Marius Mules III: Gallia Invicta (Marius' Mules) (41 page)

The four men exchanged doubtful glances. This entire action was an unknown quantity and, while Sabinus had the might of three Roman legions at his beck and call, the reduced and largely untrained Twelfth, the unpopular Fourteenth, and the under-strength Ninth constituted less than two full legions between them in terms of proper numbers. If all three of these tribes had sent their strength to this place, then estimates were that the Roman force would be facing odds of at least three to one, if not more.

As the horn blared out, he smiled at the officers around him. “I know the men are tired, but we need to make an impression here. We need to present a solid core of hardened officers.”

“
Most
of my officers are still braid-haired Gauls, general. Only half of them understand me at all.”

Sabinus chuckled.

“I’d like one of the most senior to join us. It could be very useful having someone who speaks their tongue up here.”

Plancus saluted and wheeled his horse, riding the hundred yards or so to the head of the Fourteenth Legion, which was busy coming to full attention at the buccina call. As Sabinus and his officers watched the approaching parties, Plancus quickly returned, a centurion jogging along beside him. The general glanced down at the man, who stopped running and, without even a laboured breath, saluted and dropped into a formal posture.

“Centurion? I am given to understand you speak the dialect?”

“Better than Latin, sir.”

“Good.” He pointed at the approaching riders. “I would like you to listen carefully. So long as one of them speaks Latin, you shouldn’t need to be involved unless you hear something that makes interruption necessary. I would just like a trained ear on them.”

He smiled.

“Of course, if they don’t speak Latin at all, I may require a little translation.”

The centurion saluted again and Sabinus nodded with satisfaction. The man was clearly Gallic, from his stature and colouring and, while his flaxen hair had been trimmed down to fit well with a Roman helm, the bushy, drooping moustache clearly marked his origins.

Sabinus made a gesture to the approaching scouts and they rode off to one side to join the small cavalry detachment on the flank of the army.

The officers sat at the crest of the hill, tribunes from three legions forming up behind them, as they looked down the long slope toward the distant, messy sprawl of Crociatonum and the small party of almost a dozen riders approaching from that direction.

The general gave a last look round to his legions and the officers gathered behind him in their burnished glory. If anything spoke of the sheer power of Rome, it was this. Good. There was little else he could do until they knew what they were up against. He watched, alongside his silent officers, as the riders slowed to a halt and gathered in a small knot opposite them.

Sabinus had seen enough of these tribes over the last few years to immediately pick out the important characters. Rather than this being a deputation of chieftains from the various tribes, this was a strange and different gathering.

The man who took the centre and was clearly the leader of the party was a warrior of, at most, middling status. He bore the torcs and armour of a wealthy warrior, but not the jewels and decoration they had come to expect in chieftains and kings. The men around him were equally warriors rather than purely nobles, armed for brutality and not for parlay. The grey, brooding presence of a black-haired and bearded druid at the rear of the group gave further weight to this being anything but a peaceful party. Where were the chieftains and leaders?

“I am
a
Roman general, yes. Quintus Titurius Sabinus, commander of the Ninth, Twelfth and Fourteenth Legions. And you are?”

“I Viridovix. Leader of free Gaul.”

Sabinus drew a deep breath.

“A bold statement. The Unelli and their neighbours have been allies of Rome this past year. Yet now we are led to understand that you gather an army?”

Muttering in low voices among the Gauls increased at the question and, as Sabinus shot a sidelong glance to the centurion from the fourteenth to make sure he was paying attention, Viridovix turned his glare on the chattering men behind him, silencing them with a look. Sabinus nodded to himself. Whoever this man was, he had absolute authority here.

“Unelli chieftains weak… they grovel to southern apes. Warriors of Gaul not grovel, so we execute weak chieftains and form alliance as free Gaul.”

Sabinus nodded again.

“I see. You have pulled off a coup among your tribe. I hope for your sake that you can satisfy your people better than those who preceded you. A rise to power in such a fashion often acts as a spur for others to try the same. Your position could be more delicate than you imagine.”

Viridovix put his head on one side and the druid pushed forward through the crowd, leaning close enough to interpret for his leader. Sabinus was impressed at the deference the druid seemed to pay to this warrior. In two years of campaigning he had never seen a druid pay that sort of respect to any man.

Viridovix laughed.

“I not have time to mess words with general. I give this chance: go now. Run to Rome and hide behind big walls. You stay here, free Gauls will tear off heads and use as beer mug.”

Sabinus nodded.

“And I offer
you
one last ultimatum: disband this army, send the warriors back to their tribes, and this can end peacefully. I give my word that, should you offer no arms against us, we will continue to treat you as the allies you were.”

“Looks like my winter at Octodurus all over again. If they’ve overthrown their own leaders, they’re unlikely to stop just because of threats and cajoling.”

“Indeed. But the problem is that, for all my ultimatum, the outcome of any action here is hardly a foredrawn conclusion. At best we’re one man against three, but it could be a lot higher than that.”

Plancus cleared his throat.

“I despise even suggesting this, general, but might it not be a better idea to actually take him up on his offer and withdraw until we can field a larger, stronger army?”

Sabinus shook his head.

“The longer we leave this, the worse it could get. Remember the Belgae? We left them too long and they managed to gather half the northern world against us. We need to stop them now before their numbers double.”

Galba nodded with feeling.

“If word gets out that this ‘free Gaul’ has run off an army of three legions, we could see an uprising of the whole Gaulish people. The general’s right: we need to deal with it now.”

“Yes sir. The army massed in Crociatonum is not just Unelli and Lexovii. There are many of Curiosolitae and also others. Refugees, bandits, rebels and many warriors of allied tribes unhappy at Rome.”

“They are from across the water in Britannia, sir. Not sure what was said about them, because Viridovix silenced the man at that point.”

“We cannot run, but besieging an oppidum that holds such vast numbers could be considered tantamount to throwing ourselves on our swords. Anyone have any better idea than simply fortifying and praying very hard?”

The three men sat silent and glum until Rufus spread his hands and shrugged.

“There’s no better plan, general. We might be able to come up with something but, given the fact that in five or six hours we could be under attack by half a million Gauls, we should get fortifying as fast as we can.”

Sabinus nodded.

“At least we have good high ground here, with a nasty approach to all sides. If we’re going to be trapped rats, we couldn’t pick a better trap.”

He took a deep breath.

“Alright… break out the trenching tools. Let’s get ourselves dug in.”

* * * * *

Volusenus, senior tribune of the Twelfth, leaned across and muttered something to his legate, who nodded sagely and turned his serious, dark features on Sabinus.

“We are in very grave danger of repeating the disaster with which our year began in Octodurus.”

He tried to ignore the noise going on outside, but it was difficult. The three legions had constructed a large camp with all the standard defences during the afternoon following Viridovix’s ultimatum, but had barely had time even for that, let alone any extra measures, before the first attack came.

Since then the Gaulish assaults had come at regular intervals, three pushes a day for the last three days, each different from the last, as the enemy tested the Roman defences and capabilities. Each attack was carefully planned and slowly executed, a necessity given the long and steep slope atop which the Roman fort stood, between which they would retreat to the comfort and safety of the oppidum. While Sabinus had been unwilling to make any foray outside the defences, the Gauls were equally disinclined to commit a large force to the wholesale slaughter of a charge up the steep hill, across the ditches, and against the defended walls of the fort.

However, they never tired of finding inventive new ways to put the legions to the test, wearing them down and picking off as many as they could without fully committing.

Even now, the morning attack had been under way for half an hour, enemy archers lurking among the trees at the bottom of the northern slope keeping up a steady volley that forced the defenders to remain low behind the parapet. Lacking strong auxiliary missile support, Sabinus’ force was unable to return fire, and tried to keep themselves as safe as possible from the deadly shafts, only appearing above the wall when the occasional small forays of brave Gaulish warriors made their way up the slope to the defences to attempt to pull the palisade down.

It was, in short, a war of attrition.

Galba raised his voice to be heard more clearly above the commotion outside.

“We’ve got to do something. The Gauls are trying to provoke us into making a mass sortie, and these nit-picking scuffles are hardly huge and noteworthy, but we can’t go on this way forever. Baculus estimates that we’re taking down three of them for each man of ours that falls, but there are perhaps seven or eight times as many of them to begin with. You don’t have to be a mathematician to work that problem out to its unpleasant conclusion.”

Sabinus nodded.

“I’m just grateful that we happened upon such a damn good position for the camp when we first arrived. If we were on low ground, they’d probably have wiped us out by now. It’s at least bought us the time to work out our next move.”