The Druid King (37 page)

Beginning an assault involving bridging entrenchments two hours before dawn was not something Caesar would ordinarily have done. But the Gauls had never descended to challenge any of his probes, so it did not seem imprudent to proceed on the assumption that they were
inviting
him to advance beyond at least the first of the ditches without hindrance, and would do nothing until as much of his army as he was foolish enough to deploy was spread out crossing the rings of entrenchments.

Caesar was not quite sure what the Gauls in Gergovia would do then, save attack his front somehow, but he was almost certain that Vercingetorix’s main force would emerge from wherever it was hiding, no doubt hoping to find the Roman army vulnerable to the surprise attack on its rear.

A wan sun rose through a grayish-white cloud layer over Gergovia, revealing eight cohorts of Roman infantry standing in tight formation inside the third ring of ditches and facing the city gates across the fourth. On the other side of the fourth ditch, some hundred Gallic archers lay prone. A plank bridge crossed the innermost defensive ditch behind them. On the other side were twice as many archers.

A thousand or so Gallic warriors rode back and forth before the city, shouting, cursing, banging swords and lances on their shields, raising a thunderous din; atop the ramparts, more warriors did the same.

With them were women, some of them young and fair, but most of them older and a good deal less so, wriggling their bare breasts as they shouted, turning and lifting their skirts to expose their buttocks. Trumpeters blew on Gallic carnaxes, tall brass horns curved like the necks of swans, accompanying this dance with mournful and flat blattings, creating the illusion that enormous farts were emerging therefrom.

The Romans did not break good order or military discipline to reply to this taunting, but contented themselves with shouting and cursing without moving while their own outnumbered trumpeters vainly attempted to match the volume of the Gauls.

Vercingetorix nodded to the nearest signalman, who blew a long, low warbling note on his carnax, which was picked up by another and another and another, until the woods resounded with what seemed like the honking of a great flock of brazen geese.

When the warriors were mounted, Rhia raised his standard high and Vercingetorix nodded again. The signalman blew three shorter and higher notes, and then he began to lead his army out of the forest. The dispersed force rode at a walk through the trees, then at a trot as the forest thinned out, and then a mighty horde rode at a full gallop across open grassland toward Gergovia.

Oranix’s scouts had reported that, though the Romans had crossed the first three ditches during the night, they had proceeded no farther, nor had Caesar brought up his main force as yet.

This was disquieting, for the whole desperate strategy counted on Critognat to lure the Roman army into crossing all the ditches to attack his heavily outnumbered forces, so that Vercingetorix’s own outnumbered forces could surprise them with an attack on their unprepared rear. And even if Critognat had thus far followed orders not to attack until the main Roman force attempted to cross the first fire ditch, how long he would hold his patience Vercingetorix could not know until he rode into the battle.

But the time for thought was over and the time for action had begun. Now that the final battle was beginning, it would be sword against sword, man against man. At last Vercingetorix could fight as the name his father had given him bade—as a Leader of Great Warriors. Great warriors fighting, not as an army of ants like Romans, but as a horde of heroes riding into battle with war cries in their throats, and the tales the bards would tell of this day already singing in their hearts.

Thousands of hooves thundered a stirring drumbeat and sent up a cloud of dust, thousands of voices roared out battle cries, and the rhythm of his horse galloping beneath him, and the rhythm of his heart beating in his chest, and the hot blood pounding through him stopped all thought, and Vercingetorix let out a mighty, wordless battle cry from the pit of his stomach that sent his spirit soaring.

Caesar had moved as much of his forces across the first three ditches as he was going to, and even though it might be risky, when a real battle started he could never resist leading from the front—else why wear a brilliant crimson cloak that made him the most conspicuous figure on any battlefield? So he rode through cheering legionnaires to the outermost ditch, handed his horse over to a centurion, and scrambled across the succession of plank bridges with his sword drawn like the youngest and spriest soldier in the ranks. And then there he was—standing sword in hand, crimson cloak blowing in the breeze—at the very forefront, glaring up at the city on the hill, while legionnaires cheered, grinned, and shouted excitedly to each other, “Caesar himself fights among us!”

Then a half-dozen of his men put their shields together to form a stage and helped him to mount it, and he stood there, sword raised high above his head to challenge the enemy, as thousands of voices chanted “Hail, Caesar!”

I may be getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of thing, Caesar reluctantly admitted to himself, but, gods help me, the older I get, the more I love it.

The shouting and cursing and shield-banging of the warriors atop the walls of Gergovia increased in volume and intensity as the crimson-cloaked figure was raised up like a tribal standard. The carnaxes blew out a furious cacophony. The women presented a solid wall of insulting buttocks. The cavalry in front of the walls descended toward the rear of the innermost defensive ditch in raging disorder.

Caesar raised his sword high above his head with his straightened right arm. Then he crossed the pit of his elbow with his left forearm, bending it into a right angle, a gesture anyone familiar with the Romans could recognize was the very opposite of their salute of honor.

And for anyone who was not, the thousands of jeering Romans emulating it made it all too clear.

Critognat, at the forefront of the Gallic cavalry crowding up to the archers behind the innermost ditch, shouted out something. With a quick series of puffs and whooshes and sudden gouts of black smoke, the pitch-soaked hay in the inner two ditches burst into flame and became walls of fire.

Moments later, a flock of arrows flew in a high arc toward the Romans.

The sudden ignition of a wall of flame before him staggered Caesar, sent him tumbling to his knees atop the shaky stage of shields, which suddenly collapsed, dumping him rudely on the ground amidst a forest of limbs. That probably saved his life, for arrows hummed through the space where he had stood the moment before.

He scrambled to his feet, while being shoved under a roof of shields already erected against the next fusillade of arrows, which clattered off them like a summer hailstorm on a tile roof. He felt heat far stronger than even the Spanish summer sun, and then was caught up in the backward rush of his men away from the fiery ditch.

Bravery might be a personal virtue, but it was a vice for a commander in a situation like this. He was operating blind in this front-line melee. He had to get back to his horse to see some overall picture of the battlefield.

So Caesar called half a dozen men to him and had them form a small turtle with their shields around him, so they could escort him through the crush and confusion, the curses and shouts, the cries of pain, all the way back across the planking over the first of the stakefilled pits.

Seeing that orders had been followed and the other side was clear of his troops, he dismissed his escort, rejoined the main body of his forces, mounted his horse, galloped back to where he had left his signalmen, and only then turned to study the battlefield. There wasn’t much of a battle going on, since the armies were separated by two ditches of fire. Arrows were ineffective at this range.

“Tell Gallius to bring up some catapults and bombard their archers and that cavalry milling around behind them,” he ordered a signalman. “Rocks and stones for now, but have him ready that Greek fire of his.”

The catapults might not be able to reach the city itself, but the Gallic archers would be forced back or destroyed, and the cavalry behind them would have to retreat.

Or, being Gauls, might begin whatever attack they had planned. The concept of strategic retreat was entirely foreign to their nature. Only Vercingetorix understood its uses. And Caesar was more certain than ever that he was not among them.

A cloud of jagged rocks arced high over the main body of Roman troops, over three ditches filled with stakes and two with fire, and fell on the Gallic archers and the front ranks of their cavalry like the wrath of the gods. Fist-sized, head-sized, barrel-sized, a thunderstorm of stones began, then became a continuous torrent, smashing skulls, cracking limbs, knocking men from horses, and sending horses writhing and whinnying in agony to the ground.

In short minutes, all was a confusion of wounded men and horses. Some of the archers bravely sought to return fire; others panicked into retreat but were blocked by the cavalry behind them, some of whom were themselves trying to retreat while struggling to control rearing horses—some of whom even seemed determined to charge forward into the flaming pits.

From within the chaotic ranks of the Gauls, a trumpet sounded. Then it was answered by the deeper voice of a carnax up on the city walls, and Caesar beheld the sight he had been hoping for.

The gates of Gergovia opened, and a mob of Gauls emerged, hundreds of them, many of them women, hauling ungainly constructions of logs and planking—crude mobile bridges heavy enough to bear horses at least briefly, by the look of them. There were about a dozen of the things, lugged by scores of townspeople running, staggering, tumbling down the hill, a sight that Caesar found both comical and heart-warming.

What followed was even better. As the first of the mobile bridges neared the innermost fire ditch, horsemen began to gallop out of the city, hundreds, perhaps thousands—surely all the cavalry left in Gergovia.

What a glorious sight! Shouting, screaming, a mighty barbarian horde in full battle frenzy riding straight for their own fire ditch!

Perhaps they were even drunk, Caesar surmised. If not on beer, certainly drunk enough on their own battle ecstasy to find it quite credible that a mere Roman army would flee from them in terror.

“Catapults to cease fire!” he ordered. “Sound the retreat!”

As the front line of Romans began visibly to retreat and the rain of stones suddenly ceased, a great cheer went up from all the Gauls: the archers, the cavalry behind the guttering fire ditches, the people of Gergovia running down the hill with the portable bridges, and loudest of all from the horsemen charging triumphantly into the fray behind them.

By the time the first of the mobile bridges reached the inner fire ditch, the Romans beyond the outer one were in full, rapid retreat. Heedless of the flames still burning in the ditch below, the Gauls threw their mobile bridges across it, and the Gallic cavalry began galloping over them. The bridges creaked and groaned under the weight and impact, planks cracked and splintered, horses tripped in the holes and went crashing down with their screaming riders into the flames. Some of the bridges began to burn; three collapsed entirely.

But the majority of the Gallic cavalry got across, followed by townspeople on foot, who had an easier time of it, and who then began dragging smoldering, cracked, splintering mobile bridges toward the outermost fire ditch. By the time the process was repeated, the mobile bridges were wreckage, and hundreds of warriors had fallen to fiery deaths.

But the Roman army was in full retreat and seemingly in disarray now. They had abandoned their forward positions across the innermost stake-filled ditch, and had retreated back across the outer two ditches and half a league back across the plain in such a terrorized panic that they had neglected to withdraw or destroy their own bridges behind them.

Rearing his horse, waving his sword, Critognat led his triumphant forces in pursuit across the bridges the Romans had left behind.

Caesar hadn’t expected the Gauls to make such a mess of crossing the bridges he had so thoughtfully left behind. Gallius had constructed them to pass infantry, but they were probably sturdy enough to allow horses to be walked across one at a time. Instead, the Gauls had tried to gallop across in a great howling horde, and several of the bridges had immediately collapsed, filling the ditches with screaming men and piteously neighing horses impaled on stakes.

This seemed to be enough to instill a modicum of prudence even in Gauls, and the succeeding waves had made more gingerly and successful crossings, unmolested by Roman archers or catapults.

Caesar had used the time it took them to do it to make some final redeployments. The force confronting the Gauls now consisted of infantry only five lines deep, the front line armed with spears, the rest with swords. Behind them were five lines of infantry furnished with plenty of javelins. There was cavalry behind that, but Caesar planned to hold it in reserve. And behind the cavalry, amidst more infantry, were the catapults.

The rest of his army, fully half of it, had been turned around to face the plain across which Caesar expected Vercingetorix’s cavalry to charge at any time now. Judging from how few Gauls had actually emerged from the city and were now working themselves up for a cavalry charge against his own much larger force, the “surprise attack on his rear” was surely going to be the main attack, and they were only the diversion.

Still, it would be nice to dispose of the diversion before the main attack came.

“Order the Greek fire,” Caesar told a signalman. “But tell Gallius to make sure to drop it well behind them, the second ditch or so,” he added, remembering it had taken the catapults a bit of time to get the range at Bourges. It wouldn’t do to have errant amphorae fall among his own troops when they closed with the Gauls.

Critognat raised his sword high above his head and brought it down. With a great collective shout, thousands of Gauls charged toward the line of Roman infantry at a full gallop—