Marius Mules III: Gallia Invicta (Marius' Mules) (33 page)

Within moments the first century had reached the edge of the jetty, and with surprisingly few casualties, but then that was the advantage the legions had in cramped conditions: the traditional Gallic sword or spear required far more room to wield effectively than the enemy were being afforded in this desperate press of men.

As the space before them opened up, the remaining Veneti having retreated toward the ships, Atenos bellowed another command and the century split into three groups, each one numbering perhaps twenty men now, and moved as individual shield-walls onto the wooden jetties.

The numbers here were easier, at perhaps two Gauls to each Roman, though the sudden acquisition of space now gave the defending Veneti enough room to wield their blades effectively.

Atenos grinned from the front rank of men as he eyed the biggest of the Veneti warriors; a big man by any comparison… expect when compared to the centurion himself. The score of legionaries moved forward at a slow pace, presenting a column three men wide - as many as the space allowed.

Drawing a deep breath, the huge centurion growled something in the unintelligible language of the Gauls. The big Veneti warrior ahead blanched and shied away from the oncoming Romans, but the press of his fellows prevented him from escaping.

“What did you say to him, sir?” asked the legionary to his left curiously.

Atenos grinned. “I told him we were going to eat them all.”

And then they were upon the enemy and the killing began. Lunging with his gladius, Atenos felt his blade bite deep into flesh and the big Veneti warrior cried out in pain, raising his sword defiantly and bringing it down heavily in an overhead blow. The centurion raised his shield and blocked the blow, though the previous damage that had shredded the bronze edging had weakened it and the broadsword cleaved down into the wood and leather, jamming deep into the central boss and just managing to draw blood from his arm behind.

“Bastard!”

Heaving the shield up and to his left, temporarily inconveniencing the legionary fighting by his side, Atenos pushed the man’s heavy sword away from him and leaned forward, thrusting his blade out to the right to cripple another warrior who had turned toward him.

His left arm occupied with the shield and jammed sword up to his left and his other hand gripping the blade, deeply embedded in another man’s chest, Atenos gave up the hope of an organised attack and let go of both, lunging forward and head-butting the man, hard. His helmet struck the big warrior between the eyes, shattering his nose and cracking the skull. As the Gaul staggered back into the press of Veneti warriors, Atenos lurched forward again, bringing his face down into the curve of the man’s neck just above the collarbone.

With a snarl, he bit down, severing arteries and snapping tendons as he pulled his head back and ripped a huge chunk of flesh from the crippled warrior. The Veneti man screamed and collapsed back to the floor.

From amid a face covered in blood and gristle, Atenos grinned at the warrior who suddenly became visible behind the falling body. As the man went pale, Atenos spat a sizeable chunk of meat at him and reached out to his right, ripping his blade back out of the dying warrior.

Next to him a legionary fell, to be replaced instantly by another from the second rank. The Veneti outnumbered them, but the first century had added to their arsenal the weapon of terror, and the rear ranks were already throwing themselves into the bay in desperation.

Some fifty yards behind them, the second and fifth centuries had mirrored Atenos’ initial manoeuvre, turning the outer face of the wedge and forming it easily into a heavy shield wall that began to heave the fleeing Veneti back toward the gate.

The low wall around the outer edge of Darioritum was formed after the Roman fashion, and the sole gate at the port end was no exception. The embankment, four feet high for most of its circumvallation, here rose to seven feet to allow room for a double heavy wooden gate, while the palisaded walkway marched up and across the top, giving the Veneti a defensible platform.

Simple mathematics told the men at the front of the Roman force that their mission was an impossible one. The number of Veneti already outside the gate equalled the Romans, without the many thousands behind the walls still trying to leave and the warriors who had climbed up to line the palisade and raised platform above the gate.

Valiantly, the centurions braced in the Roman line and began trying to heave the shield wall forward, pushing the warriors back toward the gate, but the sheer weight of the Gallic force pushing back out against them was at least equal and the legionaries found they were having difficulty merely holding their ground.

Every few moments there would be a cry of pain or anguish as one of the Veneti warriors fell foul to a well-placed or lucky sword blow from the heavy wall of iron. However, the cries of the wounded or dying Veneti were outnumbered heavily by Latin shouts of agony or consternation as the men of the two centuries fell to blows from the mass of warriors. The Veneti lining the palisade had found their range safely now and were throwing spears and releasing slingshot that fell constantly among the beleaguered Romans.

The shield wall buckled every second heartbeat as men collapsed and the legionary behind them stepped forward to take their place quickly before the momentary space became a full breech that the Gauls could push into.

The tussling back and forth between the two lines, one desperate to push through to freedom and the other frantically fighting to hold the line, gradually became more and more perilous as the minutes passed, the ground beneath them becoming slick with blood and gore, men tripping and stumbling over the bodies of ally and enemy alike.

The centurion of the second century shook his head angrily. This was a disaster! A quick glance up and ahead confirmed his worst fears. The line was beginning to break in places and three of every four bodies he found beneath his feet as he was jostled back and forth in the press of men wore the tunic and mail of a Roman legionary.

They wouldn’t last another five minutes. By his estimate, a third of the men were already gone, and the number of Roman screams was on the increase as the odds gradually tipped further out of their favour.

Taking a deep breath, he roared the command for individual melee, recognising that the shield wall was doomed, and the men, understanding the reason for the call, abandoned all hope of holding the wall and fell, instead, to the precision butchery for which they were trained. They wouldn’t last too long, but at least this way they would take some of the bastards with them.

Centurion Cordius of the fourth century, a grey-haired veteran with a harelip and a face ‘only a mother could love’ as he was regularly told, glanced over his shoulder and watched with dismay as he realised that the line by the gate was failing fast.

His men were busy hacking with their swords or sawing with pugio daggers at the ropes that bound the jetty planks together. It was going to be a long job. They weren’t engineers and were ill-equipped for such a task. Again, his head snapped back to the working legionaries. The battle would be long over before they could take down even one jetty, though he could see the value in Atenos’ decision. Likely the gate would fall in the next five minutes and, if the jetties were still accessible, the Veneti would flee along them, massacring the Romans in the way and clambering onto their ships.

The men looked up in surprise to see their centurion grinning and pointing to a small group of empty four-wheeled carts that stood off to one side up the gentle grassy slope, presumably having been used to load the ships with all the tribe’s goods before they began to board themselves.

“Get the carts. We’ll roll them down to the jetties. If you’ve cleared enough ropes, they might collapse them. If not, at least they’ll block them nicely.”

The gate was lost. They all knew it. There were now more Roman bodies underfoot than desperately hacking at the Veneti, and those remaining men were falling with every heartbeat. The centurion of the second century that had put out the call for melee sighed as he realised that Cordius and the fourth had joined them, having finished with the jetties. The arrival of the fourth century would merely slow down the inevitable. Would anyone remember what a good job his men had done here against unreasonable odds?

He clucked irritably as he lunged out and stabbed another enemy warrior, pausing then for a moment to wipe the blood from his eyes where it continued to stream and pool from the throbbing wound on his forehead where a powerful blow had sheared off his cheek piece and sent his helmet flying off to the ground somewhere.

Whatever the chief centurion had meant by ‘Remember Thermopylae’ had escaped him but, perhaps, if it was pertinent, it would at least lead to him being remembered. Angrily, he lashed out at another man with his shield boss and drew back his gladius, watching with a doomed resignation as three burly Veneti singled him out and closed on him in an arc.

Close to the actual gate post, a small knot of six Romans had managed to reach the rampart and formed a defensive half-circle on the sloping bank, their backs to the palisade. Lunging repeatedly in an effort to keep the Veneti mass back from them, the optio among them paused for a moment to glance over the heads of the press of enemy warriors, trying to weigh up the numbers.

“It’s the lads!” he cried out suddenly and shook the man next to him by the shoulder. The legionary looked up in surprise and then grinned.

A moan of dismay flowed through the crowd of desperate Veneti as they saw the advancing lines of bronze and iron and red wool closing on them from both sides, filling the wide space between the high wall and the outer rampart and falling on the panicked rear of the fugitives.

Down in the press, the hare-lipped grin of Centurion Cordius turned to the centurion of the second whom he had rushed to support, relieved at the shouted news of reinforcements.

But the other centurion wasn’t there. The headless body lay on the ground next to him, blood pooling around the medallions and torcs on his chest harness. Cordius sighed and looked back up just in time to see a Veneti warrior gripping the head by the hair, grinning at him with a raised sword.

A thousand Gauls couldn’t have blocked Cordius’ path as he bore down to take his revenge on the grinning warrior.

Atenos rolled his shoulders, allowing the mail shirt to settle into a more comfortable position. Glancing off to his left, he did a quick mental calculation. There were perhaps thirty of his men left. They had lost more than half the century on the jetties, a fact that was equally testified to by the sight of his remaining men having to grip onto one another to prevent slipping on the bloody slick that covered the timber, and plunging into the cold bay.

Heavy casualties, but the number of Veneti dead on the decking or bobbing around in the water made him feel a little better about it. As they stood on the empty ends of the jetties, all they could do was to watch helplessly as the Veneti fleet moved slowly off into the bay, unfurling their sails in preparation to catch whatever wind there was and take flight to their next fortress.

Would Caesar be angry? Probably, but then Atenos had seen angry generals before as both mercenary and war captive. Strangely, he found himself more worried about disappointing his legate than angering one of the most powerful men in Rome. Interesting, given that he’d only served under Fronto for a few weeks and had only known him at all for a little over a month.

He looked over his shoulder and squinted at the defences back on land.

Centurion Cordius had done a good job with the resources he had: One jetty had collapsed entirely at the land end, leaving a twenty foot gap over the chilly water. Another was in fragments, a broken cart wedged among the piles that supported the broken walkway. Even the third, though intact, was largely blocked by two more broken carts. The six other vehicles jutting from the water’s surface told of the effort required to do such damage.

The fighting around the gate had looked bad the last time he’d checked, the red of Roman lines seriously outnumbered by the multi-hued Veneti garb. Now, however, he could see the glinting lines of the other legions closing on the rear of the mass. Good. At least the day wasn’t a total loss. Caesar would have his meaningful victory.

“Centurion!”

He turned to the legionary who had called him, standing at the edge of the jetty, crimson from head to foot with Gallic blood. The man was pointing and Atenos followed his gesture, gazing out across the water until he broke into a wide grin.

The wide, square sails of Roman triremes and quinqueremes were clearly visible beyond the Veneti ships.

The fleet had arrived.

Chapter 11

(Quintilis: In the bay below Darioritum, on the Armorican coast)

Brutus glanced across at the trierarch of the
Aurora
.

“Think we can contain them all?”

The captain clearly registered the doubt in his voice and equally clearly shared it.

“Most of them, sir. All the ships near the port are still slow and wallowing. They’ve not got their sails full yet and we can run circles round them so long as we can keep them from getting round us. There have got to be fifty or so ships out here already under full sail, though. Look: they’re already pulling out to our left to pass us.”

Brutus nodded thoughtfully. He hadn’t come all this way in good weather at last just to be bypassed again. The Veneti already under sail had the edge at the moment and would be round behind the Romans in minutes.

“Then we’ll have to split the fleet. Send out the signals. Have the first six squadrons surround the fleet at the port. They should be able to do that easily enough.”