As they climbed, the arrows began to find their marks, most of them thudding into the shields and either bouncing off or breaking, a few penetrating enough to catch an arm behind, a few more managing to strike the flesh of a foot or ankle. One, only a few paces from Fabius, managed against all odds to hit that narrow band for a legionary’s sight, scraping over the shield rim and slamming into his left eye.
The man was dead before he hit the ground, the century forced to scatter and avoid the body as it rolled back down the slope, limbs snapping as it went. Other men were crying out at the leg wounds, but few were truly debilitating and most either limped on at speed or threw themselves out of formation to the side to prevent inhibiting their comrades.
They were almost cresting the hill now, the enemy mere paces away, their spears and swords already lancing and swiping out opportunistically.
Now, thought Fabius, throwing an urgent look at Carbo, who led as always from the front. The first spear point clanged off a bronze shield boss and finally the primus pilus blew his whistle, issuing the order to charge. The men tried to pick up the pace as the slope eased. They were too close to the enemy for an effective charge, but then, Fabius reflected, if the centurion had given the order much earlier, their momentum would have drained with the strain of the incline before they attacked.
The legionaries met the Gauls with a resounding crash, each side going to work at the slaughter with the confidence of professionals or the strength of men who fought for a belief.
Fabius found himself suddenly lurching forward, his foot catching an unseen hole in the grass, and was immensely grateful when Furius’ free arm caught him from behind and prevented him falling prone before the enemy.
He had no time to thank his friend, though. Already the fight was joined fully, the Gauls giving as good as they got, neither protected nor inhibited by defences. A man with a single braid hanging down the side of his face and a moustache of impressive proportions, wearing a mail shirt but no helm, lunged out with a spear, the point coming dangerously close and forcing Fabius to duck slightly to preserve his life.
Using his free, slightly deformed, hand - unencumbered by shield - he grabbed the spear shaft behind the head and yanked it down and to the side, startling the weapon’s owner, who found himself suddenly presenting his right shoulder to the Roman. Fabius jabbed his blade down, the tapering point entering the man’s body where neck and shoulder met, snapping a tendon on its descent into his torso.
The man screamed, his fingers releasing the spear, and Fabius shifted his focus to the next rebel. As the Gaul bellowed his defiance and leapt forward, Fabius tensed to meet the attack, but found himself barged roughly aside. Frowning as he stumbled and righted himself, he glared at Furius, who had pushed past him and now dispatched that Gaul with rough blows and angry strength. As his friend rose from the kill, momentarily in an open space as the two armies wrestled around them, Fabius reached out and grasped him by the shoulder.
Furius turned, his gladius already sweeping out for the attack, and it was only with extreme effort of will that the man recognised his friend and pulled the blow back.
Fabius stared at him. ‘Calm,’ he breathed.
‘I told you to stay out of my way,’ Furius snapped and wrenched his shoulder from his friend’s grip, throwing himself on into the fight.
‘What has got into you lately?’ Fabius whispered as he ran off after his friend.
The next few heartbeats were a mess for Fabius. Swords and helmets and shield bosses gleaming ghostly in the moonlight as he pushed on, keeping himself positioned carefully so that the blind-side of his missing eye did not present too much danger, while attempting to stay close on the heel of his friend.
Here and there he found himself beset by some native or other as the Gauls fought desperately to hold their position, all the time pushed back by the weight of the heavy Roman infantry that had come upon them unexpected in the dark. Ahead, Furius seemed to have been possessed by some demon, his figure soaked with blood and leading the fight, way out at the front.
The man had always had a temper - Fabius knew that. His temper had almost cost them their lives in Pompey’s eastern campaign, but it had always been contained and controlled. Made to work for him. To some extent, it was what had made him a good soldier.
But since that day at Avaricon, when he’d climbed the ladder and failed to take the prize, something had changed in him. It seemed now that he was driven by different forces. After that siege, Furius could so easily have been charged with an offence for his actions, but the legionary he had laid out had refused to take the matter up, fearing retribution. No one had spoken to the two tribunes about the incident, but Fabius had seen Fronto’s expression when they were near and he knew that, somehow, the legate had heard what had happened. In fact, though Fabius had not been able to see Fronto’s face in the gloom down below a quarter of an hour ago, he was certain the legate had worn that very same look. Indeed, before the legions had moved out under cover of darkness, Fronto had paused for a long moment before acquiescing to their request to join the attack, not an action in which a legion’s tribunes would normally partake.
And now, Furius was busy hacking and maiming his way through the Gauls as though each and every one had personally offended him. Somewhere, over the din, Fabius could hear the booing and honking of a carnyx. Though he could hardly tell one Gallic call from another through the dreadful instrument, it was clear from both the urgency of the tune and the effect it seemed to have on the mass of men that it was a call to withdraw.
The call was answered by others high up among the hills, presumably relaying orders to the beaten force to abandon their lost ground and move to some other position.
The Gauls were pulling back, but Fabius pushed on, watching his friend kill and dismember indiscriminately. The press of Gauls ahead had stopped retreating and were jammed up in a seething mass into which Furius thrust his gladius again and again, yelling something incoherent. The man’s unoccupied shield arm hung by his side, blood sheeting down it from some wound that the man barely acknowledged.
Fabius moved forward still. The Gauls were trying to run now, but this particular part of the enemy force was in serious trouble. The forces of the Tenth had driven them back across the plateau, but they had run out of places to retreat, the front ranks of the Eighth pushing in from the far side, squeezing them between the two legions, the only real path to freedom presenting them with a seventy or eighty foot drop down the chalky cliff.
‘Furius!’
But his friend fought on, oblivious.
Fabius lunged forth, his sword lowered - the Gauls were trying to run or laying down their weapons in defeat. Few were still showing resistance, and the men of the Tenth were on hand all around anyway. Reaching out, Fabius grabbed Furius’ raised sword-arm before the blood-slicked blade could descend again, hauling his friend back from the press sharply. Furius staggered back, shocked out of whatever fog had descended upon his senses.
Fabius stared as Furius’ latest victim tumbled to the ground, blood spraying from his neck, his helmet slightly askew and his mail shirt torn. The tribune blinked. The unfortunate dying legionary’s eyes stared desperately, his fingers slipping from the shield’s grip, the curved, oval shield displaying Caesar’s bull and the ‘VIII’ of the Eighth legion falling to the blood-and-mud-churned grass.
‘You lunatic!’ Fabius snapped, turning Furius to face him. His friend’s expression, from beneath a coating of blood, was bewildered… almost unhinged, in fact. Fabius stared at him, as Furius looked down at the sword in his hand as though it were controlled by someone else, and then let go of the hilt suddenly as though it glowed white hot.
The gore-spattered tribune stood shaking, his eyes flashing back and forth between his blade on the grass and the convulsing legionary he had mistakenly killed in the press of men, his rage having overridden his senses.
Shaking his head to clear it of the shock, Fabius turned. Strangely, despite the
situation, the battle seemed to have all-but stopped around them, a few legionaries still struggling with the more vehement of the trapped Gauls, but most of the enemy resigned to their fate and most of the legionaries staring in shock at the tribune and his victim.
Fabius exhaled slowly and unbuckled his helmet, ripping it from his head.
‘None of you saw this. I will deal with the matter in due course, but do not send rumours creeping across the camp. This is not the time to dishearten your comrades.’
He knew the tale would spread, of course, regardless of what he did, but if he could staunch the flow temporarily, he might be able to break the news first. Turning his despairing eye upon Furius, he ground his teeth for a moment, before clearing his throat.
‘Go back to the Tenth. Attend the capsarius for that arm.’
Furius stared for a moment and then nodded dumbly, turning and shuffling back from the scene, his sword forgotten, lying in the dirt.
* * * * *
Fronto pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut the way the general did when anger and disbelief fought for ascendancy within him.
‘This is going to cause endless trouble.’
‘I know,’ sighed Fabius, leaning forward with his palms on the table. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him, but he’s losing control.’
‘If I’d had one witness after that incident at Avaricon I would have dealt with him then. I’d hoped it was an isolated incident, though, so I didn’t push matters.’
‘Me too.’
‘I don’t understand this. You two have been model soldiers this past four years.’
And yet his memory strayed to that clearing in the woods back in Britannia. His first impressions of the pair. Furius, with that white scar that ran across his collar line, where a general back in the east had tried to have the two executed for ‘overstepping their authority’. Tales the pair told when they were in their cups of their daring exploits in their time under Pompey, most of which seemed to involve an insanely dangerous attack. The stories he had heard from last year, when the two had been intimately involved in the assault on the Menapii island that had left Fabius with a damaged hand. Perhaps, on balance, it was less surprising that the tribune had succumbed to apparent battle-madness than he’d first thought?
‘You’re both good soldiers,’ he continued through a sigh. ‘But I’m starting to worry about Furius’ appropriateness in his position. Someone of your rank should have more control.’ He felt a jolt of guilt at the comment, given his similar failures both in the attack in Britannia a few years ago, and more recently in the siege of Cenabum. He would never again allow himself the luxury of such madness, though, and he couldn’t allow it in his men, either.
‘If this tale comes to the ear of the general or Marcus Antonius, there’ll be a trial for Furius. And you might catch the backlash yourself for trying to silence the witnesses.’ He held up a hand as Fabius opened his mouth to argue. ‘I know why you did, and I would likely have done the same. But the fact remains that if it comes to the commanders’ notice, you’ll both be screwed.’
He sighed. ‘But something will have to be done. I can’t just let you both off with a scolding. It would infuriate the men of both legions who saw what happened.’
An uncomfortable silence fell, and Fabius eventually took a deep breath. ‘You cannot appear to be protecting us.’
Fronto nodded.
‘It’s time you were put back in a position most suitable for you. I’m having your striped tunics stripped. You’ll both report to the quartermaster immediately to arrange for the uniform of a centurion. You are no longer tribunes in the Tenth legion.’
Fabius bowed his head, defeated, but accepting.
‘And you will collect shields and appropriate kit for the Eighth legion.’
The former-tribune looked up in surprise.
‘I’m sorry, Fabius, but demotion is lenient for what just happened. I will be heavily criticised for it. And given that, I cannot afford to have you under my command henceforth. If either of you stepped out of line again, even fractionally, I would have to order the harshest punishment I could. Instead I am transferring you to the command of Gaius Fabius Pictor. You’re his problem now.’
Fabius stared at his legate. ‘But sir, after what Furius did to a man from the Eighth…’
‘He will have to work out how to make amends somehow. I won’t protect him in the Tenth at the expense of the ire of another legion. From what I hear, Pictor owes you. I gather you saved his life on an island in the Rhenus last year. Cash that in. Do what you must, but I can no longer command you. Report to the Eighth first thing in the morning. I will speak to Pictor and agree the matter tonight. He is still down five centurions after Avaricon, filling the roles with temporary field-promotions. He will be glad of veterans to plug the gaps.’
He rose and extended a hand.
‘Good luck, Fabius.’
The former tribune sighed and took the proffered hand, gripping it tight. ‘Thank you for this, sir.’
‘Don’t thank me too soon. You’re still in the thick of it. The Tenth and the Eighth are assigned to the camp you just took. The fight has only just begun.’
* * * * *
‘The time is almost upon us,’ Litavicus of the Aedui murmured to Cavarinos as the pair tore into a loaf of fresh-baked bread in the early morning sunlight, the dew already evaporating from the grass.
‘How will you do it?’ Cavarinos replied quietly.
‘With guile, as always,’ grinned the young noble.
The Arvernian breathed in the glorious morning air. His young companion loved only one thing more than devising his plots and plans, and that was to keep them secret and watch as they slowly revealed themselves, invariably successfully. He was, in truth, exactly the sort of person Cavarinos usually despised - treacherous, devious, not given to honour, deceitful and, despite all that, a smug and reckless one. And yet somehow it was difficult to dislike him. He simply had a magnetic quality.
It was to be hoped he was as clever as he thought he was, too.
The seven thousand Aedui riders of whom he had been placed in command had been drawn from the most veteran, notable houses of all the Aedui, beyond just Bibracte. As such, only a relatively small proportion of them were currently involved in the plan and held themselves oath-bound to Vercingetorix. Most of the powerful warriors encamped around them on this sunny hillside were pro-Roman Aedui, or at least those who had no strong anti-Roman sentiment. If Litavicus was to break their bonds, he would have to be every bit as cunning as he claimed to be.
And among their number, travelling at the rear with a score of legionaries, came the Romans’ latest supply train. Two hundred wagons of food and equipment, manned by Roman citizens and accompanied by soldiers.
‘My brothers,’ was all Litavicus had let on when Cavarinos had pried into how he intended to achieve all this. The young warrior’s two brothers, along with half a dozen other nobles who all owed their allegiance to the Arverni, had been sent ahead from Bibracte, ostensibly to inform Caesar of the imminent approach of his supplies and reinforcements.
Seven thousand of the best horseback warriors the Aedui could muster. It was quite an impressive force in its own right. They were strong enough, fresh enough, and disciplined enough to defeat a legion in the field. If Litavicus had misjudged something and the pro-Roman nobles among them took the warriors to Caesar’s side, it would be a terrible blow to the rebel cause. But if the young man had pulled it off, then Vercingetorix’s army would gain the edge they desperately needed. After all, more than half of these men had spent years serving alongside the Romans as native levies. They knew the legions; knew how to beat them, if approached properly.
And this was still only plumbing the shallowest depths of the Aedui and their allies. When news of this spread, the Aedui could field another thirty thousand men if needed, and the tribes who owed allegiance to them the same again. The scales of strength were about to tip in favour o
f the rebellion. Vercingetorix had been correct from the start in courting the Aedui; in their value to the cause. Of course he had been correct. Let’s hope he was equally correct in his decision to let Caesar meet him at Gergovia.
He sat musing in silence for a while as Litavicus hummed a carefree tune. Then, as he was finishing his cup of milk and about to rise and go to prepare his mount for the remaining thirty miles to Gergovia, a shout went up to the west.
Litavicus grinned. ‘Observe a miracle in the making.’
Cavarinos frowned and stood, brushing down his clothes and rolling his shoulders to loosen up. There was some sort of fuss over on the western side of the camp, and the commotion was moving their way like a ripple in the mass of men.
After a short wait, during which Litavicus continued to hum quietly, three figures emerged from the throng, half a dozen of the Aedui nobles hurrying alongside them. Cavarinos knew their faces vaguely, but it took him a moment to place them, then he exhaled sharply, trying not to smile.
One of Litavicus’ brothers, along with two others of the men who’d been sent ahead to Caesar. All three were dirty and dishevelled and looked to have been beaten heavily, bruises and blood caking them. The three men staggered up to the young noble’s campfire and collapsed, weary, to the earth. Now, all the warriors crowded forward to see these poor husks of men, but Litavicus’ close guard kept them back. With apparent pain, the nobleman’s brother rose and staggered across to Litavicus, who reached out his arms to steady him. Cavarinos was near enough to hear the exchange that followed, though the rest of the army heard nothing of it, for their conversation was low and close.
The Great Revolt Page 28
