Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (20 page)

Aurelius and Biorix hit the open gate as it began to move, swords raised as they crashed into the few defenders. Some quick-thinking Gaul ignored the fight and kept pushing the gate shut from close behind, using his weight against it, out of danger from the Romans. Suddenly Atenos was there, sword already coated in shimmering red as he put his shoulder against the gate and heaved it back open.

The defenders
would
get the gate shut… there was no doubt about that. Under normal circumstances, anyway. There were perhaps a hundred legionaries now descending upon them, but there were dozens of defenders who had the benefit of armour and defences, and all they had to do was push the gates close enough to bar them and the attack would fail.

‘Quick!’ Fronto yelled irritably, as those legionaries and singulares carrying their armfuls of combustible material threw them against whichever of the two gates was the nearest. Fronto, along with the other fire-bearing officers, waited only long enough for a supply of sailcloth, dry timber, rope and the like to pile up against the gate, then nodded to Iuvenalis, who carried the dry hay animal fodder and scattered it on the top.

With a last blow on the fungus, Fronto cast it gently into the pile.

He barely had time to recoil before the hay caught and began to roar into orange life. Everything was so dry. The benefit of such a damp, cold season was that every merchant kept his goods safe and dry and out of the rain, so that each armful purloined from the boats and cast against the gates was perfectly tinder-dry.

The flames were roaring within moments, catching the ropes that tethered the wooden posts together to form the gate leaves and turning them black as they became part of the raging inferno.

Splashes back along the bridge announced a number of bodies plunging into the river, some torn and bloody at the hands of Carbo’s men, others in a desperate bid to escape that same fate. Few would make it. Good luck to them!

The forces from either end of the dock were now converging at the gate-and-bridge area, and those men who had carried armfuls of gear to feed the fires were drawing their blades. Leaving the poor bastards on the bridge to their fate, trapped between groups of legionaries and hemmed in by the railings, he made for Atenos, who was busy hacking down a Gaul in the gateway.

Perhaps a dozen of the Carnutes had rushed into the open gateway to hold back the tide of Roman iron, others having given up trying to close a gate that was now more of a pyre than an entrance. There were shouts of natives running off to fetch water for the gates.

‘Let’s get inside and take this place,’ Fronto snarled, his eyes dancing with the anticipation of revenge. The big Gaulish centurion raised an eyebrow as his victim fell away. ‘General’s orders were to wait for the others, sir?’

‘Piss on that. Cenabum belongs to the Tenth now. Time to avenge Cita!’

With a roar, he ripped out his own glittering sword, with its decorative orichalcum hilt and Noric steel blade, and leapt for the nearest of the defenders. The man was good, but desperate. He threw his shield in the way of Fronto’s blow, but the legate saw the man’s own chop coming and his open hand shot up and caught the wrist as the blade descended, pushing it aside as he slammed the tapering point of his gladius into the man’s ribcage.

Thrust, twist, withdraw
…

Even as the man fell at his feet, Fronto was running, to the urgent shouts of Palmatus nearby. Behind, he heard Atenos blowing his whistle, issuing the melee command, which would release each man from supposed formation and give him the freedom to choose a target and deal with it accordingly. The centurion, the singulares and a few legionaries were right behind him as Fronto raced into the narrow streets of Cenabum.

A Gaul came hurtling out of a side street, his weapon forgotten as he carried a bucket of water, which slopped over the side with every step. His eyes widened as he saw the Roman before him - badly-shaven, wearing only a red tunic and with a face that was a mask of furious destruction. The bucket was cast aside, sloshing across the road, but before he could raise his sword, the lunatic Roman’s gladius had slashed a deep gauge across his neck, letting out a fountain of blood and a whoosh of air in a mix of crimson froth.

‘Bastard,’ shouted the Roman at the dying Gaul as he ran on, selecting another man who had emerged from a building carrying a spear, angled ready for a thrust with all his weight. Fronto ran at the man, screaming something incomprehensible about Gauls and the Tenth.

Atenos watched Fronto use his free hand to grab the spear and rip it to one side as he delivered three quick punches of his gladius with unerring accuracy to neck, belly and groin. The spearman screamed and fell back amid a wash of blood. Palmatus and the singulares were struggling to catch up with the man they had sworn to protect, finding themselves waylaid by desperate Gauls as they followed.

A Roman arrived next to Atenos, looking haggard and panicked, his young eyes wild with his first taste of real combat. The big centurion was about to order him on into one of the buildings when he realised that the man was one of the young narrow-stripe junior tribunes of the Tenth, his white officer’s tunic exchanged for a darker red one just like the rest of the legion’s officers for this action.

‘Stop him, centurion.’

Atenos blinked in surprise. ‘Sir?’

‘He’s gone mad, man. Can’t you see that? He must be stopped!’

Atenos peered off at the shouting legate as his commander savagely ripped open a warrior who’d had the misfortune to get in his way.

‘You don’t know our legate yet, do you, sir.’

‘Centurion?’

‘That’s not madness, sir. That’s two years of frustration and the loss of a couple of good friends finding a way out. I’d sooner step in front of a ballista than try and stop legate Fronto right now.’

Another glance up the street, and he watched with interest as Fronto pommel-bashed another man and took the opportunity of a lull in opponents to put a hard, military boot into the man’s ribs half a dozen times, yelling something incomprehensible as blood slicked down his blade and ran onto the hard-packed dirt at his feet.

‘We should report to Caesar that the town is ours,’ the tribune murmured quietly, a faintly horrified tone in his voice as he watched his legate at work, a huge stone hurled by some distant Roman siege engine missing him by a matter of feet and smashing into a building nearby.

‘Why don’t you go do that now, sir? I’ve got some Carnutes to kill.’

With the wild grin of the unfettered warrior, Atenos turned, yelled some dreadful Gallic war cry that ended peculiarly with a Latin reference to the Tenth legion, and barrelled on up the street in the gory wake of his commander, men of the Tenth yelling and running after him in support.

* * * * *

Fronto looked up at the sound of his name, the first word he had heard to which he’d felt remotely inclined to pay any attention over the last hour. The faint strains of sunlight were threading their way through the weave of the inky sky, forming the earliest tapestry of morning. The streets were muddy, yet tinted red with the blood of the Carnutes, their life’s essence pooling in hollows and forming moats around cobbles where the roads had been paved. The air was still murky and indistinct in the early light, fogged with the roiling smoke from a dozen charred buildings.

His singulares sat recovering in a huddle a few paces away, one or two sporting gashes and slashes. Across the small public square, a small party of legionaries was busy leading a line of a score of roped Carnute prisoners towards the city gate, while a similar party threw ragged native corpses into a commandeered wagon. Despite their work, the dead in the square still outnumbered the living.

How many of them had he killed personally, he wondered.

A group of legionaries burst from a doorway, laughing, their arms weighed down with plunder.

And there, in the middle of the square and walking towards him, was Marcus Antonius, senior officer of Caesar’s command… and friend.

‘Don’t start with me, Antonius.’

The curly-haired officer let out a strangely carefree laugh. ‘Hardly. Caesar will do that later. He takes it personally when one of his officers disobeys direct orders, though it’s such ingrained habit with you, I doubt he’ll do more than snap at you.’

The senior officer came to a halt a couple of paces from where Fronto sat on a wide, oak bench stained with the blood of the man that had died on it. He looked at the empty seat next to the Tenth’s commander and decided against it. With a shake of the head, he produced a wine-skin seemingly from nowhere and uncorked it, proffering it to Fronto.

‘No thanks. Don’t think I really need that right now.’

Antonius laughed. ‘On the contrary, Marcus, you need this
right
now. Have you taken a look at yourself lately?’

Fronto shook his head and Antonius looked around for a moment until he spotted a fallen Gaul, whose shiny, well-polished iron axe had not had time to see action before his untimely death. Crouching, he picked up the weapon and held it in front of the seated officer, such that the polished head acted as a mirror.

Fronto blinked at the sodden crimson demon that looked back at him in the blade, and reached up, wordlessly, for the flask.

‘I lost control.’

‘I know. Everyone knows. Three cohorts of men watched it happen. I hear you are to thank that silver goddess around your neck that you’re alive. Apparently half a dozen times our own artillery nearly did for you before they received the order to stop the barrage.’

‘It’s not a good trait in an officer. A legate should always be in control.’

Antonius chuckled. ‘Control is not all it’s cracked up to be, Marcus. Sometimes a little wild abandon is good for a person. Besides, this has been building in you for some time. And I’ve been told you have form. Apparently something similar happened in Britannia?’

Fronto nodded, remembering his berserk madness on that distant, misty isle.

‘What happened? I only saw a small part of the action.’

Antonius wandered over to the well a few paces away, retrieved the bucket of water and flung it across the blood-slicked bench before casting it aside. He crouched and took an intact cloak from a dead native, using it to dry the bench before he sank to the wood next to the legate.

‘The rest of the Tenth followed you in. The Eighth and the Eleventh both managed to get themselves involved before it was all over - they were the two legions nearest the gate. The last resistance was about an hour ago, in some native temple. A druid was stirring them up to kill, as though they still stood some kind of a chance. Stupid.’

‘Casualties?’

‘Theirs, or ours?’ laughed Antonius. ‘No idea how many their dead number, but we’re looking at about two thousand slaves to send back to Agedincum. Maybe a hundred got away, but we’re leaving them to spread the word to the rest of the tribe. As for ours? Well, we took the Carnutes by surprise. They hardly managed to raise a sword. About two hundred dead and critically wounded, and maybe a hundred walking wounded. Negligible, though sadly most of them were your lads.’

Fronto nodded absently.

‘And now it’s time for you to get back outside, get out of that grisly tunic, have a dip in the river and clean yourself up, and I’ll send someone with fresh clothes for you.’

‘I’d rather sit for a while longer,’ Fronto muttered. ‘My legs don’t seem to work.’

Antonius chuckled again and slapped him on the knee. ‘We have to go. The men are all being pulled out. The buildings have almost all been looted now, and the last bodies are being heaped into one of the granaries we emptied. As soon as we’re finished, Caesar’s given the order to burn the place to the ground. Cenabum is gone. The depot’s personnel are avenged.’

‘And next?’

‘Next?’ Antonius breathed, rising to his feet and reaching out a hand to his fellow officer. ‘Next we move to Novioduno as planned. The rumour is that the Bituriges have forsaken their oath to both us and the Aedui and thrown in their lot with Vercingetorix. Before we march on Avaricon, which is said to be impregnable, we need to test the water, as it were. Novioduno is small and no great threat, and we can confirm the nature of their allegiance there before we move to Avaricon.’

‘No rest for the weary,’ Fronto sighed as he reached up and took the proffered hand, using it to pull himself to his feet, his gore-soaked tunic sticking, cold and unpleasant, to his skin.

‘To the river, Antonius. Then before we move on, I would like to sample a little more of that wine!’

* * * * *

The Boii oppidum of Gorgobina.

The latest assault pulled back rapidly down the gentle slope and Vergasillaunus sucked his teeth in consternation, watching the Arverni warriors and their allies as they retreated in disarray towards the large camp seething with men and animals. Without taking his eyes from the retreat and the jeering forms of the Rome-supporting Boii defenders atop the high walls, he cleared his throat and addressed Vercingetorix.

‘Why do we not commit a sizeable force and simply swamp them? It disheartens our warriors to attack again and again with no true hope of success.’

The king of the Arverni gave his cousin that usual knowing smile. ‘Gorgobina’s walls are high, for all its low slopes, and its inhabitants are fighting for their very existence. Any committed assault will cost us dearly, and I am in the process of building this army, not demolishing it.’ He saw his cousin readying to reply, and cut him off. ‘Gorgobina has only one well which, according to our sources, is not plentiful. Most of their grain is held in the farms that harvested it and are now under our control. And the oppidum is full to the brim with desperate Boii. Their food and water will not last long, and then we can simply walk into the place and claim it without risking many men. We just have to keep sending small forays to tire them out and help them lose hope.’

‘But the delay?’

‘What is a delay of a few weeks now? Caesar will take time to move with his army. The legions have been scattered in winter quarters, and getting them together and ready - let alone supplied - to move on us will take time. And we will hear from our northern allies when he starts to move.’