As he waved to his own standard bearers with their dragon-headed banners and Celtic horns, ready to give them their orders, Crassus watched the auxilia pull back and reassemble to the rear, the legion shifting to present a solid shield wall.
Horns were blown across the hillside and the cavalry pulled back in their four groups to a distance from which to observe events. Galronus watched them and then frowned in surprise as Crassus rode forward, approaching the rear lines of the legion, an enterprising optio giving hasty commands and having a passageway opened for the legate.
Crassus nodded at the man and rode between the ranks of the Seventh until he reached the front, where he turned his horse and looked down at the men.
“Our Aquitanian and Spanish friends appear to be a little nervous?”
A ripple of laughter spread out across the crowd.
“How do we reward their resistance?”
A deep, raspy voice from somewhere amid the ranks called out “death?”
Crassus pointed in the man’s direction.
“Death is a start, but even heroes die. You and I will die some day. How do we reward these cowards trembling behind their fake Roman walls for closing their gates to the Seventh?”
A lighter voice muttered something and one of the centurions on the front rank raised his vine staff over his head.
“Obliteration, gutting, burning, dismantling and salting the land, sir!”
Crassus laughed.
“I fear you missed the looting from your list, but good man nonetheless!”
This time the laughter raced around the army in a roar.
“So do we go back and prepare for a siege, men?”
The negative murmur was clear indication of the feeling of the troops. Galronus smiled to himself. This was a Caesarean speech if ever he’d heard one. Fronto rarely made speeches of this kind; his men were so tightly bound to him they’d follow him into Tarterus if he asked. Caesar, however, relied on his oratory to goad his men and stiffen their resolve, like the public speakers Galronus had heard urging the crowds in Rome. Remarkably, it seemed to work and, more remarkably yet, the young legate seemed to be turning into a shadow of the general himself. The mood was suddenly tingling and electric, like the air between a crash of thunder and the flash of the lightning.
“Or do we march on and flatten that camp and every last living thing in it?” the legate bellowed.
A roar arose from the crowd and Crassus allowed his horse to rear up and paw at the air a couple of times heroically before settling back down as silence returned.
“Good men. Let’s go and show them a taste of true Roman power!”
As he turned and rode his horse back through the narrow passageway to the rear, the Seventh legion cheered and men reached up to try and touch the passing legate’s boot or harness for luck. Galronus had had to force himself not to cheer along.
Really there was so little to cheer about, he thought as he set his gaze on the strong defences awaiting them at the top of the slope.
Crassus hauled on his reins and turned his horse to get a better view of what was happening along the left flank.
The approach was brutal and he knew it. The men knew it as well, but they were professionals and had marched forward with the pride of Rome glowing in their eyes to take the fortress. A particularly astute soldier at the front had called a warning as they approached the causeway leading to the gate, noticing the tell tale depressions that spoke of lilia pits waiting to cripple anyone who dared take the easy approach.
The first task was to cross the ditches, three of them in all, cut to the perfect angle to inconvenience infantry. The first cohort of the legion had managed, with some difficulty and no small number of casualties, to cross the first ditch and had formed a solid shield wall between the first and second, under the constant barrage of defensive fire. As soon as they were in position, however, the auxiliary archers had rushed across and dropped down behind them before rising to send their own repeated volleys of fire at the walls, pinning down the defenders.
It irked Crassus immensely to watch his glorious Seventh reduced to the status of a gigantic shield, while the auxilia did the bulk of the work right now, the archers crippling the enemy defences and the spearmen bringing forth bundles of foliage and sods of earth to infill the ditch, enabling the remaining five cohorts to cross.
But then, the auxilia were there to use and he was sure his veterans would be happier playing shield wall than carrying the turf.
As he watched, tensely, a new wave of defenders appeared all along the fort wall, armed with heavy darts, rocks, slings and bows. The resulting sudden intense enemy fire punctured holes all along the shield wall, forcing reinforcement legionaries to run across the partially filled ditch to take their place, less than half of whom made it across alive.
The plan was solid, though. In a few hours the ditches would be no obstacle. Of course, there were bound to be lilia below the walls too if they were following the Sertorian model, and the defences themselves would be difficult enough to take, but the whole thing could be over by nightfall, depending on what these clever little barbarians had prepared within the camp itself. He’d be prepared to bet there were a few nasty surprised in store when they got that close.
He ground his teeth as the fresh wave of defenders was pushed back down behind their defences again by concentrated fire from the auxiliary archers. The problem was that in the time it took to get his men into that fortification, he may only have half his army left.
The alternative, of course, was to march the legion blindly across the ditch with no further delay and try to take them in a straight assault, since there was no chance of getting siege engines up that slope in a hurry. That would be a greater gamble still, though. This way, the battle was drawn out over a longer period, extending the time to which his men were subject to enemy fire, but at least they were in a good defensive position. If he charged them and opened them up to the full strength of enemy fire as they tried to cross the ditches…
It didn’t even bear thinking about.
He couldn’t lose this battle and he couldn’t lose the whole action. His father had spoken at length in his last letter of the likelihood of attaining a gubernatorial posting next year, which would mean that he himself would likely be recalled to Rome at the end of this season and, if that was the case, he needed victory beneath his belt to assure him of a good position in the city when his father left.
In all, this meant that not only did he have to destroy the benighted Aquitanian alliance, but he would have to do it with such force, pomp and show and with enough of a surviving force to drive the idea of resistance and rebellion from the minds of all. The Gaulish cavalryman had been right to counsel mercy down on the plains, but this was different. This had to be a statement.
Noting with satisfaction that the first ditch was now fully traversable with little difficulty and that the cornicen was sending out the orders to advance the shield wall and archers to the next intervallum, he turned and frowned.
He hadn’t spared a thought for the cavalry for the past half hour and had seen little of them, skirting the edge of the field as they were. And yet, as he scanned the periphery, past the lines of legionaries waiting for the order to advance, there was Galronus, cresting the hill from the west with a small party of riders at his back. The man was in a hurry.
Patting his restless, prancing steed calmingly on the neck, Crassus watched as the cavalry officer bore down on him, and hauled on the reins as he closed.
“I assume you’ve kept yourself busy patrolling the periphery?”
Galronus grinned.
“Something like that. I think I have some good news for you.”