It was eerie, watching the flood of Gauls moving through the night, charging into battle in odd silence. Then, as the single cornicen’s call was picked up by the musicians of the four legions responsible for this section, the enemy knew they’d been seen and burst into life with a pugnacious roar.
‘That’s it, then,’ Fronto sighed and turned, looking out over the gap between the ramparts, where men ran this way and that preparing to hold the walls, calls from the camps on the hills at either side urging the men there to fall in and man the palisades. Sure enough past them, beyond the inner fence and the defences below it, past the water-filled ditch and the scrub, up beyond the green and grey slope, the oppidum was bursting into life. Dying-bovine sounds echoed from the carnyxes within and flames appeared on the walls. ‘The reserve force will be here in a matter of heartbeats, but Vercingetorix’s army will be down joining in the fun in a quarter of an hour or so, too.’
In preparation for an onslaught Palmatus, Aurelius and Celer ran up to Fronto, the latter pair’s shields held protectively out. The wicker fence was excellent at stopping a blade’s edge, and made most piercing attacks difficult, but still a lucky arrow or spear could penetrate it, and the Gauls had learned the strength of the Roman defences quite well a day or so back.
As the cohorts began to appear on the hillsides, pouring out of the camps and moving down to help man the defences on the plain, the Gallic reserves reached the piles of their own stinking dead. In a shot that deserved a medal, one of the artillerists in the towers struck the first man to hurdle the pile of corpses, the iron bolt smashing a hole through the man’s chest and knocking him back down among the heaps of his former compatriots. As if taking their cue from that single shot, the artillerists all along the ramparts opened up, the twangs, thuds, thumps and rattles coming in an almost constant rhythm, the fence and tower posts shaking with each launch all along the line, the ground vibrating and small trickles of dust and gravel shuddering and rolling from the rampart.
The Gauls came on heedless of their losses which, though gruesome, were little more than a gnat bite to the army as a whole. The few small units of archers and slingers stationed among the legions rose and began to loose their shots, their actions echoed by the vastly superior number of missile troops outside the walls. The first exchanges were wild and largely fruitless on both sides as each force spent time trying to find their range. Then, just as the Roman archers were starting to pick off their opposite numbers, the enemy finally reached a comfortable range and the exchanges began for real. Fronto and Priscus ducked as the first cloud of enemy arrows swept the top of the fence. Within sight of their position alone, along the rampart beneath three towers, Fronto saw two legionaries and an archer thrown back, pierced and bloody. A centurion he didn’t recognise reached the wall nearby, using his vine cane to direct two men carrying a score of pila. Fronto opened his mouth to tell the man to duck, but as he did so a sling bullet smacked into the centurion’s temple with the dull bong of an old bell, crumpling the bronze helm inwards so deep that the man’s eye burst. As the crippled or dead officer toppled from the rampart, the two legionaries dropped their bundle of pila and ran, ducking, for the cover of the fence.
‘Grab a shield,’ shouted Fronto, and one of the legionaries grasped one of the numerous spares that lay face up on the turf slope. The other moved to follow suit, then his back arched stiffly as the wicker weave of the fence parted slightly with a rustle. The man turned, trying in disbelief to see the shaft protruding from his spine. Then, with an odd sigh, he collapsed and slid down the slope, where he lay face down, shaking with nerve damage. Fronto risked a look over the parapet, Celer lifting his shield to help cover his commander. Already, under the cover of their archers, the reserve foot were casting their brush and timber and the like into the ditches to allow for easier, safer, crossing. Still, all along the defences running Gauls fell screaming as their feet found hidden dangers — a sharpened stake, a metal prong or a caltrop. Yet the flood came on.
A honking noise announced the approach of the second attack from the oppidum and Fronto turned, an arrow seeking his brain thudding instead into Aurelius’ raised shield, the point scraping a painful line across the bodyguard’s forearm.
‘I’ve got this, Priscus yelled over the rising noise of battle. ‘You go take command of the inner line before they hit.’
Fronto nodded and ran for the opposite defences, his singulares forming on him as he moved, the rest of the bodyguard unit freshly arrived with Masgava at the head.
* * * * *
Priscus looked back and forth along the wall, noting the somewhat diminished number of legionaries and archers upon it. Fresh cohorts were even now running across the open ground to take up position on one rampart or the other, newly arrived from the Mons Rea and Gods’ Gate camps. As the legionaries at the fence hunkered behind their shields and the archers picked off every attacking Gaul they could sight, Priscus watched a century of legionaries arrive at his section and begin to distribute along the wall at the commands of a man with an optio’s staff. Their shields bore the ‘XII’ of the Twelfth legion, come down from Mons Rea under Antonius’ command. Priscus frowned at the sight as the optio settled his men into position and ordered them to keep their shields up and wait for the missiles to slow.
‘Where’s your centurion?’ Priscus shouted.
‘Died six towers north yesterday, sir,’ the optio replied wearily.
‘And you’ve not been given the centurion’s crest?’
‘Had no time to arrange things and get confirmed by the legate yet, sir.’
Priscus nodded his understanding. ‘Good man. Get to it.’
The optio saluted, moving along the wall with his men and Priscus found himself standing next to a soldier of not more than eighteen summers and sighed. Perhaps Fronto was right — they seemed to get younger every year. The legionary looked across at Priscus nervously though, to give him credit, the nerves may well have been more due to the proximity of such a senior officer than to the coming onslaught. After all, the lad had survived the previous fight.
‘Lean into the shield,’ Priscus said.
‘Sir?’
‘You’re holding it out like it might bite you. Lean into it. Get your shoulder up against the top, plant your leading leg.’ He paused at the look on the legionary’s face. ‘The left, man, the left!’ What was this man’s training officer doing with his time? ‘Plant your leading leg a foot from the fence and wedge the bottom of the shield against your shin.’
The legionary did as he was told, the resulting position leaving him almost entirely covered by the shield, the curved board wedged tightly against him.
‘Now anything that hits you will be blocked solidly. If you wave it around like a fairy any hit you take will just knock it back against you and probably break your pretty young face.’
The soldier nodded and shuffled his leg.
‘I know. It’s uncomfortable and it might bruise you. But it’s better than being spitted by a mad bastard with braided hair and a pathological hatred of Romans.’
Priscus took a quick look over the fence top once again and noted how much closer they were now to being under attack from the infantry. The Gauls had filled in one of the ditches entirely and had thrown rough hacked planks across the area they knew to be full of lilia pits, spikes and other unpleasantness. They were almost close enough to smell, one ditch away from a full assault. The Roman archers and artillerists were doing a sterling job picking them off as they moved forward, and already hundreds lay dead along the line, their bloody bodies adding to the potential hurdles for their compatriots.
Somewhere back among the shadowy mass beyond the outer ditch and defences, Priscus caught sight of a flicker of flame.