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Cordinus Rutilius Gallicus returned four days later, dragging two tired legions with him. The first thing he noticed was the pile of dead bodies in the center of two partially-burned camps and a third full camp. He did not even notice the completed outpost, or the scorpions mounted in the towers and on the roofs of the buildings inside, until he was almost upon it. When he did, it tempered the rage rising inside him somewhat at the waste.
Rutilius and Cadorus met him at the outpost gates, and quickly ran down the battle- the Germans feinted with cavalry to draw their attention, then snuck down the river in boats to attempt a storm along the back wall. They were driven off with no deaths, and but a few wounded.
Cordinus did not seem to care. He looked over the remains of the burned camps. “You kill a few dozen Germans but lose two entire camps, and call that a success?” he bellowed. “Where do you expect these tired legions, who have been chasing Germans for over a week now, to sleep this night? I’ll tell you where, legate. They will sleep in your camp, while you and your legion spend the night under the stars.”
“They are welcome to our camp,” Rutilius replied, in that utter calm that he knew thoroughly irritated the general. “And we will spend the night inside the completed outpost, in comfort. Or maybe, sir, it is better if the two legions move into the outpost after eight days marching, and let us finish making the stakes and fittings for new camps on the morrow- as we had already planned to do.”
Cordinus grumbled, then agreed to have the tired men move into the outpost, as both general and legate knew he would. But he had to get a last bite in, to see if he could rile this arrogant legatus. “We will pull our own guard duty, though. I see the results of when your men guard something.”
Rutilius let the lame comment pass without remark, but Cadorus at his side rose to the bait.
“Tell me something, lord,” the Briton asked in a semblance of calm that reflected his true ire anyway. “How would you have defended three camps and an incomplete outpost? So that we may do better, next time.”
The sarcasm of the last statement was lost upon the general, who scoffed and pointed to the camps as if instructing a cadet instead of a tribune who had been fighting in one army or another for thirteen years now. “You have three camps, yes? That is one, two, three. And you have nine cohorts. Nine divided by three equals three, thus I would put three cohorts into each camp, with the support troops in the outpost. In that manner all three camps are guarded. That’s how!” the general shouted.
Rutilius remained calm for a moment, then a grin started to break his resolve. Severus and Minucius, under no such obligation of duty, began to laugh raucously, causing the general to turn beet-red with anger. Only Aulus Strabo did not laugh, but then again, the young tribune knew as little of battle as the general. Since the other tribunes were incapacitated with laughter, and the legate struggling valiantly to maintain an aloof appearance, it was up to Cadorus to rely to the general’s stupidity.
“And you would have had three burned camps, one destroyed fort, and one dead legion, sir,” Cadorus pointed out. “Seven cohorts of Germans came down that river and hit this fort from its blind side. Those seven cohorts would have destroyed the
immunes you would have stationed here- hamstringing all three legions!- before they attacked the camps one by one. There was enough cavalry roaming between the forts to prevent any one from aiding another, making sallies suicidal. And with the other two legions off chasing ghosts four days away, there would be plenty of time for them to finish off this legion. Sir.”
“Leaving you to find our corpses, three burned camps, and a burned fort as a welcoming gift,” Rutilius added, bringing it back to his tribune’s opening. “They assaulted our walls, but we repulsed them with heavy losses and took none ourselves. Here in the forest, sir, wood is replaceable. Men are not.”
Cordinus did not like it, but he was not as big a fool as he just seemed to be. A quick glance at the battlefield and location of the camps- and not knowing from which direction the Germans would come- confirmed the tribune’s words. Doing it his way would have gotten them all killed- and without this base and that third legion, his expedition’s chances of success diminished rapidly. The tribune was correct, damn him to Pluto’s Realm! And the legate as well. Double damn!
“Have the other two camps ready by tomorrow night,” he ordered gruffly, then went in to inspect this new fort. It had better be worth the humiliation he just put himself through!
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Udo and Ulfrich were encamped north of the Witch’s Tower, while Herman and Georg- two of the most clever tinkerers in the warhost, finished putting the last touches onto Ulfrich’s surprises. They were dour at the failure of their river-borne assault, even more so as they discussed what they had learned from it.
“Your blade did not go deep enough,” Udo cursed. “And Erwin lied.”
“We have not heard from Erwin for weeks now, brother,” Ulfrich reminded him. “Things can change in weeks.”
“Men do not rise from the dead in a few weeks,” Udo roared. He had a sudden urge to throw his beer at his brother and choke the idiot to death with his bare hands. “I saw Rutilius with my own eyes. Silvered cuirass with a blemish over the heart from our first attempt to kill him, with a gouge from your second, blonde head, cold demeanor as he directed his warriors in slaughtering ours. It was him.”
“That is why we failed to kill many when they came across Father Rhein,” Ulfrich remarked. The bravado and strength seemed to flow right out of him to disappear into the ground as if rainwater on sand. He remembered the Witch’s prophecy. “The men are happy because Rutilius is with them. Wotan’s Iron Balls, brother, we are doomed!”
“The legates are furious with the orders of Rutilius,” Udo quoted from the self-same prophecy. “Do you know why that is, that the men are happy but the chieftains furious? Because there are two Rutilii- Marcus the chieftain, and Caius the kinglet. The kinglet issues the decree to come against us, not the chieftain. We have been trying to kill the wrong Rutilius. And in doing so, we bring the wrath of the legions upon us.”
“Nevel and Fredrik have the kinglet in their pocket,” Ulfrich said with a spreading grin. “And if the chieftain goes to the Tower, then we will have eradicated both Rutilii.”
Udo raised his horn of beer to his brother. “We may yet see success in this bold venture!”
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While the general inspected the fort from top to bottom, his legates turned their legions over to their praefecti campora, scooped up their second-in-commands and went to the camp of the X Gemina for a heart-to heart with Rutilius.
They were challenged at the gate by the guards, then passed inside as they were recognized. The two legates looked the camp over with approving eyes- it was well-sited, a well was being dug upriver from the latrines, and the tents laid out as they should with no ropes in the lanes. They followed the lane to the praetorium where the legate of the X Gemina would be going over the orders with his staff. They waited patiently outside, listening to the orders brief through the tent walls and nodded to each other.
Titus Faenius, the tribunus laticlavius of the XXI Rapax looked to his legate with a nod and said, “We ought to do that too, sir.” Amensius agreed- having a full-court senior staff meeting was a good way for a legate to get advice from those who had served Rome for years. Finally the meeting broke up and the senior centurions and tribunes went about their tasks. The legates and their tribunes then entered the tent.
“We have brought wine,” Messala said by way of greeting. He lifted a skin on high, then presented it to his host. “You, being the only here who has seen true battle since we crossed, may have the honor of first sip.”
Rutilius shrugged, then accepted the proffered skin. He sipped a bit, found it unwatered, then poured more into a goblet to which he added a third of water before handing the skin back. He then gestured to Salvius to fetch goblets for the guests, who took the stools so recently vacated by the centurions.
“We have a problem,” Lucius Amensius began. “And his name is Rutilius.”
Marcus Rutilius looked up at that.
“Quintus Julius Cordinus Caius Rutilius Gallicus, to be precise,” Amensius added. “The man does not like you nor trust you, and is jeopardizing us all- and the precious Rhenus border- in his actions concerning you.”
“Is he a cousin that your father maltreated or so?” Messala asked. “Or did your grandfather adopt him out for a too-small price? Something is eating the man, and since you never laid eyes on him before he came here, it has to be something from your past.”
“I know him not,” Marcus replied with sincerity. “Nor do I know any of our gens cognomated Gallicus. I do not think we are related, but my family history has never interested me very much.”
“Some senator you are,” laughed Gnaeus Vipsanius Messala. “Senators are supposed to preen and gloat over their ancestry. Anyway, back to our problem. He started out well with the planning and that wonderfully-executed crossing. We had high hopes for him, and were glad to be on the offensive for once.”
“Then the Bructeri fight back, and he ignores your request for help,” Amensius said. “You fight a wonderful battle, losing hardly any, yet he punishes your legion by making it stay behind to guard empty camps while Rutilius Gallicus leads us off chasing ghosts.”
“Cordinus,” Rutilius said, “my legion does not refer to him by my family name for some odd reason. He is on a quest. He does not like me, and that is mutual. But his decision to leave my legion here was a good one. We had just fought a battle, and were in the midst of redistributing personnel to fill nine cohorts. We were the logical choice for defending the outpost, so I agreed with his orders. His decision to garrison empty and dismantled camps, however, bordered on the ridiculous, so I ignored it.”
“The man is militarily incompetent, despite his early success,” Messala agreed. “He splits his forces on enemy territory to chase men he ought to know we can never catch. And he stays on it despite our pleas.”
“It is like he listens to those two guides more than he does legates with actual battle experience here,” added Faenius. “Messala here had to threaten to write to his patron Mucianus back in Rome to even get his attention.”
Messala nodded while Amensius added, “I have no benefactor in Rome, having been promoted by Cerealis. But I did submit a request for transfer. Together with Messala’s patron, we managed to get him to leave the ghosts alone- especially when we came to that tower.”
“Tower?” Rutilius asked with alarm. He brought up his map. “Where? Show me.”
Amensius pointed. The location was about the same as where Froydis had said Veleda had her tower- a structure that had no business being upon a river in Germania.
Rutilius sighed knowingly. “One of the things ‘our problem’ is questing for is Veleda, the seeress who aided Civilis. She is reputed to live in a stone tower about where you saw it. It strikes me as odd that when he finds the tower, and his goal, he returns here.”
“And chews you out for living where he would have gotten a legion killed,” added Messala. “I wonder if his reasoning for garrisoning the empty camps had more to do with putting you in harm’s way than military expedience. He gives orders that make little tactical sense.”
“I think we need to approach him, the three of us,” Amensius said. “With our tribunes and our senior centurions. And tell him to either hand over tactical command to one of us, or to bring us back to our side of the river. This horseshit he is pulling now will only get good soldiers killed, and Rome has too few already.”
“No,” Rutilius said flatly. “We shall not mutiny. That may be his goal- to get a mutiny so that he can claim we sabotaged his expedition. If we obey every command and he fails anyway, he has no scapegoat. He will have failed on his own. No, my friends, we do not mutiny. We get rid of him the old-fashioned way. We obey his lawful commands and let Rome see his incompetence.”
“How many of us have to die until Rome finally sees this governor as a walking military disaster?” asked Faenius.
“That is why he has us, tribunus,” Rutilius replied. “We keep the men alive despite his uselessness. He is no combat veteran, but we all are. Advise him. Don’t murder him.”
“He trusts those German guides more than us,” Amensius added. “We will not get far against their advice.”
“Find out about them,” Rutilius ordered. He remembered Erwin and Georg from Noviomagus. Spies. These two could be more of the same. “Capture some locals and have them interrogate them while I am nearby. Ich kan sie verstehen,” he said in Batavian, “I can understand them.”
“Since when do you speak that gutteral garbage?” Messala exclaimed.
Rutilius shrugged. “Evidently since birth. My mother was a Chatti, and that seems to be the local lingo here. I’ll be able to tell you if the guides are truthful or not.”
Amensius grinned, as did the two tribunes. Messala did not.
“You’re half slave?” he said in shock. “Jupiter and Juno!”
“Half-German, by blood,” Rutilius corrected. “My father freed my mother and married her before I was born. In freeing her she got the citizenship, and dad always was proud of our family line. I am guessing he still is, even with a half-blood son.”
“You did well enough to earn my respect,” Messala admitted. “I guess one cannot chose one’s ancestry.”
“Maybe that is the crux of the problem with ‘our problem’,” Faenius added. “He knows of your mixed heritage, and sees you as a threat. That would explain about everything- he does not trust you since he thinks you are more aligned with these barbarians than with us.”
“He is not, you fool!” Messala roared, despite his own previous outburst.
“I know this, legate,” the tribunus continued unabashed. “But maybe ‘our problem’ does not. He may think otherwise- thus the trials and extra scrutiny, and fault with every move. He is testing you, legate Rutilius, to see if you are a true Roman or a man with loyalties as mixed as your blood.”
“His getting friendly with a local lady doesn’t help his cause any either,” Salvius added.
Rutilius shot him an angry look, but Messala clapped the legate on the shoulder in congratulations. “About time, my friend.”
“She is just a friend,” Rutilius muttered, even as he himself wondered about it. “If you must know, I was going to ask for the hand of the daughter of Decimus Licinius, Licinia, but this expedition came up before she returned to our parts.”
“Putting a wedding ring on the finger of a good Roman woman would allay loyalty suspicions,” Messala agreed. “As much as tying one on with a Germanic would raise them.”
“That is total horse shit,” Amensius said firmly, “but is does explain the actions of ‘our problem’. Plus you are a bona fide hero with crowns and phalerae and everything, while he is a nobody who got this posting due to friends in high places. He fears your ability, your fame, and what might happen if you turn that against him.”
“I do not give a damn,” Rutilius answered flatly, standing to signal an end to this gathering. “I will continue to do my duty to this legion and this army, to the province, and to Rome. As long as my namesake does the same, we have no issues.”
“And if he starts placing his own above Rome’s interests?” asked Faenius.
Rutilius shrugged, leaving the answer open.
Amensius was more direct. “Then we will need a new governor.”
Messala sighed. “It does not matter. He trusts only to those damned German guides, and not us, and especially not you. We could never get you close enough to them without ‘our’ problem finding out about it.”
“Salvius,” Marcus ordered. “Fetch Dieter.” He turned to his visitors. “I might not be able to get close to these gods-given guides our general so blindly follows, but I have eighty or so warriors who might. My bodyguards. I’ll select one who speaks good Latin, and equip him as a legionary. Lucius, you take him since the general is most often in your vicinity. Post him where he can listen in, and have a centurion you trust give him some tips so he doesn’t stick out.”
Amensius smiled wolfishly. “That I can do.”
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