Varus faltered for a moment as he turned.
‘Perhaps you would be better taking the Germans with you inside, general?’ he prompted, trying not to sound hopeful.
‘No. You take them. They have proved to be a vital force against the Gauls repeatedly this year, time and again. You will need the fear and chaos they bring with them if you are to break this.’
Varus nodded and saluted.
‘Go then, commander. You know what you must do.’
Caesar and Antonius watched the eager cavalry commander run off towards his signifers, who were standing in a knot telling stories, and then turned to one another. ‘Can we do it?’ the general breathed quietly to his friend, so that no others nearby might overhear. Antonius broke into a quirky half-smile. ‘We can’t crush them — we don’t have the numbers. But they have to be as spent as our own men, in both strength and morale. If we break today, the siege is over. But if they break, they will lose. It’s that simple. We just have to make them yield before our own men collapse.’
The general raised an eyebrow. ‘Nowhere in that oratory did I hear a yes.’
‘Nor did you hear a no, Gaius. Come on. We have troops to raise.’
* * * * *
Fronto ducked a sweeping blow and clutched his wounded forearm, a deep cut still pouring out blood where his shield had been brutally hacked from his arm. One of the capsarii had tried to drag him back from the fight to bind it twice but Fronto had pushed the man away, suggesting with some rather colourful language that the medic might be more useful drawing a sword and killing a few Gauls.
Of his singulares, only Masgava and Aurelius remained at the barricade, which had now been reinforced and bulked up on four separate occasions and was still weakening with every axe blow from the far side. The rest of his bodyguard were back at the makeshift hospital, sporting a variety of wounds, though none of them, miraculously, life threatening. It seemed they had listened to his order to stay alive, after all.
What was even more miraculous was that the makeshift redoubt was holding at all. The light was beginning to dim, which meant that the battle here had been raging for half a day without reprieve. The gates had held for a matter of mere moments, but this wall of carts, crates and sacks had kept many thousands of screaming rebels at bay for — what, six hours? Seven, perhaps.
The regular feeds of reinforcements had been critical to that, mind. Without those men sent by Labienus, Brutus and Caesar, the gate would have fallen long ago. To his left, just past Aurelius, who was barely recognisable beneath a sheet of blood, stood an optio who had arrived with his centurion under Labienus’ command hours ago. Less than an hour after that he had unfastened his crest ties, making use of the new, almost Gallic-style helmet he wore with the multiple crest fasteners to swivel the red horsehair arc through ninety degrees, taking on the role of the centurion who now lay a dozen paces behind them among the piles of honoured dead. Fronto couldn’t remember what legion the young man was from but he fought like a lion, with the tenacity and inventiveness of a gladiator and, had he not been planning to retire after this battle, Fronto would have been seeking the man’s transfer into the Tenth.
A spear lanced out towards him, clipping the ravaged and torn timber frame of the cart behind which Fronto stood, and he knocked it aside with his wounded arm, hissing at the pain that rippled through it as he drove his gladius into the Gaul’s throat, twisted and withdrew, watching the body fall away only to be replaced immediately by another.
A call went up away across the camp, and it was only on the third repeat that Fronto paused, having dispatched another enemy, and frowned.
‘Shit. That call!’
The centurion nodded, struggling with a Gaul and finally forcing him back. ‘Sounds like they’ve breached the north rampart, sir.’
Fronto spared a heartbeat to glance in that direction, but from this angle he could see nothing, the ordered rows of tents filling the intervening space. The call had been clear enough. A rally to repulse meant that the Gauls had managed to cross the rampart somewhere. But why had Labienus not reacted. The senior officer had quite clearly told Fronto that the Bacchanalia chant would be blown in case of a serious breach and the army would form up for a last sally. Had the breach not been serious enough to warrant it? Or had something happened to Labienus? Fronto ground his teeth. It was all well and good holding this position, but he had to know what was going on elsewhere. Reaching a decision, he turned to the recently-promoted centurion.
‘Can you hold here without me and these two?’
The look that passed across the centurion’s face was one of uncertainty, which Fronto could quite understand and sympathise with, but it was quickly swept aside and replaced by grim acceptance.
‘We’ll hold this ‘til even Minerva’s bones are dust, sir.’
Fronto smiled. ‘Good man. Fortuna be with you.’
‘And with you, legate.’ The centurion had no chance for further exchange, a Gaul attempting to clamber over the top of the barricade requiring all his attention. Fronto stepped back from the barricade, gesturing for Masgava and Aurelius to join him. The beleaguered soldiers at the redoubt immediately shuffled up to close the gap, never letting up in their staunch defence as they did so.
The three men sheathed their swords and stepped back inside the camp to where their horses were tethered, along with those belonging to the wounded singulares. As soon as he left the barricade, the capsarius caught him again and, even as Fronto shouted at the man, he slapped a vinegar-soaked sponge into the open cut on the forearm, causing Fronto to let forth a sharp bellow and a series of unpleasant expletives. The capsarius ignored the legate as he howled and his good hand went to the dagger at his belt, wrapping a bandage around the wound and binding it tight, tying it off at the end with professional, practiced ease. Fronto threw him a murderous look, the dagger half-drawn before he snicked it back into its sheath. The medic smiled. ‘At least you won’t bleed out, legate.’
‘You might, if you try that again.’
But the capsarius was already running off to help another man who’d fallen back from the barricade, and Fronto joined his singulares at the steeds, hurriedly untying the reins and then hauling himself into the saddle, grunting at the pain in his arm, but reluctantly acknowledging the good work of the medic.
‘Where are we bound?’ Masgava asked.
‘North wall. There’s been a breach and Labienus hasn’t reacted. I want to know what’s going on.’
The three men heeled their horses and rode off through the chaos of wounded men and supply dumps, between the lines of tents and towards the site of the main battle. Fronto hoped fervently that the young centurion he’d just left could hold that gate. It would be little use recovering the north rampart if the southeast gate was overrun. The camp was under too much pressure.
Precious moments passed as the three men passed the leather tents and burst out into the open area at the north end of the camp. The sight that greeted Fronto was heart-stopping.
The nearest rows of tents to the wall had been cleared out of the way by enterprising wounded officers and their stumbling, bleeding men, and a low barricade of junk had been hastily raised, half a dozen scorpions from the reserve supplies set up along the line, manned and stocked with ammunition. Men who were clearly novices at the art held the spare bows that had been dug out from somewhere and their arrows protruded from the junk wall before them ready to be nocked and loosed.
This was the last line. The desperate one. Manned by the sick and the injured and making use of whatever could be found, for the wounded had seen the rampart give four times now and had decided they had to do something.
The north wall itself was no longer visible. Even the towers had suffered, every third or fourth one having been brought down somehow. Fronto had expected to see beleaguered legionaries atop the parapet, fighting off an external sea of Gauls, as at the southeast. But the defensive line here was now an arbitrary thing, much of the fighting going on inside the camp. Every now and then a Gaul would break free of the struggle, already inside the camp’s confines, and run for the tent lines. When that happened, the wounded let fly with whatever they had, putting the incursions down. But the number of Gauls inside the camp was growing even as Fronto watched, and the ever-changing line of defence was gradually moving back towards the ‘wounded wall’. The camp was a dozen heartbeats from lost.