Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (41 page)

‘Tell that to the bodies of Romans scattered across the land between here and Bibracte with spears in their back and all their worldly goods now decorating Aedui warriors.’

‘Who are you to deny us our freedom?’ grumbled another merchant. Aristius frowned down at him, but Priscus turned with a shrug. ‘We’re not stopping you.
We
won’t be leaving, but you’re welcome to, though I heartily recommend that you don’t. That mad bastard out there is just waiting to peel you alive.’

A brief argument broke out among the merchants, and Aristius cleared his throat. ‘Will you willingly grant passage to a number of merchants if they decide to leave?’

There was a long pause as the man clearly weighed up his options, and a brief confab between him and his cronies, and finally he nodded. ‘Your merchants may leave unmolested.’

‘You hear that?’ one of the civilians said, hopefully.

‘We should go now.’

‘But I’ve got all my coin back in the house.’

‘Better saving your life than your fortune,’ retorted another.

‘And your coin won’t help you when you’re crawling around the blood-soaked grass looking for your own face,’ Priscus snapped harshly.

‘You don’t understand,’ the newly-impoverished merchant grumbled as he reached for his pony which stood with the others at the roadside. ‘These people will not betray us. We’ve traded with them for many years. We have made each other rich. It’s
you
they want to kill - the army. Get out of my way.’

The portly trader strode purposefully towards them, leading his beast, and the two officers shrugged and stepped out of the way. A further eleven men joined him, retrieving their animals and approaching the gate, the others standing back and looking undecided for only a moment, glancing at the officers and clearly deciding upon the safety of thick walls.

Aristius paused for a moment until he was sure that all the merchants desiring to leave were gathered, and then cleared his throat. ‘Twelve men have accepted your gracious offer. May your gods favour you for your honour,’ he added, in the hope that the nudge might cause the man to exhibit some of that honour in the coming hours.’

The men at the gate lifted the bar and began to swing the portal open. Brutus took a step forward. ‘Think about this. Are you sure you want to put your lives in the hands of a man who now follows the rebels?’

He was met with silence as the disaffected merchants turned their backs on him and mounted up, riding slowly through the gate and across the causeway that traversed the ditch. The gate closed behind them and despite their wishing to remain hidden, Brutus and Priscus removed their helmets and climbed the rampart high enough to observe events beyond.

It came as no shock to either of them when the twelve merchants, just passing through the lines of the enemy, were suddenly set upon and pulled from their saddles. In moments, as the three officers and the town’s warriors watched, the twelve men were lined up on their knees, bawling out their fears. The din of panic and tears gradually diminished with each head taken, and then the twelve grisly burdens were them affixed to the tips of spears and driven into the ground at regular intervals facing the walls.

‘Looks like we’ll be staying for a while,’ Priscus noted and turning, strode back down to the street below.

* * * * *

Varus rose in the saddle, shouting encouragement to his riders. From the moment Caesar’s cavalry force, now some fifteen or sixteen thousand strong, had crested the bank of the Elaver River, they had seen the rebel forces seething like ants around the camp on the low rise some two miles distant. Caesar had waited only until a thousand men had filtered across the recently-reconstructed bridge over the Elaver, built simultaneously with the camp for the influx of supplies and using the original Gallic piles, before releasing his men to the camp’s aid.

Varus looked left and right. The units held to a loose formation at best. Few of the men who had made it across to form the vanguard were his usual force. No matter how much the officers had tried to maintain the discipline of unit formations, others had pushed in ahead, desperate to see action - Aedui warriors who felt betrayed and cheated by the rebels and sought revenge, and the ever-present Germanic cavalry, who smelled fight and bloodshed and were not going to miss the opportunity to take part.

And so here he was, riding with two hundred of his own men - a few regular alae and the rest formed of Remi and Mediomatrici levies. To his left, two or three hundred Aedui raced to get ahead and start the blood-letting, yelling imprecations and their rather forthright opinion on the parentage and ancestry of the Arverni. To his right, the Germans thundered on, drooling at the thought of the killing to come. He shuddered at the sight of the nearest of them, a necklace of finger bones clattering as he bounced in the saddle.

His focus fell once more upon the main camp, where the rebels seemed to have registered the cavalry thundering across the ground towards them and without pause for discussion, the enemy began to desert their siege, racing back around the camp corners in the direction of the oppidum.

Booing and honking suggested that the word had reached a musician or commander, who had sounded the recall. There was little hope of Varus’ cavalry engaging the enemy, with the exception of cutting down a few tardy fleeing infantry, as they approached the now unassailed camp rampart to the east. Glancing to the side, he spotted his standard bearer and musician, and called out to them. ‘Signal the halt!’

The signaller waved his standard, while the musician put out the call on his
tuba
, the central cavalry force drawing up sharply and reforming into units. The newly-acquired Aedui paid absolutely no heed, racing on in the wake of the fleeing rebels, rounding the camp’s southern edge, their desperate desire to kill echoed by the Germanic warriors, who charged, snarling and yelping, around the northern corner.

Varus shook his head. Trying to call them back would be fruitless. Besides, it might be nice to harry the bastards back up the slopes and pick off a few, and it would feed both the vengeance of the Aedui and the bloodlust of the Germanics and perhaps calm them for a while.

‘Where the hell were you lot?’

The cavalry commander looked up into the late evening light, the sun now sunk into the west and the sky an inky shade of indigo. The shape above the east gate could have been anyone, but Varus knew without a doubt who it was anyway.

‘Fronto. Nice to see you. Hope you mucked out my stable areas while we were gone.’

* * * * *

‘What do you suppose is going on?’

Priscus roused himself from the table where he had been tearing off chunks of bread, throwing down damsons and chewing sweet, tangy apples grown in the orchards of the oppidum. Since the unpleasant display outside yesterday morning, the three officers had spoken to the town’s leaders and had relocated to a house close to the walls, where a window afforded them a view across the ramparts and of the enemy encamped beyond the ditch.

Throughout yesterday the rebel force had sporadically grown, with three fresh groups coming in to bolster their numbers, bringing them to an estimated twelve or thirteen hundred now. Moreover, each group that came in had brought with them captives. Roman merchants were seemingly the prime choice, though they had brought in Aedui civilians and farmers who had refused to bow to the rebels and had professed themselves still allies of Rome. Another prime choice seemed to be civilians from the hovels and farmsteads in the surrounding mile or two, who were officially residents under the aegis of the council of Rodonna.

And over the day, more of these were dealt with, beheaded and put on display before the walls. A few who particularly angered this
Brennus
and his cronies were brutally tortured, their cries of agony ringing out over the oppidum through the dark hours.

Escape had seemed impossible for the trapped Romans, and Priscus had expressed more than once his exasperation at the very good chance that he would have to sit out the war in this place, for he would only be free to leave when Caesar had beaten the rebels.

Aristius stood leaning on the window, watching the plain below, and waved Priscus and Brutus across. ‘Something is definitely happening.’

The three men squeezed into the space to achieve a view, Priscus still chewing his apple.

The camps of the enemy outside the walls were bursting into life, men grabbing weapons and armouring up. It took only a moment for the three men’s ears to catch the distant rumble of horses, and they watched intently as a small column of riders emerged from the woodlands to the northeast, perhaps four-hundred strong and displaying boar and wolf standards common to the Aedui.

‘More allies?’ Aristius murmured?

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Brutus breathed. ‘Would they rush to arm themselves for allies?’

‘But they’re not lining up for defence, either.’

The three men watched with interest as the column of riders approached the camp, reined in briefly to speak to a warrior at the edge, and then rode for the central tents where the rebel leader Brennus stood, unarmoured but with his sword belted to his side and the plain blue of his tunic offset by gold torcs and other rich jewellery.

The leader of the cavalry stepped his horse forward for a moment, and spoke in their strange tongue, addressing Brennus. The three Romans could not hear the conversation and even if they could, they would have found the language incomprehensible, but the effect was fascinating to watch.

Whatever the new leader had said, Brennus reacted as though he had been slapped in the face. The tidings spread out from that reaction like ripples across a pond, the encamped rebels seemingly stunned as they heard this news.

‘Interesting,’ Priscus noted. ‘Might be a good idea to get over to the walls.’

It was only a short jog from the house to the oppidum’s ramparts, the house chosen for its proximity as well as its view, and the three men were climbing the earth bank only moments later. Aristius moved to the front as the default spokesman for the group, the two more senior officers keeping slightly back to remain out of the limelight.

The officers blinked in surprise. They had been mere heartbeats out of sight of the enemy, yet they had seemingly missed something important, for now Brennus had retreated to the doorway of his tent, his sword drawn, his close kin gathered around him protectively. The newly-arrived horsemen had surrounded the leader’s tent, and spears had been levelled.

‘I like the look of this,’ grinned Priscus.

A man among the riders shouted something at the defensive knot of warriors and perhaps half of them threw down their weapons and stepped aside in surrender. The rest bristled. Eight men, including Brennus, now faced off against more than a score of cavalry. Whatever had happened, the rest of the rebel camp seemed disinclined to rush to their leader’s aid and sheathed their weapons swiftly, bowing their heads to the horsemen who were now filtering throughout the elongated camp. Another noble among the horsemen shouted out an order and half a dozen of his men moved along the ditch, gathering up the spears and the heads they bore and taking them to the central area.

An argument seemed to have broken out there and was raging between Brennus and the leader of the horsemen. Something that was said acted as a trigger and suddenly the warriors around the rebel raised their swords defensively.

The new arrival raised his hand, barking out an order, and almost casually, the horsemen around them cast their spears at the defenders, killing or maiming all but three instantly, drawing swords to replace their spears even before the bodies had hit the ground. Realising their plight, the remaining two of Brennus’ guards cast down their weapons and while they attempted to step away, the trapped rebel chief gave an angry shout and stabbed one of his former guards in the back.

With a contemptuous snarl, the cavalry leader took advantage of the rebel’s posture, his sword low and still in the fallen man’s back, and rode his horse forwards, knocking Brennus aside. As the shocked former-rebel hit the ground, yelping in pain, the new arrival took to riding his horse back and forth across the prone form almost in the theatrical manner of a Roman cavalry display team, each time the hooves smashing the bones of the beaten man.

Priscus watched in amazement as the man who had trapped them here was swiftly turned to pulp, his men staring in horror, the grisly trophies they had taken yesterday cast into a fire where they rendered down in the heat and stank out the plain. As the Romans waited with bated breath, the riders began to dispose of all the poor captives’ bodies in the flames.

Once the camp seemed to have settled, the new horsemen’s leader stepped his mount forth, leaving glistening red hoof prints across the grass, and approached the causeway before the gate.

‘I wish to speak to the magistrate in charge of this oppidum.’

Priscus nudged Aristius, who frowned back at him.

‘I think this is yours,’ the prefect replied, and Aristius shrugged and stepped to the wall.

‘My name is Marcus Aristius, senior tribune in the army of the Proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, Julius Caesar. If, as seems to be the case, you are an opponent of Brennus, then that makes you a friend of Rome, am I correct?’

The horseman bowed his head.

‘I am Iudnacos of Bibracte, Cotus’ man and a loyal ally of Rome. I come to remove this pestilence from our lands and to affirm once more our friendship with Rodonna and the noble magistrates here who held tight to their oath despite the danger to themselves. Rumour circulates concerning the Aedui pledging support to the rebel Vercingetorix. I come to quash those rumours. Ignoble elements among our tribe seek to bring this situation about, but the vast majority of the Aedui maintain our oaths in good faith. That force of thousands claimed to have defected to the Arverni are, in fact, now bound for Caesar’s camp.’

‘I am pleased to hear this, Iudnacos, and your arrival is timely, so say the least.’