Colleen McCullough - 5. Caesar

It took two days to organize the retreat, for the troops, all very young and inexperienced, couldn't be persuaded by their centurions not to overload their packs with personal treasures and souvenirs, nor to relinquish their extra gear and souvenirs in the wagons. None of it worth a sestertius, but so precious to seventeen-year-olds keen to cement their yearned-for military careers with memories. The march when it did begin was painfully slow, not helped by the sleet driving in their faces behind a howling wind straight off the German Ocean; the ground was both soaked and icy, the wagons kept bogging to the axles and were difficult to extricate. Even so, the day passed and the rugged heights of Atuatuca disappeared behind the shifting mists. Sabinus began to crow over Cotta, who set his lips and said nothing. But Ambiorix and the Eburones were there beyond the sleety rain, biding their time with the complacence of men who knew the terrain a great deal better than the Romans did. Ambiorix's plan worked smoothly; he could not afford to let the Roman column, marching down the Mosa, get far enough away from Atuatuca to encounter any of Quintus Cicero's men, for Quintus Cicero and the Ninth were very much alive. The moment Sabinus led the Thirteenth into a narrow defile, Ambiorix swung his foot soldiers to block the Roman advance and unleashed his horse soldiers on the tail of the column until it turned back on itself and prevented retreat out of the steep-sided gulch, perfect for Ambiorix's purpose. The initial reaction was blind panic as screaming hordes of Eburones swarmed into both ends of the defile, their brilliant yellow shawls abandoned so that they seemed like black shadows out of the Underworld. The unversed troops of the Thirteenth broke formation and tried to flee. Worse was Sabinus, whose fear and dismay drove all military ideas from his head. But when the shock wore off, the Thirteenth steadied down, saved from immediate massacre by the narrow confines in which the attack took place. There was nowhere to flee, and once Cotta, Gorgo and his centurions got the milling recruits standing in proper rank and file to resist, the lads discovered to their delight that they could kill the enemy. The peculiar iron of a hopeless situation stiffened their spirits, and they resolved that they would not die alone. And while the troops at the head and the tail of the column held the Eburones at bay, the troops in the middle, helped by the noncombatants and slaves, began to throw up defensive walls. At sunset there was still a Thirteenth, hideously smaller but far from defeated. "Didn't I tell you they were good boys?" asked Gorgo of Cotta as they paused to catch their breath; the Eburones had drawn off to mass for another onslaught. "I curse Sabinus!" Cotta hissed. "They are good boys! But they're all going to die, Gorgo, when they deserve to live and put decorations on their standards!" "Oh, Jupiter!" came from Gorgo in a moan. Cotta swung to look, and gasped. Carrying a stick on which he had tied his white handkerchief, Sabinus was picking his way across the dead at the mouth of the defile to where Ambiorix stood conferring with his nobles. Ambiorix, wearing his brilliant yellow shawl because he was one of the leaders, saw Sabinus and walked a few paces forward, holding his longsword in front of him, its tip pointing at the ground. With him went two other chieftains. "Truce, truce!" Sabinus shouted, panting. "I accept your truce, Quintus Sabinus, but only if you give up your weapons," said Ambiorix. "Spare those of us who are left, I beg you!" said Sabinus, throwing sword and dagger away ostentatiously. The answer was a sudden swirling sweep of the longsword; Sabinus's head soared into the air, parting company with its Attic helmet as well as its body. One of Ambiorix's companions caught the helmet as it descended, but Ambiorix waited until the head had finished rolling before he walked to it and picked it up. "Oh, these shorn Romans!" he cried, unable to wrap Sabinus's half-inch-long hair about his knuckles. Only by shaping his hand into a claw did he manage to lift the head high and wave it in the direction of the Thirteenth. "Attack!" he screamed. "Take their heads, take their heads!" Cotta was killed and decapitated not long after, but Gorgo lived to see the Aquilifer, dying on his feet, summon up some last reserve of strength and fling his hallowed silver Eagle like a javelin behind the dwindling Roman line. The Eburones drew off with the darkness, and Gorgo went the rounds of his boys to see how many were still on their feet. Pitifully few: about two hundred out of five thousand. "All right, boys," he said to them as they huddled together in a sea of fallen comrades, "swords out. Kill every man who's still breathing, then come back to me." "When will the Eburones return?" asked one seventeen-year-old. "At dawn, lad, but they won't find any of us alive to burn in their wicker cages. Kill the wounded, then come back to me. If you find any of our noncombatants or slaves, offer them a choice. Go now and try to get through to the Remi, or stay with us and die with us." While the soldiers went to obey his orders, Gorgo took the silver Eagle and looked about him, eyes used to the darkness. Ah, there! He gouged out a long, pipelike trench in some soft, bloody ground and buried the Eagle, not very deeply. After which he heaved and hauled until the spot was under a pile of bodies, then sat on a rock and waited. At about the middle hour of the night, the surviving soldiers of the Thirteenth Legion killed themselves rather than live to be burned in wicker cages.

There were very few noncombatants or slaves left alive, for all of them had plucked swords and shields from dead legionaries and fought. But those who still lived were let through the enemy lines indifferently, with the result that Caesar got word of the fate of the Thirteenth late the following day. "Trebonius, look after things," he said, clad in good plain steel armor, his scarlet general's cloak tied to his shoulders. "Caesar, you can't go unprotected!" Trebonius cried. "Take the Tenth; I'll send for Marcus Crassus and the Eighth to hold Samarobriva." "Ambiorix will be long gone," said Caesar positively. "He knows a Roman relief force will appear, and he has no intention of imperiling his victory. I've sent to Dorix of the Remi to muster his men to arms. I won't be unprotected." Nor was he. When he reached the Sabis River some distance beyond its sources, Caesar met Dorix and ten thousand Remi cavalry. With Caesar rode a squadron of Aeduan cavalry and one of his crop of new legates, Publius Sulpicius Rufus. Rufus gasped in awe as they came over a rise and looked down on the massed Remi horsemen. "Jupiter, what a sight!" Caesar grunted. "Pretty to look at, aren't they?" Remi shawls were checkered in brilliant blue and dull crimson with a thin yellow thread interwoven, and Remi trousers were the same; Remi shirts were dull crimson, Remi horse blankets brilliant blue. "I didn't know the Gauls rode such handsome horses." "They don't," said Caesar. "You're looking at the Remi, who went into the business of breeding Italian and Spanish horses generations ago. That's why they greeted my advent with glee and profuse protestations of friendship. They were finding it very hard to keep their horses the other tribes were forever raiding their herds. Fighting back turned them into superb cavalrymen themselves, but they lost many horses nonetheless, and were forced to pen their breeding stallions inside veritable fortresses. They also border the Treveri, who lust after Remi mounts. To the Remi, I was a gift from the Gods I meant Rome had come to stay in Gaul of the Long-hairs. Thus the Remi give me excellent cavalry, and as a thank-you I send Labienus to the Treveri to terrify them." Sulpicius Rufus shivered; he knew exactly what Caesar meant, though he knew Labienus only through the stories forever circulating in Rome. "What's wrong with Gallic horses?" he asked. "They're not much bigger than ponies. The native stock if unmixed with other breeds is a pony. Very uncomfortable for men as tall as the Belgae." Dorix rode up the hill to greet Caesar warmly, then swung his dish-faced, long-maned marca beside the General. "Where's Ambiorix?" asked Caesar, who had preserved his calm and betrayed no sign of grief since getting the news. "Nowhere near the battlefield. My scouts report it's quite deserted. I've brought slaves with me to burn and bury." "Good man." They camped that night and rode on in the morning. Ambiorix had taken his own dead; only Roman bodies lay in the defile. Dismounting, Caesar gestured that the Remi and his own squadron of cavalry should stay back. He walked forward with Sulpicius Rufus, and as he walked the tears began to run down his seamed face. They encountered the headless body of Sabinus first, unmistakable in its legate's armor; he had been a smallish man, Cotta much larger. "Ambiorix has a Roman legate's head to decorate his front door," said Caesar, it seemed oblivious to his tears. "Well, he'll have no joy from it." Almost all the bodies were headless. The Eburones, like many of the Gallic tribes, Celtae as well as Belgae, took heads as battle trophies to adorn the door posts of their houses. "There are traders do an excellent business selling cedar resin to the Gauls," said Caesar, still weeping silently. "Cedar resin?" asked Sulpicius Rufus, weeping too, and finding this dispassionate conversation bizarre. "To preserve the heads. The more heads a man has around his door, the greater his warrior status. Some are content to let them wear away to skulls, but the great nobles pickle their trophies in cedar resin. We'll recognize Sabinus when we see him." The sight of dead bodies and battlefields was not a new experience for Sulpicius Rufus, but his youthful campaigns had all been conducted in the East, where things were, he knew now, very different. Civilized. This was his first visit to Gaul, and he had arrived but two days before Caesar had ordered him to come on this journey into death. "Well, they weren't massacred like helpless women," said Caesar. "They put up a terrific fight." He stopped suddenly. He had come to the place where the survivors had killed themselves, unmistakably; their heads remained on their shoulders and the Eburones had obviously steered a wide berth around them, perhaps frightened of that kind of courage, alien to their own kind. To die in battle was glorious. To die after it alone in the dark was horrifying. "Gorgo!" said Caesar, and broke down completely. He knelt beside the grizzled veteran and pulled the body into his arms, crouched there and put his cheek on the lifeless hair, keening and mourning. It had nothing to do with the deaths of his mother and daughter; this was the General grieving for his troops. Sulpicius Rufus moved onward, shaken because he could see now how young they had all been, most of them not yet shaving. Oh, what a business! His running eyes flicked from face to face, looking for some sign of life. And found it in the face of a senior centurion, hands still clasped around the handle of his sword, buried in his belly. "Caesar!" he shouted. "Caesar, there's one alive!" And so they learned the story of Ambiorix, Sabinus, Cotta and Gorgo before the pilus prior centurion finally let go. Caesar's tears hadn't dried; he got to his feet. "There's no Eagle," he said, "but there should be. The Aquilifer threw it inside the defenses before he died." "The Eburones will have taken it," said Sulpicius Rufus. "They've left nothing unturned except those who killed themselves." "Which Gorgo will have known. We'll find it there." Once the bodies alongside Gorgo were moved, they found the Thirteenth's silver Eagle. "In all my long career as a soldier, Rufus, I've never seen a legion killed to the last man," said Caesar as they turned to where Dorix and the Remi waited patiently. "I knew Sabinus was a puffed-up fool, but because he handled himself so well against Viridovix and the Venelli, I thought him competent. It was Cotta I didn't think up to it." "You weren't to know, said Sulpicius Rufus, at a loss for the right response. "No, I wasn't. But not because of Sabinus. Because of Ambiorix. The Belgae have thrown up a formidable leader. He had to defeat me on his own in order to show the rest of them that he is capable of leading them. Right now he'll be sniffing at the arses of the Treveri." "What about the Nervii?" "They fight on foot, unusual for the Belgae. Ambiorix is a horse leader. That's why he'll be wooing the Treveri. Do you feel up to a long ride, Rufus?" Sulpicius Rufus blinked. "I don't have your stamina in the saddle, Caesar, but I'll do whatever you require." "Good. I must stay here to conduct the funeral rites for the Thirteenth, whose heads are missing and therefore cannot hold the coin to pay Charon. Luckily I'm Pontifex Maximus. I have the authority to draw up the necessary contracts with Jupiter Optimus Maximus and Pluto to pay Charon for all of them in one lump sum." Completely understandable. The only Romans who were deprived of their heads under usual circumstances had also forfeited their Roman citizenship; to have no mouth in which to hold the coin to pay for the ferry ride across the river Styx meant that the dead man's shade not a soul but a mindless remnant of life wandered the earth instead of the Underworld. Invisible demented, akin to the living demented who roamed from place to place being fed and clothed by the compassionate, but were never invited to stay and never knew the comfort of a home. "Take my squadron of cavalry and ride for Labienus," Caesar said, pulling his handkerchief from under the armhole of his cuirass and wiping his eyes, blowing his nose. "He's on the Mosa not far from Virodunum. Dorix will give you a couple of Remi as guides. Tell Labienus what happened here, and warn him to be very vigilant. And tell him" Caesar drew a harsh breath "tell him to give absolutely no quarter."