Back at the fortress’s main gate, Marcus found a scene of orderly chaos as the Tungrians carried the last of the Selgovae dead through the wide archway and down the steep approach towards a rapidly growing pyre of wood that the other two cohorts were gathering from the nearby forest. Julius was standing in the gate’s shadow barking orders at the tired soldiers, and when he saw his fellow officer approaching down the fortress’s slope he waved a hand out over the plain below them, indicating the toiling soldiers crossing to and from the forest with bundles of firewood.
‘Once again the Twentieth Legion seems to have found its true role. You should have seen their first spear’s face when I told him and that tribune of theirs that the fight was already over. He looked like it was his birthday, and…’
A shout from the wall above him interrupted his musing.
‘Horsemen! To the west!’
Both centurions hurried up the ladder that led to the palisade’s rampart, turning to stare in the direction indicated by the sentry. At the limit of their vision, perhaps five miles to the west, Marcus could just make out a flicker of movement. A small band of riders with a long white banner trailing above them was riding for the fortress, the standard’s forked tail flickering in the wind of their passing. Julius shook his head with a disgusted look.
‘It’s the bloody Petriana. I’d know that dragon standard anywhere. I stood and watched the bloody thing fluttering in the breeze while they sat and watched us fighting and dying at Lost Eagle. And wherever that thing twists its tail you’ll usually find that wily old bastard Licinius. You!’ He shouted down to Scarface, who was standing at the bottom of the ladder. ‘Stop following your centurion around like some love-struck goat herder, go and find Tribune Scaurus and tell him that Tribune Licinius will be at the gate by the time he gets down here. Go!’
Scaurus joined his two officers in time to watch the last mile of the horsemen’s approach to the fortress. He stared out at the approaching cavalry squadron without any visible sign of surprise.
‘I’ve sent Martos to get some sleep, he was almost beside himself with fatigue. So, what have we here, just when I thought life was finally about to turn dull for the rest of the year? My colleague and his men aren’t riding like men who’ve decided to come by and see how we’ve done for the want of anything better to do.’
The Petriana’s tribune dismounted a dozen paces short of the gate and stalked up to the palisade wall with a grim smile, squinting up at Scaurus and his officers and then glancing back at the men building the pyre on the plain below the fortress. He called up to them, shielding his eyes with a raised hand.
‘Well now, colleague, I see you’ve accomplished your orders with the usual efficiency. Perhaps you ought to come down here and join me, though. I’ve something to tell you that will give you some pause for thought.’
Scaurus climbed down from the wall after instructing Julius to keep the men inside the Dinpaladyr at their tasks.
‘You’d better come with me, Centurion Corvus, I suspect I’m going to need someone to take notes of whatever it is my brother tribune has to tell me. I may well be too busy banging my head on the palisade in frustration.’
The two tribunes clasped hands, and Licinius waved a hand at the fortress with an appreciative nod.
‘Well done, Rutilius Scaurus. How long did this take? It looks as if your men are only just digging out your marching camp.’
Scaurus nodded happily, jerking a thumb at Marcus.
‘We got lucky, or rather Centurion Corvus here got lucky on our behalf. That and a little intervention from Prince Martos.’
He talked his colleague through the story of Marcus’s fight for the gate, and their subsequent discovery of the havoc wrought by Martos and the released Votadini warriors, and the young Roman found himself on the receiving end of a long stare from the veteran cavalryman.
‘Outstanding work, young man. Perhaps you should have chosen a more heroic name to hide behind, since it seems that you positively refuse to blend into the landscape and be forgotten. Which reminds me, there are imperial agents loose in the border area hunting for you. It’s hardly a surprise, but it seems that the praetorian tribune discovered that you’ve taken refuge with this cohort through a piece of battlefield gossip that eventually reached the wrong ears. Apparently that knowledge has already cost more than one innocent life in Rome, and the report I’ve received tells me that Perennis believes the combination of a praetorian and a corn officer will be strong enough to ensure that you’re brought to justice. Although I have to admit to being somewhat baffled as to what’s to stop a ruthless senior officer from simply putting them both in the ground and nobody any the wiser.’
Scaurus frowned.
‘While I thank you for that warning, I can’t see you having ridden this far north to deliver that unwelcome news in person.’
Licinius nodded his head, grim faced.
‘You’re right. My other intelligence for you is of a rather more pressing nature, and concerns a Venicone king that seems to have a hard-on for your cohort.’
Scaurus gathered his senior officers in the Dinpaladyr’s great hall, its stone floor still wet where the blood that had poured from the dying elder, as he had bled out under Martos’s unforgiving stare, had been scrubbed away. Tribune Licinius took a cup of wine with Scaurus, Laenas and their senior centurions, lifting it in salute as the small group drank to their success in capturing the fortress.
‘But that’s not all we’re here to do, is it, Tribune?’
First Spear Frontinius had greeted the arrival of the Petriana’s commander with an instinctive reserve, and now he asked the question that was on every lip in a respectful but questioning tone. Scaurus nodded in recognition of his senior centurion’s question, tipping his wine back and placing the cup on the table beside him.
‘No, First Spear, indeed it isn’t. Tribune Licinius?’
The cavalry officer stepped forward, looking around the small group to take their measure before speaking.
‘Gentlemen, for what it’s worth, I don’t think that Drust has any intention of attempting to take this fortress. He has neither the time to spare in his march north, nor the equipment for any sort of siege. But if it isn’t territory that’s on his mind, something else must be dragging him so far out of his way home. Something that matters to him more than anything else. Think back, gentlemen, to that morning that we broke into Calgus’s camp in the forest, the day that we broke this rebellion into splinters and scattered it to the wind. It was your men that were detailed to search the Venicone section of the camp, if I have it right?’
Frontinius and Neuto nodded with a grim glance at each other, both seeing where the cavalry commander’s reasoning was taking him.
‘And nothing of any great importance came to light? Or at least, nothing that was surrendered by your men…? I thought so. My guess, gentlemen, is that one of your men found something of the utmost importance to King Drust, and that he promptly stuffed it into his armour and kept quiet as to the discovery. Something small enough to conceal, perhaps a piece of tribal jewellery, a crown, or perhaps a torc, something worth enough money to make an entire tent party join the finder in his crime. I also think he tried to sell it to someone known for such dealing, even though I won’t be able to prove it until I get back south of the Wall and catch up with a certain stores officer. I’m pretty sure that he in turn recruited one of my centurions to help him with the coin needed to buy this trinket. A centurion who was then captured and tortured to death by Drust’s men, during which agony I’d be surprised if he didn’t buy a quick death with news of Drust’s lost treasure. All of which means, if I’m right, that your command is about to receive the undivided attention of eight thousand angry barbarians, all bent on recovering whatever it is that their king mislaid.’
Tribune Laenas frowned for a moment before asking the obvious question.
‘So why can’t we just march everyone into this fortress, shut the gates and wait for these barbarians to get tired of camping outside and resume their journey north?’
Scaurus shook his head.
‘That was my first reaction too, but the rainwater cisterns are almost empty and we don’t have time to refill them. The Selgovae haven’t allowed anyone out to fetch water for weeks, and the rain hasn’t been anything like enough to do the job for them. Add to that the fact that they’ve just about stripped the place bare of food, and there’s no way I can order almost three thousand men to take refuge here. If we camp inside this fortress we’ll end up having to feed the population as well as ourselves, and our water will be exhausted within a day or two. Unless Drust were to take one look and then turn around and head for home we’d be bottled up in a trap of our own making. No, gentlemen, I’m afraid that we’re going to have to fight Drust and his warband. Either that, or we run for our lives and abandon the Votadini to their fate. Not much of a choice, is it?’
The tribal elders reacted to the news of the approaching warband with the smug equanimity of men well accustomed to the idea of their fortress’s invulnerability. It was only when the Romans had explained to them the parlous state of their supplies that they realised their predicament.
‘And if you think the Selgovae were bad then you’ll find the Venicones a revelation. They need food, and since you don’t have anything to offer them I’d predict that they’ll leave this hill a smoking ruin populated only by your corpses. Perhaps they’ll spare your children for a life of slavery, but the rest of you will die in ways that will make you beg for your ends.’
Licinius stepped to Scaurus’s side, his face set equally hard.
‘You may live beyond the edge of the empire, but you’ve become accustomed to life in the shadow of what those of us on the southern side like to consider the civilised way of life. You trade your cattle and grain with us in return for luxuries, and many of you speak our language. The Venicones, on the other hand, despise us, and in consequence they also despise you. You’d be well advised to do everything in your power to ensure that they never come within sight of your walls, or you may find your entire tribe erased from existence.’ He stared hard at the dismayed elders. ‘If you don’t believe me, just sit back and wait for a while If, on the other hand, you’d rather take a hand in ensuring your survival, you’ll have every able-bodied person that can wield an axe or a spade gather at the gates as quickly as possible. I’ve an idea that just might get us all through this, but it won’t work without enough labour. To put it simply, your people can either dig or die.’
The Romans turned away to leave the tribal council to their deliberations, and Scaurus raised an eyebrow at his colleague.
‘Got somewhere in mind, have you?’
The older man smiled grimly and nodded.
‘We passed it during the ride here. We can make it ready in an afternoon, and Drust’s men are too far out to reach it before dusk. All it needs is a few hundred feet of earthworks, a few hundred carefully felled trees, and then some ankle-breakers and lilies, and it’ll be perfect. And now, if you’re amenable, I suggest that we go and find whatever it is that’s drawing Drust towards us like a runaway bull. Got any ideas?’
Scaurus nodded tersely.
‘Just the one.’
The Tungrian cohorts mustered as ordered, watched by the 20th’s bemused legionaries. Scaurus stepped out in front of his command, his eyes sweeping across the ranks of his men. He nodded to First Spears Frontinius and Neuto, and at their command the cohorts’ centurions barked the order that brought their men to attention. An uneasy silence settled across the ranks, disturbed only by the gathering number of men and women mustering at the fortress’s gate with spades and axes. The tribune raised his voice to be heard across the mass of men standing before him, raking them with flint-hard eyes.
‘Soldiers, you doubtless think I’ve paraded you in order to congratulate you for taking the fortress! And I have. Well done to you all! You will no doubt be fondly imagining that your fighting for the year is finally over, and looking forward to the march south and some long-overdue time in barracks. Perhaps you are wondering if you will be returning to your own forts. All of which is quite understandable… except for the fact that your fighting isn’t over yet. One tent party here, a few men among fifteen hundred, have presented us all with a problem. They are hiding a secret from the rest of us. These men are in possession of something that doesn’t belong to them. It used to belong to the king of the Venicones, and it now belongs to the Emperor by rights. One of you discovered it while we were searching the enemy camp, most likely, and tucked it away to sell later. We suspect that the man in question probably tried to complete the transaction that same day, once darkness had fallen, but for some reason the deal fell through, and he was left holding his prize.’
He allowed that possibility to sink in for a few seconds before continuing, watching the cohort closely. In the 7th Century’s ranks Soldier Manius stiffened, the awful possibility that his centurion might recall their encounter in the torchlit darkness that night sending a physical shiver up his spine.
‘The problem that the rest of us have got is that the Venicone king seems to have worked out that we have it, and he wants it back so badly that he’s coming in our direction with his entire warband. Eight thousand warriors. In just a few hours, soldiers, whether we like it or not, we’ll be fighting for our lives against the Venicones again. And in case any of you have forgotten that it was us who stopped them at the Red River ford, and left them stuck on the eastern bank with a bloody nose, let me assure you that they will know exactly who we are. They will be looking for blood in vengeance for their losses that day, and they will know that if they can find us outside of this fortress then they have their chance to slaughter us to the last man. And this time we have no river to hide behind…’
He turned away for a moment, allowing time for his blunt words to sink in. Manius’s eyes were locked on to Centurion Otho’s back, and he forced himself to look away, and feign bored indifference, as the officer turned to search his century’s ranks with a stony face.
‘And so, soldiers, you will understand that I’m feeling somewhat let down by these few men that have put us all at mortal risk. In point of fact I’m angry enough to have them all beaten to death by their century, once I find out who they are. And trust me in this, I will discover them within the next hour. If I have to I’ll have you all remove your armour for searching by your officers, and if the men holding this precious object make me waste that much time, time we should be using to dig defences, I’ll make their deaths appropriately brutal. But, in the interests of getting this thing over with quickly, I’m offering a limited amnesty to these men, if they surrender themselves to justice promptly.’
Otho was moving now, walking swiftly along his century’s front rank and making the turn at the point they met with the 8th, coming back along the rear of the soldiers’ line. Manius could sense his approach, for all the fact that his gaze stayed locked on the tribune right up until the moment that the centurion pulled him backwards out of the line, ripping off his helmet with an impatience that tipped the soldier’s head back hard and left his chin pointing into thin air, just as the first punch landed. Scaurus fell silent at the sudden commotion, watching impassively as the enraged centurion battered the defenceless soldier, tearing off his weapons and armour in between blows. At some point in the one-sided struggle the object of his search must have revealed itself, for he seized the other man by the ear and dragged him out of the century’s ranks with his knees buckling from the savage beating, a shining piece of gold held aloft for the tribune to see. From behind him he heard First Spear Frontinius’s snort of barely restrained laughter.
‘It’s a good thing we don’t need the idiot to tell us the story, I expect he’ll be eating nothing but gruel for the next few weeks.’
Late afternoon was turning to early evening when the two tribunes rode into sight of the Venicone camp. Halting outside of what they judged was the most optimistic of bowshots, they waited while the word was carried back to the warband’s leader that there were three enemy horsemen waiting outside the camp in the sun’s fading warmth. Having estimated that Drust was bright enough to recognise an opportunity to talk, the Romans were nevertheless relieved when a party of three warriors strode out of the smoke drifting from the barbarian campfires. Drust walked out towards the waiting horsemen until he was close enough to shout a challenge, his hammer carried over one shoulder and a wry smile on his face.
‘Have you come to discuss the terms of your surrender, Roman?!’
Licinius leant forward, muttering quietly to his colleague.
‘Leave this to me. He already knows who I am, but you’re a different matter. Let’s allow him a little uncertainty, eh?’ He raised his voice to a parade-ground bellow. ‘Far from it, barbarian! My colleague and I have come to have a good look at your ragged warband. My colleague here is keen to get some measure of how many of them we’ll have to kill tomorrow before the rest of you turn tail and run for home!’ He lowered his voice a fraction, speaking to the Venicone king rather than simply shouting at him. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come a little closer, and avoid the need for all this shouting? I owe you one safe passage, if you recall?’
Drust nodded and led his companions closer, until the Romans could see the grey hairs in his red beard. Licinius dismounted with an easy grace that belied his years and beckoned for the other two to follow his example.
‘If he wants to try cracking my head with that hammer I’d rather be on my feet than stuck up there on a dithering horse.’ He waited until the two parties were lined up facing each other before speaking again. ‘You amaze me, Drust. To have marched your men all this way for the sake of a simple gold trinket? Surely you could have had another one crafted for far less trouble than the likely price of attempting to recover this?’
He pulled the torc from inside his cloak, holding it up to the evening sun’s golden light in a hoop of liquid gold. Drust started in surprise, and the warrior standing to his right put one hand to the hilt of his sword. Licinius smiled, his quiet chuckle of amusement creasing the Venicone king’s face into a frown.
‘I’d restrain your man there, if I were you. Do you imagine I would be waving the bloody thing around this close to you without some assurance of my safety?’ He gestured to Marcus, standing alongside him with both hands on the hilts of his weapons. ‘Your tribes have both suffered at the hands of this young officer before. You, Drust, failed to cross the Red River because of the large numbers of your men that his soldiers left face down in the water as the price of their attempts to cross, and as for you, Calgus…’ He smirked at the Selgovae leader’s surprised expression before continuing. ‘Yes, I know you. That purple cloak, that and your pig-ugly face, were both described to me in detail by the last Roman officer to speak with you at such close range. You had a little chat with him before the battle that we’ve taken to calling Lost Eagle, if you recall? And if he were here, I’m sure Legatus Equitius would want me to thank you for your quite spectacular stupidity in sending your men up that hill to die on his men’s spears in such an unimaginative fashion. He was given the command of a legion as a result of his victory over you, you know? You lost a battle you already had in your grasp that day, for all that you captured an eagle. But I digress, it’s a common fault of the elderly.’
He smiled without humour at Calgus, but if he’d expected the Selgovae leader to be discomforted by the revelation he was disappointed. After a moment of stone-faced thought, Calgus’s face lit up with malicious glee.
‘So you’re the one! I read the legatus’s private papers that we captured during the battle, and I was intrigued to discover that he had a son whose identity was hidden from the world. I still have his head hidden away, you know, preserved in a jar of…’
Marcus tensed, but Licinius waved a hand dismissively.
‘Enough! I came to speak with Drust, not bandy gossip with yesterday’s man. Your tribe is scattered to the four winds and your time on earth is limited, so hold your tongue and leave those men at the table who still have stakes to play with to talk. You can take the matter up with the centurion in the morning, when he has you at the point of his sword.’ Licinius fixed Drust with a level stare, ignoring Calgus’s scowl. ‘King Drust, it’s still not too late for us both to avoid yet more bloodshed. I’ll happily return this bauble to you if you’ll turn your warband’s path to the north and return to your lands in peace.’
Drust shook his head slowly, holding Licinius’s stare and pursing his lips.
‘I think not, Roman. It would be a shame to have come all this way and left without a decent tithe of heads for being put to the trouble.’
The cavalryman shrugged expressively.
‘As you wish. You know how the battle will go tomorrow as well as I do. You’ll charge our line, and find yourselves on the wrong side of a turf wall that will expose your men to our spears as they try to get over it. It will all come down to a bloody slogging match, and that could last hours and leave thousands of men dead. And, I should warn you, we have more than enough strength to hold you off for as long as you choose to batter your heads against our defences.’
Drust shrugged.
‘I’ll take that “trinket” from your dead body, and your head besides. It will remind me of the victory. And when we’re done with you we’ll march on to the Dinpaladyr and see how pleased Calgus’s men are that we’ve lifted your siege.’
Tribune Licinius smirked, and tossed the torc on to the grass at his horse’s feet.
‘In that case you’d better have this. It will help my men to pick you out as you run before us, and since the reward I’ve put on you both is doubled if you’re taken alive I’d guess they’ll be grateful for that. And with that, colleagues, I think we’ve wasted enough time on these gentlemen.’
He turned away from the barbarians with one last calculating glance at Drust, whose attention was fixed on the torc lying before him in the grass’s tangle, and then turned back to face them again.
‘Although it would probably only be fair of me to temper your expectations as to the Votadini fortress. Should you by some strange chance manage to overcome our defence tomorrow, you might find the Dinpaladyr a little less receptive to your triumphant entry than you clearly expect would be the case…’
Calgus narrowed his eyes, and his head shook in disbelief.
‘Never try to deceive a master of deception, Tribune. My man Haervui will have had that fortress buttoned up tighter than a duck’s backside the second he saw you coming over the horizon. There are no secret approaches to the Dinpaladyr, and he’ll have had scouts…’
His voice trailed off as he saw the smile on Licinius’s face broaden to a grin.
‘Scouts, yes, we found them and took them prisoner. That there’s no secret approach to the fortress, well, again, yes, I can agree with that. But darkness, Calgus, covers up all kinds of sins, as I’m sure you’d be the first man to agree. So when two hundred beaten barbarian scum turned up at the fortress gates at dawn, led by a very persuasive Selgovae chieftain well known to all inside, who then proceeded to talk the defenders into opening the gates… well, we’ve all heard of stronger defences than the Dinpaladyr that have fallen to deception, haven’t we?’
Calgus bristled.
‘No man of my tribe would submit to being part of such treachery!’
Licinius shrugged, turning back to his horse and spoke his final words back over his shoulder.
‘You know your men better than I do, Calgus, so I’m sure you’re right. Your kinsman Harn would never play a part in such a scheme, not even with his sons at the point of a Roman spear. So the Dinpaladyr must still be in your hands, mustn’t it…?’
The Romans rode away, leaving their barbarian counterparts staring quizzically at their receding backs. Tribune Scaurus leaned out of his saddle to mutter in his colleague’s ear, his tone bemused.
‘So you’ve told them that we have the fortress. You’ve told them that we’re going to be fighting them in “the usual way” in the morning, and you’ve given that red-faced barbarian sheep-fucker his pretty gold neckpiece back. Did I miss something?’
Licinius winked across Scaurus at an openly curious Marcus before replying, a sardonic smile wreathing his face.
‘Firstly, respected colleague, I want them… no, I want Calgus to fester in his own juices this night, at the thought that his brother warrior might have betrayed his cause. Secondly, yes, he now knows exactly how we’ll be meeting their attack tomorrow, in precisely the same way we always do, in a nice straight line with spears, swords and shields. And that’s just the way I like it. And lastly, with regard to that “red-faced barbarian sheep-fucker’s” pretty gold neckpiece, please believe me when I tell you that I meant every word. I want my headhunters to be looking for that tidy little fortune when they chase those horse-eating bastards back into the hills they came from. I’d rather have him in one piece for shipment to Rome, but I’ll settle for his head. And whoever brings me his head will only get their reward if the torc’s still attached. As far as I’m concerned it’s only on loan.’
Later that evening, as the Tungrians prepared for sleep in rather different circumstances to usual, Licinius walked into the 9th Century’s lines with a thoughtful look on his face. Directed to where Marcus lay stretched out on his rough woollen cloak, he left his bodyguard waiting at a discreet distance and stood over the young officer with his helmet in both hands. Opening his eyes, the younger man saluted and started getting to his feet, but Licinius waved him back with a gloomy smile that was barely visible in the twilight.
‘I thought I might find you here. It seems I owe you an apology, young man, and I’ve been too busy to come and see you until now. Bit of a first for me, y’know, to be apologising for not saying something. Usually it’s because I can’t keep my bloody mouth shut. May I sit?’
The younger man gestured to the ground alongside him, and Licinius lowered himself on to it with a grateful sigh.
‘So, that rascal Calgus has let the cat out of the bag and I have no choice but to acknowledge the truth, if not the helpfulness of the bastard’s words. Yes, Legatus Sollemnis was your birth father. He got your mother pregnant while he was serving in Hispania. Your adoptive father was serving alongside him and was already married, and so he and your mother agreed to take you as their own rather than see their friend’s child farmed out to some peasant family, or worse. And he was, after all, a senator. His house was not a bad place for an infant to find himself.’
He paused, rubbing his face wearily.
‘Sollemnis told me all this when I discovered that the senator had arranged for you to be spirited to Britannia, rather than share his fate in Rome. He enlisted me in the plot to keep you alive, and he also swore me and everyone else that knew the secret to keep it that way until the rebellion was over, and he had the chance to tell you the story in his own time, rather than in some snatched conversation with no chance to explain his actions. And then, of course, he was betrayed to the Selgovae by Praetorian Prefect Perennis’s arsehole of a son, and murdered on the battlefield at Lost Eagle. And yes, I could have told you the truth after his death, but I decided that you’d had enough mourning for one year. My mistake…’
He looked up to find Marcus staring at him with a level gaze, with no hint of the emotions he was feeling on his face.
‘Enough mourning for one year? That’s true enough, Tribune, more than true enough. My father – because he’ll always be my father – and all my family, and then the best friend I have left in the world, and now the man I discover to have been my birth father. All of them dead in less than six months. I would mourn for the legatus, if I had another tear in my body, but I can’t. Don’t apologise to me for keeping this from me, because believe me, I would much rather never have known. And if Calgus thinks he’s left a wound on me with his words, he’ll do well to make very sure that he avoids me on the battlefield tomorrow, if he wants to live to enjoy the memory of my face this afternoon. Given the misery that man’s heaped on me in the last few months, taking his head would be a good way to pay him back. Eventually.’
The Venicone scouts slid noiselessly through the night’s silence, slipping along the forest’s edge until they came within sight of the Roman camp. Going to ground in the trees, they watched their enemies in the full moon’s light for long enough to be sure they understood the precautions the soldiers were taking before making their next step. A dozen watch fires lit the camp’s interior, and patrolling soldiers paced along the length of the earth wall, staring out into the night’s shadows. At length one man removed his boots and detached himself from the scouting party, slipping into the forest and moving silently through the trees at a stealthy pace, feeling forward with his bare feet for any potential source of noise as he took each step. His progress was painstakingly slow, but without any disturbance of the surrounding foliage or any noise to betray his presence. An hour’s quiet stalk brought him within sight of the camp’s rear wall, and he sank into the shadow of a tree to listen intently to the forest for one hundred patient breaths before moving again. Eventually, satisfied that he was alone in the night, and that the apparent lack of any patrol on this face of the Roman defences was as it seemed, he slithered over the waist-high barrier and into the heart of his enemy’s stronghold.
A tent loomed before him, and he snuggled into its shadow to wait for any sign that he might have been detected, but none came. The camp was quiet, eerily so, and with a faint frown he put his ear to the tent’s leather wall and listened carefully for a moment. No sound could be heard from within, no snores, no conversation, and his frown of uncertainty deepened. Taking a small blade from his belt, he sliced into the thick leather with a smooth, slow stroke, then put an eye to the hole thus created. The tent was empty. Eyes narrowed with suspicion, he crawled forward and around the corner, his hands outstretched to feel for anything that might betray his presence, and as he reached the tent’s doorway they encountered a hole in the ground covered with slender branches cut from the forest behind him. Parting the leaves, he reached cautiously down into the pit, his fingertips searching for and exploring the trap’s contents with delicate care.
Grim faced, he looked out across the camp, shaking his head at the utter and complete lack of movement. Watch fires burned untended amid a sea of empty tents, their faint hissing and popping of burning sap the only disturbance in an otherwise silent scene. Nodding to himself, he turned back to the wall, a slight smile creasing his face. Drust would reward them well for the knowledge that the enemy camp was an empty shell, a trap set for the unwary to blunder into, and provide a hidden enemy with the perfect opportunity to strike at them from the rear. Going back over the camp’s wall, he allowed himself to relax slightly, confident that there was nobody to see him roll across the earth barrier and cross the gap into the silent trees. As his feet touched the ground he jolted back against the wall, a sudden searing pain in his chest rooting him where he stood, sudden torture tearing at his lungs as he fought for each agonised panting breath. Looking down, he saw the shaft of an arrow protruding from his rough shirt, and even as his shocked wits fought to make sense of its presence another arced out of the trees and slammed into his body, ripping a hole in his heart that killed him in seconds. His glazed eyes stared vacantly out across the forest as the hidden archers broke from their cover and moved with hunters’ caution to stand over him.
‘Not bad. But not good enough.’
Qadir nodded at his fellow Hamian’s whispered verdict on the dead man’s abilities, leaning close to speak quietly into his ear.
‘Good enough to have got past anyone but us, I’d say. You’d better go and tell the tribune about this while I keep watch for any others. And be careful, there’ll be more of them between us and the cohort.’
His fellow archer jerked his head in silent amusement and vanished into the forest without a sound. Qadir turned and slid back through the trees, settling back into a hiding place within bowshot of the dead scout’s cooling corpse to wait for the dawn, silently mouthing a prayer for his victim’s spirit as he nocked another arrow to his bow and froze into perfect immobility.
Drust roused his warriors before dawn the next morning and gathered their family leaders around him in the grey light of the sun’s waking beneath the horizon. The previous night had been the time to fire his men up with tales of the riches they would win once the Romans were swept away, walking from one campfire to the next to show them his confident, wolfish grin. He stood in the middle of his warband, in the heart of a gathering of the fifty or so men who provided their leadership, thousands of warriors beyond them straining to hear his words.
‘One cohort and a few miserable horse boys aren’t going to hold us up for long, but I want to do this the true Venicone way, in a storm of iron and blood. Their blood. I’ve run from them for long enough to crave battle, to swing my hammer into their shield wall and see men shrink away in terror.’ He stared about him, his heart swelling with a savage pride in the host of warriors gathered about him, and raised the hammer over his head in one hand as he turned in a full circle to stare his chieftains in their eyes. ‘Not one of those Roman bastards is to survive to tell the tale of how we tore them limb from limb. Let it be as if they simply marched into the autumn fog and never came out again, as if the very hills wearied of their presence and rose up, crushing them flat without leaving any trace. Let there be no word of their deaths for their families, not even the bitter comfort of knowing that their men are dead, and not enslaved for the rest of their short lives. No more running, my brothers! Let the Romans know what it feels like to run… at least for as long as it takes for us to catch every last one of them and put them to the sword!’
When the cheers had died away he gathered his chieftains about him, speaking softly to avoid being heard beyond their tight ranks.
‘Once we move, we move quickly. Tell your men that any one of them that falls out of the march will be left to face his shame alone. We’ll meet the scouts I sent out last night on the road, and they will guide us into the enemy camp. We must mob the Romans, my brothers, like wolves bringing down a stag. When we find them there can be no hesitation, we must run straight into the fight and overcome their defence with simple weight of numbers. If we respect their shield wall they will hold us at spear’s length all morning, bleeding us from behind its shelter in their usual cowardly way. Run to the fight like wolves, my brothers, sink your teeth into their throats and bring them down in the way that we fight best. Spill blood for me, my brothers!’
The warband ran to the east in the dawn’s growing light in silence, their passage marked only by the jingle and clatter of their weapons, with the king and his twenty-man bodyguard running at their head. Three miles out from their camp, the scouts sent out by Drust the previous night rose from the vegetation at the side of the track that headed east to the Dinpaladyr, and Drust raised his hand to stop the warband’s forward progress. His men panted their steaming breath into the cold morning air while he walked to meet his men.
‘Only three of you?’
‘One of my men went closer to the enemy camp, my lord, but he did not return. We heard nothing, but they must have found him and either killed or captured him.’
Drust nodded unhappily, telling himself that the man’s loss would inform the Romans of nothing more than they already knew, but nevertheless cursing the lost opportunity to learn more about his enemy’s disposition.
‘Go on, then, tell me what you know.’
‘We found the Roman camp by the light of their watch fires, my lord, and stayed within sight of them until dawn, to better see what awaits us. They have camped in a gap in the forest, my lord, with the ground to either side made impassable by trees they have felled with the tops facing outwards, but the ground before their earth walls is clear and flat.’
Drust scowled, his face contorted with the ache in his chest from the effort of the run.
‘So they may be alerted, but no more so than would have been the case anyway. You can lead us to them?’
The scout nodded, pointing down the track with a dirty-nailed finger.
‘Simple enough, my lord. If we run another thousand paces we will come upon the break in the forest on your right, five hundred paces deep and the same wide. The enemy camp occupies the last third of the open space, with flat ground all the way from the track to their earth wall.’
Drust nodded, thinking fast.
‘How high is their wall?’
The other man tapped his leg where the thigh joined with his groin.
‘This high, my lord. A running man could be over it in one jump, if it were not defended.’
‘You read my mind. And when you left it to meet up here, was it defended?’
‘No, my lord. There was noise inside the camp, but no sign of any shields at the wall.’
‘Good. Now walk with me and give me a warning when we are within one hundred paces of the gap in the forest. We will make a quiet march from here, and only run again at the very last moment.’
The warband paced forward in silence, the lead scout walking alongside Drust as they crept down the track towards the Roman camp. With no more than fifty paces left before the point where he judged they should start the attack, the scout stiffened and grasped his master’s arm, pointing at a handful of men who had marched out of the mist to their front, each of them carrying a pair of leather buckets. The group’s leader bore the marks of a man who had recently taken a beating, and he carried himself gingerly, as if every movement were painful. Romans and barbarians alike goggled at each other in a moment of indecision before the soldiers reacted, tossing aside their buckets and turning to flee, screaming out warnings as they ran.
Too late, Drust told himself gleefully, much too late. He sprang forward, bellowing the only command required to unleash his men.
‘Attack!’
The men of his bodyguard ran with him, the faster of his warriors passing him within a dozen paces as they sprinted in pursuit of the fleeing Romans. Rounding the edge of the forest gap within which the enemy camp had been constructed, the Venicones stormed down the slight slope towards their objective, every man howling a battle cry as they swept towards the camp’s unmanned defences. Looking beyond the fleeing soldiers, Drust saw a sea of tents across the breadth of the Roman encampment, with smoke rising from dozens of cooking fires, while the few isolated sentries patrolling outside the earth walls took one look and bolted for the illusory safety of the camp’s interior. The warband’s onrushing tide reached the slowest of the soldiers fleeing before them, and the man went down with a spear in the back of his neck, his gurgling scream driving his comrades forward in their headlong flight from the howling warriors behind them.
The desperate soldiers reached their walls, running through the doglegged gap left open to allow unobstructed entry and exit, one of them falling on the mud-slicked grass and crashing to the ground. He was overrun in a second, dying in a flurry of blades as the leading Venicone warriors hurdled the earth wall to either side of the entry with ease and charged on into the Roman camp. Drust slowed a little as he reached the camp’s walls, his eyes narrowing in calculation. There was no ankle-breaker, the square-bottomed trench that the Romans usually dug alongside their earth walls to fell the unwary attacker with broken foot or ankle bones. Driven forward by the sheer mass of his men, he climbed on to the wall to stare across the leather tents that filled the camp, resisting the press of his warriors to keep his balance as they poured over the wall to either side and charged forward into the heart of the enemy position.
‘Cunning bastards…’
There, behind the camp’s far wall, there they were. A wall of round shields faced the Venicones across the empty camp. The cooking fires, the few patrolling sentries and even the apparently surprised water carriers, all a ruse to make him believe the Romans were unprepared for his onslaught, and a part of his mind wondered what trick might yet wait for them even as he pointed at the defenders and screamed the only possible command under the circumstances.
‘Kill them all!’
‘They’ve bitten off the bait and swallowed it whole.’
The three tribunes lay flat among the trees, looking down the long slope that ran down to the empty camp so painstakingly prepared the previous day. While the two Tungrian cohorts’ pioneer centuries had laboured with their axes to build an impassable abattis of fallen trees to either side of the earth walls, making an assault through the camp towards its rear wall the only way to reach its defenders, the soldiers and tribesmen had painstakingly prepared the ground inside the walls for an influx of unsuspecting Venicone warriors.
Licinius nodded in response to his colleague’s comment.
‘Just a little longer. Let them get properly mired before we show our hand.’
The barbarians stormed over the camp’s outer wall and charged through the cohort’s tents towards the real defence at its rear, a wall fully four feet tall and defended by a thicket of sharpened stakes set to rip the throat out of an unwary attacker.
‘There you go. What a delightful sound…’
Higher notes were piercing the berserk roar of the Venicone onslaught, screams of agony rising as the warriors charging across the empty camp found the other defences readied to greet them. Scaurus’s grimace when the older man had first outlined his plan for the battle had brought a smile to Licinius’s face, and blank incomprehension to Laenas’s.
‘Lilies? That’s a bit classical, colleague.’
Licinius had smiled grimly, holding the fire-blackened stake up for his brother officers to examine more closely.
‘You like the idea, then?’
Scaurus had nodded, taking the sharp sliver of wood and testing the point on the ball of his thumb before handing it to Laenas.
‘Very much so. If it was good enough for the Divine Julius in his conquest of the Gauls, it’s more than good enough for us to use on these animals.’
Judging that the volume of agonised screaming had risen to the level they were waiting for, he raised an eyebrow at Licinius, who nodded his agreement, raising his voice for the centurions waiting behind them to hear.
‘Very well, gentlemen, let’s go and show these tattooed bastards what it means to push Rome too hard.’
All three men climbed to their feet, and behind them the wood that overlooked the decoy camp came alive with the shouting of centurions and the rattle of equipment, as three cohorts stirred from their long wait and came to battle.
Still standing on the false camp’s front wall, Drust watched in dismay as his warriors blundered into the trap waiting for them, As they charged through the sea of tents, intent on bringing the defenders to battle, dozens of men lurched and fell within a few seconds, their screams merging with the war cries of their uninjured comrades in a cacophony of rage, pain and terror. The warriors following them turned to the left and right, seeking a way round the sudden chaos of fallen bodies twisting in the agony of their wounds, and blundered into more of the hidden traps, each hastily dug pit containing several stakes arranged to point in different directions like the petals of a flower.
‘Lilies. Nobody could ever accuse the bastards of failing to learn from their mistakes.’
Drust turned to find Calgus standing alongside him atop the low turf wall. The Selgovae leader shook his head slowly, watching as Drust’s warriors gingerly felt their way across the field of traps laid out in front of the rear wall’s entire length. Even advancing with caution, their progress suddenly reduced to a slow walk, the occasional man still found his foot vanishing into the apparently solid ground and impaled on the fire-hardened wooden stakes concealed in their well-camouflaged pits. Both men watched as the first warriors reached the defended rear wall, snaking around the long stakes protruding from the earth wall’s defence to attack the men waiting for them behind their shields. Calgus shook his head slowly.
‘I’ve seen this before this year. They’ll hide behind that wall and slaughter your men with their spears as they try to climb it. You’ve been fooled, Drust, they’ll hold us off all morning…’
‘So we’ll kill them all by the afternoon. They’re still stuck there behind that wall, and all I have to do is send a force around to their rear and we’ll have them bottled up like rats in a barrel.’ Drust turned to look at Calgus, who was staring at the defenders with an uncertain look in his eye. ‘What?’
The Selgovae king’s frown deepened.
‘There’s something wrong here. The Tungrians have oval shields…’ Drust turned to look again with fresh focus.
‘You’re right, they’re round. Like… those fucking horsemen!’
He spun and looked back up the slope, his jaw dropping at the sight of armed and armoured men pouring from the trees to their rear. Turning back, he pointed at the member of his bodyguard who carried the signal horn used to gain the warband’s attention in battle.
‘Blow!’
As the horn’s echoes rang across the field, and the Venicones paused in their struggles to reach the camp’s defended rear wall, Drust raised his hammer high over his head, then pivoted to point the weapon’s heavy iron head up the slope at the trap closing around the warband.
‘Warriors, there is our enemy! Attack!’
The detachment’s first centuries broke from the trees at a dead run, their centurions bellowing encouragement as hundreds of men hurled themselves from their hiding places and sprinted for the line that Licinius had indicated to Scaurus and Laenas the previous afternoon. The three men had walked across the long shallow slope as the late afternoon’s shadows slowly lengthened, discussing the course that they expected the next morning’s fight to take.
‘Assuming that Drust displays his usual bull-headed behaviour, and attacks quickly rather than standing back to consider what might be wrong with this scene…’ Licinius paused and waved a hand at the soldiers labouring to construct the marching camp that he hoped would lure the Venicones into their trap. ‘… then there will come a moment when he knows he’s been fooled. And at that moment he will turn his men round and they’ll come charging back up here like the hounds of Hades, and if they get here…’ He pointed at the ground they were standing on. ‘… before we can get a decent line established to stop them then they’ll overrun us in no time.’
Scaurus had looked back at the trees behind them, then turned to stare down the slope, gauging the distance with a practised eye. He shook his head unhappily.
‘Hiding three cohorts in that wood is all very well, but the men will be packed in like spectators at the circus games. It’ll take longer to get them out and into line than we’ll have. We might be better just meeting them on open ground…’
Laenas put a hand on his arm.
‘What if…’
The two tribunes turned to look at him, Scaurus raising an inquisitorial eyebrow and Licinius frowning slightly. His voice when he spoke was impatient with the younger man’s interruption and Scaurus saw his subordinate flinch almost imperceptibly at the tone.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I was thinking…’
Licinius put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes with frustration.
‘Tribune Laenas, we are…’
‘Colleague?’
The older man looked at Scaurus in slight surprise, taken aback at the studiedly neutral tone of his brother officer’s voice.
‘Rutilius Scaurus?’
‘If our colleague has an idea, then I’d like to hear it.’
He’d raised an eyebrow at the younger man, opening his hands in encouragement, and Laenas had stolen a nervous glance at Licinius before speaking again, his voice riven with uncertainty.
‘I was just thinking that if our problem is the time we’ll have to get our soldiers out of the trees and into line, then we’ll have to find a way to slow the Venicones down as they come back up this way. A way they won’t notice on their way down the slope.’
Both men had stared at him curiously, their interest piqued. As he kept talking, his voice strengthening as the idea took shape, Licinius’s sceptical expression had transformed into a slow smile by the time he turned to call to the nearest officer.
‘Decurion!’
Silus had hurried across to the trio, saluting briskly.
‘Tribune?’
‘I need you to take a party of twenty men back to the Dinpaladyr. There’s something the Votadini will have plenty of that we need, and as much of it as you can find.’
The Venicones massed at the decoy fort’s wall turned at their king’s command and surged back up the slope, yelling out their fury and frustration. A clear trumpet note rang out across the battlefield, and, as if by some arcane magic, the horde of charging tribesmen were suddenly reduced to a chaos of struggling bodies, hundreds of them sprawling over previously unseen obstacles while the men behind them were felled in their turn by the chaotic sprawl of bodies. In seconds the onrushing warband’s attack was reduced to a crawl, those men still on their feet having to pick their way around those still recovering their balance. Hacking furiously at the ropes which had tripped them, raised from the thumb’s-width trenches in which they had been run across the hillside the previous day, each one snapped up and tied fast by men hidden in the woods to either side, the Venicones were quickly able to remove the unexpected impediment, but as Drust looked over his men’s heads at the scurrying Roman troops he shook his head and spat on the ground with disgust.
The cohorts had formed a rough line by the time their enemies had resumed their progress up the slope, Tungrians and legionaries intermingled by the speed of their rush from the trees and kept that way by a decision made by the three tribunes the previous afternoon. Licinius had watched the 6th Legion’s men going about their preparations for the following day’s battle and turned to the other two senior officers with a questioning look for Laenas.
‘Tribune, have your men actually seen any fighting this year? I believe your cohort was shipped in from Germania after the disaster at Lost Eagle, and you were too late into the battle to destroy the rebellion to see any proper fighting.’
Laenas had slowly nodded his reluctant agreement.
‘In that case they are an unknown quantity, whereas our Tungrian cohorts have fought in two battles this year already. We know that they will cope when the barbarians’ first attack breaks on their shields, but we cannot know how your men will react. I suggest that we deliberately mix some of your legionaries in with the Tungrians, and let them work out their ranking when they get to the line of defence. That way the experienced men will help the new boys cope with what they’re about to experience. The rest of you can form our reserve. After all, no good commander ever put everything in the shop window, did he?’
Marcus’s 9th Century were among the first men to the point where Licinius had decreed the defensive line would be held, in the company of the first men of the legion cohort out of the trees. Scarface pushed himself into his accustomed place in the front rank, hefting his spear and looking to either side at the legionaries beside him, grinning at their expressions as they watched the barbarians regain their momentum to charge up the slope at them.
‘Nice shields, ladies. Best get ready to use them, the tattoo boys will be here in a moment. Get your spears ready to throw!’
‘Thank you, soldier, I’ll be the one that decides what we’re to do if that’s all right with you?’
Marcus, standing to the line’s rear with his gladius drawn, kept his rebuke level enough and his eyes fixed on the oncoming Venicones. Julius’s 5th Century had taken their place in the line next to his men, as equally mingled with the legion cohort’s men as were his own, and the big centurion was stalking along the line of his men and barking his last instructions over the din of the approaching barbarians.
‘There’s no river to stop them this time, only your shields and your desire not to end up with your head on the point of a blue-nose spear.’ Marcus winced with the involuntary memory of his first glimpse of Rufius’s head held aloft at the battle of Forest Camp as his brother officer raised his voice to bark an order at his men. ‘Both ranks, spears ready!’
All along the straggling Roman line the soldiers that had reached their places gripped their spears more tightly, readying themselves for the next command as the Tungrian and legion centurions waited for the right moment. Julius, gauging that the Venicones were as close as he wanted them without starting the fight, bellowed an order that rang across the battlefield.
‘Front rank, spears… throw!’
Legionaries and auxiliaries alike ran forward the few short paces needed to give them the momentum to throw their weapons, hurling their spears and javelins into the onrushing Venicones and dropping to one knee in order to provide the rear rank with a clear throw.
‘Second rank, throw!’
The rear-rankers threw their spears in flatter arcs, their targets fewer than a dozen paces distant, the auxiliaries’ broad-bladed spears and the legionaries’ arrow-headed javelins dropping hundreds of the enemy warriors to the slope’s turf in screaming, writhing agony. The soldiers quickly reformed their line and braced for the barbarian charge’s impact as the stricken warriors were shrugged aside or trampled underfoot by the warband’s charging mass. Scarface grimaced at the sight of a dying warrior, a spear spitted clean through him, being propelled forward on faltering legs by the mass of men behind him, and set himself a little lower behind his shield as he waited for the warband’s impact. Muttering as much to himself as to the men around him, he raised his gladius until the sword’s point was held level with his shield’s brass boss, ready to strike.
‘Steady, boys, steady. We get this wrong and we’re all fucked…’
The Venicone charge broke on the defenders’ shields with an impact that rocked the Roman line back half a dozen paces, the warband’s wild-eyed warriors hammering at the wall of shields that confronted them with a rabid intensity, a wild desperation born of their realisation that they were trapped inside their enemy’s line. The Romans gave ground grudgingly, forced back one pace at a time by the barbarian onslaught and fighting back from behind their shields with well-timed sword thrusts. Aiming for the barbarians’ vulnerable thighs, guts and throats, their stabbing thrusts ripped open the warriors’ unprotected skin in hot sprays of blood, killing or disabling several of the enemy for every legionary or soldier who fell to a barbarian weapon.
The soldier Scarface, his tunic already wet with blood running down his neck from a shallow spear wound to his chin from the initial barbarian attack, pushed his shield forward as the spearman stepped forward and struck at him again, watching as the weapon’s long blade punched through the board’s layered wood and stuck firm. Wrenching the shield back to pull the weapon from its wielder’s hands and drag the barbarian forward an involuntary pace, he stepped forward to meet the momentarily unbalanced warrior with a snarl of triumph. Stabbing his gladius deep into the other man’s thigh, he twisted the blade savagely to open the blood vessel running beneath the ruined flesh, wrenching it free and punching the stricken spearman back into the mass of men behind him with his shield’s heavy boss.
Behind the battling soldiers, centurions spaced down the length of the line watched hawk eyed for casualties, bawling at the men of the rear rank to pull any casualty who failed to stagger clear of the fight out of the line by his arms and throw him clear, quickly pushing a replacement in. Where the majority fought back in silence, save for their grunts of exertion, a few of the Romans, those close to being unhinged by the horror unfolding around them and those for whom these few precious minutes of combat were the potent elixir of their lives, screamed in desperation and wide-eyed defiance at the barbarian warriors railing at their shields as they fought.
Drust climbed the slope behind his men with a speed born of his sense of urgency, Calgus close behind him as he pushed through the warband to reach the Roman line with his bodyguard gathered close about him. Looking between the heads of his warriors he saw the Roman line holding firm, the determined soldiers fighting hard to hold off his men’s attack, and the evidence before him told its own story. Many more warriors than soldiers lay dead and wounded in the trampled mud between the two lines, and the sour stink of their blood and the contents of their guts was already strong enough to make his gorge rise. Stepping back a few paces, he looked grimly around the men of his bodyguard, nodding slowly at them as the knowledge of what would be required to escape from the Roman trap became clear on their faces. He spoke over the battle’s din, looking each man in the eye in turn as he told them what he needed.
‘Warriors of my household, you above all other men of the tribe are as brothers to me, after all these years together. And now, my brothers, I must ask a difficult thing of you. Unless we break this Roman line, and quickly, our own dead will form a wall over which we must climb to make our escape, making such a thing nigh on impossible. We few must do what another five hundred champions might struggle to achieve, hamstrung by their very numbers. We must throw ourselves into the Romans without regard for our lives, and kill enough men in one place to allow our warriors to exploit the gap we carve in their line, and break it asunder. When their line breaks I will lead the warband through the gap and fall on them from the rear. Victory will be ours, but to break their line will need a mighty sacrifice, my brothers. I will lead you in this, but you must be willing to attack the Romans with desperate speed and raging fury if we are to make this happen. Can you do that for me, my brothers, knowing that many of you will be drinking with your ancestors tonight?’
He looked around his men again, seeing the resolution harden in their faces as they met his gaze, some nodding their assent while others simply stared back with the expressions of men who knew full well that their time had come. Brushing away tears of pride, he opened his arms and beckoned them into a huddle of bodies, smelling the tang of their sweat as he spoke the words he knew would unleash their full fury on their enemy.
‘Brothers you have been to me, but no longer will I call you so. From now you are not brothers to me, but sons! Those of you that fall will be venerated as my children, those of you that live respected as members of my family. We shall be remembered far beyond our lifetimes, my sons, for what we are about to do, for we go to bite out our enemy’s throat, and tear his body to pieces. With me, my sons!’
The huddle broke as the king stepped forward to face the Romans, swinging his hammer in an overhead stroke to bring it sweeping down on the head of a legionary, the heavy iron head smashing the Roman to the ground with his helmet staved in, and while the men to either side goggled at their comrade’s inert body he swung the hammer low, breaking the ankles of one man and upending another with a vicious hook and pull that used the last of the weapon’s momentum. As the line’s rear-rankers stepped in to take their places, peering from behind their shields at the fallen soldiers, his bodyguard surged forward with snarls of defiance, taking their iron to the men to either side of the breach in order to stop any attempt to reinforce the endangered section of the line. Their reckless attacks broke on the obdurate Roman defence in sprays of their own blood, but their sacrifice, as Drust had predicted, gave him a precious moment of time in which the soldiers to either side of the terrified rear-rankers were preoccupied with their own defence, and could give no thought to reinforcing the point of his attack. Turning back to face his warriors, Drust raised his hammer high and bellowed the only command his men would require.
‘Forward, my brothers! Forward to victory!’
Turning back to the Romans, he sprang forward and swung the hammer up and then straight down, punching the pointed end of the weapon’s head down into a soldier’s helmet, breaking through the iron shell and felling its wearer instantly, blood flowing from the fallen man’s ears as he pitched full length atop the turf. The warband surged forward with a roar of triumph, pouncing on the weakened section of the Roman line in a welter of blood and iron, killing half a dozen soldiers and smashing its way through what was left of the defence in an unstoppable stream of men. First Spear Neuto ran from his place behind his cohort’s line towards the break in the defence, shouting a request to his colleague Frontinius as he drew his sword and plunged into the fight.
‘Quickly, send me your rear-rankers!’
Julius and Marcus, the nearest of the 1st Tungrian Cohort’s officers to the break in their sister unit’s line, had already reacted exactly as Neuto had requested, ordering their rear-rank men to leave the fight and follow them towards the slowly but inexorably expanding hole in the Roman defences. They ran head on into the Venicones who had fought their way past the soldiers struggling to contain the breakthrough, dozens of wild-eyed warriors spilling out into the open space behind the line, whose next act, unless they were contained, would be to fall on the rear of the men still struggling to hold back the barbarian wave.
Marcus drew his spatha and pointed it at the warriors, urging his men forward alongside those led by Julius, their few dozen soldiers advancing into the teeth of the barbarian attack, and momentarily shoring up the right-hand side of the line’s breach. Facing fresh opposition where they had thought to find nobody to oppose them, some of the barbarians turned to fight while others pushed up the slope towards the legion cohort waiting under the forest’s edge, seeking to outflank the newcomers. Reinforced by the increasing numbers of men running to re-establish the line’s integrity, even as more warriors pushed and fought their way through the slowly widening gap, forcing the defenders back pace by anguished pace, the 2nd Cohort stood their ground and fought back, despite their precarious position. Stubborn determination, and the knowledge that to break under the pressure being applied to them could result only in their deaths, fuelled their desperate resistance, but the two centurions shared a knowing glance, both realising that the defence was hanging by a thread that must snap at any moment with the Venicones’ simple but irresistible weight of numbers. Marcus looked in puzzlement up the slope to the reinforcements standing in front of the forest before turning to shout a question to Julius above the cacophony of battle.
‘What are they waiting for!?’