Marius' Mules VI: Caesar's Vow (50 page)

‘Centurion? Sound unit recalls for half the men. I want the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth centuries to start pulling back and secure the entrance to the valley. The First, Second and Third can move on for another half mile or so, and then turn back and rejoin the rest. We’re chasing shadows here.

The unit musicians blasted out on their cornus and buccinas, directing the different centuries and Quadratus sighed deeply. This damned forest was killing him by degrees. It had started with his sense of humour, then abraded his enthusiasm, finally chipping at the veneer of his confidence, and was starting to work on hollowing out his will to live. Eight days the army had been assigned to the forest, and he was only on the morning of day five. There would be another three days of this nightmare before they returned to legate Cicero’s camp. And unless someone else was having a lot more luck than Quadratus, all they’d have to show for it was a lot of dead farmers and burned huts, and still no lead on the lunatic Ambiorix. Which meant, of course, given what everyone knew of Caesar’s vow to kill the man, that the legions would almost certainly be given only a momentary breather and then sent back into the forest for a second shift.

‘Bollocks!’ he said to himself, with feeling. The senior centurion smiled knowingly at him.

A strange honk turned into a squeak in the middle of the chaos of musical calls and centurions’ whistles, and Quadratus scanned the various musicians to identify the discordant culprit. As his eyes fell upon the cornicen responsible, he was already reaching out to grab the centurion’s shoulder.

‘Ambush!’ he bellowed, watching as the musician fell, his long, curved instrument tipped and a stream of blood pouring from the end, choked through the mouthpiece while the arrow through his neck pumped blood into his throat.

Now other missiles were thrumming from the various hollows and cave mouths in the sandstone valley walls.

‘Ambush!’ he yelled again, the senior centurion taking up the call to arms. Other centurions and optios began to issue orders and within a matter of heartbeats the centuries were reforming into testudos, their shields forming boxes to protect them from the arrows and sling stones.

Quadratus scanned the cliffs and threw himself urgently to one side as an arrow whipped past.

‘Move! Each century make for the nearest cave or the cliff edge. Get inside under cover if you can!’

The call was repeated and Quadratus’ cohort split into six groups, the various native scouts and officers straggling along, not part of the defensive formations. Taking advantage of the fact that he carried no pilum or shield, Quadratus ducked nimbly behind a tree and then, keeping his eyes on the cliff, moved from bole to bole towards the sheer red-brown valley wall, keeping pace with the armoured units further along. Behind him there was a cry of agony and he turned to see the senior centurion, already sporting two feathered shafts, lifted by a third and hurled into the river, where he disappeared from sight.

This would never have happened under Labienus’ command, he grunted through gritted teeth while he scurried to the edge of the valley. As the centuries reached the cliff, their shields went above their heads, creating a solid roof, worrying less about the possibility of ground shots as their assailants began to drop rocks from the cliff entrances. Some of the luckier units managed to find wide cave entrances and moved into them.

Quadratus ducked along the edge of the cliff, eyeing the pitted surface with interest, until he reached another group of soldiers. ‘Did you notice how many caves?’ he asked as he ducked under the shield roof.

‘Several dozen, sir,’ the optio answered, ‘but only maybe ten that were wide enough for a man.’

Above Quadratus, rocks, stones and arrows pounded the shelter, and a narrow iron arrowhead punched through, emerging a few finger widths from his nose. He tried to stop shaking.

‘There are handholds carved in the rock,’ he said quietly. ‘I ran past two sets between here and those trees. That’s the only way in to the higher ones.’

‘We could starve them out?’ the optio asked hopefully.

‘Unlikely. This is a bolt-hole, so it’s probably well-stocked, and we have nothing. They’d have us dead to hunger before they emerged. We’ve only got one option as I see it, since we’ve no missile troops with us.’

The optio listened nervously, blinking occasionally as Quadratus outlined his thoughts.

‘Alright, sir. We’ll have to be quick, though.’

‘Give the preparatory order,’ the commander said quietly. The optio turned and passed on the orders, seeing them repeated down the lines, so that each man in each century knew what they were doing.

‘Let’s hope
I
do’, thought Quadratus, eyeing the score of dead legionaries out across the narrow grass strip of the valley. Above, yet more rocks pounded the shield roof, the occasional squawk announcing where they had penetrated the defence. Under the shield-shelter, every other man passed his pilum to a tent mate and, as soon as all six centuries had called their readiness, the optio looked at Quadratus.

‘Do it!’

Like the ground parting in an earthquake, the shield roof split in half, three centuries’ worth of legionaries taking half a dozen sharp steps back and pulling back their arms, pilum readied. Without waiting for an order, they each released, every man having picked a target from among the wide, weathered holes in the sandstone wall.

With a clatter and crash, accompanied by a surprisingly - and satisfyingly - high number of pained shrieks, the pila arced up and into the cave mouths. Even before they struck, though, the rest of the men, abandoning their shields to the ground, began to clamber quickly up the handholds towards the caves above, other soldiers crowding around the bottom, eagerly awaiting their turn.

The legionaries out on the grass hurriedly extricated the extra pilum from their spare hand, where it was held behind the shield, and readied it for a second wave. Quadratus was kicking himself for having agreed to leaving the spare pila back with the supplies for ease of movement in the woods, but at least they’d brought one each. Some of the cohorts had elected to travel without pila at all for speed.

Pausing, Quadratus counted to six. No good aiming the second volley too quickly - targets would be fewer and the climbing soldiers in more danger. On six, he gave the wave to the centurion out with the lines of men, who dropped his arm. The second wave of two hundred pila rose into the air just as - satisfyingly - the heads of the defenders emerged once again, preparing to drop more rocks. The pila wreaked a terrifying toll on the Eburones, and Quadratus smiled in relief as he saw the first legionary haul himself up into the mouth of a cave and realised he had time to draw his sword before moving in.

Devoid of further pila, the men back across the grass ran forward. Raising their shields, they formed a roof over the legionaries who waited to climb as the Belgic missile attack began again, though much lighter and in dribs and drabs. A number of the cave mouths were now being contested by angry legionaries.

Quadratus sighed and stepped back as he watched an Eburone archer, bow still in hand, suddenly appear from a cave mouth, mid-fight, stumbling backwards into the abyss, the legionaries below opening up their shield roof to allow him the room to plunge to the ground and land in a crack of splintering bones.

All along the cliffs men were spidering up the red rock and disappearing into the caves, swords and daggers in hands and looks of sheer bloody murder on their faces.

It would be over in a matter of heartbeats. Quadratus’ shoulders sagged, and he leaned back against a thick sapling. A veteran cavalry commander, he had been dubious about being given command of an infantry force, but Caninius had been insistent. He’d not had enough senior officers to assign to the various separate cohorts in this action, and Quadratus had been needed.

One thing was certain: when they turned back north to Cicero’s camp, and the senior command decided to admit that Ambiorix was gone, he would be damn well returning to a cavalry command. Screw this walking lark!

Somewhere above, a legionary shouted some joke about Icarus with a raucous belly laugh, and a shrieking Eburone warrior emerged at speed from the cave mouth, plunging to his doom.

* * * * *

Venitoutos was proud. Generations of his family had borne the pride of the Belgae in their blood, defending their lands from their ancient ancestors across the Rhenus or from Gaulish incursions or, of course, the interminable internecine wars the Eburones fell prey to with their neighbour tribes.

He was no king or noble. He was no druid or warrior with an arm full of rings and a glittering blade. He was a farmer, and a father, and a grandfather. But he was Eburone, and any time his king or his people had called, he had hauled on his grandfather’s torn mail shirt and hefted the spear resting in the corner of his hut, bade the women farewell and marched off to teach the enemy what it meant to be Belgae.

Venitoutos was proud.

Four years previously, he had been at the Sabis River when the great Belgic alliance had stood firm in the face of Caesar’s army, and had almost stopped the general. The scar all down his left arm was a daily reminder of that almost-victory. Last winter, he had been called on by his King to wipe out the Roman forces who had the gall to winter in Eburone lands. His lack of hearing in his left ear and the ache in his left knuckles hearkened back to that battle.

The Romans had learned time and again what it meant to face the Belgae.

Yes, Venitoutos was proud.

But he was also a father. And a grandfather. And heartily sick of death. It was one thing to bring war to Rome or a belligerent neighbour, in defence of his people. It was another to provoke the Roman bull that stomped around their lands, grinding the people beneath its hooves. That would be inviting Caesar’s war machine to murder his family, and the twins and the others deserved better.

For while Venitoutos was proud, he was also willing to see reason. The Eburones had lost all, no matter what their most noble leaders believed. Now all the ordinary folk could do was stay out of sight of the armoured monster crunching across their land, protect their loved ones, and wait for everything to settle down and Caesar to turn his sights elsewhere.

If he’d known anything about King Ambiorix or his location, he would gladly have given it to the Romans in return for his family’s ongoing safety. But even that was no use. He knew nothing.

And so he and his kin hid, in a manner most unfitting of the Eburones.

The Romans had passed through here three days ago in force, their steel and crimson ranks laying waste, executing every Eburone they found and burning the farms and villages. In this very valley three other farms had been fired, the bodies of their owners cast into the flames. And the settlement at the river head had gone the same way. Venitoutos had crouched in the bushes near the main road with his wife and children keeping the grandchildren quiet with hands over their mouths as he watched old Aneunos die miserably and their general - Labienus, apparently - ordering the death of his children with a detached coldness.

Somehow the Romans had moved down the valley quite thoroughly, burning and killing, but had missed two farms, one of them being Venitoutos’. He had given thanks to Arduenna for her shelter and protection and had promised to carve a stone to her when this was all over.

Then, yesterday, the Romans had returned. He’d found it hard to credit such bad luck, but listening in from a hiding place close to the main track, he’d heard the Remi scouts talking - he had not a word of Latin, but the Romans employed so many of his own people that he needed none. The scouts had talked about crossing the path of Labienus’ army and the fact that they’d found only one intact farm in the valley. Caesar, who himself seemed to command this second army, had burned that other farm and crucified the family, leaving them to die at the beaks and claws of the birds or the growling hollowness of starvation, their limbs gradually dislocating as they hung. The scouts had muttered about the other two Roman forces in the forest and about turning north again to the cursed camp of Sabinus and Cotta, where the wagons waited, and Venitoutos had felt a small thrill at the memory of his tribe’s victory over that camp.

Venitoutos had waited until the army had moved on, offered up yet more prayers to the great Goddess, passed his farm - now the only one surviving in the valley - and painstakingly took down the crucified family. Only the old man and one of the children would survive, and Venitoutos had taken care to deal with the dead in the old way.

Three armies.

Romans everywhere!

It was hard to credit, and it certainly sounded the death knell for the Eburones.

And this morning, as he stood in the doorway of his hut and breathed in the warm summer air of the forest, Venitoutos found himself wondering what he had done that had so angered the unseen powers? For all Arduenna’s protection, the valley had succumbed to two Roman armies and now he watched his family scurry down the bank to their last-ditch hiding place by the stream and closed his eyes.

This army was making straight for him. Though they were likely bound for some unknown location, they would be unable to pass without spotting the farm.

That they were not Roman hardly mattered.

Venitoutos had seen them at dawn, two miles from here where they had stopped to check out a burned farm and had felt a surge of hope at the sight of his fellow warriors, gathered together into a warband. He had almost rushed from the trees to welcome them when he had spotted the differences. These were not Eburones. Not even Belgae. They were the Germans from beyond the great river.

And that meant, if anything, more danger than the Romans.

It was common knowledge, spread by word of mouth in a matter of days, that the Romans had offered up the Eburones’ throats and purses to any tribe who wished to take them, with Caesar’s blessing. The tribes beyond the river had generations of hate and strife in common with the Eburones and being offered their carcass to pick over would be more than tempting for them. For all the Germans hated Rome, they were not above performing her dirty work for her if it meant loot and murder and a little revenge on an age-old enemy.