Marius' Mules VI: Caesar's Vow (38 page)

As the two legions moved off in columns eight men wide, the Tenth on the left and the Eighth on the right, the two legates, most of their tribunes and the musicians and various hangers-on remained motionless, letting the army progress before falling into position some way back along the line, away from the ‘business end’.

Even over the squelching of thousands of boots and the jingle and rustle of armour and equipment, the pair could just hear all the crashes, thumps, splashes and cursing of the engineers who had tried to transport a ballista and an onager across the causeway and had ended up sinking into the mire near the island-end, damaging the walkway in the process. A tremendous splosh announced the demise of one of the war engines as it disappeared into the swampy fens that formed part of the great Rhenus delta.

Still, two thirds of the two legions had made it across before the pig-headed engineers had blocked the route, and four scorpion bolt throwers had reached the large island.

It would have been nice to be able to name the island. Furius felt curiously lost and disconnected in a place where they didn’t even have the names of most of the settlements, let alone the natural features.

Two weeks into the campaign against the Menapii, captured and enslaved warriors had revealed under ‘coercion’ the location of a particularly large island in one of the most unpleasant swampy areas, where the leaders and the most senior druids had taken shelter. Upon learning of this, Caesar had shifted the focus of his campaign to that area of swamp, ignoring the endless small hideaways and preparing to strike at the heart of the tribe. It had taken four days to build the enormous causeway out across the sucking bogs and squelching fens to the long, low, ship-like island.

The legions had then mustered on the open ground at the causeway’s end. It had seemed odd that no missiles had been cast at them while they built, but the plumes of smoke rising from the forested island centre confirmed that the place was home to a sizeable population, and carefully-placed lookouts and patrols from the First legion kept an eye out for any attempts to flee the island by boat, which had not occurred.

The first scouts sent into the island centre woodlands had not returned, and so second forays had been ordered with heavier-armoured scouts in larger parties. They had also come under attack, but had confirmed that the island’s population were protected by a strange hedge-and-palisade arrangement that would be difficult to assault in force, especially within the trees.

Caesar was in no way deterred, of course. His other two legions were recuperating from the business of constructing the causeway, leaving the Eighth and Tenth to make the main assault. ‘Should be more than enough,’ was the common opinion, shared by both tribunes.

The men squished through the wet grass and silty earth towards the defences within the woods.

‘Feels good to be launching a proper attack again, eh?’

Fabius sucked in moist, fetid air and nodded. ‘Make the most of it, though. I overheard the legates this morning. They reckon Caesar’s thinking of heading south to flatten the Treveri after the Menapii cave in.’

‘So we get to fight endless little actions south of the great forest, then?’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘Then we’d best kick the shit out of this lot quickly, eh?’

A squawk announced the first casualty. As the legions approached the trees an arrow whipped out of the foliage and struck a standard bearer from the Eighth, who fell, clutching his neck, a legionary behind leaping forward and grasping the standard from his falling hand, discarding his own blade in favour of the honour of the legion.

‘That came from the branches,’ Furius said sharply, then turned and raised his voice, bellowing ‘they’re in the trees! Testudo! Testudo!’

Carbo had apparently spotted the same thing, and the front ranks of the Tenth were forming into an armoured box of shields even as the tribune spoke. As the legions reformed for their better protection, more and more arrows and stones whipped and thrummed out of the green canopy and into the advancing army. Here and there a legionary who was too slow to react fell, an arrow jutting from his leg, his arm, or his torso. The sheer number of missiles was staggering, given their source. They must have been putting half the population up in those branches all the time they watched the legions crossing. That, of course, was why they had not been struck on the causeway.

It was horribly effective against a column of men.

Against a testudo of interlocked shields it was about as effective as a hail of beans. The Menapii had never had to field an army against Rome. They had supplied men to various revolts and attacks, but had responded to Roman incursions by simply retreating into their impregnable swamps. And now those swamps were no longer impregnable, and the unprepared Menapii had no idea what to do about it. They had responded with the best, most innovative method of defence they could manage. It would have served them well against a disorganised horde of other Belgae, but they had committed their bulk to the first attack, which had been quickly negated by the shield configuration.

Unless they had more surprises at the palisade…             

Fabius counted under his breath each and every footstep that brought them closer to the trees. Not part of a century of men, the two tribunes were not enclosed by a testudo, keeping the large body shields they had requisitioned facing forward and hunched down behind them, making sure that the only body parts they presented to the attack were feet and the narrow slice of face between the shield’s rim and the brow of their decorative officers’ helmets.

Thirty seven paces and the first leaves brushed across Fabius’ plume. He had also noted half a dozen yelps of men struck by well-placed arrows or sling-shots during the advance, and there would have been many more he couldn’t hear over the din, but now they were at the trees.

‘Break!’ Carbo yelled from the front. ‘Pila!’

Like an anthill splitting open, the testudo formations exploded into individual activity, each legionary immediately looking up into the canopy above them and readying their pila. Most of the trees were oak and beech, the former lower to the ground, but with wider, heavier branches and therefore favoured by the Menapii archers and slingers sitting there. Their favouring of those branches was their instant undoing, most of the branches being within easy reach of the legionaries’ pila.

Men stabbed upwards with their javelins, skewering the natives and ripping through arms, legs and bodies. Many pila were lost to the men as their victims fell from the branches, smashing the shafts as they tumbled to the earth. The woodland resounded to the noise of bodies crashing through twigs and foliage. A few of the more accurate legionaries began to cast their pila up into the branches, aiming for the men out of reach of simple thrusts.

Fabius found himself wishing they had sent the archers of Decius’ auxiliary unit across first, for now they would have had an effective force to remove the more difficult figures among the greenery. Alongside the crashes and cries of the dying Menapii, the occasional shriek or Latin curse confirmed that the legions were still suffering casualties to the missiles even at this more difficult range.

‘Get those four scorpions into this clearing!’ Furius yelled. ‘Have them set up and take out the bastards in the trees. Carbo! Get a century to each machine and make sure they’re shielded while they work.’

The pink-faced centurion turned and waved his understanding as he gestured for his men to move on towards the heart of the island. His orders began to ring out, melding with those of the officers of the Eighth, who were bringing their two scorpions forward.

Fabius and Furius shared a three-eyed glance and nodded, leaving the clearing up of the archers in the trees to the scorpion crews and their defenders as they moved on to the island’s heart with the bulk of the legions.

As they moved between the wide boles of oak and the narrower, taller beech, the trees began to close up, growing tighter together, the ways between hindered by thick undergrowth. Fortunately, years of using these havens in times of need had led to the natives keeping them well-maintained, and the approaches to the settlement were clear and wide enough that there were gaps in the green canopy above. The legions had lost their neat formations during the first encounters in the woodland, and had now broken up into individual centuries, the Eighth and Tenth largely intermixed, and yet working in concert with the efficiency that was indicative of veteran centurions. Centuries moved four men abreast towards the defences ahead.

Furius stared in surprise. This place must have been settled for a long time. The trees and plants had been trained to grow together, interlinked like a giant wattle fence, branches curling around one another like some strange chain of brown and green, and wherever nature could not be trained to form a wall, the Menapii had inserted a solid palisade.

The scouts were right: it would be troublesome to assault. Far from impossible, though. For all the oddity of the system, there was no ditch - the land was too low-lying and swampy to permit such a defence, and for similar reasons there was no rampart.

The lead centuries, at the orders of their commanders, roared out a challenge and broke into a run, leaping at the strange, knotted defence system, hacking at anything that protruded and attempting to clamber up the root systems and grasp the palisade to haul themselves over.

A guttural shout from within echoed across the island and without warning several hundred spears - simple wooden affairs formed of beech shafts with sharpened ends - lanced out between the defences through every crack.

The unprepared legionaries of the lead centuries took appalling casualties in that first strike and Fabius and Furius, delayed at the first encounter, watched from a dozen paces back as men were impaled and skewered all along the line of attack, some being lifted off their feet as they slid down the tilting shafts towards the wielders, leaving a trail of wet red along the wood.

‘Shields, you miserable dogs!’ bellowed centurion Atenos from somewhere off to the left. The scant survivors of the first assault staggered back from the defences, amid the groaning wounded and dying, readying their shields and falling in with the next group of centuries.

More cautiously this time, the men moved forward, shields held forth to deflect the spear thrusts. Furius and Fabius looked at one another and the pair nodded. As the legionaries reached the defences and the wooden shafts lanced out again, this time the majority of them being turned aside by the heavy body shields, the two tribunes leapt into the fray, swords coming down and shearing off the wooden spears where they protruded from the wall before clambering up onto the lower twisting limbs of the tree-fence. Fabius glanced off to his right briefly and saw his friend disappearing into a knot of legionaries who were already at the top of the knotted defence and attempting to clear away enough defenders to drop down within.

Gritting his teeth, aware that Furius would rib him endlessly if he failed to bloody his sword, Fabius let go his shield and reached up, gripping the top of a short section of palisade and pulling himself up. As his face came to the upper edge, sword in hand at the same level, a rabid Menapii woman appeared before him, rising over the palisade tip, dagger readied.

For a brief moment, Fabius baulked. In all his years of fighting with the legions, he’d never been presented with the necessity of doing away with a woman in mid-battle. It was the slightest of pauses, but it was enough. With a snarled imprecation in her unpleasant tongue, the dirty, dishevelled farmer’s wife stabbed down with her dagger, the blade sinking into the back of Fabius’ hand where he grasped the wall top. He heard the delicate bones smash as the blade drove deep enough to pin him to the timber.

Shock flowed through him, though decades of war experience drove his actions even as his brain filled with blinding pain-light. He never even thought about or saw what he did as his sword hand swept forward, driving the tip of the gladius into the snarling woman’s eye, slamming though liquid and brain.

And then the flesh of his hand gave way, the pinned limb the only thing holding him up at the top of the palisade. The flesh and blood ripped around the dagger’s edge and tore free, and he fell back to the ground, his hand split down the centre, sword lost to him, stuck in the dead woman’s face beyond the wall.

Fabius gasped in agony and looked down at his ruined hand as he landed heavily on his discarded shield. With a grimace, he used his free hand to unknot his scarf and rip it free of his neck, winding it round and round his wounded one and pulling it tight, tying it to slow the blood loss.

Wincing against the pain, Fabius grasped the shield in his good hand and held it up against the possibility of stray missiles as he staggered away from the fight. He’d seen enough wounds in his career to know that this wasn’t deadly - though it could be debilitating - but if he left it to bleed too long, that would all change. He needed to find a capsarius with a good, steady sewing hand as soon as possible.

Shield raised, he passed the centuries marching into the fight, and spotted a medicus in a white robe, surrounded by half a dozen orderlies and capsarii, close to the legates and their tribunes, setting up in a clearing. Turning, he made his way towards them.

‘Ah, tribune,’ Crassus greeted him with an enthusiastic voice, ‘all goes well?’

‘Apart from this, sir,’ he raised his wool-scarf-wrapped wounded hand. ‘I think we’ll have the place secured in about a quarter hour.’

‘Good.’

‘Let me look at that, Fabius,’ called the medicus, spotting the wound, and the tribune and the legate of the Eighth both turned at the name, then shared another glance and shook their heads. Tribune Fabius stepped across towards the medicus and something caught his attention. It was a slight creaking noise, almost lost in the din of the battle, but he knew it for what it was. His gaze was moving around the branches and boles of the trees for the source even as he heard the release and the whisper of the arrow in flight.