Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate

by S. J. A. Turney

  "Lovely."

  "There's no denying we're in trouble, sir."

  "What's the damage? The butcher's bill?"

  Felix sighed as he shrugged. "Last count we were down to a little over seven hundred men, including the walking wounded."

  "Jove!" Cicero whistled through his teeth. "A tenth, maybe. Six thousand or so dead in so little time."

  "If it's any consolation, sir, we've taken at least double that of them. Maybe even treble."

  "It's not. They get reinforcements every morning from yet another stinking tribe who think they can do it this time. I don't think there's any less men out there this morning than there were when they arrived. More, possibly. I suspect I know it, but give me your honest professional opinion."

  "We're buggered six ways from Market day. Royally shafted with the wide end of a pilum. Made to…"

  "I get the metaphors, thank you, Felix. What's next then?"

  "Pullo's just reorganising the men on the walls and looking at a possible last-defence redoubt we could make from the ruined granaries for when the walls finally fall. At least we can hold that long enough to bury the eagle and keep it out of their grubby hands. I've sent Vorenus out to collect every used missile they can find. I suspect that this morning will be the last one. 'King' Ambiorix is about ready to wipe us out now."

  Cicero nodded. "Then we'll have to make him work for every foot of ground they take, eh?"

  "Definitely, sir." Felix pursed his lips. "What annoys me, sir, is not knowing whether they caught and skinned your messenger or whether the miserable little bugger just offed and joined them out there."

  Cicero nodded glumly. It had been too many days now for hope to hold out.

  The pair looked out in silence over enemy forces that were already shuffling into new positions, mobilizing ready for a new day's action. Neither saw centurion Vorenus until he was almost next to them.

  "You'll never believe this, sir."

  The two officers turned to look at the weary centurion, who was covered with blood and grime and gripping spears in both hands, half a dozen short shafted ones in his left and a long, Gallic cavalry affair in his right.

  "Well done, man. That'll keep us going for a moment longer, eh?"

  "No, sir: this."

  Vorenus stacked his javelins against the parapet and pointed at the tip of the long spear.

  "What is that?"

  "Parchment, sir. Good quality parchment. And I reckon it's Roman, sir. Never seen these hairy arse-scratchers writing anything down, leastwise."

  Frowning, Cicero reached up and undid the strange item from the spear, lowering it and unfolding it in view of the others.

  The three men stared.

  Felix barked out a sharp laugh. "That has to be your man, sir."

  "Does it mean what I think it means?"

  "Can't see anything else it could mean. Men with crests and square shields on their way? I wonder how long this bloody thing's been stuck in the wall?"

  Vorenus shrugged. "A few days, sir. One of the lads remembers a commotion a few nights ago when some mad Gaulish bastard ran out front and threw a spear at him. The attacker was put down by his own men - only reason he remembers it so well. Could be that spear."

  "Whoever threw it and whenever it came" Cicero grinned, "I think we can be certain of its meaning." He pointed with a trembling finger above the seething mass of Gauls. The other two men followed his gesture. A dust cloud the size of a small city rose above the distant horizon. "Only one thing raises a haze like that: a multi-legion army on the march."

  He turned to Vorenus.

  "Go find Pullo. Tell him to forget the last-ditch redoubt and concentrate on keeping those walls in our hands. Caesar's about five miles out!"

  * * * * *

  Caesar reined in his white horse, his red cloak showing dark spots as the first spit of rain fell upon them. Around him Priscus, Crassus, Brutus and Fabius hauled on their own reins and took in the wide valley ahead.

  Some four miles distant the camp of Cicero, well placed with good open ground all around, appeared to be almost submerged in a sea of Gauls. Their initial question - and the reason the five senior officers had ridden out ahead of the column - was answered even as they watched. The sea was moving, individual waves of men lapping around the sides of the camp as they withdrew west like a tide retreating down a beach.

  The siege was being abandoned as the Gauls turned to face a new perceived threat.

  "They're coming, then" Brutus noted with an uncertain mix of satisfaction and nerves.

  "It would appear so" Caesar replied. "We do not have a great deal of time to prepare. What would you say of the numbers?"

  Priscus shaded his eyes, spots of rain pinging from his hand. "Gotta be fifty or sixty thousand I'd say. A dozen tribes at least. No wonder Cicero was in trouble."

  "And we have?"

  "In terms of fully-ready fighting men: a little over fourteen thousand, including the few auxiliary missile units and the cavalry."

  "Four to one then" Caesar mused and tapped his chin with his finger. "And I do not believe we can rely on any support from Cicero. After this length of time his men will be low on equipment, exhausted and seriously reduced. It's down to us, gentlemen. We need to bring those odds more into our favour,"

  "We could hit them and run a few times" Fabius hazarded. "Keep drawing them west. Trebonius and his Ninth cannot be more than three days away. That would help."

  Caesar shook his head. "We cannot rely on the Ninth being here. Remember what happened with Labienus, after all. And we put ourselves at too much of a disadvantage if we keep moving. We need to consolidate." His brow wrinkled. "Half a mile back, where we left the column, there was a good deep valley with a stream at the bottom. You remember?"

  Crassus nodded. "It was something of an obstacle."

  "And would be for them. They know where we are now and they're coming. We return to the army, set up camp atop the far side of that valley and then we have the slope to our advantage and the river at the bottom to slow them. There were a few gullies and small woods that we might be able to use as well."

  Priscus pursed his lips. "Do you think they'll really try and attack us up that slope? It would be tactically moronic!"

  "I suspect they will for two reasons" Caesar smiled. "Firstly, we are a much smaller army and if we play the panic gambit they may try to take advantage of it." He rose in his saddle. "And secondly, they will know that I am with this force. If they are intent on driving Rome from Gaul they will not miss an opportunity to put me down personally. To that end I need to make myself as open, obvious and tempting as possible. I will take personal command of the cavalry."

  He peered at the mass moving slowly west from the fort a few miles away. "They are disorganised. That will buy us extra time. Their leaders will want to pull them in together first before they consider an attack. Crassus and Fabius: look to your legions. Brutus: take command of all the auxiliary missile units. Priscus, you have camp Prefect duties again."

  Priscus rolled his eyes. Sometimes it seemed his military career was up and down like an Aegyptian's underwear.

  "I need you to work some magic for me, Priscus. I want the fort to be feeble and easy to dismantle from the inside but to look powerful and defensive from without. Can you do that?"

  Priscus nodded.

  "Good. Come, then gentlemen. Let us engineer the end to this revolt."

  * * * * *

  The valley was better than Priscus remembered and it seemed the Gauls were giving them more time than they could hope for. By the time the first scouts from the enemy force appeared on the crest across the valley, almost three hours had passed.

  A man can do a lot in three hours: win his freedom in the arena; watch a gods-awful Aristophanes 'comedy'; spend good money in one of the better brothels of the Subura; or, if one was a legionary, dig out several paces of defensive ditch or construct the same amount of rampart.

  Priscus had been given a luxury.

/>   He had been given the best part of eight thousand men purely to construct a largely fake fortress. The ditch was real - that was the strongest defence and a necessity, as a proper ditch is almost impossible to fake. A ditch on a thirty degree slope was a new challenge for Priscus, but the men seemed unfazed and managed with aplomb. Behind the ditch however, while the rampart looked high and impressive, it was actually loosely laid - not compacted and solid - and was thin and high rather than wide and backed with a solid revetment. There had been no time to cut timber for a stockade, and so a defensive hedge of pointed 'sudis' stakes had been strung out along the top of the rampart. But against procedure, the stakes were only laid against one another and propped up, rather than bound with ropes into a troublesome pointy hedge. A quick flick of one stake could collapse a whole section to the ground.

  It had the appearance of one of the strongest forts he had ever set up, despite the lack of a full palisade.

  In reality, it had all the defensive strength of a leather legionary tent.

  Essentially, the impressive military structure that brooded over the valley was a fiction. What the general had in mind Priscus could hardly imagine, but the man was an intuitive leader and a lateral thinker and - with the odds as they lay - if the man had a plan, it was not worth questioning.

  "Can you cut some spare turf and leave it stacked behind the walls?" the general mused next to him.

  "Of course, general. Could I venture to question why?"

  "You could" Caesar smiled as he turned and walked across to where Aulus Ingenuus - the commander of his Praetorian guard - sat astride his horse with the ease of a veteran cavalryman. As he approached the young officer, Caesar smiled. "Repeat your orders, Ingenuus. Let us be clear."

  "Engage the enemy repeatedly - in skirmishes only - at the stream in the valley bottom and keep retreating back up towards the camp. Never enough to bring them up with us, though. May I ask why, sir?"

  "You may" nodded Caesar. "Suffice it to say that I want them to be twitchy and ready to leap on us by the time I show my face."

  The young commander nodded. "How will I know when to cease the skirmishes, general?"

  "You'll know, Aulus."

  "Yessir."

  "Now get going. Let's taunt them into the first tussle while they're still arriving at the valley.

  * * * * *

  It seemed strange to Ingenuus. He'd begun his career fighting in the Helvetii campaign five years ago and won Caesar's praise and an astounding promotion, had taken his role as the head of Caesar's bodyguard very seriously and had practiced and trained and drilled both his men and himself constantly over the years, yet he had rarely seen any real combat action. If Caesar's bodyguard were seeing action, things were going wrong.

  And so it was very odd to suddenly find himself not only commanding his guard in a combat situation, but also commanding the auxiliary cavalry escort, which brought his unit to almost a thousand men in all.

  What was most surprising was how naturally it all came, despite his four year absence from active service. As he wheeled his tired horse in the drizzle half way up the slope, he raised his arm to prepare his men for another charge and realised that the limb was crimson past the elbow and trickles of blood - sped by the addition of rainwater - were running up his inverted arm and into the armpit, staining his white officer's tunic. The iron taste as he licked his lips told him that his face was also spattered with the blood of the enemy - at least, he was pretty sure none of it was his.

  Around him, the cavalry also turned, a few of his Praetorians among them in fine Roman leather-backed mail with shoulder doubling, large shields bearing not only Caesar's bull but also an image of Venus - the general's family deity, and long swords of a Celtic design. The rest were Gallic auxiliaries in rough basic mail and with spears and swords, shields among them painted in whatever design the warrior favoured.

  For over an hour now, the cavalry had been harrying their opposite numbers among the Gauls. Above, the Romans had watched from the ramparts while the Gauls continued to arrive and amass across the valley.

  The lowest reaches of the slope to both sides and the grass on both banks of the stream were now treacherous in the extreme, littered with corpses and the shuddering, whinnying bodies of horses and the screaming shapes of wounded men. There was little green to be seen among the russet colour that had become the valley-bottom's norm from a mix of churned rain-softened mud and spilled blood.

  It was almost impossible to tell which bodies belonged to which army, particularly given that more than ninety five per cent of the whole lot were Gauls of one tribe or another. Indeed, in the press of it at the bottom, Ingenuus had rarely known whether the men he was shouting orders at were his or the enemy. It was only when they raised a weapon and made for him that he knew to defend himself. And yet, with every pull back up the slope - and there had been many - his force had diminished only a little, while the enemy seemed to be suffering heavy losses.

  But then, they had so many more to lose.

  In only a few more hours the sun would begin to sink behind that hill crowded with Gauls. Whatever Caesar had planned would have to happen soon. The cavalry were close to exhaustion and soon they would start to make mistakes. Then the dying would begin in earnest.

  Dropping his arm, he kicked his steed into action, racing down the hillside, praying to Epona and Mars that his horse would not lose its footing on the steep slope, made slippery and treacherous with the constant low drizzle. Around him, the heavily armoured Praetorians - intermingled with the Gallic irregulars - raced into action once more.

  As with the previous five charges, Ingenuus selected an opponent roughly ahead, angling himself so as to encounter his enemy on his left, where his shield could take the spear blow and knock it aside while he raised his own blade to strike.

  The intervening space narrowed in mere heartbeats and suddenly the fight began once more. The Gaul lowered his long, bronze-tipped spear and kicked his horse forward, lunging with the weapon. Ingenuus, his shield held back slightly to entice and draw the attack, suddenly slid his arm forward, the large oval shield coming in at an angle.

  The spear tip scored a line across Venus, disfiguring her exquisitely-painted chest, caught for a shoulder-jarring moment on the lip of the bronze boss, and then flicked out and bounced off harmlessly into thin air.

  The Gaul tried to pull his own slightly smaller shield up and into position, clearly having been surprised with how easily his own attack had been turned aside. It had been no surprise to Ingenuus, given how many times he had done just this in the past hour.

  Before the Gallic shield could come up to block, Ingenuus swung downwards with his raised sword, across his chest and down. The blade bit into the Gaul's neck, just above the collar of his mail shirt. Scything through two braids of red hair, it cut the tendon, causing the Gaul's head to snap back in the opposite direction, further opening him to the blow that continued down smashing his collar bone, half-severing the head and leaving him dying soundlessly, his windpipe caught in the slice, a fountain of crimson spraying out to the side. Ingenuus turned his face away, not at the sight - he had seen worse deaths this day - but to avoid being blinded by the spray at a critical moment.

  He was lucky. Had he not turned, he would not have seen the other spear driving towards him. With the speed and dexterity of a born horseman, he dropped to the horse's neck, the spear head slicing through the open air above his head.

  When he came back up, his shoulder knocking the spear shaft aside, he realised he could not bring his sword up into play in the tight space. Desperately, aware that he was temporarily vulnerable, he tried to make his horse step back a few paces but something was suddenly in the way. In a blur, a gladius lunged out past him and sank into the armpit of the Gaul who was desperately attempting to haul his spear back for another strike.

  Ingenuus looked around into the eyes of his saviour and blinked in surprise.

  Caesar smiled at him as he jerked his blade ba
ck. Behind him the three survivors of the Fourteenth legion sat astride horses, their eagle gleaming wetly, their blades singing out, taking revenge for their fallen comrades.

  "Think I've got their attention?" the general laughed.

  Ingenuus looked past the general at the rest of the melee. There was, he could see, a sudden urgency among the press of Gauls. Caesar had joined the fight and the news had spread like fire through the enemy. The great oppressor of Gaul was suddenly theirs for the taking.

  "It would appear so, sir!" he said, marvelling at this foolhardy move while a few paces away, Nasica used the prized eagle of the Fourteenth to stove in an enemy rider's bare head. Had the general discussed the plan with Ingenuus in advance, he would have had to stop his commander. It was the job of Caesar's chief bodyguard not only to protect the general from the enemy, but also from himself should he need it. Such was almost certainly the reason Ingenuus had been kept in the dark about the plan.

  Too late now, anyway. All that mattered now was getting the general back to the camp intact.

  "I'm afraid you cannot stay in the field, general. We must pull back. I will set a cordon…"

  "No you won't, Aulus. This will not be an orderly fall back, but a general panicked retreat. I want this cavalry back up that slope as though the snapping jaws of Cerberus himself were at their backsides. And try and persuade a few of the auxiliaries to shout panicked things in their own tongue."

  "You're drawing them uphill, sir?"

  "Indeed."

  Ingenuus thought to question the logic of pulling back to a fort that was little more than a fake show of strength, but already the general was wheeling, shouting the retreat orders in a desperate voice. The sudden appearance of their ever-implacable senior commander bellowing a panicked retreat and turning to flee had an electrifying effect across the whole field. The Roman force disintegrated, each man wheeling his horse and bolting back up the slope in their own panicked fashion, some falling to the enemy as they turned.