The legionary who had marked him earlier was closing on them, but two of the horsemen rode the soldier down and cut him to pieces long before he could get to the chieftain.
They had to go.
A new noise cut through the din and Lucterius peered into the inky dimness, his eyesight made all the poorer by the dotted Roman fires and the reflections they displayed in shield bosses and helmets. A new shape was moving in from the north. Roman tuba calls announced that their cavalry was on the way to take up the fight. They absolutely had to go now. Otherwise they would be caught here and kept busy until two or three legions converged on them, fully prepared, and cut them down.
One last try.
Turning, he viewed the battle in full swing. There had been remarkably few cavalry casualties, the Romans unprepared and unarmoured. And many legionaries lay around the earth, their blood mingling with the red of their tunics. But all that would change any moment.
‘Pull out and run!’ he bellowed into the press and was rewarded with attentive looks from the nearest perhaps half-dozen men. The tuba calls were nearer now, and a glance over his shoulder revealed a huge mass of horse hurtling across the plain towards them. It was too dark to pick out any useful detail about them, but it was impossible to miss, over the din of the approaching mob, the blood-hungry yelling and hooting in the guttural growl of the Germanic peoples. A memory swum into Lucterius’ mind of a big monster riding past him on the grass before Novioduno, fastening a severed head to his saddle horn. He shuddered. Any man not fleeing now… well gods help him!
Way to the rear of the Roman force, back up towards the large camp, he could hear the sound of cornicen calling out orders to the legions present as they fell in to protect the camp and the siege works, preparing for a full scale assault, even though only Lucterius and his cavalry had been in evidence so far.
Of the seven hundred men that had descended the hill with him, perhaps forty or fifty were now clear of the area, racing off into the southwest. Half a dozen of those men had the presence of mind to slow and check what was happening behind them, trying to ascertain where their chieftain was, aware that his continued survival as an ambassador was the prime reason for their flight. Maybe thirty or forty were now dead or down. Another twenty were gathering around Lucterius now, preparing to run, having heeded his final call. The remaining six hundred were clearly a lost cause, engaged in a melee with the Roman workers, heedless of the danger coming their way, despite the many warnings he had given them.
For all Vercingetorix’s grand talk about disregarding tribal boundaries and forming one great Gaul, such a possibility was still clearly far off. Far from the tightly-knit force of Cadurci Lucterius had led down that treacherous slope at Gergovia — many of whom had perished during that ill-fated attack on Caesar’s army a couple of days ago — the band of riders he had led down from Alesia this night had been the survivors of that assault, a mix of men from a dozen tribes and more, most of whom were only vaguely familiar with Lucterius and owed him no long-standing fealty.
This was no cavalry army of ‘one Gaul’. It was a mess of arguing tribes who paid little attention to the calls of their signallers or commanders. And because of that they would perish. He could only hope this wasn’t a simile for the whole war.
With a sad expression, he turned away from the bulk of his cavalry who were ignoring the closing Roman signals and taking out their frustration from their previous defeat upon the workmen. Joining the less-than-a-hundred men who had heeded his calls, Lucterius began to race southwest, away from the battle. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that the majority of the Roman horse had maintained their course, making for the fracas, but some of the Germans — two or three hundred in total, perhaps — had veered off, their gaze locked on the fleeing riders.
The Germans! What had he done to deserve this?
The important thing was to get away, to carry the message. It left a sour taste in Lucterius’ mouth to flee the battlefield and not turn and face the monsters, but he could not afford to fail. Tearing his anxious eyes from the whooping, bellowing ironclad Germans, he leaned forward in the saddle, gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg, and kicked his horse into whatever reserves of speed the animal could manage.
A spear arced through the air a few feet to his left, indicating just how close their pursuers were, and a moment later one of his men disappeared from his saddle with a shriek, the horse pelting on riderless, its course unchanged.
‘Come… to… me… Arverni!’ snarled a hungry-sounding voice only a few paces back in a Germanic growl and Lucterius felt his heart pound all the faster. It seemed pointless to waste breath and focus correcting the man, and the Cadurci chieftain kept his sight fixed on the lead men among his fleeing force.
The first he knew of his pursuer’s attack was when the moonlight betrayed the man, casting a shadow across his own horse’s flank. He glanced right urgently just in time to see a giant, hairy German atop a shaggy horse five hands higher than his own, his sword raised ready for a downward chop. There was little he could do to stop it. In desperation, he raised his own sword.
The German’s strength was impressive. The big sword came down like the collapsing of mountains, unstoppable and irresistible. Lucterius watched in horror as the heavy blade smashed his own to pieces, carving straight down through it, hacking off the front left horn of his saddle and then chopping deep into the back and shoulder of his horse. The animal lurched and the missing horn of his saddle, combined with his wounded thigh and the horse’s bucking, served to easily unseat him, expert horseman though he was.
Lucterius knew he was in trouble. Wounded, weaponless, and now falling from his steed, he would never see Bibracte and bring aid to the army. His arms flailed out as he fell, instinctively and with no conscious purpose in mind.
The fingers of his right hand closed on the German’s saddle, grasping desperately at the leather. As he felt his fingers scrabbling for purchase, his left hand closed around the man’s leg wrappings. Knowing that letting go meant death added a hitherto untapped strength to his struggle, and he was swiftly hauling himself up. The German, his face betraying no fear — only irritation — raised his huge sword and tried to angle it down at the figure clinging to his leg and saddle.
Lucterius’ right hand, still finding it almost impossible to maintain a good grip on the leather due to the bouncing, jolting gait of the horse, came up sharply and grabbed the wrist of the descending arm, forcing the sword out away from him at the same time as using the grip to pull himself further up.
He almost lost control when his left leg bounced against something, causing his wound to send sheets of jagged pain through him. Then he realised what it was his leg had hit: his wounded horse had somehow veered back in its excruciated, panicked race. With only a moment’s thought, he thrust out with his good leg, found purchase against his ruined animal’s bloody shoulder, and braced, launching himself with a push.
The sudden manoeuvre took the German by surprise, and Lucterius hit the big man hard and felt him falling away to the far side. Instantly, he let go of the man’s wrist and leg and scrabbled for the reins. One hand closed on the leather and, as the German disappeared down the other side with a cry that became a scream as his own huge horse ran over him, Lucterius fell. His feet hit the ground at speed, bad one first, and he shrieked. Then he was hanging from the reins, feet bouncing along the turf as the horse ran, riderless.
His arm muscles creaking and shrieking with the effort, he hauled himself up the beast’s side and slowly, with dreadful exertion, into the saddle. The horse was so large it felt odd to be up here.