(The Rhine)
Fronto held on for dear life as the wood clenched in his whitening fingers bucked and spun.
“Whose stupid shitty idea was this?”
“You really need an answer to that, sir?” Atenos grinned from the front of the low, flat boat where he stood boldly in a pose reminiscent of the great Colossus, seemingly uncaring of the lurching of the vessel with every churning trough or peak of the roiling surface. The rain, now a constant sheet of water, battered their forms, pinging off the metal of their armour and soaking into every inch of clothing.
“I shouldn’t have come, though. You could quite easily have done it without me.”
“I think it’s better that you did, sir, in the end.”
Fronto looked up from the rail and noticed the huge Gaulish centurion’s eyes flicking meaningfully past him to the rear of the boat. Trusting in Fortuna and releasing one claw-like hand from the boat’s hull, Fronto turned, his gaze taking in the dozen other boats in the small, scattered flotilla before coming to rest on the figure at the rear: the object of Atenos’ scornful look.
Tribune Menenius of the Fourteenth sat alone on the bench, the rest of the men keeping away from him — possibly out of respect for his rank, though Fronto somehow doubted it. The youthful, foppish tribune looked utterly dejected and a little frightened.
Once again, Fronto cursed his luck for ending up with the ineffectual little turd as a second in command. It would be easy to blame Plancus, the legate of the Fourteenth, but Fronto knew deep down it was a symptom of having lost his Fortuna pendant.
The plan had been simple enough: to take the boats the Ubii had donated and use them to ferry a small force across, downriver and out of sight, then to move stealthily up the east bank and fall on the archers that plagued the building work.
Simple.
So simple that anyone could have commanded it.
A dozen Ubii scouts had been brought into the force, but the bulk of the expedition would be made up of the men of the Fourteenth: Gauls themselves, who may be able to pass as locals along with the scouts during the stealthy approach. So simple.
Until Plancus had volunteered to lead the mission, given that it was his men who had been selected. Fronto had suffered a momentary premonition of how the attack might proceed under the cretinous direction of the unimaginative legate of the Fourteenth. So harrowing was his mental image that he had found himself standing forward and demanding that he lead the attack, it being his idea. Plancus had been so outraged he had almost spat teeth, but Fronto was adamant; his plan, his responsibility.
And so, having tricked himself into coming along, he had added a century of his own men from the Tenth into the force, troops upon whom he knew he could rely. Specifically the men of Atenos, the first century of the second cohort, a number of whom shared the Gallic origin of their officer. It seemed the only sensible course of action.
Yet Plancus had still refused to relinquish control of his men to his brother legate and the resulting appointment had left a sour taste in Fronto’s mouth. Menenius, a junior tribune with, apparently, no combat experience, would accompany him as a second.
The tribune looked up from beneath his sodden brown cloak, feeling the eyes of the other two officers on him. He cast an unhappy glance back at them and then lowered his eyes to his feet once more, lifting his sopping boots from the three inches of water that filled the bottom of the boat — yet another thing that sent cold shudders down Fronto’s spine.
Like it or not, he was clearly saddled with this man. Gritting his teeth and holding his breath, the legate of the Tenth nodded to Atenos and stood, rocking unsteadily as he gingerly made his way along the wide, flat craft between the legionaries pressed together against the rain, rowing for all they were worth to try and stay with the other boats despite the unbelievably strong current.
With a great sense of relief, Fronto arrived at the space around the tribune and sank to the bench opposite. Menenius looked up and tried to smile. The man looked like a fish — a fish out of water, Fronto thought sourly. The legate smiled with forced sympathy at his second in command.
“You don’t like boats either?” he hazarded, well aware in truth of the cause of the man’s nerves, but offering him an out.
Menenius sniffed, a droplet of mucus forming on the end of his nose like a six year old, which made Fronto simultaneously want to wipe it away and cuff him around the ear.
“Once we land, stick close to me. Your best centurion in the unit is Cantorix. I’ve met him before and seen him in action. When I give orders, Atenos will deal with his century. You relay them to Cantorix and he’ll diffuse them as necessary among the other three centurions from the Fourteenth. If we get separated, remember the goal. Go as stealthily as you can to the bank opposite the bridge and separate out into a wide arc before you pounce, so they have less chance of getting away. Then keep moving the arc around so you can close them in against the bank.”
The look of panic that flashed across Menenius’ face only served to increase the ire in Fronto, but he held his breath and forced the patience back into his voice.
“Have you had no experience of a fight at all? You’ve been a junior tribune for more than a year now in different legions. You must have been in the battles we’ve fought?”
“I’ve stood at the back, Fronto. I’ve occasionally had a musician send messages when required. I’m not at all cut out for this kind of thing, though. This is what centurions are for, isn’t it?”
Fronto smiled, though without genuine humour.
“The centurions will do nearly everything. Just stick with me.” He reached out and tapped the ornate scabbard of the tribune’s gladius. “With any luck you won’t need to use that.”
Menenius looked at the sword and sighed. Reaching down, he drew it slowly with a well-oiled hiss.
Fronto eyed the blade as it came free. Despite the showy scabbard and the eagle-embossed pommel, the blade itself was rust-free and unpitted, perfectly oiled and maintained and clearly sharp. Near the point where the tip began to taper, a pair of small nicks was visible.
“You keep your gladius in good condition, but it seems to be marked?”
Menenius looked at the blade in surprise, then spotted the nicks and nodded unhappily.
“My father. It was his sword. He served under Sertorius in Hispania — with distinction apparently, a fact that he never let me forget until his dying day. I sometimes suspect that if I let the blade rust, he’ll find a way to come back from the dead just to punish me.”
Fronto sagged. The tribune was clearly more suited to some administrative role somewhere.
“Just stay close and try to stay alive.”
Menenius nodded unhappily. “I wish Hortius was here. He’d know what to say.”
Fronto cast thanks up to the heavens to any God that was listening that this wasn’t the case, but fixed the fake smile of sympathy to his face again and turned at a shout from Atenos.
“We’re closing on the bank, sir.”
Sinking to the bench, the legate grasped the side of the boat again and clung on, watching the grassy slope approach at a worrying speed. Despite the swiftness of the river, the boats had managed to stay in reasonable formation, drifting downriver only a little more than planned.
The surface of the Rhenus hissed and spat as the rain hammered down into it, the boat’s bottom wallowing in several inches of freezing water. Fronto felt the numbing cold seeping in through the soft leather of his girlish boots and saturating the socks beneath and once again cursed Lucilia for offloading them on him and disposing of his good old hard boots. He really must get around to getting a new pair from Cita. Lucilia need never know.
The boat hit the bank with a crunch, jerking forward for a moment, the occupants lurching around briefly before leaping into action. At Atenos’ command, two men leapt over the bow with a mooring rope. One produced his mallet and a heavy wooden stake and proceeded to smash the peg into the ground to make a mooring post, while the other looped the rope ready and then tied it off on the heavy stake.
As soon as the boat was secured, the rest of the legionaries and the optio disembarked and began to disperse. Less than half a minute after the boat had touched earth, the men were formed up on the grassy rise, while the two Ubii scouts drifted toward the edge of the woods that surrounded them.
Fronto clambered from the boat with a great sigh of relief, feeling his gut begin to steady itself again and his bowels unclench for the first time in twenty minutes. Scanning the ground, he nodded to himself. The landing site had been well chosen. Three miles downriver, the boats would have been invisible from the building site as they crossed even in clear weather. In this torrential downpour, they would be obscured from even close range. The landing was a gentle, grassy slope where the legionaries could assemble.
Around the river-side clearing, the woodland stretched out who knew how far. This territory was beyond the ken of any of them and the forest could cover every inch from here to the end of the world for all they knew. But as long as they kept the river in view to their right, they would locate the construction site and the enemy enclave opposite soon enough.
It seemed odd to look at the men formed up as they were: in the efficient lines of parading legionaries, yet dressed so nondescript.
The reasoning had been simple: They would in theory need only a small force to deal with the lightly armoured archers they were to face and, between the element of surprise, their superior tactics and discipline and the quality of their weapons, they should not need their pila, helmets, shields or any such kit that would clearly mark them as Roman to even the least observant passer-by.
And so the men of the Tenth and Fourteenth stood with the disciplined straight backs and raised chins of the legions, wrapped in plain wool cloaks, their only concession to equipment shirts of mail and a gladius on their belts hidden beneath the folds of wool.
In a way it irritated Fronto that while, for the first time this year, he had the opportunity to control and command a military mission with a simple battle objective and no argument, discussion, or treachery, it still required subterfuge and sneaking. It would have been nice to arm up like a legion at war and tramp the grass toward a prepared and worthy enemy, rather than to run through the woods in disguise and fall upon a poorly-armed and soggy missile unit.
Somewhere deep inside, Fronto chided himself for hoping that the enemy were better armed and prepared than expected and the possibility of a proper fight, but looking across at Atenos, he realised that the big man was clearly thinking along similar lines.
Still, a fight was a fight, and anything was better than endless arguing while good men were knifed in the back by their own side.
Menenius fell in beside him, one hand wrapped around the hilt of the gladius beneath his cloak, the fingers white with pressure.
“The last of the boats is landing, legate” he reported, his voice cracking slightly with nerves.
The men poured out of the boats and fell in alongside those already gathered in the clearing. Fronto looked across the force: five centuries of troops. Three hundred and eighty two men, given the fallen and casualties back across the river; plus the two senior officers and twenty native scouts.
Four hundred and four men. And of them, perhaps only fifty who had no command of the Gallic language. Hopefully, if anything went horribly wrong, the Ubii scouts would be able to handle it, claiming to be the warriors of a large Ubii village from downriver, forced south by Suevi advances. The women and children and wagons would be following on.
“You all know why we’re here” he shouted through the siling rain. “To finish the bridge, the enemy archers on this bank must be dealt with. We have no idea about the disposition of enemy forces on this side of the river, so go carefully and quietly. If I hear a single Latin word spoken aloud once we leave this clearing, I’ll tear that man’s balls off and nail them to a tree as a warning to the rest.”
The officers, of course, were discounted from such strictures, given Fronto and Menenius’ almost total lack of comprehension of the local language. But then the tribune hardly seemed his usual loquacious self and, given the way he was still shaking gently, he was unlikely to draw any attention to them in enemy territory. And Fronto knew he could restrain himself.
“Leave any encounter to the Ubii if you can. If not, let those with the best Belgic dialects handle it. There should be very few native settlements or groups around here. The Ubii are all on the move due to the advances of enemy tribes, so it’s likely that anyone we meet will be hostile. I’m afraid we’ll just have to play it by ear. Listen to your officers and do your duty and in a few hours we’ll have cleared out the east bank and Caesar’s bridge will be marching toward us again. Right,” he pointed to the woodland at the northern side of the clearing where two Ubii scouts were waiting patiently “move out!”
“It’s a local farm” Cantorix said, so quietly he was barely audible over the rain. “Still occupied apparently. Though I see no animals, there’s smoke pouring out of the roof hole.”
Fronto leaned against the tree. For two miles as they had crept through the woodlands they had seen no sign of life, the only mark of habitation was one farmstead that had been burned out, leaving only shattered fences and the blackened stumps of a timber building. In a way, Fronto was pleased to discover life, as the journey had been too tense and silently uneventful for his liking; as if they were tip-toeing across a field where he knew there was a bull hidden in the mist.
“Anything else?”
Cantorix shook his head. “Just the smoke from the hearth. I’ve sent the scouts out to circle through the surrounding woods, just in case.”
The legate nodded. Two of the Ubii remained with them at the heart of the expeditionary force to act as advisors and, if necessary, interpreters. Turning, one hand on the hilt of his gladius, Fronto shook his head, creating a cascade of water from his sodden hair, and gestured to one of the guides, pointing at the farmstead, barely visible through the boles of the trees.
“What’s your opinion?”
“Commander?”
“Is it likely we would encounter an isolated farm still occupied by your people, but without animals?”
The scout shrugged.
“Many still trap this side of river. They leave village; go hide when enemy near; then come back when they gone. Could be.”
The legate sighed. Hardly conclusive, as answers went.
“We’ll wait for the scouts to check out the woods before we move through.”
Menenius, standing nearby with wild, nervous eyes, nodded emphatically.
The men stood among the trees, so many drab shapes blending in with the endless trunks of the woods, the rain here channelled from a constant battering force to form heavy, huge droplets that fell, swollen, from leaves and branch-tips, drenching the men beneath.
“That’s the signal” murmured Cantorix.
Fronto, Menenius and Atenos stepped forward to peer between the grey boles to the misty, rain-occluded farmstead. It took them a moment to see the scouts and the legate could only commend the centurion on his eyesight. Barely visible across the farm clearing, two of the Ubii had reappeared and stood, tiny figures in a grey, wet world, waving their arm in the signal that all was clear.
The officers deflated slightly.
“Menenius? You and Cantorix take these two scouts and go speak to the farmers. We should be able to get a good deal of information about the current situation in the area. Cantorix: take a few of your men in with you but not enough to frighten the civilians. The others can form a perimeter around the building. The rest of you, with Atenos and myself, will scatter in groups around the farmstead and search, consolidate and hold until we’re ready to move off again. We should be on the enemy archers sometime in the next half hour or so.”
The officers all nodded and moved off; Menenius hovering all too close to Cantorix for a Roman tribune. Fronto caught the Gallic centurion’s expression at being saddled with the fop and tried not to grin.
With long-practiced hand signals, Fronto directed the centurions who stayed with him, splitting them into four groups, two of which would move around the edge of the clearing, one in each direction, keeping the woodland under surveillance alongside the scouts, while the other two would spread out across the farmstead and its buildings.
The legate grinned happily as he moved along the eastern edge of the clearing, imagining the fun Cantorix was going to have with Menenius and the scouts in the farmer’s hut.
The centurion of the unit with whom Fronto moved pointed to the two scouts standing by the wood’s edge, others having now returned from the shadowed forest. The two men were waving their arms again and gesturing. The centurion, his voice low and in Latin but with a noticeable Gallic accent, leaned close. “What do they want now?”
Fronto shrugged. “Best check.”
The centurion nodded, made a couple of arcane signals to his optio and then jogged off forward to the two scouts, who were gesticulating expansively. As the centurion closed on them, the optio strolled up alongside Fronto.
“The men are separating out into contubernia to patrol the edge, sir.”
The legate nodded his understanding and squinted through the rain at the scene ahead.
“Why are they waving like that when we have so many arranged hand signals?”
He felt the optio stiffen beside him and the man’s hand grabbed his upper arm.
“Because they aren’t Ubii, sir!”
Fronto frowned as the centurion ahead reached the two scouts, demanding quietly of them what all the fuss was. The legate jerked back as he saw the tip of the Germanic long sword suddenly burst from the centurion’s back in a shower of blood. Even as the forest’s edge erupted with warriors, Fronto turned to order the musician and signifer to raise the alarm, but too late. A bellow of shocked pain rang out from the farmer’s hut and was immediately joined by others from the various buildings as the trap snapped shut.
The discordant, horrible Celtic horns rang out and Fronto was drawing his sword and letting his cloak fall to the floor even as he saw Cantorix stagger out of the central hut clutching his side and swinging his sword, bellowing at his men. No sign of Menenius yet. Suddenly, what looked like half the world’s barbarians were pouring from the treeline into the clearing.
The cornicen a few yards from Fronto was busy bleating out the alarm when the notes became a gurgle, a tribesman’s sword slamming into his neck in a backslash hard enough to snap the spine. In a sudden explosion of activity they were in the midst of battle. The century around Fronto hadn’t had the time and warning to form a defensive line and lacked shields and helmets, the fighting already devolving into a melee of individual duels.
There was no opportunity to call out a strategy or gather the men to him.
Turning again, his sword out, Fronto barely had time to raise it and knock aside the blow that was coming for him, the sheer strength of the strike when the blades met numbing his arm and sending shock waves through the joints up to his shoulder. He looked into the eyes of his opponent, a Germanic brute a good foot taller than he, with a dense, unkempt beard and his hair only kept from his eyes by a topknot. The man wore nothing but bronze arm-rings and a torc at his neck, his nakedness no shame or hardship in combat, with designs drawn on his chest in black mud. His eyes bore that crazed, unstoppable look that Fronto had seen before. A man who could only be stopped with a hard death.
The barbarian drew back his sword and swung again. Aware that his gladius was barely able to deflect the strength of a powerful blow from such a long weapon, Fronto slackened his knees and dropped into a crouch as the sword swung past above him at his former neck height.
Ridiculously, even as he stabbed up with the gladius into the big man’s vitals, the thoughts that suddenly crowded his mind were of how much his knees ached when he dropped and how much effect his age was having on his combat abilities. Would he really, realistically, be able to lead an assault like this for much longer?
The roar of the stricken barbarian stirred him from such disturbing and poorly-timed thoughts and he sank back into the crouch, ripping his blade from the man’s bladder, twisting it as it came out. Roaring and spraying blood down onto the legate, the tribesman seemed oblivious to the mortal wound he’d been dealt, apparently entirely impervious to the pain as he rocked back and clasped the hilt of his huge sword in both hands, preparing to bring it down on Fronto in a chop.
The legate stabbed up again with his blade, severing the man’s thigh artery and slicing through muscle in an attempt to unbalance him. Still standing solid despite the wounds, the barbarian’s sword came down like the falling sky, preparing to end the life of the last scion of the Falerii. Fronto left his sword jutting from the huge, bulbous thigh and dropped, trying to fall out of the way of the blow, horribly aware of the fact that the falling sword was moving too fast to dodge.
His last moments of thought were of the missing Fortuna amulet, then of the men he had led to their doom and finally, painfully, of Lucilia standing by the threshold of the newly-renovated Falerius townhouse, the sacrificial bull lowing nearby as she waited for the iron ring he would never be able to give her.
The glinting blade swept down to split his skull and was met by the upward swing of a gladius and a pugio that crossed to block it. Fronto stared up at the meeting of three blades, a shower of sparks raining down on him, and felt his bowels give just a little at how close he’d just come to being an ex-legate.
As another sword took the barbarian in the chest and drove him away from sight, the sword and dagger uncrossed and the face of the optio appeared, all concern.
“You alright, sir? Thought you were a gonner for a minute.”
“Juno’s arse, so did I” Fronto grinned up at him as he clambered to his feet, knees creaking as he went. He almost fell again as his left knee gave way, painfully twisted.
“Looks like we’re starting to get it together sir.”
“We are?” Fronto looked around in astonishment and saw that it was true. In less than half a minute, the men around the clearing had gone from being beleaguered groups into defensive squares, holding their own against the enemy. It was astounding, given the speed of the sudden turnaround and the fact that Fronto had been unable even to think about giving the right signals.
Signals.
That was it. He was suddenly aware of the cornu calls ringing out across the farmstead and the circling standards organising the centuries into fighting forces.
That was a command call.
His eyes drifted towards the farmer’s hut, where a dozen men stood in a defensive knot around Cantorix and Menenius. The Gallic centurion was leaning heavily on a stick and clutching his side, but Menenius was gesticulating with the centurion’s vine staff while standard bearers and musicians relayed the tribune’s orders across the open ground.
Fronto stared in disbelief and yet, even as he watched, the century around him reformed in the face of brutal attack, creating an organised defensive line. Their lack of shields was resulting in a much higher casualty rate than one would normally expect but at least now they were holding, rather than being slaughtered in a disorganised chaos.
He turned to the optio.
“You got everything under control here?”
“We’ll manage, sir.”
With the briefest of nods, Fronto turned and limped at speed for the central buildings of the farm. His mind formed a picture of the optio who had just saved his life and he committed that image to memory so that he could find him later and buy him enough wine to float a quinquereme. In fact, given the fate of his commander, the man would probably be a centurion by the time Fronto got to thank him properly.
The centre of the farm showed signs of hard fighting. Eight or nine barbarian bodies lay around in the dirt, the rain diffusing the blood from their wounds into the muddy puddles. Three legionaries lay among them, and Cantorix was clutching a torso wound from which blood was blossoming, leaking through the links in his mail. Apart from the inconvenience, he seemed to be ignoring the wound, which was entirely in keeping with the centurion Fronto remembered from the thickest fighting last year.
The big surprise was tribune Menenius. Standing as straight and tall as one of the statues of the great generals that stood in the forum, the tribune’s sword hung by his side in his right hand, watery blood coating the blade, while he continued to issue commands, pointing with the stick in his free hand.
Fronto stared as he staggered forward wearily, his knee clicking painfully.
“Menenius?”
The tribune spotted Fronto and his face broke out into a wide, relieved smile.
“Legate Fronto? Thank the Gods. I think we’re going to survive, sir.”
“How the hell?” Fronto stared at him, using his free arm to take in the whole battle with the sweep of an arm. “What did…?”
Cantorix straightened, holding his wound. “The tribune shows a remarkable grasp of military strategy, legate.”
“And he’s bloodied his sword too.”
The centurion nodded. “Saved my damn life, sir. Fast as a bloody snake, sir.”
Fronto’s stare turned into a frown. “Menenius?”
“Sort of lucky with the sword, legate.”
“Lucky, my arse” Cantorix grinned.
“My father paid for some very expensive weapon training in my youth” the tribune said humbly. “Not had much chance to put it into action before, but it seems I can remember enough.”
Cantorix’s eyes told Fronto that it had been a little more than that, but he let it go for a moment. “And you put out the signals?”
“With the centurion’s advice here.”
“My arse” repeated Cantorix.
“I’ve studied the historians, sir. History is replete with examples of how to turn an ambush against the ambushers. It’s all a matter of maintaining control. They expected easy pickings and panic. As soon as we take control the panic passes to them.”
Fronto glanced around the clearing. The barbarians were melting away into the woodland, their easy victory snatched from them in moments.
They had won!
“We were hit hard” he noted, assessing the situation with the practiced eye of a man who had surveyed many a battlefield. “I reckon we lost over a third of the men; maybe even half.” He turned back to Menenius. “But without your help, we’d have been lost altogether. Caesar’ll hear about this, tribune. I may have underestimated you, and I think the general needs to hand out a few phalera for this.”
Menenius looked down with a strangely shy, boyish smile.
“I’d rather go unsung, if you don’t mind, sir. Cantorix here deserves the real credit.”
Fronto, surprised at meeting a self-effacing junior tribune, looked at Cantorix and the man’s expression left him in no doubt as to just how much of this was the tribune’s doing.
“Perhaps, Menenius, but I’d love to transfer you to the Tenth.”
The men of the Tenth and Fourteenth legions jogged through the woods as fast as the terrain and unit cohesion would allow, their cloaks discarded to prevent snagging on branches or entangling in armour and scabbards. All pretence had now been thrown to the wind in favour of speed. Fronto had bound his weak knee with a thick strip of torn cloak, and tried to limp as little as possible, biting his lip against the pain and discomfort. A number of the men, in fact, had used the discarded cloaks to bind or pack wounds that they could run with, including Cantorix who had pushed half a garment beneath his mail shirt and proceeded to completely ignore the wound at his ribs.
In the light of the enemy’s recent attack and the lack of information about the barbarians’ disposition it had been a difficult decision to make. On the one hand, perhaps this had been an entirely coincidental encounter and this band of warriors was unconnected to the archers at the riverbank, in which case by discarding their disguise they further endangered themselves on the journey. More likely, though, this attack had been carried out in concert with a grand plan and therefore the barbarian archers must know they were coming. In that case speed was now of the essence. To move slowly or indecisively was to allow the possibility that the ambushers would regroup and link up with the archers.
Fronto swallowed as he ran, tense at that very thought. They would have roughly equal numbers to the archers now that they had lost so many men, but enough ambushers had escaped to make the odds almost three to one if the two barbarian forces joined up. Not good odds when lacking shields, pila and helmets.
“Sir” barked Atenos, away to his right, ducking through the trees as though born to the forest, his great size apparently causing him no difficulty.
Fronto angled his run and jumped a fallen branch, almost falling as he landed favouring his bad knee, and falling in alongside the huge Gaul with a slightly more pronounced limp.
“What?”
“The bridge” Atenos pointed off to the side. Fronto squinted and could just make out between the blur of passing tree trunks, through the mist of torrential rain, the dark grey mass of Caesar’s bridge arcing out of the distant mist, rising as it strode towards them. For the first time, seeing it from this side and angle, he realised just what an impressive piece of engineering it was.
Fronto nodded. “Pass the word.”
As Atenos turned and yelled for his men to pull closer together and watch for pickets, Fronto moved left and bellowed the order to Cantorix and the others. Menenius, pale and apparently as shaken by what he himself had done as by what had been done to them, moved along behind, his hand gripping the hilt of his gladius as though it might leap from the scabbard and start slicing people.
Fronto faced forward again, just in time to see movement ahead. A grey shape like the ghost of a warrior disappeared behind a tree, just as another humanoid bulk loomed in the mist and then faded again. Ahead, a cry went up in a deep, guttural tongue, quickly taken up by other voices.
“Take ‘em fast, lads. Fast as you can, then rally at the riverbank!”
Ignoring the bulbous raindrops bursting against his face, Fronto hefted his gladius and ran, leaping over fallen wood and ducking the worst of the branches, ignoring the fire burning in his knee and the constant danger of folding up into the undergrowth. His heart pounded as something passed close to his ear with a ‘zzzzzip’ noise and thudded into a tree.
The air was suddenly alive with arrows, whipping through the woodland, many thudding into trees or being pushed off course by fronds and leaves, but too many for comfort sheathing themselves in the men of the legions.
A soldier was suddenly at Fronto’s left, sword in hand, teeth bared as the rain battered him. Fronto turned to give him an encouraging grin but was too late as an arrow took the man, dead centre in the neck, punching through his adam’s apple and hurling him backwards to fall gurgling among the undergrowth. A moment later another man joined the legate, and he spotted Cantorix just beyond the new arrival, ahead of his men and bellowing a battle cry in a Gallic tongue that Fronto was surprised he was starting to understand a little.
The depths of the forest became slowly, imperceptibly lighter, though the running legionaries were too busy to notice. Fronto’s battle-honed wits began to tell him that something was wrong as the mist brightened and it took him only a moment to realise that the arrows had ceased. Not a single missile whipped through the shade.
“Halt!” he bellowed urgently, too late for some.
The front runners, those eager for the kill and for revenge on these damned Germanic warriors who had ambushed them and killed good friends, suddenly found they had run or leapt clear of the edge of the forest in their enthusiasm.
A few yards behind, Fronto and Cantorix came to a halt, most of the legionaries joining them, watching with held breath as the scene unfolded.
Almost a score of men had burst from the forest’s edge, yelling their blood lust to the sky, to the waiting ears of Mars, Minerva, Jupiter and Fortuna, and suddenly found themselves on springy turf, enveloped in a mist formed by wind-swirled rain. Slowing to a confused halt, they exchanged worried glances, the impetus of their attack suddenly swept away, swords ready for an enemy that wasn’t there.
Somewhere behind them they became aware of their centurions and officers calling them back, but even as they recognised the orders, the mist parted like billowing curtains in front of them to reveal a wall of humanity, three men deep and stretching from side to side, the ends lost in the grey.
And they all had bows, the strings drawn back to their ears the arrows nocked and ready.
“Shit!” yelled Artorius, excused duty legionary of the third cohort, second century of the Fourteenth legion, and closed his eyes.
Fronto watched with leaden expectation as the arrows of three dozen archers punched into the chests of the exposed legionaries, every man felled like a tree, falling to their knees and then faces, or thrown back onto the grass, staring up into the grey, searching for the Gods that had deserted them.
The men of the legions remaining in the forest instinctively began to move back between the trees, further away from the threat.
“How far do you reckon that open ground is?” Fronto called across to Cantorix.
“About thirty yards, I reckon, sir.”
“So it’d take an exceptional archer to get off more than one shot while we crossed it?”
Cantorix grinned. “Exceptional, sir. And they’ll be using sinew bowstrings. The rain’ll be playing havoc with ‘em, sir. Half of ‘em will be useless already and the rest’ll only manage a couple more arrows before they’re ruined.”
“On me!” Fronto bellowed, stepping deeper into the forest and hoping that the cover of the woodland would protect them; also that the enemy’s grasp of Latin was small or non-existent. He watched the two hundred or so men of his force converging on his position and held his breath, hoping that the enemy were nocked and waiting for another charge. If they started firing randomly into the woods again they would likely reduce the force considerably and very quickly. Fortunately no arrows came as Fronto looked around at his men.
“We can’t spread out to take them. The river hems us in to the right and who knows what’s left, but we do know there’s a force of warriors from the ambush out there somewhere and we don’t want to blunder into them. So we’re stuck. We have to take them head on and they’re prepared. So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going in as a wedge.”
Menenius, standing next to Fronto, turned his head and flashed an incredulous look at him.
“We go in as fast as we’ve ever run in our lives” Fronto went on. “Every archer out there will get one shot. After that, they’re screwed, because we’ll be amongst them, and we all know that a gladius beats a bow in close combat. Once we’ve punched into the line, we peel off. Cantorix and Atenos and their centuries will head right towards the river and carve up every archer they find. The rest of you, with me, will turn left and make sure we get every last mother’s son among them. Only when every archer is eating turf do we stop and re-form. Got it?”
The tribune reached out gingerly and tapped Fronto on the shoulder, drawing close.
“Are you mad, sir?”
“Quite possibly. It has been suggested before. But if you can think of a better way, enlighten me.”
“We go back to the boats, cross to the west bank and come back in force, armed properly.”
Fronto shook his head wearily. “The chances of us getting back without another ambush are tiny. They know we’re here now, and we’re at our objective. We set up a bridgehead and hold it for a few hours — a day at most — and the bridge will come to us.”
“Fronto? That’s madness!”
“So…” the legate turned back to the men, “quite a few of us will die in the next few minutes, but… well, that’s what we signed on for, wasn’t it? Those of you who will be in the rear centre of the wedge, I want you to remove your mail shirt and pass it to a friend. In two minutes I want half of you unarmoured in the centre and the rest of you wearing two mail shirts — preferably the really muscly buggers, as you’ll have to run fast wearing two lots of armour. It’ll be like wearing a cart.”
He grinned. “You,” he pointed at a man “give me your shirt.”
“What?” barked Cantorix. “Can’t do that, sir.”
“You damn well can. It’s an order. I’m the front of the wedge.”
Atenos was suddenly next to his fellow centurion. “He’s right, sir. The head of the wedge is a prestigious position, sir. A guaranteed commendation and worth a phalera and a fortnight’s leave at least. We can’t let you deprive a man of that, sir!”
Cantorix grinned. “A centurion doesn’t get enough leave, does he? Shall we toss a coin?”
Fronto shook his head and tried to reach past them for the mail shirt now being proffered by the legionary. The two centurions leaned towards each other, blocking him off.
“My duty, I think” Cantorix grinned. “The Tenth have reputation to spare, but the Fourteenth never seem to get the glory.” Atenos looked hard at him for a moment and then nodded.
As the centurion from the Fourteenth grabbed the shirt and pulled it over his large, muscular frame, covering his own mail that glistened red with the blood from his earlier wound, Fronto looked helplessly at Atenos.
“This was my plan. I’m not going to let anyone else grab the shitty end of the stick.”
“Tough, sir.” Atenos smiled. “Get that shirt off, sir, and get in the centre. If this works, you’ll need to be around to organise the defence until the bridge is finished.”
Fronto opened his mouth to argue, but the look on the centurion’s face was adamant and he simply nodded and began to peel off the heavy, wet armour. Next to him, Menenius had already divested and passed his mail shirt to an enormous Gaul, who was having trouble struggling into it.
A minute passed in tense expectation as the last of the armour was transferred and men fell into their assigned places, allowing for the fact that they would not be able to consolidate into the wedge properly until they left the woodland. Finally, the archers in the clearing seemed to have come to the end of their patience and occasional arrows whizzed into the woods, burying themselves in timber here and there. Fronto smiled grimly to himself. Every shot they took lessened the chances of that man being able to shoot during the charge.
“Are we all ready?” Cantorix waved and gestured for everyone to settle into their final positions. “As soon as you pass the last tree, get as tight into formation as you’ve ever been. I want you all to be able to feel the breath of the man behind on your neck. Tight and fast, then break as soon as we’re there.”
The men murmured their agreement. Fronto looked around from his position in the midst of the unarmoured centre, grumbling at his secure and unadventurous place. He couldn’t see Atenos or Menenius in the press, nor Cantorix, though he could hear the centurion at the head of the wedge.
“Go!”
And suddenly he was running, along with everyone else, his concentration now fully on the men around him and the forest floor, watching for treacherous branches or bumps that could foul him and ruin the formation, aware of the weakness of his knee with every painful click.
A sudden image flashed into his mind of a legionary being beaten within an inch of death on the orders of centurion Fabius for tripping in manoeuvres and fouling his unit. He’d been so outraged by the man and now, as he ran, barely missing a tangled root with his left foot, he felt that perhaps…
Angry, he pushed the thoughts away and concentrated on the run.
Arrows were now coming thicker and faster. The sounds of them thudding into trees were fewer and farther between, while the sounds of them crunching into mail or the screams as they punched into flesh were all more common. Here and there an archer was casting aside his bow, the string now ruined, and drawing a sword.
The stygian gloom of the woodland gave way to the pale, misty grey of the clearing and the men closed formation as only legionaries could, Fronto finding himself so tightly packed in the press that he could hardly move.
A tense heartbeat, and there finally came the expected sound: the collective twang and rush, whirr and zip of countless arrows being released simultaneously. Another single heartbeat and the result manifested in the screams of dozens of men and the inevitable slowing of the wedge. Three more heartbeats and the front of the Roman unit seemed to meet the archers, the sounds ringing out eerily through the swirling mist.
Fronto lurched, tripping on a body that had fallen in front of him and his eyes momentarily ran across it, almost certain it would be Cantorix, only to see a legionary he knew not, three arrows jutting from his face, chest and belly. He must have been one of the front men, though, to take three shots. Fronto found that he was praying subconsciously to Mars that Cantorix made it, despite the fact that such a notion was ridiculous.
Two more heartbeats and the press opened up in front of him, men veering off as assigned, moving left and right along the line of archers. Somehow, strangely, Fronto found himself staggering to a halt with no enemy to fight.
Turning this way and that, he peered into the barely-penetrable gloom, the rain hammering at him and plastering the tunic to his torso. It seemed that the archers had broken and routed as soon as they realised they couldn’t stop the Roman force. In the subdued fog of rain, he could hear the sounds of fighting off to the left and right, but here there was no one, apart from a few legionaries looking as lost as he; a few wounded, staggering with an arrow in the thigh or clutching one jutting from an arm.
Turning, he looked back toward the barely visible treeline. Bodies littered the ground between here and there, the grisly graveyard disappearing into the mist. A lot of men had died there, but it appeared that they had completed the mission. The bridge site was safe for now.
Rubbing the excess water from his hair, Fronto looked around for a centurion, optio or tribune, but saw none. He would have to pull them together and get down to the river. This was unlikely to be the last they would see of the barbarians before the engineers reached this bank.
“On me!” he yelled. “Re-form!”
Time to establish a bridgehead, somehow.