Marius Mules III: Gallia Invicta (Marius' Mules) (35 page)

The centurion watched the huge Veneti galley close on the jetty. The tall sides were at just the right height to board from the wooden walkway. It would be amusing then watching the triremes trying to disembark here onto a jetty some eight feet higher than their deck. He continued to gaze, stony faced, as the ship came alongside him.

To the rear of the port, the rest of the Roman force was busy dealing with the surrendering horde of warriors that had become trapped at the seaward end of the oppidum. Sooner or later they would have to clear the way to the jetties and repair the damage done to them. For now, though, the First Century of the Tenth Legion’s First Cohort was alone on the wooden jetties.

The Veneti warriors on board had their hands raised in a gesture of surrender as the vessel bumped against the timber of the jetty and came to a stop. Several legionaries staggered with the impact, but regained their composure quickly and returned to attention.

Atenos turned his fearsome, blood-soaked face to the surrendering Veneti and barked out a number of commands in the guttural dialect of the Gauls. Warriors flinched and ran the plank out to the jetty, hurrying off the ship and past the Roman column to stand, dejected, on the wooden planks, awaiting the decision as to their fate and hoping, presumably, that their surrender would earn them clemency.

Atenos watched as the last of the hundred or so passengers disembarked and, as the crew made to follow, he held up his hand and shouted something else in Gaulish, causing them to return to their stations.

The legionaries, confused yet obedient, turned and rushed up the boarding plank to the deck of the huge Veneti ship. Atenos followed them up and turned his fierce gaze on the ship’s captain.

“You speak Latin?”

The man’s face gave him the answer to his question and he sighed before reeling off instructions in their native tongue. The man shook his head defiantly.

“Yes you damn well
will
.”

Striding over to the shaken captain, Atenos, a head taller than him and drenched in blood and gristle, grasped the man by the tunic and lifted him off the floor until they were face to face, before speaking to him slowly and deliberately, almost in a growl.

The captain looked terrified and quickly nodded. As soon as Atenos dropped him back to the floor, he turned and began shouting commands at the crew. The huge centurion returned to his men as, behind him, the crew began to get the ship moving once more.

“We’re collecting the rest of the century and then we go out to help the fleet. At ease for now.”

As the men of the First century relaxed, Atenos stepped to the rail. It really was impressive watching the Veneti sailors at work. The ship was huge and heavy, powered only by the wind in the small front sail and yet they were already sliding through the water moments after the command was given.

He looked over at the captain and shouted another command before turning to look at the legionaries standing to attention on the other two jetties. Close by, other ships were making for the docks and this ship would be getting in the way.

The legionaries looked at one another in surprise. The ship was still moving and there was a gap of several feet between the jetty and the deck. The first man who jumped landed badly, falling to his knees and grazing them on the deck. Atenos tutted at him and beckoned to the rest.

“Get aboard or you’re swimming after us!”

The men ran in a small knot and leapt aboard, some landing well, others falling as they hit the deck. As soon as they were safely on the ship, the captain picked up the pace as he made for the next jetty. Behind them, another Veneti ship had already begun to dock at the jetty they had left, yet more vessels closing in behind.

The whole procedure was repeated at the third jetty, though with greater ease, since they knew what was coming. After another shouted command in Gaulish, the huge centurion turned to his men.

“Anyone here had experience of fighting as marines?”

There was a long, unbroken silence.

“Me neither, but I’ve seen it done. No shield walls or testudos. As soon as we get near the first enemy ship I want everyone near the rail. On my command you run and jump for the enemy deck. When you get there you come up fighting and don’t wait for orders or formations. Just kill anyone who isn’t one of us. If you miss the jump, you’ll fall between the hulls. I wouldn’t recommend that, so jump carefully. Everyone clear?”

The legionaries roared their understanding and saluted.

Atenos turned to look ahead as they broke clear of the many vessels trying to reach the docks and into the open water, heading toward the fleets, where the conflict was already underway. The Veneti ships outnumbered the Roman fleet by almost two vessels to one, but the Roman crews had adopted a peculiar tactic: they were sailing around the beleaguered Veneti, safe in the knowledge that the lack of strong winds left the enemy slow to manoeuvre. What they were hoping to achieve with this peculiar activity was beyond him until he saw, with a grin, two huge ropes give way on the nearest enemy vessel, allowing the sail to flap loosely over to one side, where it fell to the deck, useless.

Roman sailors and marines were hacking with some kind of pole-arm at anything available and were crippling the enemy ships with surprising speed and efficiency. Rather than boarding them there and then, they were leaving them, helpless and immobile, while they moved onto the next. Once they had the whole Veneti fleet becalmed and unable to move, they could deal with them at their leisure.

Atenos laughed. He had, given the navy’s record so far, presumed that the
Roman
fleet would be the ones desperately trying to outmanoeuvre the Veneti, but the situation seemed to have reversed this time. Commander Brutus had apparently identified a way to even the odds. Of course, there was still the issue of dealing with the aggravated, howling Veneti warriors on board the impotent vessels once they were stilled. The fight wasn’t over yet.

Shouting another order in Gaulish, he pointed at the near vessel that had now been abandoned by the Roman fleet, the trireme moving on to cripple another ship. The captain shifted the steering oar and Atenos’ heavy vessel swung toward the bestilled enemy.

The Veneti on board glanced at the healthy ship bearing toward them and cheered, yelling encouraging cries that turned only moments later into shouts of outrage and consternation as they realised that the warriors on board the new galley were the iron and crimson figures of Roman legionaries.

Atenos turned back to the captain, who was watching with deep regret as he steered his ship to deliver his tribe into the hands of their enemy. Stepping to the rail, the centurion bellowed an offer to the men on the helpless ship.

The answer was not immediate, as it took a moment for the Veneti warrior to drop his trousers and turn around. Atenos almost laughed at the audacity of the man, a warrior after his own heart, but that heart hardened and his face soured as he listened to the shouts and jeers and suggestions concerning possible animal stock in his lineage being issued defiantly from among the enemy.

“That would be a ‘no’ to surrender then, sir?”

The huge centurion closed his ears to the increasingly brutal insults and turned to his men.

“No quarter. They’ve been given the option to surrender and declined it, so I don’t want to see you stop just because somebody waves their arms at you.”

There was an affirmative murmur among the men and Atenos turned back to the rail. The two ships were closing rapidly.

“Alright. To the rail. Prepare to board.”

The legionaries moved into position, twenty seven men, along with their officer, each professional and eager for the fight. Atenos nodded with satisfaction. It was men like this that made the Roman army the force that would eventually conquer the world, the sky, and possibly even the Gods themselves.

He watched as the gap narrowed, taking a deep breath. The Veneti warriors howled and bellowed, banging their swords on the rail, encouraging their enemy to make the first move. ‘Well,’ Atenos thought, ‘let’s not disappoint them.’

“Board!”

The two ships had closed to a distance of perhaps three or four feet when the first man jumped and was caught mid-flight by a Veneti spear thrust out in defence. The blow was far from fatal, catching him in the hip, but arrested his momentum and caused the man, screaming, to plummet into the cold water between the two ships. A second man joined him mid-jump as a swung sword blow scythed a jagged wound across his chest.

The rest of the men began to land on the enemy deck and come up fighting just as the ships finally met with a deep, resounding thump that mercifully drowned out the crack of bones and stifled screams of the two men caught between the grinding oak hulls.

Atenos leapt, not waiting for the last of his men to cross first.

Landing heavily, but allowing his knees and ankles to bend and take the strain, the huge centurion came up facing a group of Veneti warriors, his sword gripped in his right hand, the broken shield long-since discarded back on the jetty.

Three men leapt at him, shouting, and Atenos lashed out with his left fist, delivering a punch that would have floored an ox, the force of the blow knocking the left-most man clean from his feet and sending him tumbling into the press of men behind. At the same time, his gladius parried the first lunge from another man, barely sidestepping an attack from the third in time. A legionary appeared to his right, trying to help push the enemy back from his beleaguered centurion, but was felled by a heavy blow from a man Atenos couldn’t even see.

Sidestepping to his left, the centurion slashed out with his gladius, feeling it bite into flesh, though unable to identify whose in the mass of howling Veneti. The other man stabbed out with his spear, his blow restricted due to lack of room, but good enough to connect. Atenos grunted as the point of the spear dug into his chest close to his armpit, and ducked to the side before the man had the opportunity to drive the blow home, wincing instead as the blade came free, tearing out a chunk of flesh, which fell away amid the fragments of ruptured mail from his ruined shirt.

As he ducked down and grasped the fallen enemy’s sword with his free hand, he heard a metallic clunk and realised that the blow had severed two of the leather straps on his harness, allowing the phalera he had won by the Selle River last year to roll away across the boards and disappear over the edge into the waters of the bay.

He growled angrily and stood, the long Celtic blade in his left hand too large to be wielded so by most men. He flexed his muscles, ignoring the pulsing pain in his armpit, and grinned through his crimson, streaked face at the man with the spear.

For a moment the man flinched, and then recovered himself, desperately gripping his spear and waving it defensively at the centurion.

Atenos rolled his shoulders and shouted something in Gaulish before leaping forward into the press of enemies, both swords slashing out as he attacked.

Behind him, legionary Porcius, back to back with a companion, fought off a howling warrior and realised a space had opened up before him. Glancing over at his centurion, he shook his head.

Last year, Porcius and four other men had caught one of the wretched Gallic recruits from the fledgling Thirteenth legion in the latrines and had taken out their frustration on him, beating him half to death before they saw sense and fled. All because he was a Gaul and hadn’t belonged in a Roman uniform. Hard to believe they’d done that, given the Gaulish-born centurion before him now, carrying the pride of Rome into a screaming enemy with no thought for his own safety.

At that moment, Porcius wouldn’t have been the Veneti for all the gold in Rome. A fresh wave of shame for his past actions washed over him and he ground his teeth, turning to the man behind him.

“We’re clear. Let’s go help the centurion!”

* * * * *

Brutus pointed past the rigging.

“That one.”

The trierarch nodded and gestured to his men. The Roman fleet had worked systematically over the last twenty minutes, shredding the sails and severing the cables on the Veneti ships and now, with most of the enemy floundering and waiting to be boarded under the watchful eye of a number of triremes and quinqueremes, the last eight Veneti ships were attempting to flee the engagement.

The
Aurora
, along with nine other Roman ships, bore down on the desperately fleeing Veneti, granted a higher speed by the lack of wind and determined to put an end finally to the attritive warfare of this tenacious coastal people.

What hope could they have of avoiding the inevitable at this point?

Brutus frowned as he squinted into the distance and slowly the reason for the Veneti flight became clear. What looked like the coastal undulations common along this region was, upon closer examination, the entrance to a river, wide at the mouth, but rapidly narrowing. The Gallic ships with their shallow draft and intimate knowledge of the area would know exactly where they could safely sail, while the Romans would be at a considerable disadvantage. The lack of wind would no longer be the deciding factor then.

They would simply have to stop the Veneti before they could reach the safety of the river. He realised as he stood, fuming at the situation, that the trierarch was watching him with concern.