He turned his horse to walk her slowly back down the slope to the ala below and stared in horror. Warriors were pouring out of the thicket to the right and the corpse to the left in their hundreds. An ambush.
“Form up!” he bellowed as he started to gallop down the hill to his men, the two prefects at his back. The Belgae had known exactly what they were doing. They didn’t need this many men to pick off the occasional scout, and the warriors emerging from the undergrowth were, to a man, armed with long spears. The bastards must have been watching them for a while and preparing.
“Can we outrun them?”
Varus glanced at Casco.
“If we can’t,” he replied, ”then we’re all dead!”
As they reached the bottom of the slope, Casco shouted “Orderly retreat to the camp.”
Varus stared at him for a moment, and then shouted in the loudest voice he could manage: “run!”
The first few of the barbarians were already reaching a position ahead of them. Behind lay the line of poplars and, beyond that, the marsh. No escape that way. The ground to either side of them was swarming with barbarians who had broken cover from the trees. Their only hope was to outrun the closing door of men ahead of them.
“Charge!”
Around him, his cavalry, now working on their own individual instincts rather than commands, rode as hard as they could for the closing gap, formation forgotten. Already a dozen barbarians had joined up ahead of them and were preparing themselves to unhorse the riders.
Without any need of issued commands, as soon as the first riders were within range of the barbarians, they raised and released their javelins before drawing their blades. Many of the long, tapered missiles found their targets and the waiting barbarians clutched at their wounds, dropping their own spears.
The first rider found himself clear of the attackers, the nearest barbarian alive but pinned to the turf with a javelin through his thigh, just below the hip. For a moment, the soldier looked around in surprise and relief, but then the reality of his situation kicked in and he ignored the chaos around him and rode for Caesar’s camp as though death itself fluttered at his shoulder.
Varus watched with dismay as the arms closed in front of them. Moreover, ahead in the distance, he could see a few Belgic horsemen. As far as he’d been told the Belgae favoured infantry. He wasn’t even aware they had cavalry! This was turning out to be a truly shitty day…
Ahead of him, two riders went down as the barbarians lunged with spears, one catching a rider in the gut and the other spearing a horse through the chest. Varus didn’t have time to wheel his horse or stop; besides, if he stopped, he was dead. This was one of those very few situations where ‘every man for himself’ was the only viable formation.
Taking a deep breath, he hauled on the reins and jumped his horse, arcing gracefully over the collapsing heap of men and horses. He counted all three heartbeats while he was in the air for what felt like hours, expecting at any moment to feel a spear jammed up through him or his horse.
And suddenly his hooves hit the ground once more. Without a single glance back, he thundered on. There were only a dozen or so barbarian riders; a mere reserve force to pick off the odd Roman who broke through the line, but they were off to the side and making a beeline to cut off the fleeing cavalry. Risking time to glance around him, Varus realised that perhaps twenty or thirty of his men had escaped the trap and were riding on. Far too many men were being butchered behind him, but there was nothing he could do about that.
“To me!” he bellowed.
Surprised troopers hauled on their reins and either steered or slowed to fall in with their commander. Varus cleared his throat.
“Riders off to the left. They’ll intercept us before the hill. They’ve got to stop us escaping if they want to keep their numbers unknown. Take them down!”
The resolute grimaces on the faces of his men were born partially from the desperation of their situation, but the commander knew well how much they were now also being driven by the need for revenge after the butchering of over a hundred of their colleagues.
Indeed, as the Belgic horsemen closed on them, Varus began to feel a little more confident. The barbarians were clearly unused to mounted combat and unsure of their skills, for all their vicious demeanour. Varus’ men, on the other hand, had set jaws and gripped their blades with white knuckles. There would be no quarter given by the survivors of this ala.
The attack was swift and efficient. The Belgae were hacked, stabbed, pushed from their saddles and left a bleeding mess, their surviving horses fleeing the scene and, among the Romans only one man down and two wounded.
Varus glanced behind him at the howling barbarians, cursing themselves at failing to spring their trap correctly.
The cavalry commander smiled to himself. Wait ‘til he’d seen Caesar and gathered his entire mounted division. Then the bastards would have something to howl about!
* * * * *
It had been two hours. It felt like half a lifetime, but in actual fact it had been just two hours since Varus had last been here. He glanced ahead at the line of poplar trees on the hill and could just make out the heaps on the grass in the distance that were all that was left of some of Caesar’s best horsemen.
The general had surprised and irritated Varus. Instead of being incensed and planning retribution and extreme violence as the cavalry commander himself, Caesar had merely stroked his chin and muttered “unfortunate…”
Bloody unfortunate? But in a curious way, now that he looked back on it, the general was right. Insensitive, but right. They had lost a number of cavalry, but they had found out a great deal about not only the landscape, but about the enemy into the bargain. While the Romans were facing odds of perhaps five-to-one, they were considerably better than the ten-to-one they were expecting. Once word of that had begun to spread in the camp, the atmosphere had improved no end. It had taken only a few minutes for Caesar to decide on his course of action, and only a few more for Varus to set it in motion.
Leaving only a small group of mixed regular and auxiliary cavalry in camp, Varus had divided the main mounted force into three sections. The first had set off first, riding hard along the river bank to the west, and skirting round behind the ridge. They should be able to completely bypass the Belgae and then they would be free to head north and search for the rest of the enemy. The second had been given the most dangerous task: to head east along the river bank and across the edge of the marsh and actually harry the front lines of the enemy. They would not only be able to test what they were up against, but also to confirm whether the ground was viable for an assault.
And the third section, commanded by Varus, was the punitive group. Heading directly for the centre and the line of poplars, Varus would revenge himself on the barbarian ambushers. With a smile of grim determination, he used gestures to relay his commands to the prefects following him. As he pointed silently, two large groups peeled off from the main force and rode off east and west at a tangent.
The remaining force, around eight hundred strong, marshalled in the centre at the base of the slope. At further commands they split into two units, wheeled their horses until they were back-to-back, and then began to walk their steeds at a slow, steady pace toward the woods to either side.
“Bastards had better still be in there, eh sir?”
Varus looked over at Casco and nodded.
“They are. I can feel it. Nemesis is with us today.”
Another command rang out and the ranks of cavalry raised their javelins into a throwing position. Moments later they heard the sound of the conflagration starting. The two groups that had separated had set fire to the furthermost edge of those concealing thickets. Smoke rose ominously from among the foliage and Varus watched with growing satisfaction.