Marius' Mules VII: The Great Revolt (75 page)

The Romans had been relentless. A larger force of cavalry from inside the camp had joined up with that Germanic surprise attack and between them the entire Roman mounted contingent had harried the Gallic reserve from the field, killing hundreds as they fled. Many of Lucterius’ force escaped to the relief camp before the Romans reached them, but the Cadurci leader himself was among the last, attempting to rally a lost cause, and the Romans had caught him in the open with a few of his best men. He’d lost his horse and the enemy had presumed him dead in the press. He’d had to wait until the Romans had pulled back to their fortifications before rising and dragging himself from the plains and back across the miles to the relief force’s camp on foot.

With a defeated sigh, he began the long climb up the slope, struggling to make out his path in the inky darkness. All was not lost. He would rally the leaders of the reserve army. They might be reluctant still - now more so than ever - but the fact remained that they outnumbered the Romans in total, were still in a better situation for provisions, and they had so nearly won the day.
One more fight
. The Romans couldn’t take that punishment again, and he knew it. They’d emptied their camps to fight that battle and they couldn’t do it again. They didn’t have the men, the supplies, the defences or the heart any more. One more fight and the tribes could still win it.

Lucterius’ bowels almost gave way as something landed on his shoulder suddenly. He turned, his hand reaching for the sword that wasn’t there, lost somewhere out on the plain. The thing behind him was a creature from nightmare and his heart thundered icy blood round his body. One white eye stared out of a face like chopped meat, the other orb pink and bulging. The mouth was a slanted grinning maw of…

With cold shock he realised that the mouth was
not
ruined. It had always looked like that, even before…
this
… had happened to the rest of the face.

‘
Molacos
?’

‘My king.’ The hunter’s voice came out as a hoarse, metallic rasp, like a saw trying to cut through iron, which send a shudder up Lucterius’ spine. What had happened to the man’s face?

‘Have we lost?’ Lucterius asked in little more than a whisper, unable to take his eyes from the dreadful ruin of his second in command.

‘Never,’ gurgled Molacos. ‘Rome cannot stand. Rome will pay.’

Lucterius nodded. ‘There are healers at the camp. They…’ It seemed a pointless platitude. If the man had survived to flee the field like this then he would live, but no healer short of the gods themselves could fix that face.

Molacos’ one good eye burned with baleful fire, and Lucterius shuddered. ‘Come. Let us turn this disaster around.’

Wearily, the two men clambered up the mile-long slope to the camp of the reserves, now missing a third of its original occupants but still a powerful, if tired and disconsolate, army. They were not even questioned by guards at the camp’s edge as they moved in among the blazing fires, though every warrior they came across, old and young, hale and wounded, turned his face away from Molacos in horror.

Half an hour after they had met on the lowest slope of the hill, the two Cadurci stumbled into the camp of the commanders, where Vergasillaunus had held court with the other leaders these past days. It came as no surprise to see Commius of the Atrebates, former friend of Caesar, sitting in Vergasillaunus’ chair. A number of familiar faces were absent.

‘The Cadurci hero returns,’ sneered Commius. ‘And he brings monsters to our table.’

There was no reaction from Molacos, for which Lucterius was glad. This was a delicate moment. If he was to bring the army and the war back from the brink, it would be no good launching accusations and insults around. Political. That was what he needed to be.

‘The army has lost its heart,’ he said carefully.

‘The army has lost a war,’ snapped Commius in reply.

‘Not so,’ Lucterius said clearly but calmly. ‘We lost a battle. The war goes on. Vercingetorix is still in Alesia. The Romans are still trapped in their forts. We still outnumber them. We are one step away from victory, as we were yesterday, though now it is a shorter step.’

Commius rolled his eyes. ‘Your problem, Lucterius, is that you are a fanatic. You never know when to stop.’

‘And you,’ Lucterius snapped, losing his temper despite his oath not to, ‘are a Roman pet and a coward.’

Commius rose from his seat slowly, glaring at the Cadurci.

‘I will not have you scourged and beaten from the camp for that, in memory of the brave fight you just led on the plains and the fact that you were seen to be the last to flee. But do not push me further. Now that Vercingetorix’s little boy has gone,
I
am in command here.’

‘Then while you’re standing and not on your fat arse, get among the tribes and rouse their spirits. Tell them that all is not lost. Remind them that we outnumber the Romans and we can still win.’

‘You are a fool, Lucterius. We have lost. It is time to lick our wounds and move out of Caesar’s vengeful eye.’

Lucterius stared. ‘You cannot seriously be suggesting that the army flee?’

‘Not flight, Lucterius. Simply returning to our cities and farms to take up our lives once again and hope that Caesar will be satisfied with the blood of those trapped in the oppidum and leave us to our peace.’

Lucterius took an angry step forward, the hideous monster Molacos at his shoulder, and several Atrebate warriors moved close to Commius, protectively.

‘If you flee then you ruin our chances for good. We have Caesar trapped and fighting for his life. His army cannot repeat what happened today. But if we leave, then he can resupply, feed his men, and will burn Alesia clear of all life. The war will go on either way, but it can either be ended here with relative ease, or it must be prosecuted elsewhere with a great deal more difficulty and uncertainty. Do not waste the only true opportunity we may ever have!’

Commius slowly sank back to his seat.

‘This is over, Lucterius. Take your Cadurci and go home. At sunrise this army disbands.’

The Cadurci chieftain stared at his opponent, and his eyes did a circuit, raking across every other noble and chief at the fire. None of them, barring the leader of the Senones - Drapes, his name was - would meet his belligerent gaze. They were beaten. Lucterius felt the bottom fall out of his world. Nothing he could do would persuade these men. Perhaps if he’d been the first to speak to them after the fight there would have been a chance, but they’d had hours of maudlin talk from Commius now and saw only failure and capitulation.

‘This is
not
over, Commius. As long as one Cadurci draws breath, the war will go on.’

‘Then you are a fool, Lucterius, and within a season your tribe will be but a memory.’

‘A memory of glory and defiance, rather than treachery, cowardice and surrender,’ spat Lucterius, turning and stomping away from the fire, the ruined Molacos at his side. He had made it perhaps twenty paces from the fire before he became aware of another figure falling in at his other side. He glanced across to see Drapes of the Senones with a thoughtful look on his face.

‘You are serious about carrying on the war?’

Lucterius grunted an affirmative with a nod.

‘You realise that the Arverni king will not be with us?’

‘Perhaps. The Romans will not kill him, though - he is too valuable as a prize. But even if he is crucified, we can still fight on. The Romans are tired and weak. If we can rally the tribes over winter, we will be able to rise again next year, this time with purpose and fury, not caution and subtlety.’

‘The druids might not support us after Vercingetorix’s failure.’

‘Then we will do it without them. This is not over.’ He glanced sidelong at the carved-meat face of his Cadurci friend, who radiated silent malice. ‘No. This is not over by a long way.’

* * * * *

Cavarinos had heaved his way through the western gate of the oppidum in the cold dark of the night and found the first empty house - there were so many now - to collapse in. His night had been fitful and unpleasant, filled with dreams of admonishment and loss, and for some reason punctuated with flashes of Fortuna laughing at him. Then, before the first rays of dawn, he had been struck with a vivid nightmare of battle in which a thousand dark-skinned warriors beat him to death in a brown dusty valley while a thousand glittering Romans looked on and laughed. The killing blow had never landed, though, for Cavarinos had lurched awake, drenched with cold sweat to the sound of a carnyx honking.

He rubbed his eyes and rolled out of bed. As his foot hit the ground and sent a shock up his leg, he remembered the calf wound and moved more carefully. At least his head had stopped hurting and he felt less groggy, the fuzziness that remained merely the product of his bad night.

His tunic and trousers clung to him with cold salty sweat and his hair felt saturated. He rose, trying to pick out what the carnyx call was saying. It was a general call to attendance. Not a battle call, at least. Assuming that whatever it summoned to was no urgent matter, he staggered over to the wall, where the house’s owner had hung a bronze mirror of Roman manufacture - an irony that made him smile despite himself. Peering at his face, he felt a little relieved. There was some mottled bruising where Fronto’s man had hit him, but otherwise he appeared to be whole. Nothing unfixable, anyway, and though the wrapping on his leg was soaked through with blood, as was the bottom of the bed, he had not bled out and he could feel that the wound had clotted and crusted, sticking to the binding.

He looked quizzically at the face before him. In the past few weeks and months he had left his chin hair to grown out again, his beard now as luxuriant and full as it had ever been.

He looked like Critognatos
.

With a cathartic breath, he reached for the knife at his belt and, testing the edge, began to methodically shave his chin, then on a whim continued across his cheeks and down his neck until the face that stared back out of the rippled bronze looked more Roman than Gaul. He stared, feeling certain that somehow what he was looking at was the future. It looked and felt surprisingly natural.

The horn blew again, slightly more insistent, and Cavarinos nodded to the stranger in the mirror and turned, limping from the room. Next to the door, the helpful past occupant had left a good quality spear leaning against the wall, and the Arvernian noble grasped it and used it as a crutch to hobble from the house.

The morning was bright and glorious, the sky an unbroken azure and the buzzing of bees and chittering of birds filling the air. It was still very early, barely past dawn from the angle of the light on the buildings of Alesia, and he listened again. The call was coming from the
fanum
- the sacred space given over to the shrine of Taranis at the highest point of the oppidum. As speedily as he could reasonably manage, given the difficulty of his leg, Cavarinos lurched through the cobbled streets towards the holy site. He was not alone. Numerous stragglers, their faces sewn with defeat and loss, bumbled through the settlement, converging on the call.

The fanum was a wide public square - one of the largest such spaces Cavarinos had ever seen, after the massive example at Bibracte - with three shrines to Toutatis, Taranis and Ogmios. The people of the rebel army filled it from wall to wall, occupying every space, and more folk had climbed up to the sloping portico roof that surrounded it, taking precarious seats where they could to listen to proceedings. Others were gathered at the three entrances to the Fanum, listening through the gaps from outside.

Cavarinos silently pushed past the peripheral figures, leaning on his spear. Despite the density of the crowd his condition, expression, clear rank, and the serpent arm-ring that identified him as Arverni all served to grant him access, people pushing respectfully back to grant him difficult passage.

Finally, he came to a halt next to a large stone block for the tethering of horses, where two young warriors barely old enough to shave shuffled out of the way to allow this wounded noble a seat. Cavarinos nodded his thanks and sank to the stone with a sigh.

Vercingetorix stood before the shrines on a low wooden platform, emitting an aura of authority even now. He was tall and proud, still dressed for battle and spattered with blood as a constant reminder of what he was above all else: a warrior. A strange silence filled the square and Cavarinos sat in it for another quarter of an hour until the public were no longer arriving and shuffling into place. During that time, Vercingetorix’s gaze had passed across him more than twice with no sign of recognition. Of course, his face was discoloured from the bruise and his beard had gone, so among the crowd he would hardly be recognisable. Perhaps that was a good thing?

Finally the king of the Arverni, leader of the war against Caesar, chosen of druids and beloved of the tribes, cleared his throat.

‘You have a decision to make this morning, my friends.’

The silence rushed in as he paused, filling the square with curiosity and tension.

‘I undertook this war, as any who know me will confirm, not for my own glory or for that of my tribe, and not for territory or gold or hostages. I undertook this war, at the behest of the
shepherds of the people
’ - a brief nod in the direction of a figure in an off-white robe to one side. ‘I undertook this war for the good of
all
the tribes. For the freedom of
all
the people from the Roman yoke.’

Again, the silence flooded the square. Even the bees and the birds seemed to have halted their noise to grant audience to the first - and very likely the last - king of a unified Gaul.

‘But fortune is fickle.’

Cavarinos’ hand went to the bronze figurine at his neck and he gripped it so tight that his knuckles whitened.

‘Fortune,’ the king continued, ‘was not with us yesterday. We were within a hair’s breadth of defeating Caesar, and yet the attack collapsed.’