"Hurry up! I've been waiting here for days!"
"Calm yourself. Barking at them won't make the rafts move any faster."
On the banks of the Rhodanus, the Helvetian migrants were waiting their turn to cross the river.
Yet ferrying hundreds of thousands of people across a rushing Alpine river was a logistical nightmare.
The migrants traveled with all their worldly possessions, grain, livestock, and heavy wagons, which had to be painstakingly hoisted onto the rafts one by one.
To compound the delay, their armed warriors had crossed first to engage the Roman legions.
"By the gods, when is it our turn?!"
The inevitable bottleneck left tens of thousands of anxious migrants stranded on the northern bank.
Still, they felt perfectly safe. After all, the entire Roman army was pinned down in Geneva under heavy siege.
Or so they thought.
Then Metellus and his Roman cavalry suddenly tore out of the tree line.
"Romans!"
"Roman cavalry?! How did they get behind us?!"
"Run for your lives!"
As the Helvetian migrants scattered in sheer terror, Metellus drew his spatha and signaled the advance.
"Charge!"
The cavalry squadron Metellus led consisted of young patricians who had ridden under his banner during the Troy Games back in Rome.
Once bitter rivals who had competed against Lucius Caesar, they now rode shoulder to shoulder under Lucius's command.
"Do not waste time chasing down the cowards! Ignore the unarmed civilians!" Metellus bellowed over the thundering hooves.
Seeing the armored riders bear down on them, the Helvetii shrieked, abandoning their loaded wagons to flee in all directions.
The Romans didn't bother chasing them. Instead, they seized whatever choice provisions they could carry and unslung torches to set the remaining wagons ablaze.
"Metellus! Look at this!"
"What is it? Wait, is this...?"
Metellus leaned down from his saddle, peering into a heavy wooden barrel.
"Vesta Powder. They were trying to ferry this stockpile to their siege lines. I had no idea they possessed such a massive reserve."
"Should we haul it back with us, sir?"
"We don't have the time or the packhorses. Let's use it to blow these wagons to Pluto."
After setting the wagons ablaze, the Roman cavalry wheeled around and spurred their horses back toward the forest before the Helvetian rearguard could respond.
By the time armed Helvetian warriors rushed to the scene, they found only a sprawling inferno of burning wagons and exploding powder barrels.
They stood rooted to the earth, staring in despair.
"What in Taranis's name happened here?"
"How did the Romans cross the river?!"
"Send word to the chieftains! We need reinforcements immediately! We cannot hold them off alone!"
News of a Roman force operating on the northern bank sent shockwaves of panic through the migrant encampment.
The frantic scramble toward the river completely paralyzed the already congested crossing points.
"Out of the way! My family crosses first!"
"Our clan claims priority! Push past me and I'll gut you—!"
But the deepest shock struck the Helvetian command tent.
***
"Those Roman dogs violated the armistice! They moved troops under cover of night and struck the moment dawn broke!" Orgetorix roared, his face purple with rage.
The other Gallic envoys, however, remained quite impassive.
"But how could they possibly move soldiers across the river without a bridge?"
"They obviously feigned a feast outside their walls while secretly constructing a bridge in the dark! And then they dismantled it!"
"So you propose," an Aeduan envoy said, "that the Romans built a bridge across the Rhodanus in a single night, sent a cavalry force across, and completely dismantled it without leaving a single trace?"
A few chieftains couldn't suppress their laughter.
"Even for Roman engineers, that borders on the miraculous. Is it not far more likely they moved their troops across before the battle even began?"
Orgetorix ground his teeth so hard they nearly cracked.
Until mere days ago, many tribes had been placing their bets on a Helvetian victory. But following this devastating raid, the wind was shifting slowly back toward Rome.
Who would ultimately triumph—Rome or the Helvetii?
To make matters worse, Gaius Julius Caesar had not returned. Instead, a single courier had delivered a brief letter containing only one word.
War.
"Even assuming the Romans somehow built a bridge in half a night..." a Sequani noble noted, "strictly speaking, they did not violate the armistice. No blood was shed while the truce was active, was it?"
"This requires further deliberation by the council."
Ignoring the murmuring envoys, Orgetorix stormed out of the tent. He had no time to waste on these spineless pigs.
"I should have gutted Caesar while I had the chance," he spat.
As he cursed the Roman consul, Dumnorix stepped out of the shadows and fell into step beside him.
He was there as part of the Aeduan delegation.
"What is your next move, Orgetorix?"
"Divico and the other elders are clamoring for us to pull warriors back across the river to secure the northern bank," Orgetorix growled. "It's sheer lunacy. Sending men who just crossed back to the north? We don't have the luxury of time for that."
"According to my merchants, Pompey's main army departed Rome quite some time ago."
"Do you know their current position?"
"I cannot say for certain, but their arrival is imminent."
"Damn it all!"
Orgetorix kicked a wooden plank, sending it flying across the grass.
Without supplies flowing in from the north, maintaining the siege of Geneva was impossible.
But if he detache troops to secure the northern bank, his army would be too weak to face Pompey's veteran legions when they arrived.
It was a suffocating dilemma. Whichever path he chose, the cost would be ruinous.
"There is only one path left," Orgetorix declared.
"You mean..."
"We storm Geneva. Whatever the cost in blood. The Roman cavalry that crossed the river must be a small detachment, seeing as they only hit our supply wagons and avoided any combat. If we crush Geneva, that raiding force will have no choice but to surrender."
Leaving a stunned Dumnorix behind, Orgetorix strode toward the center of the camp.
"Sound the war horns! Assemble every warrior!"
***
From a strategic standpoint, Orgetorix's decision to storm Geneva was entirely rational. However, it was far from a popular one.
"Have you taken leave of your senses?! The northern supply lines are under attack, and you want to throw men at the walls of Geneva?!"
"If this assault fails, all our people will starve to death in these ditches!"
"Then we make certain it does not fail," Orgetorix's commanding presence silenced the elders' protests. "My own clan will lead the vanguard. I trust the rest of you will demonstrate the vaunted courage of the Helvetii."
And so, the final, desperate assault on Geneva commenced.
The final assault began with the Helvetii parading Pomptinus before the walls.
The Proconsul of Gallia Transalpina, who had vanished during the first battle on the riverbank, was paraded before the walls.
Stripped naked, slathered in mud and excrement, he was strapped to the back of a mule like a sack of grain.
As other captured Roman officers were subjected to similar humiliation, the Helvetian war horns howled, and the drums thundered to life.
Like a tidal wave, the Helvetian warriors surged toward the wooden palisade.
"Here they come!"
"Scorpiones! Fire!"
A torrential rain of iron bolts and arrows tore into the charging Helvetii, dropping men by the dozens.
Yet for every warrior who fell, three more leaped over his corpse, driven by sheer anger.
They hurled bundles of fascines and wooden planks into the defensive ditch, hastily constructing crude bridges to reach the wall.
They could spare no thought for the comrades dying beside them. Moving forward was their only instinct.
Simultaneously, the catapults they had hauled across the river began their bombardment, hurling powder-filled pots at the Roman defenses.
The battlefield dissolved into a hell of deafening explosions, roaring flames, and agonized screams.
"My arm!"
"Keep firing!"
The Helvetii were not the only ones bleeding. Along the ramparts, Roman legionaries were pierced by arrows or caught in the lethal blasts of the gunpowder pots, slumping over the wooden battlements in growing numbers.
"Move the wounded off the wall! Evacuate them into Geneva!"
The Helvetian tide crashed against the base of the palisade, swarming over the timber walls like frenzied ants.
No matter how many ladders the Romans shoved back, new ones instantly took their place.
Amid the chaos, the centurions roared their commands.
"Now! Hurl the lances!"
"Throw them all!"
The legionaries hurled spears over the rampart. These were not the standard pila, but modified lances fitted with powder charges, identical to the ones Lucius's cavalry had wielded.
The burning fuses hissed as the lances buried themselves in the earth—or in Helvetian warriors—before exploding in showers of flame and shrapnel.
"Aaargh! Fall back!"
"Hold your ground! Push forward, sons of the Helvetii! Our great ancestors watch over us!"
Trampling over the mangled remains of their own brothers, the Helvetian warriors pressed the assault.
Under cover of the assault, a team of warriors sprinted toward the wall, lugging heavy oak barrels.
"They're bringing Vesta Powder! Concentrate fire on the barrel carriers!"
"Shields up! Protect the barrels! Push them to the wall!"
A Roman powder-lance struck the earth near one of the carriers. As the lance erupted in a jet of flame, stray sparks ignited the barrel the warrior was carrying.
The resulting detonation was catastrophic. A massive fireball engulfed the carrier and the Helvetian warriors around him.
"They're planting Vesta powder at the base of the wall! Shoot them down!"
Despite the relentless scorpio fire cutting down carriers by the dozen, fresh warriors instantly seized the fallen kegs and continued the suicidal charge.
At terrible cost, the Helvetii finally succeeded in piling the heavy barrels against one section of the Roman palisade—a structural weak point they had painstakingly identified during previous probing attacks.
A warrior lunged forward with a burning torch. Before the nearby Romans—or even his fellow Gauls—could retreat to a safe distance, the powder ignited.
BOOOM!
The explosion shattered the thick wooden palisade and brought down the reinforced earthen rampart behind it.
A gaping, sloping breach had been torn into the Roman defensive line.
"Charge! Pour into the breach!"
"Hold the line! Stop them!"
With that, the Roman perimeter had been breached.
***
"Status report!"
"The savages are flooding into the breach, sir! The cohorts are holding the line, but..."
"How long can they hold?"
The centurion hesitated, his jaw tightening.
With arrows whistling through the smoke around us, I stared at the collapsed rampart.
Enemy warriors were pouring up the earthen ramp, crashing against the disciplined shield wall of the Roman legionaries trying to plug the gap.
"If we can hold them here until the sun sets, they will have no choice but to break off the assault," I said, crouching with the centurion beneath the cover of raised shields.
"While we hold here, they might blow another hole in the perimeter," the centurion warned. "If they do, we won't have the reserves to plug it. What are your orders, Tribune?"
I tried to focus, but the sheer chaos of the battlefield made thinking almost impossible.
Even now, the wounded were being dragged past us, groaning in pain, and arrows thudded into the dirt nearby.
I stared at the corpse of a legionary lying near me, a Gallic arrow jutting from his neck.
"Your orders, Tribune?" the centurion pressed.
I took a slow, deep breath, forcing the panic down.
Before I left Rome, Father had given me one final piece of advice: On the battlefield, no matter what happens, the commander must always be the calmest man on the field.
The lives of thousands rested on my composure.
The Helvetii were throwing everything they had into this assault. With Metellus paralyzing their supply lines, they had no other choice. It was an all-or-nothing gamble born of desperation.
If we could just blunt this offensive, we would break the back of the Helvetian host.
A crippling defeat here would shatter their offensive capability long before Pompey's legions even arrived.
We just had to survive this day.
"We fall back to the inner walls of Geneva," I ordered, my voice steady. "Evacuate the wounded first, exactly as we planned. We must buy them time to withdraw."
"The cohorts can hold the breach until then, Tribune."
"Tell the men not to play the hero. When the signal is given, fall back in disciplined formation. The reserve cohorts will cover their retreat."
Just as I stood up, an arrow slammed into my bodyguard's shield.
Whatever the outcome, this war against the Helvetii was hurtling toward its bloody climax.
Both Rome and the Helvetii had laid all their cards on the table.
Now, all I could do was trust the men under my command.
"Fire the signal arrow!"
An arrow whistled high into the sky, bursting with a concussive crack that echoed across the din of battle.
"Retreat signal! Fall back!"
"Withdraw to Geneva! Reform the defensive line at the inner gates!"
As the legionaries began a disciplined fighting retreat, an officer sprinted up to me.
"T-Tribune Caesar!"
"Report!"
"The city gates! They're closing!"
"Closing?" I grabbed his shoulder. "What do you mean they're closing?!"
"The gates of Geneva are swinging shut! The Allobroges must have betrayed us—!"
I whipped out my telescope, training it on the heavy timber gates of the city. Though the smoke obscured the details, I could clearly see Roman legionaries engaged in a violent melee with another group right at the threshold.
Are those the Allobroges?!
"If those gates close, we'll be locked outside the walls!" the officer cried in panic. "We cannot fall back now! We have to hold the breach and somehow—"
I held up a hand, cutting off his frantic babbling.
"We cannot hold this perimeter much longer."
The order to retreat had already been given. Countermanding it now, mid-maneuver, would plunge the entire army into a disorganized rout.
"Continue the withdrawal."
"But the gates!" another centurion protested, the color draining from his face. "If the Helvetii pour over the walls while we're locked outside, we'll be slaughtered like beasts in a pen!"
He was right. If the gates of Geneva were shut and the Helvetii breached the outer camp, we would be trapped between Geneva's walls and the Helvetian horde and massacred to the last man.
But I still had one trump card left to play, a card I had kept hidden up my sleeve for a moment exactly like this.
"Antony will hold the gate."
Following the earlier supply dispute, I had quietly stationed Antony's cohort right at Geneva's main gate.
I had to trust him to do his job.
"Keep the cohorts moving! I'll remain here to coordinate the rearguard action!"
Shielded by my bodyguards, I strode toward the furious melee at the breached rampart. Seeing me, the legionaries roared.
"The Tribune stands with us!"
"Hold the line! Bleed the savages until the withdrawal is complete!"
"Lock shields! Close the ranks!"