Again Fronto shook his head.
“No. This is a major fortress and if you look at the mud here you can see hundreds of tracks. The ground’s been churned up recently by a lot of people. They’ve got to be here somewhere. Perhaps there’s something down near the cliffs? A cave system or something? I’ve heard tell that they do that in the east; occupy cave systems. If so, Crispus’ men will find them soon enough.”
They suddenly became aware of shouting. Squinting into the fine mist of rain, Fronto spotted an optio waving from the edge of the grassy slope ahead, toward the sea; one of Crispus’ men from the Eleventh. The man waved both arms above his head and then pointed out to sea. Fronto felt his heart sink. Somehow, he knew what had happened. Gesturing at Carbo, he beckoned the general and the three men strode speedily between the storehouses and across the grassy headland toward the man.
They saw it before they caught up with the optio, as soon as they reached the area where the ground began to fall away down toward the cliffs. Ships. Dozens of dark, heavy ships, their huge rectangular sails unfurling as they watched, were making their way out toward the open sea, hundreds of jeering Gauls lining the rails and gesturing up at the Romans in the empty fortress.
Caesar, next to Fronto, stopped in his tracks, grinding his teeth in angry frustration.
“No.”
Fronto looked across at him.
“Brutus and the fleet can get them. Look… the triremes are already moving.”
The three men watched intently as other officers joined them at their vantage point. Behind them, three legions spread out across the stronghold, searching every inch.
Fronto found that he, too, had his teeth clenched as he watched the sea below. Despite the fact that the storm had died to a gentle drizzle, the sea still rose and fell dangerously, huge waves crashing against the rocks where they breached the surface. The Veneti galleys were moving slowly as yet, a mere hundred yards from the cliffs, their sails only just beginning to catch the wind, whereas Brutus’ ships, powered by banks of oars, were already tearing at high speed toward them.
“They can’t get away” Fronto noted as he watched. “There’s not enough time.”
Caesar nodded as he continued to peer down into the roiling waves in intent silence. Beside them, Carbo made a strange rumbling noise. Fronto turned, frowning, to look at his primus pilus. The man was shaking his head.
“What’s up?”
Carbo unstrapped his helmet and, removing it, mopped his brow.
“It’s not going to work. If the commander doesn’t pull his fleet back, they’re in trouble.”
“What?”
But instead of explaining, Carbo merely pointed to the lead trireme as it put on an extra burst of speed, bearing down on the escaping Veneti fleet. Fronto turned back to it and peered down.
“I don’t see…”
He fell silent as he watched the trireme meet the submerged rock shelf that surrounded the headland. There was a series of cracks and crunches as the oars hit rocks and shattered, followed by an almighty bang as the hull connected with the undulating shelf beneath the jagged pinnacles.
He watched in horror as the trireme foundered on the rocks, water rushing in through the broken hull. The crew panicked and began to abandon the ship, some diving blindly onto the rocks. Behind them, the rest of the fleet veered away sharply.
Fronto stared. “How is that possible?”
Carbo shrugged.
“It’s all about draft, sir. The hulls of the triremes are too deep beneath the surface to cross these rocks, and the oars are no use there.”
“But how do the Veneti do it then?”
“Their ships must be designed differently. A lower draft so that their ships can cross the rocks in safety. And if you look, sir, they’ve a much wider beam too.”
“Beam?” Fronto began to feel as though he was being toyed with.
“Yes sir. The beam is the width of the ship. Ours are deeper underwater and narrower in the beam. Theirs have a shallow draft, which allows them to approach the coast easily, but that would make them less stable at sea, so they’ve counteracted that with a wide beam so that they remain the right way up even in strong waves. Quite clever really. They’ve adapted their shipbuilding style to the conditions they live in.”
As they watched, the Veneti fleet was already leaving the rocky area beyond the cliffs and making for open sea, their sails billowing.
“It’s not over yet” Caesar noted, watching as the Roman fleet, now carefully avoiding the rocks, began to head out to sea.
Again, Carbo shook his head sadly.
“They’re actually moving faster than our ships at the moment. Once they get out into those heavy waves our triremes will be in extreme danger. They’ll capsize and break up in those conditions. If commander Brutus doesn’t turn them back before they’re half a mile out, we’ll lose the fleet.”
Fronto frowned at his senior centurion.
“You seem to know a lot about this?”
“I wasn’t always a soldier, sir. I grew up in Ancona. My dad was a shipbuilder, sir.”
Fronto raised his eyebrow. This man never failed to surprise him.
“What’s the answer then, Carbo? How do we stop them?”
The primus pilus sighed, his shoulders drooping.
“I’m not entirely sure that we can, sir. Catching them’s possible, but it’s a matter of surprising them and trapping them in a harbour with deep enough water that we can get our own ships to them, while they can’t escape past us.”
Fronto nodded and suddenly became aware that the general was at his shoulder, paying close attention.
“Go on, centurion” the general said. “You say we could catch them, but that is not enough?”
Carbo scratched his head. “I’m not sure, sir. The thing is, even from this far away you can see the difference in size and construction of the ships. Their hulls are much higher and thicker than ours; they have to be to withstand the conditions of the sea here.”
“So?” Fronto prodded.
“Well sir… if their ships are, say, six feet higher at deck level than ours how would we get a boarding ramp across to them? There’s no realistic way of doing it, which renders boarding impossible. That, in turn, means the marines are useless and can’t get aboard the enemy.”
“Then we sink them and pick them out of the water.”
Again, Carbo shook his head.
“Solid oak. Very thick hull. I doubt our rams would go through it. If one of our fleet hit their ships at ramming speed, I would give even chances that it would be our trireme that sank and not them.”
Caesar’s teeth began to grind again.
“Are you suggesting that the fleet is unlikely to catch the enemy and effectively powerless to deal with them even if they did?”
Carbo nodded.
“Unless the commander can come up with something that helps turn the odds his way.”
The three men raised their eyes to the distance once more. The Veneti fleet were already out among the choppy waves and Brutus’ fleet, having begun to buck and roll with the sea, had slowed their pursuit.
Caesar turned his angry gaze to Fronto.
“Get the legions back to the mainland, dismantle the artillery and, when Brutus puts in an appearance, tell him to get out there and track them. I don’t care how he does it, but I want to know where that Veneti fleet goes, so that when they land we can deal with them properly.”
Fronto nodded and turned to Carbo.
“You heard the general. Get the Tenth on the move.”
“Yessir.”
Fronto gazed out once more at the distant, retreating sails of the Veneti. He had engaged defiant people before who had fought until the last man stood, and had dealt with tribes who had surrendered in order to preserve their culture. He’d never dealt with a tribe that refused to engage them and simply slipped out of the back door when the might of Rome came knocking. This was going to be problematical.
; Chapter 7
(Maius: Off the coast of Gaul some five miles north of Corsicum)
Brutus pinched the bridge of his nose as the trierarch’s fierce gaze bored into him.
“Just do it.”
“As you say, commander.”
The ship’s captain turned his piercing blue eyes away from the staff officer back to his second on deck, periodically calling out the timing for the oarsmen.
“Signal the fleet to move into bull horns formation and as soon as the ships are in position, give me attack speed.”
“Aye, sir”
The trierarch turned back to Brutus and glared. The young officer had chosen the Aurora as his flagship solely because it had been the first trireme to be completed and the first he had sailed on. He was beginning to regret choosing one with such a headstrong and outspoken captain and, while he knew that he had the authority to shut the man up, remove him from command, or even have him disciplined, he had not the heart, since he knew with every ounce of his being that the man was absolutely right.
“You are aware, commander, that this is inviting disaster?”
Brutus nodded unhappily.
“Sadly, captain, I have my orders and therefore so do you. Whatever else we do and whatever the result, we have to try.”
The comment did nothing to lift the disapproval from the man’s gaze as the other ships in the fleet pulled into a flattened crescent shape some three or four vessels deep.
“Execute the plan.”
Brutus took a deep breath. It was a long shot, for certain. In fact, it was several long shots and made him nervous just thinking about it, particularly given that it was a plan of his own devising. Still, none of the experienced naval officers could come up with a better solution.
The ‘horns’ of the bull on the outer points of the crescents were formed of the quinqueremes, the heaviest warships in the fleet. Their initial task was to sweep in as pincers and to take the edge of the Veneti fleet, effectively sealing them in and, hopefully, given their size and weight, to sink a few with the rams. While this happened, the rest of the fleet would close, the rear lines spreading out to encircle the enemy.
Brutus found that he was uttering a silent prayer to Juno, the family’s patron deity. The Veneti fleet, almost twice as many vessels as his own, drifted along at a gentle speed as though they had not a care in the world and it was both frustrating and worrying. The Veneti were clearly a clever and resourceful people and to let Brutus’ fleet descend on them was extremely out of character. Was it a trap somehow? He couldn’t see how. They were too far from the headlands for the Veneti to have hidden surprises, while trying to stay close enough to land to avoid the worst of the seas, even in this soggy lull in the weather.
It was foolish and worrying.
During his last meeting with Caesar, which had not gone well, he’d managed to argue himself into a corner. When Fronto had passed on his orders to track the Veneti, he’d been to see the general to point out that that job could be done just as effectively by scouts on the cliffs without endangering the ships. Caesar had rounded on him angrily, asking what use the ships were then, and by the time he’d left the tent, his new orders were to launch an attack.
The fleet closed on the Veneti and he swallowed nervously. If they could get the Veneti pinned they might stand a chance, the crews had spent the previous evening constructing platforms at the prow in order to raise the height of the ‘corvus’ boarding bridge and therefore overcome the difference in deck height. It looked uncomfortably precarious to Brutus, but no other solution had leapt to mind.
Glancing to left and right from his commanding position, he watched the horns of the bull closing on the Veneti and something caught his attention. The enemy fleet had thinned out at the periphery. In fact, as he scanned the Gaulish mass, the entire fleet had thinned. A huge proportion of the fleet of ships had begun to break away, altering their huge leather sails to fill with the billowing wind and picking up speed, heading for the coast.
Even as he watched, more and more clumps of vessels began to pick up speed and move away. It was like watching patches of ice breaking away in a fast stream, and the truly irritating thing was that, despite the Roman ships moving at attack speed, the Veneti vessels were fleeing the scene even faster.
He frowned.
Why, then, had they clearly left a few of their fleet at the mercy of the Romans. As more and more of the enemy broke away, it became obvious that they had left six… no… eight ships with their sails sagging, waiting to be overcome. What strange trap was this? Could the vessels be about to be fired? Disease ridden by design? Something was wrong.
He was about to begin shouting, giving the order to call off the attack, when he realised that there were still Veneti standing at the rails of the ships. Why would they leave their own men?
Brutus was without answer as the quinqueremes on the flanks closed on the two outer enemy vessels that remained, drifting alone as the rest of the fleet swept away from them.
Unable to find a convincing reason to halt the attack, he watched, mystified, as the engagement, such as it was, began. The quinquereme on the left flank; the Celerimus, he believed, swept forth with a final surge and a roar from the ranks of rowers, and ploughed into the side of their target vessel.
Brutus shook his head, realising what had happened before the scene fully unfolded. The trierarch of the Roman vessel had done nothing wrong, but the Veneti had allowed their ship to drift just slightly, putting it at a slight angle. The ram on the roman vessel slammed into the heavy oak hull but, rather than punching through and disabling the enemy, the ships came to a mutual halt with a resounding crash and men and goods were thrown around the decks. The ram had broken timbers, but had then glanced off and slid along the hull harmlessly, leaving the boarding bridge pointing out to open sea.
The enemy crew were laughing at them, Brutus realised, as the Gauls raised their sail and began to gather the wind to move away. Silently, he willed the captain of the Celerimus to pull the disaster around and, as he watched, the quinquereme changed angle and tried to face the enemy ship long enough to drop the corvus, which was already manned. There was, he realised, no chance of this happening successfully. The oarsmen had begun to row, trying to manoeuvre the heavy Roman vessel, but it just took too long to pick up speed in the circumstances, while the swift Veneti ship that had been their target began to open the distance between them, disappearing toward the land with a bulging sail and laughing crew.
Brutus felt the pain behind his eyes coming back and pinched the bridge of his nose again.
“Signal the fleet to break off.”
He opened his eyes again, already knowing what he was going to see and dreading it.
Sure enough, two other Roman vessels had closed on the enemy, one on the opposite flank and one close by in the centre of the formation. As they lunged forward, trying to ram and with the corvus swinging and ready to drop, the Veneti ships shifted their sails, caught the wind, and swiftly moved out of the way.
There was no trap. Quite simply, the Veneti had known from the start that they were safe from the Roman fleet, but were testing not only the tactics of their hated oppressors, but also their abilities. The answer was almost embarrassing. Without something new, nothing in the arsenal of Roman naval experience was going to be able to make a dent on the Veneti fleet. The Gauls were toying with them, batting them on the nose and then dancing out of reach.
He turned to catch the accusing glare of the trierarch.
“Yes, I know. Signal the fleet to follow them. When they put to shore, we need to find a useable harbour somewhere nearby and keep a squadron at a time out there, making sure the Veneti stay still. As soon as they’re ashore and we’ve got them under surveillance, I’m heading back to the general to report.”
The captain nodded quietly and Brutus ground his teeth. Caesar was unlikely to be sympathetic.
Brutus sighed as the general let his glare slip slowly away. Caesar had said nothing, b
ut his expression had said more than the harshest words.
“Very well… We are in the same position as we were before we marched on Corsicum. The only advantages we have this time are that we know what their tactics are likely to be and the fleet is there and will be able to at least try and hold the enemy fleet in.
“Weather allowing” Brutus added quietly, unwilling to raise his eyes to meet the general’s sharp glance.
“Solutions, gentlemen. We now know the situation of this next fortress. It is similar to the last, but with narrower coves opening to the sea on either side of the headland. Is there some way we can speed up the whole procedure and not be at the mercy of nature and her damn tides?”
Tetricus cleared his throat next to Fronto.
“We can stop the legions out of sight of the fortress, general; assemble as much of the artillery as possible so that it will require considerably less time to put them in position and find the range. If we then send scouts ahead as we start to move, they can locate a good place for an artillery platform and direct the engineers there. If we do it right, we can have the artillery pounding the enemy in a fraction of the normal time. The surprise could give us an edge and buy us time.”
The general nodded slowly and appreciatively.
“Surprise is clearly important. If they have too much time to plan, we could end up with a repeat of Corsicum, or worse. We shall keep the legions from moving into sight until we are ready. Let’s keep them guessing and off guard. What else?”
Balbus frowned.
“Tetricus? Can you split your fire when you’re set up and drop some of your shots into the centre of the fortress?”
“I can, but won’t it be a waste of shots we could be directing against the walls?”
Balbus smiled and scratched his bald head.
“If we’re trying to prevent them from having too much time and leisure to plan, the confusion created by being under random fire across the place could be useful.”
Caesar nodded again.
“Do it. Next?”
“Dams.”
The general turned his head to the voice off in the recess of the command tent. Mamurra, the engineer who had joined the staff in the spring, stepped into the circle of light.
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