S. Turney: The Great Revolt

The ‘plain of mud and blood’. Summer 52BC.

The Gallic warrior clutched his stolen Roman blade tightly, moving stealthily between two particularly tall clumps of wormwood — very little flora had survived on the plain, between the seemingly-endless fighting, the Roman siege works and general plant clearance. The legionary on guard duty was far from his camp and his officers, and barely within sight of his nearest compatriot. He leaned on the top of his shield, which rested on the ground, his pilum jabbed into the rich earth and standing free. He was clearly fighting off the reaching arms of Morpheus.

The Gaul frowned at his own audacity. He didn’t really want to kill the lad. There had been enough killing to last a thousand lifetimes — enough blood shed to drown the thirstiest of battle Gods. And the poor lad was young. He’d been through enough. But the Gaul had only the one free hand, and that held his sword… the other fist gripped so tightly his knuckles shone white in the night.

He waited for the lad to straighten and turn, briefly checking the terrain towards the plateau and, taking advantage of the turned back, ducked from the wormwood to the narrow bole of an ash tree that would be dead before winter, its trunk deformed from sword blows where the Romans had practiced their killing. As he reached the cover of the tree, he looked out again and almost smiled. The sentry had stood his shield free, hung his helmet on the tip of his pilum and had hoisted up his tunic to take a leak into the dip.

No killing after all.

With a deep ragged breath, the Gaul sprinted across the open ground, slowing as he approached the unwitting Roman lad, busy shaking himself clear. Careful not to make a sound, the Gaul lifted his sword arm and raised it high, bringing it down pommel-first just as the sentry began to turn to retrieve his kit. There was a heavy thud, with the dull clonk of bronze on bone, and the young man folded at the knees, collapsing face down into the mud.

Too much death.

The Gaul crouched and rolled the Roman onto his back to make sure he didn’t suffocate in the cloying mud and moved on.

The burial ground was neat. Everything the Romans did was so organised and effective. That was why they would one day rule the world and all the old peoples would be gone. No, the Gaul corrected himself, they would become Roman too. The legions’ dead were in ordered rows on one side of the flat field, the Gauls on the other. Not the bulk of the departed, of course. There were simply too many to give this kind of respect. The ordinary soldiers of Rome were in a mass grave — a great pile of ash and bone from the enormous funeral pyres that had burned for three days and nights, filling the world with the smell of Roasting pork. The Romans had fed the pyre ceaselessly with both timber and bodies, and only when the last legionary was dust, they had swept it into the centre of the excavated ditch and piled earth upon the top, erecting a monument formed from captured spears, helmets, shields and banners by which to remember the fallen.

For all their fearsome reputation, the Romans had treated the native dead with exactly the same respect. The larger pile of native ash lay beneath another mound on the far side of the plain.

But here in the middle lay the ordered rows of the notable dead. Romans commemorated with a wooden marker carved with their name, helmets, swords, torcs and the like hanging from the top to help identify them and the rank they held. Sons of Rome who led armies of thousands would be buried there, alongside their standard bearers, centurions and optios.

The Gallic honoured dead were considerably fewer, of course. Hardly any had their names marked, for the Romans knew not who they were. They were mostly commemorated only by the richness of their gear, displayed above the resting place of their ashes, only the few leaders that had been identified by the prisoners bearing a named marker.

The Gaul shook his head at the insanity of it all, and set off among the ordered lines.

It didn’t take him long to find the grave he sought. It was strange to think that such a vital man could have become ash and nothing more, just one among hundreds lying here in the earth. If the Gaul had had any truck with Gods, he might think the man and his silent companions had gone on to some divine after-world, but he knew in his heart of hearts that ash was all they would be. Ash and darkness, and unfeeling silence.

He looked down at the wooden marker with a sense of sadness tempered only by the knowledge that this man had been his enemy. A glittering sword hung on the wooden marker. In coming days that weapon would be stolen by one of the numerous scavengers who would move in when the Roman force left. Its beautiful orichalcum hilt, embossed with shapely Gods, identified it as a very valuable item.

‘I never wanted this. You know that,’ the Gaul whispered. ‘I argued against the whole thing.’

He was hardly surprised when a tear leaked from the corner of his eye and drove a channel through the caked dirt, sweat and mud on his cheek. He looked down at his clenched fist and, with seeming reluctance, turned it over and unfolded the fingers. The bronze pendant of the Roman Goddess Fortuna gleamed in the faint moonlight. He had apparently been gripping it so tightly it had cut his hand in half a dozen places, and a patina of watery crimson tinted the metal.

How appropriate .

‘Luck apparently wasn’t with us.’ He prepared to cast the bronze figurine onto the grave, but paused with a sad smile.

‘Actually, I think I’ll hang onto it a while yet. After this disaster, I think any of us could use a little extra luck. Go to your Gods peacefully.’

Fastening the thong around his neck and tucking the figurine into his tunic, he fetched out of his purse the other thing he had brought — that had brought him here ? Two shattered shards of slate, etched with shapes and strange arcane words that had once formed a whole. With a sigh, the Gaul crouched and jabbed the two shards into the freshly-turned earth above the buried jar of ashes. Standing once more, he placed his worn boot-sole upon the dreadful broken thing and pushed it down into the grave, out of sight.

‘Let it end there, in silence and darkness.’

He looked up and across the flat ground, towards the oppidum of Alesia that rose above the valleys and the plain like an upturned ship. Land of the lost.

‘Let it all end here.’

With a last sad look at the grave and the beautiful, rich sword, the Gaul turned, away from the man’s resting place, away from the silent rows of the slain, away from the Roman host, away from the last stand of Gaul and towards an uncertain future.

Massilia, some months previously .

Fronto missed his step and stumbled, brushing painfully against the wall. For a moment he paused, hardly daring to breathe, and listening intently for any sound. His eyes automatically strayed along the wall to the location of one of the hidden weapons and he silently chided himself for such a reaction. The background hum of the building’s occupants was barely audible from outside, and after a count of twenty he decided that he was safe and that no one had heard. Allowing himself a long, slow exhale which plumed in the cold winter air, he straightened from the wall, reaching out to one of the columns in the colonnade. Very carefully and being as quiet as possible, he looked down at the crusty dark red stain on his leg. Damn it!