Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (61 page)

He’d judged the move right. The swordsman had been unable to penetrate the fence, and had died for his ill judgement. The spear man, however, had thrust his weapon at the fence, roughly where Fronto had previously stood, driving the point with little trouble through the wicker. Had Fronto not moved, he would now be looking down at the spear in his belly. As it was, he turned and grabbed the protruding shaft with his free hand and pulled with every ounce of strength he could muster from battle-tired arms.

The spear came through easily and the surprised warrior gripping it hit the fence face-first. The shock made him loosen his grip and Fronto pulled the entire weapon through the narrow gap and let it roll down the inner slope, where one of the supply soldiers grabbed it and added it to the store of javelins he passed out continually to those who beckoned from the wall. Suddenly unbalanced and weaponless, the Gaul found himself staggering and plummeted back into the ditch. With an angry yell, he rose amid the grisly flesh-and-gore-pool and ripped his sword from his side only to be hit in the face by a scorpion bolt that threw him back and into the second, outer, ditch, which was as yet only half filled with corpses.

To his right Masgava, busy cleaving a climber in two, paused to yell at him. ‘Keep your right arm up when you strike. You’re sagging and your blows are going awry. Fronto gave him a tired shake of the head, but the big Numidian was already moving on to the next Gaul.

A few paces to the left an optio yelled at a legionary. Fronto couldn’t hear the details, but the tirade went unfinished as a lucky strike with a Gallic spear took the optio in the torso and threw him back from the rampart. Fronto glanced around for a moment and saw the junior officer pick himself up and rip the spear from his side, clutching a bleeding hole in his mail, starting to shout more orders even as the capsarii pushed him down onto a stretcher and carried him from the scene.

Three more legionaries arrived from the small reserve units being marshalled in the centre by Reginus, and moved up onto the ramparts to plug the gaps left by the wounded. Fronto hadn’t realised how thin this section had become until the reserves occupied it.

The battle had been raging now for so long he’d lost track of time. He knew that he’d been fighting for several hours when Atenos had appeared from somewhere and demanded that he step back and take a noon meal, else he would lose the strength to fight. He’d done as he was bidden and scoffed down a plate of meat, bread and fruit as though he’d been starved for weeks and had, in a sad acknowledgement of the fact that he was no longer a young man, taken the opportunity for an hour’s rest, in conference with Antonius, before returning to the fray.

That had been perhaps three hours ago. If fact, as Fronto glanced over his shoulder to where an equally brutal struggle was underway at the outer rampart a few hundred paces away, he could see the sun sinking towards the hillside upon which the Gallic relief army had been encamped the previous night.

Almost a whole day!

He couldn’t remember the last time a single engagement had lasted that long. A whole day of constant battle. The body count must be appalling on both sides. The number of men serving between the walls as both reserves and supply-porters had dropped drastically over that time - a telling sign of how many had been lost.

He thought back on the conversation he’d had with Antonius during his hour’s rest. The army’s second most senior officer had sent messengers to his camp at Mons Rea, as well as to Caesar and Labienus, requesting reserves to bolster the defences, but all three men had returned with nothing. The general had put down a blanket order across all his officers. Each sector was the responsibility of the officers assigned to it and they were to hold it with the troops they were given. There would be no calling for reserves from a different sector, in case the Gauls used the move to launch surprise attacks on any weak spots.

Antonius had exploded in anger and ridden off to the general, arguing that it was no use keeping the troops in position to prevent weak spots opening up where there was already one massive weak spot on the plain. Caesar had relented and allowed three more cohorts to be reassigned, but refused any further aid.

And so with ever decreasing numbers the men of the Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Fifteenth had held the walls for most of a day, not even granted time to consider what might be happening out on the plain to the cavalry. Varus would be involved in a brutal fight for his own life, given that he was cut off from the Roman fortifications by the reinforcement rebel infantry who now besieged them.

His attention was brought back to the present by a flurry of arrows - they had begun as clouds sent up en-masse in the morning, but had become sporadic as the hours wore on and the archers became separated from one another and from their leaders, encouraged to stay back by the Roman bowmen and artillerists. The flurry was answered with a Roman volley, accompanied by the crack and thud of hurled iron-tipped bolts and heavy stones from the war machines atop the wooden towers.

A Gallic arrow thudded into the wooden tower post a few feet from Fronto’s head, and the whole structure shook as the ballista atop it launched another rock over into the Gaulish army that seethed on the flat ground below the oppidum. Even back beyond the twin ditches the ground was so strewn with native bodies that little grass or mud could be seen - men who had been crippled or killed by the stake-filled
lilia
pits or the sharpened branches, embedded iron spikes or the armfuls of caltrops that had been hurled down from the rampart to spike running feet, and others who had fallen to accurate strikes from pila, arrow, sling or scorpion.

‘Legate!’

Fronto turned at the call to see a courier racing across the grass towards him, saluting as he ran.

‘What?’

‘Compliments of commander Antonius, sir. He asks that you move a third of your men across to the outer rampart to aid in a concerted push.’

Fronto blinked. ‘Is he mad? I can’t spare a third of my men.’

The courier looked distinctly uncomfortable, and closed his eyes as if trying to repeat something from memory. ‘The commander said you’d argue, sir. He told me to tell you “I can end this in half an hour, now give me the troops”, sir.’

Fronto frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound like Antonius.’

‘Respectfully, I cut out some of the worst language, sir, and he called you something I cannot bring myself to repeat to an officer.’

Fronto laughed. ‘Now
that
sounds like Antonius. Alright, tell him to make room. They’ll be across shortly.’

As the courier saluted and ran off, Fronto prepared himself for trouble and marched along the rampart, ducking stray arrows and dodging lucky blows, until he reached Atenos, two towers south. As he moved, Masgava and Quietus fell in to protect him, the latter running to his left, holding up his big shield to protect them both from stray missiles.

‘Centurion?’

‘Sir?’

‘Have your officers mark every third man and then pull them off the walls and send them over to Antonius. He needs them for something.’

Atenos frowned, ignoring the Gaul he had by the throat dangling over the drop beyond the fence. ‘
We
need them for something too, sir.’ Half turning, he head-butted the struggling Gaul and dropped the broken form back among the enemy.

‘I know that. Do it anyway.’

As Atenos, still with an expression of disapproval, snapped out the orders to his optio and the two men began marching along the rampart in opposite directions tapping men on the shoulder, Fronto staggered, a stray arrow passing close enough to take a nick out of his earlobe and draw a hot, bloody line across his neck. Masgava fixed Quietus with the most malevolent of glares and the bodyguard hoisted his shield higher, being sure to cover his legate from further strikes. Grabbing his scarf and wiping away the blood, Fronto looked down at the legionaries from the Tenth stepping away from the wall and then across at the outer rampart where a similar fight continued.

Whatever Antonius had in mind, he’d better make it work, and do it quickly. Night would descend all too soon. This was starting to look a little too much like a repeat of Gergovia for comfort.

* * * * *

Lucterius was exultant. As his horse shouldered its way through the press and he brought his heavy blade down on one of the Roman auxiliaries - a Remi perhaps? - he almost laughed. The Romans were beaten. Oh they fought on like lions, as one was always to expect with the legions, but their cavalry were fighting for their very existence now. Hours of combat had passed, with the Roman commanders repeatedly sallying forth in waves and breaking the Gallic morale, only to find that Lucterius and his companions could all-too-easily pull things back together, and turn the tables on their enemy, often accompanied by attacks from those bands of archers still present on the field. And so it had been all day, the Romans charging and the tribes pulling back accordingly under the onslaught, and then the rebel horse making their own brutal attack, only to see the Romans fall back under the pressure and regroup elsewhere. From the point of view of Toutatis, looking down upon the war, the cavalry battle must had looked like the waves of the sea, repeatedly crashing upon the shore and then ebbing back as the sand dried, only to see the next wave coming to soak it.

But the important fact was that the rebels would win. Although the attrition of this unpleasant engagement was wearing down both forces at a surprisingly equal rate, Lucterius and his people outnumbered the Roman cavalry by a high enough margin that the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

As he fought his way to the edge of the latest clash, he allowed himself a moment to gaze upon the other battle upon which today hinged. The Roman defences were still holding, but they were almost submerged beneath a sea of good tribal warriors and their future was already written in thick, oozing blood. The fact that, from what he’d heard, the Romans weren’t even sending support from their other camps to aid the beleaguered defenders could only speed their demise.

It would be over tonight, then. That sector of defences would break, the two forces would join up, and then the Romans would die, for the men of the tribes would not relent with the sinking of the sun. The Romans might not like to fight at night, but now the tribes had victory in their grasp and they would not pause, even for a moment.

A new noise entered the aural tapestry of the battle, and Lucterius frowned, peering at the Roman ramparts as he tried to discern what it was. Even at this distance it was evident that the Roman defenders atop the walls had suddenly increased in both number and voracity. He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. At this stage, many hours after the first blow, they should be tiring, unable to rally like this. Unless something had given them heart?

There it was again: that strange insistent chord somewhere in the din.
What was it
?’

He felt a sense of rage begin deep in his belly and spread out to fill him entire as he recognised finally the booing horn calls of the damned German cavalry. He was distracted for a moment as a Roman auxiliary suddenly appeared in the press and made a lunge for him. Only half paying attention, Lucterius blocked the blow high and then swept down, his sharpened blade carving across the enemy’s face and almost separating the top half of his head.

Ignoring the gurgling, dying man, he turned back to the distant walls. His heart lurched as he realised that a section of the mass attack on the rampart had been pushed back through concentrated assault by missiles and artillery and then the increased manpower at the walls. Even as he realised why, the first ranks of the savage head-hunting riders appeared in the opening, racing out into the open ground beyond the fight.

No!

The infantry at the walls attempted to close the gap and prevent the sally of the Germans, but they were simply unable to stop the flood of horsemen at a charge, their blood up, having been frustrated by a day’s inactivity and finally given the opportunity to deal death. Lucterius could imagine what was happening at the gate.

And then the Germans were hurtling across the open ground. For a moment, Lucterius was forced to pay attention to another auxiliary intent on taking his life and as he swiftly dispatched the man, he turned back to see the thousand-strong German unit halted, forming into a tight unit. This was new. The few times he had seen - to his detriment - the Germanic cavalry in action, they had been a loose mob of screaming lunatics. Cohesion seemed unlikely. And yet there they were, forming up.

His heart began to pound as he watched the Germans start to move, picking up speed at an almost unbelievable rate and racing towards the fray like the avenging fury of Gods.
Wicked
gods!

He had only heartbeats. What could the enemy do? They might be savage individually, but the field was currently a swamped mix of Roman and rebel, thrashing around in a disorganised mass. If the Germans hit them - which seemed to be their intention - they would as likely kill as many Romans as rebels. He almost laughed. Releasing the Germans was no guarantee of aid to the Roman force. It was like letting a fox loose in a pen with two chicken coops. Only the Gods knew which army would take the brunt of this attack.

A honking and then a shrill whine rang out from the west, and Lucterius frowned for only a moment before his eyes widened. No!

One of the rebel signallers had called the orders to pull back and form up. The idiot!

Lucterius swung his horse, trying to find a man with a horn to countermand that order, but the press was too chaotic. Even as he felt the panic rise, he noticed that already the concentration of men around him was becoming more and more Roman as his own men pulled back from the fray and formed into a block at the call.

Lucterius tried to shout, but an opportunistic Roman appeared in his way, swung a cavalry sword and hit him hard. The mail shirt prevented most of the damage from the blade’s edge, but he felt two or three ribs crack and was thrown back in his saddle. Recovering as best he could, he fought desperately for a hundred heartbeats, struggling, but eventually managing to fight back and kill his attacker, only to find himself face to face with another who he killed with four strokes, taking a ragged wound to the back of his hand in the process. He was almost alone among the enemy now, though close to the edge of the fight. Urgently, he pulled out from the press and into the open.