‘Close it up!’
Pulling their men back, the officers shrank the circle until each front ranker was shoulder to shoulder with the men to either side. Scaurus nodded to Julius and Tertius with a look of respect.
‘Excellent drill, First Spears!’
He pushed into the circle with the two men following, and Julius shouted one last command.
‘Face inwards!’
With a rattle of equipment the Tungrians reversed their facing, forming an unbroken ring of faces around the tribune. Scaurus strode into the middle and then turned a full circle with an appraising stare.
‘You see the value of all that mindless drilling?’ He smiled wolfishly at the men encircling him, working hard to exude a confidence he was a long way from feeling. ‘Just a moment ago you were standing watching those horsemen over there tear a legion cohort apart, wondering whether we’ll fight or flee and expecting to die whichever we chose. Now you stand in a tight formation that will enable us to face down those murderous bastards and beat them!’
He paused again, finding the looks of incredulity and disbelief he’d been expecting on many of the faces around him.The remaining legionnaires were in full, desperate flight now, running for their lives in all directions, and whooping riders were hunting them down as they frantically sought to escape by climbing the valley’s side, those men with bows using them to bring down men who succeeded in reaching parts of the slope impassable to the horsemen.
‘They can fight alright, and on the right ground that many of them are pretty much unbeatable for two cohorts of infantry, no matter how good we are. Out here on the ice, however, it’s a different story! On the ice, gentlemen, victory goes to the man with the best footing! A horse can walk on this surface, and even trot, but there’s more to cavalry fighting than simply charging at an enemy!’ He lowered his voice slightly, forcing the soldiers to lean in and listen intently. ‘A horse, gentlemen, will not charge into a line of soldiers. A bold enough rider might jump that line, except here on the ice there’s no footing for the beast to make the jump from. It might be persuaded to back into the line, although the prospect of you ugly characters poking it with sharp iron will doubtless be enough to put most animals off.’
He waited long enough for a few tight smiles to appear in the Tungrian ranks before continuing.
‘Make no mistake, gentlemen, they will come across this ice at us very soon now!’ The horsemen were milling about on the lake’s bank, some dismounting to strip their victims of their weapons and whatever valuables they happened to be carrying. ‘Their spears will be red with the blood of five hundred legionnaires . . .’
‘And one fucking idiot.’
The men standing beside Scarface nodded their agreement with the muttered sentiment, quickly turning their attention back to their tribune.
‘. . . but you men and I know full well that such displays mean nothing. Besting a few hundred untried boys caught unawares in open order is one thing! Defeating two full cohorts of the best infantrymen in the empire who are formed and ready to meet them is entirely another! They will come charging across the ice at us, but at the last moment, when they know that their horses are likely to shy away rather than collide with our line, they will pull their beasts up, looking to use the length of their lances to pick holes in our line from a safe distance. And on this smooth surface those animals will slide, gentlemen, they will fail to stop soon enough and they will present themselves at the end of your spears. And when that happens we must take the opportunity they offer us and do to them what they’ve done to those legionaries.’
He lowered his voice again, and spoke into the hush in a tone that told his men he knew something they did not.
‘You see, gentlemen, the man that leads them has made one dreadful mistake. Had he attacked us first, while we were strung out along the road on the march, then he would most likely have been successful. The legion cohort would almost certainly have run for their lives and presented him with an easy kill to finish the day. But as it is he’s chosen to start his dinner with the easy meat. We’re going to show him that we’re built from bone and gristle! We’re going to stick in his bloody throat and choke him to death!’
He nodded to Julius, ushering his first spear forward. The big man scowled around the circle, knowing that for all of the tribune’s reassurance what his men needed most now was the harsh voice of command to which they had been brutally conditioned to answer with instant obedience.
‘No more speeches, Tungrians. You either fight and win here or you’ll break and die here. And I’m not planning on dying here. Front rankers!’
Scarface and Sanga exchanged a glance, the latter muttering a comment to his mate that had heads around them nodding again.
‘Here it fuckin’ comes.’
‘On the command “Prepare to fight”, you will do this!’ Julius drew his sword and took up a shield from the ice next to him. Hacking at the ice with measured blows, he swiftly dug out a hole like the one that Dubnus had carved before dropping the shield onto it.
‘You see? Give your spear to the man behind you, use your sword to chop out a hole for the boss to sit in, then put the shield down with the boss in the hole you’ve made and your foot on the shield to give you some footing. Then you sheathe your sword, take your spear back from the man behind you, and his shield, and prepare to fight! Rear rankers! On the command “Prepare to fight”, start working yourselves up to taking on a horseman at close quarters. When those barbarians come skating up to the line fighting for control of their horses, you’re going to dive out and grab their reins and drag them in close for the front rank men to kill. If you can’t manage that, then you pull down the rider and do for him with your sword or your dagger! If you go down with him, remember that the ice is slippery. Get your feet in his body and push him away, so you’ve got time to get back on your feet and get your iron into him!’
The Sarmatae were forming up on the lakeside, their leader shouting curses and imprecations as the last of his men remounted their horses. Some of the enemy riders were laden with booty stripped from the slaughtered legionaries, wearing captured Roman helmets and weapons.
‘All ranks, about-face! Front ranks, get those shields down!’
Scarface and Sanga grimaced, drawing their swords and chopping at the ice alongside each other. The scarred soldier dropped his shield experimentally onto the frozen surface, sliding it around until the boss dropped neatly into the hole he’d made a moment before.
‘Fuck me, it actually works. Who said all senior officers were full of shit?’
Sanga spat on the ice, putting a foot on his own shield.
‘As I recall it was you, you stupid bastard. Here, you,’ – he put a hand out to the man behind him – ‘give me my spear, and I’ll have that shield . . .’
His eyes met those of the rear ranker, and narrowed in calculation as he realised it was one of the Sarmatae foot soldiers who had been given to the Romans to plug the gaps in their ranks.
‘Oi, Saratos, or whatever your name is. Am I going to let you finger your blade behind me while your mates do their best to put their iron through me? Not likely!’
He grabbed the man’s mail shirt at the collar and dragged him forward, pushing the man to his right backwards into his vacated place in the circle’s rear rank. Switching places with the hapless Sarmatae so that he was sandwiched between the two veterans, he patted his spear with a meaningful glance.
‘You so much as twitch the wrong way and I’ll put this little darling up your nose!’
Scarface regarded the trembling man levelly for a moment.
‘I think you’re being a little harsh on our new friend, my old mate. Let’s face it, he’s wearing our kit and standing in our fuckin’ line, ain’t he? He either fights for his life or else he ends up with one of them long spears of theirs poking out of his arse like a backwards prick.’ He slapped the Sarmatae on the shoulder, thrusting his head forward to shout in the man’s face. ‘You fight?’
While the previous discussion had been unintelligible to the recruit, the unequivocal challenge left no room for misunderstanding. He nodded vigorously.
‘I fight! Horseman kill!’
Sanga nodded to his friend.
‘Best keep an eye on him all the same. Hold on, Latrine’s shouting the odds again . . .’
Rapping the flat of his sword’s blade against his dagger, Julius was looking about the circle with a look that brooked no argument.
‘Tungrians, make some noise! Tell those horse-fuckers that we’re not going anywhere!’
Within seconds the flat tapping of blade on blade had swollen to a thunderous pulsing rattle of spear shafts on the bosses of the soldiers’ shields, a wall of sound that echoed across the lake as the horsemen manoeuvred into a rough line and began to advance on the waiting Tungrians, their horses stepping gingerly down onto the lake’s frozen surface.
‘And so it comes down to andreia . . .’ Julius turned to glance at his tribune with a curious expression, and Scaurus shook his head in self-deprecation. ‘I’m sorry, First Spear, random outbursts in foreign languages are the price to be paid for having education thrust upon one at an early age, I suppose. My history tutor used to fill my head with tales of the Greek wars, and time and time again he used the word andreia to describe the nature of a man’s courage.’
‘Greek was he, Tribune?’
Scaurus laughed at the question.
‘A fair guess. Yes, he was Greek, and if my uncle had known the disregard in which he held our empire by comparison with the glories his country once knew, well then I expect that he would have had the man beaten and thrown out of the house. He used to take me out on the balcony and point out across the city, all those buildings as far as the eye could see, and tell me that “All this will one day crumble, as mighty Greece’s time in the sun came to an end, when we lost the collective andreia that allowed us to triumph over Troy and repel the Persians.”’
He watched as the Sarmatae horsemen gathered pace, the horses snorting out their breath in plumes of vapour as they accelerated to a canter across the ice.
‘And now this dirty little battle becomes a matter of whose andreia is the greater, ours or theirs. If we break in the face of their charge then we are all surely dead, but if we hold long enough for them to skate onto our spears, then we may yet hold the whip over them.’
Julius craned his neck to stare over his men’s helmeted heads, then turned to Tertius and muttered a quiet instruction. The Second Cohort’s senior centurion nodded, pacing away to the back of the circle where his own men stood. The enemy were closer now, their screams and shouts piercing the air as they waved their lances over their heads. Directly facing the riders’ onrushing wall of horseflesh, Scarface rolled his shoulders and ducked into the cover of his shield with his spear held ready to throw.
‘Fuck me, but would you look at that lot?’
Sanga laughed grimly.
‘Your leggings full then, are they?’
His mate shook his head dourly.
‘Not yet. After that shit you cooked up for dinner last night you’ll know when my ring gives up the fight, ’cause it’ll smell like I’ve dropped a week-old corpse.’ He raised his voice, as the horsemen lowered their lances in a glittering wave of polished iron, speaking to the men to either side of him with a tone that dripped with bored contempt. ‘Hold your ground, you fuckin’ women! You heard what the tribune said! We can beat these!’
Marcus stepped up behind his men, raising his voice to be heard over the oncoming horses’ thunder and the chorus of brutal reassurance and imprecation being shouted by the veteran soldiers at their less experienced comrades.
‘Ready spears!’
The front rankers leaned back, eager for the command to unleash their spears on the horsemen, but Marcus guessed that Julius would wait until the last possible moment, knowing that his men would be unable to get the usual power into their throws given that the ice would prevent them from performing the forward step to add momentum to the missiles’ flight. He watched the first spear intently, waiting for his raised vine stick to fall.
‘Ready . . . wait . . . ready . . . throw!’
A hail of wood and iron arched out from the Tungrian line in an untidy cascade, spears raining down onto the oncoming enemy and transforming their relatively ordered formation into chaos in an instant. Riders busy aligning the points of their lances with the Roman line were caught unawares by the onslaught, their spitted bodies falling beneath the hoofs of the horses behind them and unnerving or even tripping the hapless beasts, while those men with both wicker shields and the wit to use them managed in the main only to deflect the flying spears onto the men beside and behind them. The charge faltered momentarily, giving the Tungrian front rankers time to reach behind them for a second spear.
‘Steady!’
All along the Tungrian line centurions and chosen men crouched close to their soldiers, encouraging, cajoling and simply bullying them to hold their positions as the horsemen regained their momentum and covered the last few paces at a canter. Scarface felt a hand on his arm, and glanced round to find Marcus at his shoulder.
‘Wait . . .’
Staring up at the looming wall of horseflesh, even Marcus was struck by the apparent impossibility of any attempt to resist the attackers’ oncoming tide, seeing his men’s spearheads wavering in the face of the onrushing charge. He bellowed at his men, knowing that the moment of greatest danger was upon them all.
‘The eyes! Look at the horses’ eyes!’
The animals were panicking, eyes rolling as their riders goaded them forward at the Romans, eager to strike back at the waiting soldiers, but the beasts’ attempts to shy away from the waiting spear points only resulted in their hoofs sliding on the smooth ice. As the rider facing Scarface skated helplessly up to the Tungrian line, he lunged forward with his lance, cursing as the soldier raised his shield and allowed the weapon’s sharp iron blade to punch through its layered board and stick firm. Wrenching at the shield’s grip, the Tungrian fought the rider for possession of the weapon, edging to one side as the soldier to his rear squeezed between him and the Sarmatae recruit alongside him to grab at the horse’s reins. Bracing himself off the shield laid on the ice before Scarface and pulling back with all his strength, the rear ranker physically dragged the protesting animal into spear reach, and even as its rider released his grip on the lance and went for his sword the Sarmatae recruit, Saratos, stabbed forward expertly with his spear, burying it deeply in the horse’s throat and twisting the shaft before ripping it free.
With an ear-piercing scream of pain the animal reared back, wrenching the reins free from the struggling soldier’s grip and pulling him over onto the ice, but then staggered on its feet as a thick rivulet of steaming blood gushed down its neck and legs from the open artery. Bellowing incoherent rage, the animal’s rider leapt down from his stricken mount’s back, raising his sword to attack only to receive Sanga’s spear in his armpit as the veteran took his brief chance with a lunging strike. The barbarian recoiled from the blow against the horse’s flank as the beast sank helplessly to its knees, horse and rider both crippled by their wounds. The rider alongside him leaned forward and punched his lance into Sanga’s unshielded shoulder, scattering a handful of severed mail rings as the long blade sank deep into the soldier’s chest below his collar bone. He staggered back with his right hand locked on the weapon’s long shaft even as the Sarmatae tried to tear it free from the wound, maintaining his tenacious grip as his eyes rolled upwards and he fell to his knees on his own shield. Scarface bellowed his rage at the distracted rider as the man fought to dislodge his lance from the wounded Tungrian’s grasp, hurling his own spear with a ferocity that buried it deep in the junction of the rider’s trunk and thigh and dropping him writhing to the ground. Drawing his sword the wild-eyed soldier took a step forward, only to find Marcus’s hand on his arm again, the centurion’s raised voice calm amid the storm of iron.
‘No! Get him to safety!’
Pulling his gladius from its scabbard the Roman levelled the two swords’ blades, pushed past his soldier and advanced out of the line in a whirl of flickering steel. Ducking under a lance thrust he swung the spatha’s long blade at his attacker’s mount, neatly severing both of the animal’s front legs at the knee. Dancing away to the right, away from the collapsing beast, he turned another kontos thrust with the gladius, then chopped the weapon’s gleaming iron blade from its wooden shaft with a swing of the spatha. Lunging in close to the horseman’s mount, trapped and unable to move in the crush of its fellows, he ducked under the horse’s belly and rammed the gladius into its belly, tearing the blade out to sever the muscles beneath the skin. The stricken beast staggered, unable to stay on its feet, and keeled over away from the Roman, sending its rider sprawling onto the ice. Looking back over his shoulder to be sure that Scarface had managed to pull his comrade to safety, his boot caught on a shield’s rim, and he staggered for a moment before falling heavily onto his back to lie momentarily helpless as fresh horsemen pushed their mounts forward around the animals he had disabled, their long lances raised to strike.
With a roar of anger Saratos stepped forward and smashed a pair of iron spearheads away with his shield, thrusting his own spear’s point up and through the foremost horse’s jaw and deep into its head, dropping the animal to the ground so fast that its hapless rider was catapulted from the saddle on top of Marcus’s legs. The young centurion thrust his gladius into the stunned warrior’s neck, then flexed his knees and kicked him back under the advancing horse’s hoofs in a shower of dark-red arterial blood. Hands grasped him by his mailed shoulders and dragged him back into the Tungrian line, and Marcus looked up to find his chosen man standing over him with a grin as he pushed more men into the gap.
‘I knew you were a good ’un, Centurion, but I’ll buy you a fuckin’ cup of wine for that, if we ever see the inside of a tavern again.’
05 - The Wolf's Gold Page 26