Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  The Atuatuci were reduced to a handful—no allies there since Caesar had sold the bulk of the tribe into slavery. Nor could Ambiorix hope for co-operation from the Atrebates, with their Roman puppet king, Commius, plotting to use the Romans as a lever to create a new title, High King of the Belgae. The Nervii had gone down badly several years before, but it was a very large and populous tribe which could still field a terrifying number of warriors. Unfortunately the Nervii fought on foot, and Ambiorix was a horseman. Worth seeing what mischief he could brew there, but they wouldn't follow a horse leader. Ambiorix needed the Treveri, in whose ranks horse soldiers reigned supreme; the Treveri were also the most numerous and powerful people among the Belgae.

  Ambiorix was a subtle man, unusual in the Belgae, with an imposing presence. As tall as a full-blooded German, he had lime-stiffened, flax-fair hair that stood out like the rays around the head of the sun god Helios, his great blond moustache drooped almost to his shoulders, and his face with its fierce blue eyes was nobly handsome. His narrow trousers and long shirt were black, but the big rectangular shawl which he draped around his body and pinned upon his left shoulder bore the Eburone pattern of checks, black and scarlet on a vivid saffron-yellow background. Just above his elbows were twin golden torcs as thick as snakes, just above his wrists were twin golden cuffs studded with lustrous amber, around his neck gleamed a huge golden torc with a horse's head at either end, the brooch securing his shawl was a great cabochon of amber set in gold, and his belt and baldric were made of gold plates hinged together and set with amber, as were the scabbards of his longsword and dagger. He looked every inch a king.

  But before he could acquire the power to persuade other tribes to join his Eburones, Ambiorix needed a victory. And why look further afield than his own lands to find it? There sat Sabinus, Cotta and the Thirteenth Legion like a guest-gift. The problem was their camp; bitter experience had taught the Gauls that it was virtually impossible to storm and take a properly fortified winter camp. Especially when, as in this case, it was built upon the corpse of a formidable Gallic oppidum which Roman expertise had rendered impregnable. Nor would surrounding Atuatuca and starving it out work; the Romans counted on the enemy's being clever enough to do that. A Roman winter camp was furnished with good fresh water aplenty, food aplenty and sanitary arrangements which ensured disease was held at bay. What Ambiorix had to do was to lure the Romans out of Atuatuca. His way to secure his end was to attack Atuatuca, being careful to keep his Eburones out of harm's way.

  What he didn't expect was that Sabinus would give him a perfect opening by sending a delegation to demand indignantly of the King what he thought he was doing. Ambiorix hurried to answer in person.

  "You're not going out there to talk to him, surely!" said Cotta when Sabinus began to don his armor.

  "Of course I am. You ought to come along too, co-commander."

  "Not I!"

  Thus Sabinus went alone save for his interpreter and a guard of honor; the parley took place right outside Atuatuca's front gate, and Ambiorix was accompanied by fewer men than Sabinus had with him. No danger, no danger at all. What was Cotta on about?

  "Why did you attack my camp?" Sabinus demanded angrily through his interpreter.

  Ambiorix produced an exaggerated shrug and spread his hands, eyes wide with surprise. "Why, noble Sabinus, I was merely doing what every king and chieftain is doing from one end of Gallia Comata to the other," he said.

  Sabinus felt the blood drain from his face. "What do you mean?" he asked, and wet his lips.

  "Gallia Comata is in revolt, noble Sabinus."

  "With Caesar himself sitting in Samarobriva? Rubbish!"

  Another shrug, another widening of the blue eyes. "Caesar is not in Samarobriva, noble Sabinus. Didn't you know? He changed his mind and departed for Italian Gaul a month ago. As soon as he was safely gone the Carnutes murdered King Tasgetius, and the revolt began. Samarobriva is under such huge attack that it is expected to fall very soon. Marcus Crassus was massacred nearby, Titus Labienus is under siege, Quintus Cicero and the Ninth Legion are dead, and Lucius Fabius and Lucius Roscius have withdrawn to Tolosa in the Roman Province. You are alone, noble Sabinus."

  White-faced, Sabinus nodded jerkily. "I see. I thank you for your candor, King Ambiorix." He turned and almost ran back through the gate, knees shaking, to tell Cotta.

  Cotta stared at Sabinus with jaw dropped. "I don't believe a word of it!"

  "You had better, Cotta. Ye Gods, Marcus Crassus and Quintus Cicero are dead, so are their legions!"

  "If Caesar had changed his mind about going to Italian Gaul, Sabinus, he would have let us know," Cotta maintained.

  "Perhaps he did. Perhaps we never received the message."

  "Believe me, Sabinus, Caesar is still in Samarobriva! You've been told lies designed to make us decide to retreat. Don't listen to Ambiorix! He's playing fox to your rabbit."

  "We have to go before he comes back! Now!"

  The only other man privy to this conversation was the Thirteenth's primipilus centurion, known as Gorgo because his glance turned soldiers to stone. A hoary veteran who had been in Rome's legions since Pompey's war against Sertorius in Spain, Gorgo had been given the Thirteenth by Caesar because of his talent for training and his toughness.

  Cotta looked at him in appeal.

  "Gorgo, what do you think?"

  The head in its fantastic helmet with the great stiff sideways crest nodded several times. "Lucius Cotta is right, Quintus Sabinus," he said. "Ambiorix is lying. He wants us to panic and pull stakes. Inside this camp he can't touch us, but the moment we're on the march we're vulnerable. If we stick it out here for the winter we'll survive. If we march, we're dead men. These are real good boys, but they're green. They need a well-generaled battle with plenty of company to season them. But if they're called on to fight without some veteran legions in the line with them, they'll go down. And I don't want to see that, Quintus Sabinus, because they are good boys."

  "I say we march! Now!" Sabinus shouted.

  Nor could he be bent. An hour of reasoning and arguing later Sabinus was still insisting on a retreat. Nor could Cotta and Gorgo be bent. At the end of another hour they were still insisting that the Thirteenth stick it out in the winter camp.

  Sabinus stormed off in search of food, leaving Cotta and Gorgo to look at each other in consternation.

  "The fool!" Cotta cried, not caring that he was insulting a legate in the hearing of a centurion. "Unless you and I can talk him out of retreating, he'll get us all killed."

  "Trouble is," said Gorgo thoughtfully, "he won a battle all on his unaided own, so now he thinks he knows the military manual better than Rutilius Rufus, who wrote it. But the Venelli aren't Belgae, and Viridovix was a typical thick Gaul. Ambiorix is not typical and not thick either. He's a very dangerous man."

  Cotta sighed. "Then we have to keep trying, Gorgo."

  Keep trying they did. Night fell with Cotta and Gorgo still trying, while Sabinus just grew angrier and more adamant.

  "Oh, give over!" Gorgo yelled in the end, patience exhausted. "For the sake of Mars, try to see the truth, Quintus Sabinus! If we leave this camp we're all dead men! That includes you as well as me! And you might be ready to die, but I'm not! Caesar is sitting in Samarobriva, and may all the Gods help you when he finds out what's gone on here for the last twelve hours!"

  The kind of man who wouldn't stomach the attendance of King Commius at a Roman council was certainly not going to stomach this from a lowly centurion, primipilus veteran or not. Face purple, Sabinus went for him, one hand upraised, and slapped him with an open palm. That was too much for Cotta, who stepped between them and knocked Sabinus off his feet, then fell on him and pounded him unmercifully.

  It was Gorgo who broke them up, aghast. "Please, please!" he cried. "Do you think my boys are deaf, dumb and blind? They know what's going on between us! Whatever you decide, decide it! This sort of thing isn't going to help them!"

  On the verge
of tears, Cotta stared down at Sabinus. "All right, Sabinus, you win. Not Caesar himself could reason with you once you've made up what passes for your mind!"

  It took two days to organize the retreat, for the troops, all very young and inexperienced, couldn't be persuaded by their centurions not to overload their packs with personal treasures and souvenirs, nor to relinquish their extra gear and souvenirs in the wagons. None of it worth a sestertius, but so precious to seventeen-year-olds keen to cement their yearned-for military careers with memories.

  The march when it did begin was painfully slow, not helped by the sleet driving in their faces behind a howling wind straight off the German Ocean; the ground was both soaked and icy, the wagons kept bogging to the axles and were difficult to extricate. Even so, the day passed and the rugged heights of Atuatuca disappeared behind the shifting mists. Sabinus began to crow over Cotta, who set his lips and said nothing.

  But Ambiorix and the Eburones were there beyond the sleety rain, biding their time with the complacence of men who knew the terrain a great deal better than the Romans did.

  Ambiorix's plan worked smoothly; he could not afford to let the Roman column, marching down the Mosa, get far enough away from Atuatuca to encounter any of Quintus Cicero's men, for Quintus Cicero and the Ninth were very much alive. The moment Sabinus led the Thirteenth into a narrow defile, Ambiorix swung his foot soldiers to block the Roman advance and unleashed his horse soldiers on the tail of the column until it turned back on itself and prevented retreat out of the steep-sided gulch, perfect for Ambiorix's purpose.

  The initial reaction was blind panic as screaming hordes of Eburones swarmed into both ends of the defile, their brilliant yellow shawls abandoned so that they seemed like black shadows out of the Underworld. The unversed troops of the Thirteenth broke formation and tried to flee. Worse was Sabinus, whose fear and dismay drove all military ideas from his head.

  But when the shock wore off, the Thirteenth steadied down, saved from immediate massacre by the narrow confines in which the attack took place. There was nowhere to flee, and once Cotta, Gorgo and his centurions got the milling recruits standing in proper rank and file to resist, the lads discovered to their delight that they could kill the enemy. The peculiar iron of a hopeless situation stiffened their spirits, and they resolved that they would not die alone. And while the troops at the head and the tail of the column held the Eburones at bay, the troops in the middle, helped by the noncombatants and slaves, began to throw up defensive walls.

  At sunset there was still a Thirteenth, hideously smaller but far from defeated.

  "Didn't I tell you they were good boys?" asked Gorgo of Cotta as they paused to catch their breath; the Eburones had drawn off to mass for another onslaught.

  "I curse Sabinus!" Cotta hissed. "They are good boys! But they're all going to die, Gorgo, when they deserve to live and put decorations on their standards!"

  "Oh, Jupiter!" came from Gorgo in a moan.

  Cotta swung to look, and gasped. Carrying a stick on which he had tied his white handkerchief, Sabinus was picking his way across the dead at the mouth of the defile to where Ambiorix stood conferring with his nobles.

  Ambiorix, wearing his brilliant yellow shawl because he was one of the leaders, saw Sabinus and walked a few paces forward, holding his longsword in front of him, its tip pointing at the ground. With him went two other chieftains.

  "Truce, truce!" Sabinus shouted, panting.

  "I accept your truce, Quintus Sabinus, but only if you give up your weapons," said Ambiorix.

  "Spare those of us who are left, I beg you!" said Sabinus, throwing sword and dagger away ostentatiously.

  The answer was a sudden swirling sweep of the longsword; Sabinus's head soared into the air, parting company with its Attic helmet as well as its body. One of Ambiorix's companions caught the helmet as it descended, but Ambiorix waited until the head had finished rolling before he walked to it and picked it up.

  "Oh, these shorn Romans!" he cried, unable to wrap Sabinus's half-inch-long hair about his knuckles. Only by shaping his hand into a claw did he manage to lift the head high and wave it in the direction of the Thirteenth. "Attack!" he screamed. "Take their heads, take their heads!"

  Cotta was killed and decapitated not long after, but Gorgo lived to see the Aquilifer, dying on his feet, summon up some last reserve of strength and fling his hallowed silver Eagle like a javelin behind the dwindling Roman line.

  The Eburones drew off with the darkness, and Gorgo went the rounds of his boys to see how many were still on their feet. Pitifully few: about two hundred out of five thousand.

  "All right, boys," he said to them as they huddled together in a sea of fallen comrades, "swords out. Kill every man who's still breathing, then come back to me."

  "When will the Eburones return?" asked one seventeen-year-old.

  "At dawn, lad, but they won't find any of us alive to burn in their wicker cages. Kill the wounded, then come back to me. If you find any of our noncombatants or slaves, offer them a choice. Go now and try to get through to the Remi, or stay with us and die with us."

  While the soldiers went to obey his orders, Gorgo took the silver Eagle and looked about him, eyes used to the darkness. Ah, there! He gouged out a long, pipelike trench in some soft, bloody ground and buried the Eagle, not very deeply. After which he heaved and hauled until the spot was under a pile of bodies, then sat on a rock and waited.

  At about the middle hour of the night, the surviving soldiers of the Thirteenth Legion killed themselves rather than live to be burned in wicker cages.

  There were very few noncombatants or slaves left alive, for all of them had plucked swords and shields from dead legionaries and fought. But those who still lived were let through the enemy lines indifferently, with the result that Caesar got word of the fate of the Thirteenth late the following day.

  "Trebonius, look after things," he said, clad in good plain steel armor, his scarlet general's cloak tied to his shoulders.

  "Caesar, you can't go unprotected!" Trebonius cried. "Take the Tenth; I'll send for Marcus Crassus and the Eighth to hold Samarobriva."

  "Ambiorix will be long gone," said Caesar positively. "He knows a Roman relief force will appear, and he has no intention of imperiling his victory. I've sent to Dorix of the Remi to muster his men to arms. I won't be unprotected."

  Nor was he. When he reached the Sabis River some distance beyond its sources, Caesar met Dorix and ten thousand Remi cavalry. With Caesar rode a squadron of Aeduan cavalry and one of his crop of new legates, Publius Sulpicius Rufus.

  Rufus gasped in awe as they came over a rise and looked down on the massed Remi horsemen. "Jupiter, what a sight!"

  Caesar grunted. "Pretty to look at, aren't they?"

  Remi shawls were checkered in brilliant blue and dull crimson with a thin yellow thread interwoven, and Remi trousers were the same; Remi shirts were dull crimson, Remi horse blankets brilliant blue.

  "I didn't know the Gauls rode such handsome horses."

  "They don't," said Caesar. "You're looking at the Remi, who went into the business of breeding Italian and Spanish horses generations ago. That's why they greeted my advent with glee and profuse protestations of friendship. They were finding it very hard to keep their horses—the other tribes were forever raiding their herds. Fighting back turned them into superb cavalrymen themselves, but they lost many horses nonetheless, and were forced to pen their breeding stallions inside veritable fortresses. They also border the Treveri, who lust after Remi mounts. To the Remi, I was a gift from the Gods—I meant Rome had come to stay in Gaul of the Long-hairs. Thus the Remi give me excellent cavalry, and as a thank-you I send Labienus to the Treveri to terrify them."

  Sulpicius Rufus shivered; he knew exactly what Caesar meant, though he knew Labienus only through the stories forever circulating in Rome. "What's wrong with Gallic horses?" he asked.

  "They're not much bigger than ponies. The native stock if unmixed with other breeds is a pony. Ver
y uncomfortable for men as tall as the Belgae."

  Dorix rode up the hill to greet Caesar warmly, then swung his dish-faced, long-maned marca beside the General.

  "Where's Ambiorix?" asked Caesar, who had preserved his calm and betrayed no sign of grief since getting the news.

  "Nowhere near the battlefield. My scouts report it's quite deserted. I've brought slaves with me to burn and bury."

  "Good man."

  They camped that night and rode on in the morning.

  Ambiorix had taken his own dead; only Roman bodies lay in the defile. Dismounting, Caesar gestured that the Remi and his own squadron of cavalry should stay back. He walked forward with Sulpicius Rufus, and as he walked the tears began to run down his seamed face.

  They encountered the headless body of Sabinus first, unmistakable in its legate's armor; he had been a smallish man, Cotta much larger.

  "Ambiorix has a Roman legate's head to decorate his front door," said Caesar, it seemed oblivious to his tears. "Well, he'll have no joy from it."

  Almost all the bodies were headless. The Eburones, like many of the Gallic tribes, Celtae as well as Belgae, took heads as battle trophies to adorn the door posts of their houses.

  "There are traders do an excellent business selling cedar resin to the Gauls," said Caesar, still weeping silently.

  "Cedar resin?" asked Sulpicius Rufus, weeping too, and finding this dispassionate conversation bizarre.

  "To preserve the heads. The more heads a man has around his door, the greater his warrior status. Some are content to let them wear away to skulls, but the great nobles pickle their trophies in cedar resin. We'll recognize Sabinus when we see him."

  The sight of dead bodies and battlefields was not a new experience for Sulpicius Rufus, but his youthful campaigns had all been conducted in the East, where things were, he knew now, very different. Civilized. This was his first visit to Gaul, and he had arrived but two days before Caesar had ordered him to come on this journey into death.