Three times he had stepped forward to take his place in the line as men went down. He had picked up a discarded spear and forced himself between two of the Batavians in the second rank and jabbed the point between a pair of auxiliary helmets in front of him at moustached, sweat-slicked barbarian faces that came and went, screamed and snarled, bled and died. As he fought for his life he had discovered a curious calm born of close proximity to the men beside and in front of him. Mail-clad shoulders pushed against his on either side; from behind, a shield forced him forward so that he was in physical contact with the auxiliary in front and adding his strength to the frontline defender’s own. He had no shield to protect him, but when one of the long barbarian spears threatened, the man at his side would nudge his own shield forward to take the blow. Comradeship, was that it? No, what he was feeling was more than comradeship. It was brotherhood. His battle was limited to that narrow corridor of half a dozen friends and the enemy who faced them from between the two polished iron helmets that limited his vision. His nostrils were filled with the acrid smell of fear, and he knew that it was his own. But there was also sweat, the bitter metallic stink from the sparks that flew when two iron blades met in a certain way, and above it all the now familiar scent of butchered carcass and torn bowels. He wondered how any man in the line was able to hear an order, if orders came at all. The soldier’s aural world was one of grunts and unintelligible growls that rasped from dry, dust-filled throats; of fear-filled challenges in an unfamiliar language, and shrieks of mortal agony sung out against a background rhythm of shield against shield, sword against shield, and sword against flesh and muscle and bone. Of man against man.
Three times Frontinus had sent him back. ‘Your place is beside the elephant, soldier,’ the Batavian snarled on the third occasion. ‘Your time will come, but disobey my order again and it will be my sword that kills you and not a British spear.’
So he had retired to his position and witnessed the martyrdom of the Batavian cohorts. Men didn’t die from a single wound. The mail that covered their torsos and the protective helmets they wore meant it was difficult for the Britons to inflict a mortal blow from beyond the shield. Instead they stood beside their comrades until they had taken a dozen cuts and dropped to the ground from exhaustion or loss of blood, then crawled clear to die without complaint among the bodies of friends who had already fallen. For every Batavian casualty the Britons suffered tenfold. With each successive charge, the mound of dead and dying in front of the Roman line grew higher and hampered the surviving attackers’ progress. It was only Nuada’s exhortations and faith in their gods that kept them coming forward. Togodumnus used his warriors like a giant club, battering again and again against the thin metal sheet that was the Batavian defence, and he raged and screamed his frustration as his men died in vain and the sheet bent and buckled, but did not tear. But there came a point as the sun reached its mid-point when not even the gods or Togodumnus’s rage could make the British champions charge again. They must rest.
A breathless hush fell over the battlefield, and where there had only been the endless clash of iron against iron and the agonized screams of men suffering and dying, Rufus could hear the sound of birdsong. It seemed inappropriate, unfair. While they had been trapped in this gore-slick enclave of carnage, life continued around and above them unnoticed. It made him want to weep. One of the auxiliaries came to his side and offered him a drink of precious water from an almost empty goatskin. He reached for it, but dropped his hand and gave the man a tired smile.
‘No,’ he croaked. ‘I’m not thirsty.’ The truth was that his tongue was cloven to the roof of his mouth as if it were set there in mortar. But he would not drink when better men were thirstier still. He waved towards the line of exhausted defenders.
Frontinus staggered up to them. The Batavian commander had lost his helmet and his face was coated with dust, making him look as if he were already long dead. ‘It is over, I think,’ he confessed. ‘If they have the spirit for just one more charge, I believe we are done.’ His voice was cracked and broken, but thick with pride. ‘Only Vespasian can save us, and I fear his troubles are as great as our own or he would be here by now. Take to your elephant’s back. If time is to be our saviour, then it may be that you can buy us a little more of it before…’ His voice tailed off and he nodded before limping back to be with his surviving auxiliaries.
As Rufus watched him go he absently rubbed Bersheba’s forehead where she liked to be scratched, and the elephant grunted in appreciation. Her trunk reached out and she sniffed his tunic, searching for the scent of the little pink apples she loved, but he had none to give her. ‘I am sorry, Bersheba, sorry for everything. I should never have brought you to this barbarian land and this dreadful place. You deserved better.’ He looked into her intelligent brown eyes and saw that, despite everything, she still trusted him. He bent to untie the ropes that held her. ‘When this is over you will never again want for an apple or sleep without a roof over your head,’ he promised, giving her the command to kneel. ‘But first, we have one last battle to fight.’ In a single movement he leapt on to her back and manoeuvred her behind the centre of the Batavian position.
On the far side of the clearing Nuada urged the exhausted Dobunni warriors to a last effort. He had watched in frustration and fury as Togodumnus launched his forces in one futile bull-headed charge after another, allowing the Romans to harvest his men the way a scythe harvests a field of corn. Now he drew Togodumnus to one side. Caratacus’s brother had the look of a man caught in a nightmare. His eyes flickered as if he were seeking an avenue of escape, but they never rested in one place long enough for him to identify it. If he didn’t win this battle, he knew he was finished. If his brother didn’t kill him, the Dobunni survivors would.
‘You have one opportunity,’ Nuada hissed, gripping the king by his cloak where a large golden brooch held it closed at his neck. ‘Do you understand me? One opportunity. Your warriors will follow you, but only if you lead them. This is what you must do.’
XXXIII
Caratacus’s brain felt as if it were about to explode. How could one man cope with so many different problems? How could a single mind deal with the myriad divergent dilemmas created by an army on the brink of defeat? Had he underestimated the threat to his right flank, from where Nuada had failed to return with word of Togodumnus’s position? He had been betrayed by Epedos, that was clear, but who else was about to betray him? He had been certain the left flank could be held — now he was certain Bodvoc would be overwhelmed unless he was given aid. He tried to feel the ebb and flow of the battle around him, but there was only chaos. His people were dying and he was helpless.
‘Lord?’ Ballan’s voice pierced his despair. ‘Lord, you must act. There is still time.’
He blinked and his mind cleared. He saw Ballan staring at him. Saw the trust in the Iceni’s eyes. Beyond him, Scarach stood with his enormous son, waiting. There was still a chance. One chance.
‘Lord Scarach, take your Durotriges, the Trinovantes and the lesser tribes. Join with Bodvoc and smash the forces facing him. One attack. Every man you can gather on the way.’ Scarach stared at him.
He had been waiting all day for a fight and at last he was going to get one. And what a fight. But he understood the implications of Caratacus’s order.
‘That will leave you with-’
‘I know. It is the only way.’
The Durotrige hesitated; did his honour require a refusal? He saw the certainty in Caratacus’s eyes and knew it did not. He nodded and turned away, shouting his orders, but Caratacus had one final instruction. ‘Scarach, you must control your forces. Don’t let them off the leash. When it is done bring them back here. I promise I will leave you more Romans to kill.’
Scarach laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep my dogs to heel. We’ll rip a few Roman faces off and slaughter so many of the bastards they won’t stop running until they reach the ocean. I’ll leave Bodvoc to clean up like the housewife he is
and then come back and show you how it’s done.’
With a last salute the king of the Durotriges ran from the hill and Caratacus again turned his attention to the legionaries pouring from the three narrow bridges. There were hundreds now, already linking the three bridgeheads into a single entity. Soon there would be thousands. His strategy had failed. There was no question of sucking Plautius into a trap, for the trap was already sprung. He must stop the three legions where they were and buy time for Scarach to defeat the force on his left.
He waved his war chiefs forward. It was now or never.
‘Catuvellauni!’ he roared. ‘Attack. Kill them! Kill them all!’
The vast warrior host had been waiting in the lee of the hill since long before sunrise, tormented by and taking casualties from the catapult missiles landing in their midst. Caratacus had dispersed them as widely as he dared, but rocks the size of a bull’s head bounced and skipped and ricocheted over the hard ground, turning men to red ruin in an instant, removing arms and legs and heads. But the British warriors knew nothing of their king’s despair. They had not fought, so they did not consider defeat. They knew the Romans were on the other side of the slope with their backs to the river. The invaders. The enemy. The Catuvellauni were blood-crazed and battle-ready and they charged with all the unstoppable power of a mountain avalanche.
With a surge of pride, Caratacus watched them as they breasted the hilltop in one screaming mass and accelerated down the slope with their fearsome champions in the lead, leaping ahead, tall and powerful and showing their contempt for the enemy by their nakedness. He felt his heart lurch when they reached the bottom of the shallow slope and slowed in a gigantic splash of disturbed water, all their momentum lost in an instant. He had known it would happen. How could he not? The water-filled bog which had been such a key part of his strategy was now the bane of his own people. It was they who were forced to struggle through the glutinous, feet-deep mud to reach the enemy. Moving towards the river, they didn’t have to fear the underwater obstacles he had placed to delay the Romans still further, but the slow-moving mass trapped in the swamp was a target even a blind legionary couldn’t miss.
His eye was drawn to a warrior in the forefront of the British assault. The man was a giant and Caratacus recognized him as Arven, champion of one of the clans who made up the Catuvellauni. Even from a hundred paces away on the hilltop he could see the man’s muscles bulge as he forced his way through the thigh-deep water. He looked magnificent. Immortal. Mighty Arven was screaming defiance at the Romans forming up by the river when his abdomen sprouted six feet of wood and metal. He stopped abruptly, before folding, almost gently, into the bog to be trampled deep into the mud by those following. He was the first of many. Caratacus saw water stained with blood indeed, but it was not the blood of his enemies.
He wanted to turn away, but he forced himself to watch the suffering of the Catuvellauni. This was his responsibility, no one else’s. His plan, that now depended on ten thousand of Britain’s finest warriors throwing themselves to their deaths against the spears and the swords of three Roman legions. Could he have done anything else? Did he expect anything else? The answer to both questions was no. How he wished it were otherwise. When he had sent the Durotriges to aid Bodvoc, he had known the only way to slow the main attack would be with the flesh and bone of his own people. He felt a twitch in his cheek, just below his left eye, and gritted his teeth. He would not weep.
Something had changed, he realized. When the fighting began he had been surrounded by his aides and his under-chiefs and those who wished to supplant them in the hierarchy of the tribe; each more eager than the one before to give him advice or offer unlikely support. Now he found himself alone in the centre of a ring of men who looked at him with either fear or compassion, as if he were suffering from some contagious disease. Even his personal bodyguard kept a respectful distance.
He knew what it was. They could scent defeat. He came to a decision.
‘Ballan.’ The squat Iceni scuttled to his side. ‘You have eaten and rested?’
Ballan nodded. Caratacus knew it was a lie, but exhaustion and hunger were minor privations on this day of days. He dropped his voice. ‘I wish you to return to the encampment and gather the women and the children, the sick and the old, and furnish them with enough supplies to reach Scarach’s fortress at Mai-den.’ Ballan’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but Caratacus silenced him with a shake of the head. ‘Your scouts will provide an escort. The day may yet be won, or it may be lost. If we are victorious I will send a rider after you. If not…’ He didn’t have to complete the sentence. If not… it would not matter, because he would be dead.
Ballan knew better than to argue. He left without another word and Caratacus turned his attention once more to the bridges, fearful of what he would see. But an unfamiliar feeling caught his chest as his eyes roved over the battle below. Hope. The three landing areas between the river and the swamp were so crammed with legionaries they barely had room to swing their spear arms. All along the Roman line a huge press of British warriors was hacking and cutting in a bid to breach the wall of shields that protected the bridgeheads. The flow of Plautius’s men over each bridge had slowed to a crawl and the far ends were crowded with units waiting their turn to cross. It was working. The sacrifice of the Catuvellauni was not in vain.
By now Bodvoc and Scarach would have destroyed the threat to the army’s left. Soon he would recall the Durotriges and together they and the Catuvellauni would throw the Romans back into the river. He began to make his plans for the attack that would finish the Romans once and for all.
A wail of dismay broke his train of thought. As calmly as he could manage he walked to the rear of the hill, where he could look down upon the British encampments. He would have expected chaos where Ballan was organizing the army’s followers for the journey to Mai-den, but this was different. Hundreds — no — thousands of men were streaming from the east through the huts and the horse lines, singly and in small groups, occasionally in larger, more disciplined units. He recognized the insignia of the Durotriges, the Regni and the Iceni among them. He knew what he was seeing. A retreating army. A defeated army.
He ordered up the leader of his bodyguard. ‘Bring me someone who can tell me what has happened. I must know. Go now, and return quickly.’ Was that urgency in his voice, or panic? He shook his head wearily. It didn’t matter. He returned to the river side of the low hill and looked down to where the Catuvellauni were still fighting and dying. Still managing to pin the Romans in place against the river as he’d asked them to do. Should he withdraw them? Could he withdraw them?
‘Lord?’ The guard held a shaking figure by the arm, a young boy not yet out of his teens. The youth had lost his sword and shield, but was unwounded. It was very obvious he thought he was going to be killed. Caratacus gave a sign and the boy was released and fell to his knees, where he began to babble incomprehensibly. Caratacus laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘Enough. Take a deep breath and tell me what happened. What of King Scarach and King Bodvoc?’
The boy went quiet and his chest rose and fell as he did as he was ordered. When he had recovered sufficiently he looked up, his eyes still clouded with fear. ‘King Bodvoc was holding the Romans when we reached him, lord, though he had lost many warriors and we were only just in time. Scarach of the Durotriges led us, and ordered an immediate attack, because the Romans were as hard-pressed as the Regni who faced them.’
‘Your tribe?’
‘The Parisii, lord,’ the boy said, his voice shaking with pride. ‘We were in the forefront of the fighting. Three times we charged, and three times they held. But their line buckled and was close to breaking. One more charge, Lord Scarach said, and he was right. One more charge and we would have sent them fleeing from the field and such slaughter we would have done, but…’ His voice faded and his head dropped. Caratacus lifted his chin and looked into his eyes.
‘I need to hear it all, lad. All.’
‘When we were massing for the final attack a great force of cavalry and infantry smashed into our flank. Where they came from none knew, for it seemed every Roman was needed to hold what they had. But they came, and with such power they cut us almost in two, and as they came the general commanding the legion to our front ordered them to attack. They should not have had the strength.’ The boy’s voice was bewildered, as if he had been cheated in a game of touch rather than being part of a routed army.
‘Yet they did,’ Caratacus said gently. ‘And you ran.’ He could see it in his head. The Roman general had chosen his moment with the utmost precision. He had husbanded his forces as Bodvoc and Scarach flayed his front line, had probably been tempted to reinforce his men as they suffered and died, but had never given in to that temptation.
That was a measure of the general he was. And at the moment the British believed he was beaten he had launched a flanking movement that had torn his attackers in two and, in the same instant, thrown everything he had into an all-out assault that had spread panic and dismay among the undisciplined warriors facing him.
And they ran.
It was over.
He didn’t need to withdraw his Catuvellauni. Word of defeat, or the scent of it, had already reached them and they were conducting a fighting retreat back up the hill with the Romans growing bolder and more numerous on the north bank with every passing second. He reached for his sword and felt it, heavy and comfortable, in his hand. Not the toy ceremonial sword — some Roman would no doubt find that when the huts were looted and take it as a trophy — but his killing sword; the sword he had been itching to wield all day. But it was a commander’s duty to command, not fight. And a commander’s duty to die with his men when the dying needed to be done. Strange that, with everything lost, he felt clean and free for the first time today. Or perhaps not so strange.
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