"Damn it, scatter if you want to live!"
"Hold! Keep formation! Shields up!"
The Helvetian commanders' orders were drowned out by groans and screams. Packed shoulder-to-shoulder with their comrades, the only thing the warriors could do was raise their shields.
But beneath the relentless downpour of arrows, more and more men began to fall.
"My hand! My hand is...!"
"An arrow hit my leg! Help me!"
As the rocket arrows slammed into them without pause, the Helvetian shields soon resembled pincushions.
The wagon-mounted launchers, which the Roman engineers had dubbed lyrae after the musical instrument, spewed arrows relentlessly.
The engineers had given them this name because the rows of arrows loaded in the frames looked like the strings of a lyre.
The lyras could be reloaded quickly simply by swapping out the preloaded launch frames.
Unless the Helvetii retreated, there was no escaping this rain of fire.
"Hold on a little longer!"
"They have to run out of arrows eventually! Just hold the line until then!"
But the Romans weren't just spraying arrows blindly. They were targeting one very specific area.
"The enemy's center has halted its advance!"
"Good. The center is pinned, leaving their left and right wings overextended. Exactly as planned."
Pompey said as he observed the battlefield through his telescope. It was playing out perfectly.
The sudden, overwhelming barrage had stopped the Helvetian center dead in its tracks. In contrast, their left and right wings had kept charging, bulging forward awkwardly.
"Order the 14th and 15th Legions to advance and shatter their right wing. The 16th is to hold formation and focus solely on holding back their left wing."
"Yes, sir."
Legates and cavalry officers scrambled to relay his orders. A moment later, the legions began to march to the blare of horns.
While the Helvetian center remained paralyzed, their wings closed the distance with the Roman heavy infantry.
That was when the Helvetian catapults opened fire.
Orgetorix hastily repositioned the artillery that had been pounding Geneva, turning them to repel the approaching Roman reinforcements.
"Vesta's Powder! Shields up!"
Iron balls and pots packed with gunpowder hurtled toward Pompey's advancing legions.
However, the legionaries did not panic. Throughout their long march to Gaul, they had practiced the same maneuver every evening until their bodies moved on pure instinct.
"Open ranks!"
At the sound of the horn, the legionaries instantly widened the gaps between them.
Thousands of men shifting in synchronized motion resembled a massive, finely tuned machine.
The moment the bombs landed, the surrounding soldiers raised their scuta. As long as they braced their shields in time, the thick wooden scuta and iron edging were enough to turn aside most of the shrapnel and shield them from the flames.
"Remember your training! Leave the wounded and keep moving! The rear guard will retrieve them!"
With every explosion, a few men went down. Some took shrapnel to the legs beneath their shields; others suffered burns on their arms from the flash.
But the overall formation held firm.
Unless they took a direct hit, no legionary suffered fatal injuries.
As the two armies closed the distance, the catapult barrage ceased to avoid friendly fire.
The horns blared once more, and the legionaries snapped back into tight formation.
"Shatter their right wing! Press the attack and encircle them! Save our brothers in Geneva! Sons of Mars, forward!"
Centurions roared from the front lines, and the legionaries answered with a deafening battle cry.
As the gap narrowed, the final order rang out.
"Pila!"
A volley of heavy javelins slammed into the Helvetian shields, their iron tips piercing deep into the wood.
While the barbarians struggled to pull the heavy javelins from their shields, a second command echoed.
"Crossbows!"
The first rank of legionaries halted, planting their shields firmly into the dirt. Leveling their loaded crossbows, they fired in unison at the centurion's barked command.
A lethal swarm of iron bolts ripped through the air.
"Prepare the next volley!"
The second rank handed loaded crossbows forward, while the third and fourth ranks passed theirs up the line.
This allowed the first rank to unleash multiple devastating volleys without pausing to reload.
It was a tactic Pompey had personally developed and drilled into his men following the Troy Games.
The idea was simple: pin their shields with pila, then unleash a storm of crossbow bolts the moment they lowered their guard to pry them free.
The Helvetii were decimated by the unexpected hail of iron.
"Draw swords! Charge! Drive them back!"
Melee combat erupted. The Roman shield wall ground forward, inch by bloody inch.
But the fatal blow that shattered the Helvetian formation didn't come from Pompey; it came from their rear—from Geneva.
***
"Reinforcements! Pompey is here!"
Cheers erupted along the walls of Geneva. I let out a dry chuckle, watching the officers and men roar in triumph.
No one had said it aloud, but we had been pushed past our breaking point. We had been hanging on by our fingernails, fighting a grueling defensive battle against a massive horde.
Through the haze of distance, I could just make out Pompey's legions clashing with the enemy's main body.
Hundreds of fiery streaks were raining down on the barbarians without pause. It seemed the engineers had finished the weapon systems right on schedule.
Absolutely brilliant bastards, the lot of them.
"Looks like they're rats in a trap now." Antony barked out a laugh, peering down over the battlements.
He was right. The Helvetian forces that had breached our outer wooden palisade were now paralyzed by indecision.
With Pompey hammering their rear, they were torn between maintaining the siege on Geneva or rushing back to reinforce their main army.
Moreover, a significant portion of their men were already trapped inside the outer perimeter.
With only the narrow gates and the breached rampart as exits, they couldn't possibly get that many men out at once.
Panic was already taking root.
"Let's go lend Pompey a hand," I said.
"I'll give the order to the cohorts. Time we returned the favor and squeezed them from both sides. The cavalry and I will spearhead the breakout."
I put on my helmet and tightened the chin strap. If there was ever a moment for cavalry to shine, this was it.
It was a shame we had exhausted all our Fire Lances, but standard lances would do just fine.
"Once we punch through the outer palisade, we can strike their main body directly in the rear." I said.
"I'll lead the infantry out first and carve a path. Wait for my signal," Antony replied, securing his own helmet.
As infantry and cavalry massed before the gates of Geneva, the war horns sounded.
Before mounting my horse, I met the gaze of the cavalrymen lined up before me.
Every one of them was a brother-in-arms who had ridden with me since the Troy Games.
We didn't even need words to understand each other anymore.
They looked at me and gave a firm nod. I nodded back and swung up into the saddle.
"Form up for the charge!"
***
"Don't stop! Keep fighting! We must break their center at all costs!"
Divico bellowed, waving his sword. A desperate, swirling melee raged all around him.
The Romans had shattered their right wing and were rapidly sweeping around to envelop them from behind.
The rain of arrows on the center had stopped, but now they found themselves trapped in a tightening noose.
"The sun will set soon! Just hold on until dusk!"
Divico roared. When encircled like this, there were few tactical options left. Stand and die, or keep fighting.
They really only had one viable option left: concentrate everything they had into a single, desperate wedge to crack the Roman center.
Despite horrific casualties, their numbers were still roughly equal to the Romans. If the forces besieging Geneva could reinforce them in time, they might just pull off a miracle.
"There is no retreat! Fight as if you are already dead! Bring up all the ash of fire! If we break through their center, we can turn the encirclement against them!"
Just as they had against Geneva's walls, Helvetian warriors clutching massive wooden powder kegs charged the Roman lines.
Fuses hissing, they threw themselves into the enemy ranks without a shred of hesitation.
BOOM!
The blast threw the carriers off their feet and caught nearby Helvetian warriors in the shockwave, but it succeeded in tearing a momentary hole in the Roman shield wall.
"Now! Push forward! Break their center!"
But Divico's order was swallowed by the sudden blare of Roman horns. Then, the impossible happened.
The Roman forces pressing their rear suddenly parted, deliberately opening a gap in the encirclement.
"What in the gods' name are they thinking...?"
Divico's blood ran cold as realization struck. There was only one tactical reason a winning army would intentionally open a gap in the encirclement.
"Run!"
"Fall back to the river!"
One by one, Helvetian warriors began to break ranks, fleeing through the newly opened corridor.
As long as they were trapped, they had no choice but to keep fighting.
Now that an escape route had opened before them, the instinct for self-preservation took over.
"No! Hold your ground! If you run now, you'll be slaughtered like sheep!"
Divico screamed. He stared toward the rear.
Opening a path of retreat in the middle of a decisive battle... It was a vicious stratagem.
"The river is behind us! Even if you reach it, the Romans will cut you down before you can cross!"
But his warnings fell on deaf ears. Panic was contagious. As men shoved past each other in a frantic bid for survival, the Helvetian battle line began to collapse past the point of recovery.
"If we get to the river first, we can take the rafts!"
Tossing aside their heavy shields and swords, the warriors broke into a mad sprint toward the Rhodanus.
But at that exact moment, Lucius's cavalry crested the rise. Having punched through the outer palisade from Geneva's gates, they descended upon the fleeing Helvetii like an iron avalanche.
"Drive them all into the river!"
***
"Halt! Halt, damn you! We cannot all cross at once!"
Orgetorix roared, trying to block the stampeding tide of his own men.
His warriors had lost all will to fight and were pouring blindly toward the banks. With Roman cavalry tearing out of Geneva to run them down from behind, it was going to be a bloody massacre.
If Orgetorix wanted to survive, he had to force these cowards to turn around and fight.
He grimaced. Even if he managed to cross the river and retreat, there was no future for him.
The elders would happily throw him to the wolves, placing all the blame for this catastrophe squarely on his shoulders.
"Do you want your children to remember you as cowards?! Do not shame our ancestors! Turn back and fight!"
"If you want to die so badly, go fight them yourself!"
A vicious confrontation erupted right on the riverbank—those trying to hold the line violently clashing with those desperate to flee.
Ultimately, they drew blades against one another.
"Kill the cowards!"
"Run if you want to live!"
Orgetorix and his personal guard hacked down the deserters, but they were vastly outnumbered.
Tens of thousands of panicked men converged on the riverbank at once. In the crushing clash of bodies, men were trampled to death or shoved into the churning river to drown.
Orgetorix was no exception.
"You gutless fools! H-Hold!"
Swinging his sword wildly, he was lifted off his feet by the surging mob and hurled over the embankment into the freezing water.
As he thrashed to keep his head above the current, more fleeing warriors plunged in right on top of him, dragging him down.
Watching the slaughter unfold through his telescope, Pompey smirked.
"Corner wounded beasts, and they'll fight to the death. Give them a way out, and they'll trample each other trying to escape."
He turned to his officers.
"Move up and help Lucius drive the rest into the water. Let's finish this."
While the battle on the southern bank was drawing to a bloody close, a new conflict was just beginning on the northern shore.
***
"Throw down your arms and surrender! Your lives will be spared!"
Metellus shouted, his cavalry encircling a convoy of wagons.
Ever since crossing the pontoon bridge in the dead of night, his riders had relentlessly harassed the Helvetian supply wagons.
Despite this, the migrants had stubbornly tried to push forward toward the river.
Now, the situation had completely reversed. Panic had set in, and the wagon trains were frantically trying to reverse course and flee back the way they came.
"Surrender and you will live! Halt your wagons!"
Operating as a mobile force, Metellus's cavalry easily overtook and disarmed the fleeing convoys. A few managed to slip the net, but outrunning cavalry in an ox-drawn wagon was virtually impossible.
"You took up arms against Rome! Do not think you can simply run home and escape punishment!"
"Remain here on the northern bank! Rome will decide your fate!"
That was when one of the riders spotted something out of place.
"Commander, look at this!"
"Is that Vesta powder?"
"Yes, sir. These men were hauling it."
Metellus rode over, staring down at the captives tied up next to the powder kegs.
Even at a glance, their garb, tribal tattoos, and sheer size clearly set them apart from the Helvetii.
"Are these..."
"Germans, sir. According to the prisoners, these are the bastards who've been supplying the Helvetii with the powder and catapults."
"But the Helvetii were driven out of their lands by the Suebi... they're at war with the Germanic tribes. Why in Pluto's name would Germans be supplying them with Vesta powder?"
Metellus stared at the stockpiled barrels of gunpowder.
"Lucius needs to hear about this immediately."