The mass of tribesmen in front of Marcus parted without warning, allowing a tall and heavily armoured man to step out into the gap between the two lines. His black helmet and chest armour were intricately decorated with silver inlays and already coated with dried blood, his thighs and calves protected by iron greaves. He eyed the young centurion with cold appraisal for a moment, then with a sudden lunge sprang to attack the officer. Three savage hacking blows from his heavy sword smashed into Marcus’s shield, their power numbing his left arm and putting him on the defensive. The big warrior paused in his attack, laughing down into Marcus’s face, his voice a grating boom over the noise of the battle.
‘I’ve already taken the head of a legatus today, so I won’t bother with yours, I’ll leave it to the crows. Are you ready to die, little Roman?’
Marcus held his ground, ignoring the taunts, and readied himself for the next onslaught. The big man sprang forward again, but this time Marcus met his sword not with his shield but blade to blade, turning the blow aside and stepping close in to slam his shield’s iron frame down on the warrior’s unarmoured foot, feeling bones crack under the impact. As the warrior fought to control the pain he attacked again, stabbing downward with his sword and spearing the blade through the man’s shattered foot and into the soft ground below before twisting it savagely and ripping the sword free. Then, while the huge warrior staggered where he stood, paralysed by the crippling pain, Marcus raised his shield to the horizontal and chopped its harsh metal edge into his attacker’s undefended throat with all his strength. With a stifled gurgle the tribal champion fell back from the shield wall, fighting for breath that was never going to reach his lungs through a ruptured windpipe. The barbarian line shivered and inched backwards away from the cheering Tungrians as their hero fell to the ground, his face darkening as he twisted in his death throes.
Along the line the gap between the two forces widened a little, as the tribesmen paused to regain their wind in dismay at the failure of their initial assault. The Tungrians straightened their line, one eye for the man next to them, one on the enemy. Horns blew to the warband’s rear, ordering the tribesmen to pull back and reform, and they backed reluctantly down the hill, still shouting defiance at the Roman troops. No command was given to follow their retreat.
On the slope before the panting Tungrians lay hundreds of enemy warriors, some dead, some dying, all spattered with blood, some moaning pitifully with the pain of their wounds, others screaming intermittently in their agony and distress. The men of the 9th stared bleakly down at the scene, some, those few among them familiar with the sights and sounds of a full battle, with numb indifference, most simply wide-eyed at the horror of the scene. One or two made ineffectual efforts to wipe away the gore that had blasted across armour and flesh with each sword stroke, but most restricted themselves to wiping the blood from their eyes and mouths, knowing that there would be more to replace whatever they removed from their bodies and equipment soon enough. Julius sought out Marcus, pulling him from the front rank with a rebuke softened by the young officer’s wide-eyed look of astonishment.
‘That’s a good place to get killed. Stay behind the line next time, and put your soldiers into the fight. We’ve got a short time before they come back. It would be a good opportunity for the century to drink some water. I’ll check for casualties…’
He looked down at the two men killed by the axeman, one without head and right arm, the other cloven a foot down into his chest.
‘Best you remove these two. They’re already with Cocidius…’
Marcus pointed down at the wounded tribesmen to their front, almost within touching distance.
‘What about them?’
The reply was dismissive.
‘They’re dead, they just haven’t realised it yet. Leave them there; they’ll slow down the next attack.’
The young officer nodded jerkily, calling for the water bottles to be passed along the line, and commanding the closest men to carry the ruined corpses of their dead into the forest at their rear.
In the Tungrian front rank Scarface leaned on his shield, grateful for the chance to get his breath back and take a mouthful of water to swill away the coppery taste of blood.
‘That was good enough. We must have done twenty or so of the bastards and lost, what, two of ours? Who came forward to replace them?’
The promoted rear-rankers raised their hands sheepishly.
‘You two, eh? Welcome to the front rank, boys, this is where the corn gets earned the hard way. Keep your heads for a few minutes more and you’ll have a place here for the rest of your time.’
He laughed at their comical expressions as both men realised that their lives as soldiers had just changed for ever.
‘Oh yes, all that piss-taking the front rank always gives the girls at the back? That’ll be you giving rather than taking from now on. Welcome to my army.’
The 9th drank gratefully, the more composed soldiers discussing the fight almost conversationally, leaning tiredly on their shields like pottery workers taking a break from the kilns. Some, the more experienced and perceptive, knowing the danger of the less experienced men losing themselves to the battle rage when the fight renewed itself, worked on the men next to them, coaxing them back to reality with words of home and family. Morban found Marcus checking the edge of his sword with a careful eye, and offered him a drink from his bottle.
‘Nicely fought, Centurion, you took that big bastard’s arm off like lopping a sapling, and the way you did the boy in black armour with your shield was nothing short of poetic. The lads’re already talking about the way you jumped into the line and got stuck in!’
Marcus nodded, sheathing his sword and holding on to the hilt to hide the shaking of his hand.
‘Thank you. I hope your son escaped injury?’
‘Indeed, I think so, the little I could see of him from here.’
A shout from the line of troops grabbed his attention, pointing arms guiding his stare to the edge of the valley a mile or so to their right, past the small forest’s edge. There, silhouetted against the skyline, a mass of horsemen was moving into position, perfectly placed to sweep down the slope and into the barbarian flank. Their long lances were held vertically, the points making a winking glitter of razor-sharp steel in the mid-morning sunlight.
‘Get the blue-faced bum-fuckers!’
‘Give them the eight-foot enema!’
A chorus of shouts implored the riders, identified as the Petriana and Augustan cavalry wings by their twisting white banners, two thousand men strong, to attack the mass of men below, but their inaction once their deployment was complete was just as Equitius had expected. An unsupported charge against so many warriors could end only in a glorious failure. All the same, anything that gave Calgus one more thing to worry about, and heartened his own men, had to be good. Even as he watched a force of some five thousand men detached themselves from the barbarian mass on the plain below, wheeling at speed to form a rough defensive line of archers and spears, ready to absorb any charge.
He walked on, to the point where his command ended and Caelius’s started, hailing his brother officer. The other man strode down the line of barbarian corpses, keeping one eye on the ground against the risk of being surprised by a wounded man feigning death.
‘Hail, Two Knives, freshly blooded, from the rumour passed down our line, and from the blood painted across your mail. I hope you offered that prayer for me?’
Marcus smiled wryly.
‘I was a little busy at the time. I’ll be sure to mention you next time I can get to an altar.’
‘Good enough. What do you think they’ll do now?’
Both men stared downslope at the milling horde, order gradually returning to their mass.
‘If I were leading them? Keep the cavalry safely at arm’s length, put some archers and slingers out front, harass us with darts and stones to keep our heads down, and pull the rest away before two full legions take them dry from behind…’
Equitius was weighing the same question.
‘We came down here as bait, to keep the warband in place until the main force can be moved up. I don’t believe we’ve been here long enough to have achieved that aim, do you?’
Frontinius shook his head with pursed lips.
‘Another hour at least, I’d say. I presume you’d like to attract their attention some more, rather than letting them slip away into the hills?’
‘Yes. They can break into family bands and worm their way into the folds in the land. We might only take a tenth of them if that happens…’
The First Spear called a man to him, muttered instructions in his ear, and then turned back to the conversation.
‘I have a way to hold them here, but it won’t be pleasant. Especially since they’ll come back up that slope like wild animals.’
The prefect nodded slowly.
‘As long as Calgus doesn’t pull his men away to safety, the price will be justified. Do whatever you have to.’
The First Spear nodded impassively and turned away, walking down the cohort’s line at the high-tide mark of barbarian dead, inspecting the troops as if on peacetime parade, giving an encouraging word here and there. The man he’d sent to help him search for a particular corpse had succeeded, running down the line of shields with a freshly removed head dripping blood on his leggings.
The First Spear took it from him, examining the slack face with an intensity that was almost feral. The owner’s hair was long and greasy, the seams of his face dark with the grime of long days on the march. His eyes stared glassily back, their animation long departed along with the man that had formerly watched the world through their windows.
‘How do you know he was a chieftain?’
The other man held out his hand, showing his superior an impressively heavy torc stained dark red with blood, the gold wrapped in a serpentine arc that had previously been around the dead man’s neck. Frontinius took the heavy piece of jewellery, weighing it in his hand and remembering the one like it that Dubnus’s father had always worn, even after his dethronement.
‘Somebody was important.’
He turned to stare down at the barbarian warband, quiet now, waiting for a command, and spoke again, without taking his eyes off the mass of warriors.
‘Go to the prefect. Warn him to be ready.’
He stood silently on the slope for a moment, the head dangling almost forgotten from one hand, the torc in the other, until the men below him, alerted by those at the front, grew silent at the sight. Calgus came to his decision with his usual speed and insight. At his rear waited the bulk of his warband, rested and ready to move. To his right were the enemy cavalry, at least temporarily neutralised by the screen of infantry and archers he’d thrown out to cover that wing of the warband. Their spears stood out above them in a forest of wood and steel, a full cohort from their density. In front of him, arrayed on the bloodied slope, the Tungrians stood motionless at the high-tide mark of a thick carpet of dead and dying men, waiting for his next move. Between them, slowly regaining a sense of order, the depleted tribal bands were reforming under new leaders, preparing to storm the hill once more.
‘Pull them back.’
Aed raised his eyebrows.
‘My lord, they are not yet successful. We…’
‘I know. But there are two more legions marching in these hills. That prefect was far too relaxed for that cohort to be far from friendly spears. If they come upon us here, with the advantage of the slope, and with those fucking horsemen, we’ll be dead meat. No, we leave now, break into tribal bands and go back to the muster. Then we can…’
A shout rang out across the open space, some leather-lunged Roman officer shouting the odds. Except… Calgus strained to hear the words, a fresh premonition of disaster stroking the hairs on the back of his neck. Frontinius lifted head and torc, the former dangling by its greasy hair, the latter glinting in the early afternoon sun. Inflating his barrel chest, he bellowed out across the mass of men below, silencing their growing noise.
‘Leave this place now, or we will kill you all! Warriors?! You have failed once, and you will fail again like the children that you are compared to real soldiers.’
He paused for breath, and allowed the silence to drag on for a long moment.
‘We killed your leaders and threw you back down this insignificant hill with ease. You came seeking heads and left your own by the hundred! If you come back up again, we will do the same to you. See, the head of a defeated chieftain!’
He swung the dead man’s head in a lazy arc by its hair, resisting the temptation to hurl its obscenity away from him and into the seething tribesmen, raising the heavy torc to glint in the sunshine and be recognised as a symbol of authority.
‘You were weak, and we punished you. Now run away, before we treat you all like this!’
Feeling queasy, he put the head to his crotch and pushed his hips at it in an unmistakable gesture, then threw it high into the air above their heads. With an angry roar the tribesmen surged forward, charging up the hill in their mad fury. Frontinius ducked back into the line of soldiers, shouting for them to ready their spears. To the warband’s rear, Calgus closed his eyes for a moment as the realisation hit him.
‘My lord…’
‘I know. I have no choice. I must kill the prisoners and send the entire warband up that hill. But not on their terms. Get me the tribal leaders.’ The Tungrians loosed their second and last volley of spears, plunging the barbarian front rank into chaos once more, then huddled into their own shields with swords ready. The oncoming rush slowed to a walk across the slippery ground, to a crawl over the wall of their dead and wounded, until the tribesmen arrived, in ones and twos, in front of the Roman shield wall. With Frontinius disdaining a charge against such disorganised opposition, preferring to keep his men on firm ground, they waited for their enemy to stagger exhaustedly on to their shields, then began their slaughter with a professional ease. Even when more men had struggled through the obstacles in front of the cohort’s line, building the attacking force to a more respectable size, the anger that had burnt out of them was replaced by a wary respect, most of them holding off from the Roman swords, content to shout defiance at the Tungrians.
Scarface’s tent party crouched ready to engage behind their shields, sensing that the fight had gone out of their opponents but unwilling to believe the battle could end so easily. A single man leapt from the barbarian line, a huge warrior swinging a six-foot-long blade around his head and bellowing abuse at the Tungrians. Stripped naked and possessed by a mighty rage, he swung his long sword over the top of the shield wall and opened the two new front-rankers’ throats with the blade’s end before whipping it back above his head to hack down into the Tungrian shields. Scarface’s neighbour, caught beneath the sword’s descending blade, raised his shield two-handed in self-defence. He staggered backwards as the savage blow chopped through the iron frame and sank the razor-sharp blade deep into his shield’s wooden layers. Both Scarface and the soldier on the far side of the attacker stepped in and stabbed their swords deeply into the naked warrior’s sides, Scarface backhanding his stabbing stroke into the man’s side and ripping the blade out through his stomach muscles to release a slippery rope of guts. Releasing the long sword’s hilt, the warrior staggered back from the shield wall with blood pouring down his legs from his dreadful wounds. The two men whose throats he had slashed died where they fell, bleeding out from their severed arteries in less then a minute. They were unceremoniously dragged away behind the line, two more rear rankers taking their places.
The prefect and Frontinius had little concern for their front, however, their attention being fixed on the mass of men gathering at the slope’s foot.
‘He’ll put more men in to threaten our flanks to fix us, perhaps throw in some skirmishers to keep our heads down, then throw that mob up the middle and look to crush us under their numbers…’
The prefect nodded unhappily.
As they watche
d, the warband’s bulk split into three groups. Two smaller groups split to left and right, and began climbing the slope with grim purpose, while a larger third body of men, perhaps ten thousand strong, started moving up to reinforce their attackers.
‘What would you advise?’
Frontinius shook his head unhappily.
‘All we can do is reposition some of the weakened centuries from the centre to the flanks and hope they can hold off the fixing attacks, then strengthen the centre with our reserves.’
‘It isn’t much of an option.’
‘Prefect, it’s no option at all. Either way we’ll all be dead quite shortly unless Prefect Licinius manages to get some troops here within the next ten minutes.’
The other man drew his sword, glaring down at the mass of men moving up the hill to either side of their embattled position.
‘Very well, take the Fourth and Seventh out of the centre and put the Fifth and Tenth in to replace them. I can’t see a reserve being much use when this comes to knife fighting. Good luck to you, First Spear. Let’s hope we meet again under more promising circumstances.’
They clasped hands, then Frontinius strode down the slope, bellowing orders to his centurions and setting their last desperate plan in motion. The 5th and 10th Centuries streamed down the slope to reinforce the centre of the line. Marcus and Julius stood together behind the thin line of their men, watching as their attackers, beaten back once more by the cohort’s swords, gathered their strength. Rufius had strolled across to join them for a moment, his vine stick now tucked into his belt and his sword drawn and bloody. More and more men were clambering over the wall of dead and dying warriors, to swell the numbers facing them. To make matters worse smoke had begun to blow across their line, from trees set ablaze in the forest upwind to their right, making it harder by the moment to see their enemy. The barbarians were hammering on their shields, screaming abuse at the Tungrians, who, understanding the depth of their situation, were increasingly casting nervous glances to their rear rather than to the front. Julius stared out at the clamouring horde dispassionately.
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