Priscus swallowed his mouthful and cleared his throat. “I talked to Rufus about it. I gather the Morini were never truly under Caesar’s thumb by the end of last year. To expect them to sit by and let us use their main settlements as a campaign base was maybe a little short-sighted.” He leaned closer. “Personally, I think they were expecting you to come back from campaign rich and loaded down with slaves. I think it was an ill-conceived and opportunistic attempt to essentially rob the victors of their spoils. It’s all gone wrong for them though, as only two ships made it back to harbour. I expect they’ve looted your ships and are still hungry for more.”
“I can only assume that Sabinus is doing his job well, though” Fronto countered. “I don’t know how many there are in the town, but I wouldn’t estimate more than six thousand. Rufus reckoned there were probably three times that number when the Ninth were first attacked. If it weren’t for Sabinus and Cotta out there standing on various necks, the number besieging us here would be growing, not shrinking.”
“There are more. They’re just hidden in the woods in a cordon, keeping us trapped here. We tried sallying out to get provisions after the first assault and it was a bloody massacre. Lost three centuries of the Ninth and they never even reached the tree line. Don’t underestimate them, Marcus. They reduced the Ninth by about a third of their manpower and sealed them up in this fort in a matter of hours.”
Fronto turned to his friend. “They’re not going to keep me pinned here until Hades reaches out for me. I’ve a long-standing arrangement with the bookmakers at Rome and Puteoli; I’ve half a cellar of good quality wine; and I’ve a very attractive, if controlling, young lady waiting for me to make her officially betrothed.”
“Then you’d best tell them that” Priscus said quietly, casting aside his bread uneaten and pointing over the palisade. Fronto didn’t need to look. He could hear the roar.
“Geminius? Time to use those new pila.”
The centurion nodded and turned to the men lined up along the wooden wall, tapping his vine stick on his greaves impatiently.
“Pilum at the ready. Mark your man and check the soldier on each side to make sure you’ve not doubled up.”
Priscus and Fronto drew their blades and strode over to the wall. “You staying for the show?” Fronto asked, reaching down and collecting the shield leaning against it, settling it into place.
“Why not? I was getting sick of riding my desk into battle. Got a spare shield?”
Fronto nodded to a stack of five slightly damaged spares and, as Priscus collected one and gripped it ready, he crossed to the wall and looked over. The slope from this corner of the fort — the northeast — descended quite gently through a large apple orchard. Beyond the ditches, the ramparts of the town sloped away to the north on his left, the settlement itself only visible beyond as a jumble of roofs interspersed with trees. The view here was excellent; despite the apple trees that obscured the slope, the fields beyond opened up and were clear and visible for at least two miles, where they met the edge of the forest.
What was of more urgent interest, however, were the scattered forms of the Morini rebels scrabbling up the slope beneath the trees.
“They look a touch desperate?” Priscus noted.
“I thought that” Fronto replied with a frown. “They’re coming up dangerously fast and not at all carefully.”
“Release” bellowed Geminius. The legionaries along the wall, each having selected an approaching Gaul, cast their pilum with an expert arm, the twenty four missiles arcing out over the palisade and descending into the trees. Fronto watched with a sense of pride in his legion as the javelins punched into torsos, heads and limbs, tearing through them and inflicting horrible injuries, often killing outright. In several cases the plummeting, screaming bodies of the warriors knocked their fellows from their feet and brought them down in a jumble, coming to rest against tree trunks. Others were pinned to trees or the ground, transfixed in agony. One particularly brave warrior, affixed to a tree with a pilum through his middle, was hauling himself painfully forward off the weapon, leaving a trail of gore along its length.
“Get ready!” the centurion shouted. The legionaries who had cast the pila were already drawing their swords and stepping forward to protect the wall. Moments later, the first of the Morini reached the outer ditch, which had been rendered somewhat ineffective now by the large quantities of brush and rubbish that had been tipped into it over the past few days to grant access to the walls. Leaping forward, the warriors pushed across the unstable and difficult infill. The second, inner, ditch was now of little more use then the first. Originally filled with pointed stakes to maim those crossing it, the lowest portion was now blocked with scattered bodies that obscured the stakes and lowered the gradient enough that the warriors hardly slowed to pass it.
And suddenly battle was joined. The majority of the pila, arrows and other missiles had been used up over the first day of attacks and the scorpions had fallen silent since then. The workshops had slowed their production — their manpower being reassigned to help hold the walls — and were largely given over now to the repair of mail, helmets and shields, rather than the production of helpful missiles.
Fronto was surprised not only at the desperate speed and ferocity of the attack, but also at their numbers. Over the past half day, each push had been several hours apart, carefully planned and often executed at a new position on the walls; usually two or three places at once. Moreover, the attacking forces had clearly been rotated each time, allowing many of the tribe to rest while the freshest warriors took their turn reducing the defending garrison. This attack was different: the mass of men storming up from the orchard, combined with the shouts of alarm from all around the fort, suggested that the Morini were committing every last man to this assault.
Two warriors, each with arm rings of bronze and mail shirts denoting their high status, rushed at Fronto’s position, charging up the slope of the inner ditch and continuing at speed to the bank of the rampart and the palisade. One had a long spear with a wicked blade, which he thrust up at Fronto from the flat between the rampart and the ditch, forcing the legate to raise his shield and knock the point aside; the spear clearly had enough reach to cause him trouble above the wooden palisade. The second warrior had thrown himself at the timber and managed to hook an arm over the top, his other hand bringing the long sword slowly up to a position where he could strike. Fronto, continually batting away the jabbing, probing spear, looked across quickly at Priscus, but the camp prefect was fighting his own spear-battle.
Just as the legate was trying to decide how best to deal with the two men, a third tribesman — a young man with no armour and a muddy face — leapt up from the ditch and threw a rope with a looped end with heart-stopping accuracy. The loop fell around the point of one of the wall timbers and slid downwards, tightening as it went.
He hardly had time to register the move, though, as the spear was there again, lunging for his face. Glancing across, he could see the second noble warrior almost pulled up to his chest, ready to throw himself over the defences and come at them from inside. One of Rufus’ reserve legionaries appeared as if from nowhere and ran at the man, smashing his shield boss into the climbing Morini noble and sending him back over the parapet with a shout of pain and alarm.
“Good man!” Fronto barked as he finally noticed an opening in the spear-man’s attack. The warrior continually jabbed in a three-move sequence, after which he drew back for a second, gaining position to begin once more. Smashing the heavy shield around and panting with the exertion, Fronto knocked the point aside; and again, and again. As the man took a single step back, the spear waggling in an ungainly manner, Fronto swung sword and shield towards one another, the shield sideways and rim-out. The two edges connected on the spear about two feet below the head and smashed through the ash shaft, neatly trimming off the dangerous part.