A honking and then a shrill whine rang out from the west, and Lucterius frowned for only a moment before his eyes widened. No!
One of the rebel signallers had called the orders to pull back and form up. The idiot!
Lucterius swung his horse, trying to find a man with a horn to countermand that order, but the press was too chaotic. Even as he felt the panic rise, he noticed that already the concentration of men around him was becoming more and more Roman as his own men pulled back from the fray and formed into a block at the call.
Lucterius tried to shout, but an opportunistic Roman appeared in his way, swung a cavalry sword and hit him hard. The mail shirt prevented most of the damage from the blade’s edge, but he felt two or three ribs crack and was thrown back in his saddle. Recovering as best he could, he fought desperately for a hundred heartbeats, struggling, but eventually managing to fight back and kill his attacker, only to find himself face to face with another who he killed with four strokes, taking a ragged wound to the back of his hand in the process. He was almost alone among the enemy now, though close to the edge of the fight. Urgently, he pulled out from the press and into the open.
The scene that greeted him sent a flood of horror through him, though he’d been expecting it in his heart.
At the sight of a clearly-rebel force gathering under a banner, the Germans had changed course en-masse and charged them. Even as Lucterius moved out away from the Roman horde who were busy rallying to kill the enemy among them, he saw the Germans hit the block of rebel horse.
When he had been a boy, his people had played a game in the street where a wooden ball was rolled at six wooden sticks standing on end, the objective being to collapse all six in one roll — a Roman game, sickeningly, that had come to the Cadurci through traders. And now he was watching the same game carried out live, the ball a tight-knit force of slavering Germans, the sticks a terrified block of Gallic horse.
The rebels exploded as the Germans hit them with seemingly unstoppable momentum.
Lucterius felt a cold stone of despair sink into his belly as he watched his men fall to pieces, standards cast down, nobles unable to control their men no matter how loud they shouted. A concentrated area of the block was savagely cut down by the newly-arrived force, but the bulk of the rebels were lost without even a blow landing. Terror flooded the horsemen, leaping from beast to beast and gripping the heart of each rider, widening his eyes, bringing forth the cold sweat, and sending him racing, as fast as his tired horse could carry him, for the hills and the camp atop them.
Lucterius tried to call things to order. He saw a musician — the moron who’d called the formation, perhaps? — but before he could shout to him, one of the Germans was there, ripping the man’s horn from him — along with half a severed arm — and then crushing his skull with the crumpled instrument.
What had been a foolish call by a foolish man quickly turned into a panic, and before Lucterius’ dismayed eyes, that panic slipped into a rout.
The few of his men still among the Romans were no longer fighting for freedom or victory. They were fighting to escape. The Romans had seen what had happened, too, and numerous horn calls went up as heart flooded back into the beleaguered cavalry.
Lucterius watched as the spearmen and archers, who had remained on the periphery and made their mark every time the Romans came too near, were suddenly swamped by auxiliary horsemen. In the time it took to blink, the sure victory of the rebel force had been turned into a panicked, ignominious flight. Only a few hundred of his men, rallying to banners, remained to fight, but they would not last long against the Roman cavalry in those numbers. Most of the men were even now racing up the slopes towards the relative safety of the relief army’s camp.
Lucterius looked around himself, hardly able to believe what had happened. Then, with no other option barring certain — if glorious — death, he kicked his horse to speed and made for the slope to the camp. He never looked back, but he did not need to. His acute hearing noted the gradual shift in calls. The carnyxes that had been urging the infantry on against the Roman fortifications were now calling the calls of defeat: rally, withdraw, fall back. The Roman horns, with a distinctly higher pitch, had changed too. He didn’t know those calls, but the melodies went from sad, discordant ones to uplifting, encouraging tunes. It didn’t take a genius to work that out.
They had failed. A whole day. A battle the likes of which the tribes had never seen, and planned with the most cunning strategies, and it had failed. Even now, the rebels would be falling back to their oppidum or camp, depending upon which side of the fortifications they stood. The armies had not managed to link up and the Romans would now be able to shuffle their forces around and repair the damage.
And it would take time to bring the reluctant leaders of the relief force around to the idea of another attempt. Likely a day or more of marshalling their forces, no matter the logic in forcing the point. The momentum would be lost in hesitation.
Failure.
It would be easy enough to blame the Germans. After all, they had had just such effects more than once on this campaign. But the truth of the matter was that, had the two armies remained mixed, the Germans would have been an unknown quantity, as dangerous to Rome as to the tribes. What had been the true cause of the failure had been one man with a horn.
He found himself hoping that the culprit was that poor fool with a missing arm and a bent horn jammed in his brain.
* * * * *
Cavarinos heaved in ragged breaths as he struggled up the slope nursing his arm, which had been dislocated during the last press and had caused him agony to pop back into the socket with the help of a nearby warrior. All around him, the dejected warriors of Vercingetorix’s army returned to the oppidum with a feeling of loss and hopelessness.
They had been so very close to breaking the defences. Indeed, in that last quarter hour, when the Romans had thinned out their numbers, small forays had actually made it across the fence and into the Roman fortifications. But then the attack of the reserve army had faltered and crumbled, and the Romans had been free to redeploy their men, strengthening the inner rampart. Perhaps hundreds of warriors had been lost inside, captured and killed by the Roman defenders, as the king had come to the inescapable conclusion that the day was lost and had the call for retreat blown. The various leaders of the tribes had echoed the call, and the attackers had pulled back from the ramparts, making their way back up the hill under the occasional shot from the Roman artillery.
Defeat!
His already failing spirits hit new lows as he spotted his brother picking his way among the dejected warriors. Cavarinos closed his eyes, steadied his breathing and counted to eight slowly.
‘Why did you sound the retreat?’ snapped Critognatos, shoving his brother roughly in the recently-dislocated shoulder and sending waves of pain through him.
‘Because we’d lost, you idiot,’ he replied just as peevishly. ‘Better to preserve our men than fight a lost cause.’
‘Bollocks. We were almost there. If we’d got more men across the fence, we’d have swamped them and won the day. You pulled the men back on the cusp of victory!’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ snarled Cavarinos. ‘We’d failed. Anyway, it was the king who called the retreat, not me.’