They were being chased.
After another few hundred paces, Vespasian looked behind; Magnus was ten paces away with Castor and Pollux lolloping beside him, almost invisible in the dark. Behind were the silhouettes of at least two pursuers and they were gaining. He looked forward into the night and could see no way of increasing his speed without running the risk of being dismounted, and yet if they did not they would surely be ridden down. Not to get through could be the death sentence for a legion. ‘We need to turn and face them,’ he shouted over his shoulder to Magnus, ‘otherwise they’ll catch us.’ He slowed and turned his mount, rearing on its back legs; Magnus managed the manoeuvre with less panache as the pursuit came on at speed, now less than twenty paces out. Drawing his sword, Vespasian urged his mount back towards them, slapping its rump with the flat of his blade. The two pursuers checked their pace, unsure of this confidence in their quarry; two dark shadows suddenly appeared, flying towards them, and, before they had time to register the attack, they were punched from the saddles. Castor and Pollux landed on their prey in a welter of ripping and growling; screams of abject terror of being devoured by unknown things-of-the-night issued from the Britons, long and hard, as they fought these monsters that could just materialise out of nothing.
Vespasian and Magnus both watched as the life was eaten out of the men, feeling that such a death was no more than their due; quickly, their struggles ceased and they were silent and still.
‘Good boys,’ Magnus purred with genuine affection for his pets as he dismounted and eased them off their feasts. ‘But we haven’t got time for a snack just at the moment.’ He tickled each under its bloody muzzle and leapt back up into the saddle as the sound of pursuit on foot reached them.
Off they sped into the night, travelling as fast as they dared for the first quarter of a mile and then, once they had outpaced their pursuit, slowing down to a trot, heading ever northward.
With no care for the fatigue of their ponies, Vespasian and Magnus pressed on and soon, directly to the east, to their right, they could see the distant glow of Camulodunum.
‘We’re level with the town now,’ Vespasian said. ‘If we carry on for another mile or so and then head northeast we should hit the Lindum road and then we’ve got about an hour left of the night to find the Ninth.’
‘Well, I hope they’ve got something good to eat; we haven’t had anything since yesterday and that ain’t good at my age. I’m starting to feel very weak.’
Vespasian said nothing on the subject; he was feeling the effects of hunger too and felt that talking about it would only make things worse. They rode in silence for a while.
In the distance the glow of the town grew, even though they were drawing away from it. ‘They must have really put it to the torch,’ Vespasian observed some time later, ‘for it to be burning like that eleven hours later.’
‘We shouldn’t have stayed there,’ Magnus said, ‘it was almost suicide.’
‘It was for a lot of people but had they had fled then they would have stood even less chance in the open. It was the Trinovantes within the walls breaking them down that really tipped the balance.’
‘Bollocks it was; it was the sheer fucking size of their army. It’ll take a few legions to stop it.’
‘Which we’ll have when they all converge.’
Magnus grunted and expressed no further opinion; they kept to their own thoughts until, a short time later, the sound of their ponies’ hoofs on stone alerted them to the fact that they had finally reached the road.
And then a strange sound, faint and yet strong at the same time, floated on the pre-dawn air; Vespasian cocked his ear, frowning. ‘What’s that?’
They halted their tired ponies and listened.
It was a rumble that they could hear; a rumble not of inanimate objects but rather voices, male voices, thousands of them, in fact, tens of thousands of them. The Iceni army was on the move.
‘They’re heading up the Lindum road to surprise Cerialis!’ Vespasian said, realising what Boudicca planned to do. ‘If she takes us one legion at a time we’re finished. There’s not a moment to lose.’ He kicked his long-suffering pony back into action and they raced away, their path along the road easier to see as the dawn glow in the east strengthened.
Behind them they could just make out a great shadow to the south, spread out to either side of the road. They thrashed their beasts north, hoping that Cerialis had already pulled back. But they did not have far to travel for, after half a mile, another shadow became distinct, this time ahead of them.
It did not take Vespasian too long to work out what it was. ‘Cerialis, you fool. You’re marching your legion towards certain death.’
But Cerialis did not know that he was marching towards annihilation, not because he was marching in the classic Roman fashion, without scouts; but because the scouts he had sent out had not, so far, returned. And so, Vespasian and Magnus were not challenged as they pelted up the road towards the VIIII Hispana.
‘Where’re his scouting units?’ Vespasian wondered aloud as the cohort leading the legion’s advance became distinct in the ever growing light. They swerved off the road and raced down the ranks and ranks of legionaries; past two cohorts they went until they approached the command position to see Cerialis, fifty paces away, sitting proudly on his horse with the legion’s Eagle parading before him and his tribunes and his escort cavalry behind. The first rays of the newborn sun glinted pale off their helms.
‘Cerialis, Cerialis!’ Vespasian shouted, galloping towards the legate.
Cerialis looked towards his father-in-law but failed to recognise him in the dawn light with his unshaven face and dishevelled clothing. With a barked order to a decurion he sent him and four others of his escort against Vespasian and Magnus. Detaching themselves from the rest of the legionary cavalry they accelerated towards the two incoming riders.
‘We’re Roman! Roman!’ Vespasian roared, slowing his pony and spreading his arms to show that he was not armed.
Magnus growled an order at his dogs to keep them in check.
‘Roman!’ Vespasian shouted again as the decurion and his men approached. ‘Mutilus,’ Vespasian cried, recognising the officer as the same man who had escorted him south from Lindum, ‘it’s me, Senator Vespasian; I must speak with the legate at once.’
Mutilus squinted at him and then recognition flooded onto his face. ‘Of course, sir, right away.’ The decurion spun his horse about and led the way back to Cerialis.
‘Father!’ The surprised legate exclaimed upon recognising Vespasian and Magnus. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘No, Cerialis, it’s what you’re doing here that is the question.’
‘I’m coming to relieve you in Camulodunum.’
‘Camulodunum fell yesterday evening; didn’t your scouts tell you?’
‘They told me that it had been invested so I thought that with swift action, like Corbulo, I could surprise the Britons this morning and we could crush them between us.’
Vespasian could not believe his son-in-law’s folly. ‘But you were meant to join up with Paulinus and …’ He stopped, realising that they were wasting valuable time discussing what Cerialis should have been doing. ‘You have to deploy defensively, Cerialis, and make a fighting retreat back to your camp.’
‘Why?
‘Because …’
But Vespasian did not need to explain why, as just at that moment two factors combined: the sun rose and its light strengthened at the same time as the Iceni had a clear view of the VIIII Hispana. These two factors brought about the biggest roar that any in the legion had ever heard; on hearing it each legionary knew that it was baying to the gods of Britannia for every drop of their Roman blood.
‘A hollow square is our only chance, Cerialis,’ Vespasian urged. ‘And then we fight step by step back to your camp.’
There was a distinct look of panic in Cerialis’ eyes. ‘Do we have time to deploy, though?’
‘We’re about
to find out; if you don’t give the order we’ll all die anyway.’
Cerialis swallowed and nodded. ‘Cornicern! Legion hollow square!’
The musician put the mouthpiece of his G-shaped horn to his lips and issued four deep notes, each identical in pitch, and then repeated the alarm. All through the legion cornicerns relayed the rumbling call to their cohorts and then onto centuries. The repetitive drill of the Roman army was not done for nothing; every centurion, optio and standard-bearer knew his place upon hearing the signal, which was only sounded when the legion was in dire circumstances. Although none of them had ever had to react to the command in the field for real before, their innate discipline meant that they began to lead their men, with bellowed orders, to the correct place in the formation. The legion began to transform from column to defensive square with blocks of men fanning out, left and right, whilst the first and second cohorts formed up to the front, facing the threat.
But despite their efficiency, Vespasian could see that that it would be a very close-run affair; ahead of the VIIII Hispana the Iceni nation had broken into a mad charge, their chariot horses galloping and the warriors sprinting, keeping no order, all just intent on being the first to catch the legion in the middle of its manoeuvre, thereby ensuring its doom.
On they came as the legion’s officers roared their men into more haste and precision, knowing that a hollow square with a gap in it was nothing more than a column with right angles and just as vulnerable.
‘I don’t like the look of this,’ Magnus said, seeing how the first cohort had not yet completed its frontage and the space between it and the fourth cohort, facing west, was still considerable.
The sick feeling in his stomach, which Vespasian had experienced on that night, all those years ago, when his II Augusta had so nearly been caught mid-deployment, returned.
That night they had just made it; it was becoming apparent that this morning they would not.
The Roman horns rumbled, thousands of pairs of hobnailed sandals stamped, kit jangled and centurions bellowed, but all this did nothing to mask the sound of the Iceni as they savoured the scent of legionary blood.
With their Queen in their midst, the leading chariots, scores of them, swerved and tore across the frontage of the incomplete ranks of the first cohort, the warriors hurling javelin after javelin into the gaps within the formation, picking off the unshielded, punching them back and down to become an obstacle for their comrades behind to negotiate, hindering further their deployment. A few centuries were organised enough to reply with a volley of pila, the weighted heads ripping cruelly into man and beast alike bringing many crashing, legs thrashing, to the ground to skid along the grass, moist with dew.
Their javelins spent, the surviving chariot warriors, the élite and pride of the tribe, jumped clear of their vehicles; with hexagonal shields, resplendent with animal designs, and long, slashing swords whirling in their hands, they charged, heedless of personal safety, into the first cohort. But it was not with shield against shield that the battle was fought, in a contest where the individualistic Britannic warriors would always lose to the mutually supportive tactics of the legion; no, this time they did not have to throw themselves against a solid wall of wood, this time the mutual support was not there and the warriors crashed through the gaps that had been widened by their javelins and took on individual combats as, behind them, their brethren on foot closed with the fraying cohort.
Screaming their hatred to their gods, smeared in strange designs, their hair stiff with lime, the cream of the Iceni brought terror with their attack. Towering over even the men of the first cohort, they brought their long blades down from great heights or slashed them in broad arcs, outreaching the short gladii of their opponents.
And then the honed iron bit into the disorganised Roman ranks and, seemingly slow as if time had relented, the first head spun up into the air, spiralling gore, at the same instant as the first right arm slopped to the ground still gripping the sword hilt. And then time accelerated. Extreme violence had begun and it was on the Iceni’s terms as they fell upon men trained to fight shoulder to shoulder and who were now unable to do so. As if crazed, the Britannic warriors twirled left and then right, forever whirling their swords in blurs of continual motion, their passage marked by sprays of blood, hurling their opponents back or down as the main infantry force of the tribe ploughed into the cohort and the second cohort next to it, forcing bloody furrows through, as the life was plucked from them and they ceased to function as units.
‘They won’t stand,’ Vespasian shouted to Cerialis as the first cohort’s standard disappeared down into the chaos of massacre. ‘If you act now there’s a chance that you can pull out with the rear six cohorts; they might get away if the Britons’ lack of discipline keeps them massacring the unlucky bastards in the first four.’
‘There’s still hope, Father; I’ve ordered the fifth and seventh cohorts to form behind the first and second to limit the breakthrough.’
‘If they get into contact you won’t be able to extricate them and then that’ll be another thousand men lost.’
‘Not if we can stop them here and complete the formation; then we can stage a fighting retreat.’
Vespasian jabbed a finger to where the Iceni had started to lap around the sides of the Roman formation, eating into the fourth and third cohorts, facing west and east respectively, their formations already buckling. ‘Look! Don’t fool yourself, Cerialis; the best that we can hope for now is to save at least some of the legion whilst the rest are sacrificed.’
‘The fifth and the seventh will stand.’
Vespasian bit back a stinging riposte as he watched the two cohorts attempt to form up at the rear of the disintegrating ones. File upon file raced forward, slotting into position in a wave effect; the fifth braced at ninety degrees against the backs of the fourth, and the seventh onto the third. But security only comes from those secure in themselves; this was not now the case. Death flowed freely through the legion and each man could feel its breath; eyes started to look nervously around rather than stay fixed to the front. Strict silence in the ranks was replaced by nervous enquiries as to the situation; old lags were asked their opinion and confirmed that they had been in far worse predicaments many a time but the tones of their voices were not convincing. Centurions started to look over their shoulders, looking for messengers with orders to begin the retreat; but none were forthcoming.
And then the dam burst: the first and the second cohorts could take no more; indeed, there were very few of them left to take anything at all, and those there were turned and fled. They crashed into their brothers forming behind; files opened to let them through ensuring the fresher cohorts were not swept away in the panic. Through these passages the fugitives ran, chased by their tormentors pressing them close. So close they pressed that the files did not close up in time and the Iceni penetrated the cohorts that were meant to hold them back with the ease and abandonment that Decianus’ men had breached the bodies of their Queen’s daughters; in they pushed, forcing themselves deeper, their weapons working constantly, blood spurting from the great gashes they hewed as more thrust in behind them, ever swelling their number and widening the passages as their sides were cleaved away, falling fouled by the slime of their own gore, faeces and urine so that cohesion entirely failed as the first warriors exploded out the other side.
In less than a tenth of the number of heartbeats, the nine hundred and sixty men of the fifth and seventh cohorts were either killed or swept away as the units were ravaged and left for dead; the Iceni were now fully within the hollow square and the same fate awaited the rest of the legion. To either side of them the warriors could see nothing but the backs of legionaries and the sight gave yet more heat to their lust for blood; as the rear ranks of legionaries began to turn, without any orders being issued, they set about them with a brutal efficiency so that they received hardly any strokes in return.
And their Queen joined them, standing tall in her chariot,
arms raised, holding a bloodied spear that sheened in the sun, and beside her came her daughters, on foot and armed with long knives, attended by Myrddin and a dozen of his order. With them came an atmosphere: a fear, a cold dread that Vespasian had felt before and, even though he was three hundred paces away, he instinctively pulled his mount back as did Magnus, Cerialis and all the legionary cavalry behind them. They watched as the daughters prowled alongside their mother, roving about the fallen and upon finding legionaries, wounded but conscious, the druids would cut their armour from them as they screamed, futilely, for mercy; with eyes burning with revenge and to the accompaniment of druidical incantations the three girls harvested hearts, pulling them still pulsing from the chest cavities of shrieking men whose last moments were filled with the creeping terror instilled by the power of Myrddin and the abject horror of being slit open and feeling a hand inserted to rip out their hearts. As each victim’s eyes faded, their last image was of their own blood falling towards them squeezed from that precious organ.
Now it was over; the four rear cohorts who had yet to be engaged could stand and watch no longer the massacre of their fellows nor could they bear the slow, steady advance of Myrddin and the druids of whom so many tales had been told, all of which had lodged within their superstitious minds. Ignoring the mantra that had been instilled in them since the first day of their training, as youths of sixteen or seventeen, that strength lies in solidarity, they broke and they ran, casting aside their shields and pila and thinking of nought but their own safety, which, in their stupidity, they had now put in the gravest peril. Their officers could do nothing, neither threaten, plead nor appeal to their loyalty or sense of pride, and rather than face the ignominy of seeking the Ferryman with a wound to the back many of the centurions, optiones, standard-bearers and steadier old lags chose to hurl themselves at the enemy preying upon their comrades up ahead.
The Furies of Rome Page 28