Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  It wasn’t so much a camp as more people than she’d thought were in the whole world spread out across the wide, denuded plain. There had still been a few clusters of trees when they’d first found the Helvan camp, but these had been cut down overnight. The cook fires were so numerous that it looked as if the land had sucked down all the stars. Thousands of tiny smoke tendrils merged into a large, low cloud, pink in the sun’s first rays. Atlas started talking about the need to leave some trees standing and generally manage the consumption of resources and Chamanca yawned all the more.

  The wooded hill which hid Labienus’ two legions of merciless killers rose out of the plain to the north like a formori’s head out of a lake. There was no sign of the occupation. The Romans, Bel curse them, were far too disciplined to light cook fires or make any other giveaway signs.

  Atlas was certain that the hidden soldiers wouldn’t attack unless Caesar’s force did, and that Caesar’s attack wouldn’t happen if Considius had done what he was told, and if Caesar had believed him. Carden, showing surprising insight, had said that Considius could have been faking his affection for the soldier, to trick Atlas into doing exactly what he’d done. Atlas had insisted that that was nonsense, but Chamanca could see that the idea had rattled him a little. Chamanca also thought it likely that Caesar would send scouts to verify Considius’ tale, but there was no point in mentioning it because there was nothing more that they could do. If the Romans did attack, the three Maidunites would have to try their best to arrange some sort of Helvan response to the force on the hill.

  When they reached the tents, the Helvans were up and striking camp with hasty purpose, abuzz with the excitement of travel. It looked like their scheme had worked. The Romans should have attacked already if they were going to, since soon the Helvans would be on their way.

  By the time they found the people they’d befriended the day before, next to the ancient circle of stones where they’d left them, Atlas was sure that it was too late for the Romans to attack. He asked if they could travel on one of their ox-carts. The Helvans insisted it would be an honour to have such fine Warriors aboard their humble conveyance. Despite their military shortcomings and their own hardships on the long march, the Helvans that they’d met had been generous and welcoming.

  After telling the Helvans to wake them if the Romans did launch a late attack, they climbed up into the cart. Sleep was the only plan.

  Chamanca woke briefly when the cart jerked to a start. Atlas and Carden were snoring. The sun was still low but already warm. Cart creaks, animal snorts and the children’s laughter filled the air. The Helvans were streaming peacefully westwards. The Romans hadn’t attacked. She put her head back down and was asleep within a few heartbeats.

  She woke, by the position of the sun, in the middle of the afternoon. The cart had stopped. Atlas and Carden were still asleep. She stood. The cart was at the top of one side of a large, gently sloping valley.

  “Fenn’s piss,” she said. Something had gone very wrong.

  On the opposite slope were four Roman legions, twenty thousand men, arrayed in three rows. Iron helmets and gold eagle standards shone, banners flapped and rectangular shields rested on the ground in a faultless battle line. Near the top of the far side of the valley, two more Roman legions formed tidy squares.

  The slope directly below them and the bottom of the valley was thick with Helvans charging towards the Romans. There were many, many more Helvans than Romans, but their attack was wholly chaotic. They were piling towards the enemy like a crowd of children let go by their parents on the edge of a fair. Some were walking, weighed down by heavy weapons, but most were running. The last part of their attack was uphill, so the younger and fitter and the few that were on horseback sped ahead of the others, futher thinning the attack.

  The Romans waited for them.

  An elderly, heavy-arsed Helvan woman came waddling past.

  “What’s going on?” asked Chamanca.

  The woman started, looked about everywhere before finally spotting Chamanca up on the cart. She put her hands on her hips. “You gave me a fright! Why aren’t you with them? You should be attacking! We’re going to crush those bastard Romans. I’d be in the front line if it wasn’t for my knees. Go on, hurry on down the hill or there won’t be any left for you to kill! A fit young woman like you lazing about up here. It’s a shame.” She shook her head.

  “What happened to the migration? Why aren’t we heading west?”

  “Where have you been all day? We changed direction first thing to follow the Romans. The cowards are retreating south. We’ve caught them and we’re going to have our revenge before they reach safety. We’ll teach them a lesson for killing our children at Suconna River! My daughters have promised to bring me one alive. I’m going to cook him slowly. Now, stop your chin-wagging and get down there before the fight’s over!” The woman waggled a finger at her then waddled away.

  Chamanca woke Atlas and Carden. They stood and watched as the wailing Helvan charge reached the Roman front line. There was a rippling, crunching sound, then a few yells, then the dreadful harmony of hundreds of people screaming in pain. The Roman line didn’t budge a footstep. The rush of the Helvan attack dissolved like water chucked at a red-hot forge. Their dead and wounded piled up. Chamanca couldn’t see from her valley-side perch, but she pictured them lying in piles, immobile and dying, eviscerated by those wicked Roman swords.

  “The fools,” said Atlas.

  “Should we get down there?” Carden asked.

  “We should not. We’d be killed, too.” Atlas stood, hands on hips. He was in his customary dark green tartan trousers and leather jerkin. Sworl-decorated iron bands encased each wide forearm, and his dung-brown skin was shiny on biceps wider than a slim woman’s thighs. His matted hair draped lumpen and immobile despite the stiff breeze, and the edges of his axe shone in the high sun. He looked good. Chamanca could almost see the aura of heroism surrounding him, which she thought was pretty impressive for a man who’d just declined to join a battle.

  The Roman line advanced. The masses of Helvans swirled. Some fled, some threw themselves at the enemy as individually and ineffectively as before. Where there were lulls in the Helvan attack, parts of the Roman front line swapped with the fresh second line. It looked like the third Roman line’s role was to spectate.

  Steadily, the Romans walked over the Helvan army like a line of scythers through a wheat field. On they came, a hundred paces forwards, two hundred paces. Fleeing Helvans, many with bloodied wounds, ran up the hill and passed the cart that Chamanca, Carden and Atlas were watching from. At first it was just a few, then it was a multitude, crying the laments of the defeated:

  “Flee! Flee!”

  “Save your lives!”

  “The devils can’t be killed!”

  Atlas shook his head. “Come on, this is over. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” said Chamanca. Along the valley to the east, not yet seen by the Romans, another mass of Helvans was approaching. They were jogging in an organised line. There were a lot of them, matching the Romans for numbers. If they were well commanded, and it looked by their good order like they were, then the battle was far from lost.

  “All right, let’s hold for a moment,” said Atlas. The trumpets of the new force blared a rattling blast. All the hairs on Chamanca’s body stood on end. As one, the entire battlefield looked up and saw the newcomers from the east. There was a pause that felt like a stone thrown straight upwards reaching its zenith, then everything changed.

  The Helvan retreat held, coalesced, reversed and became a new, huge attack on the Roman line. It was by accident rather than design, but for the first time the attack was unified. For the first time, the Romans took a few paces back. In places the Helvans breached the wall of Roman shields. Not for long: the Romans quickly hacked them down and closed the gaps, but it was a start, and more and more gaps were opening in the Roman shield wall. Legionaries were dying in significant numbers.

  “Let’
s join them,” said Carden, reaching for his sword.

  “Yes. Come on!” Chamanca tightened the thong on her leather shorts.

  “Wait,” said Atlas. “Hold a few heartbeats.”

  “No!” Carden protested, “the time is now. If we can rally a couple of hundred, we can punch through—”

  “I see your point, but humour me and wait and watch for twenty heartbeats. If you still think we should join the attack after that, I will be at your side.”

  Carden looked like he was about to leap from the cart, then said, “All right then,” and relaxed. Chamanca tilted her head to each shoulder, loosening her neck, and lifted her arms above her head. It was always good to stretch before a fight and she had twenty heartbeats to fill.

  Below them, the third line of Romans was swinging round from its position behind the second line. Smoothly as liquid metal poured into a mould, it reformed on a perpendicular front in faultless ranks, ready to face the threat from the east. In perfect synchronicity, a volley of pilums whooshed up from the new Roman line.

  The vanguard of the new Helvan attack faltered under the hail of spears, but still came on in reasonable order. The Romans waited behind their shields. The Helvans hit them. The Roman line held firm, then advanced, swords stabbing and chopping. The majority of the foremost Helvans turned to run, but they were hampered by their advancing siblings in arms and all was confusion. The Roman war machine rolled over them, dying Helvans and blood-soaked soil in its wake.

  The newly enlivened attack on the original front had also fragmented from a united, punching fist into disparate, fleeing fingers. By the end of Atlas’ twenty heartbeats both Helvan attacks had become retreats, perhaps a thousand Helvans had died, and the Romans were advancing again, now on two fronts.

  “Fuck,” said Carden.

  “Yes,” agreed Atlas, “let’s head north and see if we can find stiffer resistance. Now I’ve seen them fight, I’m more convinced than ever that we must stop this army from reaching Britain.”

  “Britain is screwed,” said Carden.

  Atlas shook his head. “No. It will need a lot of work, but Lowa can beat that army.”

  “You really think so?” asked Chamanca.

  Atlas looked less sure. “With a lot of work, and some luck. That is assuming that the Roman force doesn’t grow and doesn’t contain any powerful elements that we don’t know about.”

  Chamanca took a last look at the rampaging but still ordered Romans. She could not imagine any scenario in which any British army would defeat them. Worse, though, she had a strange feeling that there was more to the Roman army than they’d seen so far.

  Chapter 5

  “Sell the attractive women, the strongest men and any appealing children to the slavers. Give the rest to Felix,” said Caesar.

  “Julius, is that wise?” While others would prevaricate and mince words with Caesar, his right-hand man Labienus spoke his mind. “Even if I ask the men to be loose with their definitions of attractive, strong and appealing, I’ll still hand Felix more than ten thousand Helvetians. You gave him that many after Suconna River. None were left alive a week later.”

  “What he does with them is his decision.”

  “They may be barbarians, Julius, but so many—”

  Labienus was halted by a look. “Felix is working for me,” said Caesar, “for the benefit of all Romans and the Empire. He is to be afforded a free hand.”

  “Indeed, Julius, but the men are talking. There is much murmuring about Felix’s mysterious activities, and the strange legionaries who do his bidding. A good many are claiming that Felix is using dark magic to create monsters.”

  “Oh, for the love of Jupiter, can’t the centurions drum their bucolic superstition out of them?”

  It was Labienus’ turn to give Caesar a look. “Sir, we both know that their fears aren’t entirely superstition, bucolic or otherwise. I’m certain that you allow Felix’s activities because they benefit Rome, but perhaps we should keep his business and his people away from the men?”

  “All right, all right,” Caesar shook his head. “Give the prisoners to Felix. I will tell him to keep his activities out of sight and out of mind. And you, Labienus, will find these agents who persuaded Publius Considius to lie to me.”

  Labienus coloured. “Of course.”

  “I cannot understand why you sent only one messenger from the hill. If it weren’t for yesterday’s victory I’d be taking a dimmer view of your failure. I might have become very cross, if you get my drift.”

  “I followed standard procedure. Crucifixion would hardly be—”

  “No, no, you’re right. But don’t let standard procedure get in the way of common sense again. You may go. Ragnall?”

  Labienus left and Ragnall Sheeplord, sitting at the scribes’ bench where he’d been pretending not to listen to the conversation, looked up from his scroll. “Sir?”

  “Follow me, with the usual.” Caesar swept from the large tent without a backward glance. Ragnall grabbed the bag containing the bedroll and standard legionary’s morning rations and ran outside after the general.

  It was coming to the end of the fourth night watch, shortly before dawn. In the peaceful air he could hear the screams of Publius Considius from the far side of the camp. Ragnall had never seen Caesar more angry than when he’d found out that Titus Labienus had been in position above the Helvetians and that Considius had lied to him. They’d caught the hapless Considius trying to escape on a donkey, dressed as a woman. It wasn’t a clever disguise in an army entirely comprised of men. The dissembling messenger had been keeping Caesar’s torturers busy ever since.

  Caesar paid the noise no heed, striding away so purposefully that Ragnall had to half run to keep up. Approaching his forty-second birthday, the general’s hairline was in full retreat, but his wiry, fat-free frame quivered with apparently limitless energy. Ragnall wasn’t sure whether the man’s vivacity was the cause of his desire to be the greatest general in history, or caused by it. Whatever it was, Caesar was obsessed with military achievement. He was incensed that Alexander the Great had conquered the world by the age of thirty, yet his own significant martial successes to date had only numbered a few minor battles in Spain. He had much catching up to do.

  Much, perhaps even most, of Caesar’s energy was directed towards conquering Britain. The conquest of Gaul would be a stepping stone towards this. That was the initial reason he’d brought Ragnall on to his staff. Now, Ragnall liked to think that Caesar saw him as a son. That might have been pushing it a bit, but he was certainly one of the great man’s favourites and privy to a good deal that the rest of the staff were not. This did not include why Caesar was obsessed with Britain; Ragnall guessed it was simply because it hadn’t been conquered before, by Alexander, Darius or any of the greats. Then again, they hadn’t conquered Gaul either. But Gaul was well known to the Romans. Although many Roman merchants sailed there regularly, and Rome contained plenty of British slaves, many Romans still thought of Britain as a romantic, semi-mythical place. Perhaps that was why Caesar wanted it so badly? There were plenty of resources in Britain, to be sure, and sometimes Ragnall thought Caesar must have been after these, but there were plenty of resources on the more convenient side of the Channel as well.

  Ragnall also had no idea what Felix was up to, but he trusted Caesar, and if he said it would help Rome, that was good enough for Ragnall. He had long ago given up any idea of revenge against Felix, and his initial horror about the idea of Romans conquering Britain had been entirely reversed. Roman ways would make Britain so much better. And if Lowa, the woman who’d killed his family and lied to him, was destroyed in the process of introducing those ways, then so be it.

  They arrived in the clearing. Ragnall laid out the bedroll next to Caesar’s speaking platform and placed the rations next to it. The common factor in all successful Roman campaigns, Caesar had told Ragnall, was the support of Rome; not necessarily the consuls, Senate and Tribunate, but the people – the citizens
at home and the legionaries in the field. Hence the charade that he slept outside like one of the soldiers and ate the same rations. While the Senate were raging that he’d hired new legions illegally, marched them from Transalpine Gaul in breach of rules that he himself had set down as consul the year before, then massacred an entire people, the Roman man on the street would be marvelling at the humble proconsul sleeping outside and eating like a pleb.

  The citizen’s image of Caesar would partly come from tales told by legionaries returning home, and partly from Caesar’s diaries and letters, constantly written and copied by a team of scribes. Joining this writing team was Caesar’s latest idea for Ragnall’s development. “About time the barbarian learnt to write,” he’d said. Ragnall was glad. Writing and reading was perhaps the most impressive facet of the Roman way of life he’d seen so far, better even than underfloor heating in marble bathrooms. To Ragnall, the concept of recording thoughts and being able to send messages so easily was both an incredibly advanced and forehead-slappingly simple idea. He could not believe they hadn’t thought of it in Britain. Surely it was as obvious as the wheel? He was embarrassed to come from a place that couldn’t write, and all the keener to be part of the Roman invasion that would change his homeland’s benighted ways.

  The moment the sun peeked over the horizon, the thirty top centurions, five from each of the six legions that comprised the invasion force, arrived in the clearing.

  Caesar rose from his bedroll, nodded a greeting, bit into a hard bread roll and climbed on to the platform. He liked to address the centurions from an elevated position. If no natural lumps in the land were available, he’d have a platform built. Short of time, he’d sit on horseback.

  They knew as well as Ragnall did that Caesar hadn’t spent the night there, but they understood what he was trying to achieve. The more land and people they conquered, the more riches for them, so they went along with his image-boosting fabrications. They all agreed, for example, that the Roman attack on the Helvetians at Suconna had been in retaliation for atrocities against captured Romans, rather than the straightforward criminal attack that it actually was. They all agreed, too, that the Gauls had pleaded with Caesar to prevent the Helvetian migration, while the truth was that the Gauls had agreed to it years before, and the last thing they wanted was a Roman army in their lands.