But that would have to wait…
‘Where did your vaunted leadership get us?’ Commius snapped petulantly, gesturing at Vergasillaunus, who simply shrugged calmly as he replied. ‘We suffered a setback. Nothing more. The Roman lines were always going to be difficult to break through. You knew that, Commius, for you would not even try.’
Commius ignored the barely-veiled insult and ploughed on angrily. ‘The fact remains that I had an army on this hill that was strong, well-fed and in high morale. You took the command from me and now we have an army that is licking its wounds after two utterly demoralizing defeats, down on manpower and starting to become restless as the supplies we brought with us dwindle.’
Lucterius rubbed his weary eyes. ‘You have a plan of inaction again, then, Commius?’
The former commander turned a baleful glare on him, but said nothing.
‘If you think our morale has taken a hit,’ Vergasillaunus went on quietly, ‘imagine how it has affected the Romans. Our first assault showed them our strength and that we were cunning — not the mindless howling barbarians they believed us to be. That will have given them pause for thought. Our second assault was so strong that we almost cleared the defences on the plains and the Romans were forced to draw reinforcements from their redoubts and forts all around the system. And throughout all this, their supplies have dwindled just as much as ours, but, while we can supplement ours with forage, the Romans are trapped within their fences and must make do with what they have. No. We have suffered two abortive attacks, but they were not defeats, for we are still here, are we not? We have suffered two abortive attacks, but the Romans are hard pressed and becoming more so with every passing day. I would by choice now give them a couple of days to simmer before we hit them again’
He looked across the slope of the hill, past the encamped army and at the oppidum ringed in a double line of fortifications which tore a thick brown line across the land.
‘But I am ever heedful of my cousin’s army in Alesia and their own dwindling supplies. We must finish it soon for their sake. And so we move tonight.’
A sneer crept across Commius’ face. ‘A night attack? Because our last attempt was so successful. No new ideas, then Vergasillaunus?’
The king’s cousin gave his opposition a curious half-smile.
‘Not so, Commius. My scouts were at work throughout the night. While we kept the Romans busy on the plain, my cleverest and quietest riders probed the entire circuit of the Roman defences undetected. And even as we pulled back from the attack during the night, they delivered to me the path of our victory. For our next attack will be the last. We will cut through and save our brothers on the hill and bring ruin to Caesar.’
‘How?’ Lucterius asked hungrily, all need for sleep suddenly forgotten.
‘Their system has a weakness. The inner circuit is an unbroken line, following the rivers along the valleys and supported by the water trench at the western end. The outer line, however, is not as strong as it appears from here. While the view from our camp makes it appear unbroken, there is one place where the system peters out.’
‘That seems suspiciously unlikely,’ Commius sneered.
‘Nonetheless, the camp at Mons Rea is on the southern slope of the hill, overlooking the oppidum, with the inner circuit stretching to both sides. However, the outer circuit climbs the slope of the hill at both sides, but does not meet. The terrain at the top of Mons Rea is rocky. They could not put a ditch through it without many weeks’ work, driving in stakes is near impossible, and there is not enough earth on the ground to form a bank. Their only option would have been to encircle the entire hill, which would have almost doubled their circuit distance. And so the outer wall converges on the camp, just like the inner one. There is our weak spot.’
Commius blinked in surprise. ‘Our weak spot is a Roman camp occupied by two legions!’
‘But one camp. No trench, wall, tower and spike defences. Just a normal camp rampart. We break into that camp and take it and we have a defendable passage through the whole system to unite with the trapped army.’
‘I doubt the Romans will simply let us walk in. They will send everyone they have to defend it.’
‘They will not, Commius. For just before noon tomorrow you and Lucterius and the other solid cavalry commanders will lead the cavalry out onto the plain in a threatening manner, supported by a portion of the infantry. You will pose such a threat that the Romans will be forced to bolster the walls there against you.’
‘While you…?’
Vergasillaunus smiled. ‘As soon as night falls tonight I will take thirty thousand men — the strongest and swiftest we have, selected by their own leaders — and we will head west and then north. By the approach of dawn we will be in position behind the peak of Mons Rea. We will then spend the morning recovering and preparing and as soon as the Romans commit against you on the plain at noon, we will assault the Mons Rea camp from an unexpected direction. My cousin will, of course, see what is happening. He will commit as soon as we do, possibly against the plains walls, in which case you will aid them there, or against the camp with us. Either way, by the setting of the sun tomorrow we will secure a breach in the walls and unite the armies. Then Caesar cannot hope to hold us. We will wipe his army from the land.’
Lucterius felt his heart beating faster. It was a sound plan; a good plan. And if it worked, this would be it. The end of the war and the end of Caesar.
* * * * *
Cavarinos stood at the oppidum wall, looking over the Romans as they worked to repair and replenish their defensive system, past that to the piles of dead heaped on the plain and to the hill beyond where the relief army were encamped, and yet not really seeing any of it.
The Fortuna pendant at his throat seemed to burn cold now all the time, as if taunting him, or perhaps cursing him. His hand went to the leather pouch at his belt, which held the broken, spent slate tablet of Ogmios’ curse, once more wrapped snugly. In a seemingly miraculous fashion — curse the Roman goddess at his throat — the only people to have seen what happened down by the walls had fallen to Roman missiles before they could flee. No one here therefore was aware that the curse had been used — and to what dreadful effect.
And he would have to keep it that way.
He had revealed the curse to the leaders of the army so many weeks ago back in Gergovia and without it there would have been a revolt in which the king would have lost most of his forces. Instead, Cavarinos had shown them the tablet, bolstering their courage, and drawing them back to the fold. They followed Vercingetorix largely in the ridiculous belief that the Gods were with them. To show them the broken tablet would be to put the entire army’s future at risk. And, of course, there would be some rather awkward explaining to do, also.
Strangely, apart from a somewhat unsavoury dream during the three hours’ troubled post-dawn sleep he’d managed, in which his parents had beaten him to death for what he had done and demanded that he seek out and destroy Fronto, he had discovered that he felt absolutely nothing over his brother’s death. No guilt. No shame. Not even a jolt of sadness. But no joy or satisfaction either. Just a sense of sudden freedom, half-swallowed by a hollow emptiness. It had taken deep thinking to come to the conclusion that he had probably done the army and the tribes a great service in his fratricidal deed. It had come as a curious epiphany, as well, to discover that he prized the survival of one of the enemy over his own brother, and he was still unsure as to whether he had called down the curse primarily in order to kill Critognatos or to save Fronto. It was something he wasn’t quite ready to come to terms with. Indeed, until he looked into Fronto’s eyes across the battlefield, he could not be sure whether he would avenge his brother and settle the shades of his parents, or put friendship and the potential future of a peaceful Gaul ahead of such sick trivia.