Arthur Britannicus

by Paul Bannister

  During the night, the warriors of Britain had also been moving into place, marching west down the high road from Dover to meet the enemy encamped on the sweeping shingle beach at Dungeness. Their cavalry scouts along the white cliffs could see more Romans sailing in mid-strait, angling towards the port at Lympne. Soon, after the invaders’ reconnaissance vessels had surveyed the defences and scurried back to the main fleet, the flotilla changed direction and, sailing parallel to the shore, headed west for the landing ground their comrades had occupied.

  Carausius and his general staff trotted their horses onto a small bluff above the shingle to the east of the Roman beach head. From his vantage point, the war lord in his purple cloak surveyed the terrain. This was where he’d had his cavalry commander choose a site, and it had been carefully described to him. A ragged man was brought forward to the circle of officers. “This, lord, is a cattle drover who knows these marshes,” explained the tribune Cragus, "and he has shown my scouts a path through the wetlands a mile or more over there.” The emperor nodded. ‘Give him gold and keep him close. He is not to leave until this battle is over.”

  He turned to the equestrian who had chosen the site. “Where did you put them?” The horseman pointed out the markers he’d left, rocks piled in groupings. Carausius looked and nodded. “Excellent.” He held out his hand to congratulate the soldier, and they grasped wrists, shaking with conspiratorial grins like mischievous schoolboys. The emperor was delighted with the dispositions and showed it. Carausius’ specific, detailed instructions to his cavalry commander had urged the man to choose a place like this with care, and he had chosen well.

  What the emperor was viewing around the beach head of the encamped Romans was a sweeping bay. It ended in a low headland to the south before the land turned west into the next big bay. The inverted triangle of the promontory contained along its eastern edge one of the world’s largest swathes of shingle where the Romans held their beach head. Tucked inside the triangle was a vast marshland almost impassable to man or beast. Further west, the marsh ran down to the sea on the other side of the headland, meaning that the Romans had chosen to camp with reedy marsh on two sides and the strait on the third. The Britons stood astride the invaders’ only feasible land route out. The confrontation would come and the battle would be fought along the wide, firm strip to the Romans’ east, between marsh and sea. Behind the British defenders was the road to Dover.

  The emperor set his sappers to work. They began digging deep pits about 20 feet apart and drove sharpened stakes and short-shafted spears, points upright, into the bottoms of the holes. No cavalry could cross those works. The Britons’ left flank was guarded by the strait, their right flank ended at the marsh, and there, in the reedy shallows, the cavalry commander had under cover of darkness emptied the contents of the baggage mules’ leather sacks. Hundreds of coltrops, horse-crippling, four-pointed spikes were concealed under the surface of the muddied water. Infantry would be slowed and too vulnerable to the archers if they tried to plunge through the mud and water, but cavalry could be used to try to turn the flank there. Now, a hidden spiked barrier marked with rocks whose significance was known only to the British awaited any flanking cavalry.

  Another surprise was in store for the invaders. Concealed behind the reverse slope of a line of dunes that stretched behind the Britons’ rear, a vast flood of the barons and jarls of Britain who had answered the emperor’s call was arriving. They had come from their halls and fortresses in the meadows and moors of their country to repel the Romans, and they had brought the weapons used two centuries before by their great queen Boadicea. Gathering quickly, and still hidden behind the dunes were rank upon rank of the terrible war chariots of the Britons’ ancestors, called to duty one more time to save the country from the ancient enemy.

  Carausius paused in his anxious reconsideration of his deployments as he thought of those chariots so vital to his plans. Could they, would they carry out the task he’d set them? It was with the gods, he thought. At the same moment, on one of the rock piles that marked a limit of the cavalry trap, a white rat groomed its whiskers, and at an ancient shrine three miles away, the priestess Guinevia was sacrificing a lamb to the witch goddess Nicevenn.

  The Romans had investigated the harbour at Lympne and found it barred to them by the log boom and the waiting ballistae. Maximian’s signal officers each took his red woollen flags, and following the book, waved two-handed the codes that turned the fleet west to join Constantius. It would have to be a beach landing, but the sea was calmer, so the operation was feasible. The emperor sent word back by bireme to Bononia to send on the cavalry, but to leave the siege engines behind for now. The blue sails of the Roman invasion fleet headed steadily west.

  Carausius’ tribunes oversaw the dispositions as they chivvied their troops into line. On this overcast day, there was no sun behind them to dazzle the Romans, as the military manuals advised in choosing a position, but the wind at least was favourable, sending dust towards the enemy. In the battle lines, behind the deep-dug pits, each man had three feet of space; each rank was six feet apart. Carausius, resplendent in his war gear, ordered a century of 80 picked men to stay with him and the Eagle standards of the legions.

  He and the elite red-chevroned guard who had uncovered the lost Eagle would be front and centre of the line, at the place where the fighting would be bloodiest, for the enemy would want to capture the vaunted standards and it was the place of honour. If the battle went badly, it was also the place of most danger, but the big emperor knew his purple crest, his Eagle standards, his new linen flag with its bear emblem would stand proudly. His silver jarl’s badge of office marked him as a feared lord of war and his men would take confidence from those symbols. Privately, he knew that every tiny advantage was desperately important. The Romans were a fearsome enemy, and this land battle would be his most difficult ever. He had the advantage of fighting from behind defences, but his forces would be well outnumbered. It was, he thought grimly, a time to look at the sky and ask the gods for help. By the end of the day, he might well be in chains, dead or hanging from a crucifix. This was one battle he could not afford to lose, for himself or for his country.

  Carausius glanced again at the clouded sky, wondering again how many more days or mere hours he had left in this life, then shrugged aside his pessimism; time to wonder about all that after the battle. For now, he had much to do. He called to a tribune and instructed him to ensure that certain centurions had specific orders about moving men to allow the chariots through and when to do it. The wings of the line were secured by the sea and the marsh, the centre was reinforced with pits and stakes. The tribunes had mustered a reserve infantry force behind the dunes with the hidden chariots and another force was dispatched under Cragus with the cattle drover to guide their way through the marshes. A path there would bring them out behind the Romans’ rear, the drover had assured them. Cragus vowed to gut the man himself if he lied.

  Carausius knew he stood at the hinge of history, when a new nation could create its own future. The Britons had come together as never before to resist an invader, and here was the flower of Britain’s nobility facing the power of Rome. One or other army must be broken on a lonely stretch of shingle along the southern shore of the misty northern island.

  Behind the dunes, the long-moustached warrior barons from the fastnesses of Britain were gathered in front of their chariots, arranged in a half circle around a small woman. The sorceress Guinevia was calling on her witch goddess. “The hellequin Nicevenn leads the Wild Hunt that drives the damned to Hades each year, on the night of Samhain,” she told them. “I am her adept, she gives me power. I am also the disciple of Myrddin, who was born of a demon and a king’s daughter, and is earthlord of the sea god Mannanan mac Lir. They have embraced me with magic and the power of our British gods.” She gestured slowly, pointing her finger upwards and circling it. A small vapour cloud had formed above her, at twice the height of a tall man. The armed warriors stirred uneasily.r />
  Guinevia lowered her pointing hand. For a moment, not one of the hundreds of men or horses made a single small sound. Into that silence, as shocking as a thunderclap, Guinevia bellowed. Her voice had become harsh and gravelled, a tone that seemed to echo from the caverns of the Underworld itself. The warriors shifted uneasily and their ponies stamped and snorted as the witch’s tones carried across the dunes. ”I call on Nicevenn and her mounted ghouls to ride with us this day. I call on her to bring dead Boadicea and her spirit charioteers to defend Britain once again as she did with justice before. I call on Nicevenn to claim the souls of these invaders and to take them as her playthings into the deepest pit of torment and to preserve our British warriors while they carry out this task with their emperor.”

  The charioteers, awed and uncertain, stood mute as the words died away. A whirl of wind gusted, spinning a slender spiral of dust across the open end of the half-moon of awestruck, on-looking men. Guinevia broke the spell. “Look,” she said simply, in her accustomed voice. “The goddess has heard us. Now go, and make these extortionists regret they ever heard of our land. Make them pay with their blood.”

  The first of Maximian’s reinforcing fleet was easing into the shallows, a heartening sight for the encamped Romans. Two or three at a time, the ships crunched ashore, grinding the pebbly shore under their keels. Men handed down shields and bundles of arrows, spears and other war gear to waiting comrades, then spilled over the sides to wade ashore. Offshore, standing to in the tidal calm of slack water, dozens more of the invasion fleet lined up to disembark their cargoes and men.

  An alert ensign saw the danger first as they emerged from a line of low-lying haze. From the east, running before the wind like wild geese, came the British fleet, sails stretched as outspread wings, oar blades flashing rhythmically to the boom of drums, a white feather of foam at the foot of each bow. They raced down the strait like wolves on a sheep fold, and they tore into the lines of the Roman ships, ramming them with their iron-bound prows of oak even as the stalled, hove-to barges tried to up sail and turn away. From the British warships poured volleys of darts, fire arrows and javelins, all thudding into the waists of the invaders’ vessels, as archers and soldiers fired down from the fighting towers.

  The civilian master mariners from Egypt and Phoenicia, from Greece and Dalmatia who worked the Roman fleet were panicked. Some turned their vessels downwind to escape, unaware that the swirling waters off the promontory concealed ship-killing ridges of rock. Others, sometimes forced at sword-point by their Roman officers, slammed their vessels onto the beach, spilling men and equipment into the shallows. Still more were simply sunk where they were rammed, their clinkered pine hulls fragile against the oaken ribs and iron-bound carvel planking of the British ships. In a half hour, it was over. Some of the invasion fleet was grounded on the beach, some was mere flotsam; the others were foundering in the sea race off the promontory.

  XXXIV. Dungeness

  On shore, centurions under ever more frantic orders from the despairing beachmaster were battling to restore order from the chaos of men and piles of gear scrambled onto land. Soldiers from the first expedition were wading out to help their comrades ashore when the warning shouts began and they turned to struggle to dry land again, to find weapons and meet the thunderbolt that had erupted through the British lines. A hundred or more war chariots were racing across the firm shingle, axle to axle, charioteers crouched over the reins, flogging their wild-eyed ponies into frenzies of speed. The Romans ran to form ranks, but their efforts were too late. They were still grouped and bunched, struggling with armour and weapons, when the onslaught hit. At 20 paces, as they still were galloping in, the near-naked, blue-tattooed warriors alongside the drivers launched their heavy javelins, delivering them with all their power, a force boosted by the chariots’ speed. The effect was devastating.

  The chariots wheeled, their iron tires spraying shingle, and the spearmen were ready with the next volley. In moments, they were balancing surefooted down the centre shaft between the horses and had launched again, then sent a third javelin. The impact of the triple strike was like a scythe through a grain field. Dead and wounded Romans were collapsed like cornstalks after a reaper’s swathe. Before the invaders could rally themselves or bring up unwounded troops, the British warriors had leaped back onto their wheeled fighting platforms and were racing away. Constantius turned to his emperor, eyes wide. "Those fucking things haven’t been used in centuries,” he said slowly. “Where did they come from?” Maximian, teeth gritted at all the setbacks he was encountering, shook his head. “We’ll take them down when the heavy cavalry get here, that’s all. Let’s push these bastards out of the way and go and get that damned harbour.”

  For the next two hours, as harried centurions struggled to dispose their men and equipment, the chariots raced in again and again to sweep the beach head troops with their volleys, although some judiciously-planted stakes ahead of the ranks and a few companies of Roman archers did much to blunt the attacks. Finally, Maximian’s patience broke again. “Let’s move now, shove these nuisances aside and clear the way. I’m not waiting any longer. I have enough force here to do the job.”

  The trumpets and the voices of the centurions joined in a cacophony of orders, and the leading ranks of legionaries formed up in wedges, small triangular formations led by one soldier, who, protected by the shields of the comrades alongside him, spearheaded his unit into the enemy lines. The fighting wedges were designed to isolate and force the enemy into restricted positions that didn’t allow much freedom for hand to hand fighting, but was favourable to the Romans’ thrusting, stabbing attack from behind the protection of their shields.

  The legions were lined up; Maximian tapped his sword hilt for luck, then waved his ivory and gold baton of office. “Move forward!” he bellowed. His legions began their steady tramp towards the waiting Britons.

  The British tribune Quirinus was beside his emperor in the front rank with the Eagles and their elite guard when the first Roman wedge arrived. The Britons’ shields were edge to iron edge, their long spears bristled outwards at eye level. At Carausius’ nod, he gave the orders. “Stand by, stand by!” he bellowed. “Now!!” In a disciplined movement the Britons made their spears vertical and raised their shields into the tortoise defence of the testudo. Almost at once, the hail of javelins hurled by the Romans rattled onto the armoured carapace, as Quirinus had expected and countered. “Again!” he bellowed as the second volley beat down on them. “Spears … now!”

  As he had trained them, the rear ranks of his troops dropped their shields and hurled their javelins and heavy darts over their comrades and into the oncoming Romans, many of whom had lowered their shields so they could dispatch their own missiles. “Spears!” Quirinus bellowed again, and a second volley thumped into the Romans as they stumbled over their own dead and wounded.

  Already, the first Romans were mere paces away from the death pits dug in front of the British ranks. They began swerving aside, breaking formation, as they were forced to funnel themselves into the narrow gaps between the pits. The cohesion of their shield wall crumbled. Men jostled each other desperately to avoid a fall onto the sharpened stakes and gaps opened in the shield wall. Quirinus bellowed the command again. “Spears! Darts!” Again, the rear ranks poured iron death from the sky and the Roman wounded and dying formed mounds of bloodied, moaning men that obstructed their comrades, but still they came on. Now they were slower and slower as some pushed over their fallen comrades, and others broke ranks to drag them back, out of the way.

  Volleys of heavy javelins, darts and the weighted, three-bladed arrows of the Britons slashed and hammered into the Roman ranks. Legionaries were crumpling where they stood, unable even to fall backwards for the press of troops behind them. The sheer weight of oncoming soldiers forced the front ranks into the outnumbered British, and the defenders began to flinch away. Carausius waved the signal for the catapults to fire, and blazing buckets of pitch arced up and then down
to splash across the Roman ranks.

  Some legionaries fell, but snarling officers goaded and swore their men onwards, and the great phalanx of armour moved forward through the clouds of choking, dense smoke. The left wing of the Britons fell back and the Romans along the shoreline were through the blocking line of death pits. In minutes, Carausius knew, his line would crumple and be rolled up from that side. He bellowed new orders and imprecations, and the elite guard with their proud red chevrons that were testaments to their role as guardians of the sacred lost Eagle stepped forward with him and their standards into the heaving mass of the oncoming enemy.

  The Britons were maddened with battle rage, each oblivious of his own safety and confident in the shield comrade who protected his right side. The unexpected surge pushed the Romans back, and the emboldened Britons began hacking and thrusting with new energy in the corpse-congested gap between two of the death pits.

  Inch by inch, the Britons heaved the oncoming legionaries back, and regained their lost line and the defensive pits. Carausius and the Eagles’ guard stepped aside as a rush of troops flooded back to assist, then his attention was caught by a courier. On the Roman left, the invaders were now gaining, battering the British line into submission. The emperor scanned the flank. It seemed inevitable; the British line was flanked and would surely be collapsed. Carausius turned his battered elite and his Eagles and scrambled them to the almost-surrounded ranks before they broke. He was barely in time. The big, scarred warrior king led the counter attack, hewing with Exalter over the shield wall, forcing his opponents back pace by pace. He cleared the enemy from the blood-slick gap between two pits and the Britons pushed their dead and dying enemies into them, making space to take up their stations again.

  After that small gain, the next gap was cleared as the front ranks of the legion fell back in formation, and then the next, and the next reopened, too. The moment was right for Carausius’ secret weapon again. He nodded to his tribune and made a gesture to the rear. Quirinus bellowed his pre-set commands, and the British arrays parted in the strategy the centurions had agreed. At the dead run, chariots raced into the just-cleared spaces, and crashed into the front ranks of the Romans. This time, the Roman ranks did not have the chariot-baffling stakes in place, but it still looked like a losing sacrifice, giving up the flimsy chariots for one small gain.