Arrows of Fury

10

The two prefects and their first spears were standing on the hillside behind the 1st Cohort’s defence of the ford, watching the Venicone warriors on the far bank as they stood immobile in silent ranks, eerily quiet as they waited behind the mist’s diaphanous veil.

‘They can’t ford the river here, not while it’s flowing this fast and not with our spears waiting for them, and they can’t cross up or downstream because we’ve got men waiting for them there too. What else can they do but wait?’

Frontinius fell silent for a moment as he stared down at the silent tribesmen massed on the river’s far bank, then turned to his opposite number.

‘How many of them would you say there are down there?’

The 2nd’s Cohort’s first spear pursed his lips.

‘I can see… four, perhaps five thousand of them or so. Why, are you wondering where the rest are?’

Frontinius nodded slowly.

‘So am I. That many of them just don’t seem enough for their leaders to have made the gamble to throw their lot in with Calgus. I would have been expecting ten thousand at the very l… hang on, what’s that?’

A body of barbarian warriors was advancing quickly into view up the Red’s western bank, running ten paces behind a single man with his sword drawn, and for a moment the watching officers believed that some great catastrophe had occurred farther to the south and the Venicones were upon them. Then, even as Frontinius opened his mouth to start shouting orders, he found Neuto’s hand on his arm in unexpected restraint.

‘Hold up, that’s my man Appius leading them in! Those blue-noses must be your tame Votadini.’

Frontinius narrowed his eyes and peered down at the newcomers.

‘You’re right. Coming with me?’

Neuto nodded tersely, and Frontinius turned to the prefects, saluting quickly.

‘Excuse us, gentlemen.’

The two men bounded down the hill, Frontinius favouring his bad leg, meeting Appius at the bottom. The panting officer gasped out a brief account of the 8th’s crossing of the Red, beckoning Martos forward to join them. The Votadini leader stepped up, nodding his respect to the officers while Appius eased himself out of their field of view, then turned and slipped unnoticed away to the rear.

‘Your officer has his men in good order, but he told me to warn you that they will only hold for as long as they have arrows to shoot. You must take reinforcements to them, or the Venicones will cross the river and sweep your men away.’

Frontinius turned to Neuto.

‘Three centuries?’

His colleague thought for a moment.

‘Four, I’d say. We have no idea what we might be running into.’

Frontinius turned to the 1st Cohort’s line along the riverbank, shouting to his officers.

‘Centurions Julius, Dubnus, Rufius and Titus, to me, and bring your centuries with you! Quickly!

The rest of you, take a wider spacing and keep your guard up. There’s no telling when that lot might choose to start shooting arrows at you. Otho, you have command here until I get back, take your instruction from the prefect.’

He turned back to Martos, pointing to the hill behind them.

‘You’ve done well, but this is our fight now. Stay here, and keep out of the way unless you don’t have a choice.’

The officers marched off to get the 1st Cohort’s centuries moving, and Martos spoke to the men gathered around him without taking his eyes off their retreating backs.

‘So, do we stay here and wait for something to happen as instructed, or do we go with them and make it happen?’

His one surviving chieftain stepped forward.

‘We should go and find a fight, my lord, although we may be mistaken for the Venicones in this mist.’

Martos nodded grimly.

‘It’s a risk I’ll take. We fight.’

On the hill above them Furius and Scaurus stood in uncomfortable silence, watching as the four centuries disengaged from their defensive line and hastily formed a column of march. A movement below them caught Scaurus’s eye, and he nudged Furius, pointing down at the running man.

‘It’s that officer of yours again. Appius, is it? But why’s he carrying a torch at this time of day… and what’s in that jar?’

Prefect Furius stiffened, recognising the bright red pot…

‘Jar? Gods below, that’s my bloody naphtha!’

On the riverbank downstream the Hamians waited nervously, watching as the Venicone warriors once more built up their strength on the Red’s western bank in ones and twos, crossing the bridge in safety now that their opponents’ arrows were exhausted, the Hamians having shot back the scattering of barbarian arrows they had scavenged from the ground around them. Marcus and Qadir stared into the mist, spotting figures moving on the other bank, but they were too far back from the river to be sure, given the mist’s obstruction. Morban joined them, his standard held in one hand as he stared across the river’s thirty-foot width.

‘What’s happening over there? It looks like…’

Marcus nodded.

‘Like a body of men passing to the south. A lot of men.

Sounds like it too, from the little I can hear with this mist deadening everything. Nothing we can do about it, though, so I don’t intend giving it very much thought.’

Qadir shivered. His battle rage had long since burned out, leaving him damp and tired.

‘There must be sixty or seventy of them now. Should we attack again?’

Marcus shook his head, his gaze fixed on the gathering tribesmen huddling defiantly around the fallen trees’ branches.

‘Soon. I want more of them across the river before we go again.’

‘More?’

‘More. If we attack too soon their archers will pepper us as we close for the fight, but if there are enough of them across the river their view will be blocked. Besides, we were successful last time mainly as a result of your heroics. This time we’re going to do it my way.’

He looked to either side of the Hamian line to check that the Tungrian century was still in position, the soldiers prone on the damp ground and therefore effectively invisible in the mist. The barbarians continued to cross the river until he judged that there were enough of them on the western bank for his purpose. He stepped forward, raising his sword to get the Hamians’ attention.

‘Eighth Century. You’ve done it once, you can do it again. To the river!’

The Hamians went forward without bravado, but steadily enough, while the Venicones waited for their attack with grim faces, aware from the corpses clustered around them that the previous fight had gone against them. When the archers had advanced into sword-reach the barbarians began their furious assault in near-silence. They were fighting for their lives, hacking brutally at the Hamians’ shields and helmets, and for a moment, as first one and then another of the men close to him reeled from the fight with horrific head wounds, Marcus wondered whether he’d left it too late to make the attack. The century held its ground, though, fighting back with the grim resolve of men that knew they lacked any other option, however terrifying the disfiguring injuries of their comrades. It was time for the other century to play their part.

‘Eighth Century, at the walk, pull back! Morban, as we discussed it…’

He exchanged a glance with Qadir, both of their faces taut with the moment’s uncertainty. If the century had mastered the idea of the fighting retreat they would pull off the simple trick he had planned for the barbarians, if not then the plan would most likely turn into a bloody rout. Slowly, almost reluctantly, they retreated at the pace the standard-bearer was dictating, Qadir’s long pole held across their backs to keep them steady. As the Hamians pulled back from the barbarian warriors their unbroken wall of shields and readied swords kept the Venicones, advancing in their wake, firmly at bay. For thirty steady paces the Hamians pulled back, their pace remaining even and their attention focused on the warriors to their front. Nearly… Marcus glanced quickly to his left, looking for the watch officer he needed to be waiting there. The 2nd Cohort man, now on his feet and waiting for the signal, caught his eye through the mist and raised his sword to show that he was ready. Looking to the right, he found the standard-bearer equally ready to fight.

‘Eighth Century, stand fast!’

It was the pivotal moment. Would the Hamians be capable of halting their retreat, however measured? Qadir’s bellow rasped out along the wavering line.

‘Hold them! Deasura!’

The response was immediate, a stiffening of backs and a shouted response.

‘Deasura!’

The Hamians stopped in their tracks, catching the advancing Venicones off guard as they blundered on to the waiting swords. Recoiling from the shock of the suddenly stiffened Roman defence, they presented the opportunity Marcus had been waiting for.

‘Tungrians, attack!’

The 2nd Cohort centuries rose from the mist-covered ground to either side of the barbarians, still unnoticed by the tribesmen. The watch officer to Marcus’s left spat on the wet grass, hefting his broad-bladed thrusting spear and muttering encouragement to the men alongside him.

‘Come on, then, my lads, if these puny little bastards can show the blue-noses the colour of their guts I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have some fun too. Advance!’

Four tent parties to either side, the Tungrians advanced swiftly from their hiding places, driving hard into the flanks of the Venicones with their spears. Some of the enemy warriors fell without ever seeing their attackers, others turned to face dim figures half seen in the mist and went down under their attack without ever raising their swords in defence. Turning to face the unexpected attack from their right, the beleaguered warriors offered an undefended target to the four tent parties still waiting unseen to their left. Rising out of the mist, they too tore into the unprotected flank presented to them, spears flashing from their line of shields to spill yet more Venico blood. Caught between the two attacks, and with the Hamians’ line of shields obdurate to their front, the tribesmen fought and died where they stood, the slaughter complete in less than a minute. Panting from their exertion, the watch officers found Marcus and saluted, both men’s armour sprayed with blood from the massacre.

‘What now, sir?’

‘Take your men and…’

His attention faltered as a light grew in the mist to their left, swelling from a glow to a point of fire in seconds. Appius ran out of the mist, his blazing torch casting shadows across the waiting soldiers. Breathing hard, he stopped running and arched his body backwards to ease the pain in his sides.

‘Take this…’

He passed the torch to Marcus, hefting the jar as he sucked air into his lungs to speak again.

‘Naphtha… belongs to our prefect… magic stuff… you just… put a splash… on a fire… then set… a spark… to it… burns lovely. We empty this… on that tree… it’ll burn like… year-old firewood. I’ll do the pouring… you throw the torch on… once I’m clear.’

The two officers moved forward, accompanied by two tent parties of Tungrians, who hunted down the few tribesmen lurking in the mist close to the riverbank. Gulping another deep breath into his heaving chest, the Tungrian centurion unstoppered the heavy jar and stepped into the foliage, pouring splashes of the pungent fluid over the branches. With the trees’ topmost foliage ready to burn, he stepped away, putting a hand up to Marcus to forestall any move to throw the torch into the fume laden air.

‘Plenty left. Let’s do this properly.’

Stepping through the spread of branches to the river’s bank he poured more naphtha over the lower branches, emptying the jar with a last flourish and dropping it into the mass of leaves. Turning to leave, he staggered as if he had tripped, putting a hand into the naphtha-soaked foliage to stop himself from pitching on to his face. As he straightened up from his crouching position, the arrow which had struck him protruding from his neck and a look of disbelief on his face, a volley of spears arced low across the river, one of them punching through his armoured back and dropping him face down across the tree’s leafy mass. Raising his head with agonised slowness, he lifted an arm, beckoning feebly to the waiting soldiers. The standard-bearer started forward, but found his arm gripped by the stony-faced centurion.

‘That isn’t what he’s asking for.’

The fallen officer waved again, pointing feebly at the tree’s pale foliage. A pair of tribesmen mounted the trunk, ignoring the reek of naphtha as they scurried across the river to reach him. The dying man’s head and helmet would make a mighty prize. Marcus lifted the torch, offering it to the watch officer and standard-bearer.

‘He’s got an arrow through his neck and a spear in his back, and those blue-nosed bastards will have his head off before he dies unless we do something. This is what he wants. He’s your officer, do either of you want to…?’

Both men shook their heads.

‘In that case may Mithras forgive me for sending him a warrior in such circumstances…’

He threw the torch into the trees’ mass of fading greenery. As the flaming stave hit the fallen tree’s branches the naphtha ignited with a heavy thump, shooting a ball of fire unlike anything that any of the men present had ever witnessed high into the misty air. Appius reared up out of the flames with one fist held high, then sank slowly back into their grip. Somewhere in the blaze something exploded, presumably the jar, and a fresh gout of flame bloomed briefly in the branches, already well alight. The barbarians who had crossed the river to take the dying centurion’s head dived from the burning trees into the river, their hair and clothes burning, and the mist around the violent blaze vanished in seconds, vaporised by the intense heat.

With a clear view over the river for the first time, Marcus’s eyes widened at the sight of hundreds of Venicone warriors, more than could ever have made their way down the rocky path alongside the falls. He turned to speak to Qadir and saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Pointing, he bellowed the only warning that the two centuries were going to get, ripping his spatha from its scabbard.

‘Venicones!’

The warriors came out of the mist to the Romans’ rear, over one hundred strong, their swords flashing orange in the fire’s flickering light, and fell on the Hamians with savage war cries. Caught unawares, the archers dithered for a moment, dying by the dozen as the barbarians hacked and thrust at their unprepared line. Marcus bellowed a desperate order, knowing that his command was seconds away from rout and slaughter.

‘Turn and fight! Fight or die!’

With thirty-odd men having been felled by the sudden attack, the men not already dead or dying lifted their shields into a rough wall and momentarily halted the slaughter. Marcus bellowed an order at the Tungrians, pointing with his sword to emphasise the urgency in his voice.

‘Flanks!’

The two men nodded and ordered their men, waiting behind the Hamians, to run to either side of their wavering line, temporarily preventing the barbarians from overlapping their defence. Qadir walked down the decimated Hamian line’s rear, bending to shout into his centurion’s ear over the guttural cries of their attackers.

‘They must have a crossing point somewhere downstream!’

Marcus nodded grimly, his swords held ready by his sides.

‘Nothing we can do about that. Our only hope now is that the fire attracts some attention…’

A soldier in front of the two men spun on his feet and dropped with his throat opened and fountaining blood, and Marcus stepped into the gap before his chosen man had the chance. He battered away the killer’s bloodied sword with his gladius, thrusting the spatha’s point into his throat. Another warrior stepped into the fight and swung his sword up for a downstroke, opening himself up long enough for Marcus to take a fast step forward and whip a booted foot into his groin. Doubled over with the pain, the swordsman was an easy kill as the young Roman hacked hard at the man’s bowed head, chopping into his skull and dropping him to the sodden turf.

Around him his century was slowly, remorselessly being taken to pieces, a continual stream of Venicone warriors strengthening their attackers as they hacked and chopped at the Hamians. The Tungrians alongside them were suffering equally, and Marcus guessed that he had less than half his original number of men facing perhaps twice as many of the enemy. He parried a Venicone spear with his gladius, killing the man wielding it and then the men to either side with swift, economical attacks that seemed to happen with unconscious volition, his mind focused more on their predicament than the fight. The man next to him went down with a spear thrust through his mouth, choking on the blood that was gushing down his windpipe with a horrible gurgle, and Qadir stepped in alongside him, scowling over his shield at the odds they were facing. As the two men shared a momentary glance, preparing to die where they stood, a shout rang out over the din of their doomed fight.

‘Tungria! Tungriaaaa!’

With a start Marcus realised that there were helmeted heads looming over the barbarian left flank, big men, their faces contorted with rage as they hammered into the abruptly wrongfooted Venicones, their axes rising and falling in arcs of bright silver and sprays of blood. The Bear’s 10th Century had discarded their shields to a man and were wielding their weapons like barbarian berserkers, each man painting himself with blood from head to toe as they raved at the Venicone warriors like men possessed.

‘Eighth Century, attack. Attack!’

The remaining Hamians responded to Qadir’s exhortation like punch-drunk boxers, their sword-thrusts no better than a reflex reaction to the bellowed command. Hardly a man put his blade to his intended target but, with Titus’s men to their flank and rear in full battle rage, and the soldiers to their front seemingly intent on revenge where a moment before they had been all but out of the fight, the Venicones were unable to offer resistance. They turned and fled, still dying under the Tungrian axes, running wildly in all directions to escape their implacable enemies. The Hamians stood in their uneven line, unable to offer pursuit as the barbarians ran, able only to watch hollow eyed as another Tungrian century appeared out of the mist. Julius and Frontinius hurried to the 8th’s line, seeking Marcus. He saluted, aware that he was trembling on the edge of exhaustion. The first spear clapped a hand to his young officer’s shoulder in delight, ignoring the blood that stained his armour.

‘It’s good to see you, Centurion, we’d written you off hours ago. Your situation?’

Marcus pulled his helmet off, dragging a bloody hand through his sweat-soaked hair.

‘First Spear, the Eighth Century and our Second Cohort colleagues here have held this crossing since we used it to reach this side of the river. As you can see it’s now useless, thanks to the bravery of Centurion Appius.’

He told the story of their defence of the crossing point in swift, economical terms.

Frontinius nodded approvingly at the short tale’s end, turning to the two centuries’ remnants and raising his voice to make himself heard.

‘Well done, all of you, very well done. I’d say you’ve more than played your part today. Centurion Corvus, take your men back to the ford. You can stand guard at the camp in case any of those tattooed bastards get past us.’ He turned to Julius, pointing south into the mist. ‘Centurion Julius, take all four centuries south down the riverbank and find their other crossing point, and quickly. That can only have been a probe, and wherever it is they’re crossing they’ll still be putting men across the river. We can’t afford for them to build their strength up. Whatever they’re using to get across, make it unusable and then form a stop line in case they’ve already got more men across than we know about. I think a few of them got past us, but all they’ll find is the rest of our two cohorts. Now, Centurion Corvus, let’s you and I march for the camp, and you can tell me about how you came to be here at all rather than face down in the mud on the other side of the river. And, for that matter, how you managed to scatter barbarian dead around quite so liberally, given your men’s lack of any battle experience…’

Martos led his warriors away from the ford without any of the defenders seeming to notice, climbing the steep hill to the south of the defences in long rangy strides that put them on the flat summit within two minutes. With their leader setting the pace the Votadini headed south along the crest’s rolling surface, Martos staring intently down into the mist for a sight of the place he was looking for. After a few minutes he saw the Hamians marching tiredly north along the river’s bank, followed closely by the survivors of the Tungrian century.

‘Can’t be too far now…’

He led his men cautiously down the valley’s steep slope, their swords drawn and ready, his eyes scanning the ground.

‘There!’

A man to his right had spotted the scene of the battle to hold the riverbank, marked by both the burning trees’ billowing smoke and the corpses scattered across the river’s narrow plain by the score. Martos waved his men forward and down the hill.

‘Make it quick. The longer we’re here, the more chance of our being surprised…’

Julius took his four centuries south at a gentle jog, balancing the need to make haste with that of his men being ready to fight when they met the inevitable opposition. The other three centurions ran alongside him, their faces grim as they listened to his instructions.

‘It has to be another warband. That’s the reason those lads back at the ford haven’t attacked again, they’re waiting for this lot to turn our right flank. They’ll be building up their strength ready to attack the riverbank, hoping to sweep away any blocking force and fall on the defenders at the ford without warning. When we find them, we form a three-century line and then advance to make contact, with the Bear’s lads held back in reserve. We kill every blue-nose we can find, then we let the axemen loose on whatever they’re using as a bridge while the rest of us use our shields and spears to protect them as best we can. Right, it’s time to slow down and listen.’

He signalled the advance to slow to walking pace, and ordered a quiet deployment into battle line, the muffled jingling of the soldiers’ equipment the only clue to their presence as they drew their swords and hefted their shields, ready to fight. They could hear the enemy now, a distant murmur of voices in the mist as they advanced cautiously down the riverbank. Julius signalled to his brother officers, pointing to his eyes and calling softly to them.

‘They’re closer than they sound in this fucking mist. Keep your eyes open.’

With a gentle gust of wind the mist shifted, momentarily opening a window on the Venicones gathered by the river’s bank.

‘Fuck me sideways…’

The veteran Scarface, in his usual place at the centre of the 9th Century’s line, stared aghast at the scene revealed as the mist rolled aside for a moment. Hundreds of Venico warriors were milling about on the riverbank less than fifty paces in front of them, clearly waiting for their leaders to send them along the river in force. Behind them a continual stream of men were crossing the trunks of three trees that had been felled and lashed together to span the river’s churning course. The Red now foamed and gurgled around rocks that protruded from the water, as the river approached the first in a series of falls that dropped it abruptly into a stone-walled canyon that would prevent any further progress down either of the river’s banks.

Behind the Roman line Julius took one look at the scene laid out before them and stepped up behind his men, taking a deep breath and bellowing his orders.

‘Spears ready! Advance!’

The Venicone warriors, alerted to the presence of their enemy by his voice, came bounding forward to the attack, their voices raised in a clamour of screamed abuse and swords brandished over their heads.

‘Front rank, throw…!’

The front rankers ran swiftly forward and launched their spears across the twenty-five-yard gap between their line and the oncoming warriors, the heavy-bladed missiles slamming into the barbarian charge and dropping dozens of the Venicones to the steaming turf screaming in agony.

‘Rear rank, throw…!’

The front rank had followed their training and gone down on one knee once their spears were in the air, ignoring the oncoming warriors to allow their fellows an unrestricted throw. The second volley of spears was thrown lower than the first, their trajectories flatter as their targets raced closer, and the missiles again took a vicious toll of the attackers, who were for the most part unarmoured. All along the front of the mass of charging warriors men fell under the thumping impact of the spears, the flying blades piercing their limbs and bodies and dropping them helplessly to the ground, impeding their fellows, who trampled over the fallen in their urgency to get at the Romans.

‘Line!’

The Tungrian front rank drew their swords with a massed scrape of iron on scabbard fittings, slamming their shields into an unbroken wall that stretched from the riverbank to almost a third of the way up the valley’s side. With a mighty roar the tribesmen recovered the momentum stolen from them by the volleys of spears and dashed themselves against the Roman shields, swords flashing as they rose and fell in vicious arcs. Unlike the Selgovae tribesmen that the cohort had fought to a standstill at the battle of Lost Eagle the Venicones were incandescent in their battle fury, disdaining any pretence of self-preservation as they hacked and chopped at the Tungrians’ shields and the helmeted heads that peered over them, taking any opportunity to attack the men behind them even if it opened them up to devastating counter-attack from the soldiers’ short thrusting swords.

Julius stalked down the rear of his command’s line to find Rufius marshalling his century’s defences, feeding men into the line as the soldiers to their front suffered under the barbarian swords. His brother officer nodded grimly, inclining his head to the warriors railing at the shields, almost close enough to reach out and touch, and shouted over the clamour of their assault.

‘This is more like the old days. If the lads that faced us at Lost Eagle had been this fired up I doubt we would have survived long enough for the legions to show up.’

Julius nodded grimly, one hand gripping his sword’s hilt tightly.

‘And they’ve still got men crossing the river behind them. Unless we can chop that bridge off they’ll just wear us down with numbers.’

A soldier to their left went down under a barbarian axe-blow that cleaved through the curved iron plate of his helmet, staggering blank eyed back from the shield wall before pitching headlong to the bloody grass with the weapon still embedded in his head. Rufius’s chosen man thrust a rear ranker into the breach, the soldier stepping forward to put his sword into the disarmed axeman’s throat as the man leapt at him with only his teeth and nails for weapons. Rufius raised an eyebrow, ducking momentarily as a spear flashed past the two men, clearly aimed at the enticing target of their helmet crests.

‘Fuck me, they’re keen. Perhaps we should send the Bear’s boys round them to attack the bridge?’

‘Perhaps not, little brother.’

They turned to find Titus standing behind them, surveying the Venicones’ strength beyond their shields with a face equally as grim as their own.

‘There must be five hundred of them. We wouldn’t even get to the bridge before they cut us down like dogs. What this little skirmish is crying out for is a flank attack to get them fighting on two sides… then I’d have some chance of succeeding. Without something to distract them we’ll only hold them off until they get enough men across that bridge to overwhelm us…’

Julius started, looking over Rufius’s shoulder.

‘Fuck!’

He started running up the Tungrian line, his sword out of its scabbard, and Rufius and Titus turned to look at what had caught his eye. In the shield wall to their right, where the valley floor met the steep hillside that rose above it, the crested helmet of a centurion rose proudly above the helmets of the men to either side. Barbarian swords were rising and falling in flashing arcs around the embattled officer, clearly drawn to their chance of taking a Roman officer’s head like wasps to honey.

‘Dubnus!’

Even as Rufius realised his friend’s predicament the centurion staggered back out of the line, and a mighty roar went up from the men facing the 9th Century, pressing forward with the scent of victory in their nostrils.

Antenoch and Lupus’s afternoon had been relatively non-eventful. The pair had been kept busy taking rations to the centuries manning the riverbank. With each brief visit to their comrades both had taken a moment to stare out between the waiting soldiers at their enemy, standing with apparent patience on the opposite bank. Antenoch pulled the child away from the Tungrian line, thinned out by the removal of the four centuries the first spear had taken south down the riverbank to the degree that the boy no longer had to duck to stare between the soldiers’ legs to see the Venicone warriors lurking on the far bank.

‘There’s more of them over there than we can see in this bloody mist. That lot are waiting there because their leaders know they keep us here to face them down just by being there. The question is, where are the rest of them?’

Prefect Scaurus was asking the same question of himself, two or three times on the verge of sending another two centuries down after the first four. Each time he weakened, however, one look at his colleague’s face was enough to convince him not to do so. Prefect Furius was staring pale faced and trembling down at the massed warriors on the far bank, his eyes wide with the same fear that Scaurus had seen on his face ten years before. He watched Antenoch and the boy toil past his perch on the hillside once more and smiled wanly, wondering whether a position with such simple responsibilities would be better than the crushing burden of command bearing down on him.

Movement in the mist to the south caught his eye, a century or so of weary men marching over the brow of the steep escarpment from the south. His first reaction, as he recognised the centurion leading the soldiers behind him out of the murk alongside First Spear Frontinius, was a wolfish smile of triumph, but the emotion faded quickly as he realised the sheer number of men missing from the ranks marching exhaustedly behind his officers, even with what appeared to be another century bringing up the rear. The Hamians staggered to a halt, clearly at the end of their tether, most of them bearing the marks of men that had been in a desperate fight, their shields scored and notched and their armour black with the drying blood of their enemies. Many of them were supporting walking wounded. As he watched his men’s obvious distress with pity and pride, Scaurus’s attention was drawn away from what was happening in front of him for a terrible, fateful moment.

Antenoch saw them first, half a dozen ragged warriors loping down the hill in front of them towards the unguarded supply carts in the Tungrian rear, their swords gleaming dully in the mist. He pushed the child under the cart from which they were unloading the rations, snatching up his shield and unsheathing his own blade as he turned to face the barbarians bounding down the slope to attack, shouting a warning to the soldiers two hundred paces away on the far side of what remained of the previous night’s camp. His cry sounded weak and muffled in the mist’s dampness, and the Venicone warrior leading the pack grinned in anticipation, swinging his sword in a vicious hacking blow at the lone soldier.

Antenoch parried the strike upwards with his gladius, stepping in fast to drive his helmet’s brow guard into the other man’s face so hard that he felt bone shatter under the blow’s force. Reversing his grip on the sword’s hilt he ducked under the next man’s spear-thrust, burying the gladius’s length in his side and snatching away the spear, leaving the blade sheathed in the crippled barbarian’s liver. The remaining warriors spread out around him, wary of the spear’s long reach but quickly surrounding him with blades and forcing him to twist and turn, continually stabbing with the weapon’s wide blade in a doomed attempt to hold them off. One of the warriors slid silently around to his rear, stepping close to the cart and landing a slashing blow across the back of the Roman’s thigh, dropping him on to one knee with his hamstring severed. The warrior’s howl of victory became a scream of pain as Lupus scuttled out from under the cart and dragged the razor-sharp blade of his knife across the back of the barbarian’s ankle. The tendon parted with an audible thump, and the Venicone staggered away on his good leg and fell to his knees, waving his sword at the child and screaming with fury. Antenoch turned to the boy, grimacing with pain, and muttered a single word between gritted teeth.

‘Run!’

As Lupus watched, his eyes wide with the shock of combat, another warrior stepped in and butchered the stricken soldier, grabbing his helmet’s broad neck protector and jerking it up to expose the back of his neck. Slamming his sword through the space between Antenoch’s mail coat and his helmeted head, the tribesman speared the sword’s blade through his throat. A fine drizzle of the dying man’s blood flicked across the boy’s face as he stared without comprehension at the horror inches from his face. Antenoch’s mouth gaped open, but no sound issued other than his croaking death rattle. His eyes rolled upwards as he lost consciousness, and his body sagged twitching to the ground. Lupus, still frozen to the spot, looked up into the face of his protector’s killer as the warrior ripped his sword free from Antenoch’s neck, then drew back his arm to hack the child down, swinging the blade out in a wide arc that held Lupus mesmerised as the Venicone screamed his rage into the boy’s face.

In a sudden blur of motion and with a crunching impact the barbarian was gone, punched away by the impact of a shield smashed into his body by a figure sprinting out of the mist. The warrior went down with his face wrecked, battered out of shape by the impact of the shield’s heavy bronze boss, and with blood pouring from his shattered nose. He groaned once, put a hand to his ruined cheekbone and collapsed to the grass only partially conscious. Lupus stared up from his crouch between the cart’s traces, watching numbly as Marcus tossed the shield aside, flashed out his gladius alongside the longer-bladed spatha and turned his ire on the man the child had wounded. Swinging the cavalry sword at the hobbling warrior’s throat in a precise arc, he dropped the wounded man to the turf with blood sheeting from his opened neck, then turned back to the remaining barbarians with a tight-lipped snarl that hardened to barely restrained rage as he lined up the blades’ points. He drew in a long breath and allowed it to escape in a slow exhalation as he paced slowly forward, eying the three remaining barbarians with cold calculation as they dithered between fight and flight, his eyes meeting the child’s empty stare and hardening as they flicked back to the Venicones. For all their numerical advantage the warriors quailed at the sight of a helmetless soldier daubed with mud and blood, his eyes flint hard above a mouth slitted with contempt. One of them groped on the floor in front of him, unable to take his eyes from the Roman’s approach as he picked up the spear that Antenoch had dropped.

The attack, delivered after several long seconds of silence, was all the more shocking for the speed with which Marcus took his iron to the barbarians, too fast for the stunned child to follow from his hiding place. Turning aside the spearman’s frantic defence and punching his gladius through the man’s ribs, he deflected a stabbing sword from his left with an almost absent-minded parry with the spatha, slanting the long sword to allow the man’s attack to slide along its polished surface and extend the attack farther than the barbarian had intended, then kicked his legs out from under him and pitched him face first to the ground. Leaving the short sword in the spearman’s chest, he feinted momentarily at the last man standing to put him on the back foot, then finished the fallen barbarian with brutal speed, hacking the spatha deep into his spine before turning away to tackle the last remaining warrior. Ripping his gladius free as he passed the dying spearman, he brutally kicked him face first into the mud. The last man turned to run, but managed less than five paces before the enraged officer ran him down, spearing the long sword through his left thigh and dropping him howling to the ground. He waited for the Venicone warrior to roll on to his back before finishing the fight, batting aside the man’s sword with something close to contempt before pushing his spatha into his chest in a slow, measured thrust, watching the barbarian contort in agony as the iron’s cold bite pushed through his organs. The stink of faeces hung in the air as the dying warrior’s bowels voided themselves.

‘A hard death.’

Marcus turned to find Scaurus and Arminius standing behind him, their swords unsheathed. Both men were breathing hard from their run from the opposite hill. Marcus twisted the sword and pulled it from the dying man’s body, inspecting the point for any damage, then casually ran the blade through the throat of the concussed warrior he had smashed aside with his shield.

‘Not hard enough. They killed my clerk.’

The prefect nodded simple agreement, turning away to look for Lupus and finding him staring at the hill above them.

‘At least you managed to save the child, that’s some…’

He turned to look at whatever was holding the child’s attention, seeing another group of warriors staring down at them from the hill’s crest, nine or ten strong. Marcus and Arminius followed his glance, their faces hardening as the barbarians started down the slope towards them.

‘If you’ll allow me, Prefect, this is a job for your man here and me…’

Marcus fell silent as the prefect bent to pick up one of the dead Venicone warriors’ swords, seeing an amused smile touch Arminius’s face. Scaurus drew his gladius, taking up a two-handed fighting stance without ever taking his eyes off the oncoming warriors.

‘Thank you, Centurion, but I’ll take my chances alongside the pair of you if it’s all the same to you.’

The first warriors stormed in to attack the trio before Marcus had any chance to reply, assaulting the Romans in a furious whirl of swords and axes. In a second Marcus was fighting for his life, ducking under a wild sword-blow and hacking his gladius deep into his attacker’s thigh before shouldering the man into the path of another warrior. Sensing movement behind him, he swayed his upper body back out of the path of a spear-thrust, watching the wickedly sharp iron blade slide past within inches of his face. He flicked the spatha’s blade down into the muddy ground, relinquishing the sword’s hilt and grabbing the spear’s shaft with his right hand, then leaned in to thrust his gladius up under the spearman’s jaw, leaving the sword embedded in the dying man’s throat. Lifting the spear from the warrior’s numb fingers he pivoted back to the wounded barbarian and the man into whose path he had pushed him, reversing the weapon with a casual flourish and stepping in to plant the butt spike in the wounded barbarian’s throat in a spectacular shower of blood as the spike tore into the man’s neck. Shifting on to his back foot, he flipped the spear lengthwise again to present its razor-sharp blade before stamping his right foot forward again, thrusting the iron head deep into the other barbarian’s guts and ripping it free with a savage twist that contorted the warrior’s face with pain, the contents of his bowels gushing down his legs as his eyes rolled up. He watched the man’s face with savage intent, lost to blood rage as the barbarian slumped to the floor, ramming the spear’s blade between his ribs and through his heart. Arminius’s guttural shout snapped him back into the fight.

‘Behind you!’

He pivoted, ripping the spear free of the fallen warrior’s body to find a pair of warriors within a half-dozen paces and charging in fast. Without time either to pull the weapon back for the throw or turn fully enough to use the blade, he dived forward beneath their raised swords, tripping his attackers with the spear’s shaft and rolling out from beneath their tumbling bodies to where his spatha waited, its point buried in the mud. Dropping the spear and snatching at the sword’s hilt, he sprinted back into the fight, hacking at the closer of the two, the sword’s razor-sharp blade opening the man’s head up like ripe fruit, then kicked the sword loose from the lolling corpse to parry an attack from his companion. Too slow. The man’s booted foot hooked his leg and pitched him to the ground with a thump, driving the breath from his body and breaking his hold on the spatha’s hilt. The sword fell uselessly to the ground beside him and the barbarian smiled at him in triumph, his sword’s point suddenly at Marcus’s throat with a cold bite that froze his attempts to regain his feet. Groping unnoticed at his belt for his dagger he found instead the tribulus given to him on a cold spring hillside far to the south and months before by Rufius and tugged the vicious little device free, forming a fist around its iron spikes.

The Venico standing astride him laughed down at him, lifting his shoulders and taking a firm grip on his sword’s hilt in readiness to ram the blade home into the Roman’s windpipe. Marcus was a split second faster, slamming his fist up into the man’s unprotected groin and spearing the iron barb that protruded from between his fingers between his balls and deep into the root of his penis. The barbarian threw his head back and screamed in agony, his sword dangling forgotten as he staggered away, and Marcus rolled to one side, scooping up the spatha and surging to his feet to behead the man with a single blow. He looked to his comrades, fearful of what he might find.

A mile down the river, the fight was slowly but certainly turning against the Tungrian detachment sent to cover the defence’s southern flank. Julius watched with growing consternation as the number of Venico warriors ranged against the three centuries in his defensive line strengthened by the minute, a stream of tattooed barbarians crossing the river behind them to add two men to their strength for every one killed by the Tungrians. His men were tiring now, their initial battle fury exhausted, and while he knew they would fight on for a good deal longer he could tell that they were no longer battling as hard as before. While the Tungrians were increasingly huddled behind their shields, striking out with their short swords when the opportunity presented itself, the Venicones, bolstered by the flow of fresh warriors from the mass waiting on the other side of the river, were gradually gaining the upper hand, growing in confidence as their strength increased.

He looked to the rear, peering past the stolid lines of the 10th

Century’s axemen waiting for their turn to join the fight in the mist, knowing that the rest of the cohort probably had problems enough that reinforcement was unlikely.

‘Another five minutes of this and we’ll have to start putting the Bear’s lads into the fight.’

Julius nodded at Rufius’s muttered statement.

‘How’s the boy?’

The older man glanced down at Dubnus’s prone form, his wound temporarily staunched by the bandage stuffed through the hole in his armour by a bandage carrier who had shaken his head unhappily and moved on to the next casualty with the hardbitten detachment of a man who had seen death and mutilation too many times before to be affected by anything as prosaic as a spear wound.

‘Still with us. I’d say he’ll pull through, if only we can get him out of here…’

Julius snorted, pushing another of his century’s rear rank forward as a front ranker went down with an axe buried deeply in his head, the heavy blade cleft clean through his helmet’s bracing bars and deep into his skull. The rear rankers to either side grabbed him by the shoulders of his mail coat and threw him backwards past the officers and out from under the soldiers’ feet to lie wide eyed and spasming intermittently on the wet ground. The bandage carrier gave his twitching body a cursory glance before turning back to the task of bandaging a wounded man’s arm, opened up from wrist to elbow by a Venicone sword.

‘Not much chance of that. We stand here and most likely we’ll die like rats in a barrel. Bear, get your boys ready to…’

His head jerked up as he caught movement on the hill above them out of the corner of his eye.

‘What the fuck…?’

Men were mustering on the slope to the barbarian left, perfectly positioned for an attack down into their unprotected rear. Rufius stared up the hill alongside him, straining tired eyes to make out the detail masked by the curtains of mist drifting across the battlefield.

‘It’s a century of our lads, although they look bloody odd to me. Scruffy bastards from the look of it…’

Julius laughed grimly, tucking his vine stick into his belt and drawing his gladius as the men on the hill above gave a guttural war cry and poured down the hill in an undisciplined charge that narrowed Rufius’s eyes with bafflement.

‘Those boys aren’t ours, Grandfather, you need a new set of peepers. That’s Martos and what’s left of his warband, wearing our kit and getting stuck into the Venicones. I might not like the man, but I’ll be buggered if I’ll let this chance go begging. Bear, get ready to attack to the bridge!’

He elbowed the trumpeter in the ribs.

‘Blow the advance, boy! Burst your fucking lungs!’

The trumpet’s call sang out over the riverbank, the notes stiffening backs previously bent to huddle into the cover of their shields as standard-bearers bellowed encouragement to their comrades. Julius stepped up to the line, motioning with both arms to the three centuries’ chosen men to put their poles to the soldier’s backs and start pushing. He took a deep breath and roared his command, the bellowed words cutting across the sounds of clashing metal.

‘Tungrians, either we deal with these barbarian arse-fuckers now or we die before our time. Advance!’

As the newcomers burst on to the Venicones’ left flank in a flurry of hacking swords, the Tungrians took their iron to the distracted tribesmen with renewed vigour, spending the last of their strength recklessly as they saw their one chance to snatch victory from the certainty of defeat. As they stepped up to the Venicones with new purpose, hammering at the warriors with their shields before stabbing their swords in drilled unison, the 10th Century took their chance, trotting around the end of the Tungrian line and past the mass of enraged Votadini assaulting the enemy flank before breaking into two halves. Five tent parties assaulted the barbarian rear, while the remainder, led by Titus, charged into the Venicones still coming across the improvised bridge. Their already bloodied axes rose and fell in pitiless arcs, each blow chopping a Venico warrior to the ground in bloodied ruin. Attacking unprepared and unarmoured warriors from the rear, the forty men at the Venicones’ rear killed three times their strength in less than a minute, before the barbarians even had time to turn and fight. The warband, beset from the rear by blood-painted giants wielding their weapons with terrible ferocity, promptly lost all reason and threw themselves at the Tungrian line in a desperate attempt to escape, their abandon opening them up to vengeful soldiers who only seconds before had been suffering under their swords. With a sudden collective shudder of men at the end of their tether, the warband broke into a melee of fleeing warriors, pursued across the battlefield by soldiers and Votadini warriors whose blood was well and truly up, and whose only desire was to complete the slaughter of their mutual enemy.

Julius fought his way through the chaos to Martos, nodding in respect at the panting chieftain.

‘Well fought, Votadini. Can you finish them?’

The other man nodded.

‘We’ll hunt them down to the last man. I have a score to settle with these bastards.’

Julius nodded, turning back to his men.

‘To the bridge!’

‘So Martos broke the deadlock? In that case he’s been instrumental in more than one last-minute rescue. I thought we were dead men when the barbarians came out of the mist to our front with their swords ready, back there on the other side of the river. My lads were terrified, of course, so it was a good thing that it was him and his men and not the real thing, or we’d all have been dead inside a minute.’

Marcus rubbed at his still-wet hair with one bloody hand, his eyes blank as he remembered the frantic retreat from the Venicone warband.

‘He saved us, of course. Led us up the hill to our left, took us out of sight of the warband when they came thundering past a few minutes later. After that we just walked south until we came to the outcrop and climbed down it to reach the far bank of the Red. You know the rest, and you’ve seen the mess that the Venicones made of the Eighth, but I’ll wager when we count the corpses we’ll have killed five men for every one we lost. They’ve earned their right to be called Tungrians, I’d say. What happened after the Votadini came down the hill in our armour then?’

Julius grinned, still elated with their victory.

‘You should have seen it, man, the Bear’s lads just ran wild. They hacked their way to the bridge those Venico bastards had thrown across the river and left a trail of bodies with their heads stove in and arms and legs lopped off. The barbarians tried to put them off, of course, chucked bucket-loads of arrows and spears at us from the other side of the Red, but we put a double line of shields on the riverbank and the Tenth took turns chopping at the trees behind them. Once the tops were off it was easy enough to push the trunks into the river, and that was that, pretty much. If only they hadn’t managed to put a spear into Dubnus I’d be counting this as a right result. As it is…’

Julius’s face darkened. Marcus shook his head sadly.

‘He shouldn’t have been in the front rank. He kicked my backside hard enough when I did it…’

Both men were silent for a moment, staring out across the river at the thousands of Venicone warriors still waiting in silence. The four centuries that Julius had led down the riverbank to deny them their last chance of crossing the river were now back in place at the ford, the two cohorts’ massed spears sufficient to deter any further attempt to force the crossing. The river itself was running slightly lower than had been the case during their first abortive attempt, but still had too much power for the warband’s leaders to seriously consider throwing their men across the river to die on the Roman defences.

‘I heard about Antenoch. He died defending the child?’

Marcus shrugged tiredly.

‘He died defending the supplies. Lupus was an incidental. Our prefect was a bit of a revelation, though…’

Julius raised an eyebrow.

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes. I fought off the first group to come over the hill, but then another group followed them in and took the three of us on, me, Arminius and the prefect. I suggested that he stand back and let the German and me do the fighting, but he just laughed at me and stood his ground.’

‘And…?’

‘And put down three of them without much difficulty, from what I gather. I was too busy while it was happening, but I had a quick word with Arminius after the fight was done, while Scaurus was busy making sure that they were all dead. All this time we’ve been assuming that the bodyguard’s the fighter, but it turns out he’s been taking lessons from the prefect since the day he was taken prisoner.’

Tiberius Rufius walked up with a weary demeanour, squatting down on his haunches opposite the other two, who both stared at him with open curiosity. He shrugged.

‘He’ll live, just as long as the gods keep smiling on him. The prefect’s got half a dozen tents up for the wounded and he’s warm enough, plus his wound’s stopped bleeding for the time being. Got any water left?’

Marcus passed over his water skin, waiting until his friend had drunk his fill before speaking again.

‘We need to get him back to Noisy Valley. That wound needs to be cleaned out before it closes up…’

‘In which case, that’s probably good news.’

Julius pointed up the road away from the ford. Half a mile distant, where the track met the skyline, the distant silhouettes of Roman soldiers were appearing against the bright evening sky. He stood up, looking back over his shoulder at the Venicones still waiting on the other side of the slowly subsiding river.

‘It’s their turn to run now. If that’s one full legion, never mind two, they’ll not want to be anywhere close to hand when that lot cross to the far side. Come on, let’s go and watch them leg it. And remember to put on a brave face for the troops; they need better from us than the despondency we’re feeling to show in our faces. We faced ten times our strength of the nastiest bastards in this whole shitty country and lived. Again. There are few enough men that have done that once, never mind twice in one year.’