Marius Mules III: Gallia Invicta (Marius' Mules) (21 page)

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.

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.”

“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.”

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 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)

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.

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.

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.