Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (74 page)

As they had crested the hill, the man had pulled something from his belt with his left hand. Shieldless and with his sword in his right, the big German steered his beast purely with his knees. Varus had frowned at the odd thing the German chief brought forth. It looked like a long knife, but with twin parallel blades, each bent at the end into a razor-edged hook.

And then, before he could query the man, Sigeric had roared some Germanic, guttural noise and his horsemen had kicked their steeds into a charge before even Volcatius Tullus had the chance to have his signaller blow the call. Varus found himself almost lost amid the big men on their bigger horses, feeling curiously short and odd as he raced into battle.

The effect of their surprise attack was both instant and horrific.

The panic that swept through the Gallic reserve army was palpable and, Varus noted, seemed to be almost entirely aimed at the German cavalry, rather than the much more numerous auxilia and regulars under Volcatius Tullus.

And as the riders ploughed into the rear ranks of the Gaulish army, Varus began to understand. As the old saying went - well, paraphrased anyway - you could take the warrior out of Germania, but you couldn’t take Germania out of the warrior. This force may be kitted out in the best Roman equipment available, and trained by Roman cavalrymen, but they were no more Roman at heart than Varus was German.

And in much the same way as the more brutal of the Germanic tribes, this bunch apparently felt no fear whatsoever. They would cheerfully charge into the mouth of Hades itself, determined to rip the balls from Cerberus with their teeth. Their bloodthirsty enthusiasm was tangible, and if Varus could feel it riding with them - in fact, almost
succumbing
to it by sheer proximity - then he could only imagine what it felt like to the Gauls they were riding down.

The Germans ploughed into the infantry like a sword through butter, barely slowing as they chopped, slashed, speared, jabbed, sliced and kicked their way. The horses - Germanic steeds of their own selection - trampled the unwitting and more than once Varus saw the animals lunge down and bite the enemy, something he’d never seen a horse do in his life.

As he watched, Sigeric turned from a German officer into a howling, lustful battle demon. That strange, twin hooked knife rose and came down, slamming into a panicked Gaul’s throat and the big chieftain roared and hauled it up. The hooks caught on the unfortunate Gaul’s chin, shredding his neck like an old, weatherworn curtain and, accompanied by a roar and a yank of arms with muscles like anvils, Sigeric ripped the half-severed head from the body, shattered vertebrae falling away and bouncing from his horse’s flank. In shock, Varus turned away only in time to see one of the other Germans gripping a poor Gaul’s wrist in his teeth, gnawing the arteries as he sawed through the elbow with his sword.

Varus felt sick. And faint. Everywhere he looked, acts of the most appalling barbarism were being perpetrated. These were not cavalry. These were animals!

No wonder the Gauls ran when they saw the Germans. After facing this lot once or twice, no man in his right mind would want to stand and take them on a third time.

The Gaulish army had lost in that instant.

The force that had been pushing to cross the north rampart of Mons Rea disintegrated, fleeing wherever they could. It took a matter of heartbeats for word of the cavalry onslaught to reach those in the thick of it. The men outside the camp on the periphery of the battle turned and fled, heedless of the dangers all around them, desperate to be away from the scene and making for the reserve camp on the hill.

The Germans were enjoying themselves, and every scene of their enjoyment threatened to make Varus’ gorge rise. Gulping in a bloody breath, the commander fought the urge to vomit and tried to move out to the open, away from the carnage and the charnel mess. Sigeric was in the way. The Roman officer couldn’t even see the rest of his cavalry, though he was sure they were now committed, adding to the destruction. He tried to push his way past Sigeric, trying not to notice what the big man was doing to a shrieking Gaul.

A thrumming noise almost escaped his attention and he didn’t know whether to shout his thanks or simply throw up as Sigeric held out part of a Gaul and used it as a shield to stop the arrow that had been hurtling at Varus, the missile thudding into the meat with an unpleasant noise.

Varus rode away from the slaughter, his face white as a fresh toga.

* * * * *

Molacos the huntsman lowered his bow. Another Roman officer he’d almost had, but the huge brute accompanying the man had stopped the arrow. The Cadurci hunter had dithered for half a heartbeat, wondering whether to try again, but what had been a raging battle was now turning into a slaughter. He was a hunter - a man of skill and finesse - not a meat-sack warrior. Thick battle was not his forte. He would have left the fight even were his people winning, but that was clearly no longer the case. The day was all but lost as the sun’s lowest arc touched the western hill. Time to find Lucterius. Molacos had managed to break out of Alesia, cross the inner wall at that broken gate, and slip through the northern rampart once the line had collapsed and the fighting had spread everywhere. Now he was free.

Ignoring the fighting going on around him, he slipped the Roman bow he’d picked up from a supply spot in the camp over his shoulder and instead drew his knife. He turned to head into the sunset, only to find a dismounted Roman cavalryman, shieldless and out of breath, in front of him. The Roman looked as surprised at the sudden meeting as he, and Molacos raised his knife even as the Roman brought his sword round to bear. The hunter was faster and much more accurate, though, his knife hitting the roman in the chin, the point jabbing up and through the mouth, into the brain and killing him.

But the cavalryman’s blow had begun and death would not slow the momentum.

The Roman sword smashed across Molacos’ face, sending him blind with blood and a shockwave of agony through his head. Desperate suddenly to be away from this nightmare, Molacos staggered, his face burning, blinking and hoping not to die.

Gradually, as he moved into the growing shadows away from the melee, the blood slick cleared from his eyes and he could see a little. Only one eye seemed to be working properly, and his left hand side was a vague pink-grey blur of liquid. His hand probed his face as he moved and he realised quickly that it was ruined. He’d never been pretty, and he knew that, but he recognised with equal certainty that he had been made hideous this day.

Cursing the world, and war, and Rome -
mostly Rome
- Molacos staggered off into the evening, searching for his master.

* * * * *

Cavarinos blinked.

His world hurt. His head felt as though horses had ridden across it.

Where was he?

He tried to rise, but his body appeared not to be working. His limbs felt like lead. It took him a long moment of realisation to figure out that he was beneath something. Several somethings, in fact.

He was at the bottom of a pile of bodies.

His head
truly
hurt, and he could feel the sharp pains of innumerable cuts and minor wounds across his body as he tried to free himself from the pile. An image struck him. A big, dark-skinned fist with knuckles like ox-shoulders coming for him.
Fronto’s man
. Memory flooded into him along with the endless pains. He knew he should feel angry, or glad, or indignant, or vengeful, or at least
something
. All he felt was tired.

After what felt like an hour of heaving and pushing, accompanied by the snapping of already-dead bones, Cavarinos extricated himself from the pile to discover that the sun had set. The inky purple of evening was cast above him, and the sounds of battle had gone.

It was over. How had they fared?

With difficulty - and apparently an arrow in the calf, which burned like crazy - Cavarinos hauled himself upright. A few tired-looking Romans lined the walls nearby, which answered his question eloquently.

That was it, then. He knew as well as anyone that the besieged army didn’t have another fight left in them. The battle was over. The war was over. His eyes scanned the land around him and he had to blink away the pain as his leg almost gave under him. Lights were winking into existence up at the oppidum. Some of the army had escaped there then, so that would be his destination. To starve or surrender or just charge to his doom with the rest of them as whoever now led the rebels decided.

The arrow had only cut through his flesh, scraping bone but leaving the muscle intact, and he found he could walk with a small amount of pain and difficulty. He reached down and snapped the shaft, drawing it out with a whimper of pain and then binding his leg with a dirty rag torn from one of the numerous bodies in the gateway. The Romans weren’t watching him here. How would he flee? His hand reached up and he found the somehow comforting shape of Fortuna still at his neck. He gripped it tight as he stepped out from the bodies and limped and staggered through the gate, having to use the timbers to support himself.

Then he was out into the evening and the open grass, strewn with hundreds and hundreds of his countrymen. It was a soul-destroying sight. So much Gallic life spent on this one day in pursuit of a dream that had now evaporated as the tribes woke from their blissful fantasies to find the Roman boot on their throat with more weight than ever.

Over. He turned to look at the Romans on the wall. The artillery was unmanned. None of the few soldiers seemed to have a bow or pilum. They mostly leaned on the fence as though they had survived a trip through Hades, which perhaps they had.

And so, seemingly, had he. He heard one of the Romans call to another, and they were pointing at him. Cavarinos turned his back on them. If he was going to die, watching it coming would make no difference. But no pilum came, nor arrow, nor bullet as he staggered painfully back across the ground and up the slope to the oppidum and to the last night of the rebellion, as he saw it.

Tonight, the war was over.

Perhaps tomorrow the peace could begin?

* * * * *

Fronto stood with half a dozen fellow officers, his singulares - both intact and wounded - gathered around him. Everyone looked equally exhausted. He had gone back to the gate as soon as the fighting was completely done and he’d had the leisure to do so, but could find no sign of Cavarinos. That might be a good sign, but there were enough unrecognisable bodies - and body
parts
- that he couldn’t be sure.

And now Antonius was passing around the wine that he could only have had on him, somewhere at his belt, even during the nightmare of the fight at the northern wall. Every man drank deep, and some poor soldier that Antonius had grabbed as he passed was even now hunting all the camp’s supplies for more.

‘Tonight, my friends, I intend to get drunk,’ Caesar’s second grinned.

‘That’ll be a feat. Two years now of downing your own bodyweight in wine and I’ve never seen you manage to get properly bollocksed yet!’

Antonius laughed lightly. ‘I save the silly stuff for the girls, Fronto. Men drink like men.’

The officers fell silent as they watched a small party approach in the gloom of the evening, their features only coming clear as they passed into the torchlight. Labienus, still caked in gore, was accompanying a party of legionaries as they hauled some Gallic noble, his arms bound behind his back and a horizontal pole beneath his arms keeping him upright.

‘Looks important,’ Fronto noted.

Labienus nodded. ‘
Vergasillaunus
, apparently. The rebel king’s cousin who led the attack on the north wall. Caesar will want to meet him, I’m sure.’

‘We didn’t get the king, then?’

‘They say he got away back up to Alesia. Varus and his men have pursued the relief army back up to their hill, but gave off the chase at the bottom of the slope where the treeline stopped them. Not much chance of them managing something like that again, though.’

No, Fronto thought with a sigh of relief.

My last battle
…

Chapter 25

Lucterius staggered between the scrub bushes in the last purple glow of evening, his horse long gone - dead on the field from a Roman spear point. Like so many of the relief force’s cavalry, he had ended up fleeing the fight in the chaos that had ensued following the rout at Mons Rea, though most of the rest had still been mounted. The news of the disaster had come through quickly to the attack on the plain, though in truth the situation had already been obvious, since the debacle could be seen easily enough from the flat lands.

Vergasillaunus’ force had been on the cusp of completely overrunning the Roman camp when they had been hit from behind by a cavalry force that had changed the entire fight. For a while, he had not understood how a single cavalry unit - no matter how large - could have changed things so quickly and thoroughly, but someone had mentioned the Germans, and Lucterius had remembered that horrendous force with a shudder. He’d pictured the head-takers ploughing into the rear ranks of the Gallic force and the reason for the rout had immediately become clear.

Still, he’d hoped that Vergasillaunus had enough control and influence to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. After the shock of the attack had died down the Gallic leader should have been able to rally his men - Lucterius had tried the same on the plains - but it seemed that Vergasillaunus had gone and no one else had the strength of character to pull things together. Without that man leading the reserve army, control had devolved to each tribe’s commander and none had the seniority to lead the others. So inevitably the rout had become flight and death and chaos. And because the Mons Rea collapse could not be halted, Lucterius could not persuade the commanders in his own force to hold and keep fighting.

The entire battle stuttered to a halt and became a chaotic debacle on all three fronts, the failure of the critical Mons Rea attack leading to the collapse of the others. As Lucterius’ own troops fled the field, he’d seen across the Roman defences and noticed the first of the Oppidum’s force fleeing back up the slope to Alesia. No hope of success remained. Despite the fact that the Gallic forces still outnumbered the Romans, and had better access to supplies, the battle was lost.