‘Good.’ The tribune peered up at the slope’s crest, where the arrows were now coming more sporadically once again. Legionaries were hobbling back down the slope and a few were being dragged on makeshift pallets. According to the engineers’ odd design, the ramp smoothed the more vertiginous sections of the slope, providing a steady ascent for the tower, but where it approached the spring, the ramp had been continued in the form of a wide mound in an arc around the spring, hiding it from the oppidum. The tribune smiled a condescending smile. ‘Well done, centurion. Just a little more now, eh, and we’ll have the damnable rebels on crosses, eh?’
Atenos nodded politely, catching Decumius rolling his eyes behind the tribune and biting down on a chuckle.
‘Good, good.’ Repeated the officer, one of the Fifth’s junior tribunes, he thought. A man who had been in Gaul for all of four months and already thought he knew everything. A politician. The word made Atenos want to spit. ‘Very well. Have your men take the wicker shields and form up defensively at the spring while those from the Fifth lay the planks you need on the ramp. The tower and the army will be along shortly to relieve you.’
Again Atenos saluted and waited for a count of ten until the officer was jogging back down the slope out of earshot.
‘Boys in men’s jobs.’
The other centurion laughed. ‘I’ll give you ten sesterces if we see him again until it’s all over and the arrows have stopped flying.’
‘Be kind, Decumius. He’s probably still adjusting to wearing a man’s toga.’
A
nother chuckle.
‘It’s all very clever,’ Decumius sighed, ‘and we’ll stop the bastards getting to the spring for a while, but every man in the army – barring chinless down there, anyway – knows we can’t hold it for more than a couple of days at most. Hours, probably.’
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.
The tower rumbled on and arrows began to lance out from the ramparts. At first they fell far short of the approaching monstrosity but as the tower approached the painted stone that marked the Romans’ estimate of arrow range, those men at the top of the ramp moved into position, the huge wicker shields raised to block as many arrows as possible.
Arrow range was confirmed as a shaft thudded into the tower and the one strike sparked a mass of activity. In a dozen places along the wall, braziers were brought up and fire arrows were launched. As yet most still fell short, one or two hitting the wicker shields, where the legionaries hurriedly pushed the points back out with boots or wrapped fists to prevent the shields igniting. Then the range closed. The tower reached the top of the ramp and was turned, trundling parallel to the wall and into position atop that huge earth mound that arced around the spring. Fire arrows were now thudding into the hides covering the tower with every heartbeat, and men at the wicker screen were falling with almost mechanical timing. At the last moment, two centuries of men hauled on new ropes attached to the back of the tower, preventing it tipping as it reached the end of the log rollers and thudded into the earth and stone base. For a moment it teetered and Atenos waited, his heart skipping a beat, for the huge edifice to simply topple over into the spring. But after a few tense heartbeats it steadied and a cheer went up. The tower was in position, flat to the top of the big mound. It was still some twenty feet below the level of Uxellodunon’s walls, but a good archer atop it might pick off the defenders on the walls.
The advance force with the wicker shields was down to about twenty men now and they were rapidly diminishing. An enterprising centurion from the Fifth sent his men across to bolster the screen, which, along with the vineae being brought up, sheltered the arriving legionaries from the worst of the arrow storm.
There was a distant rumble of thunder and Atenos looked up in time to be struck in the eye by a fat droplet of water. A horn blast from a discordant carnyx atop the oppidum’s wall announced the general attack and what had been a fairly disorganised shower of missiles suddenly bloomed into a hail of death showering down from Uxellodunon onto the Roman attackers. Even with the tower, the mound, the vineae and the wicker shields, everywhere Atenos looked men were falling to the ground, screaming.
It had begun.
Taking a deep breath, the primus pilus turned to Decumius. ‘Shall we make their acquaintance?’
* * * * *
Atenos ducked into the tower and looked up the interior stairs. The various platforms were filled with men sheltering from the incessant arrow storm and he could not see, but could clearly hear, the Cretan archers at the top bellowing imprecations in both Greek and Latin and calling on the gods of both peoples as they released their deadly missiles at the wall. They were good. Atenos had to admit that they were among the best archers he’d seen. Yet still only one arrow in four struck home, between the difficult angle of attack and the height difference, the solid parapet behind which the enemy were well protected and the continual oncoming missiles.
As he watched with satisfaction, he spotted the men he’d detailed hoisting buckets of water up from the spring and using it to douse the seemingly endless fire arrows the enemy loosed into the tower. There were so many wet, half-charred arrows jutting from the timbers and hides now that an enterprising man could fairly easily climb the outside of the tower.
There was a sudden scream that cut through the general din and a blur flashed past, quickly followed by a wet crunch as the man who had fallen from the top struck the ground outside. Though the fire was doing little to dent the Roman’s position, the arrows were. A single glance at the piles of bodies pulled back from the action or the continual line of men being carried or dragged back out of arrow range for the capsarii to treat told a horrible tale of declining numbers.