"We aren't going to die because of those Roman bastards! If we don't shut the gates now, they'll drag their war right into Geneva!"
These young Allobrogians had a simple reason for taking up arms.
The Allobrogian people had been subjugated by Rome only relatively recently. Barely a century had passed since their conquest, and the bitter resentment over exorbitant taxes and oppression still simmered just beneath the surface.
"Why should we risk our city burning to the ground for the sake of Rome?!"
"He's right! Bar the gates! Let the Helvetii slaughter the Romans for us!"
Taking advantage of the chaotic battle outside, they planned to seize the city gates by force.
"The Romans left barely a hundred men to hold the gate. We can easily overpower them."
"There are hundreds of us. We'll crush them easily."
But these young rebels had made one fatal miscalculation. The Roman commander holding that gate was not a man to be trifled with.
Mark Antony.
Watching the armed mob of Allobroges surging toward him, Antony threw his head back and let out a booming laugh.
"I was just starting to worry I'd miss out on all the bloodletting! Perfect timing! Form ranks!"
As the legionaries locked their shields, the struggle for the gates of Geneva began.
"What are you doing?! Push them back! Clear the gateway!"
While a desperate rearguard action raged against the Helvetii at the outer palisade, a bloody struggle erupted in the narrow gateway within the city walls.
The corridor leading to the heavy timber gates was narrow. No matter how many rebels charged forward, only a few dozen could engage the Roman line at any given time.
Antony and his legionaries planted their feet and overlapped their heavy scuta to form an impenetrable wall of iron and wood.
Yet, as sheer numbers began to push a few legionaries back, several Allobrogian youths slipped past and lunged for the winches. One of the massive iron-studded doors slowly began to swing shut.
"Rally on me! Break their line!"
Roaring like a beast, Antony threw himself at the front of the formation, personally leading a wedge of legionaries straight for the gate mechanism.
"Push the gate open! Hold it open!"
The bloody skirmish, however, did not last long.
Lucius's main force had successfully fought their way back from the outer palisade and poured into the gateway.
The Allobrogian rebels were soon surrounded.
Furious, blood-spattered Roman legionaries closed the ring, their gladii drawn.
"Slaughter every last one of these treacherous dogs!"
***
"Hold! Stand down!"
I hauled a blood-drenched Antony back.
Judging by his manic grin and the gore plastered across his armor, he looked like a mythical berserker.
While the Helvetii hurled themselves against the crumbling outer defenses, inside Geneva's walls, thousands of enraged legionaries had the Allobrogian rebels dead to rights.
"I warned you, Lucius! I told you we could never trust these savage bastards!" Antony snarled, his chest heaving with exertion. "The Helvetii are practically breathing down our necks, and you want to leave these traitors at our backs?! Let's butcher them right here! You saw them trying to bolt the gates on us with your own two eyes!"
It wasn't just Antony. Every legionary in the vicinity was glaring at the Allobroges with undisguised murderous intent.
It was an entirely justified reaction. Thanks to this stunt, the entire army had nearly been locked outside and massacred.
Right then, the tribal elders scrambled forward, throwing themselves to their knees at my feet.
"Caesar, we beg you! A handful of hot-blooded fools acted on their own! The council and the rest of the citizens knew absolutely nothing of this! We do not know how to beg your forgiveness—"
"Their fate will be decided by Pompey upon his arrival," I replied, keeping my voice as calm as possible.
It wasn't that I wasn't furious. I had bent over backward to be diplomatic when they previously threatened to cut our grain supply, and this was how they repaid me.
But ordering a mass execution right now would be a catastrophic mistake.
The Helvetii were currently storming toward the inner walls.
Whether the elders truly knew of the coup or not could be investigated later.
"Antony, disarm them immediately and lock them in the granary."
"We should just slit their throats and save ourselves the trouble—"
"I gave you an order."
"Fine."
Antony nodded before barking orders to the men.
As the terrified youths dropped their weapons and surrendered, I reached down and pulled the lead elder to his feet.
Without meaning to, Antony and I had stumbled into a perfect good cop, bad cop situation.
The elder was trembling, clearly realizing just how close Antony had come to massacring him and his people.
"The battle is far from over, and the Helvetii are marching on these very walls," I declared, projecting my voice so everyone nearby could hear me.
"If they breach Geneva, they will not stop at killing us Romans! The Helvetii are starving, and your city is overflowing with grain! They will sack Geneva, burn your homes, and take everything you own!"
It wasn't an exaggeration. By crippling their supply lines across the river, I had forced their hand. The Helvetii had to pillage Geneva to survive.
"If you wish to protect your families and your city, take up arms and stand with us on the walls!" I shouted. "I have no intention of treating innocent citizens as traitors! Rome will remember every man who bleeds beside her to defend Geneva today!"
The townsfolk exchanged hesitant glances. Then, one of the elders mustered his courage.
"What are you standing around for?! Haul stones to the battlements!"
His shout broke the paralysis. One by one, the citizens of Geneva scrambled to comply, racing toward the defensive positions.
"Move! Bring the heavy rocks we stockpiled!"
"Fetch every arrow you can find!"
I let out a quiet sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the last of the rearguard continued to pour through the gates.
Under the covering fire of our archers, the final legionary stepped inside, and the heavy doors were slammed shut and barred just as the Helvetian vanguard flooded into the outer perimeter.
Now, the only thing standing between us and annihilation was the stone wall of Geneva.
Fortunately, the city stood on steep, easily defensible ground. But as they had just brutally demonstrated, the Helvetii were willing to pay any price in blood to claim victory.
"Move the wounded to the medical tents! Every man who can still hold a sword, to the walls!"
As the legionaries filed onto the ramparts in disciplined order, Antony returned to my side.
"Can we actually trust the Allobroges to fight?"
"They know perfectly well that if the Helvetii breach the gates, Geneva burns," I replied, following the troops up the stone stairs to the battlements. "Even if they despise us, they will fight tooth and nail for their own survival."
"It's still going to be a grueling brawl. We still have some time until sunset, and the barbarians show no signs of slowing down." Antony grimaced, looking over the parapet.
The slope below was a sea of writhing, screaming enemy warriors.
Scattered among the mob, I could spot several men hauling what looked like familiar wooden powder kegs.
"Commit all remaining reserves," I ordered. "We only need to hold out a little longer."
Before Father left the Helvetian camp, he had managed to slip me one short message.
And that message was...
"Look up there!" a legionary suddenly yelled, pointing a finger toward the sky.
I snapped my head up and spotted a familiar silhouette against the clouds.
A hot air balloon.
Floating high in the distant sky, the enormous balloon was unmistakably Roman.
"It seems our relief has finally arrived."
Father's message was short.
Pompey will be there shortly. Keep your eyes on the sky.
And now, I could see the hope in the sky.
***
"General! The enemy has breached the outer palisade! Caesar's forces have conducted an orderly withdrawal and reestablished their defensive line behind the walls of Geneva!"
"A shrewd maneuver. It seems Lucius knows when to yield ground," Pompey noted, lowering his telescope with a satisfied nod.
"Deploy the legions into combat formation as we planned. We will present a threat they cannot ignore, forcing their main body to wheel around and face us. Once they form ranks on the open plain, we unleash the new weapons."
"At once, sir!"
As cavalry officers galloped off to relay his orders, the brazen blast of Roman horns echoed across the hills.
At the signal, the marching legionaries unshouldered their heavy baggage poles, drew their shields, and shifted into a tight, interlocking battle line.
"Prepare for battle! Lock your shields!"
While the heavy infantry advanced, a specialized detachment wearing distinctive insignias on their helmets was hauling equipment up a commanding ridge on the Roman right flank.
"Faster! Haul it up the ridge! We need the wagons to be ready immediately!"
Spurius barked at the sweating combat engineers, urging them on. They were dragging several heavy wagons up the incline.
But these were not standard supply carts.
As the engineers swarmed over them, folded wooden launch frames were raised and locked into position atop the reinforced wagon beds.
***
"Enemy reinforcements have arrived!"
At the scout's frantic report, the blood drained from the faces of the Helvetian chieftains.
"Curse them! Half our warriors are tied down trying to breach Geneva! How did they—"
"Do not panic. Our scouts saw no sign of them even yesterday," Orgetorix said, his voice cutting through the rising hysteria.
"They must have force-marched all the way from Italy without resting. That means their infantry is exhausted, their legs turned to lead. Our men, on the other hand, still have their strength, and half our host has yet to even see combat."
He swept his gaze over the officers.
"We still possess the numerical advantage. We leave a force behind to keep Geneva under siege, wheel the catapults and the main host around, and crush this exhausted army."
"But...!"
Several clan leaders opened their mouths to object, then snapped them shut. With a fresh Roman army at their backs, they had no other options.
Fight, or die.
And as Orgetorix pointed out, they still had a viable path to victory.
"Recall all available warriors! We break the Romans here and now!"
To the blare of horns, the Helvetian host rapidly reoriented its battle lines. In sheer numbers, they still outnumbered Pompey's arriving legions.
As their massive infantry blocks began to roll forward, light cavalry darted ahead to skirmish and scout.
Opposite them, the Roman legions marched forward in silent unison. The sight of that creeping wall of iron and red shields was enough to instill dread in any man.
But it wasn't the infantry that caught the eyes of the barbarian vanguard.
"What in the world is that?"
Atop a high ridge on the Roman right flank, several bizarre contraptions had been positioned.
"Wagons? They look strange."
"Why would the Romans leave wagons on a hill before a battle?"
Their curiosity was abruptly answered.
With a deafening, unified roar, the wagons atop the hill erupted in geysers of fire.
"The ash of fire!"
"From this distance?! How is that—"
The Helvetian cavalry stared up at the sky in a mixture of bewilderment and horror. Trails of fire shot from the wagons, arcing high across the sky, screaming directly toward their formations.
"Arrows! They attached the ash of fire to arrows!"
"Impossible! No bow can shoot that far—"
At that exact moment, the blazing projectiles crested their arc and began to plummet toward the Helvetian infantry.
***
Of the myriad weapon designs Lucius Caesar had proposed during the development of gunpowder, one concept had captivated the imaginations of the engineers.
The rocket arrow.
By strapping a paper tube of gunpowder to the shaft of an arrow and lighting a fuse, the expanding gases would propel the projectile forward, trailing fire and smoke.
It was a brilliantly simple principle.
"It has potential as a weapon, but handing them to archers is far too dangerous," Spurius had initially assessed. "With fire spewing right next to their faces, the risk of severe burns is unacceptable."
"Then we don't use archers," Lucius had countered. "We build a dedicated launch platform."
Lucius's proposal was to preload dozens of these arrows into compartmentalized wooden frames. By connecting the fuses, a crew could launch nearly a hundred arrows simultaneously in a single, devastating barrage.
It was, in essence, a primitive version of what would one day be called a multiple-launch rocket system, or MLRS.
"This way, you can strike the enemy from well beyond bow range. The arrows will rain down on them like a meteor shower."
"The frames and modified wagons can be constructed entirely from timber," Spurius had agreed. "We will begin prototyping immediately."
From the moment the Gallic campaign began, Spurius had worked feverishly to perfect the powder ratios and modify the launch wagons.
He took the sturdy war wagons Pompey had originally requisitioned and retrofitted them with collapsible, multi-cell wooden launch racks, allowing for rapid deployment on the battlefield.
And now, those fully assembled batteries were spewing hellfire.
Amid billowing clouds of thick white smoke, salvos of rocket arrows screamed into the sky.
A heartbeat later, dozens of fiery streaks plummeted toward the enemy lines.
"The Romans are firing! Shields up!"
Spotting the incoming projectiles, the Helvetian warriors instinctively raised their heavy wooden shields. As the iron tips slammed into the timber, even hardened veterans flinched.
However, the vast majority of the arrows sailed wildly off target, plunging harmlessly into the empty dirt. Furthermore, the first volley had consisted of merely a few dozen arrows.
Seeing the pathetic result, the Helvetian ranks erupted in mocking cheers.
"Stupid Roman bastards!"
"Looks like their grand sorcery is nothing but smoke and noise!"
But there was one crucial detail the laughing barbarians were unaware of.
A hot air balloon was hovering silently above the hill, tracking their exact position.
***
"Observation signal received! Impact coordinates confirmed!"
A combat engineer peering through a telescope shouted without taking his eyes off the balloon.
Fitted to the sides of the wicker basket were wooden semaphore arms, identical to those used on signal towers, shifting rapidly to relay coordinates.
"Adjust trajectory and elevation! All wagons, make your corrections on my mark!" Spurius commanded.
He and his engineers frantically scribbled calculations on paper—using the mathematical system they had learned at the Technical School: Caesar numerals.
"Adjustments complete!"
"Fire on my command! All wagons—full volley!"
A signalman snapped the red flag through the air. Instantly, hundreds of fuses were lit.
With an ear-shattering roar, a solid wall of fire and smoke erupted from the ridge as hundreds of rocket arrows tore into the sky simultaneously.
His ears ringing and smoke blinding his vision, Spurius bellowed his next order.
"Replace the launch frames! Reload! Keep firing!"
A moment later, another massive wave of screaming fire streaked across the sky, arcing toward the barbarian horde.