Mid January 45 BC
Quintus Pedius turned to the senior tribune of the Sixth, a man with a strangely squat face and all the charisma of a tufa block.
‘We do what is asked of us by the general, Tiberius. Work on the siege lines is the command, and so here we are working on the siege lines.’
Sir, we are dangerously close to the city walls, almost certainly within maximum range of their artillery.’
‘Which, coincidentally, makes the city walls within maximum range of our siege engines, Tiberius. Handy, eh?’ Though he had to admit that the proximity had its dangers. All around, he could see men yawning and struggling, for throughout the night, as they had tried to sleep among the works, the defenders of Ategua had hurled fire brands and rocks from the walls, with occasional successes, for a few tents had burned, and a stack of wicker screens had gone up a treat, illuminating the whole camp for a while.
The tribune shifted from foot to foot and gave Pedius a look that was probably supposed to be loaded with meaning, though, given his peculiar features, he looked more constipated than anything. ‘Sir you are the general’s great nephew. Dare he expose you to danger here? Could not one of the other legions do this work?’
Pedius sighed. In his experience the senior tribunes were supposed to be competent; a benefit to the legion they served. The junior tribunes were all political wannabes from Rome, desperate to get through two or three years of not doing too much but wearing a fancy uniform in order to climb the career ladder back home, and he knew damn well not to trust a junior tribune with anything more than putting his underwear on the right way round, but the senior tribune was a legate’s second in command, a nobleman chosen for the job. Who chose Tiberius remained to be ascertained, but clearly the man needed a kick up the arse.
‘Tiberius, we are all servants of the republic, and it is our job to put ourselves in danger. I’m sure you’ve read my uncle’s war diaries, since they’ve been made available in Rome to the public over the years. He himself has stood in the line and put steel in Belgic flesh. Why should we expect any favours?’
Tiberius grunted a sullen reply and saluted, returning to duty. Quintus Pedius clasped his hands behind his back, standing as he was on a timber platform and overseeing the work all around. He felt a touch of satisfaction at what he could see.
For more than a week now, everything had settled into a strange inactivity in terms of battle. After Cato’s push to take Caesar’s camp across the river, the enemy had learned their lesson, and no similar large-scale action had taken place. Pompey and Labienus remained in their camp across the river, distant enough to be just within sight, his control of the lands south of the Salsum complete apart from that one Caesarian fort that represented a bridgehead. Labienus was shrewd enough not to attempt a full-scale attack across the river, and so they sat silent, waiting, watching.
Which was not to say they were inactive. The attacks on Caesar’s supply lines had begun almost immediately, and foraging in the region was becoming extremely dangerous, for Pompeian forces lurked ready everywhere. The enemy seemed content to pin Caesar north of the river, against the walls of Ategua and let him gradually starve, for that was what would happen as winter rolled on into spring. Indeed, the irregular arrivals of deserters from Pompey’s army confirmed that very tactic, just as deserters from Caesar’s army had probably informed the enemy of the tightening supply situation.
The arrival of new forces at Caesar’s camp had only highlighted the value of Pompey’s stratagem. The day after the fight at the fort, a sizeable column had turned up; the very men for whom Caesar had been waiting at Corduba. Gaius Arguetius had brought five double-sized cohorts of strong veterans from Saguntum, a large number of Cantabrian cavalry, whose king, Indo, had fallen to one of the many Pompeian raids on their journey, and who were looking now for revenge, and even freshly arrived Gallic cavalry come from northern Italia. Perhaps the greatest surprise addition, though, had been the army of Bogud, King of Mauretania, a man who had helped Sittius batter the Numidians during the African War. Now free of pressure, the Mauretanian king had brought his forces across the water to aid his ally Caesar further.
The presence of that large relief force brought joy to the men of Caesar’s army, bolstering their numbers and bringing them closer to Pompey’s level, but it had put extra pressure on the officers. More mouths meant more food, and every day saw less of it arriving. Pompey and Labienus had approached their fresh strategy carefully, and it was going to work. Unless Ategua capitulated soon, and its supplies fell into Caesar’s hands, the army would begin to starve.
And so while Pompey sat in his camp and let hunger gradually ravage his opponents, the Caesarian army began the task of taking Ategua. Its fall would save them from starvation and put a massive hole in Pompey’s own numbers and supplies.
Five legions were at work around the city, investing it with siege lines ready for the artillery to be brought up. Ategua was a Pompeian city, with precious little sign of support for Caesar, and so there was no great care for the damage its walls might suffer.
‘Sir,’ called one of the men on another platform, twenty paces away.
‘What?’
‘The gates are opening.’
Pedius peered at the town. The nearest gate was indeed now peeling back inwards, and the shapes of men appeared in the black maw, a sizeable force, pressed into the space as they burst out like ants from a nest.
‘Ad signum,’ Pedius bellowed, to which the standard bearers all across the works waved their burdens and the musicians blew the cadence. Men hurried from their work, abandoning barrows and baskets of stones, casting aside saws and mattocks, jamming on their helmets and sweeping up their shields as they ran to their unit standards.
‘Damn it,’ Pedius fumed. Another day and they’d have had the rampart and ditch complete, which would give them a solid defence against such sallies. The enemy from the town would hardly do enough damage to prevent them finishing, so what could they be…?
He turned, frowning. A hundred paces behind him sat the treeline, marking the line of a seasonal stream currently in full flow. It had served as the water supply for his men the past two days, but it also provided the timber for the siege towers and mantlets being constructed by his engineers ready for the first assault when it was ordered.
His eyes, narrowed, went back to the force issuing from the city gate. There were more fire brands among that mass. They could not hope for a solid victory here, but if they had seen the siege engines being constructed from the walls…
‘They’re coming for the construction site in the woods,’ he bellowed across to the primus pilus who was busy overseeing his men falling in. ‘They mean to burn the towers. We need to contain them.’
The centurion looked up at him, then to the approaching force, then back to the woods, then nodded. Pedius watched as the men of the Sixth followed the commands of their centurions with efficiency. He was proud of his command. The Sixth were six year veterans now. Newly raised at the time, they had cut their teeth on the siege of Alesia. This was nothing new to them, and most of the men were veterans from that very campaign.
The enemy were racing down the slope from the hilltop town now, a mass of armed fury. Pedius shook his head. Where was their discipline? These men might be the enemy, but they were legionaries. It only went to show the quality of the legions Pompey had hastily raised in his time here, for the enemy resembled a mob rather than a cohort. As he watched, they divided into two forces, forking out.
‘They’re splitting,’ he shouted. ‘Trying to bypass us and get to the work site.’
But the primus pilus was ahead of him, had already seen the change. With just a couple of quick orders, the Sixth altered formation. Four cohorts moved off to the left to intercept one force, four more to the right for the other. Of the remaining two, one settled into a long line at the centre, refusing to leave a gap, while the last withdrew under their commander to the treeline, defending the towers.
Pedius nodded once again. Off to the left, the enemy closed, while the men of the Sixth settled into a triple line, their heaviest and best armoured veterans in the front, forming a shield wall. A gap of a pace followed by the second line, who had collected what pila were available, while the third waited impatiently in reserve. The centurions among them had extended the line and curved it, an action mirrored by the cohorts to the right, so that the entire force formed the shape of a wide, shallow crescent or bowl.
As the enemy closed, at fifty paces, the middle line hefted their pila and, at a horn blast, cast them over the top of the first line. It was a difficult manoeuvre, for hurling the missiles safely over the heads of a line of men five deep was troublesome, but the Sixth were veterans and their manoeuvres well practised. The timing was excellent. The cloud of several hundred javelins sailed out over the front lines close enough to almost brush the crests of the centurions and optios among them. The braced men at the front had to have flinched as the shafts thrummed over their heads just a few feet up. The effect was impressive. The pila ploughed into the front line of the charging enemy almost as they reached the defenders. All across the front of the running mob, men fell, screaming, and chaos ensued as their companions fell over them, tripped on bent shafts, tumbled to the ground or leapt across their fallen friends.
By the time the enemy reached the line of the Sixth they were a scattered mob of panicked, wounded, and half-exhausted shaky men. Pedius smiled to himself as he watched. The line of the Sixth hardly even bent under the pressure, let alone breaking. They simply set to work, butchering. Here and there, Pedius could see small successes for the enemy, where they managed to pull aside men from the Caesarian line and almost cause a breach, but on each occasion the solid legionaries of the Sixth pushed back and filled the gap, reforming the line. That, Pedius mused, was the difference between a well-trained legion that had fought and practised across the world for more than half a decade, and a newly-raised and half-trained levy. No matter the comparative numbers, give him a small force of veterans over a mass of rabble any day. It was Pedius’ opinion that the days of the republic’s “legions of convenience” were over. There was no room now for the raising and disbanding of units for a particular campaign. They needed to be permanent and well-trained like the consular legions.
The enemy were making no headway, contained perfectly by the professional Sixth, and Pedius smiled. He had been about to give a fresh command, but the primus pilus had apparently anticipated him. Pedius might have the advantage of a good viewpoint, but the senior centurion was no novice to such action. He bellowed out a command, followed by a series of blasts from his whistle, and the entire line of nine cohorts began to change shape, the lines flowing like tidal water, curving gracefully, changing from that shallow bowl shape, gradually into a true crescent. As they moved, they gradually flanked the enemy to each side, driving them from the periphery towards the heart of the fight, merging their two forces into one at the centre, surrounded on three sides by the Caesarian force. As he watched, men were drawn from the rear lines at both flanks, adding their weight to that one cohort at the centre, doubling, then tripling the line.
It was masterful. Now the enemy were in a panic, being flensed from every direction but the rear. Pedius nodded. Better to leave them a way out. With an escape route, men could be broken and made to rout. Trap them completely and you leave them with no option but to fight to the death. He watched them break. First the rear lines of the enemy mob began to scatter, fleeing the mass and running back up the hill towards the town, using their mates as a distraction to cover their flight, but in moments more and more were on the run. Then, gradually, word of the rout reached the warriors at the front, and the fight went out of them. From that moment on, the battle was over, and Pedius just watched as the Sixth massacred running men, harrying them until they had run beyond the incomplete siege works.
As the survivors, not more than half their force, ran up the slope, whistles and cornua blew, standards waved, and the Sixth once more fell into formation within their camp. Pedius wondered whether this was an isolated incident driven by the desire to destroy siege engines visible from the walls, or part of a larger attempt. Had the other working legions faced such a fight?
Shrugging off his musings, he gestured to the primus pilus.
‘Fall the men out, apart from sentries. The enemy won’t come again any time soon, and the Sixth could do with an hour’s rest before we get back to work.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘And load the enemy dead into barrows. I want them wheeled up to the city gate and dumped in a pile in front of it. Double wine ration and an extra hour’s break for any man who volunteers for that duty.’
He smiled. The afternoons tended to get windy at the moment. As soon as the winds picked up and carried in a northerly direction he’d have the pile of enemy dead burned and let the city choke on the smell.
* * *
Galronus hurried out of his tent, belting on his sword. Outside, one of his senior officers sat astride his horse with a bleak expression. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘They crossed just before dawn, Chief.’
‘How many?’
‘At a guess, two cohorts, but they’ve been coming steadily now since first light. It’s only a pontoon bridge, but it’s doing the job.’
‘How many casualties?’
The man shrugged. ‘Low double figures, I think. It’s the benefit of horses: easy to get out fast. But they’re not happy.’
‘I can imagine. Caesar’s going to want to take this out on someone.’
‘Will he deploy the legions to deal with it?’
Galronus shook his head. ‘He won’t get the chance. This is a matter of pride for the tribes, Druccus. We let this happen. We have to put it right before Caesar can do anything. This is a job for the Germans. Go find Fridumar and tell him I want his entire warband assembled here now.’
As his man rode off to find the commander of the fearsome Ubii, Batavi and Tungri, Galronus fumed. He’d not expected any trouble in that quarter. Thus far all Pompey’s activity had been based around the centre, between the two camps, where Caesar’s bridge lay, and Postumius’ contested fort. The peripheral reaches of the river had been under the watchful eye of small units of cavalry. For well over a week now they had seen nothing but a little activity across the river where Pompey was carrying his lines of defence down to the riverbank. How were they to know what he intended? Some clever bastard among the Pompeian command had lulled them into a false sense of security, and then this morning, before first light, they had brought down rafts and barges to the river side and extended their defences across the river with a pontoon bridge. Before anyone knew it, they had overcome several small cavalry units, sending them running, ferried legionaries across, and begun creating a camp on Caesar’s side of the river.
Within the hour, Caesar could have a legionary force ready to fight them out, attempting to take that fort and drive them back across the river, but there were two problems with that. Firstly, it was a guarantee that the mind behind this little move had committed the best of their troops, and so any fight to take the new fort would be a hard one. Secondly, to commit sufficient men to deal with it, Caesar would have to pull critical men away from the siege of Ategua.
No, Galronus was determined. The cavalry had let this happen, and they would put it right. And he had an idea. The Pompeians thought they were facing cavalry, straight and rigid. Their own horse were largely Hispanic. They would not be prepared for the Germans, who Caesar usually kept for special missions. Well this was a special mission.
He peered off into the distance. He could see the fort being created even now. They were clever and determined. They had formed a perimeter of sharpened sudis stakes, which they’d managed in just moments while their friends had driven away the cavalry. Now, they were busy within that line, digging a ditch and raising a bank, building a true fort within their temporary fence. Once that was complete, with ramparts and towers, it would be an evil proposition for an attacking force.
He was fretting at the delay and had unpicked the stitching of one of his sleeves by the time Fridumar arrived beside him and announced that his men were assembled. Galronus looked over his shoulder. One and a half thousand horse were sat in the staging ground near the camp gate.
‘What’s the plan?’ the Tungrian chief asked, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
‘I wasn’t aware you ever stuck to a plan anyway,’ Galronus said archly. ‘I’ve never seen any evidence of a plan in your work.’
‘To the uninitiated we are an enigma.’
That raised a bark of laughter from Galronus. In the old days, before Rome came, his people had faced almost annual raids from the Germans across the Rhenus. If Rome had achieved anything, they had stopped that, and here he was, relying on men his father had fought back off their lands.
‘See that fort they’re building?’
‘Yes.’
‘We need to stop it. They’ve been fighting cavalry, and will be expecting more of the same. I want you to stop them building and send them packing back across the river.’
Fridumar grinned. The man had an interesting collection of teeth, no two of which seemed to point in the same direction. ‘My fuckin’ pleasure.’
Galronus gathered his own horsemen, just a small force, and waited for the Tungrian and his tribes to move out, then fell in behind them. He would rather have liked to have kicked a few Pompeian backsides himself, but he’d learned over a decade of serving with these lunatics that it was not a healthy thing to be anywhere close by. Once they committed to action, they tended to kill whatever got in their way, be it friend or foe, and even occasionally their own.
Consequently he kept his men at the rear as they rode for the camp. The Pompeians were hard at work, but as the alarm went up at approaching horse, work halted, and the legionaries grabbed up their weapons and armour and hurried to the fort perimeter. The fence was formed of sudis stakes, essentially a line of giant timber caltrops, sharpened points jutting out. An excellent temporary defence against both infantry and cavalry. Behind the defence, the Pompeian legionaries set up in lines, shields up and pila out, ready to deal with any attack. Back at their pontoon bridge, work on ferrying over supplies was similarly halted, and the men there formed up, blockading their bridge to stop any horsemen attempting to race across it.
Galronus smiled. The Pompeians were ready for cavalry. No horse would charge that fence of stakes, and when they drew up and refused, the legions would cast their pila out, ravaging the force, then set to work defending their fortification with sword and shield. No ordinary cavalry unit would take that place from them.
But then the Germans were no ordinary cavalry.
From the rear of the line, Galronus watched, drawing up his men and gathering in a small crowd to observe the chaos he had unleashed. He was fairly sure that Caesar would be less than impressed that Galronus had committed the Germans, but then they were cavalry, and theoretically part of Galronus’ force to command, for all that the general tended to consider them one of his pet units.
Fridumar and his men raced for the stake fence. The men defending it would be starting to wonder what was going on. No cavalry unit in their right mind charged a stake fence like that. Of course neither Fridumar nor any man riding with him could ever be accused of being in their right mind.
He could only imagine the shock among the Pompeians as the Germans did not stop. In fact, it did seem as though the German had a plan of sorts, for his men broke at the last moment into two simultaneous attacks. Roughly half his force ploughed to a sudden halt perhaps ten paces from the fence, leaping from their saddles and rolling, coming up to their feet at a run, bellowing incomprehensible Germanic cries, their horses forgotten, racing for the fence on foot, swords out. At the same time, the other half of the force actually picked up speed.
The Pompeians had no idea how to react. Their centurions yelled conflicting commands, and the defenders variously ducked back, pila raised to cast at the racing horsemen, who could now have no other intention than to jump the fence, or stepped forward to the fence, keeping low, preparing to fight off the dismounted cavalry.
In effect, neither was sufficient. The Germanic riders leapt, their powerful mounts rising and easily arcing over the fence of stakes, to come down amid the ordered lines of defenders. Here and there pila had taken down one of the leaping horses, but not enough to prevent the crazed disaster that then unfolded. The horses ploughed into the mass of legionaries like landing stones from an onager shot, smashing bodies and crushing men. Even as they landed, already Germanic longswords were swinging and chopping, cleaving and cutting. Had this been the only attack to content with, the Pompeians might just have managed to pull together a defence, but there was another horror assailing them yet.
The Tungrians, Ubians and Batavians who had leapt from their horses reached the fence of stakes and simply clambered up across them as though it were little more than a low mount, ignoring the pain of the sharpened points. Here and there a man found himself impaled, but even Galronus, who had seen these men at work before, winced as he watched one Batavian, his thigh impaled in a life-changing wound on one of the pointed timbers, who simply refused to acknowledge that he was done for. Even as he writhed on the sharpened stake, he stabbed and smashed with his sword and shield, snarling and howling, cutting down Pompeians as his blood flowed out in torrents across the fence that transfixed him.
Similar stories were being played out all across the line. German riders were scrambling across the fence with apparently no care for their own personal safety, the sheer bloody desire to carve the heart out of a Pompeian legionary overriding any fear or pain they might feel. Galronus shook his head in awe and amazement as he watched a Batavian busily hacking the head from a legionary, ignoring the fact that the Pompeian’s friends were battering at him as he worked. He lifted the head free and howled the name of a god before disappearing beneath a flurry of blows. Even then he reappeared, briefly, holding a severed arm, before he vanished for good.
The riders who’d jumped the fence and waded through the lines of legionaries had managed to force and fight their way free, breaking out into the part-constructed camp behind the legionaries, where they turned and began to butcher the defenders from the rear.
Galronus gave a harsh laugh. They were done for. No matter that they were veterans and with a sudis fence, the legionaries were now trapped between Germans on horseback, carving holes in them, and Germans swarming over the fence and butchering with impunity. There was nowhere to run, even if they wanted to rout, and Galronus watched for a while as the Germans, mostly dismounted now, went about their work. The legionaries who had been at the far side of the camp, as yet untouched, had taken one look at what was happening to their mates, and had legged it, running for the bridge.
Galronus gestured to his men. ‘Let’s give them a little chase.’
Leaving the Germans to their wanton, chaotic savagery, Galronus led his turma of veteran Belgae in a wide arc, avoiding any potential entanglements, and skirted the camp and the fighting going on there. Beyond the ramparts, they raced for the retreating legionaries, drawing their swords. Even powered by fear, the fleeing men stood no chance of outrunning the horses, and Galronus dealt the first blow, his long sword catching a man across the shoulders, snapping bones beneath his chain shirt and sending him pitching face first into the turf, where one of the other riders simply rode over the top of him. He saw Druccus bring his sword down in a massive overhand chop, the heavy blade striking the bronze helmet of a running man, creasing a deep fold in bronze, bone and brain. Druccus cursed as the legionary fell, shaking and already done for, but the blade was so tightly jammed in his head it was pulled from the rider’s grip as the Roman disappeared.
‘Bollocks. That sword cost me dear,’ he grunted as he accepted a spear from one of his riders, who then drew his own blade. Fleeing legionaries were impaled on the points of spears, cut down by swinging swords, or simply ridden down and ground beneath the hooves.
He only reined in and held up a hand to stop his riders as they neared the pontoon bridge. Other soldiers had created a solid shield wall on the bridge, bristling with javelin points. Even the Germans might baulk at that problem. Attacking across a shaky floating bridge was asking for trouble. Better to stop here. He watched as the last fleeing men, driven by panic, shields and pila thrown away as dead weight, reached the pontoon and pelted across it, the defenders opening up to allow them past.
‘Onagers or fire?’ Druccus asked.
Galronus frowned as he turned to the man. ‘What?’
‘Well we want to finish the bridge too, don’t we? We either pelt it with heavy rocks until it’s kindling and floats away, or we hit it with jars of pitch and fire arrows and burn the bastard.’
Galronus turned and looked back. The Germans were all but done with the camp, busily taking heads from the last few, no sign of a Pompeian survivor running for the bridge. With a grin, the Remi turned back to Druccus. ‘I’m feeling unaccountably generous. Let’s do both.’