The Druid King (50 page)

“What are they doing
now
?”

Caesar laughed. “It would appear that they’re running around in circles,” he said.

“Seriously . . .”

“Seriously, they’re keeping in motion to present less easy targets, and circling our fortifications searching for a weak point that they are not going to find.”

“What do you think they’ll do then?” asked Tulius.

“They can charge our fortifications and be annihilated,” said Caesar. “Or they could besiege us, in which case we would be in dire trouble unless Labienus succeeds in rounding up enough Teuton cavalry to break through. But I doubt they’d have the discipline to do that, since it would mean that Vercingetorix’s army in the city would die of starvation long before we feel the pain. Or they could give up and go home.”

“You are saying that the war is won?”

“Yes, Tulius, I do believe I am.”

“Well?”
demanded Critognat.

As much of Vercingetorix’s army as could had crowded up onto the ramparts, watching Litivak’s force turning round and round the Great Wheel of fortifications.

Rhia stood beside him silently, holding up his standard, which now, rather than being a rallying point, was the focus of grumbling impatience.

“They’re waiting for you to give the order,” said Cottos.

“And I am waiting for Litivak to realize that he must pick a spot, mass his force, and attack the outer Roman wall.”

“And if he does not?”

From somewhere around the curve of the ramparts, where Vercingetorix could not see, someone began banging his sword on his shield, and then someone else, and then another, and another, and another, and then it seemed that the whole army was beating out a rhythm. It was neither a triumphant cadence nor a threatening one, nor one to raise a battle spirit, but a slow, heavy, somber beat, almost what one would hear around a funeral pyre.

“You must order the attack now, or they’ll just run out there on their own to be slaughtered,” Rhia whispered in his ear.

When the people will not follow where you would lead, you must go with
them or walk alone.

“So be it,” said Vercingetorix. “Perhaps Litivak is waiting for a sign—”

“A sign!” groaned Critognat. “Have we not had enough of signs and omens?”

“A sign from
us,
” said Vercingetorix. “It would appear we must attack first, and hope that he will understand what we are doing, and thus what
he
must then do.”

Vercingetorix made his way to the nearest watchtower and mounted it, so that as many of his troops as possible could see him and directly hear his words.

He drew his sword, held it high above his head, and stood there silently until the beating of shields had ceased, and the silence had spread all around the wall, as the words he was to speak would spread from mouth to ear to mouth.

Words that he had spoken before. Words that he could not find silver enough in his tongue to better now.

“So be it! I will lead you into the jaws of death with a battle song in my heart!”

And they cheered. And the cheering spread. And swords on shields began to pound out a mighty rhythm.

The barricading rubble had been cleared from the gates of Alesia, and Vercingetorix’s army was assembled before them, a long column no more than a dozen men across at its widest, stretching far back out of sight into the smoldering ruins of the city.

Vercingetorix stood at the head of the column, flanked by Critognat and Rhia, and directly behind him a score of warriors carried a battering ram crafted from the trunk of the great oak that had stood in Cottos’ courtyard. They had tipped it with an iron cauldron reinforced by lead.

Behind the ram, twoscore warriors carried logs, bales of straw, pots of pitch, and burning torches. Learning from the Romans, Vercingetorix had positioned around this spearhead force fifty warriors with the largest shields to be found.

Everything was in readiness. Or as ready as it could be.

There was nothing left to say, save perhaps the words that might still the dark thoughts that slowed his mind.

And so he drew his sword and declaimed them:

“Open the gates! Do we want to live forever? Or would we rather become immortal?”

Vercingetorix, Rhia, and Critognat, bunched tightly together with their shields forming a roof above them, ran down the slope toward the inner Roman wall. Behind them came the warriors carrying the battering ram, and then those with the logs and straw bales and torches and pitch pots, surrounded by more warriors, who likewise roofed them over with shields, a larger, Gallic version of a Roman turtle.

Pouring out of the city after them, fanning out from the open gates into a human avalanche, came the rest of the Gauls.

Caesar left Tulius in command of the outer fortifications and rushed to the top of the inner ones, where Galba was in charge. When he had clambered up the ladder to the top of the command tower, he saw that Brutus was there with Galba and the signalmen. He also saw that the front line of the Gauls from Alesia charging the wall was already within arrow range, but moving too fast for catapults or ballistae to adjust their ranges rapidly enough to be effective. Soon enough, the Gauls would be so close to the wall that the angle would render these weapons useless.

“Brilliant!” he exclaimed when he saw how the advance spearhead with the battering ram was being protected from the archery barrage by auxiliaries with shields. Nor did he have to bother to look to know that Vercingetorix himself would be leading it.

“Brilliant?” said Brutus.

“See how he has adapted our infantry’s turtle formation to a specialized unit! Remember this, Brutus! What a pleasure it is to learn a new tactic from an enemy!”

“Pleasure?” grunted Brutus with a look of befuddlement that Caesar found almost as choice.

“Oh yes,” he said, “and unfortunately a rare one. And one, of course, that you can only enjoy when you know you will defeat him anyway.”

Under a brutal fusillade of arrows and javelins clattering off their shields, Vercingetorix, Rhia, and Critognat reached the ditch at the foot of the Roman wall, halted until men protected by the shields of others brought up logs to bridge it, then crossed.

Here the angle was difficult for the archers and javelin-throwers atop the wall, and the rain of arrows and javelins off his shield became a mere patter. But when Vercingetorix looked behind, he saw that the wave of warriors dashing toward the wall were using their shields in a much less organized manner and taking disheartening casualties.

“Straw! Logs!” Vercingetorix commanded, and the men bearing them piled up an untidy pyre.

“Pitch!”

Pots of sticky black pitch were poured and tossed upon it.

“Hand me a torch!”

A torch was passed to Vercingetorix. He stepped back to what he deemed a prudent distance and tossed it onto the pyre, which exploded into bright-orange flame, sending billowing black smoke aloft, and a mighty cheer from the Gauls who saw it.

“The ram!”

A pillar of black smoke boiled skyward from the inner wall, not far from the tower where Caesar stood.

“The wall’s on fire!” cried Brutus.

Caesar leaned over the edge to get a better angle, and saw that the Gauls had built a roaring bonfire beside the wall.

“No, Brutus,” he called out, “the wall’s not on fire. But it soon will be.”

And indeed the wall by the bonfire was beginning to smolder as Caesar righted himself and returned to Brutus and the signalmen.

“They’re trying to
burn
through the wall?” asked Galba.

“Yes, they’re—”

He was interrupted by a great thump that shook the tower and became the first blow of a continuous rhythmic pounding.

Litivak, riding around the curve of the ditch, raised his hand into the air to signal a halt to the circling as the pillar of boiling black smoke came into view, slowed his horse to a walk, waited for the army behind him to do likewise, and then stopped entirely as the tips of tongues of flame licked teasingly at the top of the inner fortifications.

Vercingetorix slung his shield and, trusting in the wall of shields above him, joined the crew at the ram battering the now burning section of the wall steadily and relentlessly through the roaring flames of the bonfire.

“I’ve got to get to a closer tower,” said Caesar, scrambling down the ladder.

“Caesar, don’t—”

“You’re in command here, Galba! I’m going where I belong! Commanding from the front!”

The scene within his fortifications was an admirably orderly contrast to the chaos outside.

The infantry was lined up in neat cohorts positioned at regular intervals all around the circumference of the circular fortress, ready to reinforce any section of either wall at short notice in the event of a scaling or breakthrough. Cauldrons of pitch and some stinking sulfurous stuff that he could not identify were boiling merrily away, surrounded by soldiers ready to relay their contents to the parapets. Chains of legionnaires extended from the armories, up ladders, to the tops of the walls, constantly resupplying the archers, javelin-throwers, and catapults. Gallius’ mobile barricades, a score of them, were waiting along both walls to be wheeled into position to block any breach if needed.

A complex and smoothly functioning war machine hidden from sight of the Gauls, Caesar thought in no little satisfaction. I myself have said I do not like what I do not understand. And I doubt that any Gaul, even Vercingetorix, could truly understand
this,
even if he
could
see it.

Litivak’s army stood motionless, watching black smoke piling up like a small thunderhead into the clear blue sky. A distant tide of Gauls poured down from the city toward the inner wall, antlike at this distance, their deaths barely visible as they fell by the hundreds under fusillade after fusillade of Roman arrows and javelins, which were so numerous, and so grayed by the distance, that they appeared as a storm of driving rain.

No one moved for a long moment. Then Litivak trotted his horse a few lengths to the fore and turned to them.

“Are we lesser men than our brothers?” he screamed. “Do we fear death more than dishonor?”

Few were close enough to hear his words. But none were so distant that they could not discern his meaning as Litivak wheeled his horse around and galloped toward the battle without looking back.

Had he done so, he would have seen an army of Gauls charging into the jaws of death behind him.

Caesar felt the pounding of Vercingetorix’s battering ram through the soles of his feet as he ascended the tower nearest to it. The whole structure shook with each blow, and when he reached the top, the acrid smell of burning pitch and wood seared the back of his throat, and the thick black smoke obscured what was happening below.

But the eyes of the catapult crew and the signalmen were fixed on what lay beyond the outer wall, and when Caesar followed their gaze, he saw Litivak’s entire force, cavalry and infantry alike, charging the fortification. Horses by the hundreds stumbled into pits and fell, and still they came. Men by the hundreds were pierced by arrows, and still they came. Amphorae of Greek fire burst in their midst, and even burning men pressed on.

Here, he thought, comes Gaul itself. A vast pride of lionhearted warriors dashing gloriously into certain destruction. Fearless as a lion and just as simple. But beautiful as a lion is beautiful.

Titus Labienus’ spirits soared as soon as he was close enough to confirm that the smoke he had seen before Alesia became visible was indeed a sign of battle. And a great one, by the looks of it from here! And it was not too late to join in and assure final victory.

Labienus rode beside his general’s standard in the center of an orderly formation of Roman cavalry, some five thousand in identical crested helmets, reddish-brown cloaks, well-tended armor.

Up there, Caesar had ten times as many men, but, to judge from the smoke, and the fires, and the extent of the human anthills boiling and roiling around the bottom of the hill on both sides of Junius Gallius’ precious fortifications, Labienus was sure that a second army of Gauls had indeed arrived.

He knew that his five thousand cavalrymen would make little difference. But half a league behind rode something like twenty thousand Teutons.

Caesar could never have done what was needed to bring Ragar and his mercenaries this far. For, famed as an orator as Caesar was, Labienus knew that Caesar would never have found the simple words and simple deed necessary to win the Teutons over.

Gaius Julius Caesar was a complex man—warrior, yes, but also general, statesman, cunning politician. The Teutons were simple warriors. And so was Titus Labienus. And proud of it.

Labienus had finally offered Ragar a chest of gold denarii, all he had with him, just to gather at least ten thousand Teutons to hear him speak. He assembled his cavalry on horseback in a tight, orderly formation—a mere five thousand facing a good deal more than ten thousand well-armed Teutons.

“On this chariot, you see a chest of gold you could easily seize, and you wonder how I could be so stupid as to believe I could prevent you from just taking it,” Labienus told them. “The answer is simple.”

He nodded to the charioteer and standard-bearer, who, groaning with the weight of it, hefted the chest and laid it on the ground before the Teutons.

“I prevent you from seizing it by
giving it to you.
My men and I will now ride off to fight in the great and glorious battle I tried to pay you to join. My mistake. I insulted your pride. True warriors do not fight for money.
True warriors fight for pride and glory and the pleasure of it. So I
give
you the money. Ride after us, and if the battle is to your liking, join us. If you see no pleasure or glory in it, you now have plenty of gold with which to gamble on the outcome as you stand aside like old men and watch.”

And without another word, Titus Labienus wheeled his horse, turned his back on the dumbfounded Teutons, and rode off at the head of his men, not deigning to look back to see if they were following.