Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (25 page)

‘Indeed. The Bituriges have planned their capital well and their gods watch over them.’ The general frowned and turned to Antonius. ‘Do we know
what
gods they revere here?’

‘The usual,’ shrugged Antonius, then scratched his head. ‘But I do also remember hearing tell of a local god called Anvallus. The ‘unconquered’ apparently.’

‘Interesting,’ the general tapped his lip. ‘Have the priests sacrifice to Jove, Mars and Minerva as usual, but make sure they invoke Teutatus and Taranis and pay special attention to this Anvallus. We’ll find it easier to get over those walls with ‘the unconquered’ with us, rather than against us.’

Fronto smiled as he watched Antonius nod and file the names away. It seemed a particularly interesting facet of the unpredictable officer that he was capable of the most appalling casual drunken blasphemy and yet paid such close attention to any shrine or temple they came across and seemed to live his life by the predictions of auguries and seers. The strange juxtaposition was just one of the things that he liked about Antonius.

‘But favour of the gods aside,’ Plancus returned to the subject in hand, ‘what do we do in the absence of artillery range?’

‘We could build artillery platforms closer to the walls?’ mused Cicero.

Priscus shook his head. ‘Once we get them within effective range, the trajectories will be so high it will cause the artillerists endless headaches. Besides, once we get them that close, they’ll be under attack from the walls because of their height and angle. For every bolt or rock we put over the walls, we’ll lose several men. Hardly worth it.’

‘So it’s a straight infantry assault?’ Fronto sighed. ‘Seems the only feasible solution. But it’ll be costly.
Very
costly.’

‘Too costly,’ Caesar said quietly. ‘There is a force of rebels out there somewhere nearby that might outnumber us by now. I cannot afford to throw away veteran legionaries on an unassailable wall with that kind of danger floating about. The rampart is too high for men to scale, even with ladders, and siege towers and vineae are not an option. The ground is too marshy and soft. The machines would sink.’

‘Unless we build it up,’ murmured Priscus. The gathering of staff officers turned to the prefect with interested frowns.

‘Picture the dip,’ Priscus continued, ‘but picture it crossed by a wide causeway. It would give us a solid surface for vehicles and negate some of the lowest slopes beneath the walls.’

Caesar smiled. ‘Better still, we make the causeway slope upwards to the west and turn it into a ramp, gradually ascending to the walls. It will negate the height advantage for the sake of a little extra initial work.’

‘The men are hungry, mind, Caesar. And hunger makes them weaker than usual. We moved onto half rations days ago, and Proculus tells me we’ll be halving that again in a few days. Soldiers living on hard-tack biscuits will struggle to build such a structure… especially under constant attack from the walls.’

Antonius cleared his throat. ‘Is there no word from the Aedui or the Boii about your request for grain? Or from Agedincum or Cenabum?’

Caesar shook his head. ‘The possibility that the tribes are refusing aid in line with the enemy’s wishes concerns me as much as the more likely chances that the rebels are waylaying their convoys en route. But whatever the cause, we must press on here as fast as we can. We cannot afford to retreat to a well-supplied position. Our speed has given us an advantage over the Arvernian rebel, and I will not give up that advantage.’

‘We could send out a few cohorts?’ Antonius argued. ‘Or a large cavalry force? To Bibracte, perhaps, to seek supplies? The gods know we could do with a little more knowledge of what’s going on out there? Our forage parties disappear without trace, which suggests that Vercingetorix is close by. If we could move against him, our siege here would be redundant.’

‘No.’ Caesar peered into the drizzle and shivered. ‘Each time we send out men, they disappear. I will not throw away any more units of good men. I agree that we need more information, but sending groups of legionaries out is inviting destruction. Instead, select a few dozen native riders that could pass as locals. Have them dress in a civilian manner and send them out as scouts. They are to avoid trouble, but locate any farms that have not been burned to cinders, or any sizeable enemy force, and report back with what they find.’

He pulled his heavy, damp red cloak about his shoulders and gestured to the walls across the dip. ‘Give the soldiers two days of rest. During that time all we will do is have a watch mounted and rotate the men in groups to construct two siege towers and as many vineae as the local woodlands will provide. The men can rest and prepare when off-shift.’

‘Vineae, sir?’ All present imagined the hide-roofed structures designed to protect attacking troops crossing the proposed ramp.

Caesar smiled at Plancus. ‘Yes. Vineae. They will protect the men as they build the ramp. We will place them in continual lines approaching the walls, such that the man can use them as tunnels taking them from the safety of camp to the latest build site. The enemy’s weapons will be largely negated.’

Fronto nodded appreciatively. It would sit well with the tired, hungry men to be well protected in their work.

‘Now let us set about the task of building their morale before we ask them to build us a ramp. Have the first cohort of each legion fall in at the flat ground beyond the camp. Tell your men that tunics and belts is the order. No armour or weapons. They are not on parade and may stand easy.’

* * * * *

Caesar stood before the gathered men. The legionaries had the look of an army on campaign, unshaven and dirty with ragged hair and mud-spattered kit. Their appearance was not improved by the fact that the morning’s drizzle had strengthened as the day wore towards noon and had become the spirit-crushing rain that seemed so endemic of Gaulish winters.

And yet the sodden, unkempt and dirty legionaries gathered on the flat turf stood proud and in neat lines, despite the order to attend at ease. The optios and centurions had waived that order and kept their armour, crested helmets and staffs that marked their rank. They made their commander proud. And they had been attentively silent, without a word of complaint as they waited.

The general took a few steps forward into the centre of the arc of men.

‘Men of the legions… soldiers of Rome… conquerors of Gaul. Thank you.’

There was a mix of confusion and pleasure at this odd profession of gratitude, apparent in every face, and yet not a voice broke the silence, such was the discipline of the veterans.

‘You face hardships with the stoic acceptance of true Romans. For that is what you are. Some of you have been drawn from my provinces and from underprivileged societies, regardless of the standing senatorial orders for the raising and manning of a legion. But every man here is now a citizen of Rome - a chosen son of the republic. And you make your nation proud with your manner.’

As pre-arranged, Marcus Antonius stepped up from the back, carrying a tray of small bags. Caesar took the first from the tray.

‘Our allies have been requested to supply us with extra grain and, though their attempts to send us goods seem to have been waylaid by the enemy, this is naught but a setback. You have faced the hunger of halved rations with strength and dignity, and I salute you for it. I am told that conditions worsen, and am sure that rumour of this will already have reached you. Rations will have to be cut again unless our convoys reach us.’

He paused, waiting for the groan, though only a few small voices murmured, their optios jabbing them with staffs to keep them quiet.

‘I will not ask any of you to suffer in a manner that I am not willing to experience myself. In order to drag out our supplies as best we can, as of this morning, the officers are all moving to quarter rations to help stretch the food supplies.’

He cast the small bag into the crowd, where a legionary caught it with ease.

‘This is the officers’ rations. Good white flour. The finest milled. It will be added to your supplies today.’

There was a cheer as Antonius began to fling the small bags of flour out into the mass of men, Plancus and Fronto stepping forward with two more trays and joining the display of largesse. It would make little real difference in terms of hunger, but the gesture would be more than appreciated.

‘In order to bring matters to a close here,’ Caesar announced, while the distribution continued, ‘it is my intention to construct a ramp. The work will cross the dip and the marsh and will deliver us dry to the walls, allowing us to complete our siege in the usual manner of a Roman army. Vineae will be placed as we work to keep enemy missiles from your heads.’

He paused, a sly look passing across his eyes, unnoticed by the crowd.

‘But I will never carry out such a work at the expense of my legions. If you are feeling the pinch of hunger too deep to commit to such work, then I understand. If we reach the point at which you can no longer go on and it becomes critical for us to return to our supply bases, I will raise the siege without further comment, and the army will break camp and move away.’

‘Piss on that!’ came a voice from the crowd, and the statement brought a small chorus of agreement and no ding on the head from his optio.

‘You would have us continue?’

A man in the press of legionaries looked left and right and, seeing no reason not to, rose to his feet. His ochre-coloured scarf identified him as an engineer, and he cleared his throat noisily.

‘We can have that ramp up for you in two weeks. Three at most.’

Caesar frowned - he’d planned on not more than a week. The legionary noted the look of surprise on his general’s face and pursed his lips. ‘It’ll need to be maybe four hundred paces long and upward of eighty feet in height. And the width will have to be a lot more than that of a simple siege tower to provide adequate stability. Two to three weeks to be sure of success.’

Someone nearby muttered something Caesar couldn’t catch, but which earned him a clout with an optio’s staff.

‘Don’t you worry sir,’ shouted another man. ‘We’ll get it done fast. We’ve never abandoned a siege yet, all through this piss-poor land, an’ we ain’t going to start doin’ it now.’

‘Yeah,’ threw in another. ‘Remember the mounds at Cenabum? Those poor bastards! For them.’

Caesar bowed his head in response. At least a week longer than he’d expected, then, and possibly more. A week or two more of starvation and hardship, and yet his men were unbroken, prepared for the troubles ahead and undaunted. It was what Pompey always missed in his aloof separateness from his army: the sheer humbling nobility of the ordinary soldier.

‘For the victims of Cenabum,’ he said quietly, but loud enough to be heard across the space. ‘For all those who have fallen in the name of Gaul’s pacification, we will crack Avaricon and bring the Bituriges to heal and by the kalends of Aprilis we will stand in their halls eating their bread and drinking their wine.’

He closed his eyes and basked in the roar of approval.

* * * * *

The days wore on in privation and poor weather. The rain had set in as a constant - that early spring rain that battered the land with misery rather than a winter chill and dragged down the spirits of the men off whose armour and shields it pinged and clattered.

The rough turf of the hillside became a mire of sucking and oozing mud, with brown streams and rivulets carrying the mess down into the dip before the city, adding to the burgeoning swamp at the bottom.

Caesar took one more look through the interminable rain at the ramp, already impressive and marching out across the soggy dip, lined with the roofed vineae through the tunnels of which men moved constantly, carrying baskets of rocks and earth or lengths of timber. Occasionally one of the more hopeful of the Bituriges would loose an arrow at them, but they rarely struck, the defenders having discovered early on the protective power of the timber-and-hide sheds. There seemed nothing to do for either force but to watch the ramp’s gradual rise as it approached the walls.

‘Caesar?’

He turned at the voice and registered again the Aedui scout standing patiently waiting for debrief. ‘Speak.’

‘There is much to tell, Caesar.’

‘Go on.’ The general clasped his hands behind his back, rocking on his heels as he watched Fronto stomping angrily up the ramp with his engineer, Pomponius, in tow, and slapping a legionary around the back of the head, at which the man dropped his basket of rocks, earning him another hard slap.

‘We have located the enemy’s camp, general. I and my companion came across a single warrior separated from their army, scouting in the same manner as us. I
persuaded
him to answer a few questions, and then left his body hidden and we rode out to confirm the truth of his words.’

Caesar nodded, his mouth turning up at the corner as the legionary, struggling to pick up his rocks, dropped one on Fronto’s foot, bringing forth a stream of invective that could be heard even at this distance, followed by a fresh bout of head-slapping.

‘It seems,’ the scout continued, ‘that Vercingetorix had positioned his camp on the moors some fifteen miles east of here, back towards Aedui land. It was from that place that he sent out his raiders but, having burned all that could be burned within easy reach and effectively cut off all our supply routes, he broke camp two days ago and is now in position on the far side of Avaricon, less than five miles distant. He seems to have now positioned himself close to the supply route our wagons from the north would take.’

Caesar’s stomach gave an involuntary and rather loud growl. He had stood by his word, the officers rationing themselves along with the men. He coughed to hide his irritation.

‘Cunning, isn’t he,’ the general murmured. ‘He has effectively removed all the forageable goods within our conceivable reach and now he moves in force to blockade any supplies. He is well informed, too, apparently. Less than a week since, I sent riders to Labienus and Trebonius, asking that they send well-defended columns with grain. Such a column would get through his usual raids, but not a large interception force.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I cannot believe this is his full army, however. He will have left men in the east to prevent supplies from the Aedui and the Boii reaching us. Perhaps he has split his army in two. Do you have any estimate of the camp’s numbers?’