‘There! Did you see that?’ He pointed at the enemy with his dagger.
The centurion shook his head. ‘No, sir. What?’
‘The Treveri. They’re splitting up.’
A moment’s silence, and then the centurion cleared his throat. ‘I see it, sir. Three groups separating off from the main force. A new tactic you think, sir?’
Labienus gripped his blade tight. ‘I hope not. If it is, we could be in trouble. Either they’re moving off to get into position around the other sides or…’
He paused and a grin spread across his face.
‘No. No new tactics or attack. They’re leaving.’
‘The Treveri, sir?’
‘Not yet; not as a tribe at least. But some of them are. Look. They’re following noblemen and a druid. They’re leaving the field.’ He laughed out loud as he managed to locate the figure of Indutiomarus on a horse near the back of the army. The rebel leader was yelling and gesticulating angrily at the departing sections of his force.
‘Excellent. Everything is falling into place. Prepare for another assault, centurion. This will be a brutal one, too. That lunatic is going to throw everything he can at us now, because he knows as well as I do that unless he makes significant in-roads in the next hour, that will not be the last time he watches whole chunks of his army depart. Pass the word round the walls. Hold the defences, but don’t do anything stupid. No heroics. I just want the camp secure, not a bloodbath.’
‘Sir?’
‘I have something else in mind.’ Labienus grinned as he moved to the stairs down into the camp. Spotting one of the legionaries on courier duty awaiting orders, he gestured the man over.
‘Go find Quadratus at the stables and tell him to have every trooper equipped and in the saddle in the next half hour and every native levy on horseback and armed. Their time is about to come.’
With any luck he would be able to end this entire uprising with minimal carnage, remove the ongoing threat and bring the Treveri back onto Rome’s side. There were days when Mars clearly looked down favourably upon him, and today seemed to be one of those days. Indutiomarus had better hope his Gods were watching over him too.
Chapter Three
Gaius Volusenus Quadratus waited impatiently for the gates, watching the twin leaves open under the straining arms of the legionaries. Gathered behind him at the southern entrance to the fort, a force of cavalry — some two hundred local auxilia and thirty two regulars — champed at the bit ready to move. Still, even with the open gate before them, he held his hand high, waiting to give the signal.
His arm ached.
Labienus had waited until the last moment to reveal his plans, as was his command style, Quadratus knew. Really, with the many and varied local tribal auxiliaries, it was a safe and sensible thing to do, but really he could have at least dropped an advance warning to a fellow senior Roman officer.
The waiting seemed interminable, but finally he heard the low honk of a horn — three short and relatively subdued blasts designed to be heard across the camp, but not to carry to the enemy force.
The Treveri army had been breaking up now for more than an hour, separate groups of nobles taking away their people, sick of the siege and disenchanted with Indutiomarus’ failure to provide them with victory and loot. The Gallic chieftain had been ranting and railing from the back of his horse, waving his sword at the departing groups and threatening them, but still they had gone.
Now more than half the Treveri themselves had left the scene, and between desertions and death, perhaps half of the mercenary force had gone too. The odds were more or less in parity with the defenders and a pitched battle would have almost guaranteed victory, but still Labienus had held back his forces.
Quadratus could understand why, of course. In a full scale battle, the rebel chief could launch his army at the Romans and sit safely protected behind them. Hundreds or thousands of Romans would die, as would even more thousands of Treveri, in a bloodbath on a monumental scale. Labienus had avowed time and again his desire to see this corner of the world settled without heavy Roman losses, but also without Gallic genocide, given that the Treveri were not as committed to the attack as their leader would have them. To attain victory without such a death toll would mean finding a way to take down Indutiomarus without having to engage his army in bulk.
And that was where the cavalry came in.
At the east gate, the rest of the mounted contingent had gathered under the command — despite Quadratus’ misgivings — of a native, a prince of the Mediomatrici who had been utterly incensed by the actions of the Treveri leader and had been urging Labienus to let him and his men off the leash ever since the attack had begun. It was not that Quadratus thought the man a coward or a traitor. There was no question of him refusing to attack, but the problem was something rather opposite. Given his spiteful invectives against the Treveri and their bandit allies there was every possibility that the angry noble would forget his orders in the thirst for blood and simply launch into the nearest enemy he found. And that would put Quadratus’ considerably smaller force in great danger.
But it was all moot now. The anvil was in position and the hammer was falling.
Those three short blasts had indicated to Quadratus that prince Messirios of the Mediomatrici and his force had fully committed and the east gate was now closed. If the blood-crazed lunatic Gaul was still clinging to both sanity and his orders, he would now be racing in a wide arc, circumventing the bulk of the enemy force and threatening their flank enough to draw out the reserve that sat behind — the Treveri noble cavalry, the most dangerous and effective fighting group on the field. With any luck, even now Indutiomarus was spotting the danger and sending the cavalry — one of his few remaining loyal units — off to the east to meet the Roman auxiliary force. And with luck Messirios had not simply charged his cavalry at the murderers and thieves in the front lines. If he had, Quadratus was in for a short and brutal trip, as he came across the entire Treveri mounted contingent.
He shook his head irritably. No point in brooding on the possibilities. The attack had to go ahead regardless. He would just have to pray to Mars and Minerva that the prince stuck to the plan.
His hand dropped and the cavalry began to move out through the south gate at his signal.
The enemy had long-since abandoned the siege of the southern and western sides of the camp, partially because of the diminishing numbers of their force they could rely upon, but also because they knew that the swift, dangerous Mosella river — which formed a wide horseshoe at this point — curved around those sides and effectively prevented the Romans from fleeing that way in force. Indeed, their force was small and unimpressive even to the east, theoretically allowing the rest of the cavalry to burst through them and complete their task, depending upon the reliability of that Gaulish prince.
This concentration of enemy forces around the north and east left an area to the south devoid of enemy warriors, giving Quadratus the golden opportunity to leave the camp unnoticed while all Treveri attention would be on Messirios’ attack.
In line with the series of orders Quadratus had issued before the gates opened, the small but effective force of veteran cavalrymen raced across the causeway that spanned the camp’s double defensive ditch, and down the gentle slope which led to the Mosella river, the thunder of hooves lost to enemy ears amid the tumult of the attack by Messirios, and sight of them hidden by the slope.
Quadratus reined in close to the rushing torrent of ice cold water brought several hundred miles from the Vosego mountains to the south. To be caught against that river by a superior force would be the end — the main reason for the lack of enemies in this arc. Nobody would be able to escape across it without the aid of a bridge or a ford, and the only local ford was the one behind the Treveri, across which they had come when they first arrived.