swore we were a day from the navigable waters of the Rhodanus. I didn’t want to fight. In fact, all I wanted to do was to get home. The charms of travel and exploration had faded; I was beginning to feel old. In fact, I was thirty years old that autumn, and the age of it was in my bones.
I watched the hills, and the steel moved, but it did not disperse. Whoever was up there had enough men to fight my two hundred.
When we were armed, I sent my dozen horsemen to scout. As an aside, Greeks are not much good as scouts. Greek cavalry tend to fight other Greek cavalry — it’s like any other Greek contest — and the losers don’t go back to tell their friends what happened, I can tell you. But Seckla’s people have different notions of scouting, and Seckla led his boys down the valley and across the fields on a long sweep while I got my train organized and pushed my main body of spearmen out in front of it. I left eighty men with the Senones — a fine reserve, and at the same time a good baggage guard. My other hundred pushed forward in a line four men deep, a small, shallow phalanx that nonetheless covered the train behind them. They weren’t closed tight — the ground was far too broken — but they were close enough to support each other, ebbing and flowing around the patches of woods and rocks like a stream of hoplites.
Seckla sprang the trap, if it could be called a trap. He encountered a blocking force at a small bridge and rode away before they could throw javelins at him — then found one of the flank forces moving along some hedges to the right. He rode back to me as we closed on the low stone bridge.
He pointed. ‘Sixty men at the bridge, lightly armed. At least a hundred to the right in the woods. Those horsemen must be somewhere, but there’s no dung on the road and no horse signs to the right.’
Friends, that’s a scouting report. Honest, factual and terse.
I had put Demetrios in charge of the baggage train, and I took command of the phalanx myself, with Gaius and Gian as my deputies. I got them all together, quickly. ‘We’re going right over the bridge,’ I said. ‘We’ll smash them and move across, and then the spearmen will switch from advance guard to rearguard while the train moves as fast as they can. We’ll be out of their reach before their flanks can close on us.’ I pointed at the bad going — the fallow fields, the marsh on our right. ‘Don’t lose your nerve. Just keep going. My only worry is that they have more men in ambush on the other side of the stream. Seckla, that’s your part — as soon as we clear the bridge, ride through and look down the road. Everyone got it?’
Everyone did.
I rode to the head of the phalanx, dismounted and gave my horse to my boy. ‘ Philoi!’ I shouted. ‘You are better men, and you are better armed. See the men by the bridge? We will sweep them aside like a woman sweeps dust off the floor. And then we will go home.’
They roared.
I was glad that they were roaring, because my stomach was somersaulting like a landed fish. My quick count was that the enemy — I had to assume they were the enemy — had three hundred warriors and another fifty cavalry. Odds of three to two sound heroic, but in a small fight, a few men are an enormous advantage. The ground was passable for cavalry; hardly ideal, but fifty Saka archers could have destroyed my whole force. Luckily, Gaulish noblemen don’t use bows. Ares be praised.
I took my place in the ranks and raised my spear. ‘Let’s go!’ I said. And like Miltiades at Marathon, I called: ‘Let’s run!’
We ran at them.
The entire time I held my command meeting and gave my little speech, the men on the right flank had been moving forward cautiously. It is a thing men do — they sort of pretend to cling to cover, even after they have been discovered.
My archers — the same men who performed the role on board ship, but without Doola’s magnificent archery — began to drop shafts among the more confident men on the right. I don’t think they hit a man, but they slowed the right flank of the ambush to a literal belly crawl.
We ran forward to the bridge. The Aedui were in a shield wall, about forty men with javelins, big shields, a few well-armoured men in front. Gaius and I took the centre of our spearmen into them, and our flank men went right down into the stream and up the other side. In spring, I’m sure the stream was full and the bridge was required, but in mid-autumn, all they lost was their close order as they poured over the streambed.
I didn’t have time to watch. I ran forward, and despite the old wound in my leg, I flew. When I reached the Aedui shield wall, it was just me and Gaius.
We had never really fought together.
Perhaps we sought to impress one another. But neither of us would give a step, and neither of us slowed, and so we hurtled straight into their ranks. I got my aspis up and forward onto the spears and I let them slow me, and then I leaped as high as I could and threw my spear — hard — into the front rank, and came down without getting a spear in my foot or knee or head — alive, in other words.
Gaius must have thrown a pace farther out, because a man fell, and for a moment, their ranks rippled I put my shoulder into the back of my aspis as I landed, head down, and my impetus slammed a man back even as I got my kopis out of the scabbard. The long swords the Gauls used only hampered them, this close. I know, because one rang off my helmet immediately. I was in their ranks, moving among them, slashing right and left. I doubt I killed a man, but I’ll wager I hit six in as many heartbeats.
And about then, the rest of my spearmen hit their shield wall, and they folded. They began to break from the front, not the back, and suddenly they were dead men — just like that. Let me say, we outnumbered them four to one, and we had every advantage: terrain, flanks, depth and armour. But their shield wall couldn’t hold two of us.
It is a difference in attitude, eh? As many Persians would have killed us. Hmm… Or perhaps not, eh?
I burst out through the back of their shallow line, and my flankers were climbing the bank and I was almost across the low bridge. To the right, a hundred men or more were coming at the flank of the tin train. It would be close whether they got to it, or it got across the bridge.
To the left, the river guarded my flank. Or so I thought. But when I looked, there were fifty armoured horsemen swimming the river. The same low water that had allowed me to cross the streambed Well, I can be a fool, sometimes.
And my spearmen were running the Gauls down and killing them instead of stopping to rally.
Oh, for a hundred real soldiers! Even real pirates.
Men in victory are as irrational as men in defeat. Only a veteran knows the truth — that it’s not over until it is over.
Seckla hadn’t crossed yet. I held up a hand and stopped him.
‘If there’s an ambush, the spearmen will find it,’ I said. ‘Stop the horsemen. And take the archers.’
Seckla nodded and rode off, and I ran — in armour, damn it — back to the donkey train. They were trotting along the road. Demetrios was at their head.
‘Move!’ I roared. ‘ Move! ’
I looked to the right. The archers lofted another volley, and hit not one but two Aedui warriors, and the rest fell on their faces. My archers turned and followed Seckla, and the Aedui rose to their feet and came forward — slowly at first, and then with more spirit.
I had been far too confident.
Panicked men do not make good animal-handlers. Panicked men lead to panicked animals, and panicked animals run. In all directions.
In a matter of heartbeats, an easy victory had become a disaster. My train didn’t cross the bridge. It ran off, away from the charging Aedui and towards the river. A donkey with an eighty-pound ingot of tin doesn’t run all that well, but it will run as fast as it can.
The horsemen were almost across. The archers were starting to engage them. The range was close, and the archers had time and felt safe, at least for the moment.
Horses and men began to die.
Behind me, the Aedui from the bridge were dying. But my precious spearmen had run too far, all but Alexandros’s marines and maybe a dozen others.
I could have screamed in my frustration. Even Gaius had run off after the Aedui. Gwan — I could see his Gaulish gear — was beside him, halfway down the valley.
On the other hand, when the animals broke for the river, the eighty men in reserve ceased to matter as
