Britannia, September, AD 182
The barbarian scouts shivered in the cold pre-dawn air, staring out into the forest’s black emptiness and waiting for the dawn that would release them from their task of watching the silent trees for any sign of a Roman attack. The youngest of them yawned loudly, stretching his arms out in front of him to dispel the stiffness that was afflicting all three of them before whispering to the small group’s leader.
‘There’s nothing out there, nothing for miles. The Romans are camped out on the plain behind a wall of earth, not crawling round the forest like wild pigs. It’s time we were back inside the camp…’
The oldest of the three nodded almost unseen in the darkness, keen to be warming his feet and hands at the fire rather than crouching in the shadow of a fallen tree and waiting in the cold for nothing to happen. He shook his head stubbornly, raising a finger in admonishment to both men.
‘We’ve been trusted to watch this side of the camp, to sound the warning if we hear as much as a badger stirring the leaves, and that’s what we’ll do, until the sun’s over the horizon and eyes are stronger than ears. If either of you don’t like that, you can fuck off back into the camp and discuss it with…’
He started at a sudden sound, thinking for a moment that someone was wielding an axe at the palisade a hundred paces to their rear before he realised that the younger of the two men facing him had been punched sideways to the ground with something protruding from his ear. The stink of blood was suddenly heavy in the air. The older warrior slumped away from the log a split second later with an agonised, bubbling grunt. His eyes rolled upwards as the arrow buried deep in his chest took his life. Their leader ripped the hunting horn from his belt, grabbing a deep breath and putting it to his lips, only to shudder with the bone-crunching impact of an arrow into his own ribs. The horn fell from his nerveless fingers to the fallen leaves with a soft thud, and he stared stupidly for a moment at the short length of its feathered wooden shaft jutting from his chest, feeling his blood spraying from the terrible wound chopped deep into his body by its iron-tipped head. His vision narrowing, he sank slowly to his knees, caught for a moment between life and death as a noiseless figure ghosted across the forest floor towards him.
Without any sound that the dying barbarian could make out, the shadowy figure was abruptly beside him, a tall, lean man dressed in a grey cloak and with a Roman gladius gleaming palely in his right hand, his face painted with stripes of dark mud beneath a cross-crested helmet to match the forest’s dappled moonlit floor. He grabbed at the tottering warrior’s hair to steady him and lifted his sword to strike, angling the blade for the killing thrust. He looked into the dying man’s eyes for a moment, then ran the gladius’s razor-sharp blade through the helpless tribesman’s throat and eased him down to lie glassy eyed in the leaves. Putting a hand inside the tunic beneath his mail armour, he touched a pendant hanging around his neck and muttered a quiet prayer.
‘Unconquered almighty Mithras grant you safe passage to your god.’
He dropped into the fallen tree’s shelter, staring intently at the palisade for any sign that the scouts’ deaths had not gone unnoticed by the warband camped behind its protective wall. His brown eyes were pools of darkness in the night as he stared fiercely into the gloom, his fingers white with their grip on the sword’s hilt. After a long moment of complete silence, other than for the rustle of leaves in the night’s gentle breeze, he turned and whistled softly. A dozen men rose from the cover of the undergrowth fifty paces from the camp’s palisade and crossed the space between the forest edge and the fallen tree with swift caution, weaving noiselessly around the stumps of trees felled to build the camp’s wall. They dropped into the fallen tree’s cover and were instantly still, each one of them aware that any unexpected sound might waken the barbarians sleeping beyond the palisade. Half of the small group were, at first glance, declared enemies of the other half dozen, their shaggy hair and long swords in stark contrast to the soldiers’ close-cropped heads and short infantry blades. After a moment one of the barbarians bent close to the cloaked swordsman, speaking softly into his ear.
‘I told you this was the place, Two Knives. They wouldn’t have put men to watch the forest here without a quick route to safety back through their wall.’
The Roman nodded, whispering his reply.
‘And since Qadir put the watchers down silently, we still have the advantage of surprise.’ Behind the barbarian one of the soldiers, his helmet crested front to back to denote his status as a chosen man and the centurion’s deputy, nodded recognition of his officer’s quiet compliment. He finished slinging his bow across his muscular shoulders, and pulled his gladius from its sheath while the centurion pointed to the wooden wall looming over the stump-studded clearing. ‘And the palisade breach is to the left of the hidden doorway?’
The barbarian nodded confidently.
‘Yes, as we discussed. A twenty pace section of the wall from the hidden opening is ready to fall if the retaining bars are removed. And now, with your permission…?’
He drew a long hunting knife from his belt and reversed its grip so that the silver line of its blade was concealed behind his arm. The Roman officer nodded decisively.
‘Quickly and quietly now, Martos. There’ll be plenty of noise soon enough.’
‘Don’t worry, Centurion Corvus, for the chance to twist my knife in Calgus’s guts I would go silent for the rest of my days.’
The barbarian turned to his men, as the shaggy-haired warriors clustered around him.
‘There were three of them, one young, one old and one about my age. You, and you, you’re the closest we have to them. With me, and quietly. Any man that makes a noise will have me to reckon with.’
The three men slipped away, quickly merging with the looming bulk of the timber palisade that had been thrown up around the barbarian camp.
Calgus, king of the Selgovae people and self-styled ‘Lord of the Northern Tribes’, knew the argument, if it could be deemed worthy of the name, was getting away from him too quickly for there to be any chance of his regaining control of the situation. For a fleeting moment he considered taking his sword to the Venicone chieftain who was so blatantly defying him in his own camp, but the half-dozen hard-faced killers arrayed behind the man, and the heavy war hammer carried over his shoulder, killed the thought before it had time to muster any conviction. He might have been standing inside his own tent, in the middle of thousands of his own people, but these flint-eyed maniacs would tear through his bodyguard and kill him before any of his men were sufficiently awake to react. Drust shook his head vehemently, flicking his hand in a violently dismissive gesture.
‘This war of yours is doomed to fail, Calgus, doomed by your own hand, and the Venicone tribe will not stand alongside you while the invaders grind us all into these hills.’ He flicked the hand again, the gesture inches from Calgus’s face. ‘Our part in this war is done. We will fall back to our own lands, and wait for the Romans to decide whether we’re worth the trouble of pursuit.’
He turned to walk away, and Calgus reached out to take his arm.
‘I had thought the Venicone under King Drust had…’
The Venicone leader spun back at the touch of Calgus’s hand on the sleeve of his rough woollen tunic, his braided red hair whipping about his face with the speed of his reaction. His men froze as he lifted a hand to still their instant response, their eyes burning with the urge to fight, and he leaned in close to his former ally, speaking softly despite his anger.
‘You thought there was more to us, perhaps? You wonder that I can walk away from a war not yet finished? There was a time not long distant when I would have agreed with you. I considered you a comrade, Calgus, a man I could stand alongside in the fight to evict the Romans from our soil, but hear me now when I warn you one last time. The next time you lay a finger on me, I will let these animals behind me loose on your bodyguard just to see who comes off best, and you and I will discover which of us is doomed to die at the other’s hand. You thought me stupid, eh, Calgus? You thought I would never hear the rumours of your betrayal of our Votadini brothers after they had triumphed in battle for you, and that you did this because their king disputed your plans one time too many? Perhaps even simply because you could? My men were a cunt-hair from victory in their fight with the Romans at the ford, with more than a thousand heads for the taking, until Martos of the Votadini, a man deliberately betrayed and left for the Romans to slaughter by you, led his warriors into battle against mine at the crucial moment, and turned our victory into bloody defeat in a hundred heartbeats! Apparently even the Romans know better than you how to treat an ally, and while I’ll have no truck with them, neither will I risk your friendship for an hour longer. You have poisoned our own people against us, you fool, and you will pay for that mistake with your own blood, and that of your tribe!’
Sneering disdainfully, he turned away and ducked through the tent’s doorway, leaving Calgus staring after him. A soft voice spoke from behind him, although there was iron in the words.
‘You must stop him, my lord. If he takes his men north we will not have enough strength to defend this place against two legions should the Romans attack.’
Calgus spun back to face the speaker, glaring with frustration into his seamed face before nodding at the old man resignedly. His adviser was a man of unerring instincts, even if some of his advice had resulted in more difficulty than had at first seemed apparent.
‘And what do you propose, Aed? That I should beg our comrade to stay? I’ll not make a fool of myself to no purpose.’
The old man smiled gently, spreading his hands out.
‘No, my lord, I fully agree. Your authority must be maintained at all costs. I was simply about to suggest that you might have something to offer Drust in return for his continued support.’
Calgus frowned.
‘What can I possibly offer the Venicone that would persuade them to stay and fight?’
‘Something, my lord, which, since you have possessed it for less than a month, you will never truly miss. Something which you can always take back later, once the Brigantes south of the Wall are freed from under the Roman boot and swell your army to an irresistible size.’
Calgus nodded slowly as the realisation of Aed’s meaning took effect.
‘Yes…’
He hurried from the tent in the wake of the Venicone chieftain.
There was a long moment of silence before one of Martos’s men reappeared from the gloom, gesturing the remainder of the raiding party forward. Marcus led his men across the ground between the fallen tree and the wooden wall in a crouching run, finding the gap in the palisade just as Martos had described it to the legions’ senior officers the previous day. The two ends of the wooden wall were overlapped, making the thin gap between them almost invisible.
‘Give me ten front-rankers and I could defend that little gap against a fucking legion…’
Marcus looked over his shoulder to find one of his men standing close behind him; the stark white line that marked his face from the point of his right eyebrow to his jawbone was still visible beneath the mud daubed across his features. While the soldier was hardly one of his more stealthy men, he had point blank refused to allow his centurion to accompany Martos’s warriors to the enemy walls without his being one of the soldiers alongside him. Marcus pulled off his helmet, handing it to the other man.
‘Here, Scarface, make yourself useful and take this. I’m going in to find Martos. Get your ropes in place, and be ready to guide the cohort in if I sound the call.’
The soldier shook his head with resigned disgust.
‘If you’re going into that nest of blue-noses with them…’ He tipped his helmeted head to indicate the Votadini tribesman. ‘… then you’d best be looking like one of them.’
He fished a small bundle out from beneath his mail, handing it to Marcus, who opened it to find a mass of hair spilling out into his hands. He stared down at the object with fascinated disgust.
‘This is…’
‘It’s clean, I washed the skin in the river only a few days ago. Put it on.’
Marcus’s skin crawled as he pulled another man’s scalp over his head, allowing the long black hair to settle over his shoulders. Scarface squinted at him in the darkness.
‘Your own mother wouldn’t recognise you. Try to bring it back, there’s a soldier in the Sixth Century offered me ten denarii for it.’
Squeezing between the gap in the palisade with his gladius drawn, Marcus found the barbarians busy dragging the last of the guards into the four-foot-deep ditch that ran around the camp behind the palisade. Martos turned to him with a grin, shaking his head at the sight of a Roman officer with another man’s hair draped across his head.
‘It suits you. Perhaps you should have been born north of the frontier.’
Marcus slid his gladius back into its scabbard and covered the sword’s gold-and-silver eagle’s-head pommel with his cloak.
‘The palisade is as you expected?’
The barbarian nodded.
‘Yes. I told you there were pre-prepared exits on all four sides of the camp, and I remembered the location of this one perfectly. Twenty paces of the wall with the logs chopped almost clean away at their bases, the whole section braced into one solid section and then locked in place with wooden beams to stop it falling over if some idiot leans against it. We’ve taken down the bracing beams that hold the whole thing to the wall on either side, so all your men have to do is give their ropes a solid pull and the whole section will fall and make a nice handy ramp into the camp. And now, if you’re ready, for Calgus.’
Marcus nodded, looking about him at the sleeping barbarian camp. In the pre-dawn gloom the tribe’s tents receded into the darkness, the occasional fire kept burning to provide a quick source of flame.
‘There will be men awake, even at this time.’
Martos nodded.
‘Yes, it’s certain. They know that the legions are camped on the plain close by, and that they may attack at any time, perhaps even today. Some men will sleep like dogs; others will lie awake for fear of the morning. But we will walk with confidence to Calgus’s tent, and the men that are awake will see what they expect to see, their own people going about their leader’s orders. Come.’
The half-dozen barbarians gathered around the Roman officer, following Martos’s lead as he strode confidently into the heart of the slumbering enemy camp. They walked for a minute or so, angling to the left and climbing the slope away from the safety of the palisade, until Martos raised a hand to halt them. He looked around him and then ducked into the cover of a large tent, gathering his men to him with a gesture and whispering so quietly as to be almost inaudible.
‘This is Calgus’s tent. There will be guards at the entrance, so once we’re inside I want silence until we have everyone inside either dead or gagged. And Calgus is mine.’
He looked around the group to ensure that he was perfectly understood, then dug the point of his knife’s blade into the tent’s side and drew it swiftly downwards, opening a long slit in the rough canvas wall. Marcus stepped in through the hole first with his gladius drawn, finding the tent’s spacious interior dimly lit by a pair of oil lamps. The sole occupant, a stooped figure, stood with his back to him, and he bounded forward with two quick paces to wrap his arm around the man’s mouth and jaw, muffling any cry for help with the fabric of his cloak and the armour that clad his sleeve beneath the rough wool.
‘Guard the door, and keep that slit held tight.’
The two warriors moved quickly at Martos’s whispered command, temporarily securing the tent against chance discovery, and their chieftain stalked around the captive until he came into the old man’s field of view. Marcus felt him shrink away from the Votadini prince’s harsh stare, and tightened his grip against any attempt to raise the alarm, but felt only capitulation in the way the old man held tightly against him pressed back in a futile effort to escape the nightmare unfolding in front of him. Martos lifted his knife to the old man’s face, tapping a sunken cheek with the point.
‘Aed. Not what I’d hoped for, but a fair start. I came seeking your master, but instead I have the sour, shrunken old fuck that drips his poison into Calgus’s mind. Doubtless it was your idea that my warband be abandoned in the path of the Roman cavalry after the fight for White Strength, led into their path to be chopped to pieces, in revenge for the massacre of their cohort. And why? To get me out of the way, so that Calgus would be free to murder my uncle and take control of our kingdom.’ He put the knife’s point under the old man’s chin, digging the sharp iron up into the sagging flesh until a thin runnel of blood ran down Aed’s neck and into the folds of his robe. ‘And now, thanks to you, I am a prince without his people. My family are either dead, or suffering so badly that I could wish them dead. So let’s not bother with any of the usual denials, because if you don’t answer me quick and straight I’ll slice you open and pull your guts out for you to carry around for a while. Calgus. Where is he?’
Drust laughed in Calgus’s face for a second time, his eyes bright with amusement.
‘You offer me the Votadini’s land, Calgus? You might as well offer me the moon, for all the cost to you, and for all the chance that I might be able to keep the ground you offer, even if I were minded to accept. If I wanted the Votadini’s land I would have taken it long since, you fool.’ He turned back to his men, pointing to the northern face of the camp’s protective palisade. ‘We need to be away from here before full dawn. You, take a message up the hill. The fence is to be opened, and our people ready to run north.’ Turning back to face Calgus, he put both hands on his hips.
‘The Votadini are nothing more than the Romans’ lapdogs, Calgus. Their royal women drip with jewellery made in the south, and their men wear swords with keener edges than would be the case if they were locally forged. If we occupy the Dinpaladyr we’ll have less than a month before a legion marches up, batters down the ‘fortress of the spears’ walls with their catapults and puts us all to the sword. The Romans like their trade with the Votadini, and through them with the rest of you fools, and they won’t be abandoning that easy money without a fight. So no, Calgus, you took the Votadini’s land and now you can defend it, or else run and hide when they kick down your gate and come looking for their revenge on you. I can run now, away to the safety of my own land behind their old north wall, and they will leave me well alone if they know what’s good for them. They might even pay me tribute to keep me behind my walls and out of the fight. But you, Calgus, you have ruined their forts and slaughtered their soldiers. You could run to the ends of the world and they would still never stop hunting you. So if I were you I’d…’
His eyes suddenly narrowed at the sound of shouting from over Calgus’s shoulder. Another voice joined the first, and a sudden scream of agony rent the air. Drust turned and roared at the men gathered about him.
‘Get that fucking fence open! It’s time to leave!’
The first Selgovae warrior through the tent door died silently, his throat torn open by a hunting knife wielded by the Votadini he’d knocked aside in his haste to enter the tent. He staggered three paces into the tent’s half-light, with his lifeblood pumping down his chest and his bowels noisily emptying into his rough woollen trousers before he pitched full length to the pale turf.
‘Lord Calgus! There are Romans in the…’
The second man was still only halfway through the flap doof shouting wildly that the alarm was raised, when the first warrior’s killer backhanded the short blade into his belly and ripped it out through his side, spilling the slippery rope of his guts and wrenching a grunted scream of pain from his contorted mouth as he fell to his knees. Martos shrugged into the old man’s white face.
‘Time to leave. Release him, Marcus.’
Aed barely had time to register the sudden cool air on his face as the Roman stepped back, lifting his arm away and pushing him on to Martos’s knife before a sudden burning pain ripped into his body. Looking down in horror, he saw the weapon’s blade protruding from his belly in Martos’s expert hand, staggering in sudden shock as the Votadini prince pulled the weapon down into his lower abdomen before twisting it savagely and pulling it free, wiping the bloody iron on his robe. A rush of warm blood gushed from the wound, filling the air with its metallic stink, underlaid by the smell of excrement, and the old man dropped to his knees and bent double with the excruciating agony of his wound.
‘Die hard, Aed. Hard, and slowly.’
He gestured to the hole in the tent’s rear, stooping to pick up a small wooden box that rested at the foot of Calgus’s bedroll and lifting the lid to peer inside, then angled the casket to show Marcus the contents.
‘I should have known. Nothing but paper. I suppose Calgus’s private letters might be of some value, if only to give your tribune something to read once the fighting’s over…’
He tossed the chest to one of his men, and the small group stepped out into the dawn’s pale light through the rent in the tent’s back wall, Marcus quickly taking stock of their situation in the sure knowledge that if the presence of a Roman officer in the enemy’s camp became known they would be beset from all sides in seconds. All about them warriors were crawling from their tents and reaching for their weapons, not yet aware of the interlopers in their midst, but only seconds from making that discovery.
‘There’s no time for slow and quiet now! Follow me!’
He drew his gladius and set off at a dead run down the path between the tents, sprinting towards the palisade where his men were waiting, Martos and his warriors close on his heels. The crude wig that had masked the Roman’s features fell away and revealed his short cropped black hair, and a tribesman blinking away sleep in his path gaped in amazement, throwing his head back to shout a warning as Marcus’s gladius ripped open his throat before one of Martos’s warriors shoulder-charged him into the side of another tent without breaking stride. A chorus of shouts was following them now, alerting the men in front of them even if the cause of the uproar was still unclear. Bleary-eyed tribesmen turned to crane their necks, instinctively reaching for weapons as they sought the source of the commotion.
Martos drew level with the centurion, straining every sinew in his magnificent physique as he pounded along beside the man who had been his enemy only days before. A straggling group of Selgovae warriors was gathering across their path, hefting their weapons in readiness for a fight as the intruders charged towards them.
Marcus tossed the gladius into his left hand and drew his spatha on the run, flashing the long blade out and bellowing a rising scream of defiance as he ploughed into their midst, flicking aside a spear-thrust with the long cavalry sword and ducking under a swinging blade before upending the sword’s owner with his leg hacked off at the knee, spinning away to his left in a double flicker of razor-edged iron. Martos matched the ferocity of his attack, hacking his way into the Selgovae with a fury that scattered the warriors, his men crowding in around him to protect their prince at any cost. A tribesman hacked down two handed at Marcus with a heavy sword, the blade sliding down his angled spatha as Marcus pivoted around his right arm, reversing his left-handed grip on the gladius’s eagle-head pommel and backhanding the short blade through the swordsman’s ribs before spinning again, tearing the blade free and cutting low, felling another warrior, both his hamstrings severed by the spatha’s harsh bite. Two more warriors ran in to the fight, and Marcus turned to confront them, starting as a spear hissed past his head and punched the closer of the pair back with his eyes rolling back to show only the whites. The other man swung his sword up to attack, only to stagger as an arrow flicked through the throng of Votadini and embedded itself in his throat. A strong grip on the neck of his mail armour pulled the young centurion away from the fight, the four surviving barbarians and Marcus’s own men forming a thin line against the gathering mass of enraged Selgovae warriors. Qadir and his two fellow Hamians were nocking and loosing arrows with a speed and accuracy that were, for the moment, felling as many tribesmen as were joining the uncertain warriors facing off the outnumbered Romans. Scarface grinned apologetically as his officer spun to face him, backing off a step at the look on Marcus’s face.
‘No time for that, Centurion, the fence is coming down…’
With a creaking, screaming tear of rending wood, the twenty-foot-wide section of the palisade that Martos had identified to him on their way in fell away from the rest of the wall. As the dust of its falling settled, Marcus saw the men who had dragged it down drop their ropes and take up their weapons, forming an unbroken line of shields in seconds. A lean centurion limped out in front of them, pointing with his sword and bellowing an order in a voice that carried far across the barbarian camp.
‘Tungrians, advance! ’
Calgus stared across the camp with mounting consternation, hearing the bray of trumpets that he knew must presage an attack by the legions. With a sudden flicker of fire in the purple dawn sky, half a dozen blazing fire pots arced high over the camp’s southern wall, landing in gouts of flame as they shattered to release their burning liquid contents and set instant flame to both men and tents. Behind him Drust smiled knowingly, unsurprised at this turn in events.
‘The Romans are inside your walls, Calgus. Your game is finished.’
He nodded to the largest of his bodyguards, tapping the back of his head. The man took two steps forward before punching Calgus behind the ear with as much force as he could muster, his massive fist hammering the unwitting tribal leader to the ground twitching and barely conscious.
‘Nicely done, Maon, now tie his arms and legs, and gag him. He may prove a useful bargaining counter to have behind our walls should the Romans come knocking.’ He turned away from the scene of chaos. ‘Let’s be away now, before the legions close the gap in the northern fence and pin us against their shields.’
The warriors around him turned at his command and climbed the gentle slope towards the camp’s northern fence, its line of tree trunks now marred by a gap to match that ripped open by the Romans down the slope to the east. Drust looked about him and found the scurrying figure of his body servant, running for the king’s tent, clearly intent on salvaging the most precious of his master’s possessions. He smiled quietly to himself at the man’s evident urgency.
‘Very wise, little man. I’d have the skin off your balls were it any other way.’
He turned away, confident that his servant would be out of the camp with the warband’s rearguard, and ran for the gap in the palisade, intent on making sure that no attempt to close the gap in the fence could be made before his men were all through it and into the safety of the forest. Behind him in the king’s tent, and unseen by the hundreds of men streaming past up the camp’s slope, the slave dropped to his knees and started to frantically cram his master’s most treasured possessions into a goat-skin bag. He was reaching for the most important item of all when a ballista bolt, fired blindly over the camp’s palisade by the legion artillery supporting the attack, punched through the tent’s canvas wall and spent its lethal power in his body, spearing through his heart and covering the far wall with a spray of crimson arterial blood. His eyesight dimming, the dying servant reached out a hand to grasp the shining gold ring, then froze into immobility, his last conscious memory the agonising iron cold of the missile which had transfixed him.
Marcus and his men stepped clear of the Tungrian advance, and the cohort’s leading century strode past them and into the enemy’s stronghold, soldiers running hard for both ends of the century’s line to lengthen the shield wall against a barbarian counter-attack as quickly as possible. The cohort’s 2nd Century followed them in and veered to the left, their centurion shooting Marcus a quick grin as he ran past bellowing orders at his men, the 3rd Century breaking to their right. As the cohort’s line grew in strength their spears flickered out to kill those tribesmen who had failed to retreat in the face of their remorseless advance. More centuries poured through the palisade breach and fanned out on both sides to further strengthen their foothold in the enemy camp, and Marcus saluted the cohort’s first spear, clasping hands with him as the other man jumped from the palisade’s wooden slope to the ground.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so pleased to see your face, sir!’
His superior officer smiled grimly, motioning for them to step aside as another century stamped up the fallen palisade’s wooden ramp and hurried off into the fight. Marcus’s friend and brother officer Rufius winked at him as he pointed up the slope with his vine stick, shouting the command for the 6th Century to form line in a bellow made hoarse by the twenty-five years of legion service he had completed before joining the Tungrians. First Spear Frontinius’s chin jutted between the cheek pieces of his helmet as he stared out into the barbarian camp, watching as the sea of barbarian tents took fire from the flame pots being hurled over the palisade by the legions’ artillery, the blaze’s flickering light illuminating the enemy warriors as they crowded forward to join battle with their attackers.
‘A job well done, Centurion Corvus! Now we finish these blue-faced bastards once and for good. Your boys will be along in a moment. Take them to the left, push up the hill and link up with the left flank of the century that went up in front of you. In the meanwhile our axemen will make this gap in the fence big enough that even the Sixth Legion’s road menders will feel safe to join us. Ah, here’s your century now…’
He pointed back into the empty space between forest and palisade, and Marcus followed his outstretched arm to find his 9th Century marching into view, their one-eyed watch officer striding alongside them with Qadir’s brass-knobbed chosen man’s pole in his hand while Morban, Marcus’s veteran standard-bearer, was at their head. Marcus saluted the first spear, then trotted out to meet his men, returning the watch officer’s salute and barking his orders to the men around him as Qadir retrieved his pole and dropped back to his usual place at the century’s rear.
‘Well done, Cyclops! To your places, gentlemen, we’re turning left and advancing up the inner wall until we make contact with the century to our right, then we take our place to their left and keep advancing alongside them!’
He trotted over to the head of the century, returning the standard-bearer’s salute and shouting over the crash of hobnails and the jingle of equipment as they mounted the fallen palisade’s wooden ramp.
‘Morban, take them left! Up the hill!’
The standard-bearer shot him a quick nod, then bellowed over his shoulder at the lanky trumpeter marching behind him.
‘Blow!’
The trumpet’s harsh note snapped the century’s heads up, and Morban canted the standard to the left. Marcus stepped out in front of the marching century, turning to face the troops and raising his gladius high and pointing to their left.
‘Follow me! ’
He jumped down from the wooden ramp, watching the marching soldiers as Morban led them over the one-foot drop and up the slope to their left. Satisfied that they had made the turn successfully, he turned, gulped a lungful of air and ran hard up the slope, past the leading ranks of the century’s column and on up the hill. He ignored the fact that Cyclops had broken ranks to run alongside him as he searched through the billowing smoke for the century that had preceded them, knowing that nothing he could say would reduce the man’s protective instincts towards his officer. Toiling through the reek drifting slowly across the chaotic battlefield, he suddenly ran into clear air and stopped, aghast at the scene unfolding in front of him. The century that had advanced up the hill only moments before him was being overrun by hundreds of barbarian warriors, the soldiers fighting a desperate but doomed defensive action as their enraged enemy hammered against their faltering shield wall, one man after another going down into the trampled mud to be finished off with swords and spears by the rampaging horde. As he watched, the other century’s centurion, anonymous in the drifting smoke, stepped into the front line with a bellow of defiance and started fighting for his century’s survival. Without his even being aware of it, a growl of anger rippled in his throat as he watched his brother officer fighting for his life, and he put a hand on the hilt of his spatha.
‘No!’
Marcus turned, to find his watch officer’s one good eye fierce with determination.
‘No use in your throwing yourself away. Take the lads in there and pull those poor bastards out of the fire, those that’s left.’
He nodded slowly, turning away from the scene of his comrades’ massacre. When he spoke, his voice was harsh with fresh purpose.
‘Get back to your men, Cyclops.’
He ran back down the slope through the smoke, his mind working quickly, almost falling over Morban in the murk.
‘Twenty paces more and then put them into line to the right, facing up the hill. No horns!’
The standard-bearer nodded at him and stamped away up the hill, while Marcus pulled a soldier out of the marching ranks and barked a command in the man’s ear.
‘Run back down the hill to the first spear. Tell him there’s a century being torn to pieces up here and we need urgent reinforcement now! Go!’
He pushed the soldier hard, sending him away down the slope, then turned back to the marching column. Morban, barely visible through the smoke, had the standard held horizontally over his head with its metal hand pointing to his right.
‘Scarface! Make sure they make the turn!’
The veteran soldier snapped a salute and ran to march at Morban’s shoulder, ready to stand firm once the standard-bearer made the right-angled turn to put the 9th in line facing the enemy, rather than risk encountering them in the vulnerable column of march. The line abruptly turned right, the soldiers following their standard without much of a clue as to what was happening. And just as well, Marcus mused, given what they would be facing in less than a minute. He stepped in alongside his deputy, pointing past the marching soldiers and up the smoke-wreathed slope.
‘Qadir, there are hundreds of barbarians less than a hundred paces that way, and they’ve already torn up one century. When we march out of this damned smoke they’ll throw themselves on to us like dogs on raw meat, so give me your pole and get your bow ready, you and your mates. Anyone that looks like they might be important, anyone with a lot of gold or that’s shouting the odds a bit too loudly, put them down.’
The big Hamian handed over his six-foot brass-knobbed pole, unslinging the bow from across his shoulders and barking a command in Aramaic to the dozen or so other Hamians marching in the 9th Century’s ranks. Marcus shot a glance back down the century’s line, waiting a few seconds to allow the last of the marching soldiers to make the turn, then drew breath to bellow his orders.
‘Ninth Century, halt!’
The column stamped to a halt, troops coughing and spluttering as they breathed in the thickening smoke from the rapidly spreading fires.
‘To the left… face! Form lines of battle!’
He waited while the soldiers straightened their lines, the front-rankers raising their shields and hefting their spears, the rear-rankers crowding close to the men in front of them, ready to grip their belts and hold them steady once the fighting started.
‘Ninth Century…’
Marcus’s voice rang out over the short double line, the din of battle from their right muffled by the smoke and the distant roar of blazing canvas.
‘When we march forward, we will soon come upon the remains of one of our sister centuries. They were surprised in the line of march, and never stood any chance of resisting the barbarians. You, however, are ready to fight, armed and armoured, drilled and trained to perfection. Any one of you is worth a dozen of those blue-nosed bastards. So we will go forward, we will find the men that killed our brothers and we will kill as many of them as possible before our reinforcement arrives. At the walk, advance!’
The century started forward as one man, and while Marcus had Qadir’s pole ready to push between the shoulders of any man hanging back, he quickly realised that he wasn’t going to need it. Ten, twenty paces they advanced, without any sign of an end to the dirty grey smoke what was making eyes water and lungs strain for breath, and then, in the blink of an eye, they were back out in the crisp dawn air with the scene of the other century’s massacre laid out before them.
The slope was littered with corpses clad in the same equipment his men were wearing, their mail armour a dull iron grey against the barbarian camp’s trampled mud. A few of the fallen soldiers were still moving, their wounds severe enough to leave them helpless but not enough to have killed them immediately. Half a dozen barbarians were moving among them, their swords black with the blood they had spilled, and, as Marcus watched, the nearest of them raised his blade in readiness to dispatch another of the wounded. Qadir snapped his bow up, and, with a sonorous note from the bowstring, put an arrow into his neck, dropping him choking and kicking to the ground beside his intended victim.
A couple of the barbarians closest to the dying warrior looked up at the sudden commotion, gaping in surprise at the 9th Century’s unexpected appearance from out of the smoke even as the other Hamians shot them down with a swift precision that rivalled Qadir’s. Forcing himself to ignore the dead and dying Tungrians scattered across the ground before him, Marcus pushed through the century’s battle line and looked around him for some sign of the barbarians who had massacred his fellow soldiers only minutes before. The smoke eddied with the gentle morning breeze again, affording him a momentary glimpse of the fight taking place down the slope to their right. The Tungrian line was now fully embattled, struggling to hold back easily three times their own strength of enemy warriors who were throwing themselves at the shield wall with the desperate fury of men who knew that if they failed to break through the soldiers they were as good as dead. Before the curtain of smoke closed again he realised, with a sickening jolt, exactly what it was that the barbarians had impaled on their spearheads and were waving up and down in front of the Tungrian soldiers. He turned back to his men with his eyes blazing and the muscles around his jaw rippling as he fought to hold his temper.
‘Ninth Century, right wheel!’
He held his breath for a long moment while the century swung ponderously through their quarter-turn to face down the slope. The Hamians were all at sea with the manoeuvre, still new to the disciplines of infantry fighting after choosing to join the century less than a week before, but the men around each of them gently pulled and pushed them through the line’s reorientation, with more than one kind word or pat on the shoulder for men who had been derided as nothing more than a burden on the cohort only days before. Marcus smiled to himself despite his anger, acknowledging their justified change of status. The battle at the Red River’s ford had seen to that in one desperate, bloody afternoon of seemingly doomed resistance to the Venicone tribe’s assault.
Within a minute the line was aligned with the direction in which a swelling roar of battle was reaching them through the smoke, the soldiers looking anxiously down their ranks at him as he pulled both swords from their places on his belt, his face grim with purpose. Morban, now no longer the pivot for their swing to the right, scuttled down the line’s rear to his place immediately behind their attack, the trumpeter running behind him. Marcus raised his voice again, steeling himself for the attack.
‘Ninth Century, your enemy are down there, hidden in the smoke.’ A few of the soldiers, he realised, were translating his words for those men around them with insufficient Latin to keep up with his angry words. ‘When I give the command we will march down this slope until we have them in sight. They will be close, Ninth Century, close enough for you to smell the shit that will stream down their legs when they see us come out of nowhere at their backs.’ A few men laughed, the delight of imminent combat evident in their wide eyes and flared nostrils. The rest of them were for the most part stone faced, working hard to hold their nerve with battle only seconds away. Marcus nodded to the trumpeter, who blew the advance strong and clear.
‘Ninth Century, advance!’
As the two lines of soldiers stepped off down the hill, Scarface thrust one of his spears at the man behind him.
‘You, pass this forward to me when I’ve put the first one through some fucker’s back, and make sure you’re ready with it as soon as I’ve thrown this one, or there’ll be a short and very interesting discussion once we’ve sorted these long-haired cunts out.’ The men around him smiled despite themselves, as amused as they always were by his blend of bombast and single-minded purpose. Without taking his eyes off the ground in front of him, the veteran soldier hawked noisily and spat into the grass. ‘The rest of you, stop your grinning and get your fucking spears ready to throw!’
Thirty paces down the slope, the century got their first glimpse of the enemy through a momentary gap in the smoke. The mass of tribesmen were pressing harder on the Tungrian line than before, clearly wearing the embattled soldiers down by the sheer weight of their numbers, and the cohort’s grip on its foothold inside the barbarian camp had visibly reduced in size since Marcus’s last quick look. Another ten paces saw the century within a spear’s-throw of the raging tribesmen, and yet still undetected. Marcus lifted his sword and then dropped the blade. Whatever the trumpeter might have been feeling, his lungs seemed unaffected, a loud note from his horn pealing out over the battlefield and snatching the attention of the enemy warriors. The 9th Century’s front rank roared their defiance, shaking their spears at the surprised barbarians, and Marcus raised his sword again.
‘Spears…’
The men in the front rank leaned backwards, their left arms reaching forward for balance as they pulled their spears back until the iron heads were level with their helmets. Scarface turned his face and kissed the cold iron, feeling the blade’s ragged edge on his lower lip, then locked his gaze on a warrior twenty paces distant in the barbarian warband’s rear.
‘Throw!’
The front rank took a collective two steps forward, exhaling noisily as they hurled their weapons into the enemy warriors.
‘Spears… throw!’
Reaching back to take their second spears from the men behind them, the soldiers hurled themselves forward again, and launched a second volley into the barbarian rear. Dozens of the enemy were now out of the fight, some toppled to the ground, others on their knees or held upright by the crush of their numbers.
‘Form line!’
The century was back in line within seconds, staring down at their enemy as a wave of confusion spread through the barbarians.
‘Swords!’
The front rank unsheathed their short swords, a sudden pale gleam in the dawn light. Marcus pointed his sword at the enemy warriors, raising his voice to a roar.
‘Attack!’
Scarface pointed his sword at the barbarian he’d decided to kill first, screaming his challenge.
‘Come on, you fuckers!’
He bounded down the hill, the men to either side of him howling their own battle cries as they made their own charges, punching his shield into the barbarian’s face and stabbing his gladius into his guts before the other man had the chance to recover from the blow. Driven by their recent experience of battle with the tribes, and knowing what would inevitably come next, the front rank pulled their shields together to form a defensive wall, while the rear-rankers stepped in close and caught hold of their belts, steadying them against the assault to come. With a roar of anger the barbarian warband slammed back against their defence, hammering at their shields and helmeted heads with swords and spears as they recovered from their shock and threw themselves at the new threat.
Tribune Licinius spurred his horse forward up the line of the 20th Legion’s column to meet the scout riders racing towards him from the barbarian camp’s northern face. His cavalry wing was strung out over the hundreds of paces behind him, still making their way through the forest that surrounded the camp, along a tortuous hunter’s path that had been scouted as an approach route in the days that had followed the near-disaster at the Red River. Sending half a legion down the path first had been a necessary measure, given the need for the heavy infantry to break into the camp and defeat the warband before the cavalry could follow up and chase down any survivors, but their lack of urgency in the approach march had tested his patience beyond its limits. The lead rider reined in his sweating horse alongside the tribune’s magnificent grey, his voice urgent as he saluted his superior and launched into a description of what was happening at the head of the column.
‘The northern palisade has been breached from the inside, Tribune, and there’s a warband running north in tribal strength. We saw their rearguard heading off into the forest, at least a thousand men strong, and they looked like Venicones.’
Licinius nodded, thinking quickly.
‘Those tattooed buggers must have decided to quit Calgus’s war even before the attack on the camp became evident to them. What about the legion?’
The decurion shook his head dismissively.
‘Too slow and too late, I’d say, Tribune. The leading cohorts are just wasting time forming up on the open ground between forest and palisade, with no sign that they intend getting stuck in any time soon.’
Licinius’s temper boiled over.
‘With me!’
He spurred the grey down the line of troops followed by his bodyguard, seeking out the group of men that represented the point of the 20th Legion’s spear.
‘Tribune Laenas, might I ask exactly what the fuck you think you’re doing?’
The legion’s second-in-command, a tribune whose tunic bore the broad purple stripe of the Roman senatorial class, and a man unused to having his judgement questioned, turned away from a frustrated-looking group of the cohorts’ senior centurions with a look of incredulity, opening his mouth to snarl a response that died in his throat when he saw who was doing the questioning.
‘Ah, Tribune Licinius, we’re, ah just making sure that we’ve got everything in place before…’
Licinius rode over his half-hearted explanation with a patrician disregard for manners, leaning in close and speaking in quiet but fierce tones.
‘What it looks like, Tribune Laenas, is that you’re dithering in the face of a fight. These gentlemen around you know that the time to strike was while the barbarians were still escaping into the forest. Since even my old ears can clearly make out the sound of battle from inside that palisade, I suggest that you get your cohorts through the gap those blue-nosed blighters have torn in the fence and get them into action. If, that is, you don’t want to be dismissed and censured for lack of commitment by the governor. And let me make this very clear; if your soldiers aren’t out of my way very quickly I will simply ride my cavalry through and if need be over them. There’s a Venicone warband making their escape while we sit here wasting time, and I intend making sure that as few as possible of them get away, if you’ll get your men out of my path.’
He sat back in his saddle with one eyebrow raised. Laenas swallowed unhappily, then turned back to face his officers.
‘Ah, gentlemen, we will advance into the enemy camp and join battle immediately.’
The legion’s most senior centurion nodded briskly, his smile speaking volumes for his pleasure at the cavalryman’s intervention.
‘At the double march, Tribune?’
Laenas swallowed and nodded.
‘Indeed. At the double march, First Spear Canutius.’
‘It’s a good thing we’ve got the advantage of the slope!’
Qadir nodded in response to Marcus’s shouted comment. The century were starting to tire, the front rank becoming more interested in keeping their feet and fending off the barbarian spears than taking their iron to the enemy, who in their turn had burned through their first rage and were attacking with less vigour than moments before. A horn sounded across the smoke-wreathed camp from the northern palisade, and the front rank of a legion cohort swept into view through a gap in the camp’s northern fence. Marcus shot the oncoming legionnaires a dark glance.
‘About bloody time too.’
Qadir shook his shoulder, pointing across the Tungrian line.
‘Look!’
Fresh troops were pouring into the space behind the Tungrian cohort, moving quickly to bolster their sagging line.
‘It’s the Second Cohort. First Spear Neuto was never going to leave us in the sh-’
Marcus stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes suddenly caught by an object being waved around over the heads of the barbarians a dozen paces from the century’s line. Qadir caught his stare and looked to see what had taken his attention. It was a man’s head, still wearing the cross-crested helmet that denoted his centurion’s rank, evidently hacked from his body and impaled on the point of a spear as a crude trophy with which the Romans could be taunted. As Qadir watched, Marcus’s face went white with anger, and his eyes narrowed in calculation. He turned to the Hamian, reaching down and picking up a fallen shield, his voice stony as he turned to face the howling mob railing at the century’s shields.
‘Shoot to my right, and keep shooting.’
Guessing what was about to happen, Qadir reached out a hand to restrain his friend, but Marcus was too quick for him, pushing through the astonished rear-rankers and stepping into the front rank alongside Scarface. Stopping a sword-blow with his shield, he stepped forward and stabbed his gladius into the tribesman’s throat as the enemy warrior fought to free his blade from the painted wooden surface, turning back to stare with a blank-eyed intensity at the wide-eyed soldiers.
‘Guard my left.’
He turned back and stepped into the seething mass of warriors, hacking down a man to his right and blocking another sword-blow from his left with the shield, shouting a terse order over his shoulder.
‘Qadir! Shoot to my right!’
The Hamian shook himself free from the amazement of seeing his centurion actually throw himself into the mass of his enemies and bellowed a command in his own language.
‘Hamians, to me!’
Nocking an arrow and loosing it with one fluid motion, he sent the iron-tipped head through the throat of a warrior poised to bury his axe into Marcus’s helmet. Ramming his gladius deep into another barbarian’s chest and feeling the blade’s reluctance to come free of the wound’s tight grip, the young centurion released the weapon’s ornate handle without a second thought, kicking the dying warrior back into the men behind him. Grabbing the axe from the tribesman tottering backwards with Qadir’s arrow buried in his throat, he levelled his shield and hurled it horizontally into the press of the enemy, flattening another of the men facing him with a ruptured throat, then raised the axe two handed and gathered himself to attack again. Another Hamian reached Qadir’s side at the same second, ripping his bow from its place across his back and reaching for an arrow with the same unconscious grace with which the chosen man exercised his craft. With only a split second’s time spent finding a point of aim, he sent the missile into the fray around his centurion with an almost thoughtless speed that nevertheless sent another of the men facing Marcus staggering back into the men behind him in a spray of his own blood. At the same instant Scarface shook off his own momentary panic, hurling a furious command at the front-rankers to his left as he waded forward into the barbarians.
‘With me, you bastards!’
Slamming down his shield to block off a spear-thrust aimed at his legs, he thrust his sword’s blade into the barbarian’s throat and twisted the hilt, opening the warrior’s neck wide in a shower of hot blood that flicked across the half-dozen men who had advanced into the barbarian mass alongside him. Glancing up, he was momentarily open mouthed at the sight of his officer hurling his shield into the warband’s mass and grasping an axe two handed before throwing himself at the warriors gathering around him with an incoherent scream, clearly lost to his rage. The speed and savagery of his onslaught cleared a path into the heart of the warband as warriors fell away from him with their bodies rent by the weapon’s heavy blade, those as yet untouched by the unexpected attack backing away from the berserk Roman. Qadir and his fellow archers were ten strong now, and their arrows were killing the warriors to Marcus’s right faster than they could be replaced by the men behind them, the barbarians’ eyes flickering from their unhinged enemy, his armour dripping with the blood of the dying men scattered around him, to the archers dealing out impersonal death to them from behind the Roman line.
Scarface and his fellow soldiers now formed the other side of their centurion’s tenuous link to his century, their shields forming a diagonal wall from the century’s line to Scarface at its farthest extension. A man fell forward into the seething mass of barbarians facing them, his throat skewered by a barbed spear thrust over the rim of his shield and then pulled back to haul him bodily out of the shield wall, and Qadir pushed a rear-ranker forward to take his place before lifting his bow to shoot again. The soldiers were holding out well enough, stabbing into the mass of their enemies and parrying the inevitable counter-attacks in a way that the veteran soldier knew could only last so long before they succumbed to the overwhelming strength gathering against them. He dragged in a deep breath, meaning to entreat Marcus to retreat from his exposed position, but before he could do so the axe snagged between a dying man’s ribs and stuck fast. A warrior in the mass facing him stabbed at Marcus’s face, the blade slicing a long cut in his cheek as he swayed backwards to evade the attack, releasing his grasp on the axe’s handle as he bent to scoop up a dying warrior’s sword from the ground beside him. Stamping forward, he hacked the sword’s blade at his attacker’s legs, dropping the man to his knees with the muscles of both thighs opened to the bone. Drawing his spatha, the Roman roared his blood-soaked defiance at the barbarians now visibly shrinking away from him. A single man stepped forward to meet him in the space that had opened around the Roman, one hand grasping a massive battleaxe, the other a spear on which the centurion’s head was impaled, and as Scarface realised whose the head was his eyes narrowed in pain.
‘Oh, dear fuck…’
Marcus jumped forward to meet the newcomer’s attack, a fresh flight of arrows punching into the men to his right as he stopped the barbarian champion’s axe with crossed swords, halting the blade inches from his head before slamming his helmet’s brow guard forward in a vicious head-butt which sent the enemy warrior staggering backwards, blood streaming from his shattered nose. He followed up with lightning speed, his spatha hacking off the reeling barbarian’s right arm at the wrist before the other man ever realised what was happening to him. Thrusting forward with the barbarian weapon, he ran the warrior clean through, leaving the blade sheathed in his opponent’s chest and tearing the spear from his grip. While the barbarians around him watched in amazed silence, he pulled the severed head from the bloody blade, tossed the weapon aside and tucked the grisly trophy under his left arm. Stepping back a pace, he growled a quiet order to Scarface.
‘Fall back. Slowly.’
The tribesmen watched in silence as the Romans retreated to their line one pace at a time, never once looking back from their enemies, while the Hamians waited with arrows nocked and ready to fly. Regaining the relative safety of the Tungrian line, Marcus blew out a long shaky breath, tears running through the blood painted across his face between his cheek guards as he stared down into the pain-contorted face that stared back up at him. He lifted his head to watch numbly as the 20th Legion’s leading cohort smashed into the barbarian rear less than a hundred paces from the Tungrians’ place on the slope.
‘I’ll see you buried properly, Tiberius Rufius, and then I’ll take as many of my men as will follow me, track down that bastard Calgus and make sure he dies in agony for you.’ He turned back to Morban, who was standing at his shoulder, aghast at the death of the man who was both Marcus’s saviour and his closest friend, his voice hoarse with sudden grief. ‘Standard-bearer, at the slow march, retreat back up the slope. Now they’ve finally got here we’d best give the bloody legion some room to work.’