“What did you find?” I asked. “I don’t suppose you just want to show me a million painted savages dancing around and working themselves up for a morning attack.”
“Nothing that simple,” he said. “You’ll see.”
We rode to a sally port in the rampart. This was a narrow slot, just wide enough for horsemen to pass single-file. It was blocked at entrance and exit by heavy logs studded with long spikes. The auxilia manning that port dragged the logs aside and we rode through. On the other side waited a wild-looking little detachment of Carbo’s scouts, more like hunting hounds than human beings. Among them I recognized Ionus, the man who had discovered Vinius’s body.
“Let’s go,” Carbo said. The Scouts set off at a lope. On the uneven ground their progress was more a series of leaps than the long strides of a civilized runner. Bent over almost double, their arms held a little away from their bodies for balance, they looked as if they were following a scent trail. They kept ahead of us easily, even though we were riding at a swift trot.
As we drew away from the rampart, I felt the chilling dread experienced by most soldiers when they are separated from their legions. Precarious as military life can be, there is tremendous comfort to be had from six thousand shields with six thousand resolute Roman swordsmen standing behind them. Even the primitive fortification of an earthen wall topped by wooden stakes takes on the permanence and solidity of a fortified city when you are out on your own in enemy territory.
A short ride across the grassy plain brought us to the foot of the densely wooded hills. The Helvetii, whose agriculture was primitive, never bothered to clear this hill country to till the slopes. They dwelled in the valleys and plains, where the land was hospitable and yielded easily to their wooden plow-shares. The great labor required to clear and plant vineyards on steep slopes was repellant to the Gauls, who thought such work fit only for slaves. True, most Gallic peasants were little more than slaves themselves, but they had no liking for hard toil either.
A small detachment of Carbo’s skirmishers awaited us at the base of the first hill. “Any sign of the enemy?” Carbo asked them.
“Not a hair of them,” a decurion said.
“We continue on foot from here,” Carbo said, dismounting. “You skirmishers get some torches from the horsemen. Lovernius, you come with us. The rest wait here. Be ready to run for it, but don’t run before we get back.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked nervously. I didn’t like the idea of being separated from my horse. When I have to flee, I prefer not to waste time at it. Armored and in hobnailed boots, I would have no chance of outfooting a horde of near-naked Gauls. It wouldn’t even take a horde of them. Two or three would do the job. Mabe even one. I’d had an exhausting night.
“The woods are too thick for horsemen,” Carbo said phlegmatically. “Come on.”
We went up onto the slopes with the Scouts in the lead. I wondered what the watching Helvetians were making of all this activity. Our little torchlit cavalry procession must have been visible for miles, and the torchbearing skirmishers probably presented a twinkling display as we ascended.
Our climb was all but silent, the only sounds the faint rustle of mail links against sword sheaths and the hiss and crackle of the torches. The massive, ancient trees pressed close in upon us, the undersides of their limbs luridly illuminated by the torches. Night-roaming animals scurried away from us as we climbed. It was all monstrously oppressive and frightening.
We Romans do not like wild places. We like open, cultivated land that has been tamed by the hand of man. Deserts repel us; mountains are just obstacles; and we dislike forests with their wild animals and their swarms of spiteful spirits. Only pastoral poets pretend to like nature, and their sylvan dales occupied by nymphs and handsome shepherd lads are as unreal as a wall painting. The real thing is vicious, messy, and unforgiving.
Soon I detected a faint glow ahead of us. “Almost there now,” Carbo said. Iron man though he was, he was breathing heavily. This was his second such climb of the night.
Abruptly, we were at the edge of a clearing. The Scouts halted, then the skirmishers, and finally Carbo, Lovernius, and me. The trees ended at a roughly circular patch of mossy ground perhaps thirty paces in diameter. Big, rough rocks protruded from the ground, strangely shaped, although they were apparently nature’s work, showing no marks of hammer or chisel. Tremendous oaks marked the periphery, their branches interlacing overhead to form a ceiling.
These details were made faintly visible by the low-burning remains of what must earlier have been a huge bonfire. It was nothing but embers now, crackling and sending up smoke to the heavens. It was an uncanny place, and I had the uneasy but certain feeling that I was looking at what the Greeks call a temenos: a sacred place consecrated to the gods.