It was like a landslide in a horseshoe shape.
Correus listened carefully to the calls. He could hear the Roman centurions putting out their orders, followed by the whistles and the dip and swipe of the standards to relay the commands to any who hadn’t heard. He was surprised not to hear the Romans order the retreat, though it bothered him not at all, as the two thousand-strong reserve forces emerged from the woodland behind the Romans and sealed them in.
He heard various commands he recognised and even as he picked his way towards the fight saw them being carried out by the centuries of men.
Contra-equitas!
Centuries were forming themselves into a specialised form of the ‘tortoise’ formation that was designed to counter cavalry, the entire unit presenting a flat face of shields at two angles, bristling with sharp javelins.
Orbis!
Other centuries of men combined to present a circle some four bodies deep, outward facing and revealing no point of danger to the enemy.
All very good. It would be of no use, of course. They were trapped, and the numbers were simply too uneven. For all their fancy manoeuvres, the Romans would die where they now stood.
At last his horse reached the flat ground of the valley bottom, and Correus joined his warriors in charging the Romans, his bodyguard staying as close to him as they could. The Bellovaci king laughed at the simplicity of it. When it came to this point battle was a joy, for there was nothing to worry about, barring his personal safety. The conclusion was already set. The Romans had lost the moment they entered the valley.
Correus urged his horse forward and made for the large orbis formation, hefting his spear. With a flourish and the practised eye of a seasoned warrior, he selected one of the legionaries whose shield was not quite high enough, and cast the spear, immediately thereafter drawing his long blade. The missile caught the legionary between shoulder and collar bone and threw him back into the formation, but the Romans were quick. Rather that the blow catching the Romans by surprise and leaving an opening in the circle, the man was hauled backwards out of the way and another man was instantly in his place. Correus had fought the Romans more than once, but this was some of the most efficient manoeuvring he had ever seen.
He frowned as the entire orbis, which had been fighting now for perhaps a hundred heartbeats, made one heavy thrust and swipe that forced their enemies to step back and, in the intervening moments before Correus’ men could recover and strike, the entire front line had been replaced by the second. He watched in fascination as the men who had tired at the front gradually filtered to the safest position at the centre where they could rest while their compatriots each moved a line forward.
He couldn’t rely on wearing them out, then…
Still, the Romans were dying. Slowly, and with a higher casualty rate among the Bellovaci than he would prefer, but at least they were dying, and soon there would not be enough to form any kind of defence. Then, the remaining exhausted legionaries would fight their own last, desperate, individual duels until swamped by Correus’ men.
The king’s attention was caught by a booing sound, and he looked up at the reserves, who were not engaging, merely preventing any hope of escape. What were they doing putting out calls? There was no call necessary now until he decided to rein in his men and send them back to the camp.
He frowned, looking for the errant carnyx or horn player, but he couldn’t spot him, for the reserves appeared to be in turmoil. What was going on?
Then, like a cracked dam that has reached its point of structural failure, the reserves broke, flowing from the treeline and into the open ground. Correus cursed Bitucos and Helicon for their unnecessary eagerness. Their involvement was not necessary – they should be remaining in position. The force Correus commanded alone would finish the Romans, but it was important that none escaped.
He took an idle swing at a Roman who happened to be close enough, though his attention was really on the reserve forces. He waved to his carnyx player and shouted to be heard over the din of battle. ‘Go tell Bitucos and Helicon that they’re…’
His voice tailed off as the reserves flooded the valley, flowing like the burst dam around and past the pockets of action. And in that same moment, his eyes caught movement beyond them, and he understood with dreadful clarity.
Four columns had begun to emerge from the trees. They were not moving in shield walls, but in what looked like some kind of parade formation. And he knew why. Because at the front of the columns came the standard bearers, the eagle bearers and the musicians, who, now that they had cleared the woods, burst into a deafening triumphant melody. That sight alone would be enough to make a brave man run, but the fact was that each of the four columns was led by an eagle, backed by a man carrying a flag with the legion’s number.
Four legions!
Suddenly the eight thousand men he had with him seemed a rather feeble proposition, in the face of probably twenty thousand legionaries. And where Caesar’s legions went so went their auxiliary slingers and archers, and – he prayed to Taranis it was not the case, though without any real hope of efficacy – the Remi and other Gallic horse, and even the Germans.
Damn the proconsul. Correus had sprung a trap on the Romans only to find his entire ambush at the centre of their own trap. Staying would mean death for all of them, and if the best of the Bellovaci, and their king, died, then the rest of the force up at the camp would collapse in terror.
‘Signal the retreat,’ he shouted at the musician, but when the man put the carnyx to his lips, he paused, and no sound emerged.
‘Sound the call!’ he repeated with urgency. The Roman orbis had now exploded and reformed into a square which was beginning to push outwards, taking the fight back to the Bellovaci. They had fresh heart, knowing that their fellows were here. Correus was momentarily distracted as he was forced to defend himself against a giant of a man. As he put the Roman down with some difficulty, he walked his horse a little further from the fray and over to the musician. Reaching out, he grabbed the man by the tunic and almost pulled him from his saddle.
‘Sound… the… retreat!’
But the man was still silent, staring. Correus turned to look at whatever it was that had captured the man’s attention and felt his blood chill.
All around the valley, the treeline had burst into life, more Romans appearing in a complete circle, surrounding the Bellovaci. Damn the proconsul – he had split his legions and sent some ahead to surround them. But his keen eyes picked out the eagle and the flag near the defile that led to the camp. No. A
fifth
legion. His heart in his mouth, and already knowing what he would see, he raked the ridge around the valley with his gaze until he found the other two eagles with their flags and standards. The Roman general Trebonius had arrived with his three legions. Now, Correus’ eight thousand faced somewhere in the region of forty thousand Romans.
Hope deserted him.
His men were running for the woods, but it was a futile, panicked move. Wherever they fled, there were more Romans waiting for them. Only one small group was free and out of danger, and that very fact gnawed at Correus more even than this unmitigated disaster.
The civilians who had initially fled to the defile had managed to run, and the Romans seemed to be making no effort to pursue them. Sharp of the Roman commander, for those women, children and old men would even now be carrying morale-destroying word of this catastrophe to the camp and the rest of the army.
The revolt of the Bellovaci had failed.
He hoped that when his people back in the camp realised all was lost, they might tear open Commius of the Atrebates and leave his flayed corpse hanging from a tree for the crows. It ate at him that his best men would die here for his error in judgement, but what really burned into his soul was the fact that he would die in this valley without getting a chance to personally gut the silver-tongued Atrebate for what he had done.
‘Come, my king.’
He turned and frowned at his bodyguard. ‘What?’
‘We must get you away from this place.’
‘There is no escape,’ he replied in the hollow voice of a defeated man.
‘Your guards can force a path through the enemy, my king.’
‘No they cannot. Even around the valley top, they will be forty lines deep. No. We fight here, and we die here.’
The man continued to plead, but Correus snarled defiance and turned, seeking out the most important man on the field. His eyes fell on a man with a transverse crest, marking him as a centurion. As the combatants parted for a moment, he also saw the man’s harness full of medals and the torcs and corona hanging from it. A veteran, heavily decorated. A worthy opponent.
He marked the man with a gesture of his sword and started to move towards him, though the Roman had not returned the sign that had been indicative of the desire for a personal duel of heroes. Shrugging as he closed on the man, a legionary swung up at him as he passed, and Correus swept his own blade down, turning the gladius aside and taking the tips from all four knuckles. The man screamed and dropped the sword, staring down at his hand, and Correus took the opportunity of the lowered face to bring his sword down heavily, hacking into the flesh and bone at the back of the man’s neck. He felt the spine go and the soldier fell away, curiously at one and the same time limp, yet twitching.
Another legionary came to stop him, but his bodyguard was there and pushed the man out of the way, killing him on the third stroke. Correus once more set his gaze upon the centurion, and suddenly his world exploded into a blurred kaleidoscope. It took a moment after the blow to his head to realise that someone had killed his horse and that he was now on the ground, his head swimming from contact with the hard turf. Desperately he realised he was surrounded by Romans, and none of them were the centurion. One of his bodyguard fought off a legionary, pushing him back into the crowd, and then reached down to help him up.
Correus gripped the man’s free hand, but then the guard’s fingers stiffened and the pointed tip of a gladius emerged through the side of his neck, showering the king in a torrent of his man’s blood. Desperately, he wiped the worst away, rolling to one side so that the body fell not on him, but on open grass.
Trying to recover his wits, he pulled himself painfully upright, realising only as he saw the centurion’s crest between two other soldiers that his sword had disappeared somewhere in the fall. Angry beyond reason, he reached down to his belt and drew his fighting knife – a weapon of last resort for a true warrior.
‘Come for me, Roman!’ he bellowed in thickly-accented Latin.
The centurion actually turned and noticed him, but it was an unseen legionary who answered.
‘Gladly, Gaul,’ came a voice from off to his left and he felt a horrific pain in his side as a pointed blade punctured his mail shirt end on, driving deep into muscle and then organs.
Hissing, more in shock at the lack of honour in the man than from the pain, he turned. The legionary had already accounted him dead, turning to his friend and laughing at his little moment of humour.
Correus lashed out and caught him in the cheek, driving his knife in, shattering teeth and splintering jaw, slicing through the tongue with its bland jokes. The soldier screamed, though the wound muffled the noise. Correus, king of the Bellovaci, was dead, and he knew it. Apart from the mortal wound in his side, he felt two more blows, one of which ruined his leg and the other slid between his ribs. But none of that stopped him taking out his fury on the laughing legionary.
‘Not so… funny… now…’
By the time the fifth wound he took severed Correus spinal cord and he flopped useless onto the ground, his blood and intestines pouring out onto the grass, he knew he had stabbed the legionary many dozens of times. The man was, miraculously, still alive, for he was shrieking in horror at his ruined body, each limb shredded and his torso full of rents and holes.
Correus felt the darkness closing on his senses and with it came an odd feeling of peace. The din of battle seemed to fade away and suddenly the centurion’s crest was in front of him, upside down as the man leaned over him.
‘Brave. Stupid, but brave.’ The Roman officer leaned down, gently pulled open the king’s mouth and pushed a small silver coin under his tongue before driving his own blade in deep and speeding up the advance of the blessed darkness.
* * * * *
Varus sat astride his mount, shivering in the cold of the morning, and glanced across at Brutus, who looked equally uncomfortable. Trebonius rode slightly ahead of them alongside Caesar in the place of honour for a victorious commander. Behind them marched the legions – all seven in good array and better spirits, their eagles leading the way. It was an impressive column. One of the largest displays of Roman forces Varus had seen in all his years in Gaul. Seven legions.
And ahead, across the narrow river which ran into that same defile that emerged some miles distant at the baggage valley that now served as a mass grave for eight thousand Bellovaci, stood the camp of the enemy.
And its gate was open.
‘Sound the horns,’ Caesar commanded. ‘Let’s see what happens.’
The cornicen blew their instruments, issuing the standard call for parley or recognition. As they fell silent again, there was a long pause. Varus watched intently as occasional figures appeared in the gateway up the slope. It was no oppidum or city, but a simple temporary camp atop a hill, surrounded by a hastily erected fence, and the gate was simply an area where the fence had been removed.