* * * * *
Vellaunoduno was unimpressive, to Fronto’s eye. In the six years he had fought through Gaul, he had seen the most powerful fortresses the tribes had to offer, from the towering chiselled mountain of Aduatuca, through the treacherous coastal strongholds of the Veneti, to the swamp-ridden islands of the Menapii. Vellaunoduno had walls of reasonable quality, but it sloped gently downhill from north to south, with even the north only protected by a gentle grassy incline, and the south gate undefended by any natural obstacle.
‘We could take that place in an hour,’ he muttered, shivering in the cold breeze.
Carbo, the primus pilus of the Tenth legion and trusted officer of Fronto’s, grinned. ‘Give the word, legate and I’ll turn the place upside down for you. It’d be a damn site better than this.’
He indicated the work going on all around them, as legionaries from eight legions busily cut turf sods, worked on taking the ditch down to at least waist level and used the soil to create the rampart behind it. Atop the completed sections of the mound, other legionaries were using timber and wattle to weave strong fences and nailing them in place to posts. Here and there, men were even constructing low towers to sit above the fence, affording a good view of the oppidum and its surroundings. The work was going on in a wide circle that surrounded Vellaunoduno, leaving just under a scorpion-shot between the two opposing walls.
Fronto sighed. ‘No. Sadly, we cannot. Caesar gave his orders. Circumvallation. He wants the oppidum undamaged for its stores.’
‘I can’t help but wonder what the Gauls are thinking, sir. They’re Senones, and that means they’re theoretically our allies, yet we pitch up here with eight legions and build siege works? And what happens when the bloody-minded buggers inside decide it’s better to burn the granaries than let us have the grain?’
Fronto nodded. The same thoughts had occurred to him. ‘There are rumours that the western Senones are sending warriors south to Vercingetorix, and when we arrived, they shut the gate. No welcome party generally means you’re not welcome. And as to the granaries, we’ll have to trust to their sense of self-preservation. Currently we have no reason to put them to the sword. We are not officially at war with them, after all. Caesar will grant them favourable terms in return for supplies.’
He desperately hoped so. When they had arrived at Agedincum two days ago, Fronto had gone with Priscus to examine the supply situation at the main camp. Labienus had showed them the granaries and storehouses, and they had been pitifully thin. Normally, when faced with such an issue, the commanders of the winter quarters would rely upon sending out centuries of men and foraging in the surrounding lands, but it seemed a Boii scout who had been working with Cita at Cenabum had survived to bring the legions news of the Carnute attack a few months back, and in response, Labienus had reined in all such forage parties, keeping the legions together and on high alert. The result had been low stores, but six well-prepared and alert legions, ready to move at a moment’s notice. Indeed, Labienus had told them of reports from native scouts of Carnute and Parisi warbands prowling the region in the hope of picking off any such small extended foray.
Caesar had rallied from the news, sending out messengers to the Aedui at Bibracte and the Boii at Gorgobina, reminding them of their allegiance and asking that they send whatever supplies they could spare. Still, Fronto had noted, Caesar had lost no time in fielding the army and making for the grain-filled oppidum of Vellaunoduno, leaving only two legions at Agedincum in reserve.
The centurion nodded wearily. ‘The lads are itching for a fight, sir.’
‘I suspect that by the autumn they’ll be sick of the sight of blood, Carbo. Somewhere south of here is an army of Gauls bigger than anything we’ve faced in this land so far. And some time in the next few weeks or months we’re going to have to bring them to battle.’
‘It’ll be a big one, sir.’
Fronto regarded the bald, shining pink pate of the stocky centurion and nodded. ‘It’ll end all this and settle the place one way or another, that’s for sure. By the time this season’s over half the population of Gaul of fighting age will be howed up in burial mounds, be they Gaul or Roman.’ He shrugged off the depressing thought and nodded to the growing rampart. ‘How long will the circumvallation take?’
Carbo shrugged. ‘The mound and ditch will be in place by nightfall… benefit of eight legions’ manpower. Another day for the fences, towers and gates. Then there’s the lilia pits and the like. Two days, though in all.’
A nod.
‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’ muttered Palmatus, arriving at the completed mound that overlooked the south western corner and standing beside his commander. The singulares remained standing at ease close to the rear of the slope, ready to move should their commander require it, and watching the rest of the army labouring with the satisfaction of the excused-duty.
‘No,’ the legate replied. ‘But from here you can see why it’s important.’
‘Why’s that?’
Fronto pointed over the enemy ramparts at the sloping town within. ‘See up near the top, past that two-storey place with the red tiled roof? There are four extremely long roofs?’
‘I see them?’
‘They’re granaries.’
Palmatus whistled through his teeth. ‘They’re bigger than the ones in a legionary fortress.’
‘That they are. Vellaunoduno’s pretty much at the centre of the Senones’ grain-farming region, like Cenabum for the Carnutes. As such, it’s a hub, which supplies other towns within the tribe. There’ll be enough grain in those four buildings to keep us in the field for a month or more.’
‘Hopefully it won’t take that long to finish the job,’ Palmatus shrugged. ‘The general word is that the Gallic army is massing less than a hundred miles south of here. A bit of careful manoeuvring and we could bring it to open battle in days. Weeks at most.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ Fronto replied quietly. ‘Remember: we’ve met their leader. He and Caesar might well be a match for one another. Neither of them is going to commit on unfavourable ground, so there might be a lot of dancing around before anyone gets to bloody their sword. No idea what Vercingetorix is doing down there, but he’s close to the Aedui, and after last winter I’m not quite sure how far I trust our old friends any more. And as for Caesar: well he’s concentrating on breaking off the man’s northern allies and containing him. Could be a while before we put sword to throat in open field.’ The pair fell silent and perused the oppidum’s walls, pulling their cloaks tighter for warmth. None of the men were used to campaigning so early in the year. It was unnatural.
‘Look at that pair. Daring buggers, eh?’ Fronto and Palmatus followed Carbo’s pointing finger and picked out two men standing atop the walls of Vellaunoduno with their fists on their hips, regarding the Roman engineers sealing them in. The rest of the warriors atop the walls had either pulled back down inside the city or were crouched behind the parapet, ever since the Roman artillerists had loosed a hundred pot-shots at the walls just to determine range and the position for the line of the ditch. The Roman defences were safely out of Gallic bowshot, but a scorpion was still accurate enough with a good artillerist behind it to pick a man from that wall.
‘They’re just watching us, the cheeky bastards,’ Palmatus said.
‘Let ‘em,’ Fronto said. ‘Might help with lowering their morale.’
‘An extra corpse or two would help more,’ Palmatus snorted.
‘They’re wise to us, though, since the test volleys’ replied Carbo. ‘Any time the crews move the scorpions, the buggers go into hiding.’
Palmatus gave a nasty grin and turned, looking back down the earth bank to where Fronto’s bodyguard were assembled, supping from water flasks, exempt from all the manual labour going on around them.
‘Arcadios? Get up here.’
The swarthy Cretan scrambled up the bank, his bow across his back and a leather case of arrows at his waist. He saluted Fronto and Carb
o and nodded to Palmatus. ‘Sir?’
‘I’ve seen you put a point through a torc at almost a hundred paces. Could you hit a man on that wall?’
Arcadios narrowed his eyes and squinted through the dreary air. ‘It’s more like a hundred and sixty paces. Maybe a hundred and seventy.’ He sucked a finger and held it aloft. ‘And there’s a more-than-moderate breeze. It’s possible, but I’d have to be very lucky.’
‘Be lucky, then,’ grinned Palmatus.
The three Roman officers stood and held their breath as Arcadios tested the wind once more, took a long moment to examine the shot, then bent forward, nocked an arrow, and slowly straightened, releasing the shaft as he reached the apex in a smooth move and with no pause. His aim had already taken place before he reached for the arrow.
‘Nice shot,’ whispered Fronto as they watched the arrow arc up into the air, on target for the two men, who might well be expecting pot-shots from the scorpions, but would not be anticipating an arrow.
Then, just past the apex, as the shaft began its descent and picked up speed, a sudden gust wafted it and the missile moved slightly off-target. The three officers sighed with regret as the arrow passed between the two Gauls and plummeted out of sight within the town behind them.
‘Pretty good,’ Fronto smiled. ‘They might not be hurt, but I’ll bet they both shat themselves!’
The four Romans on the rampart laughed.
* * * * *
Cavarinos saw the arrow only as it plummeted out of the misty grey, and he was suddenly grateful for the chill wind he had been complaining about all morning and which might well have been the only reason the shaft passed half an arm’s length from his head rather than straight through his eye. Damn, that was lucky!
The arrow thudded into the compacted earth of the street behind them.
As Critognatos turned to look back at the fallen missile, Cavarinos was impressed at the lack of concern on his brother’s face, but then put that down not so much to implacability and strength of character as to lack of imagination and not being bright enough to panic.
‘Our timing leaves a great deal to be desired,’ he sighed as he watched the Romans working hard. Critognatos had apparently been quite successful at stirring the local tribes and had been at Vellaunoduno for several days. Cavarinos had arrived late last night from his foray into the Carnute druid woods. And this morning the assembled might of Rome had hoved into view through the trees. Cavarinos had cursed himself for agreeing to break his fast on a hearty meal before they left. Had they just departed at dawn they would have been long gone before Caesar had arrived.
‘The Senones are cowards,’ Critognatos spat. ‘They took their oath to Vercingetorix, but the moment Caesar appears, they all quiver and shake.’
‘They hold for now. But they must capitulate soon, brother. They will all die otherwise.’
‘At least they will die for a cause.’
‘And we will die with them,’ reminded Cavarinos. ‘A peaceful solution that sets us on our way is advantageous.’
‘Coward!’
Cavarinos rounded on his brother. ‘Don’t be a fool. You know I’m no coward. But the answer is not always in drawing a sword and running naked, screaming, at the enemy!’
‘You have that curse?’
‘Yes.’ Cavarinos took a step back, his eyes narrowing. The value in the tablet was as a talisman to rally the men. Not in using, only to discover it was as useless as he felt certain it was. ‘I don’t know when I should use it, but the druids said ‘when the boar and the eagle were struggling with a sword or something. I don’t think this counts.’
Critognatos slammed him in the shoulder and pointed out over the no-man’s-land.
‘Do you see a figure over there, behind their defences, on a white horse, with the red cloak?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s almost certainly Caesar. That’s what they say: he wears a red cloak and rides a white horse.’
‘And if it isn’t? If we waste this thing? No. The value of this curse is in showing it to the army and carrying it with us.’
‘Use it on Caesar!’
‘No.’
‘Then use it on one of them!’ He pointed at the small knot of Romans on the mound and, ignoring his brother’s continued badgering, Cavarinos peered at the men. A large figure had now joined them: a big, ebony-skinned man. Cavarinos felt a jolt. The clever Roman from Bibracte last year. He had had a black-skinned warrior with him. It was too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.
‘We have to get out of Vellaunoduno and back to the army. We cannot do that by attempting to use the walls to defeat an army more than forty thousand strong with a few thousand frightened locals. We have to see this to a peaceful solution.’
‘There will be more than a few thousand, brother.’
‘What?’
‘My embassy to the tribes was successful. Upwards of ten thousand warriors are leaving their lands and heading south for the army.’
‘They’re hardly likely to all come through here, you idiot. And even if they did, and they all got the urge to fight straight away, that would still only make us one to about three or four in numbers. Nowhere near enough.’
‘How the king ever came to put you in command of warriors I will never understand,’ Critognatos spat and, turning, stomped off back down the slope and into the town.’
‘Idiot.’
Cavarinos allowed his gaze to linger for a long moment on the small group of Romans, including the dark-skin and the officer atop the wall, and then the figure with the white horse and the red cloak crossed the camp and came to join them. Despite his personal misgivings and his flat disbelief that the burden he carried held any true power, Cavarinos found himself fingering the edges of the curse tablet in the leather case at his belt.
‘No. A peaceful solution, for now…’
* * * * *
The sanctuary of the god Borvo and the goddess Damona thrummed with the collective worry of two hundred throats. Consisting of a portico of heavy timber posts supporting a sloping tiled roof, only one side of the square structure rose above a single storey, and it was from the balcony on this section that the magistrate of Vellaunoduno, accompanied by the most notable residents and a white-clad druid, had asked the crowd to hush.
Cavarinos and Critognatos sat on the driver’s seat of a large cart at the far end, above the heads of the crowd. The pair had hardly exchanged a civil word since their argument on the walls, yet sat together largely for the security that granted among a foreign tribe.
‘The Romans have made no demands,’ the magistrate repeated. ‘They arrived and besieged us. We have the choice now.’
He paused for a moment as the general hum of the crowd intruded, and when it subsided, he continued. ‘We can see this as an open act of war and assume that their commander has nothing in mind but the conquest of our city and the impounding of our grain to feed their hungry legions. Or we can see it as a cautious reaction from a people who now know that much of the land has risen against them and cannot simply presume us to be allies. After all, while they cannot know that we have taken the oath for the Arverni king, they can hardly be sure we have not.’
Again, the hubbub arose. Cavarinos sat patiently. Even over the din in this place, he could hear the distant sounds of hammering as legionaries worked in the darkness by the light of flaring torches to complete the barrier surrounding the oppidum. The magistrate waited for the lull once more, and then spoke again.
‘You people are the nobles, the land owners, the free artisans and workers. It is to you that I turn, for the way forward to me is clouded and obscure. Segomaros here represents the druids, and it is his council that we defend this place to the last and deny the Romans any succour, including our grain.’
‘He would torch the grain?’ one of the crowd called out incredulously.
‘Would you feed the Romans?’ shouted another with an audible sneer.
‘Tarvos here,’ the man went on, in
dicating a warrior who physically lived up to his name - the bull - ‘would see us come to terms with the Romans and buy passage from the city with our grain. He would see our warriors join the Arverni army at any cost.’
‘And what about the children?’ shouted a woman. ‘If the Romans take our grain and the warriors leave to join the Arverni, the rest will starve!
‘And this is what we are here to debate,’ announced the magistrate patiently.
Cavarinos listened to half a dozen more shouts and finally rose from the wagon seat, towering above all, bar those few on the balcony.
‘If you fight here to the death, what fate do you expect for your children? Anything better than starvation? Romans are not like the tribes across the Rhenus. They will take slaves when they win a battle, yes, but they are almost always open to negotiation. They might be the enemy but they value life and they understand the value of life. Submitting to them might be ignominious for you, but you would be alive and, I daresay, free into the bargain; and few Romans I have met will watch the children starve if you have willingly aided them.’
A murmur of agreement and support sussed across the crowd, and Cavarinos could see the magistrate nodding his appreciation of the comment, albeit coming from a foreigner. Sometimes it took an outsider to bring sense.
His heart sank as the bench weight shifted, warning him that Critognatos had risen behind him.
‘Many hundreds - thousands even - of warriors of the Meldi, the Parisi and the Catelauni tribes will be passing here as they rush to join the Arverni army. They will not pass by here and see you beneath the Roman yoke. You need only hold until they come.’
Idiot!
With a malicious streak flashing through his heart, Cavarinos gave the side of the cart a good hard thump with his heel and was rewarded by the sound of his brother falling with a crash behind him as the cart shuddered. Despite the gravity of the situation, those nearby chuckled at the sight and Cavarinos smiled. Good. His brother’s credibility was waning.
‘Those warriors will not pause on their journey to engage an army many times their size, even for your grain. Your only hope of survival is to parlay. I know these Romans. I have met one of them myself before now, and he is a reasonable man. Favourable terms are within your grasp. I beg you for the love of reason not to throw away your lives and those of your families for a prideful gesture.’
The Great Revolt Page 12
