Thirty-five paces. The centurion he could see on the wall, identified by his red transverse horsehair crest, raised an arm. That was it, then.
‘Cast!’ Vergasillaunus shouted.
The second and third ranks barely faltered in their advance, hurling their spears up and over towards the defenders. Vergasillaunus saw the centurion’s arm falling to echo the manoeuvre and did not even pause for the last spear to leave before he bellowed his second command on the heel of the first.
‘Chelona!’
At his command, given in the Greek, for he couldn’t countenance a Latin command, the front rows of each block split neatly and efficiently and brought their shields up to the fore, the sides and the top in a more-than-passable imitation of a Roman testudo formation. His timing had been spot on. Even as the formations coalesced in the press of men, the pila rose from the defences, supported by the bolts from three scorpions and the arrows of a couple of dozen auxilia assigned to the rampart.
The Roman javelins went through the shields as often as they were turned by them, and no formation would stop the scorpion shots, but still the arrows were largely nullified and many men survived the volley because of the Roman tactic.
It took a moment for the tortoise formations to recover, shuffling together and attempting to fill the gaps with varying degrees of success. The Roman archers took advantage of the hesitations to put arrows into the gaps in the shield-walls, trying to open them up more and along the line, here and there, testudos collapsed.
But most reformed and moved inexorably against the wall.
The Gauls’ spears were designed for fighting with, not throwing, and their volley had been rather random and haphazard, yet it had had an astounding effect, which Vergasillaunus suspected would stay in the memory of these men and change their mode of warfare forever. The weapons may have been unwieldy and off-target, but there had been thousands of them and by the law of averages, many hundreds had found their mark. In a single volley, the wall’s defenders had thinned out considerably, and the way looked more inviting and easier than ever. His gaze dropped from the palisade, down the steep - if low - rampart slope to the v-shaped ditch with an equally precipitous inner slope. Many hundreds, if not thousands, would perish there, filling the ditch with their corpses.
Unless he could prevent it. Now to try something else.
At a third call, echoed along the lines by the tribes’ leaders, the testudos stopped advancing, closing up before the ditch and creating a solid line, two shields high against the Roman arrows. As the line formed, leaving gaps every hundred men, the blocks of archers reformed into longer lines behind them and began to return the volleys.
In a matter of heartbeats the air was full of arcing black shafts, many more hurtling towards the camp than issuing from it. And as the archers carried out their attack, Vergasillaunus gave his second-to-last planned command.
‘Ditches!’
At the call, the three thousand men loitering behind the attacking force and ahead of the reserves ran forward, disappearing into the gaps left in the formation, pushing their way out into the open and braving the missiles to cast their huge baskets, barrows and sacks of debris, earth, brush and so on into the ditches, one after the other.
Perhaps every third man of the earth-carriers disappeared with a shriek as he burst out into the open and fell foul of a thrown pilum or a loosed arrow or bolt, but their burden was already out, falling into the ditch, their bodies only adding to the debris.
It took the space of a hundred heartbeats to complete the manoeuvre. He had lost almost a thousand men, their bodies in the ditch beneath the rampart, adding to the crossings they had formed so thoroughly with their burdens. Though it irked him to think like a Roman commander, Vergasillaunus could only note that a thousand was a small price to pay to nullify the ditch and much of the rampart slope, for the attackers now had clear ramps leading straight to the Roman palisade. Had he led his army in the usual fashion, there would be five times as many bodies in that ditch before the first man ever reached the defences. He might hate the Romans for what they were and what they had done, but he was forced to grudgingly respect the efficiency of their military ways.
The shield wall closed up as the last man retreated, and at Vergasillaunus’ final command the army surged forward at the wall. The Arvernian commander took a deep breath as he watched his near twenty-nine thousand men rushing the meagre defences manned currently by less than a thousand. Unless the Romans pulled a miracle out of their backsides, the day would by his within the hour.
Expelling that explosive breath, he drew his blade. There were limits, of course, to how far he was willing to emulate a Roman general. No standing at the back and looking pretty for him. With a roar, Vergasillaunus of the Arverni pointed his sword-tip at the enemy, adjusted his shield and broke into a run.
* * * * *
When the camp’s east gate gave way it did so almost explosively, one leaf ripped from its rope bindings and flying in against the inner redoubt like a missile, the other breaking into individual timbers and crashing back against the rampart, smashed and useless.
The attack had been delayed by the efficacy of the centurion and his men on the wall-top, casting endless missiles down at the small Gaulish force and keeping them back for as long as possible, but as the attackers managed to pick off a few of the Roman guards and the supplies of pila began to thin out, the flurries of defending missiles diminished and the Gauls had come on afresh.
It had bought Fronto enough time to construct and man his redoubt, and now his twenty six men faced perhaps four times that number, bursting through the gate, the Romans gritting their teeth and ready to fight from their hasty barricade of wagons and barrels. The legionaries hefted their pila, watching the flood of Gauls push through the gate and into the ‘U’ of defences.
Fronto lifted his gladius - no longer the beautiful orichalcum hilted blade he’d lost in the fight against Critognatos of the Arverni - and angled the dulled-if-sharp point towards the dead brute’s brother who ran at the forefront of the attack, his face somehow hollow and empty. Fronto swallowed for a moment, awaiting the crash.
The Gallic warriors hit the wagons like a winter storm wave crashing on the rocky shore, shaking the entire redoubt and threatening to knock it over entire and trash the defence. But as the wagons rocked back to solidity, men like Masgava and one thick-set brute who’d come down from the walls steadying them with meaty hands, the work of killing began on both sides. Half the defending force stood atop barrels and raised platforms, stabbing down at the attackers, while the rest remained on the ground, jabbing through the numerous gaps in the rickety redoubt with their swords, trying to catch any unarmoured and exposed body part.
Cavarinos came at him like some sort of killing machine, his face hollow and expressionless, his actions mechanical and stiff, his empty, shield-free arm coming up to grab hold of an exposed spoke of a cart wheel, giving him leverage to leap up onto one of the reinforcing boards beneath the vehicle and use it as a step to stab out with his long, Gallic blade.
Fronto ducked to the side, the blow being unwieldy and poor, given Cavarinos’ precarious attack position. He lifted the small, round shield he had selected from the supplies his men had brought in - a signifer or musician’s shield, portable and light but with much less protective surface than a standard legionary equivalent. Cavarinos barely breathed before his sword came back and swung in a wide, unheeding arc that almost took the top off the head of one of his own men close by before sweeping forward and down against Fronto.
The man’s eyes might be hollow, but he was fighting like a demon, seemingly driven on by the sight of the Roman officer. Why? Yes, Fronto had killed the man’s brother, but if Cavarinos hadn’t saved his life, that same brother would have spitted him instead. The answer, of course, was simple: grief. Fronto had seen and lived through enough grief to know how it could grasp a fighting man. He might be seen to accept it stoically - might even believe that himself - bu
t somewhere inside, the blame blossomed like a sick, crimson rose, forcing a man to test his fate at the edge of a blade. Cavarinos likely felt so deeply shocked at what he’d done that the only end he could see was the death of either Fronto or himself in atonement.
Well not today, my friend.
The legate raised his small shield in time to take the blow, though the power of it sent a shock along his arm and he thought it might have broken one or two of the small bones in his hand. An arc of red-painted wood and leather edging strip came away with the blow and flipped off into the distance.
Fronto recoiled, adjusting his hold on the battered shield with his stinging fingers, his sword hand whitened with the pressure of its grip. A second Gaul appeared at the side of Cavarinos and lunged at him. Fronto reached out to hack at him, but Masgava was there, a long sword lashing out and smashing into the man’s face, throwing him back from the defences.
There was no respite. Fronto had to raise his diminished shield again to stop another assault from the Arvernian noble before him. He noted, as fresh pieces of painted wood were carved from his defence, the bronze figure of Fortuna swinging beneath the man’s chin, and felt how odd it seemed that the man was clearly more possessed by Nemesis right now than by luck, while Fronto, who wore that sword-wielding Goddess, felt no anger but could do with a little good fortune.
‘Cavarinos, stop!’
There was no life in the man’s eyes as he lashed out again. Nor, it appeared, was the Arvernian putting heart or thought into his attacks. They were animalistic and mechanical. And as the noble lunged again, this time with such force that he overextended and almost lost his grip on the cart, Fronto jabbed out with his sword towards the exposed armpit. It came as no surprise when his heart overrode his brain and his arm jerked short, halting the easy-killing blow before it touched flesh. Instead, he flicked his gladius out and turned the blade away.
As Cavarinos came back from another silent, expressionless attack, Fronto caught sight of Masgava out of the corner of his eye. The big Numidian was giving him the oddest look, and Fronto chose to ignore it as he turned away another of Cavarinos’ lunges with his battered shield and kept his gladius back ready to block others.
Another lunge. And another. A sweep easily turned.
Fronto shook his head at the madness of it. The man was crazed and sooner or later he would have to kill him before the Arvernian got in a lucky blow.
From the corner of his eye, he saw his singulares commander take the arm off an attacker at the elbow and then slam out at another, knocking him back from the makeshift barricade.
‘Masgava?’
The big Numidian turned, taking advantage of the momentary lull, as Fronto blocked yet another blow.
The legate ducked back. ‘Put him down for me, if you would?’
Masgava frowned and, as Cavarinos lunged out for another attack on the legate, the huge former gladiator lashed out with his own sword, hilt first, smashing the heavy steel into the Arvernian’s head. The noble disappeared with a sigh, falling away from the barricade to be replaced by another warrior, this one exhibiting much more life and vitriol as he snarled and slammed his sword forward. Fronto felt relief flood him as he released the killer that he held locked behind his eyes and stabbed out into the man’s throat, tearing out his wind pipe and artery as he withdrew his blade in a spray of crimson that soaked the cart and the men fighting over it.
‘You’re going soft,’ grunted Masgava next to him as he turned back to take down the next of the attackers. Soft or not, he’d done the only thing he could with Cavarinos. The man might well die down there, taken by a stray blow or just trampled to death by his own people, but at least there was a chance, and Fronto had not had to skewer him. There was nothing he could do about the man’s fate right now. Perhaps when they had fought off this small attack he could be retrieved. All Fronto could do was hope that his beloved patron goddess continued to look after the man around whose neck she now hung.
Along the wall above, he could hear the centurion calling his men to greater feats of arms and marksmanship, so the fight must be going on as brutally elsewhere. Certainly the mob in the gateway seemed to have increased as the enemy realised that their compatriots had forced what appeared to be a breach.
Another Gaul appeared over the cart, hauling himself up and to Fronto’s left, Aurelius hacking out at him. Fronto heard a tell-tale thrumming noise and his keen eyes caught the missile in flight. His left arm lashed out, almost flattening Aurelius as the near-destroyed shield still in his grip caught the arrow in the wood surface. Aurelius blinked, and Fronto flashed him a grin.
‘I told you: no one else dies. Keep your eyes open.’
Down among the seemingly endless press of bodies in the gateway, Fronto caught a momentary glimpse of a mail-shirted man amid the bodies, bow still raised from the shot, his unpleasant, maniacally-grinning face lowering as he disappeared again amongst the crowd.
In defiance of Fronto’s ‘no more deaths’ order, one of the legionaries staggered back from the wall, clutching a ragged hole in his chest from which blood issued in gouts. It was only as the man fell to the ground that Fronto realised the man had not been the first. He joined three other legionary corpses in the dust. Gritting his teeth, Fronto looked back at the next attacker, slamming his blade point into the man’s face even as he brought the pitiful remains of his shield up.
Time rolled on in the small, ‘U’-shaped theatre of death as the Gallic bodies piled up and more and more of his defenders hit the ground. Without his having to send a request, one of the nearby officers had clearly seen the danger and sent two more contubernia of legionaries to bolster the gate defence. Biorix suddenly staggered away from the wall, his shield cast aside, clutching his own arm as crimson rivulets ran down his mail shirt from somewhere near his armpit. Fronto threw him a stark, questioning look but Biorix shook his head with a smile. Not critical, then, but debilitating. Without two serviceable arms and busy bleeding a man was no use on the redoubt. A capsarius appeared from nowhere and helped Biorix back from the fight to tend to his injury.
And on it went. Half an hour passed - perhaps three quarters - and Fronto took advantage of a pause to rise and peer over the makeshift barricade into the pit of seething forms, both living and dead.
‘Is it me or are there more now, despite everyone we’ve killed?’
Masgava nodded as he scythed off the jaw of a Gaul. ‘Looks that way.’
Fronto looked up at the wall, where a commotion cut across the fighting. The centurion commanding the wall defence was in close discussion with two of his men even as the others continued to fight off attackers, and Fronto felt a frisson of anticipation as he saw the officer pointing off to the southeast.
‘Hold the barricade,’ he shouted to Masgava, somewhat redundantly, as he dropped back down from the cart and turned, running across to the rampart and clambering up the bank. His heart, pounding heavily from both the fight and the climb, skipped a beat as he looked out from the wall-walk, seeing what the centurion had spotted.
Almost the entire Gallic force along the inner defences, which had issued from the oppidum and spread out to try each position, had turned in response to some unheard signal and was now leaving the circumvallation, their sights set on the Mons Rea camp. Many thousands were even now approaching the poorly-defended camp.
‘Oh shit.’
* * * * *
Molacos watched his shot thud into the officer’s shield and nocked another arrow, his sight shifting to Cavarinos of the Arverni. The man had fought like a wolf against the Roman atop the cart, but something about him disturbed Molacos, and he felt his mistrust bolstered when, rather than simply killing him, the Romans knocked him out. Drawing back the string, he marked the heap on the ground that was the Arvernian noble. Perhaps a waste of an arrow, but the man simply did not appear trustworthy. With a held breath, he let the missile fly, barking his annoyance as some unidentifiable warrior in the press barged into him, knocking
him aside. The mob had closed up and he’d lost sight of Cavarinos, unsure whether his arrow had struck true or not.
In irritation, he ripped his knife from his side and hamstrung the man who’d knocked him, dropping back through the press and leaving the screaming warrior floundering, flopping on his useless leg.
As he moved, he sheathed his dripping knife and fastened his arrow case. Despite the mass of men flowing this way from Vercingetorix’s army, he had a distinct feeling that this position was going to become a charnel pit soon and there was no guarantee which side would fill it most before the fight was won or lost. This was a place for a mindless killer, not for a huntsman. A place for brawn, not skill.
Ducking between slavering warriors, Molacos retreated from the fray until he reached the broken gate, where the mass still filled the space, though not quite so tightly-packed. With profound regret, he let his precious bow drop away to the floor and unfastened his quiver, dropping it among the mess.
Taking a steadying breath, he ripped a green scarf from his belt pouch and tied it around his neck above the mail shirt he had acquired during his days trapped in the oppidum. Hoping none of his kin would understand what he was trying, he whipped his bloody knife from his side again, grasped the end of the cart that butted up against the gate edge and sought the defenders behind it through gaps and nooks in the barricade. His eyes caught the russet of a Roman tunic and his hand disappeared into the hole, gouging with the knife. A moment later, he withdrew it and the Roman had gone. Another check and another tunic. Another lunge through a hole and another victim. And in heartbeats, the very end of the barricade was clear. With a deep breath, he pushed at the cart until it moved a few hand-widths. Another shove and it opened a little further. The Roman officer commanding the redoubt had clearly spotted something amiss and was shouting for his men to close the gap.
With a brief prayer to Ogmios in his guise as lord of words rather than master of the dead, he slipped through the gap, opening his mouth to shout in his best Latin, his accent a good southern Cadurci, carrying the same inflection as the Romanised men of Narbo.
The Great Revolt Page 53
