“Second stage!”
In a fluid move, a dozen legionaries along the length of the wall reached out and grasped the burning torches that had been used to ignite the arrows and climbed up to the parapet. As they emerged above, the huge Gallic army was already pouring across the filled ditches. Each legionary took careful aim, identifying a spot where a gap opened up and casting their torches almost in unison.
The flaming missiles dropped among the Gauls who were too consumed by a combination of exhaustion and desperate blood lust to pay too much attention to a small number of falling weapons. The flaming torches landed among the dry brush infill beneath their feet and it took only moments for the fire to catch, wood and dried undergrowth spitting into orange life and spreading the fire rapidly. Within moments a swathe in the midst of the huge army was consumed by the roaring inferno, a small number of men trapped between the burning ditches and the rampart.
“Third and Fourth stage! Sally!”
At the command, the crouched legionaries rose up along the wall and began to cast their first pilum down into the ranks of yelling Gauls. In places along the ramparts, pockets of the less exhausted enemy managed to reach the palisade, climbing the slope and thrusting upward with spears or delivering heavy, scything overhead blows with their swords.
The number of men who had reached the wall in any state to commit to action was small, however, and the legionary defenders had little trouble holding them back, pushing them away from the palisade and stabbing at them with their second pila where they could. The massive bulk of the enemy were still contained between the ditches that now roared with deadly fire, and the wall of burning pitch and grass behind them, the narrow causeway across the ditches that led to the north gate filled with howling Gauls trying to reach the Roman palisade without falling into the raging inferno to either side.
Sabinus offered up thanks to the Gods once again that the rain had held off for so many days. What they would have done if this morning had brought a downpour, he couldn’t imagine, but things would likely be looking a great deal bleaker.
The flanks of the Gaulish force were already attempting to separate from the trapped mass, moving around the slope, trying to escape the burning traps afore and aft, and make their way into clear land around the other sides of the hill. At a call from the buccina, however, the east and west gates of the camp opened and the slow, deliberate stomping feet of thousands of legionaries issued forth.
The Twelfth remained at the wall and throughout the rest of the camp, dealing with those men who managed to find their way as far as the walls without burning, while the Ninth and Fourteenth exited the gate and moved in formation, shield walls solid and strong, around the edge of the defences and toward the Gauls as they spilled out from the flaming trap.
“Advance!” called centurions around the hillside, and the wall of armoured men rumbled slowly into the mass of fleeing Gauls, coming to a halt as further commands were issued. The Ninth and Fourteenth now contained the enemy in a space between them and the walls of flame, holding their shield walls as an impenetrable barrier and hacking and stabbing at those who came close enough.
The effect of the trap was impressive, and Sabinus smiled from his position atop the defences. The combination of exhaustion, frustration, and terrified surprise, had turned the mood of the enemy in moments from vicious lust to desperate panic. Far from the unprepared Romans, busy trying to de-camp and move off, that the Gauls had expected, they had, instead, run straight into a deadly mix of steel and fire.
“Surrender and mercy will be considered!” bellowed Sabinus, his words deliberately ambiguous. He was well aware of the danger that would be inherent in accepting a surrender and leaving an intact army behind them with only the word of their leaders for assurance.
Calls went up from among the mass and for a strange moment, the fighting stopped, everything falling silent and still, bar the roaring of the flames.
Sabinus readied himself. He would offer harsh terms for their surrender, but it had to be still within the realm of acceptability. He had them now, but if they really wished, there were still enough of them that they could break through the trap at an awful cost and crush the defenders. Terms had to be preferable to the losses they would incur if they continued.
A loud voice called something out in the local language and Sabinus watched in astonishment as the speaker, a nobleman judging by his dress and equipment, threw down his sword in a gesture of surrender, only to have his head removed by a sudden, scything blow from the man beside him. The act of defiance did something to the crowd and Sabinus could only stare in disbelief as the Gallic army flowed like a sea crashing against the rocks, those flanks that had been contained by the legions pulling back in.
The warriors at the rear, contained by the burning pitch and holding themselves desperately back from the roaring flames, were suddenly pushed, screaming, into the inferno by their comrades, the fire rapidly extinguishing with the sheer weight of men being thrown into the flames.
As he stared in horror, he saw the rear flaming wall of the trap put out by the sizzling, melting fat of a human carpet, and the mass of ‘free Gauls’ running back down the hill toward the distant gates of their city, trampling their dead and dying comrades as they fled.
He turned his sickened gaze away to Galba.
“I cannot decide whether that was a stunningly brave act of tribal preservation, or an atrocious act of barbarism.”
Galba nodded soberly.
“We have to deal with them now, sir, while they’re tired and on the run. If we give them a chance to catch their breath and reform, we’re in trouble.”
“Indeed. Can’t let them fortify against us. Have the general advance sounded. Let’s chase them down.”
Cantorix sighed and turned to look over the parapet once more. It had taken the rebellious tribes a matter of only a few hours to argue among themselves as to what to do about the Roman threat, to reach the conclusion that they had to be dealt with before they could leave and join Caesar’s army, and then to put their plan into action. Cantorix and his companions were untrustworthy foreigners to them and had spent that time safely locked in a dark, oppressive room deep in the oppidum, two men guarding the door.
When, just after first light, the leaders had finally assembled their men at the gate of Crociatonum and goaded them into a killing frenzy, the presence of the foreigners seemed to have been entirely forgotten, or at least ignored, the guards joining the attack and leaving the fifteen ‘Veneti’ refugees locked in their prison and unattended.
Given the background and dubious skills of some of these men, it had come as no surprise to Cantorix that someone had the lock undone and the door open within half a minute of the army leaving, the sound of bellowing violence dying away as the enormous force charged away up the hill.
Briefly the centurion had considered calling the unit to order and going to join the fight, but the sheer lunacy of the notion soon imposed itself as he recalled the throng of thousands of angry warriors and weighed it against the relative size of his small force. At least the enemy had not seen fit to drag the strangers along with them, as it would have been hard for his men to identify themselves before the general and his legions skewered them.
Instead, he had made his way to the gate and climbed to the walkway above where he would observe the action as best he could. Though they must be two miles away at the Roman defences, he could safely assume that the battle proper had started by now.
As he appeared over the parapet, he noted spots of flickering yellow flame appear in the haze, punctuating the rear of the distant Gallic force, a grey homogenous mass at this distance.
The other legionaries, whom he had allowed to go about their business, had begun to enter the various buildings around them, looting anything they could carry. Cantorix turned his gaze from the distant battle and glanced back down along the main thoroughfare toward the house where they’d so recently been kept. One of the legionaries left a doorway, st
aggering under the weight of his spoils and almost bumped into a companion, similarly burdened.
It would have been comic under other circumstances. The centurion, however, was too tense to smile. Each time he saw a figure within the walls of the oppidum, he had to frown for a moment, worrying whether it was truly one of his men, dressed Gallic style, or a stray local who had been left behind. The oppidum seemed, though, to have completely emptied, as the rebel army moved on their hated enemy. At least it appeared that the rebel Gauls had moved their women and children somewhere else and used this ‘city’ as a staging post for war, else the houses would still be packed with nervous non-combatant Gauls.
“Sir?”
He blinked and concentrated his gaze in the direction of the voice. One of the men was waving from a house a few doors down from their erstwhile cell.
Cantorix squinted.
The man was carrying a different burden to those of his mates; a body, draped across his arms and hanging limp, at least one limb mangled and beyond use, the horrible wounding evident even from up here. The figure was decked in a drab tunic that had once been red.
The centurion shook his head sadly. The officers had charged them to be on the lookout for a tribune from the Ninth by the name of Gallus that had been sent to these tribes months ago.
“Get him on a cart or a pallet. We’ll have to take him back to the officers when it’s all over. How long has he been dead?”
The man shrugged, a difficult manoeuvre under the weight of the body.
“Not long. Maybe a few days. He was messed up badly first, though.”
Again, the centurion shook his head. The barbarians had kept him alive all this time, torturing and beating him, keeping him in case he became of use, but the arrival of general Sabinus and his army had diminished the need for hostages and Gallus had become superfluous.
“Get him…”
His voice tailed off as his eyes had strayed casually back to the view over the parapet and widened. The centurion choked and scrambled to his feet.
“Drop everything! Legionaries of the Fourteenth, form on me!”
Without waiting for an answer, he leaped down the stairs that descended the wall’s inner face three at a time, dropping the last seven or eight feet, his knees bent against the impact.
He was gratified that, despite the unsavoury nature of his unit, the past year of service had drilled the necessity of discipline into the men and, without question, the legionaries had dropped their plunder and hurried to the open space before the gate.
“What is it, Centurion? We was only lootin’ the enemy. The general encourages that!”
Cantorix waved the comment aside as he stood, rubbing his jarred knee.
“Get that gate closed.”
“Sir?”
“The Unelli are on the way back! Get the sodding gate closed or you’re going to be knee deep in your own blood.”
As he shouted, the centurion was already scanning the area, picking out anything they might use to brace the huge wooden portal. Fortunately, the Unelli seemed to be somewhat lacking in keeping their streets tidy, and various broken timbers, long beams, shutters, and ramshackle animal pens littered the settlement.
As the legionaries rushed past him to close the gate, he grabbed one of them by the shoulder and gestured to him and three others.
“You four go get some beams and timber; biggest and strongest you can find and carry them back to the gate. We’ve got maybe five minutes before that lot get here.”
As the men ran off about their task, Cantorix turned to see the other ten men busy heaving the heavy gates closed, their shoulders to the timber, grunting and groaning as they pushed. Nodding with tense satisfaction, he strode across to them.
“Alright. You men: get those bars across and locked down. Idocus and Dannos, get running round the walls in both directions. I didn’t see any other gates, and I doubt there’s much, but we can’t ignore the possibility there’s another way in. Be quick, cause we’ll need you.”
The two men ran like hares along the inner face of the oppidum’s defences, searching for posterns or other main exits, and Cantorix took a deep breath. Four minutes, he thought as he made himself breathe calmly. The remaining eight men had easily manoeuvred two heavy oak bars across the gate and into their cradles, bars designed to protect the Unelli against the Romans… an irony not lost on the centurion.
“Alright. Two of you get up on that parapet. I want to know when they pass the quarter mile and around two hundred yards.”
As the force split once more, Cantorix nodded and rubbed his temples.
“Four more of you gather any stones or anything heavy or pointed you could drop on the enemy and fill some of these abandoned baskets. Get them up on the wall. You’ve got four minutes to shift as much ammunition as you can.”
As they ran off, the remaining four legionaries turned to him.
“Good” he said, rubbing his hands. “Now go find anything heavy and strong you can use to help brace the gates.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his tired eyes, he wished he’d felt relaxed enough during the previous night to have slept in their prison, like some of the more conscience-free of his companions. Exhaustion was no good in a soldier, but in a commander during a battle it was potentially catastrophic and therefore unforgivable. He turned to see the four men he’d sent off first approaching with a long, heavy oak beam, struggling under the weight.
“Good. Let’s get it into position.”
He hurried over to help the men and between the five of them, they manoeuvred the beam into position.
“It ain’t gonna hold against a push, sir.”
Cantorix nodded and pointed at the floor, drawing a line in the dust with the toe of his boot.
“Dig a pit over a foot deep there and when you’ve done, slide the beam across and jam it into the hole. That’s about as braced as we can get. I’d like to see anyone short of Hercules shift that.”
As the four men lowered the end of the beam to the dust and began to dig the pit with their heavy, Gallic, knives, Cantorix turned to see the others carrying various beams and poles.
“Follow this example. Let’s have that gate harder to move than the walls either side.”
A voice above called something and the centurion looked up, holding his hands out, palms up while he shrugged.
“Quarter mile or less” the soldier shouted again.
“Shit.”
He fretted again, rubbing his face as the legionaries hauled rocks and chunks of timber up to the wall top, dug small pits and sunk great beams into them. Time was hardly on their side.
“Can you see what’s happened up at the camp?”
There was a brief pause and then the legionary shouted again.
“Looks like the enemy are panicked. Our lads are chasing them down, but slower. I think the three legions are all on the way behind them, but one bunch is way off at the back.”
“Probably ours” muttered Cantorix. “Alright. Get ready. We’ll have to hold this gate for about five minutes. After that the enemy’ll be in enough trouble with the rest of the lads pounding on them without worrying about us.”
He shook his head.
“Right. Everyone in position. Four men on the walls with the rocks. Rest of us hold the gate steady.”
He looked up.
“Shout if you’re in trouble.”
Without listening further, Cantorix ran forward to the gate. Constructed of heavy oak, the timber was almost entirely flush fitting, with precious few cracks and openings.
“Don’t lean into the gate yet, ‘cause you’ll just exhaust yourself, but be prepared. If you see a bracing beam giving way a little, get on it and reinforce it; hold it down. If you hear a shout from the lads above, get up there and help. Otherwise, keep your eye on any holes in the timber. If you can jab a blade through it and do some damage, get it done. No throwing yourself into anything. This is about holding on long enough for the rest of the a
rmy to do their job.”
“Brace yourself” one of the men above bellowed.
“Here they come.”
The sound of the panicked Gaulish army desperately trying to retreat to the safety of their suddenly inaccessible oppidum was immense, a roar and babble of shouts, mixed with the thumping of feet, the crash of metal and wood and screams from the few unlucky enough to fall and be trampled.
Cantorix closed his eyes and offered up a quick prayer to Mars, Fortuna, Minerva… and to Belenus and Nodens too, just in case.
The initial blow as the mass of the enemy threw themselves against the gate was as impressive as any forceful charge the centurion had seen. Despite the heavy timber of the construction and the two cross beams in their cradles, both gates shifted inwards by more than a foot, the bracing beams creaking and jumping in their earthen sockets.
“Bloody hell!” shouted one of the men in front of him and Cantorix couldn’t find a better expletive at that moment.
He threw his gaze around to take in the top walkway that had actually shaken under the blow, the dust and dirt that had fallen, dislodged from above, and the fact that the very walls had given a tiny amount to either side of the gate, earth slipping out and pouring to the ground from the timber-framed, soil-packed fortification.
“Swords” he bellowed, and the men under his command began to jab their blades through any hole they could find in sharp, swift blows, so as not to allow the weapons to become jammed.
The centurion leaned back and scratched his head as the second huge blow came, the gates shaking and releasing yet more dirt. With a loud retort, a thin crack appeared across one of the huge cross beams. Impressive. He’d seen similar results with a battering ram, but with shoulders and muscle alone? They must be desperate.
“Crap, I hope the legions hurry up.”
Pounding feet behind him made him turn. Dannos came to a halt, dropping his hands to his knees and breathing in deep gasps, Idocus close behind him.
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