“You’re not joining your men, Marcus?”
Fronto growled again.
“Waste of time. I can’t do anything to help and Priscus knows how to keep the men as safe as possible. Frankly, I want nothing to do with this.”
For a moment he pondered, then lightly punched Crispus in the upper arm.
“Unless you feel the urgent need to die in a ditch with your men, come with me.”
Crispus frowned and turned to follow Fronto as he veered off to the side. On a slight rise to the east stood the supply train and wagons of the army. Sitting, looking rather bored amid carts full of dissembled machinery, were the members of the legions’ engineering details assigned to the wagons and, as Fronto expected, Tetricus stood atop the nearest, staring in dismay at the legions marching on the high walls of Noviodunum. He saw the two legates approaching and sighed.
“I hope you’ve brought some wine, Fronto. This disaster is going to be hard to watch sober.”
Fronto shook his head.
“Sadly, no. I’m here to pick your brains.”
“You can have them!”
Fronto gave a weak laugh.
“The only legate down there stupid enough to believe they can do it is Plancus. Everyone else is going to do what they can to preserve the men they have. I know damn well that Priscus is going to see that I haven’t joined him and take it very carefully. It’ll be over in a lot less than an hour, for certain. So you need to start thinking.”
“What about?”
Ways to get in there without wasting any more troops. This assault’s doomed and, as soon as Caesar realises that, we need to present him with the quickest possible way of taking the place before he decides on another frontal assault.
“Oh shit. Will you look at that?”
Fronto and Crispus turned as Tetricus pointed across the intervening ground to where the assault was taking place. The legions had reached the oppidum’s defences and the men were carefully skidding and dropping down into the wide ditch. It was like watching a waterfall of people disappearing over a horizon. But that wasn’t the thing that Tetricus was drawing their attention to. Somehow, during legions’ journey across the intervening space, Plancus had managed to manoeuvre the Fourteenth to the centre of the force, where Balbus’ Eighth should be.
The green legion was marching across the causeway. Fronto watched with mounting dismay as the front lines reached the gate and began to mill about hopelessly waiting for the battering ram that was being slowly transferred through the force to the front. Men were dying so thick and fast there it looked like the Fourteenth might disappear altogether.
To each side, men had crossed the deep ditch in reasonable formation and were now forming testudos to protect them from the many falling missiles dropped by the defenders. As they watched, soldiers hurled grapples toward the wall tops. Remarkably few reached the height of the walls and those that did were instantly dislodged and fell back into the ditch. The units of auxiliary archers had let off a few initial volleys, few of which had even crossed the parapet, but had now wisely packed away their bows and were also watching unhappily. Once the legions were in the ditch, they had fallen prey as much to the Roman arrows bouncing off the wall tops as to the defenders’ own missiles.
As they watched, a massive rock was tipped over the parapet and fell out of sight into the ditch, where it likely killed several men and injured many more. Another glance at the causeway confirmed Fronto’s fears that the Fourteenth may well be gone before they could bring the ram to bear on the gate.
“Screw this.”
“What?” Crispus and Tetricus turned to look at him.
“We’re going to get Caesar to stop this madness.” He turned to Tetricus. “And you are going to come up with some ideas on the way to impress him.”
Without waiting for them, Fronto stormed at speed back down the slope toward Caesar.
Arriving red-faced with his two companions, Fronto pulled himself up to his full height before the general.
“What?” the man asked absently, looking past the legate at the distant fracas.
“Right…” stated Fronto. “You hate being gainsaid, but you know me well enough to know that I always have good reasons for what I do.”
Caesar nodded vaguely. Fronto carefully positioned himself so that he was in the way, aggravating the general a little more.
“You have to stop this. It’s a disaster. If you don’t sound the recall now, in half an hour you’ll have six legions instead of seven and the ones you have left will be seriously under-strength. They’re getting massacred over there! A few days of siege and you could take the place without all of this.”
Caesar was shaking his head.
“Look, general. This is a waste of good men. If you lose half your army here, what’s going to happen when you meet another large army of Belgae? They’re dropping rocks the size of haystacks on your men!”
“Plancus promised he’d take that gate!”
Fronto grasped the general’s shoulders.
“Plancus has the brain of a boiled herring! He’s lost about a thousand men in five bloody minutes down there. Stop them now!”
Caesar stared in surprise at the officer who had dared to manhandle him. Suddenly, he seemed to wake from a daze.
“You’re right, Fronto. You always are…”
He turned to the cornicen standing behind him.
“Sound the recall!”
* * * * *
Fronto carried the wax tablet across the ground by the hastily-erected command tent to where Caesar stood, looking unhappy. He tried to ignore the glare he was receiving from Plancus, despite the fact that it gave him such a warm glow.
“Apologies, Caesar. It’s not good news.”
The general ignored the sounds of the legionary camp being assembled around him. The seven legions and associated extras had split off and were each constructing their own camp in a circuit around the large hill that was the oppidum of Noviodunum. All the legates and staff officers were, however, here in the camp of the Tenth.
“We lost over two thousand men in ten minutes?” Caesar said despairingly as he examined the figures. “That’s the heaviest loss I think I’ve ever heard of in such a short time.”
Fronto nodded soberly.
“Tetricus has drawn extra men from the legions and started work on all fronts. There are more vineae being constructed as we speak. By noon tomorrow, we could probably shelter a legion under them. He’s got three towers being constructed too… one for each gate. We should be able to get them close enough, so long as we keep throwing water on them, so the Belgae can’t set fire to them. But he’s most concerned with his ramp.”
“Ramp?”
Caesar frowned. “He never mentioned a ramp before.”
“That’s what he took the existing vineae for, Caesar. He used them to build basically an ‘above-ground tunnel’ that goes from out of the enemy’s range right to the edge of the ditch.”
“What for?” Caesar looked nonplussed.
“For the ramp, sir…”
He smiled.
“Tetricus is having tons of rubble transported under the vineae to the ditch, where it’s being tipped in. He’s filling the ditch in, but more than that, he’s starting to angle it up so that by the time it’s crossed the ditch it’ll be at the top of the wall nearly.”
The general stared at him.
“But that would take weeks, wouldn’t it?”
Fronto grinned.
“Tetricus says three days. And it’s nice and safe, as the men are all working under cover of the vineae. He reckons that by noon three days from now, we can hit them at each gateway with a tower, and should be able to get men in their hundreds up his ramp and over the wall under cover all the way. It’s worth the slight delay.”