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Cavarinos wiped his blade on his own trousers, ignoring the wet, warm, metallic-smelling smears amid the other spatters of blood, and then slid the sword back into the sheath at his side, his fingers dancing across the leather pouch at his belt that held the curse tablet, as had become habit. Staggering, he clutched his left shoulder where his second flesh wound of the night burned still with hot pain, the blood from the sword cut running down his arm in small rivulets. The other wound was less impressive — though it hurt just as much — where an arrow had hit him in the chest, miraculously lodging itself in the rings of his mail shirt such that the tip only dug into his flesh by a finger’s breadth, bringing forth blood and pain but doing no permanent damage.
He was lucky, really. Very few men who’d made it to the fence had lived. A few had even got over the fence, but had been dealt with immediately by the defenders. Cavarinos had been there in the thick of it just as the Roman reinforcements had arrived from the north, bearing the banners of four different legions and filling the walls, pushing back the few incursions the rebel army had achieved.
From what he’d seen, Cavarinos had to admire the courage of his countrymen, who had managed to actually reach and cross the Roman defences despite being starved and weary and hard-pressed, while it appeared that the reserve forces outside had barely managed to touch the fence, making much less of an impression. And now he could hear the calls going up in the distance from the carnyxes of the relief army. The reserve force was pulling back.
Cavarinos looked up. The first streaks of lighter colour were staining the clouds, announcing the coming dawn. Aurora, the Romans called it: a goddess whose rosy fingers wove their light across the heavens. The Romans would be praising her shortly as they watched the relief army run back to their camp on the hill, allowing them respite again. And with their retreat, Vercingetorix would have no choice but to echo that call, drawing his own army back up into the oppidum. A second attack on both fronts against a trapped army with comparatively fewer men, and yet a second failure. Cavarinos reached up and found the figure of Fortuna hanging at his neck, open now and outside his tunic, for he had touched her in thanks after both wounds had failed to kill him. He wondered what had got into him. He’d happily managed almost three decades of conscious life without resorting to heartfelt prayer, and yet one of the enemy donates him a foreign idol and suddenly he becomes all pious?
He made a conscious decision not to be such a credulous fool, and yet his fingers still played across the cold metal of her form. The dark was retreating rapidly now, the lightening of the sky helping him pick out details. With the easing of identification, the artillerists in the Roman towers began to loose their shots once more, picking standing targets out among the multitude inside the besieged area. Cavarinos stood some thirty five paces from the rampart, back across the ditches filled with faggots and bodies, the men of the tribes still seething this way and that, some retreating for a breather after attempting to breach the walls, others fresh and pushing for the Roman fortifications. The call for the retreat would come any time, but had not yet done so.
Perhaps he should try and seek cover from the deadly scorpion shots? But then the press of men was so solid, the chances of one of the artillery pieces selecting him among thousands was so slight, he would trust instead to luck.
His hand clutched the goddess at his neck involuntarily and he cursed himself briefly, and then again, when the man standing next to him lost his face to a scorpion bolt in a shower of blood and bone which coated him and yet somehow miraculously missed the bronze goddess entirely.
His attention was drawn by an upsurge in the roar of battle, somehow discernible even over the endless din of death and destruction, and his wandering gaze picked out a section of the Roman fence, where a great deal of activity seemed to be taking place. Ignoring the wound on his arm, he began moving back towards the rampart. Figures were crossing the fence. Had they managed a proper breach? If they had then perhaps there was still a chance for tonight.
As he leapt through the mess, making for the scene along with a number of other men who seemed to have cottoned on to the fact that something was happening, Cavarinos was given cause to frown. The figures crossing the fence were not his countrymen. They were Romans! Romans were sortieing from the defences?
In moments, he was picking his way between the few sharpened points that had not been covered with bodies or torn up by the advancing rebels, just outside the twin ditches. A brutal melee was underway just outside the Roman rampart, atop ditches that were no longer visible beneath a flat carpet of corpses. Warriors from a dozen tribes, mixed in the chaos, fought tooth and nail with a small party of Romans that were somehow cutting a bloody swathe.
Behind him, the carnyxes began blowing the call to fall back.
Cavarinos stood transfixed as the world began to part around him, a few die-hards who had succumbed to the battle craze still piling into the Roman sortie, while the vast bulk of the survivors turned tail and fled back toward the slope that led up to the open gates of the oppidum and safety. His feet told him to run, and all sense agreed. Yet for some reason he stood as the ground cleared about him, watching the fight at the ditches only a few paces away.
A scorpion bolt slapped into the churned earth close enough that he felt the breeze of its passage.
His hand went down to the hilt of his sword. Perhaps he would be the last man to leave? Though he’d known he shouldn’t let it get to him, his brother’s ridiculous accusation of cowardice had rankled for the past two days. Since that fight at the end of the last attack, Cavarinos and Critognatos had not crossed paths, the former deliberately staying out of the way. Vercingetorix had tried to heal what now seemed an uncrossable rift between the brothers, but even Cavarinos had been uncharacteristically adamant, while Critognatos had explained in short, spat curses that the next time they met he would tear out his brother’s spine if it turned out that he actually had one.
To be the last man on the field and kill the last Roman of the day would disprove his brother’s accusations.
His heart leapt as the scene opened up. There were perhaps twenty Romans in this foray — no more. They faced a slightly larger force of tribesmen — perhaps forty or so, the rest of the force retreating for the oppidum. But what had caused his heart to skip was the sight of his brother amid the warriors, fighting like a furious bear, ripping Romans apart.
His questions about why the Romans should endanger themselves crossing the fence were swatted away by the irritated realisation that even the possibility of being the last man to retreat had been spoiled by his pig of a brother, who clearly had the same idea.
Anger coursing through him, Cavarinos stamped across the ground towards the fray.
And stopped.
His blood ran cold.
The torn and bloodied plume of a Roman officer came into view — the man busy fighting Critognatos at the heart of the struggle.
Fronto?
Critognatos pulled back his sword and lunged, Fronto twisting to one side out of the way of the blow and stabbing down with his own, shorter, sword, only to have it turned by the big Arvernian’s shield. The Romans were in trouble. Even as Cavarinos watched, his eyes disbelieving and his blood like ice, three more of the regular legionaries were cut down, and one of the men in the different uniform that seemed to be huddling protectively around Fronto. Another of the better-dressed Romans leaned across to try and save the legate from Critognatos, and Fronto batted him out of the way, lunging again.
For a brief moment, Cavarinos caught a clear view of the Roman officer’s face. Despite the mud and blood coating it, he could see the blazing, unrestrained fury in Fronto’s expression. Whatever had got into him, he would not stop this fight until either he or everyone around him was dead.