‘Hawk Legion,’ he bellowed as though they were on parade and not fighting for their lives, ‘at the command, you will step two paces back, maintaining the wall. By the riiiiiiight… WITHDRAW!’
The entire shield wall thudded two steps back in perfect timing. The natives were taken somewhat by surprise at this unexpected manoeuvre and dithered momentarily. Good. Moments were all Cantex needed to change the whole fight.
‘Reform and cycle files.’
It was an almost instinctive move and took just three heartbeats to accomplish. With a thud a new set of shields locked together in a wall, fresh men from the rear, just in time to take the blows of the natives as they recovered from their surprise and stepped forward into a fresh attack. The reshuffling, practiced daily on parade grounds across the empire until it became second nature, put the fresh second line to the front and pushed the weary front line to the back, but it also allowed an automatic infill of the gaps, and the previously sporadic line went from anywhere between four and one rows deep to a constant solid three.
‘Second row,’ he bellowed as the fresh men at the front jabbed out at the enemy and held their wall tight. ‘Second row, shield roof!’
The second line of men lifted their shields and held them, slanted down at the front, covering the entire shield wall as a roof. Almost immediately the sound of missiles thudding against the leather and timber pointed to the success of the manoeuvre.
‘Captains, hold the line for now.’
Satisfied that the imperial shield wall was rejuvenated and could now hold out long enough, Cantex returned to the activity behind him. Men were busy tearing down the tents while others were piling up any timber or other combustible material they could find into a line along an imaginary border where the outer tents had previously stood.
Cantex nodded again in satisfaction. It was progressing faster than he’d expected. His eyes played across the general din, and he spotted a group of soldiers seemingly unoccupied.
‘You men.’
They looked up and saluted as he approached.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sir,’ replied a junior watch officer among the group, ‘our captain told us to tool up so we could dig or construct. I think he means to put up a fence within the outer line, sir.’
‘Drop the tools. A fence would be too slow and make little difference, and I can’t spare the manpower. Fall in at the rear of the line and relieve the wounded and exhausted.’
He watched, tense, as the work party moved across and took positions in the third row, sending the men they had replaced who so recently had been at the forefront of the fight, out into the camp.
‘You men,’ he addressed the wounded and exhausted, ‘report to the captain at the headquarters building. Well done. You’ve contained the enemy and held the camp. Now you’re in the reserves, so rest at headquarters until you’re called.’
Grateful and weary, the men shuffled off and stomped away towards the centre of the camp. Cantex looked about himself under a sky that was gradually changing hue as the morning made its presence felt. It was hard to estimate enemy numbers in the darkness, especially when at this side of the camp they were atop the bluff. Perhaps he could get a scout out there?
He glanced around until he spotted a man in the tunic and cloak of an irregular. Good. Not all the scouts had betrayed them or been silenced at the onset, then. He’d hoped that was the case. Waving, he hurried over.
The scout was a southern Alban native, drawn from one of coastal tribes when they’d landed, and lured into service on the promise of lucrative pay. He was wounded in at least three places and limped slightly.
‘You,’ Cantex said sharply. ‘Do you speak my language?’
‘Yes,’ replied the man. ‘Little.’
‘Good. Is there any way you can get out behind these bastards and work out how many there are and who they are? From what the general told me, I’m wondering if they’re Albantes from the north.’
The man frowned, presumably translating the words slowly in his head, then shook it.
‘This not Albante. This Senteri and Ibelli.’
Cantex frowned. ‘I don’t know those peoples.’
‘From east. Sea. Fen.’
‘Really?’ Cantex’s thoughts raced as his skin prickled with realisation. ‘That’s where Crito and his Raven Legion were campaigning. Damn it, if this lot have overrun the Raven Legion and still have enough men to come for us we could be in real trouble. Shit.’ And if they hadn’t overcome the Raven Legion, then what were they doing here? He was aware that the scout was still watching him, confused and trying to translate his words at speed. He ignored the man.
‘The general thought our scouts and pickets might have sold us out through some connection with Senator Rufus, but it would seem to be something entirely different. Perhaps if they’ve already dealt with the Raven Legion they knew enough about us to overcome the scouts and pickets swiftly and silently.’
Cantex shivered. Something was very, very wrong here. An arrow from the west – from General Volentius’ theatre of war had taken the general amid an attack by a tribe that should not be here – a tribe from the region where General Crito was supposedly campaigning. If only Convocus was here with his quick wits. If Volentius was capable of sending assassins, was Crito above the same?
‘You want I go?’ urged the scout.
Cantex looked up at the figures on the bluff, undecided. There was precious little chance the man could get out past the enemy, even with the aid of the darkness. The legion was entirely surrounded, albeit that they had maintained a safe line with the natives held at bay beyond the river and soon here by fire.
As if his thoughts were the trigger for it, the nearest section of men approached with small jars of pitch and torches. ‘Ready, sir?’
He motioned to the scout. ‘You’ll never make it, and soon it will be light and we’ll know what we’re facing anyway. Make your way to the headquarters and join the reserves at the medical tent.’ He then turned to the men with the torches, noting that other such groups were forming all along the line even as their comrades continued to heave things into the barricade. Fifty paces or so away, half a dozen men were dismantling a cart with picks, while others were ferrying the broken timbers to the fire site.
‘Wait until the line pulls back this side of it, but the moment the last heel crosses, get it lit.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He looked up and down the line and once he felt confident that the defence would be solid and men were ready to ignite the whole length, he cleared his throat.
‘On the command, the entire formation will withdraw at pace to my position. Be sharp, as any man who falls will be left behind, and watch underfoot for obstacles. Ready… WITHDRAW!’
As one continuous unit, the defensive shield wall, all along the line of the escarpment, stepped back, and again, and again, and again. Their heels met the new obstacle, and yet they stepped over the piles of timber and cloth, grain and grass, cloaks and tent material, feeling the sticky mess of the pitch on the soles of their boots.
Here and there, inevitably, men fell, either to wounds from the pursuing tribesmen, or through stumbling over the dreadful obstacle. Cantex closed his eyes for a moment. It went against everything he believed to sacrifice men, but there was simply no choice. They had to get the obstacle lit or the enemy would be across and it would be too late.
‘Light it,’ he yelled.
From one arm of the encircling arc of river to the other, where the bluff formed the remaining side, men thrust burning torches into the pitch-soaked wreckage. Coated with the thick, highly-flammable pitch, the entire obstacle burst into fiery life, throwing up bright yellow-orange flames along its length and returning the sky by comparison to the deep black of night.
The enemy howled in frustration, but Cantex cared little for them. What he was sure would fill his dreams to his very last day were the cries of those imperial soldiers he doomed one way or another. Some
had been brought down or were too slow to cross the defence in time and he could hear their cries for mercy as they were butchered by the frustrated and enraged natives hidden by the wall of flames.
They were the lucky ones.
The poor few who had been felled while crossing the barrier were incinerated, the sticky pitch clinging to their bodies as it burned them. A few men managed to leap free into the safety of the camp, where they rolled around, beating at the flames that contorted and seared their flesh.
The smell of roasting meat filled the air, and Cantex was fairly sure it would be the only thing he would be able to smell for the rest of his life.
The wide eyed, breathless soldiers, still shaking from the ordeal of the withdrawal, formed up facing the flames and the thwarted enemy beyond, their captains giving them shouts of encouragement. Cantex took a couple of steps back and watched in astonished horror as one of the natives tried to cross the barrier, an axe held in both hands above his head. He leapt, screaming, through the conflagration, but the pitch and the roaring flames did for him. By the time he crossed the boundary into the camp he was ablaze, and his howls of battle-lust had become screams of pain.
Here and there along the line there were similar incidents, but the enemy quickly learned to hold back from the dancing fire, and peered across the blazing barrier at the soldiers, who heaved sighs of relief inside the camp.
‘That’ll hold them for a while,’ Cantex sighed. ‘Scour the camp for more combustible material. Take whatever you have to, but keep that fire burning as long as you can.’ He looked up, paused and let his eyes adjust. The sky was distinctly lighter now, once he’d shaken off the glare of the fire. Dawn was only a short time away. What would the morning bring? he wondered.
Chapter 15
The sun had been up perhaps two hours, clear of the horizon and promising a glorious day on which to meet a grisly death, when the tilt of the battle changed. It was heralded, as is often the case, by a piece of seemingly-innocuous news. One of the men scurrying around the camp had approached Cantex to inform him that they had burned all the soldiers’ tents and he sought permission to take down the officers’ housing and the headquarters to fuel the fires. It was a question delivered in a quiet, tense, professional manner, but the meaning beneath was clear and chilling.
We have now burned everything we can and are scrabbling around desperately for the last scraps of fuel.
The fires were low.
And with the sunshine, the tribune’s question as to numbers had been answered. Aware that their missiles from the top of the escarpment could no longer reach the imperial lines, the natives had stopped throwing things and had descended en-masse to stand on the lower ground on the far side of the fire, waiting for the inevitable. That had given Cantex plenty of time to count.
Somewhere in the region of three to four thousand hovered beyond the flames. A smaller number of men than the legion, for sure, even with the losses they had taken. But the legion was tired and nervous, and still had to divide its number, with all possible missile troops facing the other force of natives across the river and a reserve held ready to plug the gaps. So while the legion nominally outnumbered the force at the escarpment, in actuality they were outnumbered there by at least two men to one.
Now the fires were burning low. For hours the imperial soldiers had been barely able to see the enemy through the blaze. Now they were merely looking over the top of the fire at the eager natives beyond.
‘Be ready,’ he murmured to the captain who stood next to him.
The officer’s reply was drowned out by the blast of a native war horn.
‘That can’t be good,’ Cantex said under his breath. Yet as he watched, there was no movement from the men beyond the fire. Tense, expectant, the tribune felt the time passing with every pulse of his blood until sudden desperate calls went up from imperial musicians at the far side of the camp.
‘Damn it. They’re crossing the river in force. That means the reserves will have been committed. We’re on our own here.’
The captain nodded and cleared his throat before shouting. ‘They’ll come any time now, lads. Brace your legs and keep your shields steady. Second and third ranks add your weight to your friends.’
All along the line, the shield wall shuffled, boards clacking into place and men grunting as they settled into position, preparing to repel a rabid enemy.
They came sporadically at first. A native warrior a few hundred paces north of Cantex’s position leapt through the flames. When he landed on the imperial side, unharmed bar a little singeing, he was so surprised at his success that he wavered in confusion and the nearest man drove a blade into him before he could recover.
The next man was less unbalanced and landed howling, sword out and ready. He was still dispatched with relative ease by the nearest men, feeling three blades enter his torso at once. The third native within the tribune’s sight to try and cross the conflagration slipped and fell into the embers, screaming as he caught light. His slow, painful demise did nothing to deter his companions, and a moment later half a dozen men leapt through the flames, then a dozen, and then the entire mass was coming.
Cantex watched as the work of efficient butchery that was the practiced skill of imperial soldiers began. The shield wall braced and took the initial charge solidly, then, at individual unit commands, sections of it would tilt their shields slightly, opening up tiny gaps in the wall from which blades would lance, jabbing into the enemy.
The enemy began to fall to imperial steel, but the signs of coming defeat were already beginning to show along the imperial line.
The men were exhausted. The relentless pace north on meagre rations and insufficient sleep in between had taken its toll, and while a legion on campaign should be capable of fighting a battle at the end of a day’s march, these men had been pushed to the limits of their endurance by the general’s desire to press north. They had then spent the night awake, either fighting or watching the enemy nervously, and now they were flagging even though they knew their lives depended upon every ounce of strength they could give.
The line broke away to the right, and a small knot of the enemy pushed through. The shield wall was closed again with difficulty, but the interlopers went into a frenzy of killing, cutting through the rear lines like a farmer’s scythe before they were put down. Even as Cantex sighed with relief that they had been contained, another section broke further away to the north. More dangerous bulges were forming along the line.
‘Hold the wall,’ he bellowed, though he was well aware that they were already doing everything within their power.
Another horn sounded from the area of the escarpment, and the tribune felt his heart sink.
‘What now?’
‘Sir, that’s an imperial horn!’
Cantex turned a furrowed brow to the captain, but as he listened to the repeated call, it definitely carried a different tone to the last one. Moreover, though he did not recognise the melody, it bore a distinct resemblance to the Hawk Legion’s call for a charge.
His head jerked up towards the bluff, his gaze drawn by sudden movement. A huge row of men suddenly appeared at the top, mid-charge, realising only at the last moment that there was an impressive drop and not a gentle slope. A number of men fell from the edge, careening down the steep slope, while others were barged off the bluff by the weight and press of the men behind them.
The main mass came to a halt at the unanticipated drop with difficulty, more than a hundred men having gone over the edge, perhaps half of those now picking themselves up and preparing for a fight while the others floundered, concussed or nursing broken bones or sprained joints.
‘Javelins!’ bellowed a voice atop the cliff, and Cantex saw an officer in a tribune’s crest pushing to the front. The mass of imperial soldiers readied themselves, javelins raised, passed forward from behind where necessary. Within three heartbeats a cloud of missiles fell from the escarpment top, plunging into the rear of the native mass.
‘Advance,’ called the voice from the top of the bluff.
This time, prepared for the sudden descent, the imperial soldiers dropped from the top and skittered their way carefully down the incline, falling in with their friends below and immediately preparing for battle.
A great moan of dismay arose from the native warriors as they realised they were now trapped between two lines of imperial soldiers. Those towards the ends of the imperial shield walls turned and fled appropriately north or south, plunging into the river in an attempt to flee, where most were then picked off by archers. The rest fought like lions or ran like deer, the scene one of panic and confusion.
Row after row of imperial soldiers reached the escarpment and dropped down it, adding to the manpower in the fight and suddenly all tactics had gone, the fight turning into a melee. Desperate natives had forced gaps in Cantex’s lines in a bid to escape their fate, forcing the Hawk Legion’s shield wall to splinter in order to deal with the interlopers.
As things gradually devolved, not even the standards or the captains’ bellowing voices could call the legion back to order. Cantex tried to find a position where he could see better, but the whole place was now confusion. Two things that were certain, though, were that the imperial troops now seriously outnumbered the enemy, and that they were killing efficiently, while the natives were panicked and struggling to stay alive.
‘Pull the units together,’ he shouted to a nearby captain. ‘Try to regain order, or we’ll lose a lot of men in this chaos.’
Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5) Page 18