The barbarian drew back his sword and swung again. Aware that his gladius was barely able to deflect the strength of a powerful blow from such a long weapon, Fronto slackened his knees and dropped into a crouch as the sword swung past above him at his former neck height.
Ridiculously, even as he stabbed up with the gladius into the big man’s vitals, the thoughts that suddenly crowded his mind were of how much his knees ached when he dropped and how much effect his age was having on his combat abilities. Would he really, realistically, be able to lead an assault like this for much longer?
The roar of the stricken barbarian stirred him from such disturbing and poorly-timed thoughts and he sank back into the crouch, ripping his blade from the man’s bladder, twisting it as it came out. Roaring and spraying blood down onto the legate, the tribesman seemed oblivious to the mortal wound he’d been dealt, apparently entirely impervious to the pain as he rocked back and clasped the hilt of his huge sword in both hands, preparing to bring it down on Fronto in a chop.
The legate stabbed up again with his blade, severing the man’s thigh artery and slicing through muscle in an attempt to unbalance him. Still standing solid despite the wounds, the barbarian’s sword came down like the falling sky, preparing to end the life of the last scion of the Falerii. Fronto left his sword jutting from the huge, bulbous thigh and dropped, trying to fall out of the way of the blow, horribly aware of the fact that the falling sword was moving too fast to dodge.
His last moments of thought were of the missing Fortuna amulet, then of the men he had led to their doom and finally, painfully, of Lucilia standing by the threshold of the newly-renovated Falerius townhouse, the sacrificial bull lowing nearby as she waited for the iron ring he would never be able to give her.
The glinting blade swept down to split his skull and was met by the upward swing of a gladius and a pugio that crossed to block it. Fronto stared up at the meeting of three blades, a shower of sparks raining down on him, and felt his bowels give just a little at how close he’d just come to being an ex-legate.
As another sword took the barbarian in the chest and drove him away from sight, the sword and dagger uncrossed and the face of the optio appeared, all concern.
“You alright, sir? Thought you were a gonner for a minute.”
“Juno’s arse, so did I” Fronto grinned up at him as he clambered to his feet, knees creaking as he went. He almost fell again as his left knee gave way, painfully twisted.
“Looks like we’re starting to get it together sir.”
“We are?” Fronto looked around in astonishment and saw that it was true. In less than half a minute, the men around the clearing had gone from being beleaguered groups into defensive squares, holding their own against the enemy. It was astounding, given the speed of the sudden turnaround and the fact that Fronto had been unable even to think about giving the right signals.
Signals.
That was it. He was suddenly aware of the cornu calls ringing out across the farmstead and the circling standards organising the centuries into fighting forces.
That was a command call.
His eyes drifted towards the farmer’s hut, where a dozen men stood in a defensive knot around Cantorix and Menenius. The Gallic centurion was leaning heavily on a stick and clutching his side, but Menenius was gesticulating with the centurion’s vine staff while standard bearers and musicians relayed the tribune’s orders across the open ground.
Fronto stared in disbelief and yet, even as he watched, the century around him reformed in the face of brutal attack, creating an organised defensive line. Their lack of shields was resulting in a much higher casualty rate than one would normally expect but at least now they were holding, rather than being slaughtered in a disorganised chaos.
He turned to the optio.
“You got everything under control here?”
“We’ll manage, sir.”
With the briefest of nods, Fronto turned and limped at speed for the central buildings of the farm. His mind formed a picture of the optio who had just saved his life and he committed that image to memory so that he could find him later and buy him enough wine to float a quinquereme. In fact, given the fate of his commander, the man would probably be a centurion by the time Fronto got to thank him properly.
The centre of the farm showed signs of hard fighting. Eight or nine barbarian bodies lay around in the dirt, the rain diffusing the blood from their wounds into the muddy puddles. Three legionaries lay among them, and Cantorix was clutching a torso wound from which blood was blossoming, leaking through the links in his mail. Apart from the inconvenience, he seemed to be ignoring the wound, which was entirely in keeping with the centurion Fronto remembered from the thickest fighting last year.
The big surprise was tribune Menenius. Standing as straight and tall as one of the statues of the great generals that stood in the forum, the tribune’s sword hung by his side in his right hand, watery blood coating the blade, while he continued to issue commands, pointing with the stick in his free hand.
Fronto stared as he staggered forward wearily, his knee clicking painfully.
“Menenius?”
The tribune spotted Fronto and his face broke out into a wide, relieved smile.
“Legate Fronto? Thank the Gods. I think we’re going to survive, sir.”
“How the hell?” Fronto stared at him, using his free arm to take in the whole battle with the sweep of an arm. “What did…?”
Cantorix straightened, holding his wound. “The tribune shows a remarkable grasp of military strategy, legate.”
“And he’s bloodied his sword too.”
The centurion nodded. “Saved my damn life, sir. Fast as a bloody snake, sir.”
Fronto’s stare turned into a frown. “Menenius?”
“Sort of lucky with the sword, legate.”
“Lucky, my arse” Cantorix grinned.
“My father paid for some very expensive weapon training in my youth” the tribune said humbly. “Not had much chance to put it into action before, but it seems I can remember enough.”
Cantorix’s eyes told Fronto that it had been a little more than that, but he let it go for a moment. “And you put out the signals?”
“With the centurion’s advice here.”
“My arse” repeated Cantorix.
“I’ve studied the historians, sir. History is replete with examples of how to turn an ambush against the ambushers. It’s all a matter of maintaining control. They expected easy pickings and panic. As soon as we take control the panic passes to them.”
Fronto glanced around the clearing. The barbarians were melting away into the woodland, their easy victory snatched from them in moments.
They had won!
“We were hit hard” he noted, assessing the situation with the practiced eye of a man who had surveyed many a battlefield. “I reckon we lost over a third of the men; maybe even half.” He turned back to Menenius. “But without your help, we’d have been lost altogether. Caesar’ll hear about this, tribune. I may have underestimated you, and I think the general needs to hand out a few phalera for this.”
Menenius looked down with a strangely shy, boyish smile.
“I’d rather go unsung, if you don’t mind, sir. Cantorix here deserves the real credit.”
Fronto, surprised at meeting a self-effacing junior tribune, looked at Cantorix and the man’s expression left him in no doubt as to just how much of this was the tribune’s doing.
“Perhaps, Menenius, but I’d love to transfer you to the Tenth.”
The men of the Tenth and Fourteenth legions jogged through the woods as fast as the terrain and unit cohesion would allow, their cloaks discarded to prevent snagging on branches or entangling in armour and scabbards. All pretence had now been thrown to the wind in favour of speed. Fronto had bound his weak knee with a thick strip of torn cloak, and tried to limp as little as possible, biting his lip against the pain and discomfort. A number of the men, in fact, had used the discarded cloak
s to bind or pack wounds that they could run with, including Cantorix who had pushed half a garment beneath his mail shirt and proceeded to completely ignore the wound at his ribs.
In the light of the enemy’s recent attack and the lack of information about the barbarians’ disposition it had been a difficult decision to make. On the one hand, perhaps this had been an entirely coincidental encounter and this band of warriors was unconnected to the archers at the riverbank, in which case by discarding their disguise they further endangered themselves on the journey. More likely, though, this attack had been carried out in concert with a grand plan and therefore the barbarian archers must know they were coming. In that case speed was now of the essence. To move slowly or indecisively was to allow the possibility that the ambushers would regroup and link up with the archers.
Fronto swallowed as he ran, tense at that very thought. They would have roughly equal numbers to the archers now that they had lost so many men, but enough ambushers had escaped to make the odds almost three to one if the two barbarian forces joined up. Not good odds when lacking shields, pila and helmets.
“Sir” barked Atenos, away to his right, ducking through the trees as though born to the forest, his great size apparently causing him no difficulty.
Fronto angled his run and jumped a fallen branch, almost falling as he landed favouring his bad knee, and falling in alongside the huge Gaul with a slightly more pronounced limp.
“What?”
“The bridge” Atenos pointed off to the side. Fronto squinted and could just make out between the blur of passing tree trunks, through the mist of torrential rain, the dark grey mass of Caesar’s bridge arcing out of the distant mist, rising as it strode towards them. For the first time, seeing it from this side and angle, he realised just what an impressive piece of engineering it was.
Fronto nodded. “Pass the word.”
As Atenos turned and yelled for his men to pull closer together and watch for pickets, Fronto moved left and bellowed the order to Cantorix and the others. Menenius, pale and apparently as shaken by what he himself had done as by what had been done to them, moved along behind, his hand gripping the hilt of his gladius as though it might leap from the scabbard and start slicing people.
Fronto faced forward again, just in time to see movement ahead. A grey shape like the ghost of a warrior disappeared behind a tree, just as another humanoid bulk loomed in the mist and then faded again. Ahead, a cry went up in a deep, guttural tongue, quickly taken up by other voices.
“Take ‘em fast, lads. Fast as you can, then rally at the riverbank!”
Ignoring the bulbous raindrops bursting against his face, Fronto hefted his gladius and ran, leaping over fallen wood and ducking the worst of the branches, ignoring the fire burning in his knee and the constant danger of folding up into the undergrowth. His heart pounded as something passed close to his ear with a ‘zzzzzip’ noise and thudded into a tree.
The air was suddenly alive with arrows, whipping through the woodland, many thudding into trees or being pushed off course by fronds and leaves, but too many for comfort sheathing themselves in the men of the legions.
A soldier was suddenly at Fronto’s left, sword in hand, teeth bared as the rain battered him. Fronto turned to give him an encouraging grin but was too late as an arrow took the man, dead centre in the neck, punching through his adam’s apple and hurling him backwards to fall gurgling among the undergrowth. A moment later another man joined the legate, and he spotted Cantorix just beyond the new arrival, ahead of his men and bellowing a battle cry in a Gallic tongue that Fronto was surprised he was starting to understand a little.
The depths of the forest became slowly, imperceptibly lighter, though the running legionaries were too busy to notice. Fronto’s battle-honed wits began to tell him that something was wrong as the mist brightened and it took him only a moment to realise that the arrows had ceased. Not a single missile whipped through the shade.
“Halt!” he bellowed urgently, too late for some.
The front runners, those eager for the kill and for revenge on these damned Germanic warriors who had ambushed them and killed good friends, suddenly found they had run or leapt clear of the edge of the forest in their enthusiasm.
A few yards behind, Fronto and Cantorix came to a halt, most of the legionaries joining them, watching with held breath as the scene unfolded.
Almost a score of men had burst from the forest’s edge, yelling their blood lust to the sky, to the waiting ears of Mars, Minerva, Jupiter and Fortuna, and suddenly found themselves on springy turf, enveloped in a mist formed by wind-swirled rain. Slowing to a confused halt, they exchanged worried glances, the impetus of their attack suddenly swept away, swords ready for an enemy that wasn’t there.
Somewhere behind them they became aware of their centurions and officers calling them back, but even as they recognised the orders, the mist parted like billowing curtains in front of them to reveal a wall of humanity, three men deep and stretching from side to side, the ends lost in the grey.
And they all had bows, the strings drawn back to their ears the arrows nocked and ready.
“Shit!” yelled Artorius, excused duty legionary of the third cohort, second century of the Fourteenth legion, and closed his eyes.
Fronto watched with leaden expectation as the arrows of three dozen archers punched into the chests of the exposed legionaries, every man felled like a tree, falling to their knees and then faces, or thrown back onto the grass, staring up into the grey, searching for the Gods that had deserted them.
The men of the legions remaining in the forest instinctively began to move back between the trees, further away from the threat.
“How far do you reckon that open ground is?” Fronto called across to Cantorix.
“About thirty yards, I reckon, sir.”
“So it’d take an exceptional archer to get off more than one shot while we crossed it?”
Cantorix grinned. “Exceptional, sir. And they’ll be using sinew bowstrings. The rain’ll be playing havoc with ‘em, sir. Half of ‘em will be useless already and the rest’ll only manage a couple more arrows before they’re ruined.”
“On me!” Fronto bellowed, stepping deeper into the forest and hoping that the cover of the woodland would protect them; also that the enemy’s grasp of Latin was small or non-existent. He watched the two hundred or so men of his force converging on his position and held his breath, hoping that the enemy were nocked and waiting for another charge. If they started firing randomly into the woods again they would likely reduce the force considerably and very quickly. Fortunately no arrows came as Fronto looked around at his men.
“We can’t spread out to take them. The river hems us in to the right and who knows what’s left, but we do know there’s a force of warriors from the ambush out there somewhere and we don’t want to blunder into them. So we’re stuck. We have to take them head on and they’re prepared. So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going in as a wedge.”
Menenius, standing next to Fronto, turned his head and flashed an incredulous look at him.
“We go in as fast as we’ve ever run in our lives” Fronto went on. “Every archer out there will get one shot. After that, they’re screwed, because we’ll be amongst them, and we all know that a gladius beats a bow in close combat. Once we’ve punched into the line, we peel off. Cantorix and Atenos and their centuries will head right towards the river and carve up every archer they find. The rest of you, with me, will turn left and make sure we get every last mother’s son among them. Only when every archer is eating turf do we stop and re-form. Got it?”
The tribune reached out gingerly and tapped Fronto on the shoulder, drawing close.
“Are you mad, sir?”
“Quite possibly. It has been suggested before. But if you can think of a better way, enlighten me.”
“We go back to the boats, cross to the west bank and come back in force, armed properly.”
Fronto shook his head wearily.
“The chances of us getting back without another ambush are tiny. They know we’re here now, and we’re at our objective. We set up a bridgehead and hold it for a few hours — a day at most — and the bridge will come to us.”
“Fronto? That’s madness!”
“So…” the legate turned back to the men, “quite a few of us will die in the next few minutes, but… well, that’s what we signed on for, wasn’t it? Those of you who will be in the rear centre of the wedge, I want you to remove your mail shirt and pass it to a friend. In two minutes I want half of you unarmoured in the centre and the rest of you wearing two mail shirts — preferably the really muscly buggers, as you’ll have to run fast wearing two lots of armour. It’ll be like wearing a cart.”
He grinned. “You,” he pointed at a man “give me your shirt.”
“What?” barked Cantorix. “Can’t do that, sir.”
“You damn well can. It’s an order. I’m the front of the wedge.”
Atenos was suddenly next to his fellow centurion. “He’s right, sir. The head of the wedge is a prestigious position, sir. A guaranteed commendation and worth a phalera and a fortnight’s leave at least. We can’t let you deprive a man of that, sir!”
Cantorix grinned. “A centurion doesn’t get enough leave, does he? Shall we toss a coin?”
Fronto shook his head and tried to reach past them for the mail shirt now being proffered by the legionary. The two centurions leaned towards each other, blocking him off.
“My duty, I think” Cantorix grinned. “The Tenth have reputation to spare, but the Fourteenth never seem to get the glory.” Atenos looked hard at him for a moment and then nodded.
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