S. Turney - The Great Revolt

It was over. How had they fared?

With difficulty — and apparently an arrow in the calf, which burned like crazy — Cavarinos hauled himself upright. A few tired-looking Romans lined the walls nearby, which answered his question eloquently.

That was it, then. He knew as well as anyone that the besieged army didn’t have another fight left in them. The battle was over. The war was over. His eyes scanned the land around him and he had to blink away the pain as his leg almost gave under him. Lights were winking into existence up at the oppidum. Some of the army had escaped there then, so that would be his destination. To starve or surrender or just charge to his doom with the rest of them as whoever now led the rebels decided.

The arrow had only cut through his flesh, scraping bone but leaving the muscle intact, and he found he could walk with a small amount of pain and difficulty. He reached down and snapped the shaft, drawing it out with a whimper of pain and then binding his leg with a dirty rag torn from one of the numerous bodies in the gateway. The Romans weren’t watching him here. How would he flee? His hand reached up and he found the somehow comforting shape of Fortuna still at his neck. He gripped it tight as he stepped out from the bodies and limped and staggered through the gate, having to use the timbers to support himself.

Then he was out into the evening and the open grass, strewn with hundreds and hundreds of his countrymen. It was a soul-destroying sight. So much Gallic life spent on this one day in pursuit of a dream that had now evaporated as the tribes woke from their blissful fantasies to find the Roman boot on their throat with more weight than ever.

Over. He turned to look at the Romans on the wall. The artillery was unmanned. None of the few soldiers seemed to have a bow or pilum. They mostly leaned on the fence as though they had survived a trip through Hades, which perhaps they had.

And so, seemingly, had he. He heard one of the Romans call to another, and they were pointing at him. Cavarinos turned his back on them. If he was going to die, watching it coming would make no difference. But no pilum came, nor arrow, nor bullet as he staggered painfully back across the ground and up the slope to the oppidum and to the last night of the rebellion, as he saw it.

Tonight, the war was over.

Perhaps tomorrow the peace could begin?

* * * * *

Fronto stood with half a dozen fellow officers, his singulares — both intact and wounded — gathered around him. Everyone looked equally exhausted. He had gone back to the gate as soon as the fighting was completely done and he’d had the leisure to do so, but could find no sign of Cavarinos. That might be a good sign, but there were enough unrecognisable bodies — and body parts — that he couldn’t be sure.

And now Antonius was passing around the wine that he could only have had on him, somewhere at his belt, even during the nightmare of the fight at the northern wall. Every man drank deep, and some poor soldier that Antonius had grabbed as he passed was even now hunting all the camp’s supplies for more.

‘Tonight, my friends, I intend to get drunk,’ Caesar’s second grinned.

‘That’ll be a feat. Two years now of downing your own bodyweight in wine and I’ve never seen you manage to get properly bollocksed yet!’

Antonius laughed lightly. ‘I save the silly stuff for the girls, Fronto. Men drink like men.’

The officers fell silent as they watched a small party approach in the gloom of the evening, their features only coming clear as they passed into the torchlight. Labienus, still caked in gore, was accompanying a party of legionaries as they hauled some Gallic noble, his arms bound behind his back and a horizontal pole beneath his arms keeping him upright.

‘Looks important,’ Fronto noted.

Labienus nodded. ‘ Vergasillaunus , apparently. The rebel king’s cousin who led the attack on the north wall. Caesar will want to meet him, I’m sure.’

‘We didn’t get the king, then?’

‘They say he got away back up to Alesia. Varus and his men have pursued the relief army back up to their hill, but gave off the chase at the bottom of the slope where the treeline stopped them. Not much chance of them managing something like that again, though.’

No, Fronto thought with a sigh of relief.

My last battle …

Lucterius staggered between the scrub bushes in the last purple glow of evening, his horse long gone — dead on the field from a Roman spear point. Like so many of the relief force’s cavalry, he had ended up fleeing the fight in the chaos that had ensued following the rout at Mons Rea, though most of the rest had still been mounted. The news of the disaster had come through quickly to the attack on the plain, though in truth the situation had already been obvious, since the debacle could be seen easily enough from the flat lands.

Vergasillaunus’ force had been on the cusp of completely overrunning the Roman camp when they had been hit from behind by a cavalry force that had changed the entire fight. For a while, he had not understood how a single cavalry unit — no matter how large — could have changed things so quickly and thoroughly, but someone had mentioned the Germans, and Lucterius had remembered that horrendous force with a shudder. He’d pictured the head-takers ploughing into the rear ranks of the Gallic force and the reason for the rout had immediately become clear.

Still, he’d hoped that Vergasillaunus had enough control and influence to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. After the shock of the attack had died down the Gallic leader should have been able to rally his men — Lucterius had tried the same on the plains — but it seemed that Vergasillaunus had gone and no one else had the strength of character to pull things together. Without that man leading the reserve army, control had devolved to each tribe’s commander and none had the seniority to lead the others. So inevitably the rout had become flight and death and chaos. And because the Mons Rea collapse could not be halted, Lucterius could not persuade the commanders in his own force to hold and keep fighting.

The entire battle stuttered to a halt and became a chaotic debacle on all three fronts, the failure of the critical Mons Rea attack leading to the collapse of the others. As Lucterius’ own troops fled the field, he’d seen across the Roman defences and noticed the first of the Oppidum’s force fleeing back up the slope to Alesia. No hope of success remained. Despite the fact that the Gallic forces still outnumbered the Romans, and had better access to supplies, the battle was lost.

The Romans had been relentless. A larger force of cavalry from inside the camp had joined up with that Germanic surprise attack and between them the entire Roman mounted contingent had harried the Gallic reserve from the field, killing hundreds as they fled. Many of Lucterius’ force escaped to the relief camp before the Romans reached them, but the Cadurci leader himself was among the last, attempting to rally a lost cause, and the Romans had caught him in the open with a few of his best men. He’d lost his horse and the enemy had presumed him dead in the press. He’d had to wait until the Romans had pulled back to their fortifications before rising and dragging himself from the plains and back across the miles to the relief force’s camp on foot.

With a defeated sigh, he began the long climb up the slope, struggling to make out his path in the inky darkness. All was not lost. He would rally the leaders of the reserve army. They might be reluctant still — now more so than ever — but the fact remained that they outnumbered the Romans in total, were still in a better situation for provisions, and they had so nearly won the day. One more fight . The Romans couldn’t take that punishment again, and he knew it. They’d emptied their camps to fight that battle and they couldn’t do it again. They didn’t have the men, the supplies, the defences or the heart any more. One more fight and the tribes could still win it.