The Gods of War r-3

by Jack Ludlow

  They had expected the march to Numantia to be hard, but not even Aquila, with his dire warnings and elaborate precautions, was prepared for the tenacity with which the tribes tried to block their passage. Brennos wanted them weakened before they arrived and had bent all his persuasive power to the task of ensuring a rough passage for the Romans. Every hill had to be taken by assault, each narrow valley outflanked and every river bridged under a rain of spears and arrows. They cut a makeshift road through the huge forests — a straight Roman road, ignoring the terrain. If they succeeded, it would become permanent, opening up the interior of the land to Roman civilisation; if they failed, it would disappear, an overgrown testament to the demise of a whole army.

  The new quaestor had known for years that the formation of the army, with its complicated baggage train, had previously militated against success, for, when fighting such an enemy, in such country, speed and mobility were paramount and he had been worried at the outset when Titus pushed his army hard, letting the tribes occupy the route to their rear. These legionaries had grown up with a method of fighting and it was common sense to Aquila that a sudden change of basic tactics, in a situation where battle is imminent, could lead to total disaster.

  One asset was Titus himself. The men had, for once, a general who led from the front; in fact, he could not be kept away from a fight, despite continual pleading that the loss of his life could be fatal to the enterprise. Titus trusted the gods with his person and the men beneath him with his legions. Aquila noticed right away, that, given the responsibility to make their own decisions, few officers let their general down, since the only requirement the consul had of them was that they avoid being foolish. So the individual tribunes were encouraged to innovate.

  Aquila himself had instituted a way of pushing the entire force of velites, as well as the Iberian auxiliaries, forward at a rapid pace. These skirmishers, gathered from all the legions, added to the fighters from the coastal plain, being numerous, forced the tribesmen to spring their ambushes too early, and, facing lightly armed Romans, they were drawn into pressing home their attacks, from which they found it difficult to swiftly disengage. The bulk of the army, without the usual baggage train and camp followers, was moving at a hitherto unprecedented pace, so, in the first few weeks of the march they caught their enemies engaged time and time again. But Brennos, if indeed it was he who was directing the tribal effort, soon learnt the lesson and, with a firm grasp of the properties afforded him by the rugged landscape, he eschewed ambush, instead setting up defensive positions that had to be taken by assault.

  ‘These are mere pinpricks, Fabius,’ said Aquila, as they formed up yet again to attack a steep ridge. ‘The real fighting is still to come.’

  ‘That’s one of the things that’s wrong about you. You can’t tell a pin from a knitting needle, and as for a prick…’

  Aquila yelled out his commands and the skirmishers started forward, darting about before the enemy to draw their fire and reduce their stock of spears. Success would mean they would have less to cast at the following heavy infantry. Titus for once stayed back, as a general should, standing on a rock to observe the action, all his army spread out around him in battle array. Cholon sat beside him, a papyrus roll on his lap, his eyes darting from the battle taking place ahead, then down to the paper for a quick notation. The commotion from the rear took them both by surprise. A huge mass of mounted tribesmen had appeared across the road back to the coast, formed up and ready to attack. Too small a force to defeat the Romans, their presence was, nevertheless, demoralising. They were living proof to all the legionaries that they were cut off in enemy territory and any attack they delivered, even partially successful, would lead to casualties that Titus could ill afford.

  The general was off his perch in a flash, mounting his horse to ride to the scene of the trouble. Publius and Gnaeus Calvinus, in command of the lightly armed rearguard, had calmly wheeled their men round, forming two lines, as the mounted tribesmen came rushing forward. They kept their voices steady, raising them only as much as was needed for their orders to be understood. Their first line knelt at the command, their shields angled over their heads and their spears dug into the ground, forming a frieze before them that would impale any mounted attacker. The second line immediately formed into threes, one behind the other. Titus hauled on his reins, watching the next line of legionaries, heavy infantry to the rear of the Calvinus twins, as they swung expertly into place, forming up into four lines, with the proper gap between each group. That would allow the Calvinus cohorts to withdraw in safety. It was a set-piece manoeuvre, carried out as if being executed on the Campus Martius.

  For all the pride in Roman arms that Titus Cornelius had experienced as a soldier, nothing equalled this, because it was being carried out, not on a practice field, but in broken country. That iron discipline, the ability to manoeuvre under attack, plus sheer raw courage by officers and men alike, when properly employed, made Roman legions invincible. Cholon had joined him, abandoning his chair and his note-taking. Titus looked over his shoulder to check that Aquila’s attack was proceeding successfully, noting that the velites and auxiliaries had scaled the escarpment and were now engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the defenders.

  ‘Write this up, Cholon. This is the very best you’ll ever see. A Roman army attacking in two directions at once.’

  ‘But they’re not attacking,’ said Cholon, pointing to the men withdrawing under the orders of their officers. ‘They’re retreating.’

  ‘Watch!’

  Publius and Gnaeus led their men safely back, one defensive line slipping through another, with the three men coming abreast immediately the last man escaped, never leaving the attacker anything but certain impalement to face. Finally, when they were close enough to the heavier infantry, they broke and ran to safety. The gaps closed immediately and the rear cohorts filled in. The orders were given, and the Celt-Iberian tribesmen found themselves facing an unbroken line of advancing troops. Having milled around uselessly, their horses were winded, so they broke at the first cast of the spears, leaving dead men and screaming animals pinned to the ground by Roman javelins.

  A great shout rent the air and both Cholon and Titus turned in their saddles, just in time to see Aquila, at the head of the princeps of the 18th Legion, take the crest of the ridge, his enemies in full flight before him.

  Their next battle was at a heavily contested river-crossing, the main problem being that there was no room on the opposite bank to deploy, since, apart from a narrow strip of land, the rock rose sheer for a hundred feet. Titus had searched the river up and down its length for an easier passage, but in his bones he knew there was nothing. The mere presence of his enemies, in such force, on the opposite hills was proof of that. But the one asset that the Roman legion had in this situation was that they could all swim; the other advantage lay in their discipline. A well-trained army could attack at night — something denied to wild hordes of barbarians. Titus rested his men throughout the day, with only the rearguard engaged in any meaningful way, and stood down his auxiliaries; this was no task for local troops.

  Then, using the cover of cloud, interspersed with fitful moonlight, he threw a line of cavalry across the river, well downstream, each soldier and horse roped to the other. These men and their horses would stay there all night, set to catch anyone swept away by the force of the water. Then, in almost pitch darkness, the most experienced heavy infantrymen, with ropes tied round their middle and stakes lashed to their backs, followed the velites into the water, holding clear their great metal-topped hammers. Aquila was at their head, his red-gold hair with the white band lashed round it picking up what little light existed. He swam swiftly to the other bank, forming the skirmishers into a defensive screen that would allow their comrades to work. The first the defenders knew of the coming assault was the sound of those stakes being driven into the damp riverside earth. The ropes were lashed to the stakes and at a steady pace Titus pushed his infantry across.

>   Aquila had already led his skirmishers up the steep slope, so that the tribesmen found themselves engaged in battle before they were properly awake. Fighting in the dark is terrifying, never knowing where the enemy is; or if the ghostly shape in front of you is friend or foe. Such hand-to-hand combat required a steely determination that the defenders lacked. Titus had the horns sounded continuously, and out of tune, from the moment the first stake was driven into the earth. This cacophony bounced off the rocks, multiplying and, added to the screams of the attackers, making the defenders feel that they were under attack from some horrifying monster. Each of Aquila’s men had, like him, a white cloth tied round his head. The Romans, even in the dim light, could identify their enemies, and they extracted a heavy toll long before the heavier troops arrived to take over the assault.

  Yet someone gathered them into a cohesive line, shouting commands that Aquila heard clearly. He sent a messenger back to warn Titus, well aware that the effect, initially, would be minimal. The Celts started to throw their javelins over the heads of the Romans on the cliff, aiming them in the general direction of the river. With such a mass of men in the water, struggling across the foaming torrent on dozens of ropes, many found a target. The screams of the wounded added to all the other noises of battle that echoed off the rock face, and, downstream, the line of cavalry found that they were indeed required, if only to stop the bodies of drowned men flowing all the way to the sea.

  When they ran out of spears, a distinct horn sounded, and the defence evaporated, leaving the Romans no one to fight.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The fog swirled around them, making their long, curled brass horns sound like something from the underworld. Few would have sailed into this, but Marcellus blessed the mist, for it could mean he would get his men ashore unopposed. They had spotted the first of the Lusitani the day before on the eastern shore, following them on land as the fleet made its way north. As darkness fell, beacons were lit on the hilltops so that the message would proceed ahead of those on foot, who could not be expected, in the dark, to match the pace of well-rowed galleys. To the west lay an endless expanse of sea and beyond that the edge of the world, peopled by demons and sea-nymphs who fed on human flesh and turned the wits of those they did not eat.

  Nothing could be seen of east or west in this mist. In the bows, the slow chant of the leadsman, calling out the depth of water beneath the keel, added a nerve-jangling litany to the ethereal call of the horns. Marcellus was with the fellow doing the casting, listening carefully to the depths, for they were in shoal water, perhaps surrounded by jagged rocks, with his ship in the very lead, each galley in the fleet taking station right behind the one ahead. If he could get through whatever they faced, so could they.

  ‘Sand on the line,’ called the leadsman, before casting it ahead again.

  The quinquereme rowed on slowly, its forward movement carrying it to a point where the line was vertical. The leadsman hauled quickly, pulling it out of the water, examining the tallow at the end to see what lay on the bottom, then, swinging it in an ever-widening circle, cast it forward again.

  ‘Give the order for silence,’ said Marcellus to a sailor standing behind him. ‘No more horns. And you, leadsman, whisper to me.’

  The sailor rushed to obey and his young commander strained forward. They were close inshore now, and the sound of the waves would tell him if he had guessed right. If they crashed unevenly and noisily, he would be on a rocky shore, in grave danger of holing his ship and sinking, but if he heard the hiss of water running evenly up a beach, then he would be safe. Marcellus could put men ashore and start to build the first Roman stockade in Lusitani territory.

  The fog lifted like a curtain suddenly whisked aside. Marcellus did not look back to see if the other galleys were still hidden, being too taken by the sight that greeted him on the sandy shore: rows and rows of Lusitani tribesmen, their spear tips glinting in the watery sun, lined the golden beach. A great roar welcomed him, with the spears jabbing impatiently, and threateningly, in the air. In the middle of the throng stood a magnificently clad chieftain, who opened his arms, shield in one hand, sword in the other, in a gesture intended to invite them to do battle.

  ‘Steer parallel to the shore,’ he called and the galley swung round, each ship emerging from the fog doing likewise, eventually anchoring in a line that matched the serried ranks of warriors waiting for them to try and wade ashore.

  ‘Well, Regimus, what do you think?’

  The older man rubbed his short, iron-grey hair. ‘Not a single ship. We’ve haven’t seen one the whole way here.’

  ‘No,’ replied Marcellus. ‘Yet these Lusitani are here. It’s as though they knew in advance that this were where we intended to land.’

  ‘Oh, they knew all right. All that beacon-burning was just to make sure we came as far as this bay. I daresay everyone in Portus Albus knew where we were headed by the time we sailed.’

  Marcellus stood still, his eyes fixed on the edge of the shore. He could see the line of weed by the feet of the front rank of warriors; between that and the sea, the sand was wet, which told him they had been there since high tide. If the warriors had waited that long on land, then it was a fair bet that the ships would be at sea, full of men, ready to fall on their rear.

  ‘Well, Legatus?’ asked Regimus, neatly underlining, by the unusual use of Marcellus’s rank, that the sole responsibility lay with him.

  Marcellus smiled. ‘I’ve no intention of retreating, Regimus, though I’m not averse to letting them think I am.’

  He turned and looked at the bank of offshore fog. The indentation on the shore was like a capsule, with the mountains at the back, the arms of the bay on each side running into the fog, forming an impenetrable wall to the rear.

  ‘I think they’re hoping we’ll attack.’

  Marcellus interrupted, still smiling. ‘At which point their ships will come in and try to catch us in the water as we wade ashore.’

  ‘That thought might cheer you up, Marcellus Falerius, but it makes my blood go cold.’

  The young legate laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Regimus. Can’t you see we’ve got them in a trap?’

  The rings of earthworks, in the morning light, seemed to rise one upon the other like some gigantic temple. Below Numantia, in front of their position, two rivers cut a wide swathe through the countryside. The only route of attack lay between those rivers; the other sides of the hill fort had approaches that were too steep for a proper assault.

  ‘As you said, Aquila, if this place falls, it will break the spirit of Iberian resistance.’ Aquila smiled, knowing that his general, who was not one for hyperbole, had not finished. ‘The question is, will our spirit survive to see it destroyed?’

  Aquila felt that he was seeing something familiar that he recognised from a dream, but it was hard to tell if that was true or just wild imagination. He had heard so many tales about the place, he felt he knew every stone and earthwork by heart. All around them the legionaries were hard at work constructing a camp, which seemed the wrong course of action. As always, when faced with a problem, he took his eagle in his hand, something Titus observed.

  ‘Does that bird have the power to divine the future?’

  The quaestor smiled at him. ‘Many people have thought so.’

  ‘Like every man in the legions,’ he continued, answering the look on Aquila’s face. ‘I’ve had no end of hints, friend, that I should consult your charm, so that we can all get out of this alive. The men have great faith in it and no faith at all in the priests and their chickens.’

  Titus looked again at the fortress of Numantia, a place so much stronger than he had ever imagined, a site that truly lived up to its reputation. For the first time since they had set out, he considered that he might have to order a retreat, wondering if even the novel tactic he had decided to employ would work on such a formidable obstacle. His mind went back to the conference he held on his return from the south, to the looks on the faces of his office
rs as he outlined his plan to turn Brennos’s great defensive bastion into a trap.

  ‘Our weapon, gentleman, is a combination of action and inaction. We will make breaches in the wall of the fort, and men will die doing so, but we will have plenty of time to rest between assaults.’

  The eyes that had fixed on him then, in a look brazenly enquiring, had been those of his quaestor and they had quite plainly posed the question: what are we going to do about all the tribesmen not in the hill fort? Titus knew he had truly gained Aquila Terentius’s trust at that point, for as he spoke, the look in the eyes changed from challenge to wonder. He told them that he intended to build a wall all the way round Numantia, interspersed with forts that Brennos’s allies would have to attack. He would besiege the enemy within, while those without would be forced to attack him in a situation heavily to their disadvantage. Such a situation would discourage them, and once that happened, he would detach enough men to fight their way back to the coast, opening up a supply route which meant he could stay in front of Numantia forever.

  Like all plans, it looked good on paper; now, with the task visible before him, it was less so. But Aquila’s next words, delivered with such heart-warming conviction, chased any thoughts of failure away. ‘If we can eat, General, and they can’t, then they must eventually surrender.’