Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate

by S. J. A. Turney

  I trust that all is well with you and your kin. Pass on my regards to those we hold dear and I pray that I will see you all when the season is over. With my newfound rank I see no reason to winter here with the men when I can return to Rome.

  Another pause as Priscus wondered what else to say. There was only a little vellum left. With a shake of his head, he gave up and signed it, rolling it into a scroll and dropping it into a standard military tube-case. With clenched teeth, he dripped wax on the join to seal the case and then pressed his signet - the heron and olive branch of the Vinicii - into it.

  "Courier?"

  The young soldier who had been hovering just outside the door of the tent for the past half hour at his request pushed aside the flap and came to attention inside, saluting.

  "Sir?"

  "Take this, visit the chief clerk at Caesar's praetorium and check if there are any other messages awaiting the trip to Rome. If there are, take those too and head down to the ships, find the one set aside for courier duty and accompany the messages until they reach Gesoriacum and the supply chain. Then check for incoming messages and bring any you find back here. When you return, wait at this camp. The army may not have returned from our march, but there will be a resident garrison. You got all that?"

  The messenger nodded. "Yes, sir. Anything else, legate?"

  Priscus shook his head, motioning the lad to leave, and stood, reaching for his embossed helm with the ridiculous horsehair plume, and grabbing his sword and baldric before turning to leave the tent. This bloody Cassivellaunus had damn well better either capitulate quickly or run until he reached the edge of the Styx. Priscus was in no mood to mess around.

  * * * * *

  Tribune Fabius cleared his throat. "It's no good, sir. There's nothing usable here."

  Priscus sagged, pinching the bridge of his nose irritably. "Nothing?"

  "Not a thing, sir. All the animals that couldn't be taken away have been charred beyond edibility. The crops have been harvested early or burned where that's not possible. All the veg have gone. I swear the bastards have even picked all the fruit and berries from the trees!"

  Priscus closed his eyes. Caesar was going to rant again. A week now the army had been on the move inland, crossing rivers and traversing forests, always heading west, forever stretching their communication and supply lines, and every mile west had been a chore.

  The first two days had been perfectly acceptable, the army moving in good spirits, eating well from the supplies they had brought, and with no sign of the Britons. Day three had changed all that. The natives had appeared among the trees of the seemingly endless forest the army crossed. While the legions had hurriedly responded by drawing close and preparing for action, it appeared that the Britons were content to keep pace and watch the invaders from a distance - a habit that quickly began to unsettle the Romans.

  By that first night, it became evident that their apparent non-involvement was an untruth. The army settled in to make camp, a heavy guard out against local incursions, and waited for the standard small rear-guard of men from the Ninth and Eleventh to arrive with the supply wagons.

  They never came.

  The first scout party sent out to find them also disappeared without trace.

  When four cohorts of the Seventh were sent to discern what had happened, they discovered the supply train ransacked and the entire rear-guard still in position, minus their heads.

  On the fourth day the army had stayed put while a strong force returned to the beachhead to collect more supplies, and then on the fifth they marched on, only to encounter a grisly tableau in a forest clearing involving an altar to a misshapen native deity surrounded by in excess of two hundred severed Roman heads. While a number of the rankers began to question the wisdom of continuing on into this barbaric land, the grim spectacle simply hardened Caesar's resolve, and the army marched on, crossing a second large waterway that morning that the locals called the 'Medu Wey'.

  That night, the new rear-guard and replacement supply wagons failed to arrive and Caesar snapped one of Priscus' wax tablets in half in his anger.

  It quickly became painfully clear that, unless the legions were to leave a continual line of men all the way back to the beach, they were unlikely to maintain a working supply train with these nightmarish hidden ambushes. Caesar decided on the sixth day that the force would have to become fully self-sufficient, cutting the standard daily rations and living from foraging and the commandeering of local resources.

  It was an easily workable plan. It had seen Roman forces through hostile lands over several centuries.

  It was also a complete failure in Britannia.

  This Cassivellaunus, who - the questioned captives had confirmed - had managed to bring half a dozen tribes together in the single cause of resisting the Roman advance, was quite clearly dangerously insane, and possibly brilliant.

  After the assault on the hill fort, the man had realised that this Roman force was unstoppable in the field, even with his novel tactics. And so he had combined with all the other tribes in a unified network of resistance, refusing to meet the Romans in battle, but continually severing the lines of supply and communication and effectively blinding the army. It was no longer viable to send out scouts and patrols in numbers of less than a thousand and comprised of both infantry and cavalry. The smaller groups had been all too easily picked off and then left, dismembered, in the path of the army.

  And now that Caesar had decided the army could live off the land for the length of one short campaign, Cassivellaunus seemed determined, willing even to kill his own people if it stopped the Roman advance. Every farm they reached had been burned, slighted and raped of anything useful. Every orchard was picked, every field harvested. Even the woods seemed suspiciously empty of deer and game birds. Could the Britons really be overhunting their own forests to excess just to stop the Romans eating?

  And it was working. The army was hungry and starting to slip into despondency. Gone were the high spirits gained from the hill-fort's conquest. Now, every man trudged slowly and miserably, trying to ignore the grumble in his stomach and living off only the dry rations he carried in his kit.

  Then, last night, a shock arrow storm had swept down from a hill nearby, killing dozens of men and wounding many more. The whole thing was over before even a buccina call could go out, and by the time soldiers had reached the ridge, the archers were long gone. Since then, no man had left his shield out of reach.

  And now here were the Tenth, standing in a deserted farm, looking at a field of inedible stubble and smelling the charred remains of the too-old, too-young, and lame animals that formed a carbonised smoking pile near the main hut.

  Another failed foraging mission. Four hours of hunting the surrounding lands with almost two thousand men and what had they to show for it: a stray cow that had somehow escaped the mass cull, two unfortunate ducks and a hare. Oh, and a basket of mixed nuts, berries and fruit. When divided between four legions'-worth of men, it wasn't going to supplement the dry rations a great deal.

  "What are your orders, legate?" Fabius asked quietly.

  "What else? We return to camp. I face Caesar and everyone else makes a piss-poor stew out of the half dozen scrawny animals we found. I hope someone likes to eat arse meat, as that constitutes about ten per cent of what we've recovered. Brains, bums and balls."

  "Sounds like the Seventh… apart from the brains" smiled Carbo from where he stood nearby, who then snapped to attention and straightened his face as the two officers turned to glare at him.

  "When I find this poor excuse for a lame donkey's pizzle Cassivellaunus, I'm going to make a stew out of him." Priscus growled.

  His hand fell to the water-skin at his side - of which the contents only comprised three parts in four of water - and he unstoppered it, lifting it to his lips and cursing the fact that every day saw him turning more and more into Fronto. That thought, in turn, brought him back to the letter he had despatched, which would now be somewhere in Northe
rn Gaul, winging its way to Rome where it would make Fronto thoroughly angry.

  "What's that?"

  Priscus looked in the direction of Carbo's gesture. Flashes of bronze glinted in the sunlight among the trees at the far end of the farmer's field. There, a century of the Tenth were busy trying to hack the remaining few stalks of some crop from the ground.

  "Ambush. Surely not enough to challenge four damn cohorts?"

  And yet as the legate watched, arrows, sling stones and spears began to arc from the tree line and into the century of working legionaries. Fortunate were they that recent experiences had taught them to be ready at all times and to never underestimate the enemy. In a heartbeat every man had risen from his work, sword already in hand and shield unslung from his back. Nobody even bothered putting the leather cover on their shields these days.

  Eight men lay dead or writhing from the onslaught, but seventy had survived, largely through their preparedness.

  And then Priscus witnessed the latest in a long line of disasters engineered by the bastard Cassivellaunus.

  The century - under Centurion Allidius if he wasn't mistaken - quickly formed up into a testudo exactly as Priscus would have ordered, had he been close enough, but then marched at double time to the treeline. That, Priscus would not have done. With the trouble and trickery of the Britons this past week, it paid to retreat in good order and re-form with the rest of the army.

  Allidius, however, seemed dead-set on taking the fight to the natives who had pinioned a contubernium of his men. The sour-faced Sicilian had always pushed his men a little too far. Five years ago, Priscus remembered having been forced to rein the man in during the Helvetii battle as he had been about to break formation and push forward. And now the man had done it for the last time.

  Priscus turned to the cornicen by his side, opening his mouth to demand the recall be blown, but his gaze had not left the century of men out by the woods and he realised all too quickly what little difference the call would make.

  The men of Allidius' century charged on the men hidden among the boles of trees, bellowing their love of Rome and their hatred of the Britons, only to run directly into the covered trench that had been prepared lovingly for them and carefully lined with sharpened branches. Not a man of the unit escaped the trap, the second and third lines stumbling into the deep, wide pit on the heels of the first and plunging to their agonising death.

  Even across two fields by the farmhouse, Priscus could hear the pained screaming. Already the natives had left the woodland and were plunging long spears down into the pit, killing the few active and dangerous survivors, but not bothering with those who would quickly die of their wounds.

  "Sir?" the cornicen prompted.

  "What?" snapped Priscus.

  "Sound the rally? The charge?"

  "No point. Poor bastards are already dead. Dead and stupid" he added bitterly. "By the time we muster and cross two fields those native arseholes will be half a mile away in the woods and lost to us. Just sound the muster and when the cohorts are in position we'll go and collect the bodies and head back to the army."

  As Priscus stormed angrily away towards his horse and the cornicen blew the call, Furius strode across to his friend. "If we don't find and skewer this Cassivellaunus soon there'll be no one left to cross back to Gaul in our rebuilt fleet."

  Fabius nodded. The list of the dead was lengthening, despite the low numbers falling to each individual incident. And with each fresh trouble and resultant burials, the army lost more heart.

  Britannia truly was a cursed land.

  * * * * *

  "Priscus? Cicero? What do you see?"

  The general sat atop his white steed on the rise above the river, hand across his brow, shading his eyes from the glare, calm and collected as though the entire campaign and journey had gone entirely according to his design.

  Sitting on their own horses to one side of him, Priscus and Cicero shared a resigned, weary look. Neither of them was rolling around with enthusiasm at this point. They glanced across the wide Tamesis river at the north bank.

  "Enemy horse and chariot wheeling around at the back" Cicero shrugged. "Most of the warriors on foot in the centre, close to the bank."

  "Unseen, but almost certainly archers, slingers and spearmen hidden in the three or four small copses we can see over there" Priscus added.

  "Your assessment?"

  Cicero took a deep breath. Clearly, Caesar would not be happy to hear anything negative at this point in the push. "It will be an extremely hard fight. The men will have to slog across the river very slowly. This may officially be a ford, but it's still deep enough to drown a short man. All the way across they'll be in danger of enemy missiles with just their heads poking out. The other bank's as good as a fort's ramparts - a natural defence. Those infantry will cut to pieces anyone who reaches the far bank. Even if enough men make it in force to actually do any damage, there's not enough space for them to form up. In the vernacular, as Front… as the centurions would say: 'we're buggered seven ways from market day'."

  Caesar's gaze hardened as he turned it on Priscus, who was nodding seriously. "They've set sharpened stakes along the far bank and - if you look carefully enough general - under the water too across the latter half of the ford. They're a death trap that'll need weeding out as we advance, which will risk ever higher casualties."

  Caesar frowned. "You think it impossible?"

  Cicero shrugged. "Nothing is impossible, general, other than making a vestal smile. But it is impractical. Can we not keep heading upriver and find a better crossing?"

  Priscus shook his head. "Nearest crossing upriver is many days round, according to our information. And if they've got this place sewn up like a vestal's undergarments, I imagine they've some pretty unpleasant surprises for us there too. The way is here, but it's difficult."

  His mind roved back over the past four days since the Tenth had lost a century of men in a farm. The endless cycle of loss and ambush had far from declined as they closed on the Briton's home ground, but rather had increased in intensity with each day. The one time the legions did seem to achieve the upper hand, routing a small enemy ambush of horse and chariot, they had pursued them, only to find half of Britannia waiting on the far side of the hill. Few men of that force had returned to tell the tale and the enemy had vanished by the time a punitive force hurried out to deal with them.

  Worse still, a small force of particularly determined Britons had made a suicidally dangerous attack last night as the army made camp, aiming for the gap between two legions where a group of officers stood discussing the defences. Their attack was so small, swift and carefully aimed that they managed to cut down two centurions and Durus - a tribune of the Ninth - before any kind of force formed to stop them. Of perhaps a score of insurgents, more than a dozen managed to continue on out of the half-built camp and escape into the woods unharmed.

  And now this.

  Unhappily, Priscus peered into the water and then lifted his eyes to the massed enemy at the far side. No matter what they did, they would lose an unhealthy number of men today. Even putting aside the difficulties of the terrain, this was the largest force they had yet seen - though almost certainly not the full force of men that Cassivellaunus could call on - and it attested to the continually growing sureness and confidence of the natives that they felt they could face the invaders en masse now. Conversely, the legions slumped unhappily, following a week and a half of watching Charon dog their footsteps and now staring yet more death in the face. The morale level of the army would be very influential in any Roman assault.

  They would win - there was little doubt in Priscus' mind about that. Rome had the advantage of numbers still, and the legions were disciplined enough that no matter how bad things became, they would do their duty even as they grumbled about it. But the losses would be appalling and would put any further campaigning in doubt.

  "Then we will frighten them into submission" Caesar announced boldly.

&n
bsp; "I beg your pardon?" Cicero frowned. Priscus turned his own surprised look on the general, who straightened and gestured at the ford - some ten feet wide.

  "The ford is a killing zone, as you say" the general stated. "It is impeded with sharpened stakes, in much the same fashion as the whole of the far bank. It is deep and the legionaries will struggle across in constant danger from the enemy. At the far side they must deal with the enemy pushing back at them, and then they will have no room to form up. That is the essence of your observations, gentlemen?"

  "It is, Caesar."

  "Then we must do the unexpected. The unthinkable. We will commit to a charge with cavalry support."

  "Caesar?" both men said at once.

  "There is an interesting thing I have noted about fords. The water level is shallower there than the normal river bed, as you will note, but in addition upstream of any ford, the close stretch of river bed also becomes shallower over time. I know not whether this ford is a natural underwater causeway or a native construction of timber or stone, yet it matters not. Look upstream and you will see, if you look closely, that decades or even centuries of silting have built up the river bed against the ford to almost the same depth. That section is crossable almost as easily as the ford."

  "Almost, Caesar, but it's still a little too deep. Even on the ford, men will only have their head above water. They'll drown there."

  "The cavalry will not."

  Priscus blinked. The thought hadn't occurred to him. With perhaps ten feet extra width, devoid of sharpened stakes, the cavalry would have a reasonable crossing alongside the infantry.

  "They would still have to negotiate the river-bank stakes at the far side and the waiting Britons" Cicero countered, though his voice had taken on an almost eager note even as it voiced his concern.