FIELDS OF MARS

by S. J. A. Turney

  Moments later, he caught sight of movement to the south. Shapes were emerging from an olive grove – riders in glinting chain shirts with bright green shields. They swarmed out from between the twisted ancient trees and began to close once more into units.

  ‘Rear ranks be ready to pass your pila forward. We’re going to take a pounding from the cavalry first.’

  The centurion to his right cleared his throat. ‘Can you see how many?’

  ‘You’ve got eyes,’ Atenos replied quietly.

  ‘Yes, but you’re about two feet taller than the rest of us. You’re almost looking down on them.’

  Atenos shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. More than a few hundred. Maybe a thousand?’

  ‘Regular or native levy?’

  ‘Both. But it’s the natives they’ll throw at us. Petreius won’t want to push Roman against Roman if he can avoid it. He can’t be sure how well his men will react to it. I’d like to say we’re better off against the natives, but the Hispanics have been fighting Romans for decades thanks to the last civil war, so they know what they’re about.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘They’ll try to break us – they have to. We launch one volley of pila as soon as they come within range. Then the reserves pass their pila forward and we form the contra equitas formation. All of us. The whole square. We deny them the chance to break in, because if they break one side of the square then we’ll be in chaos when the infantry get here. Any man who even trembles gets a taste of Antonia here.’ He waved his vine stick meaningfully.

  The enemy cavalry were coming now. They had formed up this side of the trees and created three units, each several hundred strong. Behind them, the red banners and gleaming chain of Pompey’s Hispanic legions were emerging from the greenery in solid, military formation and at a mile-consuming pace. Atenos knew that every man around him was experiencing the same feeling. The Tenth and the Seventh were old legions – Caesar’s staunchest and longest-serving veterans. They had fought Belgae and Gauls, Aquitanii and Germans. There was no one of whom they were afraid.

  But the men pouring out of the trees across the parched fields of Hispania Citerior were men just like them. Pompey’s veterans. As long-serving, as well trained and experienced. As strong and – most importantly – as Roman. Civil war.

  Of course, Atenos had the benefit of an outsider’s view. He may be a Roman citizen, and serving as an officer in the legions, but he was a Gaul by birth, weaned on tribal warfare. In the old days, when he’d been young, civil war was the norm for his people. Tribes fighting tribes was as natural as the morning air. But for the men under his command it would seem unthinkable to plunge their blades into those men beyond the cavalry. Into many of the horsemen too, for that matter.

  The three units of riders began to diverge as they approached, the outer units veering off to the sides. The central one was riding straight at Atenos’ men.

  ‘A quarter of our lads are going to get an easy ride,’ murmured a centurion off to his left.

  ‘There’ll be no easy rides to be had today,’ corrected Atenos. ‘Ready pila.’

  The men in the front rank shifted position, bracing their leading leg, their hands changing grip on the wooden shaft as they angled it upwards past their chins, ready to launch. Atenos peered along the line, satisfied that they were in good order.

  Every legion had a different way of doing things, and he could just see the men of the Seventh around the corner of the defensive line preparing to follow the same commands. Their pila wavered slightly and were held at much less uniform angles. Many legions preferred to have their heaviest, strongest veterans at the front line, taking the first blows of any combat, and there was a great deal to be said for the advantage that gave a unit. Fronto himself had followed that very system when he’d commanded the Tenth. Atenos and Carbo had instituted a different system. Their first line in battle formation was formed of the legion’s best throwers. The second line was the heavy veterans. Of course, they’d not had much chance over the past couple of years to test the veracity of this system, though it seemed the time was upon them at last. Now it was about the pila. Then it would be about quick changes in formation and the spacing of the men.

  ‘Wait until they get close. No further than thirty paces.’

  His vine stick jabbed out, indicating the line of white stones his optio had placed in front of them, marking the thirty pace mark. Thirty paces was something of a stretch for a pilum thrower to hold any level of accuracy, but his front line were the best he could muster. He’d been careful to have the white stones placed at twenty five paces around the Seventh to allow for their likely lesser effective range.

  He could feel the tension building as the cavalry thundered toward them.

  The most dangerous moment facing a cavalry charge was now. With that implacable wall of iron and horseflesh pounding toward you at breakneck speed, even the strongest bladder began to leak. Men who thought themselves brave would consider their next few moments carefully and seriously contemplate taking flight. Once battle was joined, things became easier, if more violent. But if the cavalry could somehow rupture the lines, then it would be over in short order. Even Atenos would be unlikely to recover any sense of formation before the infantry hit them and began to butcher. They had to hold.

  ‘Steady, lads. They’re only boys on ponies, after all. Not proper soldiers, like you.’

  There was a ripple of nervous laughter along the lines. Someone let out a fart that lasted a surprisingly long time and rose in pitch to an impressive squeak. The line roared with laughter and even Atenos smiled as one of his men muttered something about eggs, but he needed them to focus as well as maintain good spirits. ‘Calm it down now, lads. Those poor buggers on the horses think you’re laughing at them. Ready…’

  The enemy were close, their hooves pounding toward that line of white stones. Please, Atenos thought, directing his request to whichever gods might be watching the dry fields of Hispania, please let the lads get this right.

  Closer.

  ‘Tense those muscles. Ready…’

  A hoof smashed one of the white stones to pieces as the first horse crossed the line.

  ‘Iacta!’ bellowed Atenos.

  Four hundred pila left his line in near perfect harmony, released at the same time and at almost the same angle. The cavalry were still coming. There was nothing they could hope to do now, at thirty paces, other than attempt to ride down and break the Roman line.

  ‘Contra Equitas!’ he bellowed even as the last pilum left loosening fingers. Even as the volley was in flight, every man passed his pilum forward, while the front two lines also slammed their shields into position. The front line dropped to a knee and formed a wall with their shields pushed together into a perfect defensive line. The second lifted their shields and held them at a forty-five degree slope atop the front ones, bending in to brace the line so that the legion produced a wall two shields high and at an angle. Pila were thrust through the gaps between the shields, forming a hedge of perilous spikes along the line.

  Atenos heard it all happening, heard the officers telling men to shuffle this way and that. But he wasn’t watching. His eyes were on the enemy. The volley of pila had been brutal. The Iberian cavalry were equipped to each individual’s capability, which meant that a few wore cuirass with leather shoulder straps, and more wore chain shirts, but the majority wore either a leather shirt over their tunic or no armour at all. Some had helmets, but others had none. Many had shields of one size and shape or another. The only uniform aspect to them were the swords hanging from the saddle horns and the spears in their hands.

  There were perhaps four hundred of them at Atenos’ estimate, and the initial pila barrage was devastating. Almost every pilum struck a target, between the skill and strength of the soldiers, the distance required and the sheer press of men at the other end. Iron points smashed deep into horses and men, into chests and legs, heads and rumps. Beasts leapt or slumped, crashing to the ground as the
ir riders tumbled from them, equally agonised and transfixed by pila.

  A hundred men and their steeds died at that line, and there was a long moment of chaos as the riders behind plunged on through the crowd of fallen and dying creatures, many of them being unseated or felled by the disastrous chaos around them. By the time the riders were past the stones and the huge line of thrashing and shrieking flesh, the legion had assumed their contra equitas formation and were prepared.

  From somewhere inside the enclosure of shields there was another drawn out fart and a lot of cursing until a centurion bellowed for silence.

  The riders hit the shield wall. They didn’t want to, but they had little choice. No horse will willingly charge a hedge of iron, and even the most vicious and brave riders among the Iberians found their horses shying away, rearing or attempting to turn from the deadly wall. But the momentum of the unit was carrying them inexorably forward. Just as they’d been forced on through the crowd of their fallen brothers by the pressure of the mass behind them, so now, even as they reared or turned, they were driven into the Roman formation by their friends behind.

  Atenos could see nothing of what happened now. Without a shield or pilum himself, he had ducked down at the last moment within the formation and simply heard the clash from within the enclosed world of the shield-box.

  There were screams of men and horses, the sound of pila being snapped, the constant clatter and bang of shields, and the thud of men hitting the ground hard. The centurion felt a man pushed back against him and boot studs painfully grazed his ankle, making him hiss. The formation was being pushed back at his position. Between the men holding the shields he briefly caught sight of bay horsehair and a screaming man. There was a spray of blood that managed to penetrate the shield wall.

  ‘Push back,’ Atenos yelled. ‘Straighten the line.’

  Not an easy thing to do, of course, when a horse has smashed into your shield and fallen dead at your feet. His men lifted their shields and dropped them onto the dead horse, allowing them to move a pace or two forward again, the shield-line now undulating over the fallen beast rather than bowing back behind it.

  A centurion nearby beat him to his next command, bellowing out ‘Pass your pila forward!’

  Those men whose javelins had been snapped as the beasts collided now cast the shattered remains out into the mess and grabbed a new one, passed from behind, jabbing it out through the same gap and thrusting it at any shape that moved in front.

  It was over quickly. The remaining native horse had managed to pull back at last and now fled the field in disarray. Light flooded into the formation as a man lifted his shield with a sigh of relief. He cried out in pain as Atenos’ vine stick walloped him on the shoulders. ‘You break formation when you are told to break formation, soldier!’

  He waited and, as if to illustrate his point, a last few Iberian cavalrymen threw spears into the mass before racing away. Atenos counted to twenty, slowly, and then gave the order.

  ‘Form into four lines. Front rank cycle to rear.’

  As the shields were pulled away and the battlefield became visible once more, the front line, damaged and exhausted, pulled back between their counterparts and formed the reserve, while the second line stepped forward to become the front. These were Atenos’ strong veterans, like those already fielded among the Seventh. His system had worked. It might not work in straight infantry situations, but now he had his best men out front, fresh and ready for the fight, while the veterans of the Seventh were being rotated to the rear, putting the less experienced men at the fore.

  The ground before the legion was littered with the bodies of men and horses. The casualty rate among the cavalry had been extremely high, and not more than a third of their number were now racing for safety. They had held off the first attack. Atenos breathed heavily and turned, surveying his men.

  The Tenth had bowed and almost broken thirty paces to his right, a fact clearly stated by the body of a horse and rider within the Roman lines. That had been close, and maybe forty legionaries lay dead in that area. He wondered idly if the man with the horrendous wind had been among them.

  Still, the Tenth had lost less than a hundred men and had taken out almost three hundred cavalry in the process. It had been close, but they had to count that a win. Shouts of consternation from the far side of the hill suggested that things had gone worse for the Seventh. He turned and glanced up at Plancus, who stood atop a wagon, engaged in a discussion with a tribune.

  ‘Sir, how’s the line?’ he shouted, interrupting the conversation. Plancus looked around in irritation and spotting Atenos shouting at him, waved the tribune away. ‘Lost quite a few men, but the line held on every side. I don’t think we’ll see their cavalry again.’

  ‘No, but we’ve got something else to worry about now.’

  He pointed, and Plancus followed his gesture, his face paling and his expression setting hard.

  Across the dry brown grass, toward the olive groves, four legions stomped relentlessly toward them in formation. Atenos threw up a prayer to Mars and to his own favoured Teutatus as well, and looked down the line.

  ‘Alright, men. This is going to be nasty. We’re not going to try to take them all. We’re not here to win. We just stop them getting to the carts and beasts. Hold the line until the relief gets here, and then we’ll go home and drink until we can see dancing sprites and big-breasted women.’

  There was an oddly subdued cheer, and Atenos watched the enemy approach.

  * * *

  Atenos felt a fiery line drawn across his flesh as the tip of a gladius dinged off his cheek guard, missed his eye by a finger-width, and carved a furrow in his nose. He caught a brief glimpse of the face of its wielder – a sun-weathered legionary with skin like a saddle bag, before his automatic reaction blow struck, his vine stick swung hard from the left. The heavy, knobbly end, polished on the tunics of a hundred legionaries, clanged into the man’s helmet so hard that it sounded like a temple bell. The man fell away, his sword lowered, eyes spinning with the blow. He dropped to his knees and threw up even as he tried to undo the chinstrap on his helmet and free his concussed head. His helmet fell away, and before he could sense relief he was hit in the face with the bronze edge of a shield as a soldier from the Tenth took momentary advantage.

  Atenos lashed out with his gladius, slamming it into the armpit of a man who had raised his sword to strike at a Caesarian optio.

  It was hell. The unconscionable consequences of civil war had been forgotten from the first moment the Pompeian legion had hit them. Atenos had not been able to escape the irony that it appeared that the unit they were facing also carried a flag labelling them as the Tenth. Only Caesar’s bull on their own flag helped delineate who was fighting whom. Worse, Atenos had already twice found men from his own legion fighting one another in the mistaken belief they were deadly enemies. His only consolation was that the same thing seemed to be happening among the enemy. He’d seen two men fighting back to back against a circle of enemies for a dozen heartbeats until they realised they were from different legions, and even then Atenos hadn’t been sure who had won that scuffle.

  ‘Reform the line,’ he bellowed. ‘Tenth Equestris on your banners!’

  The lines were holding, but here and there they melted outwards into small melees as men accidentally responded to the whistle calls of centurions from another legion.

  A man slashed at Atenos and he knocked the blade aside with his stick, irritated at the dent the blow left, and jabbed his sword into the man’s genitals. As the legionary fell, screaming, Atenos stepped back and watched his men pulling away from the enemy and settling into their lines again. The enemy commander seemed to have had the same idea and he could hear calls for the Tenth Virtutis to pull back and form lines.

  Virtutis. The brave. There was no denying that, at least.

  ‘Take a look,’ Atenos said to his men, ‘at the men to each side. Keep them in that position and stick your steel in anyone in front. Don’t g
et drawn out into melees and forget whistles and horns. You all know my voice and that of your own centurion. If the order isn’t called in one of our voices, ignore it. Ready, lads?’

  There was a roar in response, and swords were clattered against the side of shields.

  ‘For Hispania and for the senate and the people of Rome,’ bellowed an officer of their opposing legion. Atenos narrowed his eyes.

  ‘For Caesar, for Rome, and for victory!’ he bellowed.

  Another roar, and the enemy came again.

  Once more Atenos found himself in the thick of it, his vine stick and gladius lashing out together, battering and slashing, parrying and jabbing. His flickering glance suddenly fell upon a man with the pelt of some great beige feline draped across his helmet and his eyes rose to the standard above him. A standard!

  Two men beside him were already breaking the line to get to the standard bearer and, despite breaching his orders to maintain the line, he could understand why they would risk it. To take an enemy standard in battle was automatic promotion and free drinks for a year. It was hard to beat as a battle honour unless you could get your hands on their eagle.

  The first of the two men fell to the blade of the man on the signifer’s left, and the second crumpled as the iron shoe on the bottom of the standard slammed into his helmet. For a moment even Atenos considered putting himself in mortal danger and breaking out of the line to try for the man’s heavy burden. Then the reality of what that standard meant sank in. It was a standard from the Third Cohort, but the Third Cohort of the Fourth Legion. That meant that he and his men were no longer facing just one legion, but two. Their odds had just fallen considerably.

  ‘Form up and hold. Just hold. No heroics!’

  Again, his world became blood and bone, iron and bronze, as things unmentionable sprayed across him and hit his armour before sliding wetly downwards. His sword sang out again and again with the meaty sound of blows successfully delivered. His vine staff blocked sword after sword, taking notches along its length, and repeatedly dinged people on the helmet, sending them reeling back with their ears ringing.