Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  "I'll start tomorrow at dawn," said Labienus, satisfied. He shot Caesar a wary, puzzled look. "You haven't told me what you thought of the Commius incident," he said.

  "That it was a pity you let Commius get away," said Caesar. "He'll prove a thorn in our paw. Let us hope, Labienus, that we find a mouse willing to withdraw it."

  The business at Decetia proved to be so complex that when it was over, Caesar had no idea who was telling the truth and who was lying; the only good which came of it was the opportunity to face the assembled Aedui in person. Perhaps that was what the Aedui needed most, to see and hear Caesar himself. Cotus was ejected, Convictolavus reappointed, the young and feverish Eporedorix promoted to junior vergobret. While the Druids hovered in the background and swore to the loyalty of Convictolavus, of Eporedorix, of Valetiacus, of Viridomarus, of Cavarillus, and of that pillar of rectitude, Litaviccus.

  "I want ten thousand infantry and every horseman the Aedui can muster," said Caesar. "They'll follow me to Gergovia. And they'll bring grain, is that understood?"

  "I'll be leading in person," said Litaviccus, smiling. "You may rest easy, Caesar. The Aedui will come to Gergovia."

  Thus it was the middle of June before Caesar marched for the Elaver River and Gergovia. Spring was under way, the streams so swollen from melted snows and rainy thaws that passage across them had to be by bridge, not ford.

  Vercingetorix crossed from the eastern to the western bank of the Elaver immediately and demolished the bridge. Which forced Caesar to march down the eastern bank, Vercingetorix shadowing him on the other side. Demolishing all the bridges. Never good stonemasons, the Gauls preferred to build wooden bridges; the river roared and tumbled, impossible to cross. But then Caesar found what he was looking for, a wooden bridge which had been erected on stone pylons. Though the superstructure was gone, the pylons remained. That was enough. While four of his legions pretended to be six and marched southward, Caesar hid the remaining two in the forests of the eastern bank and waited until Vercingetorix moved onward. The two legions flung a new wooden bridge across the Elaver, marched over it, and were soon joined on the western bank by the other four.

  Vercingetorix ran for Gergovia, but didn't enter the great Arvernian oppidum, which sat on a small plateau in the midst of towering crags; a spur of the Cebenna thrusting westward provided Gergovia with some of the highest peaks in the Cebenna as shelter. The hundred thousand men the King of Gaul brought with him camped among the rugged high ground behind and flanking the oppidum, and waited for Caesar to arrive.

  The sight was truly horrifying. Every rock seemed peppered with Gauls, and one glance at Gergovia was enough to tell Caesar that it could not be stormed; the answer was a blockade, and that was going to consume valuable time. More importantly, it was going to consume valuable food. Food Caesar didn't have until the Aedui relief column arrived. But in the meantime there were things could be done, particularly seizure of a small hill with precipitous sides just below the Gergovian plateau.

  "Once we own that hill, we can cut off almost all their water," said Caesar. "We can also prevent their foraging."

  No sooner said than done; comfortable working in the dark, Caesar took the hill between midnight and dawn, put Gaius Fabius and two legions in a strongly fortified camp there, and extended its fortifications to join those of his main camp by means of a great double ditch.

  Midnight, in fact, was to prove a crucial hour in the action before Gergovia. Two midnights later, Eporedorix of the Aedui rode into Caesar's main camp accompanied by Viridomarus, a lowborn man whom Caesar's influence had seen promoted to the Aeduan senate.

  "Litaviccus has gone over to Vercingetorix," said Eporedorix, trembling. "What's worse, so has the army. They're marching for Gergovia as if to join you, but they've also sent to Vercingetorix. Once they're inside your camp, the plan is to take it from within while Vercingetorix attacks from without."

  "Then I don't have time to reduce the size of my camps," said Caesar between his teeth. "Fabius, you'll have to hold the big camp and the little camp with two legions; I can't spare you a man more. I'll be back within a day, but you're going to have to last the day without me."

  "I'll manage," said Fabius.

  Four legions and all the cavalry moved on the double out of camp shortly after, and met the approaching Aeduan army twenty-five miles down the Elaver shortly after dawn. Caesar sent in the four hundred Germans to soften the Aedui up, then attacked. The Aedui fled, but Caesar's luck was out. Litaviccus managed to get through to Gergovia with most of the Aeduan army, and—far worse news—with all the supplies. Gergovia would eat. Caesar would not.

  Two troopers arrived to tell the General that both camps were under fierce attack, but that Fabius was managing to hold them.

  "All right, boys, we run the rest of the way!" Caesar shouted to those who could hear, and set off himself on foot.

  Exhausted, they arrived to find Fabius still holding out.

  "It was the arrows caused most of the casualties," said Fabius, wiping a trickle of blood from his ear. "It seems Vercingetorix has decided to use archers wherever he can, and they're a menace. I begin to understand how poor Marcus Crassus must have felt."

  "I don't think we have much choice other than to withdraw," said Caesar grimly. "The problem is, how do we withdraw? We can't turn and run; they'd fall on us like wolves. No, we'll have to fight a battle first, frighten Vercingetorix enough to hesitate when we do withdraw."

  A decision made doubly necessary when Viridomarus returned with the news that the Aedui were in open revolt.

  "They ejected the tribune Marcus Aristius from Cabillonum, then attacked him, took him prisoner and stripped him of all his belongings. He gathered some Roman citizens and retreated into a small stronghold, and there he held out until some of my people changed their minds and came to beg his forgiveness. But many Roman citizens are dead, Caesar, and there will be no food."

  "My luck is out," said Caesar, visiting Fabius in the small camp. He shrugged, looked toward the great citadel, and stiffened. "Ah!"

  Fabius looked immediately alert; he knew that "Ah!"

  "I think I've just seen a way to force a battle."

  Fabius followed his gaze and frowned. A forested hill previously thick with Gauls was empty. "Oh, risky!" he said.

  "We'll trick them," said Caesar.

  The cavalry were too precious to waste, and there was always the chance that the bulk of it, being Aedui, would decide their skins were at too much risk. A wretched nuisance, but he did have the four hundred Germans, who knew absolutely no fear and loved to do anything dangerous. To reinforce them he took pack mules and dressed their noncombatant handlers in cavalry gear, then sent the force off under instructions to scout, learn what they could, and make a great deal of noise.

  From Gergovia it was possible to see straight into both the Roman camps, but the distance rendered it difficult to see clearly; the watching Gauls saw a great deal of activity, cavalry riding back and forth, legions marching back and forth in battle gear, everything going from the big camp into the little camp.

  But the success of the enterprise, which aimed at storming the citadel itself, depended, as always, on bugle calls. Every kind of maneuver had its special short, specific tune, and the troops were exquisitely trained to obey those calls at once. Yet another difficulty concerned the Aedui, who had been deserting Litaviccus and Vercingetorix in droves, and whom Caesar had no choice other than to use combined with those Aedui loyal to him from the start. They were to form the right wing of the attack. But most of them were wearing true Gallic mail shirts instead of the customary Aeduan mail shirts, which left the right shoulder bare. Dressed for battle and therefore minus their distinctive red-and-blue-striped shawls, without that bare right shoulder they were indistinguishable from Vercingetorix's men.

  At first it went well, the Eighth in the forefront of the fray. Caesar, fighting with the Tenth, had control of the bugle calls. Three of Vercingetorix's camps fell, and King T
eutomarus of the Nitiobriges, asleep in his tent, was forced to escape bare-chested on a wounded horse.

  "We've done enough," Caesar said to Quintus Cicero. "Bugler, sound the retreat."

  The Tenth heard the call clearly, turned and retreated in good order. But the one thing no one, including Caesar, had taken into account was the complicated and precipitous terrain; the brassy voice of the bugle, propelled by a carefully chosen pair of lungs, soared up above the sound of battle so loudly that it bounced off every cliff and cranny, echoing on and on and on. The legions further from it than the Tenth didn't have any idea what the call was signaling. With the result that the Eighth didn't retreat, nor did the others. And the Gauls who had been fortifying the far side of Gergovia came running in their thousands to hurl the advance guard of the Eighth off the walls.

  What was rapidly turning into a debacle increased its pace when the Aedui, on the right, were thought to be the enemy because of their mail shirts. Legates, tribunes, Caesar himself ran and shouted, hauled soldiers back, turned them round forcibly, hectored and harried. Titus Sextius, in the small camp, brought out the cohorts of the Thirteenth held in reserve, and slowly order came out of chaos. The legions reached camp and left the Gauls in command of the field.

  Forty-six centurions, most of them in the Eighth, were dead, and close to seven hundred ranker soldiers. A toll which had Caesar in tears, especially when he heard that among the dead centurions were Lucius Fabius and Marcus Petronius of the Eighth; both had died making sure their men survived.

  "Good, but not good enough," said Caesar to the army in assembly. "The ground was unfavorable and all of you knew it. This is Caesar's army, which means courage and daring are not the sum total of what is expected of you. Oh, it's wonderful to pay no heed to the height of citadel walls, the difficulty of camp fortifications, hideous mountain terrain. But I don't send you into battle to lose your lives! I don't sacrifice my precious soldiers, my even more precious centurions, just to say to the world that my army is composed of heroes! Dead heroes are no use. Dead heroes are burned and honored and forgotten. Valor and verve are laudable, but not everything in a soldier's life. And never in Caesar's army. Discipline and self-restraint are as prized in Caesar's army as any other virtues. My soldiers are required to think. My soldiers are required to keep a cool head no matter how fierce the passion which drives them on. For cool heads and clear thinking win more battles than bravery does. Don't make me grieve! Don't give Caesar cause to weep!"

  The ranks were silent; Caesar wept.

  Then he wiped his eyes with one hand, shook his head. "It wasn't your fault, boys, and I'm not angry at you. Just grieved. I like to see the same faces when I go down the files, I don't want to have to search for faces no longer there. You're my boys; I can't bear to lose any one of you. Better to lose a war than lose one's men. But we didn't lose yesterday, and we won't lose this war. Yesterday we won something. Yesterday Vercingetorix won something. We scattered his camps. He scattered us from the walls of Gergovia. It wasn't superior Gallic courage forced us back, it was shocking ground and echoes. I always had my doubts about the outcome; it's not unexpected. It won't change a thing, except that there are faces missing in my ranks. So when you think about yesterday, blame the echoes. And when you think about tomorrow, remember yesterday's lesson."

  From the assembly the legions left the camp to form up in battle array on good ground, but Vercingetorix refused to come down and accept the battle offer. The faithful Germans, shrieking that ululating warcry which sent shivers down every Gallic spine, provoked a cavalry skirmish and took the honors.

  "But he isn't going to commit himself to an all-out fight, even here on his home patch of Gergovia," said Caesar. "We'll parade for battle again tomorrow, though he won't come down. After that we'll get out of Gergovia. And to make sure we get out in one piece, the Aedui can bring up our rear."

  Noviodunum Nevirnum lay on the north bank of the Liger, very close to its confluence with the Elaver; four days after leaving Gergovia, Caesar arrived there to find the bridges across the Liger destroyed and the Aedui in outright revolt. They had entered Noviodunum Nevirnum and burned it to deprive Caesar of food, and when the fires were slow to burn, they emptied the contents of the storehouses and granaries into the river rather than see Caesar save anything. Roman citizens living in Aeduan lands were murdered, Roman sympathizers among the Aedui were murdered.

  At which moment Eporedorix and Viridomarus found Caesar and told their tale of multiple woes.

  "Litaviccus is in control, Cotus is restored to favor, and Convictolavus is doing as he's told," said Eporedorix dolefully. "Viridomarus and I have been stripped of our estates and banished. And soon Vercingetorix is going to hold a pan-Gallic conference inside Bibracte. After it, he'll call a general muster at Carnutum."

  Face set, Caesar listened. "Banished or not, I expect you to return to your people," he said when the tale of woe was ended. "I want you to remind them who I am, what I am, and where I intend to go. If the Aedui attempt to stand in my way, Eporedorix, I will crush the Aedui flatter than an ox can crush a beetle. The Aedui have formal treaties with Rome and the status of Friend and Ally. But if they persist in this present lunacy, they'll lose everything. Now go home and do as I say."

  "I don't understand!" cried Quintus Cicero. "The Aedui have been our allies for almost a hundred years. They were only too happy to assist Ahenobarbus when he conquered the Arverni—they're so Romanized they speak Latin! So why this change of heart?"

  "Vercingetorix," said Caesar. "And let us not forget the Druids. Nor let us forget the ambitious Litaviccus."

  "Let us not forget the Liger River," said Fabius. "The Aedui haven't left a bridge standing anywhere; I've had the scouts check for miles. Everyone assures me it's not fordable during spring." He smiled. "However, I've found a spot where we can ford it."

  "Good man!"

  The last job Caesar required of his Aeduan cavalry was to ride into the river and stand against its current, all thousand horsemen packed to form a buffer between the full force of the current and the legions, who crossed in water well above the waist without trouble.

  "Except," said Mutilus, a centurion in the Thirteenth, upon the north bank, and shivering, "that there's not a mentula left among us, Caesar! Dropped off in the ice of that water."

  "Rubbish, Mutilus!" said Caesar, grinning. "You're all mentula! Isn't that right, boys?" he asked the men of Mutilus's century, blue with cold.

  "That's right, General!"

  "Hmm!" said Caesar, and rode off.

  "We're in luck," said Sextius, riding to meet him. "The Aedui may have burned Noviodunum Nevirnum, but they couldn't bear to burn their own barns and silos. The countryside is full of food. We'll eat well for the next few days."

  "Good, then organize foraging parties. And if you find any Aedui, Titus, kill them."

  "In front of your cavalry?" asked Sextius blankly.

  "Oh, no. I'm done with the Aedui, and that goes for Aeduan cavalry too. If you come with me, you can watch me fire them."

  "But you can't exist without cavalry!"

  "I can exist better without cavalry aiming their lances at my soldiers' backs! But don't worry, we'll have cavalry. I've sent to Dorix of the Remi—and I've sent to Arminius of the Ubii. From now on, I don't intend to use Gallic cavalry any more than I have to. I'm going to remount and use Germans."

  That night in camp he held a war council.

  "With the Aedui in revolt, Vercingetorix must be absolutely convinced he'll win. In which case, Fabius, what do you think he might assume I'll do?"

  "He'll assume that you're going to retreat out of Gallia Comata into the Province," said Fabius without hesitation.

  "Yes, I agree." Caesar shrugged. "After all, it's the prudent alternative. We're on the run—or so he believes. We had to retreat with Gergovia untaken. The Aedui can't be trusted. How can we continue to exist in a totally hostile country? Every hand is turned against us. And we're perpetually short of foo
d, the most important consideration of all. Without the Aedui to supply us, we can't continue to exist. Therefore—the Province."

  "Where," said a new voice, "there's strife on all sides."

  Fabius, Quintus Cicero and Sextus looked, startled, to the gaping tent flap, filled by a body so bulky that the head on its shoulders looked too small.

  "Well, well," said Caesar genially. "Marcus Antonius at last! When did the trial of Milo finish? Early April? What is it now? The middle of Quinctilis? How did you come, Antonius? By way of Syria?"

  Antony yanked the tent flap closed and threw off his sagum, quite unruffled by this ironic greeting. His perfect little white teeth gleamed in a broad smile; he ran a hand through his curly auburn hair and gazed unapologetically at his second cousin. "No, not by way of Syria," he said, and began looking about. "I know dinner's long over, but is there any chance of something to eat?"

  "Why should I feed you, Antonius?"

  "Because I'm full of news but little else."

  "You can have bread, olives and cheese."

  "Roast ox would be better, but I'll settle for bread, olives and cheese." Antony sat himself down on a vacant stool. "Ho, Fabius, Sextius! How goes it? And Quintus Cicero, no less! You do keep strange company, Caesar."

  Quintus Cicero bridled, but the insult was accompanied by a winning smile, and the other two legates were grinning.

  The food came, and Antony fell to eating with gusto. He took a swig from the goblet a servant had filled for him, blinked, set it down indignantly. "It's water!" he said. "I need wine!"