Caros grabbed a waterskin from a warrior’s trembling hand and upended the snout over his mouth, downing a mouthful of tepid ale.
“Rappo, every man with a spear is to stand in the second and third rows. Tell that to every graybeard you can find.”
The youth was covered in blood from the mouth down and Caros grimaced. “Wait! If you are hurt get to the horses.”
Rappo grinned. “Not my blood. I will find the graybeards and tell them.”
Already Neugen was sending swordsmen into the front rank as quickly as he could locate them. For once, the Bastetani warriors allowed orders to be given and followed them. Men and women were trembling and most had leaked rivulets of piss down their inner thighs. One woman took a place in the front rank, blood oozing from an open-mouthed wound in her shoulder. She had no shield, only a falcata.
“Pass that warrior a shield! Every warrior in the front rank a good shield!” Caros roared.
These were quickly passed forward overhead to replace the splintered scraps that were all that remained of their original shields. All the while the Romans edged forward.
Thank Runeovex, thought Caros, that at least they were not launching spears at them.
Dubgetious and his front rank were coming closer now and right behind them were the Romans.
“Spears! Second and third row!” Caros shouted. He grabbed and thrust men bodily into place.
“Caros! Ready!” Neugen called from his place in the first rank. The Roman wall loomed large.
Beaugissa pushed past him, eyes narrowed and lips pressed to her teeth. She gripped her spear in both hands as she shouldered her way into the second rank behind Neugen.
Every warrior that was going to fight was in place. Others were limping back towards the horses, ready to flee should the Romans prevail.
Caros muttered a quick invocation to Runeovex. It was all he had left. He pushed into the ranks of men and women, oblivious to the stink, the sobs and the curses.
The Romans were on them. From five paces away they struck, surging forward with a roar. Caros felt his shield punched back into his shoulder and immediately a gladius flashed past his nose.
He roared his war cry and stabbed. He rocked his shield against his opponent’s, keeping the Roman off-balance and stabbed again and again, sinking his blade into the gaps in the Romans’ overlapping shields. On the fourth thrust he felt a solid impact and the yield of flesh. Blood gushed over his hand and he twisted his sword free as he pulled his shield right up to his body. The injured Roman groaned and fell forward, his left leg giving way. Striking like a serpent, Caros drove his blade into the wide gap created, taking the man’s comrade under his sword arm, driving the falcata a hand’s breadth into his chest. It was a mortal wound and Caros quickly withdrew the sword as a legionary in the second row hacked at his arm. With a twist of his wrist, Caros lashed the cutting edge of his blade along the legionary’s inner arm, opening muscle to the bone.
Here was the method to defeat the Romans. Immobilize their shields with your own and whittle their living flesh from their bodies. But that was just one facet.
“Spear!” Caros called over his shoulder.
The word was scarce past his lips when Beaugissa slid her spear between his shoulder and Neugen’s. The spearhead punched over the shield rim of a Roman who had just stepped forward to fill the gap created by Caros. The point took him under the right eye, snapped his head aside and laid open his face. Caros kicked the bottom of the stricken legionary’s shield, opening more space, and whipped his sword across the man’s throat.
He could hear the call now all along the Bastetani line for spears. The warriors were catching on, battering the Romans’ front rank with their shields, while the spear carriers behind slid their blades to and fro, opening wrists, knees and faces.
Panting and blinded by sweat, Caros lashed out again and again. More often than not, his blows met the Roman shields or missed altogether. When he did find flesh, the curved falcata opened it with ease.
The Roman ranks pressed hard against the Bastetani and sword wielders staggered and slipped, gutted by the stabbing swords or blinded by unseen thrusts from over shield rims. More and more spear carriers found themselves unexpectedly in the front rank where without shields, they lasted just heartbeats.
Caros felt his sword arm cramp and cursed, kicking the Roman shield in front of him, buying moments for his strength to return. To his relief, the Roman fell back and then, before Caros could engage, the Roman and his shield receded.
A great roar lifted over the melee and Caros gritted his teeth, wondering which flank had given in. A soiled green and white cloak whipped past him along with an ululation. Warriors battered his shield aside and sent him staggering as they rushed past him. He wiped his eyes clear of the stinging sweat, no longer certain even in which direction the enemy stood.
Beaugissa appeared before him, her chest rising and falling, a pulse fluttering close under the blood-stained skin of her throat. Her eyes were liquid fire as she dropped her gore encrusted spear and fell against his chest.
Long locks of hair that fell from under her helm, brushed his chin, blowing under his nostrils. He breathed in her scent and held her tight. His eyes closed and for a heartbeat he imagined he was killed and he quickly snapped them open. His vision cleared by degrees and revealed a scene of utter butchery.
A thick line of toppled bodies, like a great fleshy gouge, extended across both sides of the road. Many warriors still grappled on the ground. Others writhed and kicked alone in their own world of pain and dying. Injured legionaries stumbled and crawled after their retreating fellows, desperate to evade the warriors now hunting them. These fell on the luckless Romans, opening their throats with practiced ease.
Caros looked down incredulously as Beaugissa lifted her face.
“We defeated them?” His voice was rough and dry, but she understood and nodded.
He looked to his right, down the valley, hearing the monotone trumpet call of the Roman legionaries. No more than a hundred and a half men of the original four hundred still walked. They had formed a close-knit block of shields and were edging back up the trail they had so confidently marched out on that morning.
Bastetani warriors were harassing them in the age old way. Sudden swift assaults by a handful of screaming warriors. The Romans, defeated, were still violently dangerous and these little groups rarely survived the initial attack. Their blood lust was killing them.
“Hold! Neugen! Call the warriors home!”
Beaugissa saw what he was seeing and released him, sinking to her knees in exhaustion.
Rappo came running, concern bright on his face at the sight of Beaugissa on her knees.
“Rappo! She is fine, but you need to fetch the horses.”
The relieved Masulian thrust a waterskin into her hands with a wide smile, before tearing back to the rear, whistling. His faithful mount broke from the herd to meet him. Nimbly, he leapt to her back and galloped off to bring horses to the lines.
Neugen called to Caros from where he lay nearby. “Am I dead? If so, I demand ale!”
Maleric pushed himself to his knees from a few paces away. “Ale?” His voice was like gravel on chain. He hawked and spat. “We won that? How is that possible?” His dark eyes swiveled to Caros, respect radiating from them.
Caros heard the drum of hooves and saw Rappo leading a string of four mounts. Taking a deep breath, he felt pain ripple and crack like lightning through his back, shoulders and hips. When the mounts came to a halt, he had just enough strength to pull himself astride.
Rounding the Bastetani warriors up, beating them back to save them from wasting their lives attacking the retreating Romans, and then finding a safe path to a camp took his remaining strength. He slid from the horse and leaned against it for a heartbeat until his head cleared and he could feel his toes.
“Water.” He peeled a goatskin from a reeling warrior with half his face covered in blood-soaked linen. The man smiled through
bloodied lips, revealing shattered teeth and bleeding gums.
Caros wiped the rim of the spout with tired concentration and sniffed the contents. Ale, sour and rank. He drank all the same, feeling the sour liquid ignite his raw throat and roil as it hit his guts. He spat and threw the skin back at the man.
“Good fighting.”
“Ho, good fighting, Caros. I fought and won at the side of the Claw.” The man swallowed a bellyful of the potent drink. “Thank you for that. Cost me an eye and most of my teeth, but we took their heads and pissed down their throats!” Ululating somehow, despite his injuries, he tripped off to find his kin.
Caros dropped slowly to his knees beside his own companions where he found them on the hillside.
Maleric and Neugen lay on their backs, passing a skin between them. An empty skin already lay forlorn where it had been tossed.
Beaugissa was struggling to untie her cuirass and cursing her bloodless fingers. Rappo, stripped to his small clothes, sat chewing a twig, eyes wide and unseeing as darkness fell.
Few fires were lit, the warriors too distracted to care. Caros lay unmoving beside Beaugissa, listening to the moans of copulation from the unwounded and the hissing of pain from those that had hosted sharp iron in their flesh.
Chapter 21
Stars still burned brightly in the nightscape above the tree-crowned hills and deep black valleys when Caros thrashed awake. He lay on his back, oblivious to the sharp contours of rocks pressing into his back while he tried to recapture the images from his dreams. Heart hammering, he blinked up at the stars, feeling the sweat of fear swiftly grow cold at his neck. His cloak lay damp at his side, thrown off at some point while he slept.
Cursing, he propped himself up on an elbow, wincing at the multitude of aches that awoke. Dark mounds and pale-shadowed faces lost in sleep were all he could see of his companions. Their deep regular breathing was at odds with the other sounds that issued from across the hillside and Caros felt his skin pimple and hair rise.
He sat up and pulled the cloak over his shoulders, fastening it at his neck with a copper brooch and pin. There was little point in trying to sleep again. He was cold, sore and needed to piss. His hair hung in his face and he patted around to find the braided leather belt he used to tie it with. His knuckles struck an upturned helm causing him to grit his teeth as pain coursed through the bruised and swollen joints. How many times in the battle had his hand been crushed between his shield and a Roman’s he wondered? How many times had the flat of a gladius slap into his knuckles, elbows and knees? He felt fresh sweat ooze from his skin as he thought of the number of times it could have been the edge of the blade. He found the belt and rose, tying back his hair and squinting east to see how far off lay dawn’s new light. Some while still.
It was slow work edging through the hundreds of sleeping bodies in the near dark. Some weary warriors sat beside muted fires, tending to kin or clan that had suffered grievous injuries that threatened to steal their breath before the new day.
He winced and cursed as he urinated, knowing the stream was too dark, even in low starlight. His lower back throbbed like a mule kick every time he put any effort into emptying his bladder faster. Finally done, he stood panting from the effort. Victory in battle did not come cheap he thought dryly. In the valley the sounds of battle still emanated. Only these combatants wore fur coats and ran on four legs.
The Bastetani dead had been pulled from the grim furrows of corpses and placed on guarded pyres. Two hundred would return to their ancestors with the setting sun that day. The Roman corpses, stripped to bare broken flesh, had been left where they had fallen. Their bodies now a feast of offal for wolves, dogs and lynx. At sunrise the vultures and crows would descend in oily black clouds and the clamor would grow even louder.
When day came, Caros sent four riders galloping south. Two riding to the lands of the Bastetani to tell of the great battle and victory for their people. These two warriors, one a pox-scarred man and the other a broken-toothed woman, had committed to memory the names of two hundred and eleven men and women who would ride to their ancestors.
Their eyes filled to overflowing with the honor of their task, they tied two packs of plundered coin, jewelry and armor taken from the Romans to their pack horses.
Across the hill, warriors drummed their shields and vultures wheeled as these two rode solemnly away.
The remaining two riders looked miserably after their departing fellows.
“You will ride to Hanno with news of the battle.” He had scratched a short message into one of the leaden plates used for such communiques and enclosed it in a pouch bearing the symbol of the Barcas. He tossed the pouch to the Greek speaking Cam. “Tell Hanno we encountered a small Roman vanguard and fought them as he would have wished.” He stared gravely at them. “Do not mention victory. You tell him it was a bloody battle in which we lost more than two hundred of our kin before we retreated in good order.”
Cam’s expression darkened as the implication became clear. “What of our victory? We defeated the Romans! It is a deed that our ancestors will cheer, Caros!”
Caros kept his eyes fixed on the messengers as he listened to the man’s words. “Because that is the truth that Hanno and Indibilis must hear and I have asked you to deliver it. Now, will you or shall I send another?”
Cam twisted the pouch in his hands, his eyes clouded with confusion. How could he deny the Bastetani hero that had turned so many battles into victories? Yet, how could he deny a Bastetani victory over the iron-hard legionaries that made even brave warriors tremble in fear?
Caros watched in silence, knowing the warrior pride in the messenger was at war with the man’s loyalty to him. After long moments, the man’s loyalty and respect for Caros won and he nodded, tucked away the message pouch and slammed his heels into his mount’s flanks.
“You fed him swill and he resents it. So, tell us the real reason you deny our victory?”
Caros clenched his fist, stared at the purple and yellow bruising around the rents and scars, endured the pain.
“To gain a greater victory and save more of our people’s lives.” He looked up at Neugen, who stood shaking in anger.
“That sounds like something Hannibal would say, Caros. Except you are not a Carthaginian. You are Bastetani!”
Caros stepped close to Neugen, his blood thick with anger. “What of it? Am I wrong to follow the path I see? One that will save the lives of countless warriors, not only Bastetani? That is what I am doing and I care not who you think I sound like while I do it.”
Maleric grumbled low in his throat from nearby, a warning at Neugen’s fist closing on his sword hilt.
“Tell them we won, Caros. It is the truth, just tell them the truth or be cursed in the eyes of Catubodua and you will never win another battle.” Neugen pleaded.
Caros trembled at the curse and stepped back to gain his senses. Breathing deeply, he smiled in sorrow at Neugen.
“Won? My friend, we were double their numbers yet we could not prevent them retreating. That is not the victory I dream of and nor, do I think, would Catubodua, goddess of war, see that as a victory.”
Neugen slammed his fist into his palm, his eyes dark. He spun to look across the throbbing wings of countless carrion birds circling the feast that awaited them.
Caros stepped up beside him, the sun dazzlingly bright on the hillside and a light breeze lifting a stray lock of hair. Perhaps it was a passing shade’s farewell.
He placed a hand on Neugen’s shoulder. “It was a fine battle and respect to the Romans for their prowess. They matched us and matched us well. Now imagine if I tell Hanno and Indibilis that we won a great battle. Would they not throw their tiny army at the full might of the Romans?”
Neugen remained silent, eyes blinking unseeingly.
“You know they would. But if we can delay the battle and advise them how to fight these Romans, will that not give us a better chance at winning?”
The thump of axes could be heard f
rom the nearby forest as trees were felled for the sunset pyres. Scouts were riding north to keep eyes on the enemy. More rode west watching for treachery from the Ilerget.
Neugen turned to Caros, smiled and clasped his arm tightly. “I see now what you mean and I am sorry for the curse. Both Catubodua, goddess of war and Runeovex, god of spears and secrets, ride each on your shoulders and guide you. I shall butcher two fine rams as an offering to them.”
“That is a fine plan, and well due. We will empty Cissa of their very best stock of rams and bulls and make a day of thanks for a fine battle.” Caros grinned, his heart light and his spirit increased at the thought of honoring the old ways among his own people.
Neugen punched him on his already swollen shoulder and snorted when Caros flinched. “Whoops, too hard for you? I swear, the way you think, you could be a match for the clever Barca.”
Caros shook away the thought. “Not likely.” Then he saw the glint in Neugen’s eye and knew his friend had a barb poised to set. “Aargh… go shag a goat.”
“No really, except Hannibal gathers allies like a day old shit gathers flies. You?” He laughed. “Less so.”
Outriders from Hanno’s columns arrived before sunset of that day. First came M’hatmu with five hundred Masulian horsemen. Amongst them rode Cam and his fellow messenger.
Caros greeted the gray-bearded Masulian at the foot of the southern facing slope the Bastetani had encamped on.
“Greetings, M’hatmu! It is good to see you and your Masulian warriors.”
They were the first sign that Hanno was near and Caros could not stop himself from looking south toward Cissa.
M’hatmu smiled, “Greetings Caros, your message arrived. I am glad to see you well.”
Caros laughed. He ached from the crown of his head to the balls of his feet. “Nothing a day in the sun will not mend.” He caught M’hatmu looking towards the unlit pyres and then beyond to the tempest of wheeling carrion birds. “The battlefield is close?” M’hatmu asked in confusion.
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