by R. W. Peake
“That's going to be a real bastard to take,” Calienus announced quietly.
Even with the ramparts in the way, we could look past them and see the town spread out on the slope rising toward the crest, perched there as if daring us to attack it. We newer men took a cue from the mood of the veterans, knowing that if they were not enthused about the prospects, we certainly should not be ourselves. Nobody answered him; there was not much to say about it. The town was there, meaning it had to be taken because it had not surrendered and we could not leave its inhabitants in our rear as we marched further north.
We should have had more faith in Caesar, because he immediately saw that the very feature that the Gallaeci were counting on, their position on the side of the hill, was also their biggest weakness. The shelf on which the town was built was perhaps two-thirds up the side of the hill, leaving higher ground above them. The opposite slope of the hill was extremely steep, a feature that the Gallaeci were undoubtedly counting on as being precipitous enough so that nobody would try to climb it in order to take a position above the town. They did not account for Caesar’s determination and imagination, because that is exactly what he did, or we did. Word was sent out among us asking for those men with experience in scaling such slopes, and from our two Legions was assembled an ad hoc group about two Cohorts strong. They were assigned the task of sneaking out of the camp at night, carrying not just extra javelins, but a number of the scorpions and one of the smaller ballistae that was broken down, then stealthily making their way to the back side of the hill. Using the darkness as cover, they scaled the steep slope of the back side, despite losing almost a dozen men who lost their footing and fell to their deaths, dragging the artillery behind them and using ropes to pull the pieces up. About two thirds of the watch before dawn, the rest of us were given the order to assemble in battle array outside our camp, located less than a mile from the town and in clear sight of the Gallaeci standing on the walls looking down on us as the sun rose. They were greeted by the sight of two Legions arrayed for an assault on the town, minus the two mixed Cohorts who were at that moment just getting into position and reassembling the artillery. Meanwhile, the rest of our artillery deployed and were ready to begin the bombardment of the walls to create a breach. The veterans had assured us that, despite the apparent greater strength of a stone wall, it is actually easier to knock it down with artillery than a wooden wall is, because there is no give in the rock, making it more brittle. Despite finding this hard to believe, we had learned to trust their judgment on these matters since they were seldom wrong. From our formation, Caesar sent another Tribune under a flag of truce, except this time with an armed escort, none of us forgetting what happened at the first town. That group approached the walls and began to parley with the Gallaeci in the town. We were ordered to keep our eyes turned on the exchange at the gate; Caesar did not want anything to betray the surprise being prepared above and behind them, since some observant Gallaeci who noticed that our heads were turned to the top of the hill might get suspicious. Still, most of us, myself included, kept our heads turned to the parley, but nevertheless watched the top of the hill out of the corner of our eye.
“There they are,” someone called out, and although it took me a few heartbeats, I saw a group of men, barely more than dots, appear on the crest of the hill followed moments later by larger shapes as they assembled the artillery pieces. Finally one of the men on top of the hill waved what appeared to be a flag as some sort of signal, which the Tribune negotiating with the Gallaeci had obviously been waiting for, because he immediately pointed up to our force on the hill.
The battle for the town was over before it really began. Once the Gallaeci saw our men on top of the hill, with our artillery pointing down at them, they did not even need a couple of projectiles thrown their way to convince them that they were finished. They accepted the terms that the Tribune was offering almost immediately, except they still had one trick to play, as we were about to find out. Regardless of what lay in the immediate future, all of us who were going to be assaulting that town heaved a huge sigh of relief; for once, the idea of survival outweighed the lure of plunder and when the surrender was announced, we all cheered heartily. Meanwhile, the Gallaeci continued haggling with the Tribune about minor details, something the Tribune was too inexperienced to recognize as a ploy. Finally, Caesar grew impatient when none of the enemy came out of the town to surrender, prompting he and his command group to ride over to the Tribune, whereupon Caesar began pointing and gesturing at both the Tribune and the Gallaeci who were still standing on the wall above the gate.
“Something’s wrong,” Scribonius mused, “or else Caesar wouldn't be so worked up.”
As we watched, Caesar jerked his horse around and came galloping back to the formation, giving orders for the artillery to open fire and focus on the gate. This sudden reversal swept through the ranks and we began to talk amongst ourselves, speculating on what could have happened.
“Silete!”
The Pilus Prior seemed more irritable than usual, and I wondered if even he was beginning to get nervous about what was going on. With the artillery all concentrating their fire on the gate, it did not take long before it crashed open, one of the doors hanging by what appeared to be a thread from a distance. Immediately afterwards, the bucina and cornu sounded the advance at the double and the First Cohort peeled away, jogging towards the gates, followed by us, then the rest of the Legion.
“Keep your intervals you bastards,” roared the Pilus Prior as we drew closer, our eyes fastened on the parapets, waiting for men to suddenly pop up and start bombarding us with missiles. Fortunately it never happened; the First Cohort went sweeping through, followed by us immediately behind them, they fanning out to the left as planned, us fanning out to the right. Immediately we noticed that the area of the town surrounding the gate seemed to be deserted, except for a few old men and women, along with some people who looked infirm and weak. This town was arranged in such a manner that it was laid out in two levels; the original part of the town was built on the shelf of the hill and was fairly level, then as it grew, a second level had gotten added that was built further up the slopes of the hill. After a quick search of the lower town, we huffed and puffed up the narrow streets to the second level, finding only more old and sick people. All of these we put to the sword since they held no value as slaves.
It turned out that the only able-bodied men left were the few men on the parapet above the gate negotiating with first the Tribune, then with Caesar. As we descended back down, we saw them by the gate, bound and on their knees, surrounded by the officers and some of the senior Centurions. Despite their state, they looked up at the men surrounding them with defiant expressions, a couple of them even smiling, like they had won some sort of victory, which in a sense they had. It was only after one of them was summarily executed that the others began to talk, finally explaining how the inhabitants of a town, not only combatants but all of the citizens who lived there that could walk, had vanished. One of the men indicated a street that was very hard to spot, branching off the larger street on the side of the town nearest the ocean that led up to the upper town. Because of the stone construction, it blended in as part of the wall that the street followed and was not really visible until you were almost on top of it. Sending a Cohort down the road, they came to a sheltered cove, where the boats that had hauled the people across the river had been moored. With the upper part of the hill above this spot dropping off into a sheer face more than a hundred feet above the water, the approach to the drop was so steep that the men on top of the hill had no way to get close enough to look down and see the harbor. It turned out that even before the sun came up to shine on our army ready to assault the town, the Gallaeci had determined that there was no real way to stop us from taking it. Our reputation preceded us and they knew that we would not just go away until the town fell and once it did, all the people in it would suffer a terrible fate. Therefore, as soon as the sun went down, they
began evacuating the place and the only reason the men on the parapet seemed to have a change of heart and ceded the town was because the last of the boats had just pulled away. By the time the last boat that left after the sun came up reached a point where they might have been seen by our men on the hill, their attention was turned completely on the town, this being when Caesar gave the order to make ready to fire on the town with their artillery. Despite ourselves, we held a grudging admiration for the guile and skill of the Gallaeci, even if it meant that we would have to face these same men again.
The town was sacked, except there was little of value left behind, and we were immediately given orders to break camp to resume our pursuit of the Gallaeci. Those Gallaeci who remained behind to stall us were tortured, but it became clear that they did not know where their compatriots were headed. Since they were under no illusion that they would escape their situation alive, there was no need for them to know where the rest of the tribe was headed. This was not good news, because it meant that we were forced to march along the coast, which in this part of Hispania is extremely hilly. While giving us a commanding view of the ocean and the area ahead, it also meant that our pace was considerably slowed, no matter how hard Caesar pushed us. The end of the campaign season was rapidly approaching, betrayed by the cooler nights and shorter days, and it was our baggage train that slowed us the most. At some point every man found himself, his shoulder hard up against the back of a wagon, pushing with all their might as the mules and oxen struggled to pull their load up each hill. In many ways, however, going down the hill presented more risk, since there was a danger of a wagon being too heavy for the beasts to control, so we would use ropes attached to the back of the wagon and act as a multi-man brake to keep the wagon from careening out of control down the hill and smashing into other wagons or our comrades. Despite it being a little more than 30 miles from the town to the spot where we finally caught sight of the Gallaeci, it still took the better part of four days to cover the distance.
When we finally found them, there was a collective groan from the entire army. Our scouts had come rushing back with some sort of news, but it was not until we crested a hill and looked down on what lay before us that we in the ranks saw what we were facing. There was a bay, with a deep inlet that crossed in front of us, cutting some few miles deep into the land, the bulk of Hispania being to our right. Out in the bay were a number of islands, three small ones arranged in a row, crossing to our front perpendicular to our line of march, all clearly deserted. Farther out past that were a pair of islands, arranged parallel to our direction, and much larger. One of them appeared to be deserted as well but even from a distance, the second island, even farther away, was clearly inhabited because of the smoke rising above it that signaled the presence of people. We had to make a sharp right turn in order to follow the inlet around to a point where we were opposite the larger islands and as we drew closer, more details appeared. The larger of the two islands is shaped like a crescent, with the open end facing away from us and on the low hills of the island we could see fortifications. There were a large number of boats of varying sizes pulled up onto the beach opposite where we stood and it did not take a military expert to know that this is where the Gallaeci had fled from the town. To make matters worse, soon after we arrived opposite the first island the scouts came back to inform us that further north, perhaps ten miles ahead, was another island that was fortified in a similar manner. We stood watching the low hills of the first island as the command group conferred and the mood was apprehensive, to put it mildly. Very few of us had any experience on the water, making the idea of getting in boats to be ferried over to either of these islands unappealing in the extreme. However, Caesar was not to be denied, and in truth, it did not make sense for us not to finish the job so we resigned ourselves to our fate and waited to see what we were supposed to do.
Our mounted scouts scoured the area of the inlet, along with another inlet opposite the second island, yet could not find any craft large or seaworthy enough to ferry us across the water to either island.
“Maybe he’ll call off an attack,” Vibius said hopefully, a sentiment that I answered with a snort of dismissal.
“Not very likely. We’ve just marched across the entire length of Hispania; do you really think Caesar is going to be denied now?”
Despite not liking what I said, neither could he argue and he knew it, just answering with a shake of his head as he viewed the expanse of water with trepidation. Caesar’s answer to the lack of boats was simple; we would make them. Once again we found ourselves finding, felling and dragging back trees that the engineers deemed suitable for our purposes. There were men with experience in shipbuilding who were put in charge of the work, with the rest of the Legions supplying the manual labor. It took a full week, and was done far enough up the inlet that results of our labor was not visible to the Gallaeci on the islands. While we were involved in this work, those Gallaeci that for whatever reason had not joined their comrades on the island did whatever they could to delay us, most commonly attempting to fire the boats at night. They managed to burn one, so after that raid we kept a constant vigil, forcing a lot of us who worked all day to go without much sleep at night as we stood guard. Despite the Gallaeci’s attempts, the work progressed until we had a dozen flat-bottomed barges, each of them able to hold two Centuries and an artillery piece. Meanwhile, the command group worked out the plan for the assault, deciding that our best chance was to cross at night, something that became a symbol of Caesar’s, the sudden movement that the enemy did not expect. However, a night attack requires a huge amount of coordination and not a little luck but as we were to learn, almost as much as his skill, Caesar was renowned for his good fortune and he never hesitated putting his faith in it during tough times. The 10th was chosen to lead the assault, with the First through Fourth Cohorts designated as the first group the boats would take across, and the decision was made to attack in three days’ time, there being no moon starting that night, a sword that cut both ways. It would make our approach harder to detect, but it also meant that the chances of a mistake were much greater. To help guide us a small group of men, using a boat commandeered from somewhere that was small enough to be harder to detect, would row over to the island the night before the assault, then remain hidden during the day. On the next night, at a pre-appointed time, they would light a shielded lantern on the beach only detectable from our spot out on the water to help guide us in. To further the subterfuge, the boats would not be brought down the inlet until after dark, requiring us to hurry to load up then row across to the island, using the lamp as our guide. It would require a minimum of foul-ups in order to be successful, and the fact that Caesar put his faith in us made us all the more determined.
When the night of the assault arrived, helping our cause was a heavy cloud cover, or at least so we thought. However, shortly before the boats were supposed to arrive it also began to rain, with the wind picking up, blowing off the ocean and directly into our faces. That made the trip down the inlet more difficult for the men selected to row the boats, so they arrived later than planned. By the time they pulled up onto the beach, the wind had increased so that the falling rain was almost horizontal and the waves had become increasingly choppy. Peering through the rainy dark at Vibius, I saw an expression of real apprehension that not even the gloom could conceal, bringing me a bit of comfort now that I knew he was as worried as I was. Both of us were country boys, our first glimpse of the ocean occurring on a training march from our camp at Scallabis several months earlier, while neither of us had been in so much as a rowboat, let alone a flat-bottomed troop transport. Calienus and the other veterans who had participated in amphibious operations with Pompey did their best to put us at ease, but their own looks of concern did nothing to assuage our fears. Being the First Century of the Second, we were one of the first to load up, bringing on board with us two artillery pieces, both scorpions, whereupon we rowed out a short distance then dropped anchor to wait for
the other units to load up. Before much time passed, the violent bobbing made most of us sick, so the gunwales of the boat were lined with Legionaries puking their guts out. I am not ashamed to say that I was one of them; it was not until much later that I got my sea legs but even then, I did not, nor do I now like sea voyages of any duration. It took perhaps a third of a watch to load the rest of the Centuries of our four Cohorts into the boats, then we ran into another problem. With the rain getting steadily worse, it became so heavy that we could not see the beacon that was supposed to be guiding us to the island.
“If we can’t see the damn light, how can we know which way we’re going?” this was Didius’ voice, and for one of the few times I was in complete agreement. “For all we know, we may end up 20 miles out to sea, then what'll happen?”