The whole battle lasted less than ten minutes, from the time the first wave of Gauls burst from cover until Vercingetorix blew a signal on a trumpet and the remaining Gauls wheeled off the roadway, rode through the rear of the broken Roman formations, and disappeared back into the depths of the forest whence they came.
The slopes of the defile were steep and rock-strewn, but not so steep that nothing would grow on them, and the cleft between them, green with an abundance of fresh spring grass, was not quite narrow enough to be called a gorge, and not quite wide enough to be truly deemed an alpine meadow.
Vercingetorix crouched behind a seemingly natural jumble of boulders piled up by his men atop the ridgeline, watching the Roman supply train approaching. This was not one of the more direct routes through the Alps, but the pass was wide enough to allow an infantry guard to march on either side of the wagons.
“Clever prey,” said Oranix, crouching beside him. “They never stumble into the same snare twice.”
“You sound like you approve.”
“Of course I approve,” said Oranix, watching the Romans approach with the keen and concentrated gaze of the hunter. “Dull prey makes for a boring hunt.”
Dull prey, Caesar’s army was not. The first attack on a Roman supply train had been the easiest one, for Caesar had probably never seen such tactics before, but never again did he group his supply wagons together on a road. Each of his legions then moved with its own supply train in the center of a large infantry formation. They did not rely on roads. They kept far away from the forest.
This had freed Caesar to group his cavalry into several large scouting forces, seeking to hunt down the “army of Gaul.”
Vercingetorix had then divided his forces into three main parts: Arverni led by himself, Edui led by Litivak, and a force composed of warriors from a collection of the smaller tribes led by the Atrebate vergobret Comm. The Gallic leaders knew the terrain far better than the Romans, and each commanded many more men than the roving Roman cavalry units, so it was easy to lead them into disastrous ambushes.
But Caesar regrouped his forces once more, this time into legion-sized units with the cavalry never far in advance of the infantry, and sent them roving independently around the countryside.
Once the snows melted and sowing began, the Romans gave over hunting for the elusive army of Gaul and instead took to harrying the peasants in their fields and sacking villages, trying to provoke the army to attack and tie it down in battle long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Vercingetorix did attack, but not as Caesar had intended. He brought together only enough forces to attack single legions, and fought only long enough to destroy food supplies, never allowing a battle to last more than half an hour. Ride in, break through to the supply wagons, fire as many as possible, ride out, disperse, do it again. And again. And again.
Yet again Caesar regrouped his army, this time into three main forces, each with the supply wagons clustered in the center, each far too large to attack and penetrate. But these impregnable formations were too cumbersome to hunt down anything. All they could do was attempt to provoke suicidal attack by slaughtering villages, taking slaves, sacking towns. Several contingents of warriors from the smaller tribes deserted to return to their lands when Vercingetorix refused to take the bait and these lands Caesar cunningly gave over despoiling.
Vercingetorix had been constrained to call a council of his main lieutenants when even Litivak openly considered defecting. This was held over a roasting boar and a barrel of beer deep in the forest and away from other ears, for Vercingetorix knew full well what he was going to hear.
“There’s no honor in this!” Critognat complained.
“Even the Arverni are calling you a coward!” said Comm. “And I’m beginning to agree with them!”
“Why fight if we’re not even protecting our own people?” demanded Luctor of the Cadurques. “What are we supposed to tell our men to keep them from leaving?”
“Caesar attacks the farmsteads of those tribes who have troops in this army of yours and leaves the others be,” said Litivak.
“Thus does he seek to divide us,” said Vercingetorix.
“Thus is he succeeding,” Litivak told him. “Liscos is now demanding that I withdraw my men. Unless I obey, I take the blame if Caesar does turn on the Edui once he has finished with you, not him.”
“But if you don’t,” Vercingetorix told him, “the glory will be yours, not his.”
“Glory? What glory?”
“The glory of winning the war.”
“Winning the war!” growled Critognat. “We haven’t even won a single real battle!”
“No glory!”
“No victory!”
“But no defeats either,” Vercingetorix told them, “and if any among you can point one out, I now invite him to speak.”
There was only sullen silence.
“We are winning the war,” Vercingetorix insisted. “We are defeating the greatest power in the world. Caesar brought his army here in winter knowing it would have to live off what it brought with it until grain was ripe in the fields and grass in the meadows. Yet crops are only beginning to grow, and we have destroyed half of what the Romans brought to see them through to summer. They will be starving before then. Caesar must either retreat over the mountains or fight us with an army whose horses are dead or dying, whose legionnaires’ knees have been rendered too weak to keep them standing, and then shall Gaul know the most glorious victory in the history of the world, for then shall we have done what no other people have done—not the Greeks, not Carthage with Hannibal and all his mighty elephants—we shall have defeated and humbled Rome!”
This silver-tongued speech had been enough to hold the army together, but Vercingetorix knew that, to bring that victory, sooner or later he would have to force down their unwilling throats a strategy far more bitter still.
But for the moment…
As the head of the Roman supply train began to move past his position, Vercingetorix saw that this one was guarded by infantry alone. “No cavalry at all this time…” he muttered.
“Clever prey,” Oranix said again. “They’ve learned that we’re choosing slopes too steep for horses to climb.”
Behind the boulders piled up on the ridgeline and screened from sight were bales of hay wrapped around smaller boulders for weight, and soaked in sticky pitch. Vercingetorix’s men were positioned all along the ridge on the other side of the crestline—like the hay bales, invisible from below.
Vercingetorix peered down into the valley, back at the line of boulders poised atop the ridge, down again. The center of the Roman supply train was now directly below him.
He raised his trumpet to his lips and blew the first signal.
All along the ridgeline, his men prized the piles of boulders free with stout tree branches, and hundreds of them, large and small, tumbled and bounced down the slope, kicking up clods of earth, dislodging more boulders, stones, and pebbles, rumbling and roaring toward the Romans within a fearsome cloud of dust.
Even from this distance, Vercingetorix could hear the cries of “Avalanche!” from below, as the front ranks of the Roman infantry guard knelt down with their shields before them in a futile attempt to block the mighty wave of rock and dust—
—which picked up speed as it reached the bottom of the slope, crossed the narrow valley floor, and broke upon them, smashing them backward into their fellows, crushing, pulverizing men, reaching the wagons, shattering wheels, cracking axles, panicking horses, as—
—Vercingetorix blew the second signal, and his men lit the hay bales and sent a second avalanche, this one of fire, rolling down the slope.
The flaming hay bales, even with their stone centers, formed a lighter avalanche than the boulders, and moved more slowly, causing the fresh green mountain grass to smolder in their wake. They had just enough speed when they arrived at the valley floor to roll through the decimated Roman infantry to reach the chaotic disarray of overtu
rned and shattered wagons, and set them ablaze.
“We must last out until the grain in the field is ready for harvest, and that is all there is to it,” said Caesar. “We will just have to reduce the rations again.”
“Again?” moaned Tulius, holding up his bowl, which contained but a handful of porridge that had been boiled with grass to eke out the dwindling grain supply. “The men are eyeing the horses hungrily, and I must admit they’re beginning to look good to me too.”
“Surely you’re not serious!” exclaimed Labienus. “We’ve got no chance at all without cavalry.”
“Surely not,” Caesar said peevishly. “We’ve lost enough of them already, and now at least there’s enough new grass to sustain what we have left.”
“Too bad it won’t sustain us,” said Galba.
“If it comes to that, perhaps it will,” said Caesar.
Caesar choked down the last gluey and tasteless morsel of his own ration of gruel, which did little to assuage the dull ache in his gut.
A spring shower was descending, and behind was his bundled tent, but Caesar insisted that he and his commanders share every hardship of the men and be clearly seen to do so. If the ordinary legionnaires squatted outside in the rain to eat their midday meal, so would they. And if the men must make do with two handfuls of this grim green slop a day, the generals, and he himself, must enjoy no better. Morale was bad enough without having tales get around of fabulous luxuries—such as extra handfuls of gruel—being secretly enjoyed by high officers.
“Why don’t we capture some of the more important cities?” suggested Labienus. “Nothing like a few one-sided major victories to improve morale. If Vercingetorix fights us for them, we’ll have him where we want him.”
“And find ourselves tying down large garrison forces in each city we hold to keep down hostile populaces, with our troops still on very short rations. Were I Vercingetorix, I would be most pleased to allow us to occupy as many such cities as we like.”
“Perhaps, then, we should retreat south and try again when the situation is more favorable…?” suggested Trebonius.
“And what, may I ask, are we to eat along such a long retreat, grass and worms and marmots?” Caesar said scathingly. “And what do you suppose we will find when we return, save a larger army of Gauls emboldened by our disgrace?”
He did not deem it politic to say “if we return,” which, given the fatuous public hand-wringing of the Senate over the situation, and the private glee of his ever-more-numerous enemies therein, did not seem likely if he dragged the remnants of a starving army back over the Alps with its tail between its legs.
Which, Caesar had no doubt, was exactly what Vercingetorix was trying to force him to do. I should never have been so open with him. I should certainly never have told him that keeping an army supplied is half the battle. Worse still, thanks to my own folly, Vercingetorix knows that conquering Gaul is only a necessary military prelude to the conquest of Rome by political means.
Caesar had certainly not been forthcoming with his own generals about that!
Labienus, with his overdeveloped sense of honor, would report it to the Senate. Most of the rest of them probably would betray me out of ambition. No, there has been no man with whom I can fully share such thoughts since Gisstus was slain.
“Send out more foragers,” he told his commanders. “Hunt down deer, hunt down boar, hunt down rabbits, fish every stream with nets, winkle every last mouse and vole out of its burrow. Strip the bark from the trees and scrape the moss from the rocks and boil it all into bitter soup. We need only survive until there are crops ripening in the fields, and then we shall attack every city in Gaul one by one if need be, not to hold but to sack, until we force the Gauls to fight to defend them. Then shall we crush them, and then shall the Gauls eat a defeat far more bitter than what they force us to swallow now.”
If I have to eat grass, grass will I eat. If it comes down to dung, I will eat dung too. For there are morsels even less nourishing than grass, destinies far less possible to choke down than shit, and these I will never swallow.
Vercingetorix looked back down the valley at what he had wrought. The blue skies of summer above this rich farmland were fouled with a pall of sooty smoke; there were fires burning everywhere the grain in the fields had not yet been reduced to ash; the smoldering skeletons of orchards glowed an ugly orange against the blackened landscape.
Vercingetorix and Rhia rode a horse’s length ahead of a squad of fifty warriors. He had divided the force with which he had entered this valley into a score of such squads, each with a druid whose authority would, he hoped, preclude the use of force by Gauls against Gauls.
Before him, the valley was a golden sea of ripe grain alternating with the stubble of that which had already been harvested, dotted with small groves of apple trees heavy with reddening fruit. Sheep grazed in the lush green fields around farmsteads, their granaries beginning to fill with the harvest, their sties filled with fat sows suckling new litters of piglets, the chickens and ducks and geese leading the season’s hatchlings, a vision of bounty and well-being.
Vercingetorix raised his right arm and made a circling signal as his squad approached a little village of wood and wattle-and-thatch houses and granaries, surrounded by pigsties, duck ponds, and grassy fields where grazed the sheep. Thirty of his warriors fanned out to encircle the buildings in the center of the village where the peasants had already gathered. The rest accompanied Vercingetorix to guard him against their expected and not unjustified ire.
Dagavar, wife of Pithrin, mother of Comak, Belandra, Frisa, and Dirnor, watched the great hero ride into her village with an angry and uncomprehending heart. She knew this was Vercingetorix himself, for beside him rode his warrior woman carrying the bear standard. It almost shamed her to hate this boy, who could not be six years older than her own eldest son. But hate this vergobret of her own tribe, this sorcerer, this ravager of the land, Dagavar did.
She knew that Caesar and his Romans were the enemy, for so the druids proclaimed. Certainly she had no love for them; for she understood that if they had remained in their own country, where they belonged, this blond boy would not now be leading his warriors into her village to destroy the life she and Pithrin had built here for their children.
But how could anyone in her village not hate and fear Vercingetorix when all they had to do was look out into the distance and see the boiling black pillars of smoke to know that he and his warriors had already destroyed half the crops and livelihoods of the valley?
And for what? So that one clan of leeches would rule over them and extract unfair tribute, rather than another? So that a portion of their crops would be stolen in the name of “Gaul” rather than “Rome”?
War should be left to the nobles and warriors, and the folk of the land should be left alone to bring in the crops and tend the livestock as long as those who ruled were allowed to steal their unfair share.
What sort of war was this that turned farmers into beggars and destroyed the land in the name of saving it?
Vercingetorix rode into the dusty little square, where a score or so men had gathered with their wives and their children. He halted before them, warriors on either side of him. He did not dismount.
“I am Vercingetorix, commander of—”
“The great hero of Gaul!” a burly gray-haired fellow shouted scornfully, to hoots and jeers. Some of the men held scythes and hoes and pitchforks and meat knives.
“Why do you ruin the lands and destroy the crops of your own people?” demanded the portly woman of like age standing at his side with a raging glare in her eyes.
“To prevent a greater despoliation by Caesar’s legions,” Vercingetorix replied, as he always did. “The Romans would steal anything left behind for them to steal in any case.”
“Stolen by the Romans, destroyed by you—what difference does it make to us? We are still left with nothing!”
And as he always did, Vercingetorix reached into the large leath
er sack affixed to his saddle, withdrew a handful of gold coins, and tossed them into the peasants’ midst. “Do you suppose Caesar will pay in gold for what he takes?”
There was a scramble for the coins, but the adults seemed less avid than the children.
“Do you suppose we can eat your gold?”
“Enough!” shouted Vercingetorix, exasperated not with them but with himself, with having to repeat this dishonorable act over and over. But as the peasants must make the bitter sacrifice of their goods in this world that Gaul be free, so must he make bitter sacrifice in the Land of Legend, that of his own honor.
For there he had seen what would be the sweet fruit of such sacrifice, his and theirs—the legions of Rome, stoop-shouldered cavalrymen leading skeletal horses, legionnaires afoot too weak to bear armor plodding across a lifeless landscape. He had seen Caesar, a skeleton riding the skeleton of a horse. A cruel and mysterious vision burned into his brain. Crueler still, now that he knew what it meant.
“Every sheaf of grain, every scrawny chicken, every blade of grass!” he declared, drawing his sword. “Flee with what you can carry, and destroy everything else!”
The howls and protests were enough to have his guards drawing their swords, moving closer to him, and brandishing them menacingly.
“You do it or we will! No food or fodder must be left behind for the Romans. They would seize everything they find, so you lose nothing you would not lose anyway!”
“And what are we to do when what we can carry is gone?” shouted out an old man.
“What we all must do for Gaul, sacrifice and suffer.”
It was Guttuatr who spoke these words, from behind the peasants; they turned and saw a druid in a pure white robe bearing a staff with a fallen star atop it.
“The Arch Druid himself!”
Guttuatr slowly made his way to Vercingetorix’s side, and turned to deliver the speech that he had now delivered scores of times. It had aged him. There were more lines in his face. His nose now seemed less that of a proud raptor and more that of an old man. His eyes no longer showed the same strength nor the line of his mouth the same resolution. Something had gone out of the man holding the staff of the Arch Druid’s office. Perhaps some power had left the staff itself.
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