The Belgae

by S. J. A. Turney

  Varus frowned.

  “D’you know? I do believe you’re right. It’s a huge camp, but they’re well spaced. I wonder whether they’re trying to look bigger than they are? Must be… what? A hundred and fifty thousand at the most. Maybe half the Belgae we’re expecting!”

  Casco shook his head.

  “Careful there, sir. Might be that they’ve left room for the other half, and there’s more on the way.”

  “Hmm.” Varus’ frown deepened. Casco was right. This army could double in size any time and the only way they’d know is if they kept a permanent eye on it.

  “Maybe that’s why they’re killing off Caesar’s scouts. They don’t want the general to know where they are until they’ve met up with the other half of the army.”

  He shook his head.

  “Shit. That means we need to do something about this, and fast. Let’s get back to camp.”

  He turned his horse to walk her slowly back down the slope to the ala below and stared in horror. Warriors were pouring out of the thicket to the right and the corpse to the left in their hundreds. An ambush.

  “Form up!” he bellowed as he started to gallop down the hill to his men, the two prefects at his back. The Belgae had known exactly what they were doing. They didn’t need this many men to pick off the occasional scout, and the warriors emerging from the undergrowth were, to a man, armed with long spears. The bastards must have been watching them for a while and preparing.

  “Can we outrun them?”

  Varus glanced at Casco.

  “If we can’t,” he replied, ”then we’re all dead!”

  As they reached the bottom of the slope, Casco shouted “Orderly retreat to the camp.”

  Varus stared at him for a moment, and then shouted in the loudest voice he could manage: “run!”

  The first few of the barbarians were already reaching a position ahead of them. Behind lay the line of poplars and, beyond that, the marsh. No escape that way. The ground to either side of them was swarming with barbarians who had broken cover from the trees. Their only hope was to outrun the closing door of men ahead of them.

  “Charge!”

  Around him, his cavalry, now working on their own individual instincts rather than commands, rode as hard as they could for the closing gap, formation forgotten. Already a dozen barbarians had joined up ahead of them and were preparing themselves to unhorse the riders.

  Without any need of issued commands, as soon as the first riders were within range of the barbarians, they raised and released their javelins before drawing their blades. Many of the long, tapered missiles found their targets and the waiting barbarians clutched at their wounds, dropping their own spears.

  The first rider found himself clear of the attackers, the nearest barbarian alive but pinned to the turf with a javelin through his thigh, just below the hip. For a moment, the soldier looked around in surprise and relief, but then the reality of his situation kicked in and he ignored the chaos around him and rode for Caesar’s camp as though death itself fluttered at his shoulder.

  Varus watched with dismay as the arms closed in front of them. Moreover, ahead in the distance, he could see a few Belgic horsemen. As far as he’d been told the Belgae favoured infantry. He wasn’t even aware they had cavalry! This was turning out to be a truly shitty day…

  Ahead of him, two riders went down as the barbarians lunged with spears, one catching a rider in the gut and the other spearing a horse through the chest. Varus didn’t have time to wheel his horse or stop; besides, if he stopped, he was dead. This was one of those very few situations where ‘every man for himself’ was the only viable formation.

  Taking a deep breath, he hauled on the reins and jumped his horse, arcing gracefully over the collapsing heap of men and horses. He counted all three heartbeats while he was in the air for what felt like hours, expecting at any moment to feel a spear jammed up through him or his horse.

  And suddenly his hooves hit the ground once more. Without a single glance back, he thundered on. There were only a dozen or so barbarian riders; a mere reserve force to pick off the odd Roman who broke through the line, but they were off to the side and making a beeline to cut off the fleeing cavalry. Risking time to glance around him, Varus realised that perhaps twenty or thirty of his men had escaped the trap and were riding on. Far too many men were being butchered behind him, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  “To me!” he bellowed.

  Surprised troopers hauled on their reins and either steered or slowed to fall in with their commander. Varus cleared his throat.

  “Riders off to the left. They’ll intercept us before the hill. They’ve got to stop us escaping if they want to keep their numbers unknown. Take them down!”

  The resolute grimaces on the faces of his men were born partially from the desperation of their situation, but the commander knew well how much they were now also being driven by the need for revenge after the butchering of over a hundred of their colleagues.

  Indeed, as the Belgic horsemen closed on them, Varus began to feel a little more confident. The barbarians were clearly unused to mounted combat and unsure of their skills, for all their vicious demeanour. Varus’ men, on the other hand, had set jaws and gripped their blades with white knuckles. There would be no quarter given by the survivors of this ala.

  The attack was swift and efficient. The Belgae were hacked, stabbed, pushed from their saddles and left a bleeding mess, their surviving horses fleeing the scene and, among the Romans only one man down and two wounded.

  Varus glanced behind him at the howling barbarians, cursing themselves at failing to spring their trap correctly.

  The cavalry commander smiled to himself. Wait ‘til he’d seen Caesar and gathered his entire mounted division. Then the bastards would have something to howl about!

  * * * * *

  It had been two hours. It felt like half a lifetime, but in actual fact it had been just two hours since Varus had last been here. He glanced ahead at the line of poplar trees on the hill and could just make out the heaps on the grass in the distance that were all that was left of some of Caesar’s best horsemen.

  The general had surprised and irritated Varus. Instead of being incensed and planning retribution and extreme violence as the cavalry commander himself, Caesar had merely stroked his chin and muttered “unfortunate…”

  Bloody unfortunate? But in a curious way, now that he looked back on it, the general was right. Insensitive, but right. They had lost a number of cavalry, but they had found out a great deal about not only the landscape, but about the enemy into the bargain. While the Romans were facing odds of perhaps five-to-one, they were considerably better than the ten-to-one they were expecting. Once word of that had begun to spread in the camp, the atmosphere had improved no end. It had taken only a few minutes for Caesar to decide on his course of action, and only a few more for Varus to set it in motion.

  Leaving only a small group of mixed regular and auxiliary cavalry in camp, Varus had divided the main mounted force into three sections. The first had set off first, riding hard along the river bank to the west, and skirting round behind the ridge. They should be able to completely bypass the Belgae and then they would be free to head north and search for the rest of the enemy. The second had been given the most dangerous task: to head east along the river bank and across the edge of the marsh and actually harry the front lines of the enemy. They would not only be able to test what they were up against, but also to confirm whether the ground was viable for an assault.

  And the third section, commanded by Varus, was the punitive group. Heading directly for the centre and the line of poplars, Varus would revenge himself on the barbarian ambushers. With a smile of grim determination, he used gestures to relay his commands to the prefects following him. As he pointed silently, two large groups peeled off from the main force and rode off east and west at a tangent.

  The remaining force, around eight hundred strong, marshalled in the centre at the ba
se of the slope. At further commands they split into two units, wheeled their horses until they were back-to-back, and then began to walk their steeds at a slow, steady pace toward the woods to either side.

  “Bastards had better still be in there, eh sir?”

  Varus looked over at Casco and nodded.

  “They are. I can feel it. Nemesis is with us today.”

  Another command rang out and the ranks of cavalry raised their javelins into a throwing position. Moments later they heard the sound of the conflagration starting. The two groups that had separated had set fire to the furthermost edge of those concealing thickets. Smoke rose ominously from among the foliage and Varus watched with growing satisfaction.

  A minute or so passed and then the shouting began. At first, shouts of alarm, and then some of panic. The blaze tore through the dry woods, leaping from tree to tree like a wave.

  As the Romans sat tensely, the first desperate warrior burst from the undergrowth. The look of relief on his face quickly slid away to be replaced once more by panic. Having escaped the dreadful fire sweeping through the thicket, he now found himself facing hundreds of angry Roman cavalrymen. He opened his mouth to shout a warning back into the woods and the first javelin caught him full in the face before he could issue a sound. The second javelin took him through the chest and hurled him back to the grass.

  “Don’t waste your throws! One at a time, and mark your man.”

  Another figure appeared from the woods, and then another. Quickly now, warriors began to emerge, some choking from the effects of the smoke that roiled under the green canopy. And yet it was less like a military action or even a punitive attack than like a hunt, or even a game. Not a single figure managed to break the tree line and walk four steps before he was hit by a javelin; sometimes two.

  The steady flow of men escaping the flames grew over a minute or so and then began to decline. Certainly there must be a lot of corpses there by now. The front rows of cavalrymen had cast their javelins and more that had been passed from the rear ranks. Probably four hundred javelins had gone. Allowing for wasteful throws and misses, there would likely be two hundred and fifty to three hundred barbarians littering the grass before the woods. Likely more had been consumed by the flames that were now visible. Almost the entire wood was ablaze at this point, and the firing units with their extinguished torches were now riding to rejoin their commander.

  Varus smiled coldly. On the assumption much the same had happened at the other side, behind them, that would be six or seven hundred dead barbarians. A fitting revenge for the hundred and fifty or so Roman dead below the hill. Caesar would be pleased, anyway.

  He waited until his men were ready and then gave the order to form up.

  Before he turned his horse away from the field, he gave a last regretful look at the littered heaps of men and horses. If only they could sort out a burial detail, but that was a job for the infantry, and after the danger was over. With a sigh he gave the command to return to camp.

  Prefect Lucilius gritted his teeth and briefly regretted accepting command of the right flank. His thousand horsemen, almost entirely composed of Gaulish auxiliaries, stamped and snorted and chattered behind him. The other prefects and decurions watched him expectantly.

  Lucilius had commanded more than one ala of cavalry before. Indeed, at Vesontio last year, he’d been one of Varus’ most favoured officers, but that was in battle. This seemed wrong. Cavalry were used as part of a grand battle plan or to harry and mop up. No Roman general in his right mind pitted cavalry alone against a solid enemy force with no infantry support.

  He shook his head. It was well known that Caesar thought in curves and not straight lines. The general assigned officers to largely permanent positions, which seemed to suit the infantry. He maintained a regular cavalry attached to his legions, which was unheard of, even among the great innovators like Marius and Scipio. But sometimes the general’s decisions seemed just a little too dangerous; even bordering on the insane.

  “How am I going to do this?” he asked himself quietly, glad that the rest of his officers were far enough back to allow him thinking room.

  The terrain allowed for a safe riding width of perhaps seven or eight hundred yards; not much room to manoeuvre a large cavalry force, certainly. And even from here he could see the glistening and glinting of the streams and pools that dotted and crossed the grass. He offered a quick prayer to Fortuna that Varus knew what he was doing and that what faced him was just standing water and not swamp.

  So… how to arrange a trial assault on the Belgae on a narrow strip of land between a reedy river bank and a swamp; a narrow strip of land that might, itself, be marshy and treacherous. And all of this in front of a waiting force of Belgae who had a clear view of them coming. Caesar and Varus must be mad! And Lucilius must be an idiot for accepting this command.

  He frowned. On the bright side, given the narrowness of the assailable area, they would only be facing a thousand Belgae at a time. An idea was beginning to form. Turning, he waved to the nearest of his prefects, a thoroughly Romanised Aedui nobleman. The man rode out forward and joined him on the rise. In full Roman uniform, with short hair and a clean shaven face, the slight accent to his Latin was the only thing that marked the prefect as a non-citizen. He’d even taken a Roman name.

  “Septimius… you know the tribes of Gauls and Belgae, yes?”

  The prefect nodded soberly.

  “Most of them.”

  “And these Belgae are supposed to be the most dangerous, violent and warlike of the lot, yes?”

  “Them and the Germanic tribes, yes. When they’re not fighting someone else, they fight themselves. It’s all they do: fight.”

  “So…” Lucilius frowned. “It shouldn’t be too hard to goad them into a fight then?”

  Septimius laughed.

  “I suspect it would be harder to force them to stand still.”

  “Alright, then.” The commander smiled. “Let’s go give them a fight. Sound the advance.”

  The prefect saluted and returned to his men. Moments later the musician on his horse at the rear blew out the call to advance and the alae walked their steeds forward. Lucilius remained stationary until the line reached him and then kicked his horse into action, falling in with the front line. Slowly, like the inexorable tide, the cavalry poured down the gentle slope toward the flat open ground before the Belgic lines.

  Manoeuvring carefully in order to maintain formation, the cavalry stepped onto the flat, rotating into blocks that fitted the terrain.

  “Here we go” muttered Lucilius quietly to himself as they moved into the damp, glinting grass. The first fifty yards or so were tentative, each rider warily watching the shallow pools and trickles as they walked their horses.

  Lucilius glanced ahead, squinting to make out the lines of the Belgae. The barbarians were rushing around, gathering several men deep in a front line. As the prefect watched, spears were raised defensively. Any direct attack could be very short and very unpleasant.

  His confidence grew as the cavalry trotted through the shallow puddles and pools and splashed across small streams. Varus had been right: the ground between the marsh and the river had dried out fairly well in the last few weeks.

  The decision made, he smiled a determined smile and turned to the officers beside him.

  “Sound the charge but rein in at a hundred yards for a volley. Pass the word; and no calls on the horn in case anyone there knows our signals.”

  The officers nodded and shouted the commands down the line to their decurions, who relayed beyond. Within a few seconds the entire cavalry broke into a run, the front lines pulling away first, but the rest gradually falling in and catching up like a landslide. Lucilius laughed as he rode. This was the kind of mad stunt that old Longinus used to pull.

  Rapidly, the intervening space between the two armies narrowed and the commander found himself so into the rhythm of the charge that he almost shot out ahead as his troopers reined in to a sudd
en halt. Clicking his tongue in irritation, Lucilius turned his mistake into a show, wheeling his horse sideways and flicking an insulting hand gesture at the Belgae. To either side of him along the lines of horsemen, the front two ranks let fly with their javelins.

  The Belgae, confused as to why the Romans had halted their charge so suddenly, stared wide-eyed at several hundred javelins that suddenly arced out from the front lines. All along the wall of men, warriors shrieked as they were pierced and flung back into the crowd with the force of the blows. They were so tightly packed the Romans couldn’t have missed.

  The front line of the Belgae bulged ominously. Lucilius smiled. One volley and they were already wanting to break their lines and attacks. With a widening grin, he turned to his officers.

  “Let’s repeat the process a few times and see how fast we can get it. I want to piss these barbarians off enough that they’ll do anything.”

  Nodding, the prefects and decurions passed down the orders and the entire cavalry turned their back on the enemy and rode peacefully back across the wet, grassy ground.

  Once they reached the slope at the far end, Lucilius waved his arm.

  “Same drill. No orders or calls. Everyone knows what they’re doing. Those men who’ve now cast their javelins to the back and make way for the next rows. This time I want that volley the moment you stop. Then straight back. Don’t give them a target!”

  The men around him grinned in anticipation.

  “Alright. Charge!”

  This time he allowed the troopers to charge past him and took a position at the rear, where he could observe the results.

  True to their training and efficiency, the cavalry thundered across the open space and came to a sudden halt, a volley of hundreds of deadly shafts arcing out from the lines and dropping with horrifying accuracy into the mass of Belgic warriors. Without waiting to see the results, the cavalry wheeled and rode back to the far end of the grassy stretch.