Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate (33 page)

It was not uncommon now to see a legionary fall out of line trying to gather what looked like edible fruit or berries. Even the beatings such activity bought them from their officers did nothing to prevent repeat incidents. Valuable pila had been cast off into the woodlands and lost in vain attempts to pin what might have been a deer, but could just as easily be a figment of the mens' imaginations.

Trebonius had offered the suggestion that the army divert from their course and move on one of the other tribal settlements in order to attempt to secure a source of fresh grain, but Caesar's flinty gaze was set upon Cassivellaunus and nothing short of a slap from one of the Gods would have turned his head from that now.

And finally last night the scouts had come back unmolested - a rare occurrence in itself - and proclaimed that the settlement had been located.

Following the battle, such as it was, at the river Tamesis, the few captives had been examined by the officers and subdivided. Those men - the bulk - who were poor and stupid warriors of the various allied tribes were simply disarmed, beaten a little, and ejected into the woodlands to run home and tell of the clemency and power of Rome. After all, the column could hardly spare the men, let alone the food, to keep guard on a chain of prisoners. Those few who were apparently powerful men - a couple of nobles, a rich warrior and a man who looked suspiciously druidical to Caesar - had been kept in the column as potentially useful and important to keep separate from their people; those eight captives made little difference, But the three who belonged to the Catuvellauni tribe were given to the vanguard to help them navigate and move on the settlement. The poor bastards had been defiant at first, but half an hour with Blattius Secundus and his selection of hunting and skinning knives had made them remarkably compliant and talkative. The two who still had their eyes helped their friend to move as they aided the scouts in any way they could to track down and enslave their own people.

No one stood up to Secundus for long.

Now, as the sun sent glittering rays through the trees, Priscus had to admit that they would probably never have found this place without Secundus' unpleasant methods.

The captives referred to it as 'Wheat Valley' and Priscus could see how it had acquired that name.

A low rampart ran across the land before them and, while they could not see the far end of the enclosure, it must be a remarkably sizeable area. A pool and long, narrow waterway lay at the base of the rampart facing them and, apart from a few coppices like the one the small Roman party now occupied, the entire wide, open countryside around the settlement was covered with grain fields - all harvested, leaving nothing of use for the outsider, and probably stored in bulk somewhere behind those ramparts.

Behind Priscus, Cotta, currently commanding the Eleventh, snorted.

"Call that an oppidum?"

"What?" Priscus asked sharply, despite his weariness.

"Well, the oppida we've seen in Gaul were all on high bluffs, well defended with heavy towered walls and the like. This is a slight lump in the flat land surrounded by a small mound and a fence. My aunt could take that if she armed her gardeners."

"She must have a sodding big and dangerous garden then. Look again."

Caesar nodded slowly, standing off to one side. "Ditches, you think, Priscus?"

"Hades yes, sir, ditches. Big ones too, I reckon. They're not relying on a natural slope - it's a plateau, but only a low one. Instead they've done exactly what Roman architects would do. Those mounds - which, by the way, are actually rather big - are the spoil from the ground in front of them. The only place the mound's low and there's no ditch is where all that stagnant water is. Anyone fancy wading into combat through a swamp?"

There was a silence interrupted only by the guffawing of a blackbird somewhere above them. Priscus peered between the branches and across the raped fields once again.

"The southwest approach is the only feasible one. The mound is suspiciously low there and without a water channel. I'm guessing that the ground was resistant to ditch digging. See how the hedge and stockade atop it is considerably stronger there? That's to counteract the failure of the topographic defences. To the south east there's the water and to east and west those big mounds suggest deep ditches. Easier to take the stronger stockade than cross the deeper ditch."

"What of the north" asked Trebonius, pointing into the distance which sat in the early morning haze. "I can see no mound anywhere."

Priscus turned and pointed off to the east. "See the river?" The officers turned as one, almost comically, and peered through the foliage spotting the winding ribbon of silver that shimmered off to the east, curving round towards them until it passed out of sight.

"And there" he added, pointing west. Again all eyes followed his finger and saw the waving silver serpent straying across the landscape. "Runs just past the north side of the settlement, I'd say."

"It's tiny" Cotta snorted. "A horse could jump it."

"Look again" Priscus sighed. "Widens out in a lot of places to ponds and lakes. That means there'll be fens and bogs and reeds and the like - a nightmare to cross, despite looking suspiciously narrow. And then there'll be the slope up from the river to the settlement, no doubt defended by a stout stockade that we can't see from this angle. I tell you now: the southwest is your favoured approach. It's the only place where legions can be deployed effectively. That should be enough of a reason on its own."

Caesar nodded. "You have the right of it. Remember, Cotta, that Priscus has years of the first-hand assault experience that we all lack." He tapped his chin reflectively. "The north will be their bolt-hole."

"General?" Even Priscus joined in the confused query.

"Where the tribe will run when faced by our attack. The south will be our focus and the east and west are unfeasible. The tribe will run north."

"So you want a force there to stop them?"

The general smiled knowingly.

"Hardly. We cannot afford to smash or enslave them. We are far outside our own territory here and not in a position to claim the lands."

"But you wanted…" began Trebonius.

"I wanted to show our strength enough to persuade the tribes of this accursed island to keep their claws out of Gaul. I will not tolerate interference with our progress there. This place is the focus of our opposition in Britannia. I want it to fall easily, quickly and efficiently. And there is no point in making a bold statement of our ability to crush the opposition if there is no one left to witness it and spread the word."

A nod of understanding passed through the officers and Priscus smiled with relief. Even since Gesoriacum, the general had been adamant that Britannia must go ahead, but the legate had assumed - as had everyone else - that this campaign was either an extension of Gaul, trying to add yet more territory to the control of the Republic, or a stunt to raise his standing with the mob in Rome.

Of course,
whatever
his motives, if he was successful, he would achieve the latter.

But the general was ever one for keeping his wagers and plans to the last moment; until the dice needed to be rolled. It made sense now why Caesar felt it wise to leave an unsettled Gaul for this: because he had to make sure that the vast hordes of barbarians from this land kept their noses out of affairs across the water. And to do that he had to prove to them that Rome could come in and stop them, chastise them and even destroy them if it felt so inclined.

The only hiccup was that Priscus was not entirely convinced that the attack on 'Wheat Fields' would be as simple as the general hoped. It should, but the column had no siege weapons with them - only light artillery - and the army was underfed, hungry and miserable. Morale was low enough to affect their ability to succeed here. Under normal circumstances, the legions would take this place in a matter of hours. Like this, could they even realistically camp down here for that long?

Of course, if they could lay their hands on the grain stores inside that settlement…

"Fulvius! Get those natives over here".

As the optio and his contubernium of men coaxed the three captives across to the commanders, Caesar gave Priscus a quizzical look but remained silent. In a short time he had already come to respect the former centurion's opinions.

The natives - two broken and hopeless, one crippled and blind - sagged in their captors' grasp as they were forced to their knees before Priscus, who gestured for them to rise again. As the weakest of them, a young man in his twenties who was hardly warrior-material, turned his pale face to the legate, Priscus grasped his chin and turned him to face the settlement.

"Where will Cassivellaunus store all the grain they've harvested?"

The Morini scout who accompanied the small prisoner escort repeated the question in a dialect close enough for the captives. At first the man was defiantly silent but a quick cuff round the head from the optio loosened his tongue. His fellows glared angrily at him, but did nothing to prevent him answering the question. The scout nodded and then raised his gaze to Priscus.

"Town have four grain store near west side. Lots extra grain mean more store. Not time to build extra so keep in house near grain store."

Priscus frowned and rubbed his forehead where a bead of sweat was starting to trickle down towards his nose.

"If we could seize a supply of that grain we could maintain a siege for a lot longer and the morale of the troops would increase a great deal. The lads love to eat and to pull one over on the locals."

Caesar shook his head. "I have no intention of tarrying for a long siege. I want this over with in short order. Besides, you know how dangerous and unlikely it would be to manage to bring any sizeable quantity of grain back out of there. But if we cannot raise our troops' morale and feed them well, we could perhaps even the odds the other way."

"Sir?" Trebonius frowned.

"Destroy their grain. Lower their morale and make them equally hungry."

Priscus nodded slowly, his eyes glinting with devious thought.

"It has some merit, Caesar, but there is a serious problem with the idea: when we do take the place, we still have no food. We need that grain when the town falls."

"You have a better idea, Priscus? I recognise that look."

"The scout says they will have too much grain to keep in the granaries and it'll fill the closer houses too. So we could destroy just the granaries and not the nearby houses. Specific targeting. We know they don't build in brick, so those granaries will be wood and will go up a treat with fire arrows. But we need to make sure we leave all the excess in the other buildings to feed the men. The archers will have to be careful."

"Fire spreads, Priscus" Trebonius reminded him gently. "Among wooden buildings on a dry day you'll be extraordinarily lucky if the other buildings don't catch."

"That's why we attack slowly and sporadically. We attack at night and use Decius' Cretans - they're the only archers good enough to pull that off. We need the inhabitants to have time to realise what we're doing and rush across to limit the damage. If they've an ounce of sense, they'll realise that the granaries are done for straight away and pull the wreckage down, throwing water on the walls of the other buildings. We have to hope they're not stupid enough to miss that or we'll lose all the grain anyway."

Trebonius smiled slowly. "I see where you're going with this. There'll be such a focus on the grain stores that their attention will be distracted."

"Absolutely. And that might give us just enough advantage to get a force across the southwest rampart easily."

The two men turned to look at the others. Caesar nodded his approval as Roscius, so far quiet at the general's shoulder, shared a look with Cotta before the two men smiled and nodded in turn.

"Get it done."

* * * * *

Auxiliary prefect Titus Decius Quadratus waved to his centurion. Calatorius - a veteran of the Sertorian war and a dour, disapproving old man - left the protection of the wide-boled tree and scurried through the undergrowth with a speed and dexterity that belied his years.

"Sir?"

"You've served with archers longer even than me. What's your opinion?"

Calatorius gave one quick glance towards their target and shrugged.

"So long as they're the right buildings the boys will have 'em to ash in half an hour."

"But that's the very problem. Can we rely on those being the right buildings?"

The two men peered again. Decius' unit of four hundred Cretan archers had been split, half remaining with the force guarding the ships and beachhead, the other half with the army that had advanced west. Three slightly depleted centuries of lightly armed sagitarii had waited until dusk and skirted the wheat fields at a mile distant so as to remain undetected by the settlement, coming in from the west and towards the 'oppidum' using overgrown hedgerows and small copses and plantations of fruit trees for cover. They had reached their destination over an hour ago and the men were resting from their exertions, sipping from flasks and rubbing sore muscles. In order to cover their plain white linen tunics, they had donned their travelling cloaks of grey coarse wool, despite the balmy evening, and had moved like ghosts across the landscape, their lack of armour, helm or shield lending them surprising stealth, their only equipment a bow and quiver and a short sword at their belt.

And here they were, waiting for the moon to reach its apex, when the attack would begin.

It had surprised Decius how much the officers argued over tactics - he had never been privy to staff meetings before. Some of them had been insistent that a night attack was dangerous and stupid, regardless of the bright moonlight and clear sky. Others had argued that Rome was known for its dawn assaults and rigid adherence to certain norms of warfare and that a night assault would give them the edge of surprise.

It was true, of course, but there were so many dangers in the dark.