Fortress of Spears

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Ninth Century, advance!’

  As the two lines of soldiers stepped off down the hill, Scarface thrust one of his spears at the man behind him.

  ‘You, pass this forward to me when I’ve put the first one through some fucker’s back, and make sure you’re ready with it as soon as I’ve thrown this one, or there’ll be a short and very interesting discussion once we’ve sorted these long-haired cunts out.’ The men around him smiled despite themselves, as amused as they always were by his blend of bombast and single-minded purpose. Without taking his eyes off the ground in front of him, the veteran soldier hawked noisily and spat into the grass. ‘The rest of you, stop your grinning and get your fucking spears ready to throw!’

  Thirty paces down the slope, the century got their first glimpse of the enemy through a momentary gap in the smoke. The mass of tribesmen were pressing harder on the Tungrian line than before, clearly wearing the embattled soldiers down by the sheer weight of their numbers, and the cohort’s grip on its foothold inside the barbarian camp had visibly reduced in size since Marcus’s last quick look. Another ten paces saw the century within a spear’s-throw of the raging tribesmen, and yet still undetected. Marcus lifted his sword and then dropped the blade. Whatever the trumpeter might have been feeling, his lungs seemed unaffected, a loud note from his horn pealing out over the battlefield and snatching the attention of the enemy warriors. The 9th Century’s front rank roared their defiance, shaking their spears at the surprised barbarians, and Marcus raised his sword again.

  ‘Spears …’

  The men in the front rank leaned backwards, their left arms reaching forward for balance as they pulled their spears back until the iron heads were level with their helmets. Scarface turned his face and kissed the cold iron, feeling the blade’s ragged edge on his lower lip, then locked his gaze on a warrior twenty paces distant in the barbarian warband’s rear.

  ‘Throw!’

  The front rank took a collective two steps forward, exhaling noisily as they hurled their weapons into the enemy warriors.

  ‘Spears … throw!’

  Reaching back to take their second spears from the men behind them, the soldiers hurled themselves forward again, and launched a second volley into the barbarian rear. Dozens of the enemy were now out of the fight, some toppled to the ground, others on their knees or held upright by the crush of their numbers.

  ‘Form line!’

  The century was back in line within seconds, staring down at their enemy as a wave of confusion spread through the barbarians.

  ‘Swords!’

  The front rank unsheathed their short swords, a sudden pale gleam in the dawn light. Marcus pointed his sword at the enemy warriors, raising his voice to a roar.

  ‘Attack!’

  Scarface pointed his sword at the barbarian he’d decided to kill first, screaming his challenge.

  ‘Come on, you fuckers!’

  He bounded down the hill, the men to either side of him howling their own battle cries as they made their own charges, punching his shield into the barbarian’s face and stabbing his gladius into his guts before the other man had the chance to recover from the blow. Driven by their recent experience of battle with the tribes, and knowing what would inevitably come next, the front rank pulled their shields together to form a defensive wall, while the rear-rankers stepped in close and caught hold of their belts, steadying them against the assault to come. With a roar of anger the barbarian warband slammed back against their defence, hammering at their shields and helmeted heads with swords and spears as they recovered from their shock and threw themselves at the new threat.

  Tribune Licinius spurred his horse forward up the line of the 20th Legion’s column to meet the scout riders racing towards him from the barbarian camp’s northern face. His cavalry wing was strung out over the hundreds of paces behind him, still making their way through the forest that surrounded the camp, along a tortuous hunter’s path that had been scouted as an approach route in the days that had followed the near-disaster at the Red River. Sending half a legion down the path first had been a necessary measure, given the need for the heavy infantry to break into the camp and defeat the warband before the cavalry could follow up and chase down any survivors, but their lack of urgency in the approach march had tested his patience beyond its limits. The lead rider reined in his sweating horse alongside the tribune’s magnificent grey, his voice urgent as he saluted his superior and launched into a description of what was happening at the head of the column.

  ‘The northern palisade has been breached from the inside, Tribune, and there’s a warband running north in tribal strength. We saw their rearguard heading off into the forest, at least a thousand men strong, and they looked like Venicones.’

  Licinius nodded, thinking quickly.

  ‘Those tattooed buggers must have decided to quit Calgus’s war even before the attack on the camp became evident to them. What about the legion?’

  The decurion shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Too slow and too late, I’d say, Tribune. The leading cohorts are just wasting time forming up on the open ground between forest and palisade, with no sign that they intend getting stuck in any time soon.’

  Licinius’s temper boiled over.

  ‘With me!’

  He spurred the grey down the line of troops followed by his bodyguard, seeking out the group of men that represented the point of the 20th Legion’s spear.

  ‘Tribune Laenas, might I ask exactly what the fuck you think you’re doing?’

  The legion’s second-in-command, a tribune whose tunic bore the broad purple stripe of the Roman senatorial class, and a man unused to having his judgement questioned, turned away from a frustrated-looking group of the cohorts’ senior centurions with a look of incredulity, opening his mouth to snarl a response that died in his throat when he saw who was doing the questioning.

  ‘Ah, Tribune Licinius, we’re, ah just making sure that we’ve got everything in place before …’

  Licinius rode over his half-hearted explanation with a patrician disregard for manners, leaning in close and speaking in quiet but fierce tones.

  ‘What it looks like, Tribune Laenas, is that you’re dithering in the face of a fight. These gentlemen around you know that the time to strike was while the barbarians were still escaping into the forest. Since even my old ears can clearly make out the sound of battle from inside that palisade, I suggest that you get your cohorts through the gap those blue-nosed blighters have torn in the fence and get them into action. If, that is, you don’t want to be dismissed and censured for lack of commitment by the governor. And let me make this very clear; if your soldiers aren’t out of my way very quickly I will simply ride my cavalry through and if need be over them. There’s a Venicone warband making their escape while we sit here wasting time, and I intend making sure that as few as possible of them get away, if you’ll get your men out of my path.’

  He sat back in his saddle with one eyebrow raised. Laenas swallowed unhappily, then turned back to face his officers.

  ‘Ah, gentlemen, we will advance into the enemy camp and join battle immediately.’

  The legion’s most senior centurion nodded briskly, his smile speaking volumes for his pleasure at the cavalryman’s intervention.

  ‘At the double march, Tribune?’

  Laenas swallowed and nodded.

  ‘Indeed. At the double march, First Spear Canutius.’

  ‘It’s a good thing we’ve got the advantage of the slope!’

  Qadir nodded in response to Marcus’s shouted comment. The century were starting to tire, the front rank becoming more interested in keeping their feet and fending off the barbarian spears than taking their iron to the enemy, who in their turn had burned through their first rage and were attacking with less vigour than moments before. A horn sounded across the smoke-wreathed camp from the northern palisade, and the front rank of a legion cohort swept into view through a gap in the camp’s northern fence. Marcus shot t
he oncoming legionnaires a dark glance.

  ‘About bloody time too.’

  Qadir shook his shoulder, pointing across the Tungrian line.

  ‘Look!’

  Fresh troops were pouring into the space behind the Tungrian cohort, moving quickly to bolster their sagging line.

  ‘It’s the Second Cohort. First Spear Neuto was never going to leave us in the sh—’

  Marcus stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes suddenly caught by an object being waved around over the heads of the barbarians a dozen paces from the century’s line. Qadir caught his stare and looked to see what had taken his attention. It was a man’s head, still wearing the cross-crested helmet that denoted his centurion’s rank, evidently hacked from his body and impaled on the point of a spear as a crude trophy with which the Romans could be taunted. As Qadir watched, Marcus’s face went white with anger, and his eyes narrowed in calculation. He turned to the Hamian, reaching down and picking up a fallen shield, his voice stony as he turned to face the howling mob railing at the century’s shields.

  ‘Shoot to my right, and keep shooting.’

  Guessing what was about to happen, Qadir reached out a hand to restrain his friend, but Marcus was too quick for him, pushing through the astonished rear-rankers and stepping into the front rank alongside Scarface. Stopping a sword-blow with his shield, he stepped forward and stabbed his gladius into the tribesman’s throat as the enemy warrior fought to free his blade from the painted wooden surface, turning back to stare with a blank-eyed intensity at the wide-eyed soldiers.

  ‘Guard my left.’

  He turned back and stepped into the seething mass of warriors, hacking down a man to his right and blocking another sword-blow from his left with the shield, shouting a terse order over his shoulder.

  ‘Qadir! Shoot to my right!’

  The Hamian shook himself free from the amazement of seeing his centurion actually throw himself into the mass of his enemies and bellowed a command in his own language.

  ‘Hamians, to me!’

  Nocking an arrow and loosing it with one fluid motion, he sent the iron-tipped head through the throat of a warrior poised to bury his axe into Marcus’s helmet. Ramming his gladius deep into another barbarian’s chest and feeling the blade’s reluctance to come free of the wound’s tight grip, the young centurion released the weapon’s ornate handle without a second thought, kicking the dying warrior back into the men behind him. Grabbing the axe from the tribesman tottering backwards with Qadir’s arrow buried in his throat, he levelled his shield and hurled it horizontally into the press of the enemy, flattening another of the men facing him with a ruptured throat, then raised the axe two handed and gathered himself to attack again. Another Hamian reached Qadir’s side at the same second, ripping his bow from its place across his back and reaching for an arrow with the same unconscious grace with which the chosen man exercised his craft. With only a split second’s time spent finding a point of aim, he sent the missile into the fray around his centurion with an almost thoughtless speed that nevertheless sent another of the men facing Marcus staggering back into the men behind him in a spray of his own blood. At the same instant Scarface shook off his own momentary panic, hurling a furious command at the front-rankers to his left as he waded forward into the barbarians.

  ‘With me, you bastards!’

  Slamming down his shield to block off a spear-thrust aimed at his legs, he thrust his sword’s blade into the barbarian’s throat and twisted the hilt, opening the warrior’s neck wide in a shower of hot blood that flicked across the half-dozen men who had advanced into the barbarian mass alongside him. Glancing up, he was momentarily open mouthed at the sight of his officer hurling his shield into the warband’s mass and grasping an axe two handed before throwing himself at the warriors gathering around him with an incoherent scream, clearly lost to his rage. The speed and savagery of his onslaught cleared a path into the heart of the warband as warriors fell away from him with their bodies rent by the weapon’s heavy blade, those as yet untouched by the unexpected attack backing away from the berserk Roman. Qadir and his fellow archers were ten strong now, and their arrows were killing the warriors to Marcus’s right faster than they could be replaced by the men behind them, the barbarians’ eyes flickering from their unhinged enemy, his armour dripping with the blood of the dying men scattered around him, to the archers dealing out impersonal death to them from behind the Roman line.

  Scarface and his fellow soldiers now formed the other side of their centurion’s tenuous link to his century, their shields forming a diagonal wall from the century’s line to Scarface at its farthest extension. A man fell forward into the seething mass of barbarians facing them, his throat skewered by a barbed spear thrust over the rim of his shield and then pulled back to haul him bodily out of the shield wall, and Qadir pushed a rear-ranker forward to take his place before lifting his bow to shoot again. The soldiers were holding out well enough, stabbing into the mass of their enemies and parrying the inevitable counter-attacks in a way that the veteran soldier knew could only last so long before they succumbed to the overwhelming strength gathering against them. He dragged in a deep breath, meaning to entreat Marcus to retreat from his exposed position, but before he could do so the axe snagged between a dying man’s ribs and stuck fast. A warrior in the mass facing him stabbed at Marcus’s face, the blade slicing a long cut in his cheek as he swayed backwards to evade the attack, releasing his grasp on the axe’s handle as he bent to scoop up a dying warrior’s sword from the ground beside him. Stamping forward, he hacked the sword’s blade at his attacker’s legs, dropping the man to his knees with the muscles of both thighs opened to the bone. Drawing his spatha, the Roman roared his blood-soaked defiance at the barbarians now visibly shrinking away from him. A single man stepped forward to meet him in the space that had opened around the Roman, one hand grasping a massive battleaxe, the other a spear on which the centurion’s head was impaled, and as Scarface realised whose the head was his eyes narrowed in pain.

  ‘Oh, dear fuck …’

  Marcus jumped forward to meet the newcomer’s attack, a fresh flight of arrows punching into the men to his right as he stopped the barbarian champion’s axe with crossed swords, halting the blade inches from his head before slamming his helmet’s brow guard forward in a vicious head-butt which sent the enemy warrior staggering backwards, blood streaming from his shattered nose. He followed up with lightning speed, his spatha hacking off the reeling barbarian’s right arm at the wrist before the other man ever realised what was happening to him. Thrusting forward with the barbarian weapon, he ran the warrior clean through, leaving the blade sheathed in his opponent’s chest and tearing the spear from his grip. While the barbarians around him watched in amazed silence, he pulled the severed head from the bloody blade, tossed the weapon aside and tucked the grisly trophy under his left arm. Stepping back a pace, he growled a quiet order to Scarface.

  ‘Fall back. Slowly.’

  The tribesmen watched in silence as the Romans retreated to their line one pace at a time, never once looking back from their enemies, while the Hamians waited with arrows nocked and ready to fly. Regaining the relative safety of the Tungrian line, Marcus blew out a long shaky breath, tears running through the blood painted across his face between his cheek guards as he stared down into the pain-contorted face that stared back up at him. He lifted his head to watch numbly as the 20th Legion’s leading cohort smashed into the barbarian rear less than a hundred paces from the Tungrians’ place on the slope.

  ‘I’ll see you buried properly, Tiberius Rufius, and then I’ll take as many of my men as will follow me, track down that bastard Calgus and make sure he dies in agony for you.’ He turned back to Morban, who was standing at his shoulder, aghast at the death of the man who was both Marcus’s saviour and his closest friend, his voice hoarse with sudden grief. ‘Standard-bearer, at the slow march, retreat back up the slope. Now they’ve finally got here we’d best give the bloody legion some room to w
ork.’

  2

  King Drust looked about him as the Venicone warband climbed the bare hillside high above the doomed barbarian camp, scanning the empty ground to either side before glancing back over his shoulder, panting with the effort of the climb up the wooded slope below. The forest’s upper limit was five hundred paces behind the rearmost of the Venicone warriors, whose initial headlong charge from the embattled camp had quickly been reduced to a long loping stride as they had weaved their way through the densely packed trees. His warriors were marching in a long, straggling column as they climbed the mountain’s unforgiving slope, moving in family groups of spearmen and archers whose breath steamed around them in the cold morning air. He spat on to the hillside’s thin turf and grunted a comment at the leader of his personal bodyguard jogging along beside him.

  ‘Perhaps we got away clean, but I doubt it. Those Roman bastards don’t give up that easily.’

  The other man grimaced at the pain gnawing at his chest, as the effort of the long climb started to tell upon him.

  ‘Aye, and we’re leaving a trail that a blind man could follow.’

  The king nodded, looking back at the treeline again.

  ‘Their soldiers will never catch us, not over this ground and carrying that much weight in weapons and armour. It’s their horsemen that worry me.’

  ‘Worry you, Drust? I thought you and your tribesmen feared no man?’

  The king looked up, to find that Calgus, still being carried over the massive shoulder of the man who had beaten him into unconsciousness, had regained his wits. His voice was weak with the after-effects of being stunned, but the acerbic note was unmistakable. He reached out and tapped Calgus’s head with his knuckle, causing the rebellion’s former leader to wince in pain.

  ‘Calgus! You still live, then? I thought Maon might have hit you too hard, but I see your skull is every bit as thick as I imagined.’

  Calgus smiled wanly.

  ‘Insult me as you will, Drust, I can see that I am due a long period at your mercy before you sell me to the Romans. If they let you escape, that is …’