‘Breach!’ he bellowed. ‘Help me!’
He’d known that the Romans would close the gap, of course. They were too efficient to let the warriors outside capitalise on the tiny breach. But it had been enough for him to squeeze through. The Romans nearby, not legionaries, but some sort of bodyguard for the officer, looked him up and down and a scout in Roman colours noted the green scarf - the same shade as the one the scout himself wore, along with every other auxiliary scout and hunter - and nodded, rushing over to help this auxiliary with the skeletal grin close the gap.
It was the work of a moment to help the Romans close the gap and re-deploy at the edge, and then to slip away with one of the legionaries who was running back to the piles of supplies nearby. An officer of some kind turned to him, probably seeking to send him to work elsewhere, but Molacos clutched his side with his knife hand, the blood from his three victims running from the blade and down his hip, looking for all the world like gore from a wound in his side, and the officer’s eyes slid past him and on to another target. A capsarius rushed over to help him, but Molacos shook his head, and the medic ran off after someone else.
With a satisfied smile, the Cadurci hunter picked up a battered shield from one of the piles and, almost indistinguishable from the many auxiliaries among the Roman force, made his way towards the northern rampart. This was no place for him. But somewhere outside the Roman lines - easy enough to traverse from the inside - back towards the reserve camp, Lucterius and his Cadurci brothers would be fighting.
And that was where he needed to be, for Molacos fought not for a unified Gaul, nor for hatred of the Romans, nor for Vercingetorix himself. Molacos fought for his master, Lucterius, and would do so to his last breath.
* * * * *
Fronto was hard pressed. What had begun as defending a weak point against the periphery of the inner force’s attack had quickly become the second-most fought-over position on the battlefield. While the reserve cavalry and their infantry support slugged it out over the ramparts on the plain, the north wall of the Mons Rea camp was swamped with enemy warriors, but the south-eastern side had become the target for the force that had been trapped on the oppidum. Another hour had passed at a guess, based on the movement of the sun across the sky, since the redoubt had almost caved, its defensive cohesion only saved at the last minute by one of the native levies who’d happened by.
Since then, the gate had become something of a focus for the rabid enemy. As the huge rebel army converged on this position, the powers inside the camp - who Fronto had no time to go and see since every man counted - had seen fit to send three more centuries of men to the makeshift barrier. Fronto had immediately left Masgava to directing the fighting men and sent the new arrivals to fetch more equipment and more junk to help strengthen the defence. It had worked and the place still held, though by the skin of their teeth. The barricade was perhaps half as high again as it had been and twice as thick, with grain sacks, clods of earth, timbers and more all thrown into the pile to help strengthen it, and the number of men fighting to hold it was gradually increasing, while the attacking force in the ‘U’ failed to grow, limited as they were by the gate.
A quarter of an hour ago he’d taken the time to pop up to the rampart and confer with the centurion again. Things were looking troubling all round, it seemed. The newly-arrived Gauls had managed to fill in the single ditch outside the east rampart with relative ease and had set up shield walls while their archers and slingers had begun to pelt the parapet with their missiles. Fronto had left the man to it. The situation was pretty bleak but the centurion - one Callimachus - seemed to have his head screwed on; one of the more competent officers Fronto had yet encountered in the whole system, and he could handle the disaster as well as any other. Before returning to the fray to discover that Arcadios had been forced to pull back with a vision-blurring head wound, Fronto had grabbed one of the nearer couriers and told him to ride for Antonius and Caesar as fast as possible and request help.
‘What message should I deliver, sir?’ the man had asked, worried.
Fronto had blinked. ‘Send help,’ he’d replied helpfully.
‘But how many men, from where and to where, sir?’ the young courier had asked, frowning.
Fronto had grasped him by the neck, bunching his scarf, and dragged him to the redoubt, lifting him so that he could see over it, almost having the top of his head removed by a stray sweep of a blade, and then lowering him, terrified, to the floor again.
‘Did you see the enemy?’
The acrid smell of urine had risen from the courier’s tunic. ‘Yessir.’
‘Unless you want them pushing a sponge-stick so far up your private manhole you can taste it, tell Antonius and Caesar to send everyone they can spare to Mons Rea.’
The man had nodded emphatically, his eyes wide, his curly locks having been trimmed by an impromptu blade. Fronto had let go and patted him on the head, and the man had run for his horse.
That had been almost quarter of an hour ago, and nothing had happened. Occasionally, Fronto had paused and tried to make sense of the military calls, but the simple fact was that the battlefield was such a chaotic din of noise that trying to unthread it was like trying to unpick a tapestry one handed in the dark while playing a lyre.
A Gaul thrust a spear up at the wall top, the blade coming perilously close to Fronto’s helmet, and he ducked before lunging out and stabbing the man in the chest.
There seemed no end to the opposition. They had killed hundred upon hundred of the Gauls, and taken a steady stream of dead and wounded in the process, the poor bastards dragged or helped back from the redoubt by medics or the dead-patrol accordingly, only to be replaced by their weary tent-mates.
But it was not the numbers or the defences as such that worried Fronto. What gave him serious pause for thought was that there had been cracking and banging noises from fore and below for a while now, and that signified that some of the more astute Gauls had given up trying to flood over the barrier and were now busy pulling apart the carts plank by plank to get through to the Roman defenders. And they would, in due course.
‘You’re looking tired, Fronto. Are you getting enough sleep?’
Fronto delayed only long enough to put his utilitarian military gladius through the temple of an unhelmeted warrior who’d made it to the top of the barricade and turned with a frown.
Titus Labienus, Caesar’s senior lieutenant and one of the most successful and respected generals of Rome, sat astride an impatient looking bay a few paces away.
Fronto blinked and looked past him.
Legionaries in seeming hundreds and thousands were busy pulling what they needed from the supply dumps and filtering onto the rampart and to the barricade as their centurions commanded. Finally, after weeks of maintaining their position in the Alesia lines, the First and the Seventh had finally committed.
‘You are a sight for fucking sore eyes, Labienus. About time. Got sick of all the baths and the snoring did we?’
Labienus smiled indulgently, but the way his expression slid quickly into serious and troubled worried Fronto.
‘What is it?’
‘Don’t get over excited, Fronto. Estimates put your opposition at about five thousand, and I’ve brought six cohorts.’
Fronto heard a clunk and looked over his shoulder to see a grapnel over the wall top, the timbers up there already straining, the centurion sending legionaries over to deal with it before some behemoth of a Gaul ripped the wall apart. The bastards were serious and only a heave or two away from success, then. ‘Six cohorts is better than a kick in the teeth, Labienus.’
‘Then get ready for me to put the boot in. Five of them are for the north rampart. Caesar’s trying to bring in reserves to help here, but he’s got other troubles down on the plains. The Gallic reserves are pushing him to the limit, so he’s being careful with his own troop assignments. For now I’ve got only one cohort for you, I’m afraid.’
Fronto nodded tersely. ‘
I’ll make them worthwhile.’
‘You do that,’ the staff officer replied. ‘And here’s a little something extra for you: new orders agreed by the general. Have a cornicen so close you can hear his arse squeak when he walks. If the walls are breached anywhere unrecoverable, have the man blow the Bacchanalia chant. As soon as that chant goes up anywhere along the walls, every century available is to form up and prepare for a sortie against the enemy.’
Fronto stared at the man. Sortie beyond the walls? The man was mad. But Labienus was nothing if not an inventive tactician, and had yet to be beaten in a campaign, with a success rate even surpassing Caesar’s.
‘Alright. You’d better know what you’re doing, Titus.’
‘For the love of Juno, Fronto, I really hope so!’
* * * * *
Caesar felt the icy thrill of uncertainty. Throughout his entire command of Gaul, which had taken him from governor of three provinces to becoming a conqueror and all-but-governor of a fourth new one, he had rarely been caught off-guard. When he had, he had usually had systems in place to recover the situation as quickly as possible, and had never truly felt that strange excitement of being on the cusp of losing everything until Gergovia. And now here he was, mere months later and feeling it again. It was strangely intoxicating. Much more so than the smug knowledge that he would overcome whatever the odds, which had been his gut feeling throughout his career, even in that ridiculous business with the pirates so many years ago.
But Gergovia had been a disaster and he’d chosen to turn it into a hurdle rather than a wall, withdrawing and deciding to regroup. Then somehow, despite his best plans, he’d found himself in almost as poor a position now. He had besieged his enemy and in turn been besieged, and he’d been sure of success even then. But while the Arvernian king on the hilltop had been predictable and ineffectual, some nobleman among the enemy reserves had proved to be at least as intuitive and inventive a commander as the rebel leader, and had in the end put the Roman forces to the test, at the very limit of their strength.
He knew that Mons Rea had proved to be a weak point, and had committed Labienus with six cohorts to aid them. He knew as well as any man that such an act was akin to jamming a single rag into a failing dam. Mons Rea would need more men. And yet the Gallic cavalry and their infantry support on the plains were in serious danger of breaking into the outer rampart, the defenders truly hard-pressed, and if that line fell then Mons Rea would be irrelevant, for the entire system would be swamped under the enemy bodies which even now outnumbered the Romans by perhaps three or four to one in total.
And the Gaulish reserve was well-fed and well-rested, while the beleaguered Romans were to a man hungry and exhausted. Things were dangerous here on the plain, and would only get worse as his men continued to tire until the rampart fell and the whole siege collapsed in annihilation for the legions.
His men needed encouragement and heart, and Caesar had spent the last hour in a frantic rush of action, all along the plains defences, from the foot of Mons Rea to the lowest slopes of Gods’ Gate. His white horse and red cloak marked him out wherever he went, and his continual cries of ‘For Rome!’ had made his voice hoarse and scratchy and left him shaking. Every now and then, he’d paused to take stock, rattling out a series of orders to whatever officer he could find - usually Antonius, who seemed to be everywhere at once, encouraging and organising like some sort of Mercury in human form. And between such confabs Caesar had been one with his men, at the fence, driving his priceless blade into Gallic bodies as he shouted for his men to hold, at the gates of the cavalry enclosures, helping keep the enemy from felling the timber leaves with axes, on the towers with the artillerists, helping them sight to pick off the most important of the enemy horsemen, his own steed tied to the posts below. And everywhere he had been, he had spoken to the men as equals with words of praise and reassurance - that they had held in more trying times and situations than these. That they must hold for the love of Rome and of victory. That this would be the last fight and with it Gaul would be theirs to loot. That by the time the sun touched the horizon, the rebels would be beaten.
Everywhere. He had not stopped, and he felt so tired. He kept suffering involuntary visions of his bed and a platter of fruit his slave would have waiting when he retired to it. And with every passing hour and the constant tiring activity, the fear increased that he might have one of his attacks in public, where it could not be contained and hidden. He stifled a yawn.
The afternoon was beginning to wear on, the sun slipping lower and lower in the sky, threatening to turn this fight into a night attack.
He paused at one of the small command posts where a supply centurion was giving out orders and receiving requests from an endless stream of runners, and took a swig of water from one of the open barrels from which buckets were being carried around the defences.
‘General?’
He turned to see Varus looking twitchy and tense. ‘Yes?’
‘I want permission to make a break out from one of the cavalry forts, sir. If I can get round behind them, I can perhaps take the pressure off the ramparts?’
‘Pointless,’ rumbled Antonius, appearing as if from nowhere, swigging from his ubiquitous wine flask and wiping a mix of it and half a pint of arterial spray from his lower face.
‘What?’
‘The cavalry are only the distraction down here. Their infantry are doing all the real damage to the ramparts and if you sally, their cavalry will engage you while their foot continue to rip us apart. You’ll just be throwing away your horse.’
Varus sighed. ‘We have to do something. I have thousands of good men sitting idle.’
Caesar nodded. ‘Their time will come, Varus. And soon, I think. In an hour or so, if things have not eased, I will have to do something drastic to turn the tide, and if that becomes a necessity I will have need of your cavalry. Have them continue to rest and prepare, but have them all filter slowly to the northern end of the defences, towards Mons Rea. Slowly and carefully, mark you. I don’t want the enemy to realise you’ve redeployed the entire horse.’
Varus frowned but nodded.
‘What is the news?’ the general enquired of Antonius as he took another handful of water and rubbed it across his tired face.
‘Brutus is making his way up to Mons Rea with another six cohorts. You know even then we won’t hold there, yes?’
Caesar nodded wearily and stretched, keeping his voice low. ‘I’m having the best part of a legion form up from Labienus’ forces. We’ve almost emptied the eastern arc of our circumvallation now. We can only hope that the entire oppidum has committed, for if they have kept a reserve and discover that we have withdrawn almost all our force to this section, this day could be over very quickly.’
‘But the same holds true of Mons Rea and the plains.’
Caesar nodded. ‘We will continue to feed whatever reserves we can pull together into the Mons Rea camp and hope they can hold while we maintain these ramparts on the plains. We cannot afford a night-time battle, though, Antonius. Our men are spent. If we cannot finish this in the next hour or two, I will have to try something. I’ve already given Labienus the authority to sally if the walls fail.’
‘Let’s hope he doesn’t have to try.’
‘Yes. Cast up your prayers to Mars and Minerva that young Brutus can plug that hole with six more cohorts.’
* * * * *
Brutus gestured to the cornicen he had chosen as chief signaller for the six cohorts. ‘First and Sixth cohort to the east gate. Looks like Fronto’s in deep trouble.’ The signaller nodded and pursed his lips to sound the melody that would send the two freshest and strongest cohorts to support the troubled east wall as Brutus went on. ‘Then sound for the other four to spread out and filter into the northern defences by century. As soon as they’re on the rampart, they are to pay attention to the musicians and signifers already there. They are much more aware of the situation than we.’
Leaving the cornicen to his w
ork, Brutus hurried on ahead of the quick-marching cohorts, running through the centre of the camp, where the only men to be seen were a few supply troops lugging bundles and bags of equipment to some position or other, the critically wounded staring at the stumps of limbs and small makeshift hospitals where occasional medici and, more often, over-stretched capsarii worked tirelessly to save lives and limbs and to close wounds, far too busy to spend time with pain-killers or drugs. Screaming filled the void at the camp’s centre.
Finally, he arrived at the northern defences and he felt his heart catch in his throat.
He had known that the north end of the Mons Rea camp was in trouble - that was no secret anywhere among the circumvallation, for the mass of attacking Gauls swamping it was visible even down on the plain. But the extent of the danger was simply staggering up close. Even as he stumbled to a halt and stared, Caninius, legate of the Twelfth whose camp this was, lurched to a weary halt next to him, hands on his knees and breathing heavily. Brutus looked across at the man. Caninius was a good enough commander, but old-school. He remained at his command post and directed things through tribunes, relying on his centurions to carry out the battle at ground level. And yet the legate was liberally spattered with blood and muddy to the knees, his sword bloodied in his hand and a bandage tightly bound round his upper left arm blossoming pink to show the severity of the wound beneath. For Caninius to be in such a state, things were truly dire.
But then he could see that clearly for himself.
‘What happened to the towers?’
Caninius straightened. ‘You mean why are they empty? Expediency, Brutus. Can’t keep them manned.’
‘But the siege engines…’
‘Were costing us too many men to maintain. The enemy archers just riddle the towers with arrows any time a body appears up there. Didn’t take them long to empty every damn one. And the towers are open structures.’
The Great Revolt Page 54