Clash of Empires by Ben Kane

Author:Ben Kane
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409173403
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2018-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

CHAPTER XXIV

Western Macedonia, late spring 199 BC

A month into the new campaign, and Felix and Antonius were patrolling the countryside. Their pleasure at leaving the vast camps on the Illyrian coast, where the army had spent the winter, had not yet dissipated. Although the weather had been pleasant – sunny, and not too cold or damp – months of tent-living in one place was tedious. Pullo might have enjoyed the endless hours of training and weapons drill, leavened only by sentry duty and patrols, but Felix and the rest had had to endure it. Their rare periods off duty – as well as one pay day – had been cherished, and occasions for vast consumption of wine.

The peaks of the mountains to east and west might still be snow-capped, and the rivers running swift and deep with freezing meltwater, but the legionaries had left them behind and descended onto flatter ground. Here, summer was just around the corner. Warm sunshine bathed the landscape. Skylarks trilled from on high; the trees were in full bloom. In the small fields, crops of millet, emmer and spelt stood knee high.

Felix and his comrades weren’t alone on their quest for food. Half the legion and ten turmae of cavalry had also been deployed. Tens of thousands of soldiers, and similar numbers of horses and mules, needed vast quantities of food daily. Foraging close to the enemy was risky, however, and so after offering Philip battle in vain several times, Galba had marched his legions seven miles north along the plain. Fresh camp had been set up on the lower slopes of the western mountains.

From there, hundreds of legionaries, Felix and his comrades among them, were to scour the land for supplies. The principes emptied barns, gathered up sheep and cattle, and if the crops were ripe, harvested the fields. Farmers stood by in helpless rage as wagons following in the Romans’ wake took away not just their means of making a living, but most of their food for the coming year. Any foolish enough to resist received short shrift.

‘What do they call this place again?’ asked Fabius. ‘We’ve been through so many shitholes in the last month.’

‘Ottolobus,’ said Felix. He had heard Pullo talking with Livius.

Fabius hawked up a gob of phlegm and spat. ‘That for Ottolobus.’

‘It’s better than the fucking mountains,’ said Felix.

Thanks to heavy winter snowfall, the approaches to Macedonia from Illyria had been impassable for half a month later than usual. Impatient to begin the campaign, Galba had ordered the army’s departure from Apollonia sooner than might have been wise. Felix and his comrades had endured calf-deep snow and freezing temperatures for days before the worst of the heights had been crossed.

‘It wasn’t pleasant,’ agreed Antonius. ‘What must it have been like for Hannibal in the Alps? A month it took his army to cross the mountains, and half of them died.’

‘A shame the whoresons didn’t all perish, and save us a generation of blood and arse-ache,’ said Hopalong, to loud mutters of agreement.

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