Not so for much longer.
The first settlement they had come across in Nervii territory was no city or oppidum. No fortress or druidic site. It was a simple village of poor, dirty and apparently frail farmers and their families. To Antonius - and to Fronto, standing on the periphery of the staff - they did not look capable of ambushing a sheep, let alone a sizeable force of Roman legionaries.
But Fronto knew otherwise.
They may look peaceful and frail, yet they were anything but. These very people may well have been among that force that almost halted the Roman campaign in Belgae lands four years ago. They may be the very men who besieged Cicero a matter of months ago. Yes, they held hoes and rakes, fed pigs and kneaded bread. But give them a rousing anti-Roman speech and in moments they would be wielding any blade they could lay hands upon and charging the hated Roman enemy. The Belgae were, as Caesar had once said, the bravest and the fiercest of all these peoples. Even their farmers were dangerous. Even the women.
The officers watched in silence as the two cohorts began to move in. As soon as the village - a shabby collection of huts that played home to some fifty souls - had been located, Caesar had ordered two cohorts of the Ninth ahead, sweeping to both sides in a wide arc and then moving in like pincers to surround the settlement and pin them against the approaching army.
Panic gripped the natives as the first signs of the two cohorts were seen between the trees and scrub, closing in on the village. A wall of steel and bronze and red wool, rattling, clanking and thumping, with the rhythmic crunch of booted feet in an ever-tightening circle of death, leaving only a single gap which even now was filling with the rest of the approaching army, moving around both sides of the small hillock that played host to the staff officers, like a river around an island.
Native women grabbed their dusty, half-naked children and ran into their huts as though a few handfuls of dried mud and wattle would stop the advance of a determined legion. The men variously grasped whatever offensive items upon which they could lay their hands and gathered in a group, or helped the women and children to ‘safety’, one man actually wasting time releasing a large horse from a corral gate and leading it by the reins to his hut!
Horses were expensive, after all.
‘Come!’ Caesar commanded and applied heels to horse, urging his steed down the gentle incline towards the village, where the panicked and desperate males had now formed up into a small warband of twenty or so, armed with scythes and sickles, shovels, and even the odd real sword here and there.
The Ninth legion’s ranks parted at calls from their centurions, clearing a path for the staff officers to traverse and reach the centre of activity. Caesar and his cadre of officers entered the small settlement, passing between a barn and a small pig pen where the beasts wallowed, grunting and carefree, unaware of the drama unfolding around them.
‘Galronus?’ the general asked, to which the Remi noble, commander of a large auxiliary cavalry wing, stepped his horse forward, falling in near Caesar’s side.
‘Sir?’
‘I will need my words translated to these people, since I doubt they have a word of Latin.’
Galronus nodded respectfully, and the general cleared his throat. With a wave of his hand, he gave a signal and small groups of legionaries detached from their units and began to move towards the various structures.
‘My soldiers will search each of your huts,’ he announced, pausing for Galronus to echo his words in the local drawl.
‘If you wish to see another dawn, you will drop your weapons and gather peacefully in the corral there, offering no resistance. Your women and children will leave their buildings and join you. If they do not leave the huts voluntarily, my men will drag them out, and if they offer continued resistance, they will simply be killed inside the huts. Do I make myself clear?’
There was the obligatory pause in translation, and then a long silence as the menfolk looked at one another in panicked indecision.
‘You number perhaps a score of men, while I command some thirty thousand in your lands alone. There is no doubt about your fate if you disobey, and you know who I am and what I will do. Now drop those weapons and move.’
By the time the translated words had become echoes among the huts, the men had begun to drop their spades and rakes and scythes, and a number of small groups of women and children and the elderly had started to appear, blinking, from the darkness of their hovels.
Caesar waited patiently as the villagers traipsed despondently into the horse corral. Two centuries of legionaries moved off at a command from Trebonius and surrounded the enclosure, leaving only the open gate for the remaining natives to move through.
When the last of the visible Nervii had entered the makeshift holding pen, the small parties of soldiers began to move into the buildings, most of them coming out a few moments later with a signal for ‘all clear’, others shoving panicked, screaming women out into the cold light, crying children clamped around their mothers’ legs, inhibiting their movement.
In one hut there was the sound of raised voices, the words indistinct, shouting in the Belgae tongue and then a blood-curdling scream, after which four legionaries emerged, grim faced and dragging two young boys, their mother’s blood still running from one soldier’s sword.
Moments was all it took, and so far with miraculously only one death.
Fronto had watched it all in hard silence and noticed that Galronus had not flinched or looked away either. It was a hard fact that with these people there was no distinction in war between warriors and the rest. He remembered with a sudden ache the Germanic woman that autumn so long ago who had sunk her teeth into his ankle and very nearly done for him. The Nervii had plotted twice before to defeat the legions, and their underhanded sneak attacks had been brutal and costly. They could not be allowed to do the same again under the command of Ambiorix.
He hardened his heart against the violent demise of the poor unseen woman. She would not be the last. The legionaries moved to close the gate, but the centurion in charge halted them, selecting one middle-aged farmer with a tap of his vine stick.
As the man was dragged out by the legionaries, the gate closed behind him, other work parties moved around the farm. Some were igniting hastily-made torches and then moving to the huts of the village, holding the flames to the thatch or wattle until the fire caught and raced across the walls and roofs of the buildings, quickly turning them into an inferno. Others rounded up all the animals of the village, that fine horse retrieved and led to the cavalry detachments, much to the sullen chagrin of its owner. The pigs, sheep, cows and chickens were butchered quickly and efficiently, loaded into the empty supply carts that were being brought forward, where they would provide good fresh meat for the army. Other units began to move off into the vegetable plots and the granary, gathering the food, uprooting or harvesting everything of any value and storing it for the legion’s consumption. The village would be utterly devastated within half an hour of their arrival.
But the scene at the centre was the important part, and they all knew it, Roman and Nervian alike.
The farmer was manhandled to the central space, where the temperature was now becoming uncomfortably warm from the burning huts all around. The damp earth had been churned to mud by so many feet. One of the auxiliary cavalry drawn from the Remi stepped forward to join the centurion who stood near the captive. The pair waited quietly while the two legionaries hauled the farmer into position and then kicked him hard in the back of the legs, dropping him painfully to his knees with a squawk.
One soldier grasped his hands and yanked them up behind him, eliciting another yelp of pain, while the other drew his pugio dagger and tested the edge with his thumb, nodding his satisfaction.
Everything fell to an eerie silence, broken only by the cries of the animals being slaughtered and the tears and wails from the women and children in the corral - and from some of the menfolk.
‘Where is King Ambiorix of the Eburones?’ Caesar
said, with deliberate slowness and clarity, enunciating each word carefully, so that there could be no mistaking what it was that he asked. The Remi cavalryman next to the centurion repeated the translation equally slowly and carefully. The farmer simply stared at his captors in panicked misery, shaking his head with what appeared to be genuine incomprehension.
The centurion looked around at Caesar with an unspoken question. The general nodded and, at a gesture - reminiscent of that of the editor of a gladiatorial combat - the legionary put his pugio beneath the farmer’s chin and opened his throat from one ear to the other.
Blood spurted, fountaining out onto the wet dirt. The cut was so wide, deep and professional that the watching Romans saw the man’s face change colour rapidly, going from a ruddy and healthy pink, through purple to a rubbery grey. His eyes bulged and his mouth worked silently but he remained in position, held in place by the iron grip of the legionary behind him. At another nod from the centurion, the soldier let go and the dead farmer, still twitching, fell to his face in the mud.
By the time two more soldiers had arrived and grabbed the farmer’s arms to drag him away, he had stopped kicking. The legionaries hauled him over to one of the burning huts and, taking his arms and legs, cast him into the flames to be consumed by the conflagration. By the time they had finished their grisly disposal and returned to the central space a second farmer - this time a young man, fresh faced and defiant - had been hauled out of the pen and to the centre. The performance was repeated and the man sank to his knees in the churned mud and blood, his defiant, cold blue eyes fixed on Caesar. Back in the pen his woman screamed her love and fear for him.
‘Where is Ambiorix of the Eburones?’ asked Caesar slowly. The Remi horseman repeated the translation. The farmer simply heaped more scorn and arrogance into his cold gaze and at Caesar’s nod, the centurion gave the order.
The young farmer’s blood arced and sprayed, adding to the russet coloured mud before them.
As the body was hauled away, leaving dark red streaks through the dirt, the young Crassus appeared between Fronto and Antonius, his face bleak and unsettled. If ever there was a sign that he was not a facsimile of his father and brother it was the difficulty that he was clearly experiencing in watching such efficient brutality. The older Crassus brother would - Fronto knew - have performed the task with gusto, and his father would have positively revelled in it.
‘What happens if they don’t know? Any of them, I mean? Will they all die?’ Crassus’ voice was little more than a whisper, but Galronus and Caesar both apparently heard and turned their heads while the next victim was being brought out.
‘We decided to set the limit at ten,’ Antonius replied quietly so that the natives would not hear, in case any might speak Latin. ‘After that it’s slavery for the rest.’
Crassus seemed slightly relieved to discover that there would be an end to it at some point. ‘And if none of them know the answer?’ the young legate persisted. ‘It seems farfetched that such low peasants would know of the doings of kings.’
Galronus shook his head. ‘They know. That last man knew. You could see it in his eyes - in the defiance and arrogance. He knew, and he took the knowledge with him to his Gods. And if he knew then others do too. Do not be fooled by their rustic appearance. I am Belgae and I know these things - no man in these lands is less than a warrior, no matter how much he kneads the bread.’
Caesar nodded his agreement and the two men turned back to the scene as the third victim, this time a woman, was dropped to the bloody, wet earth on her knees.
‘Where is Ambiorix, king of the Eburones?’
A repeat in translation.
The woman spat a string of words at Caesar and received a slap to the cheek from the knife-wielding legionary. The slap was hard enough to break cheek or jaw, as the loud crack announced, and the woman slumped slightly. Caesar threw a questioning look at the Remi translator, but he shook his head and replied that the woman had simply cursed Caesar for a devil.
‘And now she is useless anyway since she cannot answer through her ruined jaw,’ the general added irritably. At a gesture, the centurion gave the order and her throat was opened.
Fronto watched impassively along with the other officers, including the slightly pale Crassus, while the next few farmers and their wives were brought out, questioned, and executed quickly and efficiently. Crassus muttered his gratitude that the Ninth had been vanguard and therefore given this grisly task, and not his Tenth. Fronto fought the irritation at that last part, but could only echo the young legate’s gratitude that the Tenth had not been set to executing farmers.
Seven dead now, their bodies blazing in the inferno of one of their homes.
Crassus gave a sharp intake of breath as he watched a boy of perhaps seven summers being dragged from the pen. The lad’s parents were shouting desperately and clawing at the hard legionaries holding them back.
‘Where is Ambiorix of the Eburones?’
‘Surely he cannot know?’ Crassus whispered in a hollow voice.
‘Unlikely,’ Antonius nodded, ‘but his parents might, and it could shock some sense into them all.’
Crassus watched in horror as the boy shook, making his throat-cutting a difficult chore, but the legionary was a professional, and held the boy’s head while he was dispatched. The rising wails and shrieks from the corral confirmed the effect this brutal display had had upon the locals.
Caesar gestured, and the centurion gave the commands, but the Remi translator waved his hand and shouted something to Galronus. The cavalry officer turned to Caesar and raised his own arm to pause the string of deaths.
‘Three of the Nervii are shouting Avenna,’ he said quietly.
‘And what is Avenna?’ Caesar asked.
‘The Nervii are quite advanced for a Belgic tribe,’ Galronus said, with what appeared to be grudging respect. ‘Almost as advanced as the Remi,’ he added pointedly. ‘They have a council, like the Roman senate and a capital city like Rome, which is the heart of their tribe. Avenna is less than a day’s march north of here.’
‘Avenna sounds as likely a place to find Ambiorix as anywhere else, then,’ Antonius noted.
‘More likely than most,’ agreed Caesar. ‘Very well.’ He returned his attention to the centurion and raised his voice. ‘End it. We are done here and ready to move on.’
The centurion nodded and began shouting his orders to the men. As the last of the livestock and grain was being loaded, the huts burning down now to orange embers billowing with black smoke, the rest of the villagers were roped together at neck and wrist and sent off with three centuries of men to lead them back to Samarobriva and a future of slavery, the profits of which would supplement the income of the army by a minute sum.
‘It seems almost too good to be true,’ Fronto noted to Antonius. ‘To pin the bugger down so quickly, I mean.’
‘Agreed,’ the other officer replied. ‘With any luck we’ll deal with him in short order and the army can be moved out into garrisons to deal with these various other threats we keep hearing about.
Fronto nodded, though he couldn’t help but fear that this was far from over yet. Something was still nagging him about that Arverni noble back in Bibracte and the way the man had spoken of Ambiorix. There was mystery wrapped up in all of this and he couldn’t believe it would all be this easy.
* * * * *
Avenna was, Fronto had to admit, impressive. As far as Gallic or Belgic defended settlements went, it ranked up there with the best. It was not large, being perhaps a third of a mile across at the widest point, and claimed no benefit from the topography, lying fairly low in an area of even lower, featureless ground.
But its defences were solid.
A low earth rampart had been topped with a wall of the type they now knew was typical of the Gallic peoples: constructed from a framework of wooden beams, the outer of which was faced with heavy stones between the supporting timber, the inner backed by a solid, earthen bank, and the frame
work itself packed throughout with a core of rubble and dirt.
It was a solid system and a good one, very hard to bring down with siege engines.
The oppidum seemed to have been constructed in three sections, with a separate enclosure to the west, consisting of perhaps a quarter of the whole, with its own west-facing gate, while the main enclosure with its southern entrance contained a further individual and double-walled hill at its easternmost edge.
‘Why the three sections?’ Antonius mused.
Fronto, however, had spent years traipsing around similar fortifications all over Gaul. He shrugged. ‘There’s very little uniformity in the Gauls’ settlements, even within the same tribe, so unless you get in and have a look, there’s no knowing for sure, but I’d wager that the separate western enclosure is a sacred druid grove. You can see even from here that there’s no smoke from household fires rising over the top, and there seem to be a lot of treetops there. If not religious, then it’s perhaps some sort of animal and farming compound? The main section is the city itself - you can see the chimney smoke rising. The heavily fortified hill is interesting. I’d expect that’s where their council meets, and their leaders live.’
Antonius nodded. ‘Seems a fair assessment. And here’s mine: this place is too bloody strong by far. It’ll take a week to demolish enough of those defences to get inside in sufficient numbers. The cavalry are no use, and any infantry assault is going to be extremely costly. Have you seen that gate?’
Fronto grunted an affirmative as he squinted into the slightly misty cold air. The huge, heavy walls - easily the height of two men - turned sharply inwards, forming a wide approach to the gatehouse, which was set back some way, providing a killing zone perhaps twenty paces wide and as deep before any attacker could reach the huge double gated entrance with its tower above. An attack there would invite death from a hundred arrows, bullets and rocks. Not that the rest of the defences would be any easier, of course. Antonius was right about the cost in manpower.
Marius' Mules VI: Caesar's Vow Page 15