"And if they don't break?"
Valens shot him an incensed look. "Then make yourself useful until they do! You know what's at stake here, man. Both of our necks will be on the block if Caesar is not defeated."
Porcius nodded nervously. "And where are you going?"
Valens looked after the distant cloud of dust stirred up by the galloping horses of Caesar and his bodyguard. "I go where Caesar goes. I go to ensure that the blessed proconsul never leaves this field alive."
With that, Valens mounted his horse and rode off at a full gallop.
XXV
On the far left side of the Roman army, the legions had mere moments to prepare for the coming onslaught. The forest on the opposite side of the river was much closer to the water’s edge than in other places along the four mile line. Thus, the Belgae spearmen springing from those woods had much less distance to run in order to reach the Romans. The men of the Ninth and Tenth Legions, both Spanish legions, having just arrived on the field, dropped their kits and trenching tools and quickly formed ranks. Often considered Caesar's finest legion, the Tenth was famous for its speed and hardiness, and it did not disappoint on this day. The Tenth Legion, along with the Ninth, established the left anchor of the Roman army, their eighty centuries coolly forming into three lines in the face of the onrushing enemy. They did not have to be told what to do, for they were all veterans, and had faced barbarians many times before. Eight thousand Roman helmets peeked above as many freshly painted shields. With javelins poised, the legionaries stood side-by-side, like a cemented seawall, prepared for the approaching wave.
The Belgic warriors splashing through the river shallows to confront the two legions were the 15,000 spears of the Atrebates, under their chieftain Commius. The tribe came from the coastal plain and was, by and large, comprised of men who made their trade on the sea – merchants and sailors who did business with the British Isles. While they were stout and hardy men, they were not as akin to combat in rugged terrain as their Nervii brethren, who regularly blooded their spears fending off incursions by the Germans.
Riding near the head of his charging warriors, Commius knew full-well that pitting his average troops against the prime Roman legions was ill-advised, but the fates had decided otherwise. With the advantage of numbers, he also would have preferred sending some troops to hit the Romans in the flank, but the Roman left was protected by a sharp escarpment covered in thickets and hedgerows. Under the previous plan, in which his men and the rest of the Belgic army were to face one or two legions at most, these natural barriers were to have boxed in the fleeing Romans and prevent them from escaping. Now, with six legions on the field, the hedges worked to the Romans’ advantage, forcing the advancing Atrebates to approach the three-century-deep Roman lines with a nearly equal front. Still, they outnumbered the Romans before them nearly two to one, and should, by all accounts, be able to overcome them with a single massed frontal assault. Commius forced his mind to believe that as he glanced over at his son, leading the brigade to his left.
The mass of howling warriors charged up the slope on the Roman side of the river, obliterating the hoof prints left in the mud by the cavalry. Their ranks were jumbled from the crossing, but their nobles spurred them onward, waving swords high in the air, disregarding or oblivious to the fact that they had just stepped into the deadly space that lay before any Roman legion drawn up in perfect battle order on the high ground.
When the Belgae were within twenty paces of the Roman shields, the two legions suddenly came alive. The primus pilus, standing in the front right centuries, shouted an order that set the massive formations in motion. Like a ripple traveling down the skin of a snake, two thousand javelins were hurled into the sky. The front right centuries threw first and the other front centuries followed suit, in a perfectly sequential motion that might have been beautiful had its result not been so deadly.
The six-foot missiles swarmed above the open space between the lines and came down with devastating fury amongst the front ranks of rushing spearmen. As if encountering some invisible barrier, the front lines stagnated, forcing the pressing ranks behind to push into them. Shields came up and men crouched to avoid the terrifying weapons, but in vain. The two-foot-long iron shank on the tip of each Roman javelin, backed up by the momentum of a five-foot wooden shaft, found the gaps in the shields and sliced through the poorly armored. Many of the missiles that struck the shields squarely, punched through the plied wood to destroy the hands and arms beneath. Men cried out in pain and terror, some lanced by two or three pila, some gushing blood from javelins lodged in their necks, even one who ran about frantically between the lines trying to dislodge a pilum that had entered through his eye and protruded from the side of his head, miraculously not killing him.
Having lost its momentum, the Atrebates charge now stagnated, as wounded men crawled to the rear, many of them unconsciously trampled by the ranks behind. The uninjured warriors clawed their way through dropped shields, corpses, and the shafts of a thousand of spent pila protruding from the soft ground, but none seemed ready to rush at the waiting Roman lines. Shouting encouragement to the hesitant spearmen, a few mail-clad Belgic nobles on horseback nudged their way to the front and began to rally the muddle back into a line of continuous shields.
The legionaries in the frontline centuries observed this and began ridiculing their opponents, daring them to come up the slope. Arrows, shot over the Belgic ranks by bowmen standing knee-deep in the river, began to clatter against the giant Roman shields. These were some of the same archers that had so thoroughly massacred the lightly armored Treveri horse only hours before. Now, they faced heavy infantry – legionaries – clad in mail-shirts and bronze helmets, and only a few fell prey to the flying missiles. Commius, understanding that the sight of so many arrows causing so few casualties among the Romans would do nothing to help bolster his men, ordered a general charge before his men had time to think about it.
The Atrebates line surged forward, a mass of snarling, blue-painted, spiked-haired men behind shields and extended spears. They hit the Roman line like a thunderclap, shield against shield, some throwing spears at the squinted eyes of the legionaries, some wildly leaping into the ranks of their foe. Like a giant meat-grinder, the Roman line engaged the blue wave, each soldier crouching behind his shield as he shoved it into the enemy to his front, pushing the Belgic front liners back into the ranks pressing from behind, and then jabbing with his gladius at the off-balanced foe. This was repeated time and time again, short, repeated thrusts that punctured blue-painted abdomens, mutilated genitals and opened leg arteries, while the Belgae spears, unwieldy in the compact close quarters glanced off of the curved Roman shields. Atrebas warriors began to fall by the dozen to the repeated thrusts of the gladii. Spears probed the gaps between the legionaries’ shields, some of them returning covered with Roman blood, but most getting deflected or shattered by a chopping short sword. As one of the few sword bearers among the Atrebates, Commius had a distinct advantage over his countrymen. He splintered the Roman shield to his front and then drove the point of his long sword into the face of the legionary behind it, dislodging teeth and jaw and starting a torrent of blood that streaked down into the man's tunic and mail. Commius gave a victorious cry, hoping that the men around him might take heart from the mangled Roman now falling back into the rear ranks, but his small victory, and those of the few other sword-wielding nobles, was not enough to stop the wholesale slaughter of his men. They were no match for the trained veterans of the Ninth and Tenth, and they began to fall back, no matter how much Commius upbraided them for it.