04 The Eagle and the Wolves

04 The Eagle and the Wolves

THE EAGLE AND THE WOLVES

SIMON SCARROW

04 The Eagle and the Wolves

Chapter One

‘Halt!’ the legate shouted, thrusting his arm up.

The mounted escort reined in behind him, and Vespasian strained his ears to catch the sound he had heard a moment before. No longer drowned out by the heavy clumping of hoofs on the rough native track came the faint braying of British war horns from the direction of Calleva, a few miles distant. The sprawling town was the capital of the Atrebatans, one of the few tribes allied to Rome, and for a moment the legate wondered if the enemy commander, Caratacus, had made a bold strike deep into the rear of the Roman forces. If Calleva was under attack . . .

‘Come on!’

Kicking his boot heel into the flank of his horse, Vespasian bent low and urged his mount up the slope. The escort, a dozen of his scouts from the Second Legion, pounded along after him. It was their sacred duty to protect their commander.

The track inclined diagonally up the side of a long steep ridge, beyond which it sloped down towards Calleva.

The town was being used as the forward supply depot of the Second Legion. Detached from the army, commanded by General Aulus Plautius, the Second had been ordered to defeat the Durotrigans, the last of the southern tribes still fighting for Caratacus.

Only when the Durotrigans had been destroyed would the Roman supply lines be secure enough for the legions to advance further north and west. Without adequate supplies there would be no victory for General Plautius, and the Emperor’s premature celebration of the conquest of Britain would be exposed for a hollow sham to the public in Rome.

The fate of General Plautius and his legions - indeed the fate of the Emperor himself - depended on the overstretched and slender arteries that fed the legions, and which could be severed at a stroke.

Regular columns of heavy wagons trundled from the vast base camp on the estuary of the Tamesis - the river that snaked through the heart of Britain - where provisions and equipment from Gaul were landed. For the last ten days the Second Legion had been without supplies from Calleva. Vespasian had left his forces laying siege to one of the larger hillforts of the Durotrigans while he hurried back to Calleva to investigate the matter. The Second Legion was already on reduced rations, and small groups of the enemy lay in wait in the surrounding forests, ready to attack any foraging parties that dared to range too far from the main body of the legion. Unless Vespasian managed to secure food for his men soon the Second Legion would have to fall back on the depot at Calleva.