Atenos sighed and nodded. ‘Apart from some dressing, it can be done, sir. There will be a couple of places near the top that might not be adequately compacted yet, but the engineers tell me that such things can be circumvented with the use of heavy planks. With enough manpower we’ll do it, sir.’
‘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.’
Another 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.