This time, however, they had clearly reached the correct loop.
The farmstead before them was surrounded by a low palisade and contained a large building at the centre along with perhaps half a dozen other structures scattered about the place. An irrigation ditch in an adjacent field had been extended to loop around the place, forming a minor moat.
The Germans had been at work.
Though unable to form a concerted attack on the three hundred men in the farm behind their defences, the Germanic cavalry had the enemy pinned in that stockade, riding around just outside arrow range. The evidence of earlier clashes lay about the scene: German horses and riders here and there who had come too close to the palisade and had fallen foul of Senone arrows. A small group of six Germanic bodies in a heap at the water-filled ditch, where some kind of assault had obviously been attempted and repelled.
The remaining thirty five or so riders had taken to keeping the enemy contained, waiting for the rest of the army. Varus’ gaze swept from there to take in the rest of the landscape.
‘Do you see the ford?’ Caninius asked, pointing off into the distance. Varus nodded. At the next loop of the river, where the flow curved back this way, the shallow water could easily be made out by the change in colour. The winter meltwaters had gone, and the warming of the world had lessened the depth and flow of such rivers so that seasonal fords were beginning to show again.
‘Now look at the farm,’ the legate urged him, and Varus squinted into the sunlight. While the German cavalry were riding in circles around the place and a few of the trapped Senones were in defensive positions around the circuit occasionally loosing a desultory arrow at them, the bulk of the enemy were concentrated around a closed gate at the far side of the enclosure.
‘They’re going to make a run for it,’ he said, spotting what Caninius had cleverly picked up on.
‘We lost Lucterius in the marsh,’ Caninius grumbled. ‘I’m damned if I’ll lose this Drapes too.’
Varus shot a sidelong glance at the legate, but the comment seemed to have been delivered in a matter-of-fact, objective manner with no blame attached to Varus for being the officer in command of the fight that had lost Lucterius. He nodded his agreement. ‘I’ll take the horse and seal off that route. You ring them in with infantry.’
Caninius turned to the musician and gave his orders, and Varus simply gestured at his standard bearer who waved the banner and got the cavalry moving. As the cohorts began to cross the hill and move down towards the fertile farmland in the loop of the river, Varus’ horsemen raced to catch up with him and then achieved a loose formation as he led them at a safe distance from the farm around the hills at the valley side and to the high ground that rose beside the ford.
As he and his riders thundered their way along the valley, the warning went up in the enemy camp and that gate was thrown open, enemy warriors running for the ford at the base of the hill. Varus urged his men on, noting as he did so two more groups that had peeled off left and were running for the river bank at the furthest extent of the curve. He could see no gleaming of mail on those groups. Sharp buggers they must be, running for the river rather than the ford, hoping to swim to safety and trusting that the Germans behind them would not risk their mounts in the deeper, faster water. Varus had watched those Germans for a year or more and was fairly sure that they would ride off a cliff if it meant taking an extra head.
Still, they were making a run for it and doing well.
It was, however, going to be a race for the ford. The enemy, though on foot, had been considerably closer to the ford and were running for their lives, which always gives a man a turn of speed of which he didn’t previously know he was capable. Varus urged his men on, kicking his own steed into an ever faster pace. If the Senones achieved the ford, they might just be able to hold off the cavalry there – where they would be so much less effective – until their leader and his best could get away. It would certainly be a hard fight.
Leaning forward in the saddle, Varus veered his horse slightly to the left, aiming to cut off the fleeing Senones and secure the high ground by the ford. The better horses and horsemen kept pace with him. Others were beginning to string out along behind. The ford was now maybe fifty heartbeats away and Varus was almost close enough to the enemy to smell their sweat. The front man of the fleeing Gauls turned to look back over his shoulder and Varus could see his eyes, bright and desperate, yet defiant and brave. The man gave two quick gestures and a small group of the running Senones suddenly halted and turned, their blades out.
Varus focused on that man giving the orders. If he was not Drapes then he was at least another noble or chief, for he was clearly in charge here and the warriors supported him so blindly that they had turned into their certain death to save him. That group of two dozen or so men holding their ground in the face of the charging cavalry would most certainly die, but they might just delay the cavalry long enough to allow the leader to make it across the ford and into the woods beyond.
Trusting his men to take care of the problem, Varus gestured to the decurion following him – one of his oldest and most trusted riders. While the bulk of the horse – composed in the main part of Remi, Allobroges, Mediomatrici and other allied tribes – rode directly at that small group of defenders in an effort to take that high ground and prevent the rest of the fleeing Gauls from achieving freedom, Varus and his single turma of riders slewed off sharply to the left, arcing around that small defensive group.
He could sense the decurion staring at him as if he were mad, which he would clearly have to be to do this. His face set in the rictus of battle, Varus cut across the line of enemy flight, behind the leaders who were nearing the ford and the line of men trying to prevent pursuit, but ahead of the bulk of the fleeing Senones. Across, and to the river.
With little chance of reaching the ford in time by forcing through the enemy and achieving that spur of high ground, the only option open had been a direct line. Consequently, he cut across the path of the men, straight down the bank and into the river, making for the middle of the ford downstream through the deeper water.
He winced as his horse jumped from the bank and plunged into the cold torrent, which came to midway up its flanks. He had been lucky, he knew. He’d reasoned that upriver of the ford and this close, centuries of sediment and dross would have built up, making the river shallower than it would be downstream, and he’d been borne out. The men around him had probably expected to find themselves in deep water, their horses swimming and panicking, but instead, the beasts would be able to touch the river bed and walk, though the surface of the water was high and the beasts would find it hard going. At least the current was with them, helping propel them towards the ford rather than fighting them every step of the way.
A tremendous splash behind him announced the arrival of the decurion, and he was followed by more as the cavalry jumped, whooping, into the river, racing as best they could for the ford.
The enemy gambit had worked. A quick glance to Varus’ right, and he could see over the riverbank that the small wall of enemy warriors had arrested the advance of the horse, Varus’ cavalry busy fighting to pass them. They were dying, as were the other Senones fleeing behind them, running foul of the horse who had now achieved the high ground and were denying escape to the rest.