‘But he promised,’ one of the merchants butted in, hopefully.
Brutus flashed a look at the man. ‘I heard no promise. Just an offer.’
Above them, Aristius cleared his throat. ‘I heard only an offer, Aeduan. No promise of safety for the merchants here.’
The Aeduan leader snorted and spat. ‘I give you my oath.’
‘On what?’
‘On whatever you like,’ snapped the man. Again, Priscus and Brutus shared that look. ‘He just got a little bit more strained. He’s had to lie about an oath and that annoys him.’
‘But the Aedui always stand by their oaths!’ one of the merchants frowned.
‘Tell that to the bodies of Romans scattered across the land between here and Bibracte with spears in their back and all their worldly goods now decorating Aedui warriors.’
‘Who are you to deny us our freedom?’ grumbled another merchant. Aristius frowned down at him, but Priscus turned with a shrug. ‘We’re not stopping you. We won’t be leaving, but you’re welcome to, though I heartily recommend that you don’t. That mad bastard out there is just waiting to peel you alive.’
A brief argument broke out among the merchants, and Aristius cleared his throat. ‘Will you willingly grant passage to a number of merchants if they decide to leave?’
There was a long pause as the man clearly weighed up his options, and a brief confab between him and his cronies, and finally he nodded. ‘Your merchants may leave unmolested.’
‘You hear that?’ one of the civilians said, hopefully.
‘We should go now.’
‘But I’ve got all my coin back in the house.’
‘Better saving your life than your fortune,’ retorted another.
‘And your coin won’t help you when you’re crawling around the blood-soaked grass looking for your own face,’ Priscus snapped harshly.
‘You don’t understand,’ the newly-impoverished merchant grumbled as he reached for his pony which stood with the others at the roadside. ‘These people will not betray us. We’ve traded with them for many years. We have made each other rich. It’s you they want to kill — the army. Get out of my way.’
The portly trader strode purposefully towards them, leading his beast, and the two officers shrugged and stepped out of the way. A further eleven men joined him, retrieving their animals and approaching the gate, the others standing back and looking undecided for only a moment, glancing at the officers and clearly deciding upon the safety of thick walls.
Aristius paused for a moment until he was sure that all the merchants desiring to leave were gathered, and then cleared his throat. ‘Twelve men have accepted your gracious offer. May your gods favour you for your honour,’ he added, in the hope that the nudge might cause the man to exhibit some of that honour in the coming hours.’
The men at the gate lifted the bar and began to swing the portal open. Brutus took a step forward. ‘Think about this. Are you sure you want to put your lives in the hands of a man who now follows the rebels?’
He was met with silence as the disaffected merchants turned their backs on him and mounted up, riding slowly through the gate and across the causeway that traversed the ditch. The gate closed behind them and despite their wishing to remain hidden, Brutus and Priscus removed their helmets and climbed the rampart high enough to observe events beyond.
It came as no shock to either of them when the twelve merchants, just passing through the lines of the enemy, were suddenly set upon and pulled from their saddles. In moments, as the three officers and the town’s warriors watched, the twelve men were lined up on their knees, bawling out their fears. The din of panic and tears gradually diminished with each head taken, and then the twelve grisly burdens were them affixed to the tips of spears and driven into the ground at regular intervals facing the walls.
‘Looks like we’ll be staying for a while,’ Priscus noted and turning, strode back down to the street below.
* * * * *
Varus rose in the saddle, shouting encouragement to his riders. From the moment Caesar’s cavalry force, now some fifteen or sixteen thousand strong, had crested the bank of the Elaver River, they had seen the rebel forces seething like ants around the camp on the low rise some two miles distant. Caesar had waited only until a thousand men had filtered across the recently-reconstructed bridge over the Elaver, built simultaneously with the camp for the influx of supplies and using the original Gallic piles, before releasing his men to the camp’s aid.
Varus looked left and right. The units held to a loose formation at best. Few of the men who had made it across to form the vanguard were his usual force. No matter how much the officers had tried to maintain the discipline of unit formations, others had pushed in ahead, desperate to see action — Aedui warriors who felt betrayed and cheated by the rebels and sought revenge, and the ever-present Germanic cavalry, who smelled fight and bloodshed and were not going to miss the opportunity to take part.
And so here he was, riding with two hundred of his own men — a few regular alae and the rest formed of Remi and Mediomatrici levies. To his left, two or three hundred Aedui raced to get ahead and start the blood-letting, yelling imprecations and their rather forthright opinion on the parentage and ancestry of the Arverni. To his right, the Germans thundered on, drooling at the thought of the killing to come. He shuddered at the sight of the nearest of them, a necklace of finger bones clattering as he bounced in the saddle.
His focus fell once more upon the main camp, where the rebels seemed to have registered the cavalry thundering across the ground towards them and without pause for discussion, the enemy began to desert their siege, racing back around the camp corners in the direction of the oppidum.
Booing and honking suggested that the word had reached a musician or commander, who had sounded the recall. There was little hope of Varus’ cavalry engaging the enemy, with the exception of cutting down a few tardy fleeing infantry, as they approached the now unassailed camp rampart to the east. Glancing to the side, he spotted his standard bearer and musician, and called out to them. ‘Signal the halt!’
The signaller waved his standard, while the musician put out the call on his tuba, the central cavalry force drawing up sharply and reforming into units. The newly-acquired Aedui paid absolutely no heed, racing on in the wake of the fleeing rebels, rounding the camp’s southern edge, their desperate desire to kill echoed by the Germanic warriors, who charged, snarling and yelping, around the northern corner.
Varus shook his head. Trying to call them back would be fruitless. Besides, it might be nice to harry the bastards back up the slopes and pick off a few, and it would feed both the vengeance of the Aedui and the bloodlust of the Germanics and perhaps calm them for a while.
‘Where the hell were you lot?’
The cavalry commander looked up into the late evening light, the sun now sunk into the west and the sky an inky shade of indigo. The shape above the east gate could have been anyone, but Varus knew without a doubt who it was anyway.
‘Fronto. Nice to see you. Hope you mucked out my stable areas while we were gone.’
* * * * *
‘What do you suppose is going on?’
Priscus roused himself from the table where he had been tearing off chunks of bread, throwing down damsons and chewing sweet, tangy apples grown in the orchards of the oppidum. Since the unpleasant display outside yesterday morning, the three officers had spoken to the town’s leaders and had relocated to a house close to the walls, where a window afforded them a view across the ramparts and of the enemy encamped beyond the ditch.