Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (66 page)

‘That seems suspiciously unlikely,’ Commius sneered.

‘Nonetheless, the camp at Mons Rea is on the southern slope of the hill, overlooking the oppidum, with the inner circuit stretching to both sides. However, the outer circuit climbs the slope of the hill at both sides, but does not meet. The terrain at the top of Mons Rea is rocky. They could not put a ditch through it without many weeks’ work, driving in stakes is near impossible, and there is not enough earth on the ground to form a bank. Their only option would have been to encircle the entire hill, which would have almost doubled their circuit distance. And so the outer wall converges on the camp, just like the inner one. There is our weak spot.’

Commius blinked in surprise. ‘Our
weak spot
is a Roman camp occupied by two legions!’

‘But one camp. No trench, wall, tower and spike defences. Just a normal camp rampart. We break into that camp and take it and we have a defendable passage through the whole system to unite with the trapped army.’

‘I doubt the Romans will simply let us walk in. They will send everyone they have to defend it.’

‘They will not, Commius. For just before noon tomorrow you and Lucterius and the other solid cavalry commanders will lead the cavalry out onto the plain in a threatening manner, supported by a portion of the infantry. You will pose such a threat that the Romans will be forced to bolster the walls there against you.’

‘While you…?’

Vergasillaunus smiled. ‘As soon as night falls tonight I will take thirty thousand men - the strongest and swiftest we have, selected by their own leaders - and we will head west and then north. By the approach of dawn we will be in position behind the peak of Mons Rea. We will then spend the morning recovering and preparing and as soon as the Romans commit against you on the plain at noon, we will assault the Mons Rea camp from an unexpected direction. My cousin will, of course, see what is happening. He will commit as soon as we do, possibly against the plains walls, in which case you will aid them there, or against the camp with us. Either way, by the setting of the sun tomorrow we will secure a breach in the walls and unite the armies. Then Caesar cannot hope to hold us. We will wipe his army from the land.’

Lucterius felt his heart beating faster. It was a sound plan; a good plan. And if it worked, this would be it. The end of the war and the end of Caesar.

* * * * *

Cavarinos stood at the oppidum wall, looking over the Romans as they worked to repair and replenish their defensive system, past that to the piles of dead heaped on the plain and to the hill beyond where the relief army were encamped, and yet not really seeing any of it.

The Fortuna pendant at his throat seemed to burn cold now all the time, as if taunting him, or perhaps cursing him. His hand went to the leather pouch at his belt, which held the broken, spent slate tablet of Ogmios’ curse, once more wrapped snugly. In a seemingly miraculous fashion - curse the Roman goddess at his throat - the only people to have seen what happened down by the walls had fallen to Roman missiles before they could flee. No one here therefore was aware that the curse had been used - and to what dreadful effect.

And he would have to keep it that way.

He had revealed the curse to the leaders of the army so many weeks ago back in Gergovia and without it there would have been a revolt in which the king would have lost most of his forces. Instead, Cavarinos had shown them the tablet, bolstering their courage, and drawing them back to the fold. They followed Vercingetorix largely in the ridiculous belief that the Gods were with them. To show them the broken tablet would be to put the entire army’s future at risk. And, of course, there would be some rather awkward explaining to do, also.

Strangely, apart from a somewhat unsavoury dream during the three hours’ troubled post-dawn sleep he’d managed, in which his parents had beaten him to death for what he had done and demanded that he seek out and destroy Fronto, he had discovered that he felt absolutely nothing over his brother’s death. No guilt. No shame. Not even a jolt of sadness. But no joy or satisfaction either. Just a sense of sudden freedom, half-swallowed by a hollow emptiness. It had taken deep thinking to come to the conclusion that he had probably done the army and the tribes a great service in his fratricidal deed. It had come as a curious epiphany, as well, to discover that he prized the survival of one of the enemy over his own brother, and he was still unsure as to whether he had called down the curse primarily in order to kill Critognatos or to save Fronto. It was something he wasn’t quite ready to come to terms with. Indeed, until he looked into Fronto’s eyes across the battlefield, he could not be sure whether he would avenge his brother and settle the shades of his parents, or put friendship and the potential future of a peaceful Gaul ahead of such sick trivia.

‘He died as he lived,’ a voice said from behind, startling him. He turned to see Vercingetorix standing behind him, holding out a wooden platter with a few stringy fragments of meat and a chunk of bread that had clearly seen better days.’

‘Knee deep in blood and filth, you mean?’ Cavarinos said harshly and uncharitably.

‘A warrior’s death. They say that even as we pulled out and back to the oppidum, Critognatos and his cadre of warriors saw a small Roman sortie and decided to refuse them their victory. I gather that you were among that crowd, and it seems a gods’ gift that you survived. I am grateful for it, though… I will have need of your cunning these coming days. Now eat. There is not much, but we must all keep our strength up as best we can. We may not have broken out yet, but my cousin will not leave us languishing for long. Rest assured he will already have another plan, and we must be ready to follow along when he shows himself to us.

‘I am sick of war.’

The king gave him an odd look, but recovered quickly into an understanding smile. ‘None of us want to fight forever, Cavarinos. But it will end soon. And you know as well as I that this is about more than just throwing Caesar out of our lands. That is just the catalyst that will change everything. We are at last one nation under one man, and I will not let that collapse when the Romans are gone. If we want to take our place in the world in the manner of a Rome or Aegyptus or Parthia, we must centralise and become a
power
. The druids brought us here, though they now sit back in their
nemetons
and watch us carry out the war. It was they who began everything and they have been the glue that bound the tribes together. But now we are whole and it is time they relinquished their hold over our people. Rome has made us into Gaul, and I will continue their good work in their absence.’

‘It is a glorious dream,’ Cavarinos sighed.

‘It is no dream. We are on the cusp, my friend. The next few days will see this war at an end. I can feel it in my blood. And then we must begin the true work of building a nation. Gergovia will always be my home and our greatest fortress, but the Aedui are at the heart of the peoples and Bibracte must be our capital. We must have a senate like Rome, even if I am to be king. The tribes must all have a voice, but they must combine to become a choir with one song, the druids serving the people as Rome’s priests do, rather than guiding them. I need men like you in that senate, Cavarinos. My cousin is a good warrior and a great general, but you are a man with deeper intellect. You will lead the Arverni when I lead Gaul.’

Cavarinos was too tired even to show surprise.

‘I hope it all works out as you propose. But I have a nagging feeling that something is wrong somewhere. Something is about to halt us in our tracks, I fear.’ He turned looked out over the plain again. ‘Don’t misunderstand me - I very much hope I’m wrong. But I cannot shake the feeling.’

‘Intellect is a great thing, but sometimes it leads a man to question even the truths of the world. We will see what we will see. The gods are with us and the tribes are still spoiling for a fight. We have one more raging battle in us and we need to make it count.’

The king placed the plate on the wall top next to the silent nobleman and patted him encouragingly on the shoulder before wandering off back into the city. Cavarinos turned to watch Vercingetorix depart and noted out of the corner of his eye the figure of Molacos, the Cadurci hunter, standing impassively along the wall with folded arms. That cadaverous face twisted into an unpleasant smile as the man gave a tight nod and then turned and sloped off.

One last battle. And then? Peace either way, but what peace?

* * * * *

Fronto stood before the small mound that had been raised at the foot of the Gods’ Gate hill, at the southern edge of the plain and in the wider space between the two lines of rampart. Beneath it lay half his singulares unit, attested by the swords standing proud from the turf at the top. Silently, he listed their names reverently.

Palmatus
. A man he’d only known two years or so, and yet had become as close a friend as any. A man who had treated Fronto as an equal despite the gulf in their rank and social status. And yet a good friend. Butchered by the bodyguard who had accompanied Cavarinos’ savage brother.

Quietus
. A man who had joined him in more than one deadly struggle.

Celer
. As fast as his name, with a mind and tongue even faster than that.

Numisius
. Recovered from a broken arm after a fight in the Arduenna forest, tough as ever.

Iuvenalis
. An artillerist by trade who had been a master of the grapnel.

The remains of his bodyguard - Masgava, Biorix, Samognatos, Arcadios and Aurelius - stood silent and respectful beside him, honouring the dead. Five survivors of a unit that had been almost twenty strong early the previous year. A former gladiator, a Gallic engineer, a Belgic scout, a Cretan archer.
And Aurelius
. Despite the sombre occasion, the presence of Aurelius always seemed to make him smile. The man was superstitious to a fault and unlucky enough that if anything humorous and embarrassing were to happen, it would happen to him. And yet a model soldier and a trusted friend.

Friends were becoming fewer and fewer these days.

His gaze dropped to the urn in his arms. Priscus. The cinerary jar was still warm from the ashes within, the pyre black and charred, staining the grass with the memory of death. Priscus. It was harder than anything to believe him gone. The men of his singulares deserved their honours, but somehow the loss of Priscus had utterly eclipsed them. He really had little idea what to do with the urn. It couldn’t stay here in Gaul, clearly. When this was all over, it would have to go back with him, but where? To Massilia where he would no doubt have to think about constructing a family mausoleum? Or to Rome, where his family already had such a tomb? Or perhaps to Puteoli where the family mausoleum still had spaces from generations of dead? Or better still, to the holdings of the Vinicii down in Campania? It would be the most appropriate compliment to take him back to the arms of his family, but somehow he felt that Priscus might be more at home with Fronto’s family, estranged from his own as he was.

He turned to the five men with him, reaching up and touching his tender nose and eye that were swollen and discoloured after the fight beyond the walls - an unending background ache.

‘That’s it. No more. I want each one of you to survive this, even if you have to hide in a ditch or run like a coward. I’ve lost too many friends this season. This morning I went to see the general, as you know. The thing is that while Masgava is a freedman and employed by me, and Samognatos is a hired levy, the rest of you are still tied to the eagle despite being in my guard. No more. I have attained your
honesta missio
this morning as though you had served a full term. When this fight is over and the season ends, you can consider yourselves free men. You will have your pension and your plot of land.’

The men looked at one another in surprise and Fronto gave that half-smile again. ‘But if you want to continue to serve the Falerii, I will be in need of good men in Massilia, and I have made sure that your land grants are within Roman territory but so close to Massilia that if you fart on your land I’ll hear it on mine. Make sure you survive these last few days and I shall be retiring to Massilia, hopefully with men I trust around me.’

An image of Lucilia and the boys swam into his mind.

‘The war is almost over, lads. Peace is almost upon us.’

* * * * *

The cornu blared its warning and Fronto looked up from the table, where Masgava had almost entirely cleared the
latrunculi
board of his employer’s pieces. For a gladiator who had never even seen the game until Fronto introduced him to it two years ago, he was unsettlingly good at it.

‘An attack?’ the big Numidian asked quietly, noting the distant call. He was gradually becoming used to the army’s signals, and recognised most of the Tenth’s, but he still had some trouble with the different unit calls, and the melody blaring out across the lines outside the small command tent belonged to the Fifteenth, one of the four legions whose men continually garrisoned the section of defences on the plain.

‘The Fifteenth - a call to the standard. Preparation, so something’s going on. Come on.’

The two men, already in kit given the lateness of the morning, spilled from the tent to see the legions moving to their standards or to positions on the ramparts, as assignment required. Beyond the Fifteenth’s calls, which were being issued by a cornicen only twenty paces from the tent, the musicians of the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth were also calling the alarm. Biorix, Samognatos, Arcadios and Aurelius stood nearby, already having collected their weapons and shields in preparation. Almost a day had passed since the burnings and interment of the dead, and last night had been entirely uneventful for the six men who had joined Antonius and Varus to send off the souls of their friends through the medium of drink. But each had felt that building of pressure that a career soldier comes to recognise as the approach of action, and each of them was ready for the next Gallic push.