4.Conspiracy of Eagles

by S. J. A. Turney

  “Looking for my standard, sir!”

  “Don’t be bloody stupid. Just get to the beach and form up with anyone you can find, even if they’re not from the Tenth!”

  As the man turned and struggled back towards the beach, Carbo took the time to give him a clout on the back of his helmet for his idiocy.

  A mass of helmeted shapes were ploughing toward the beach. Fronto frowned as his brain told him he should be remembering something – something urgent.

  “Shit!” he dropped into the water again as the arrow hissed past him and disappeared with a splash. But as he rose from the surface once more, he realised that the arrow had been a single pot-luck shot and not part of an organised attack.

  “Why aren’t the archers shooting us?”

  “Hello sir” Carbo said, grinning as he turned.

  “I said: why aren’t they shooting us anymore?”

  In response, the centurion cupped his hand to his ear dramatically. Fronto frowned, but after a moment, he heard the twang of the ballista on board Caesar’s trireme. Ahead, there were screams on the beach.

  “Ah… got you.”

  Another dramatic ear cup at the other side, and Fronto smiled as he heard the thud of the catapult on Cicero’s trireme release its heavy stone burden. A second later, on the beach, one of the chariots suddenly spun upwards, the terrified horses still attached as the stone smashed the vehicle into the air, the warrior aboard dead before he fell back to the sand, crushed and broken.

  “This can’t hold. Let’s get to the beach before they decide to do something clever.”

  Carbo turned away and made for the sand, the water level now just above his waist.

  On the beach, something was already happening, though. The chariots had drawn up in two lines to the rear at both ends of the long beach while the cavalry, so very reminiscent of the Gallic horsemen of Caesar’s, drew up facing the sea.

  “Looks like we’re about to have company.”

  Even above the sloshing of the waves, the shouts of men and the din of ship-borne artillery, Fronto could hear the drumming thunder as the cavalry started to move, then picked up the pace, charging toward the invading force.

  Another random pot-shot arrow appeared from nowhere and glanced off Fronto’s crest-holder with a clang, disappearing into the water in a cloud of severed red horse-hair.

  Heaving a sigh of relief, the legate concentrated once more on what was happening across the open expanse of beaching waves. A wall of horseflesh, hair, skin and bronze approached as the massed ranks of the tribal riders raced across the sand and into the shallows. The barbarians, aware now of the dangers of the artillery, had kept the noble and easily-targeted chariots out of ballista reach, as well as the archers and the bulk of their warriors. But the cavalry had the speed to reach the Roman forces in the water with the minimal risk of being taken out by artillery. Moreover, their advantage in the water was clear, and the Roman artillery would cease fire at close quarters for fear of hitting their own people.

  Fronto watched with growing dismay as the native cavalry ploughed into the water, splitting into groups and making for any legionary or small number of them who had become separated and looked like easy pickings. Even as he struggled towards the nearest such group, the ballista on Caesar’s ship fired one last time, smashing into one of the horses and throwing both it and its rider back into the shallow surf; it then fell silent.

  Two legionaries and an optio were swiftly surrounded by half a dozen horsemen, their long swords rising and falling as they battered at the three men, jostling to maintain a position where they could reach. The Romans had moved back to back and their shields were raised to take the blows but their strength was ebbing fast with the sheer effort of fighting in waist deep water.

  Snarling imprecations, Fronto laboured towards them, his sword slipping from its sheath beneath the water. The three men would not last long surrounded by cavalrymen with the advantage of both height and numbers.

  The silent, oppressive void of the submarine world closed over him again as he slipped on a rock, his bad knee giving way and plunging him down into the salty, choking sea. Desperation grasped him and he let go of the shield he’d been gripping to free him a little from the weight and bulk. Despite the salty discomfort, his eyes remained open and he looked up to see his discarded shield bob to the surface, creating an oblong shadow above him.

  A memory of muttered conversations with an angry Varus over too many drinks to be truly healthy flashed into his head as he looked up from his submarine world, and his face split into a hard smile.

  He knew how to turn the tables.

  Bursting from the surface with the renewed vigour that comes with certainty of purpose, Fronto began to push and fight his way through the water toward the fracas. One of the legionaries had already taken a sword blow from the horsemen and his shield was being split into kindling with the repeated hammering as he desperately clung onto life, failing to find an opportunity to use his gladius.

  Closing on them, Fronto grinned, aware that they hadn’t seen him. At a distance of perhaps ten feet, he took a deep breath and plunged beneath the surface, scrambling along in a half-crawl, half-swim in just over three feet of water.

  A shadow fell across his strange, ethereal world just as he saw the injured legionary succumb to another blow and drop beneath the waves, clouds of dirty brown indicating the horrible extent of his wounds as the blood bloomed out of his chest and tainted the water.

  There was plenty more of that to come.

  Crouching, Fronto used the combination of his bunched muscles and the hard pebbled seabed to launch himself through the surface and straight into the horse’s underbelly. Germanic tactics. It was horrible – a dirty way to fight a war – but needs must when Caesar drives…

  His gladius plunged into the horse’s gut and ripped this way and that. Urgently, Fronto ducked to one side to avoid the writhing of the agonised animal.

  The beast screamed and tried to leap, the Celtic rider suddenly bucking from the saddle and being thrown into the water. It would have been nice to finish the bastard off, but that could come later. With gritted teeth, Fronto plunged beneath the surface, through the glowing slick of horse’s blood and sought out the next equine shadow that blotted out the sun.

  Quickly, efficiently, and with a rising distaste, Fronto located another of the Celtic riders and, aware that the swinging swords and danger of battle was taking place just above the surface, concluded he was better off remaining hidden. Closing his eyes and sending a mental apology to the poor beast, Fronto lifted his hand to just below the water’s surface and drove his gladius into the horse’s upper leg, feeling it grate off the central bone as it pushed through and out the other side.

  The horse crumpled on its bad leg and Fronto barely managed to push himself out of the way as the beast collapsed into the water almost on top of him, slipping sideways. He felt the tug as the sword was almost wrenched from his grasp with the movement and it was only through a superhuman effort that he managed to maintain his grip on the hilt as it tore free of the leg.

  Half-swimming backwards, he watched with sick fascination as the rider, tipped unceremoniously from his blanket seat by the screaming horse, found himself suddenly beneath both the waves and his crippled mount, pinned to the pebbles as the horse thrashed, grinding him to a pulp.

  Turning from the grisly scene, Fronto moved along to the next horse, repeating the unpleasant ‘gutting’ tactic of the Germanic warriors, ducking back into the water as the slick of the beast’s blood drenched him from above.

  Moving out away from all the action for a moment’s breather, he stood again, aware that the quantity of blood churning in the water was now making it almost impossible to see and that he was in as much danger of bumping into the beleaguered soldiers as he was of finding another horse to deal with.

  Two of the beasts that he’d attacked were dying already, thrashing in the water, part bleeding out and part drowning, while another
was desperately trying to reach the ‘safety’ of the beach, a constant rain of blood falling from its undercarriage to the surface of the sea. Of their unfortunate riders he could see no sign, though the pair of legionaries who had recently been fighting to preserve their own skins had now taken the initiative and were battering native warriors down into the surf with their shields as their swords rose and fell in rhythmic butchery; likely the fate of the men Fronto had unhorsed.

  The legionaries had no time to thank him for the relief, though. Two of the riders who’d been attacking them had wheeled their mounts and pounded away through the waist deep water in search of easier targets, while the last rider, now unhorsed, floundered in the waves, trying to fight off the revenging legionaries. The fight was far from over.

  The small pockets of combat had begun to spread and increase, melding together to form one great half-submerged melee, stretching from the very edge of the water, where Petrosidius fought like a man possessed, to the waist deep area, where the last men from the two Gallic vessels struggled to catch up. Two ships’ worth? Where was everyone else?

  Horses screamed as the legionaries attacked them viciously, unable to reach their riders. Soldiers hacked and battered with sword and shield, sloshing this way and that, taking advantage of the blood-tinted sea to drop beneath the surface and disappear whenever danger loomed, rising out of the water like some avenging spirit once the trouble had passed and moving on to the next likely target.

  A quick glance around the beach revealed a sickening truth: the number of legionaries committed in the water was barely enough to hold their own against the native cavalry. If the rest of the horde decided to brave the artillery and move into the fray, all would be lost. Frowning, Fronto peered past the two nearest ships, their high-sided Gallic hulls rising majestically from the water. To his dismay, he could see soldiers lining the rails of the two triremes. Caesar had held back the men of the Tenth on his ship, and Cicero had done the same with the Seventh on his.

  Unbelievable: both officers so stubborn, even in these circumstances! Despite Fronto’s leading of two centuries from the Tenth, the general had clearly put out the call to hold the rest of the legion back, expecting the Seventh to carry out his initial orders. Cicero, equally, had either refused to commit his men, or possibly had found it impossible to force his reticent officers to lead them into the fight. Either way, the entire struggle for the beach was being carried out by two centuries from each legion.

  Insane!

  His wandering gaze took in the numerous scuffles in the water and settled on a musician with a wolf-pelt over his helmet, struggling to free himself from the bronze hoop of a bent ‘cornu’ horn in which he had somehow become tangled as a Briton rider bore down on him, bloodied long-sword raised and ready to land the blow. He was almost on the unfortunate soldier.

  “Over here!” Fronto bellowed to the endangered musician, waving his sword arm. The man turned and began to wade desperately towards him, the sodden wolf fur half obscuring his vision, the horn almost comically constricting him. The legate’s brow furrowed in concentration even as he began to move to intercept. With his shield gone he would stand about as much chance against the horseman as the entangled musician did if he tried to wade out and take him in a fair fight.

  Luckily fair fighting to Fronto was a luxury, rather than a necessity.

  Hoping he would have clear enough vision, Fronto took a deep breath and dropped beneath the surface of the water again. The salty brine had taken on the distinctive tinny tang of blood and Fronto could taste it even on his closed lips as he opened his eyes and looked up.

  The water was stained dark pink and currents of blood flowed through it sickeningly, creating darker patches here and there, but he could just make out the shapes of clouds above – it would be good enough. Praying to Fortuna that his sense of direction had held, he half-swam, half-waded onwards toward the struggling cornicen, making sure to keep his head beneath the surface.

  The musician was easy enough to spot as he passed by. The man pushed his way wearily and desperately through the deepening water towards where Fronto had been. Even through the murk of blood, Fronto could see the panic on the soldier’s face as he tried to find the officer who’d shouted him.

  And then he was past and the horse and rider were almost on him. Fronto watched the powerful equine legs pound though the water, stirring sand and pebbles into the already gloomy mix. Judging the time to be right, he stood.

  * * * * *

  Gaius Figulus, cornicen for the second century of the first cohort in the Seventh legion lost his footing and it was then that he knew it was all over. The native horseman chasing him down had been gaining on him as he ran and the officer that had called him had somehow vanished. Panic had gripped him then. He was not a man prone to excessive fear, and he was certainly no coward, but the simple knowledge that he was out of chances had finally fought its way into his beleaguered mind and unmanned him.

  After landing in the water, following centurion Furius despite the shouted orders to the contrary, he had drawn his sword, his cornu over the other shoulder and held tight in his grip – to lose his cornu would be to suffer beatings from his centurion later, as well as a substantial loss of pay.

  In a matter of moments he’d found himself in a melee, surrounded by two enemy horsemen. With no shield, he’d managed to repeatedly block their powerful, hammering sword blows with only his gladius for a hundred speedy heartbeats. He’d even eventually managed to stab one of the horses so that the rider pulled back and retreated. Unfortunately, his cornu had taken half a dozen heavy sword blows and, at some point as he’d ducked a swipe, it had bobbed on the water and managed to slip over his head and shoulder and now pinned his left arm to his side, the slightly buckled metal digging painfully into his neck. He’d have no trouble untangling himself given the opportunity, but for the fact that the remaining rider was still swinging at him, and finally a heavy blow that landed broke several fingers on his sword hand and weakened his wrist, his gladius tumbling away into the water, lost.

  Miraculously, another legionary had appeared and distracted the rider long enough for him to flee the scene, struggling with the horn, trying to lift it off himself as he retreated. But he’d failed, his hands trapped and bloodied, and the horseman had come after him.

  And then the officer had called.

  And then disappeared.

  Figulus made one last effort to try and haul the cornu off him, but his left arm was hopelessly pinned in the circle of bronze, while his right hand throbbed painfully with broken blackened fingers and was too weak to help.

  Turning, he observed his doom thundering through the water, bearing down on him.

  And then something unexpected happened.

  A figure rose from the water like the very embodiment of Neptune, armour glinting silver with a faint sheen of watery crimson, face a contorted grimace of anger, fingers of its left hand grasping, reaching, a gladius glittering in the right.

  Figulus boggled as the free hand grasped the passing rider’s ankle, almost hauling the apparition out of the water, but allowing the other arm to come round in a powerful swing that hacked deep into the Briton’s shin.

  The cavalryman screamed and, the tip of the gladius having pricked the horse’s side enough to draw blood, the mount also bellowed and reared up, mid-run. The rider recovered his wits quickly enough, somehow managing to hold on to the horse’s reins, but he had lost control of his steed and the beast bolted through the surf back toward the beach. Figulus stared at the officer in the expensive, if dented, helmet and muscle-shaped beaten bronze cuirass, his horsehair crest bedraggled and sagging slightly.

  “I… Uh.”

  The officer turned his gaze on Figulus and the cornicen took a tiny involuntary step back at the sheer anger in the man’s face. The officer clearly seemed to have momentarily forgotten he was there in the thrill of battle.

  “You. Can you still play that thing?”

  “I think s
o sir. It’s a bit bent and it might not sound quite right, though.”

  “Don’t care” the officer said flatly as he waded through the water and began to help him remove the misshapen horn from around his neck and arm. “Do you know all the army’s calls?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  “Right then. Sound the advance for both legions.”

  Figulus nodded and reached his lips towards the mouthpiece, his good hand gripping the curve.

  “And the command call for all ships to beach.”

  “Sir? That order can only be given by the general or his staff.”

  The officer’s expression suggested heavily that a lot of Figulus’ future rode on the next minute and he swallowed nervously, observing the officer’s dented, stained armour, his grizzled features and the very plain, utilitarian blade in his hand, slightly nicked from extended use. He could be one of the staff, if he was one who didn’t pander to appearance, or care what his peers thought.

  Then he caught the officer’s eyes again and reached for the mouthpiece of the horn, blowing the call for the ships to beach as though his life depended on it.

  * * * * *

  Fronto patted the young musician condescendingly on the head as the last few notes rang out across the beach, his hand sinking into the saturated wolf fur. As he’d hoped, the other musicians across the ships had picked up and echoed the call, assuming the order had come from the nearby command trireme.

  Grinning, the legate could only picture Caesar’s face as he stomped around the trireme’s deck, demanding to know who had given the order. But already every remaining ship was moving gracefully through the water toward the beach, the men on their decks straining, ready to leap into the fray.

  Even by the time Fronto had turned away and started taking stock of the situation, the first men of the Tenth and Seventh were dropping into the water, sloshing forward to help their comrades. The sleek, speedy Roman triremes had taken just half a minute to move far enough forward to beach and deposit their troops, the men plunging into water that was only two feet deep, still holding their shields and swords ready, and running straight for any of the enemy they could see.