‘Want me to get a signal back to the camp, sir?’
Atenos paused for a moment in thought, but shook his head. ‘No point causing a major disturbance.’ He turned and cleared his throat. ‘Grab your pila and form up on me! Three blocks of four lines to my left, using all the open space.’
In a few heartbeats the party had downed tools, leaving branches half-adzed and trees with wedges cut from the base, ready to topple, grasping the shields that lay on the ground close to them as they worked. Running past the pilum stacks, each man took one and moved into line as ordered.
‘Front rank: pila at fifty paces and then down. Second rank: follow on the first. Third and fourth pass your pila forward as soon as the volleys are out, then first two repeat at twenty paces before you draw swords.’
The other centurions, signifers and musicians present relayed the command in case anyone had missed the commands in the centurion’s booming voice.
Half a hundred heartbeats the legionaries waited, arms starting to waver slightly with the effort of holding aloft the javelins. Then the first of the Gauls emerged from the bushes down the shallow slope. More and more burst from the undergrowth and, as they realised the Romans were aware of them and stealth was no longer of value, they began to yell war cries and push their tired, strained muscles to a last burst of speed.
‘Steady, lads.’
Another fourteen heartbeats, and the first man passed the shrub that Atenos had selected as a distance marker.
‘Ready… throw!’
With a fluid grace that had come from years of Atenos’ hard training, more than fifty arms jerked back a foot and then came forward, casting the javelins. Barely had the missiles left their grip before they dropped behind their large body shields and the second rank repeated the manoeuvre.
A hundred pila fell in two close waves, the descending gradient aiding their distance and power, and almost all the visible front ranks of Gallic attackers fell, torsos, heads, legs and arms pierced by the javelins. Here and there a man had managed to get his shield up and the pila had ripped through them, bending and becoming fast, their weight dragging the shields down and away until the Gauls gave up and dropped them.
More were coming, though. The Gauls were bellowing their defiance and hatred as they emerged still from the scrub in a ragged band. This time, as he had planned, Atenos waited, allowing the enemy to close on them, heaving in breaths as they climbed. As the first few men passed the centurion’s next marker, he glanced quickly to his left. Swiftly, efficiently, the rear ranks had passed their pila forward.
‘Mark and throw.’
The third and fourth volley followed in quick succession, every bit as effective as the earlier ones, more deadly, given the closer range.
By the time the living had extricated themselves from the dying and cast away damaged and useless shields, the legionaries were formed up in a solid wall, the three centuries closing up into one unit. Ten paces away, the lead Gauls snarled and shouted, clambering closer, sweating with the effort. The Romans stood calm and collected, each man a perfect mirror of his companions.
The first Gaul arrived and leapt at the wall. The legionary behind the shield he hit turned his arm slightly, allowing the man to roll off the curved surface and, as the Gaul simply changed target, launching a savage attack on the man next to him, that first legionary took the opportunity to jab the tip of his gladius into the Gaul’s armpit, recovering his position in the shield line before the next man arrived, the first victim falling away gurgling.
The Gallic force began to arrive in greater numbers, attempting to push the shield-wall back and buckle the defensive line. Atenos had no doubt that his men could hold. One of the many innovations he had brought to the Tenth since his arrival was the addition of a bronze or wood lip just inside the top right corner of their shields, allowing the man next to a legionary to slot his shield in, giving the wall tremendous extra stability, and yet allowing a man to pull his shield free and stab out, which the men were doing with mechanical speed and accuracy.
Leaving his men to their work, Atenos concentrated on doing his part. A centurion had to lead by example, and he had never yet led men into a fight without drawing as much blood as any other man. Indeed, he and Carbo had had something of a private competition going. Carbo had been ahead by an estimated ten bodies, though it seemed Atenos would likely pass that total before the week was out.
Five men were coming in his direction, veering off from the bulk of the enemy and heading for the extreme right flank, aiming for the man in the transverse crest, recognised as an officer. The first of them threw an overhand attack which was easily blocked with the centurion’s shield, but Atenos felt a moment of irritation as the legionary to his left took the opportunity to help his commander and jabbed out unseen, ripping his gladius into the Gaul’s side.
One down. Atenos tried not to feel angry at his man for the blow — he should really be praised for it. Concentrating on the fight, he swung his shield down and right, slamming the bottom rim into the next man’s shin and thrusting down over it with his gladius, ripping a hole in the Gaul’s mail with the tapering point and piercing his heart with simple accuracy. The man cried out briefly and the centurion brought the shield back up, pushing as he did, so that the Gaul fell away into the path of one of the other attackers while the Roman’s blade came free.
A sharp jerk out with his left arm and the shield cracked into another man, knocking him back and buying Atenos time to stab out and then slash with his gladius, taking the fifth man in the neck and then cutting across his midriff. The Gaul who’d been felled by his own dead friend had apparently decided that the centurion was too tough a prospect and had staggered to his feet and run off to attack one of the clearly-less-dangerous legionaries. The remaining man, unarmoured and his face bloody from the shield blow, blinked the crimson flow from his eyes and threw himself at the centurion.
Casually, contemptuously, Atenos simply stepped back a pace and allowed the Gaul to overextend with his strike. As the man almost fell forward into the blow, the big centurion brought his own sword down and hacked off the man’s hand just above the wrist, where the bones were delicate and the muscle thinnest.
As the staggering, agonized Gaul yelped, Atenos grabbed his tunic and drew him face to face, speaking in a low, menacing rumble and in his own native Gallic tongue.
‘Go back and tell your friends that the Tenth are waiting to chain them to the lord of corpses for their journey to the next world.’
The Gaul stared at Atenos in horror and bewilderment and, unable to tear his eyes from this demonic Roman with the Gallic tongue and the knowledge of Ogmios, he turned and fled. Atenos looked down in satisfaction at the array of bodies before them and ran a small calculation in his mind. Looking along the line of legionaries, finishing off the last few enemies already, he grinned.
‘Three hundred little fights like that and we’ll have ‘em beat, lads.’
As perhaps twenty Gauls fled back down the slope, Atenos freed the shield-wall, and the better throwers among the front rows stooped, pulling the few intact pila from earth or flesh and then casting them after the retreating Gauls, taking another half dozen before they were fully out of range.
It would be nice to think that this little show meant the rebels were getting desperate already, but Atenos knew the Gallic mind. These were small test forays and nothing more. Someone up on that hill was watching the result.
* * * * *
Lucterius fell silent, his last words — a plea from the heart to commit everything they could to the cause — ringing around the council hall of Bibracte. His heart sank. He had expected a raucous reaction, whatever the result. He’d hoped the various tribal leaders and ambassadors would leap to their feet enthusiastically, seeing this as their great chance to do away with Caesar, shouting and bellowing their bloodlust as they committed every man old enough to carry a spear. More realistically, he’d expected an explosion of argument as some tribes threw in their wholehearted support while others dithered. Then there’d be a period of negotiation in which his rhetoric would be put to the test, attempting to get all the men the army needed.