Marius' Mules II: The Belgae (17 page)

Without the
need for further orders, the pig was dropped into the stream of oil
in the tunnel entrance. The fat hissed and popped as the two men
with torches leaned gingerly forward and ignited the bubbling
carcasses. The charred remains burst into flame with fresh vigour
and, working furiously in the face of searing heat and splashes of
hot fat, the men heaved the pointed wooden poles out of the burning
hogs and used them to set the flaming bundle rolling.

By now shouts
had gone up inside the tunnel. The lead warriors of the mining
party had discovered that their passage had been completed. They
were probably now aware of the small river of oil flowing beneath
them and gathering in a small pool around the lower entrance to the
tunnel. If they were bright, they might have connected that with
the smell of roasted hog. If they were really clever, they had
turned and were already running, but they had no hope. The tunnel
was still fairly narrow and there were more than a dozen men in
there. There would be chaos in the darkness as they tried to push
back through their friends.

Fronto chewed
on his lower lip in vague irritation. He didn’t like doing
something like this to people; even to enemies. A man could die in
battle with a blade in his guts and go proud and happy, but this
was horrible. There was an explosive, incendiary noise somewhere
below him and he thought for a moment that he felt the ground
shake.

Then silence
for a single heartbeat…

And then
screams; screams that issued from inside and outside of the walls,
from the entrances of the tunnels. Those attackers that had not
been ignited by the flow of burning oil that ran down the special
gutter had found themselves face with a huge flaming carcass
rolling down the slope in the enclosed space. There was no
escape.

Black roiling
smoke rose from the tunnel entrance, carrying the scent of burned
meat. The men among the wicker shields below were in a panic,
unsure of what to do until the first blazing figure emerged from
the dark maw, screaming and running in a blind panic until he
tripped and tumbled down the slope toward the rest of the Belgae.
Behind him, the half dozen men that had lived long enough to reach
the exit burst out into the light, shrieking in agony and falling
at the tunnel mouth, rolling down the hill. The slope failed to
extinguish all of the flames, as the oil and fat had thoroughly
soaked them now, and the figures, long dead by the time they rolled
to a halt in front of their comrades, were still licked by
flames.

Glancing back
and forth along the hill, Fronto nodded sadly as he saw the same
sequence of events unfolding at each tunnel. Raising and lowering
his arm once more, he shouted “Third Team!”

Behind him,
four more men lifted the oil barrel back upright and poured two
open topped barrels of water into the passage to extinguish the
flames and prevent the wooden supports from collapsing and bringing
the wall down with them. Then a group of ten men grasped shovels,
both manufactured and makeshift, and began to backfill the tunnels
with earth, carrying them down into the passageway and starting
below the wall itself to make sure the fire was no longer a threat
to the defences.

Fronto nodded
with cold satisfaction. It would take several hours for the men to
fill those tunnels enough to prevent them being of further use to
the Belgae but, judging by the chaos below, his demonstration had
had the desired effect. The wicker shield-bearers had dropped their
screens and fled, only to fall to the archers on the walls, who
were no longer restricted in their shots.

He could
imagine the conversations that were going on between the tribal
leaders of the enemy below. Certainly plans were being redrafted.
No one was going to be in a hurry to run up the hill again, so his
men should have time to finish their work and be prepared for the
next move.

With one last
look down the slope, he turned and walked away to the left along
the wall, to the far tunnel, where Decius was ordering his men
around.

“
Well that’s given them something to think about
eh?”

Decius
grinned.

“
Did you see those bastards run? If we’d not shot ‘em down
they’d have kept going ‘til they drowned in the Rhine!”

Fronto
laughed.

“
It’s certainly bought us some time. I’d say we’re safe at
least until the afternoon now. What I expect for the rest of the
day is a few small pushes to test our defences. They knew they’d
cleared most of the Remi’s original missile defences from the
walls, but now they also know there’s a new threat. I don’t think
they’ll send more than a hundred at a time, and probably not even
that. And they’ll come from a different direction each
time.”

He sighed
wearily.

“
I’m just hoping they stick to that and don’t come en-masse. If
they do, we’re done for wherever they come from. No matter how
clever we are, we just can’t withstand those kind of
odds.”

Decius nodded
and smiled.

“
If they do it probably won’t be until tomorrow.”

“
Don’t be too sure. They won’t want to give us another night
here, having seen what we managed with the first one. I think
they’ll keep testing us all day until late afternoon. Then they’ll
just ‘all-in’ to get rid of us before nightfall.”

Fronto dropped
to a crouch and started to tap the wall top absently with a
stick.

“
What we need to do is to get every man here with a brain
thinking of ways to take down large groups of them and bolster our
defences.”

Decius
nodded.

“
I’ve a few ideas, particularly for the northern sector. You
haven’t been round there yet, have you?”

Fronto shook
his head.

“
That’s going to be the weak spot for missiles. The slope is
covered with woods. The only bonus is it’s going to be a bastard of
an ascent for the enemy too.”

Fronto
frowned.

“
But you’ve got ideas?”

“
Sort of. Need to work on them a bit and perhaps try and speak
to Iccius about it. Mostly I don’t want to do anything about it
while we’re only expecting little forays. It’d be a shame to waste
a good surprise on a few men.”

Fronto
nodded.

“
Try and get everything ready so you can put any plans into
action quickly. When they start to gather for a big assault, we
might not get more than half an hour’s warning.”

Decius
laughed.

“
I must say that serving with you is certainly an adventure,
sir.”

“
Indeed. Go to it, Decius. I’m going to go speak to the others
and see what ideas we can rustle up.”

Just as he’d
expected, there was little activity from the Belgae for some time.
It was later morning before the first assaults began. Small pockets
of Belgic warriors bravely tried the ascent from all sides, not a
single man managing to survive within forty feet of the wall.

The fourth
such attempt, as the sun rose high, involved what appeared to be a
testudo formed of those wicker shields they had used to protect the
miners. For a moment the defenders were nonplussed and fired a few
random stones and arrows at the approaching block, which bounced
harmlessly from the protective surround.

Then,
irritably, Decius had appeared on the scene and accosted one of his
archers. Grumbling, he had snatched an arrow from the man’s quiver,
dipped the head in the oil barrel stationed at the rear of the
wall, lit it with one of the torches that had been kept burning
throughout the day, and then passed the flaming missile back to the
man. The Cretan smiled with comprehension and, aiming, sent the
burning arrow in a tight arc, where it landed in the wicker with a
thud. The dry screen caught light instantly and the warrior was
forced to discard it hurriedly to one side. Barely had he let go of
it before two arrows plunged into his chest and a heavy lead sling
bullet broke his temple.

The plan had
quickly passed down the line of archers and the wicker assault
screen was left a flaming mass, surrounded by the bodies of the
warriors that had borne it.

The morning
wore on with regular small attempts to scale the hill. Those coming
up the southern slope above the river found themselves easy targets
for the defenders, who saved their missiles and dropped rocks down
the steep escarpment. The brave few who took either east or west
slope in full view of the walls on open ground learned quickly what
Rome already knew about the quality of the slingers bred on the
Balearic islands, and those who picked their way carefully through
the wooded northern slope struggled as they reached the top only to
be met with arrows.

As the sun
began its lazy arc down toward the rear of the oppidum, Fronto once
again found Decius, standing at the edge of the woods on the
northern slope, where he could still make out the hordes of Belgae
on the eastern plain.

“
Afternoon, Decius.”

“
Sir.”

“
I think it might be time to start putting together your
surprise. We’ve not had an assault from any side in an hour and
there’s a lot of movement and organisation going on down
below.”

“
You think the big push is coming?”

Fronto
nodded.

“
I don’t know how big, but as big as we’re likely to see.
That’s only a tenth of the whole Belgic army down there but, when
you think about it, Bibrax is a relatively small target. I don’t
think it can be that important to the Belgae or they’d have come
here in all their glory. If it was only worth a small vexillation
of their army, then I doubt their leaders will commit all thirty
thousand or so. We’ll probably see half of them at most. If the
cost of this place is too steep, they won’t buy.”

Decius
nodded.

“
Still… that’s going to be about five to one. We’ll have to
work to make the price too high.”

“
It’s all about keeping them at arm’s length. Up close these
auxilia will be pretty useless. It’ll be down to the Remi to save
the day then. Right!”

He took a deep
breath.

“
Let’s get to work.”

* * * * *

In retrospect,
Fronto had to express admiration for the timing of the Belgae’s
attacks. They had estimated the time taken to assault all four
slopes of the oppidum and had adjusted accordingly, so that the
defenders could not draw men from one sector to help defend
another. The first assault to be launched was the northern
offensive, hampered by the thick woods and undergrowth of that
slope. The second, perhaps fifteen minutes later, was the steep
incline above the river. Finally, the east and west assaults, the
easiest terrain, began simultaneously five minutes later.

Fronto,
commanding the main gate and the eastern sector above the camp of
the Belgic army gritted his teeth and hoped that these
often-overlooked and unsung auxiliary prefects were worth their pay
grade, and more besides.

A quick glance
back down the slope and he shook his head. The main block of the
assault was coming at him; somewhere around seven or eight thousand
men, all told. He’d seen a legion with its auxiliary contingent
many times and that was roughly what he was looking at here: the
Belgic equivalent of a standard Roman field army. If the Belgae had
been innovative thinkers, Fronto and his men wouldn’t have stood a
chance. If what people said about the Belgae’s fierceness was true,
only their own ingenuity would save them.

He turned to
look at his small groups of defenders in position along the walls,
shading his eyes from the sun that sank over his left shoulder
toward the now thinning treetops of the oppidum. Perhaps six
hundred men, including the Remi sword and spear bearers that stood
interspersed with his auxiliaries.

Shit.

Odds of more
than ten to one were enough to put the wind up even the most
seasoned commander. He smiled a grim smile.

Still, large
numbers was no offset for monumental stupidity. They may be brave,
but they were also foolhardy.

He watched the
front line of the Belgae. Like most barbarian armies he’d had to
deal with, the Spanish included, the Belgae gathered in large
crowds, excited themselves into a frenzy of bloodlust and a need
for personal glory, and then poured towards the enemy like a burst
dam in no semblance of order and with no real plan of attack.

Seven thousand
men or more in a heaving sea of violent lust pouring up the
hill.

With a weary
smile, Fronto turned to the Remi warrior nearby and made
throat-slashing motions.

The man nodded
and gabbled off in his own dialect with other warriors. Fronto
turned back to the massed charge on the slope and watched with
interest.

There was a
crunch to his left and a bang, followed quickly by similar noises
to his right. More noises sprang up from both sides and he nodded
sadly.

It had taken a
little over an hour for his men, along with the Remi, to saw down
six of the beech trees at the far side of the oppidum; the
southwest, out of sight of the main force. They had been stripped
of branches and cut down to lengths of around twenty feet before
being transported across the village and raised up onto the walls.
There they had stood for the last ten minutes, just out of sight of
the attackers below, until the signal was given.

The Remi
warriors along the walls braced themselves on the stonework and
heaved at the logs until they began to rock. A little more leverage
and they tipped from the wall and began their lethal descent down
the slope.