Marius' Mules VI: Caesar's Vow (10 page)

Tensely, he watched the mercenary Gauls return to the fold of the enemy. Though he could not say what the call precisely meant, he was convinced that this was the crucial moment - the tipping point for the battle. His breathing slow and deliberately calm, he squinted into the air, shivering in sudden recognition of the chill now that the brutal activity had stopped and his blood was cooling.

‘There! Did you see that?’ He pointed at the enemy with his dagger.

The centurion shook his head. ‘No, sir. What?’

‘The Treveri. They’re splitting up.’

A moment’s silence, and then the centurion cleared his throat. ‘I see it, sir. Three groups separating off from the main force. A new tactic you think, sir?’

Labienus gripped his blade tight. ‘I hope not. If it is, we could be in trouble. Either they’re moving off to get into position around the other sides or…’

He paused and a grin spread across his face.

‘No. No new tactics or attack. They’re leaving.’

‘The Treveri, sir?’

‘Not yet; not as a
tribe
at least. But
some
of them are. Look. They’re following noblemen and a druid. They’re leaving the field.’ He laughed out loud as he managed to locate the figure of Indutiomarus on a horse near the back of the army. The rebel leader was yelling and gesticulating angrily at the departing sections of his force.

‘Excellent. Everything is falling into place. Prepare for another assault, centurion. This will be a brutal one, too. That lunatic is going to throw everything he can at us now, because he knows as well as I do that unless he makes significant in-roads in the next hour, that will not be the last time he watches whole chunks of his army depart. Pass the word round the walls. Hold the defences, but don’t do anything stupid. No heroics. I just want the camp secure, not a bloodbath.’

‘Sir?’

‘I have something else in mind.’ Labienus grinned as he moved to the stairs down into the camp. Spotting one of the legionaries on courier duty awaiting orders, he gestured the man over.

‘Go find Quadratus at the stables and tell him to have every trooper equipped and in the saddle in the next half hour and every native levy on horseback and armed. Their time is about to come.’

With any luck he would be able to end this entire uprising with minimal carnage, remove the ongoing threat and bring the Treveri back onto Rome’s side. There were days when Mars clearly looked down favourably upon him, and today seemed to be one of those days. Indutiomarus had better hope
his
Gods were watching over
him
too.

Chapter Three

Gaius Volusenus Quadratus waited impatiently for the gates, watching the twin leaves open under the straining arms of the legionaries. Gathered behind him at the southern entrance to the fort, a force of cavalry - some two hundred local auxilia and thirty two regulars - champed at the bit ready to move. Still, even with the open gate before them, he held his hand high, waiting to give the signal.

His arm ached.

Labienus had waited until the last moment to reveal his plans, as was his command style, Quadratus knew. Really, with the many and varied local tribal auxiliaries, it was a safe and sensible thing to do, but really he could have at least dropped an advance warning to a fellow senior Roman officer.

The waiting seemed interminable, but finally he heard the low honk of a horn - three short and relatively subdued blasts designed to be heard across the camp, but not to carry to the enemy force.

The Treveri army had been breaking up now for more than an hour, separate groups of nobles taking away their people, sick of the siege and disenchanted with Indutiomarus’ failure to provide them with victory and loot. The Gallic chieftain had been ranting and railing from the back of his horse, waving his sword at the departing groups and threatening them, but still they had gone.

Now more than half the Treveri themselves had left the scene, and between desertions and death, perhaps half of the mercenary force had gone too. The odds were more or less in parity with the defenders and a pitched battle would have almost guaranteed victory, but still Labienus had held back his forces.

Quadratus could understand why, of course. In a full scale battle, the rebel chief could launch his army at the Romans and sit safely protected behind them. Hundreds or thousands of Romans would die, as would even more thousands of Treveri, in a bloodbath on a monumental scale. Labienus had avowed time and again his desire to see this corner of the world settled without heavy Roman losses, but also without Gallic genocide, given that the Treveri were not as committed to the attack as their leader would have them. To attain victory without such a death toll would mean finding a way to take down Indutiomarus without having to engage his army in bulk.

And that was where the cavalry came in.

At the east gate, the rest of the mounted contingent had gathered under the command - despite Quadratus’ misgivings - of a native, a prince of the Mediomatrici who had been utterly incensed by the actions of the Treveri leader and had been urging Labienus to let him and his men off the leash ever since the attack had begun. It was not that Quadratus thought the man a coward or a traitor. There was no question of him refusing to attack, but the problem was something rather opposite. Given his spiteful invectives against the Treveri and their bandit allies there was every possibility that the angry noble would forget his orders in the thirst for blood and simply launch into the nearest enemy he found. And that would put Quadratus’ considerably smaller force in great danger.

But it was all moot now. The anvil was in position and the hammer was falling.

Those three short blasts had indicated to Quadratus that prince Messirios of the Mediomatrici and his force had fully committed and the east gate was now closed. If the blood-crazed lunatic Gaul was still clinging to both sanity and his orders, he would now be racing in a wide arc, circumventing the bulk of the enemy force and threatening their flank enough to draw out the reserve that sat behind - the Treveri noble cavalry, the most dangerous and effective fighting group on the field. With any luck, even now Indutiomarus was spotting the danger and sending the cavalry - one of his few remaining loyal units - off to the east to meet the Roman auxiliary force. And with luck Messirios had not simply charged his cavalry at the murderers and thieves in the front lines. If he had, Quadratus was in for a short and brutal trip, as he came across the entire Treveri mounted contingent.

He shook his head irritably. No point in brooding on the possibilities. The attack had to go ahead regardless. He would just have to pray to Mars and Minerva that the prince stuck to the plan.

His hand dropped and the cavalry began to move out through the south gate at his signal.

The enemy had long-since abandoned the siege of the southern and western sides of the camp, partially because of the diminishing numbers of their force they could rely upon, but also because they knew that the swift, dangerous Mosella river - which formed a wide horseshoe at this point - curved around those sides and effectively prevented the Romans from fleeing that way in force. Indeed, their force was small and unimpressive even to the east, theoretically allowing the rest of the cavalry to burst through them and complete their task, depending upon the reliability of that Gaulish prince.

This concentration of enemy forces around the north and east left an area to the south devoid of enemy warriors, giving Quadratus the golden opportunity to leave the camp unnoticed while all Treveri attention would be on Messirios’ attack.

In line with the series of orders Quadratus had issued before the gates opened, the small but effective force of veteran cavalrymen raced across the causeway that spanned the camp’s double defensive ditch, and down the gentle slope which led to the Mosella river, the thunder of hooves lost to enemy ears amid the tumult of the attack by Messirios, and sight of them hidden by the slope.

Quadratus reined in close to the rushing torrent of ice cold water brought several hundred miles from the Vosego mountains to the south. To be caught against that river by a superior force would be the end - the main reason for the lack of enemies in this arc. Nobody would be able to escape across it without the aid of a bridge or a ford, and the only local ford was the one behind the Treveri, across which they had come when they first arrived.

Swiftly the rest of his force assembled around him, and Quadratus paused as they arranged themselves into their tribal sub-units, his veteran regulars forming up on him, bearing their banner to relay his orders to the rest, no signal horn in evidence in case its blasts led to their discovery.

As soon as the various sections were ready he nodded to the signifer, who waved the red
vexillum
flag in the approved signals. In moments the entire force was moving along the bank of the river, following it downstream in a northerly direction towards the ford at the rear of the Treveri army. It was a measure of the skill and competence of the cavalry, both regular and native levy, that they managed to maintain their unit cohesion and move at speed given the narrow confines afforded by the raging torrent to their left and the slope that hid them from the enemy to their right.

The horsemen raced on blindly, able to see only the gentle curve of the river valley, the location of the Roman camp and the Treveri army pin-pointable by the sounds that echoed across the landscape. The first gamble had been whether the other cavalry force would commit as intended. They would soon know the answer to that. The second gamble was that Quadratus’ own unit could leave the river and move up onto the enemy-controlled plain in just the right position to reach the commanders from the rear without engaging the entire force.

Evicaos, one of the more senior native mounted scouts, had assured him that if they followed the river as far as the ford and then turned back directly south, they would fall upon the unprepared and lightly defended Indutiomarus with ease. Quadratus hoped the man was right. There was still every possibility - even if they made the right position to leave the river - that his small cavalry unit would arrive at their turning point, rush up the hill and find themselves confronted by the entire Treveri cavalry force defending their leader.

* * * * *

Lucius Annius Gritto clung to his spear and shield tightly as he steered his nervous steed with his knees in the fashion taught by Roman cavalry trainers. His mail shirt felt as though it weighed more than he did, dragging him down to the ground, but he clenched his teeth and held on.

How he had drawn the duty of second in command of the native cavalry attack, he was still unsure. He was certainly not the most senior decurion in the camp, and far from the most experienced. He
was
lucky with dice and had fleeced a number of his peers recently, including the commander Quadratus, and it was tempting to blame that as a reason, though he hoped he owed this dubious honour to something more substantial than his affinity with lady Fortuna, bless her shapely breasts. He wished he had a free hand to grasp the pendant of his favourite Goddess hanging around his neck, but settled for a mental prayer - short and to the point.

The briefing had taken mere moments and was simple:

Make sure the native prince and chieftains kept to the plan and didn’t either race off into the open ground and freedom or launch against the first warrior they saw. It
sounded
simple, anyway.

In reality, given the lack of regular cavalrymen in the force and the absence of Roman officers or Roman training, what he actually found himself part of was a headlong, disorganised charge in true Gallic style, with a lot of shouting and screaming, threats and promises, some crazed laughter, more than a little jostling between the riders, occasional falls and mishaps and so much noise that it felt as though his ears might turn inside out. It had occurred to him within only moments of leaving the camp that his presence was about as pointless as tits on a bull, since even if any of them could hear his orders and calls over the general din, none of them seemed to be paying the slightest attention to him anyway.

His initial fears were first realised when he shot out of the gate like some sort of projectile, squeezed through among the Gauls, only to see the remaining western force of Treveri running towards the open gate. There were not many of them, given the size of the Gauls’ army - perhaps three hundred, which was minimal given that until the desertions had begun there were more like two thousand outside this gate. They were rabid and wild, just like the horsemen he was riding amongst, and they sought blood, but they could easily be avoided, given their numbers.

Indeed, the prince in charge, one Messirios - identified by the dragon standard that rode alongside him - immediately took the lead units out and swept around the Treveri group, as the plan had dictated.

Two of the other chieftains leading their auxiliary volunteer regiments seemed to have different ideas and turned their forces directly on the small besieging mob, rushing to meet them and crashing into them like two opposing waves.

Gritto had shaken his head in exasperation, realising there was virtually nothing he could do about it, and rode on with the bulk of the force, hoping that the loss of a hundred or more cavalry to this unintentional engagement would not alter their chances of the main objective.

Then they had found themselves in the clear, riding hard to circumvent the main enemy force. It had been exhilarating, momentarily. They were on-task. The discordant honking and lowing of the carnyx horns and some frantic waving from the Treveri command group confirmed that they had been seen and were being taken seriously, just as intended, and even the enemy cavalry began to move as if to intercept them.

And then things had gone wrong.

Another bunch of the chieftains among the cavalry had apparently decided that they liked the look of the nearest bunch of Treveri scum and had peeled off with their units, heading directly towards the main force. As Gritto had shouted himself hoarse, his voice totally lost in the noise of the attack, he’d felt his heart sink as he watched two more of the native units peel off to support them.