S. Turney - Sons of Taranis

Atenos nodded. The losses they were seeing now were small, for they were only a small building crew and had not yet really tried to deny the enemy access to the water. The death toll once they brought a sizeable force up here and cut the supply would be appalling. For then the defenders would stop half-heartedly sending flurries of arrows down at them and would push back for real. The enemy would be able to stretch their water supplies over many more days than the legions could afford to throw men into the grinder up there.

‘It’s a testament to the general, for certain.’

‘Sir?’ Decumius frowned.

‘Whole armies have revolted against their commanders for such things – being thrown away pointlessly, I mean. Yet the men trust Caesar. They know he always has a plan, always finds a way. And he does. Even when we’re up to our knees in the shit, the general never fails to produce a way out. This all looks untenable, Decumius, but you’ve only been in Gaul a year and a half. Mark my words: the general has a reason for this.’

‘I hope you’re right sir,’ the centurion replied, ‘else we’re going to lose a lot of men up there.’

Atenos gestured to the nearest legionary.

‘Sir?’

‘Get up the slope. Tell them to stop packing it now. Have them lay every board we have at the weaker spots and then form up along with those lads from the Fifth. Share the wicker shields but get in the lea of the mound, out of sight of their archers until they’re needed. Any moment now the tower will be moving. As soon as it comes anywhere near arrow range I want you all back out protecting it until it’s in place.’

The legionary saluted and ran off up the ramp. Atenos turned with his fellow centurion and peered down the slope. The tower was moving out of the defences now, still horizontal. At a surprising speed it was trundled across the flat ground to the point where the purpose made ramp began. The tower had not been given wheels and was instead being propelled forward by means of placing carefully adzed timber boles beneath it, removing those from the rear it had already crossed and placing them at the front in preparation. As the two men watched, six centuries of men moved around the front with long ropes and began to haul the monstrosity upright.

It was powerfully tall and heavily constructed, covered with hides soaked in water, with timber walls beneath. In fact, it was as good a siege tower as Atenos had ever seen, and taller than any he’d witnessed, too. The beast slammed down, its base impacting upon the log rollers with a noise that echoed like the back-handed slap of a god even this far up the slope.

‘Glad I’m not on one of those ropes,’ noted Decumius with feeling.

‘Quite.’

Slowly, inexorably, the tower moved onto the ramp and Atenos watched it begin the slow, painstaking ascent. Now eight centuries of men were moving it up the slope, engineers running ahead and arranging pulleys on the posts driven hard into the ground at the sides of the ramp, threading the next ropes through them. It was an old method, yet to be bettered. The ropes led from the tower up the slope perhaps fifty paces, where they passed through the pulleys and back down beside the tower to where the soldiers hauled in relative safety, protected from attack by the tower itself. The ones in the most danger were the engineers rushing out ahead to thread the next set of pulleys. But then, they weren’t pulling something that weighed the same as a trireme up a slope.

An hour crawled by as the two officers watched the monstrous tower crawling up the ramp towards them, Decumius producing a small flask of Fundanian wine and sharing it with his commander as they waited. Atenos had chuckled to see that the flask had a stamp on the neck that labelled it MFM. The temptation to see that as ‘Marcus Falerius, Massilia’ was overwhelming. Any other year, Fronto would have been standing on this slope with him, watching the tower and drinking the wine rather than supplying it. Perhaps, then, he was here in spirit. The tower was closing now, almost two thirds of the way up the slope and, ready for action, the unassigned men of the six legions were falling in behind it, bringing the remaining vineae with them in readiness for missile attack, shuffling slowly in ordered lines.

Atenos, feeling something in the air, prickling the back of his neck, turned to look back up at the oppidum. The high walls of Uxellodunon were gradually filling with more and more of the enemy, flooding the defences ready to repel the Roman invaders. If each of those men carried a bow or a sling or a free hand for rock throwing, this would be a slaughter. The veteran centurion felt a shudder run through him.

‘You alright sir?’

‘Yes,’ he smiled grimly. ‘Just thinking about what’s coming.’

He was gratified to note a similar shudder run through Decumius as the other centurion peered up at the defenders and pictured the coming fight.

And still the tower rumbled on. Time passed nervously and Atenos heard something ping from his helmet. Looking up he noticed for the first time the bulky, boiling dark grey cloud rolling across the sky above them like the prow of Jupiter’s own ship.

‘The sacerdos was right, it seems. There’s a monster of a storm coming.’

Almost as if sensing the approach of the inclement weather, the tower lurched forwards with a new turn of speed. Two or three more spots of rain hit Atenos as he watched the tower reach a point just twenty paces from him and pause while the engineers changed the pulleys and ropes again. While they worked, a small force of auxiliaries scurried forward with buckets, climbing to the top of the tower and tipping water in torrents down the outer faces, continually dampening the hides against fire arrows. As soon as they had finished, the tower jerked and began its ascent once more.

The centurions came to an attentive stance as Commander Varus hurried past the structure to where they stood. ‘Atenos,’ he nodded. The primus pilus saluted in return. ‘Caesar’s instructions, since you are in charge of the installation: using the tower and the mound, hold the spring as long as possible. Prevent access for the defenders. They will throw everything they have at you so it’ll be a tough job, but you must hold for as long as possible. You will have two cohorts of the Tenth, one of the Fifth and two units of Cretan archers. I know that sounds a lot, and on parchment it is. But in truth that’s about twelve hundred men in all. There will be a reserve, but the more men we put up here the easier it will be for their archers to kill us. Use the vineae, the tower and the mound as defensively as you can and make the most of the archers to keep them at bay. And this from me: don’t get yourself killed, Atenos. The Tenth can’t afford to lose any more good officers. You’re at a premium now.’

The primus pilus smiled and nodded. ‘Will do, sir. And you should know by now that there’s nothing made by man that can get through my thick hide.’

Varus snorted with laughter. ‘Especially advice. Do your best. Pull out only if there is no other option. Mars and Minerva go with you, centurion.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

As Varus jogged off back down the slope, skirting the approaching tower, Decumius sighed. ‘Lucky cavalry, eh, sir? They can’t do much today, so they sit and drink wine while we hold the spring.’

Atenos nodded absently. ‘They earn it. I know they’re not popular with you Roman legion men. But a man of the tribes can see their advantage and for five years before you joined us I’ve watched that man muck in with the best of us, up to his armpits in blood and bone. He’s a proper soldier, not just an officer.’

Decumius simply nodded and at a motion from his superior stepped off the ramp to allow the great tower to pass by. Once more, the engineers rethreaded the ropes. A few more sporadic raindrops clanged off Atenos’ helmet and he threw up a quick prayer to Jupiter Pluvius – and to his native Taranis, just in case – that the storm hold off until the worst of the fighting was done. Sometimes truly bad weather halted battle, but that seemed unlikely today, and the idea of fighting for the spring in a deluge was not attractive.