“Why not?”
“Because of you, Caesar,” said Donnotaurus, surprised at the question. “After you sent the Helvetii back to their own lands, the Allobroges rested more securely. They also took uncontestable possession of the lands around Genava. They know which side is going to win.”
*
Caesar found Narbo in a panic, and quelled it by going to work. He raised the local militia, sent commissioners into the lands of the Volcae Tectosages around Tolosa to do the same, and showed the duumviri who administered the city whereabouts they needed to strengthen their fortifications. Inside the forbidding stronghold of Carcasso most of the western end of the Province’s armor and armaments were stored; as they came out for distribution people began to feel more confident, more settled.
Caesar had already sent to Tarraco in Nearer Spain, where Pompey’s legate Lucius Afranius had his headquarters, and to Corduba in Further Spain, where Pompey’s other legate, Marcus Petreius, governed. Answers from both men were waiting in Narbo; they were levying extra troops and intended to draw themselves up on the frontier, prepared to move to rescue Narbo and Tolosa if the need arose. No one understood better than these hoary viri militares that Rome—and Pompey—wanted no independent Gallic state on the other side of the Pyrenees.
Lucius Caesar arrived with Decimus Brutus and the Fifteenth on the day they were expected; Caesar sent his thanks to the legion and put Lucius Caesar to work at once.
“The Narbonese have steadied down remarkably since they heard I’m leaving them a consular of your standing right here to govern the Province,” he said, lifting one eyebrow. “Just make sure the Volcae Tectosages, the Volcae Arecomici and the Helvii get plenty of equipment. Afranius and Petreius will be waiting on the other side of the border in case they’re needed, so I’m not very worried about Narbo. It’s incursions among the outlying tribes I fear.” Caesar turned to Decimus Brutus. “Decimus, is the Fifteenth fully prepared for a winter campaign?”
“Yes.”
“What about their feet?”
“I’ve had every soldier empty his kit on the ground for an inspection just to make sure. The centurions will report to me tomorrow at dawn.”
“They weren’t very good centurions last year. Can you trust their judgement? Ought you perhaps to inspect in person?”
“I think that would be a mistake,” said Decimus Brutus evenly; he was not in the least afraid of Caesar and always spoke frankly. “I trust them because if I can’t trust them, Caesar, then the Fifteenth won’t do well anyway. They know what to look for.”
“You’re quite right. I’ve requisitioned all the rabbit, weasel and ferret pelts I could find, because socks won’t be enough protection for the men’s feet where I intend to take them. I’ve also got every woman in Narbo and for miles around weaving or knitting scarves for their heads and mitts for their hands.”
“Ye Gods!” exclaimed Lucius Caesar. “Where are you planning to take them, to the Hyperboreans?”
“Later,” said Caesar, departing.
“I know,” Lucius Caesar sighed, looking ruefully at Hirtius. “I’ll be told when I need to know.”
“Spies,” said Hirtius briefly, following Caesar out.
“Spies? In Narbo?”
Decimus Brutus grinned. “Probably not, but why take chances? There’s always some native boiling inside with resentment.”
“How long will he be here?”
“He’ll be gone by the beginning of April.”
“Six days from now.”
“The only things which might hold him up are scarves and mitts, but I doubt that. He probably wasn’t exaggerating when he said he’d put every woman to making them.”
“Will he tell the soldiers where he’s taking them?”
“No. He’ll simply expect them to follow him. Nothing beats shouting for disseminating news, a fact of which the Gauls are well aware. To shout his intentions at an assembly of the troops would inform all of Narbo. The next thing, Lucterius would know.”
Though Caesar did enlighten his legates over dinner on the last day of March—but only after the servants had been dismissed and guards posted in the corridors.
“I’m not usually so secretive,” he said, reclining at his ease, “but in one respect Vercingetorix is right. Gallia Comata does have the numbers to eject us. Only, however, if Vercingetorix is given time and opportunity to get all the men he plans to marshal for his summer campaign into the field right now. At the moment he has somewhere between eighty and a hundred thousand. But when he calls a general muster in Sextilis, that number will swell to a quarter-million, perhaps many more. What I have to do is beat him by Sextilis.”
Lucius Caesar drew in his breath on a hiss, but said nothing.
“He hasn’t planned on any Roman activity in the field before Sextilis and high spring, which is why he hasn’t got more men with him right now. All he intends to do during the winter is subdue the recalcitrant tribes. Thinking me safely on the wrong side of the Alps, and sure that when I come he can prevent my joining up with my troops. Sure that he’ll have time to return to Carnutum and supervise a general muster.
“Therefore,” Caesar went on, “Vercingetorix must be kept far too busy to call that general muster early. And I have to reach my legions within the next sixteen days. But if 1 go up the Rhodanus valley through the Province, Vercingetorix will know I’m coming before I’m halfway to Valentia. Still well down inside the Province. He’ll move to block me at Vienne or Lugdunum. I’m only one man with one legion. I won’t get through.”
“But there’s no other way you can go!” said Hirtius blankly.
“There is another way. When I leave Narbo at dawn tomorrow morning, Hirtius, I’ll be marching due north. My scouts tell me that Lucterius’s army is further west, besieging the Ruteni at their oppidum of Carantomagus. Faced with a war of this magnitude, the Gabali have decided—quite prudently, really, given their proximity to the Arverni—to join Vercingetorix. They’re very busy arming and training for the mission they’ve been allocated in the spring—to subdue the Helvii.”
Caesar paused for maximum dramatic effect before coining to his denouement. “I intend to pass east of Lucterius and the Gabali oppida and enter the Cebenna massif.”
Even Decimus Brutus was shocked. “In winter?”
“In winter. It’s possible. I traversed the high Alps at a height of well over ten thousand feet when I hurried from Rome to Genava to stop the Helvetii. They said I couldn’t cross through the high pass, but I did. Admittedly it was still autumn by the seasons, but at ten thousand feet winter is always there. An army couldn’t have managed—the path was a goat track all the way down to Octodurum—but the Cebenna isn’t as formidable as that, Decimus. The passes lie at no more than three or four thousand feet, and there are roads of a sort. The Gauls travel from one side of the massif to the other in force, so why shouldn’t I?”
“I can’t think of one reason why,” said Decimus hollowly.
“The snow will lie deep, but we can dig our way through it.”
“So you intend to enter the Cebenna at the sources of the Oltis and come down on the western bank of the Rhodanus somewhere near Alba Helviorum?” asked Lucius Caesar, who had been talking to Gauls at every opportunity and learning as much as he could ever since Caesar had given him command of the Province.
“No, I thought I’d stay in the Cebenna for somewhat longer than that,” Caesar answered. “If we can manage, I’d rather come out of the massif as close as possible to Vienne. The longer we stay out of sight, the less time I afford Vercingetorix. I want him to come after me before he has a chance to call his muster. Vienne I must visit because I hope to pick up an experimental force of four hundred German horse troopers there. If Arminius of the Ubii kept his word, they should be there now getting used to handling their new horses.”
“So you’re giving yourself sixteen days to negotiate the Cebenna in winter and join up with your legions at Agedincum,” said Lucius Caesar. �
��That’s a distance of well over four hundred miles, a lot of it through deep snow.”
“Yes. I intend to average twenty-five miles a day. We’ll do many more than that between Narbo and the Oltis, and after we come down to Vienne. If we slow to fifteen miles a day across the worst of the Cebenna, we’ll still be in Agedincum on time.” He looked at his cousin very seriously. “I don’t want Vercingetorix to know exactly where I am at any given moment, Lucius. Which means I have to move faster than he can credit. I want him utterly bewildered. Where is Caesar? Has anyone heard where Caesar is? And every time he’s told, he’ll discover that was four or five days earlier, so whereabouts am I now?”
“He’s an amateur,” said Decimus Brutus thoughtfully.
“Exactly. Large ambition, small experience. I don’t say he lacks courage or even military ability. But the advantages lie with me, don’t they? I have the mind, the experience—and more ambition than he’ll ever know. But if I’m to beat him, I have to keep forcing him to make the wrong decisions.”
“I hope you didn’t neglect to pack your sagum,” said Lucius, grinning.
“I wouldn’t part from my sagum for all the world! It once belonged to Gaius Marius. When Burgundus came into my service he brought it with him. It’s ninety years old, it stinks to the sky no matter how many herbs I pack it in, and I hate every day I have to spend wearing it. But I tell you, they don’t make a sagum like that anymore, even in Liguria. The rain just rolls off it, the wind can’t get through it, and the scarlet is as bright as the day it came off someone’s loom.”
*
The Fifteenth left Narbo without any wagons at all. The centurions’ tents were deposited upon mules; so were the extra pila, the tools and heavier digging equipment. Everything else, including Caesar’s treasured artillery, started out the long way up the Rhodanus valley, its arrival time anybody’s guess. Each legionary member of an octet carried five days’ supply of food, with another eleven loaded onto a second octet mule together with the heavier gear out of his pack. The lighter by fifteen pounds, each soldier marched with a will.
And Caesar’s fabled luck went with him, for the great snake coiled its way north in the midst of a thin fog which reduced visibility to a minimum and allowed it passage undetected by Lucterius or the Gabali. It entered the Cebenna in light snow and began immediately to climb; Caesar intended to cross the watershed to the east side as soon as possible, then remain within the higher crags as long as he could find reasonable ground to traverse.
The snow quickly deepened to six feet, but had stopped falling. Each century among the sixty was rotated in turn to the front of the column to take its share of digging a clear path; for safety’s sake the men moved four abreast instead of eight, and the mules were led in single file over what seemed the most solid terrain. There were accidents from time to time when the path collapsed into a crevice or the mountain fell away taking a man with it, but losses were rare and rescues many. So much snow rendered tumbles easier on the bones.
Caesar remained on foot for the duration of the march and took his turn with a shovel in the digging party, mainly to cheer the men on and enlighten them as to where they were going and what they were likely to find when they got there. His presence was always a comfort; most of them had turned eighteen, but that was not the full measure of a man inside his mind or his body, and they still suffered from homesickness. Caesar wasn’t a father to them, because none of them could imagine in their wildest fantasies having a father like Caesar, but he emanated a colossal confidence in himself which wasn’t tarnished by a consciousness of his own importance, and with him they felt safe.
“You’re turning into a moderately good legion,” he would inform them, grinning hugely. “I doubt the Tenth could go very much faster than you are, though they’ve been in the field for nine years. You’re only babies! There’s hope for you yet, boys!”
His luck held. No blizzards descended to slow them down, there were no chance encounters with stray Gauls, and always a thin mist hovered to conceal them from distant sight. At first Caesar had worried about the Arverni, whose lands were on the western side of the watershed, but as time went on and no Arverni appeared, even a lost one, he began to believe that he would get to Vienne without a single warning flying to Vercingetorix.
A very thankful Fifteenth came down out of the Cebenna and moved into camp at Vienne. Three men had died, several more had sustained broken limbs, four mules had panicked and plunged over a precipice, but not one soldier had suffered frostbite and all were capable of marching onward to Agedincum.
The four hundred Ubii Germans were in residence, had been for close to four months. So delighted with their Remi horses that, said their leader in broken Latin, they would do anything Caesar asked of them.
“Decimus, take the Fifteenth to Agedincum without me,” said Caesar, dressed for riding, Gaius Marius’s smelly old sagum over his head. “I’m taking the Germans with me to the Icauna. I’ll pick up Fabius and his two legions, and meet you in Agedincum.”
*
Ninety thousand Gauls had set out from Carnutum to enter the lands of the Bituriges, Vercingetorix at their head. Progress was slow, for Vercingetorix knew that he didn’t have the skill at siegecraft to attempt an investment of Avaricum, the main stronghold of the Bituriges; he had therefore sought to terrify the people by plundering and burning their farms and villages. It had the desired effect, but not until some time after the Aeduan army had returned home without crossing the Liger. The bitter truth took days to sink in, that there would be no relief and no help from the Romans sitting safe and sound behind their formidable fortifications. At the middle of April the Bituriges sent to Vercingetorix and submitted.
“We are your men to the death,” said Biturgo, the King. “We will do whatever you want. When we tried to honor our treaties with the Romans, they failed to keep their end of the bargain. They did not protect us. Therefore we are your men.”
Very satisfactory! Vercingetorix led his army past Avaricum and advanced on Gorgobina, the old Arvernian oppidum which now belonged to the Helvetian interlopers, the Boii.
Litaviccus found him before he reached Gorgobina, and paused atop a hill to marvel. So many men! How could the Romans win? One never really had much idea of the size of a Roman army because it marched in column, winding into the farthest distance at about a mile to the legion with the baggage train and the artillery in the middle. Somehow less frightening and certainly less awesome than the sight which spread itself out before Litaviccus’s dazzled eyes: one hundred thousand mail-shirted, heavily armed Gallic warriors advancing on a front five miles long and a hundred men deep, with the rudimentary baggage train wandering behind. Perhaps twenty thousand of them were horsed, ten thousand bracketing either end of the front. And out in the open ahead of it rode the leaders, Vercingetorix on his own, the others in a group behind him: Drappes and Cavarinus of the Senones, Gutruatus of the Carnutes, Daderax of the Mandubii. And Cathbad, easy to recognize in his snow-white robe atop his snow-white horse. This was a religious war, then. The Druids were proclaiming their commitment to a united Gaul.
Vercingetorix rode a pretty fawn horse blanketed in Arvernian checks, his light trousers bound around with dark green thongs, his shawl draped across his mail shirt. Though he had insisted that his men be helmeted, he wore none himself, and his person glittered with sapphire-studded gold. Every inch a king.
Biturgo was not among the privileged just behind Vercingetorix, but he was in front of his people, and not far away. When Litaviccus approached, he drew his sword and charged.
“Traitor!” he howled. “Roman cur!”
Vercingetorix and Drappes rode between him and Litaviccus.
“Sheath your sword, Biturgo,” said Vercingetorix.
“He’s Aedui! Traitors! The Aedui betrayed us!”
“The Aedui did not betray you, Biturgo. The Romans did. Why do you think the Aedui went home? Not because they wanted to. It was an order from Trebonius.”
&nbs
p; Drappes persuaded Biturgo to draw off and accompanied him, still muttering, back to the ranks of his people. Litaviccus reined his horse in beside Vercingetorix. Cathbad joined them.
“News,” said Litaviccus.
“Well?”
“Caesar appeared out of nowhere in Vienne with the Fifteenth Legion and left again immediately, heading north.”
The fawn horse faltered; Vercingetorix turned startled eyes on Litaviccus. “In Vienne? And gone already? Why was I not told that he was coming? You said you had spies from Arausio to the gates of Matisco!”
“We did,” said Litaviccus helplessly. “He didn’t come that way, Vercingetorix, I swear it!”
“There is no other way.”
“In Vienne they’re saying that he and the Fifteenth marched through the Cebenna, that Caesar entered up the Oltis, crossed the watershed somewhere, and didn’t come out until he was almost level with Vienne.”
“In winter,” said Cathbad slowly.
“He means to join Trebonius and his legions,” said Litaviccus.
“Where is he now?”
“I have no idea, Vercingetorix, and that is the truth. The Fifteenth is marching straight for Agedincum under the command of Decimus Brutus, but Caesar isn’t with him. That’s why I’ve come. Do you want the Aedui to attack the Fifteenth? We can just manage to do it before they leave our territory.”
Vercingetorix seemed subtly to have diminished a little; the first of his strategies was going to fail, and he knew it. Then he drew his shoulders back, took a deep breath. “No, Litaviccus. You must convince Caesar that you’re on his side.” He looked up at the surly winter sky. “Where will he go? Where is he now?”
“We should march for Agedincum,” said Cathbad.
“When we’re within a stone’s throw of Gorgobina? Agedincum is over a hundred miles north of here, Cathbad, and I have too many men to cover that distance in less than eight or ten days. Caesar can move much faster because his army is used to working together. His men wear a drill field out long before they see an enemy face. Our advantage is in our numbers, not in our speed. No, we will go to Gorgobina as intended. We’ll make Caesar come to us.” He drew a deep breath. “By Dagda I swear that I will beat him! But not on a field of his choosing. We will not let him find an Aquae Sextiae.”
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