But at that moment, the sound of horses’ hoofs filled the air, and the pressure on the Roman shields relieved instantly. Lucius looked through the spearmen and across the field to see a mass of charging horse emerge from the trees, kicking up great clots of mud behind them. Their helmeted riders leaned forward behind extended lances, forming a continuous line of razor sharp iron points. They were the green-clad, mustachioed warriors of the Aedui, and they were led by a short-limbed, barrel-chested rider who wore a knee-length coat of mail beneath his green cloak. With a wild cry he drove straight for the Nervii officer, who had just regained his footing after falling from the wall. The officer looked dumbstruck at the thundering death rushing at him. Out of desperation, he brought his shield up to his face to deflect the oncoming lance, but the Aeduan leader simply dipped his weapon beneath the shield and plunged the point into the officer’s mid-section. At full gallop, the horse’s momentum drove the weapon with such force that it shattered the links in the Nervii’s mail shirt, skewered the flesh beneath and erupted from his back to leave a crimson splatter on the wall behind him.
Seeing their officer dispatched like a ragdoll, half of the spearmen panicked and ran for the trees. The rest attempted to draw up near the wall to face the onrushing horsemen, but without their leader they succeeded only in forming an incongruous mass of confused soldiers who were quickly crushed under the hooves of the Aeduan horse as the beasts leapt over the wall and bounded into the unorganized ranks, crushing Nervii skulls, caving in ribs, and snapping limbs as if they were twigs.
The group of legionaries on the right had somehow managed to get through the melee with few losses and now rushed to help their centurion and their comrades. The legionaries slew the mortally wounded spearmen whose bodies now twitched in the mud, while the Aeduan horsemen rode down the fleeing Nervii, driving their lances into one back after another.
Lucius saw the Aeduan leader trot his mount over to the dead Nervii officer and then dismount and begin rifling the contorted body. He removed something from the officer’s belt that looked like a rolled letter. The Aeduan leader studied it curiously for a few moments and then, when he noticed Vitalis and Lucius approaching, quickly tucked the document into his own tunic.
“Many thanks to you, my lord,” Vitalis said, eyeing the Aeduan as if he should ask about the document, but he did not.
The Aeduan leader glanced at the centurion sullenly beneath his conical helmet. He seemed irritated, but then, when he made eye contact with Lucius, his face broke out in a wide grin.
“If it isn’t my Spanish-Roman friend,” he said cheerfully, “who likes to hunt for old women’s corpses in the dead of night!” He removed his helmet, and Lucius saw that it was Divitiacus, the Aeduan chieftain. “Lugus’s three pricks, boy, what are you and your mates doing in such a place? You’re fortunate to have escaped with your foreskins intact!”
“We are here on the order of our tribune, my lord,” Vitalis, as the senior officer, stepped in to answer. “We should return to the column without delay.”
The chieftain eyed him and then nodded. “Your tribune was a fool to bring you out here, centurion, but I can see that you know that.” Divitiacus touched the disk-like badges on the front of Vitalis’s mail shirt with the butt of his spear.
“We are most grateful that you arrived when you did, my lord,” Vitalis replied evenly.
“You should be giving thanks to this young lad here, Centurion.” He pointed to Lucius. “He’s the one that saved your neck just now. I saw the whole thing. You were alone, and surrounded, and this lad came to your aid, at great hazard to himself. You would be dead in the mud with the rest of these had he not moved when he did.”
“Yes,” Vitalis replied. It seemed to make him uncomfortable to admit it. “Excuse me, my lord, I must see to my men.”
Vitalis then marched off to examine the line of wounded legionaries being gathered near the mill, evidently uneasy with the direction the conversation was going.
“And how about you, Lucius?” Divitiacus said, once Vitalis was out of earshot. “Did you ever discover who it was that wanted you dead?”
Lucius glanced once at Vitalis, and the chieftain raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise.
“The centurion?”
Lucius nodded. “And the tribune.”
“Tribune Piso? Now this is getting interesting. You must be far more important than you let on, my young friend. Are you sure you’re not Piso’s bastard brother, sent off to the legions to avoid bringing disgrace on his father, perhaps? I must admit, I’ve a few bastard sons riding in my own ranks, though Lugus forbid if anything ever happened to them. Their whore mothers would serve my own balls to me on a skillet. ”
Lucius smiled, but said nothing. He had a feeling he knew the motive, but he did not trust the Aeduan chieftain quite enough to share it with him.
“Divitiacus!” A high-pitched voice called behind them. “Thank Jupiter, it is you!”
Both men turned to see Amelius stumbling out of the hut, his forehead marked by several contusions. Lucius could only conclude that the noble had been hiding inside for the duration of the battle.
“Please come quickly, Divitiacus!” the noble said desperately, almost incoherently. “He’s just inside the hut. We must get him to help quickly! Please come. He’s in a terrible state!”
“Who?” Divitiacus replied perplexedly, unaware of the events that had transpired before the battle. “Who are you referring to?”
“Piso, damn you!” Amelius replied irately, shooting a scathing glance at Lucius. “The tribune! You must help him!”
VI
A nightingale flying high in the night sky would have observed a glow in the blackness below. It was the sparkle of ten thousand torches – light and order, amidst a dark and barbarous land. The Roman army – Caesar’s army – eight legions strong, 40,000 spears and auxiliaries, bedded down in fortified camps on the forested borders of the Nervii lands. Hammers rang out as the liverymen worked late into the night, fitting shoes on mules and fastening axles to wagons. Sparks streamed from a dozen spinning wheels as cutlers honed the edges of swords and spears.
The army had come out of winter quarters. The spring floods were over. The campaigning season had begun. From his base in the Aeduan lands, Caesar had brought his army north to deal with a new threat looming along the Axona River. The dozen Belgic tribes living there had formed a coalition with the solitary purpose of driving the Romans out of Gaul. The Belgae were many, and they far outnumbered Caesar’s army. In the end, however, their resolve had proven too weak. Upon hearing of Caesar’s approach, many of the southern tribes instantly sued for peace, fearful of the savagery the Romans might exact on their lands. Others capitulated, and some even joined the Roman side against their own kind. Thus, the first weeks of the summer had been spent marching here and there, scattering the few tribes that still resisted. Their armies had disintegrated like chaff in the wind. But now it was mid-summer, and there were rumors of a new coalition – this one led by the Nervii, the fiercest of all the Belgic tribes. And so, Caesar’s army had marched again.
Two riders clattered out of the darkness and approached the gates of the Roman camp. Both were ornately dressed in fine armor and plumed helmets. A delegation of attendants and a cavalry escort materialized behind them bearing banners that the guards on the walls quickly identified. The gates were opened and the delegation from the Senate was allowed to pass. Once inside the camp, the torchlight revealed the speckles of dried mud on the cloaks of the riders. The party had travelled far, all the way from Rome, and they had travelled at great hazard to get here. It was not the first time Caesar had received such guests on the threshold of an enemy country. Caesar, always the politician, always the one to treat his political enemies as friends, invited the uninvited guests to dine with him in his tent. They lounged on the proconsul’s field furniture under the dim light of the lanterns.