Marius' Mules Anthology Volume 1

by S. J. A. Turney

  Decius made a sour face.

  ‘Got to be plagued by insects there.’

  A nod.

  Fronto frowned.

  ‘How come you noticed all this? Looked like a green pasture to me.’

  Galeo smiled.

  ‘I come from the wetlands at the coast near Aquileia, sir. And I know my birds, sir.’

  Caesar nodded.

  ‘Then there’s no clear field of battle near the enemy. They’ll have to come round the edge of the marsh. That should even up the odds a little.’

  He stood silently for a moment, tapping his thumb on his lower lip absently and then looked up suddenly, as though he had forgotten the officers were there.

  ‘Mmm? Oh yes, sorry Fronto. I think you four had best go bathe, change and get some rest. I’ll be calling a general meeting of the staff some time this afternoon, but I’ll send for you then.’

  He frowned again.

  ‘On your way out, have someone go and find Varus and send him to me. I have a job for the cavalry.’

  Fronto nodded and, saluting, the four officers filed out of the tent.

  Bees buzzed and added their gentle hum to the background noises of a military camp at rest. Fronto smiled. It was a nice time of year. Better savour the next hour or two, since the next few days promised to be busy.

  ‘Well I don’t know about you three, but I’m looking forward to rinsing out my mouth with some good, old-fashioned Roman wine for a change. Care to join me, relaxing in the laconicum with a nice wine?’

  ‘Laconicum?’ Decius raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Alright,’ Fronto grinned, ‘the river, if you must know!’

  * * * * *

  Quintus Atius Varus inhaled deeply, sucking down the warm fragrant air of early summer. Barbarians the Gauls and the Belgae might be, but they had some lovely land up here in the north. The air seemed to be fresher than it was back home in Italy; lighter and cleaner. He glanced around him at the cavalry, two alae of regulars.

  His orders were clear. Examine the terrain between the two armies and report back, preferably without engaging enemy scouts or outriders. Oh, a job like this could be done by scouts for the Romans, but from what Caesar had said, his scouts kept mysteriously disappearing, so the task needed a little more force this time.

  Varus smiled.

  And, of course, he and his men would be able to report the terrain with a soldier’s eye, rather than the basic geography relayed by a native scout.

  The crest of a hill loomed ahead, crowned by a thin row of poplar trees as if nature’s own crest surmounted the helmet of the land. Steering the steed with his knees, he made for the avenue of trees. They were spaced evenly, planted by the design of some unknown hand, rather than naturally seeded.

  As they approached the rise, Varus gave commands using hand and arm motions. The two alae peeled off to either side and came to a halt in formation. Off to the left, a large thicket cut off the view of the plain stretching away, and a similar knot of tangled trees lay to the right. Motioning to the officers, he walked his horse gently toward the crest. The two cavalry prefects trotted up to join him as they reached the top.

  Varus whistled through his teeth quietly.

  ‘Shit, that’s a lot of Belgae!’

  The three riders, largely sheltered from view by the thin avenue of trees, looked down the slope with a growing sense of awe. A sizeable marsh began at the foot of the slope and stretched away to within a few paces of the Belgae. The swampy ground was enclosed off to the left by a ridge, along which Fronto and his men must have come this morning. The other end, however, meandered off to the edge of the Aisne River with which it was almost level. Varus’ trained military eye spotted the possibilities. That area looked marshy, for certain, but it was the area that had now dried out and sealed off the water inland. It would be easily crossable by cavalry and would probably present no great problem for infantry, but you would not want to actually fight there, just in case.

  The impressive thing, though, that seized Varus’s gaze and held it, was the camp of the Belgae. He had been sceptical of the reports from Fronto that the force covered a width of eight miles. It sounded such a long way.

  And yet, looking down from here, the line of camps stretched from the river bank to the crest and was perhaps two miles thick as well.

  ‘What would you say, Casco? Does that look like three hundred thousand Belgae?’

  The prefect beside him shrugged.

  ‘Respectfully, sir, it’s damn near impossible to tell when they have no formation.’

  The prefect on the other side of him shook his head.

  ‘Not that many, sir. They’re spread out.’

  Varus turned and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, there’s a lot, sir, don’t get me wrong, but not a third of a million. Remember seeing Ariovistus’ army at Vesontio last year? Well I reckon there’s about twice as many here. Ariovistus had about seventy thousand men.’

  Varus frowned.

  ‘D’you know? I do believe you’re right. It’s a huge camp, but they’re well spaced. I wonder whether they’re trying to look bigger than they are? Must be… what? A hundred and fifty thousand at the most. Maybe half the Belgae we’re expecting!’

  Casco shook his head.

  ‘Careful there, sir. Might be that they’ve left room for the other half, and there’s more on the way.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Varus’ frown deepened. Casco was right. This army could double in size any time, and the only way they’d know is if they kept a permanent eye on it.

  ‘Maybe that’s why they’re killing off Caesar’s scouts. They don’t want the general to know where they are until they’ve met up with the other half of the army.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Shit. That means we need to do something about this, and fast. Let’s get back to camp.’

  He turned his horse to walk her slowly back down the slope to the ala below and stared in horror. Warriors were pouring out of the thicket to the right and the corpse to the left in their hundreds. An ambush.

  ‘Form up!’ he bellowed as he started to gallop down the hill to his men, the two prefects at his back. The Belgae had known exactly what they were doing. They did not need this many men to pick off the occasional scout, and the warriors emerging from the undergrowth were, to a man, armed with long spears. The bastards must have been watching them for a while and preparing.

  ‘Can we outrun them?’

  Varus glanced at Casco.

  ‘If we can’t,’ he replied, ‘then we’re all dead!’

  As they reached the bottom of the slope, Casco shouted ‘Orderly retreat to the camp.’

  Varus stared at him for a moment, and then shouted in the loudest voice he could manage: ‘run!’

  The first few of the barbarians were already reaching a position ahead of them. Behind lay the line of poplars and, beyond that, the marsh. No escape that way. The ground to either side of them was swarming with barbarians who had broken cover from the trees. Their only hope was to outrun the closing door of men ahead of them.

  ‘Charge!’

  Around him, his cavalry, now working on their own individual instincts rather than commands, rode as hard as they could for the closing gap, formation forgotten. Already a dozen barbarians had joined up ahead of them and were preparing themselves to unhorse the riders.

  Without any need of issued commands, as soon as the first riders were within range of the barbarians, they raised and released their pila before drawing their blades. Many of the long, tapered missiles found their targets and the waiting barbarians clutched at their wounds, dropping their own spears.

  The first rider found himself clear of the attackers, the nearest barbarian alive but pinned to the turf with a pilum through his thigh, just below the hip. For a moment, the soldier looked around in surprise and relief, but then the reality of his situation kicked in and he ignored the chaos around him and rode for Caesar’s camp as though death itself fluttered at his shoulder
.

  Varus watched with dismay as the arms closed in front of them. Moreover, ahead in the distance, he could see a few Belgic horsemen. As far as he had been told the Belgae favoured infantry. He was not even aware they had cavalry! This was turning out to be a truly shitty day…

  Ahead of him, two riders went down as the barbarians lunged with spears, one catching a rider in the gut and the other spearing a horse through the chest. Varus did not have time to wheel his horse or stop; besides, if he stopped, he was dead. This was one of those very few situations where ‘every man for himself’ was the only viable formation.

  Taking a deep breath, he hauled on the reins and jumped his horse, arcing gracefully over the collapsing heap of men and horses. He counted all three heartbeats while he was in the air for what felt like hours, expecting at any moment to feel a spear jammed up through him or his horse.

  And suddenly his hooves hit the ground once more. Without a single glance back, he thundered on. There were only a dozen or so barbarian riders; a mere reserve force to pick off the odd Roman who broke through the line, but they were off to the side and making a beeline to cut off the fleeing cavalry. Risking time to glance around him, Varus realised that perhaps twenty or thirty of his men had escaped the trap and were riding on. Far too many men were being butchered behind him, but there was nothing he could do about that.

  ‘To me!’ he bellowed.

  Surprised troopers hauled on their reins and either steered or slowed to fall in with their commander. Varus cleared his throat.

  ‘Riders off to the left. They’ll intercept us before the hill. They’ve got to stop us escaping if they want to keep their numbers unknown. Take them down!’

  The resolute grimaces on the faces of his men were born partially from the desperation of their situation, but the commander knew well how much they were now also being driven by the need for revenge after the butchering of over a hundred of their colleagues.

  Indeed, as the Belgic horsemen closed on them, Varus began to feel a little more confident. The barbarians were clearly unused to mounted combat and unsure of their skills, for all their vicious demeanour. Varus’ men, on the other hand, had set jaws and gripped their blades with white knuckles. There would be no quarter given by the survivors of this ala.

  The attack was swift and efficient. The Belgae were hacked, stabbed, pushed from their saddles and left a bleeding mess, their surviving horses fleeing the scene and, among the Romans only one man down and two wounded.

  Varus glanced behind him at the howling barbarians, cursing themselves at failing to spring their trap correctly.

  The cavalry commander smiled to himself. Wait ‘til he had seen Caesar and gathered his entire mounted division. Then the bastards would have something to howl about!

  * * * * *

  It had been two hours. It felt like half a lifetime, but in actual fact it had been just two hours since Varus had last been here. He glanced ahead at the line of poplar trees on the hill and could just make out the heaps on the grass in the distance that were all that was left of some of Caesar’s best horsemen.

  The general had surprised and irritated Varus. Instead of being incensed and planning retribution and extreme violence as the cavalry commander himself, Caesar had merely stroked his chin and muttered ‘unfortunate…’

  Bloody unfortunate? But in a curious way, now that he looked back on it, the general was right. Insensitive, but right. They had lost a number of cavalry, but they had found out a great deal about not only the landscape, but about the enemy into the bargain. While the Romans were facing odds of perhaps five to one, they were considerably better than the ten to one they were expecting. Once word of that had begun to spread in the camp, the atmosphere had improved no end. It had taken only a few moments for Caesar to decide on his course of action, and only a few more for Varus to set it in motion.

  Leaving only a small group of mixed regular and auxiliary cavalry in camp, Varus had divided the main mounted force into three sections. The first had set off first, riding hard along the river bank to the west, and skirting round behind the ridge. They should be able to completely bypass the Belgae, and then they would be free to head north and search for the rest of the enemy. The second had been given the most dangerous task: to head east along the river bank and across the edge of the marsh and actually harry the front lines of the enemy. They would not only be able to test what they were up against, but also to confirm whether the ground was viable for an assault.

  And the third section, commanded by Varus, was the punitive group. Heading directly for the centre and the line of poplars, Varus would revenge himself on the barbarian ambushers. With a smile of grim determination, he used gestures to relay his commands to the prefects following him. As he pointed silently, two large groups peeled off from the main force and rode off east and west at a tangent.

  The remaining force, around eight hundred strong, marshalled in the centre at the base of the slope. At further commands they split into two units, wheeled their horses until they were back-to-back, and then began to walk their steeds at a slow, steady pace toward the woods to either side.

  ‘Bastards had better still be in there, eh sir?’

  Varus looked over at Casco and nodded.

  ‘They are. I can feel it. Nemesis is with us today.’

  Another command rang out, and the ranks of cavalry raised their pila into a throwing position. Moments later they heard the sound of the conflagration starting. The two groups that had separated had set fire to the furthermost edge of those concealing thickets. Smoke rose ominously from among the foliage and Varus watched with growing satisfaction.

  A long moment passed and then the shouting began. At first, shouts of alarm, and then some of panic. The blaze tore through the dry woods, leaping from tree to tree like a wave.

  As the Romans sat tensely, the first desperate warrior burst from the undergrowth. The look of relief on his face quickly slid away to be replaced once more by panic. Having escaped the dreadful fire sweeping through the thicket, he now found himself facing hundreds of angry Roman cavalrymen. He opened his mouth to shout a warning back into the woods and the first pilum caught him full in the face before he could issue a sound. The second pilum took him through the chest and hurled him back to the grass.

  ‘Don’t waste your throws! One at a time, and mark your man.’

  Another figure appeared from the woods, and then another. Quickly now, warriors began to emerge, some choking from the effects of the smoke that roiled under the green canopy. And yet it was less like a military action or even a punitive attack than like a hunt, or even a game. Not a single figure managed to break the tree line and walk four steps before he was hit by a pilum; sometimes two.

  The steady flow of men escaping the flames grew over a long moment and then began to decline. Certainly there must be a lot of corpses there by now. The front rows of cavalrymen had cast their javelins and more that had been passed from the rear ranks. Probably four hundred pila had gone. Allowing for wasteful throws and misses, there would likely be two hundred and fifty to three hundred barbarians littering the grass before the woods. Likely more had been consumed by the flames that were now visible. Almost the entire wood was ablaze at this point, and the firing units with their extinguished torches were now riding to rejoin their commander.

  Varus smiled coldly. On the assumption much the same had happened at the other side, behind them, that would be six or seven hundred dead barbarians. A fitting revenge for the hundred and fifty or so Roman dead below the hill. Caesar would be pleased, anyway.

  He waited until his men were ready and then gave the order to form up.

  Before he turned his horse away from the field, he gave a last regretful look at the littered heaps of men and horses. If only they could sort out a burial detail, but that was a job for the infantry, and after the danger was over. With a sigh he gave the command to return to camp.

  Prefect Lucilius gritted his teeth and briefly regretted accepting
command of the right flank. His thousand horsemen, almost entirely composed of Gaulish auxiliaries, stamped and snorted and chattered behind him. The other prefects and decurions watched him expectantly.

  Lucilius had commanded more than one ala of cavalry before. Indeed, at Vesontio last year, he had been one of Varus’ most favoured officers, but that was in battle. This seemed wrong. Cavalry were used as part of a grand battle plan or to harry and mop up. No Roman general in his right mind pitted cavalry alone against a solid enemy force with no infantry support.

  He shook his head. It was well known that Caesar thought in curves and not straight lines. The general assigned officers to largely permanent positions, which seemed to suit the infantry. He maintained a regular cavalry attached to his legions, which was unheard of, even among the great innovators like Marius and Scipio. But sometimes the general’s decisions seemed just a little too dangerous; even bordering on the insane.

  ‘How am I going to do this?’ he asked himself quietly, glad that the rest of his officers were far enough back to allow him thinking room.

  The terrain allowed for a safe riding width of perhaps seven or eight hundred paces; not much room to manoeuvre a large cavalry force, certainly. And even from here he could see the glistening and glinting of the streams and pools that dotted and crossed the grass. He offered a quick prayer to Fortuna that Varus knew what he was doing and that what faced him was just standing water and not swamp.

  So… how to arrange a trial assault on the Belgae on a narrow strip of land between a reedy river bank and a swamp; a narrow strip of land that might, itself, be marshy and treacherous. And all of this in front of a waiting force of Belgae who had a clear view of them coming. Caesar and Varus must be mad! And Lucilius must be an idiot for accepting this command.

  He frowned. On the bright side, given the narrowness of the assailable area, they would only be facing a thousand Belgae at a time. An idea was beginning to form. Turning, he waved to the nearest of his prefects, a thoroughly Romanised Aedui nobleman. The man rode out forward and joined him on the rise. In full Roman uniform, with short hair and a clean-shaven face, the slight accent to his Latin was the only thing that marked the prefect as a noncitizen. He had even taken a Roman name.