Hero of Rome

XXXIV

They died well.

The gladii hacked down the first shock of the British attack, and the second, but for every Celt who fell another ten rushed forward to take his place. By now only the mound of corpses and the narrowness of the bridge limited the numbers reaching the near bank. A crack like the sound of a giant axe signalled that the side rails of the structure had given way, throwing dozens to their deaths in the swollen river. Even so, thousands had already crossed and the veterans were only just holding them. Something whirred past Valerius’s head, reminding him of the fate of the young legionary. The Britons had no formal units of archers, but many skilled hunters swelled the ranks of that great mass and now they lined the bushes of the far bank, picking their targets with bow or sling. The centurions’ steady cry of ‘Close the gaps’ rang with increasing regularity as the veterans dropped. Three burly Celts pulled Octavian bodily from the Roman formation and hacked him to pieces. Didius took a spear point in the throat and went to his gods without a murmur of complaint. For now, the casualties in the First cohort could be replaced by the men in the second line, but the old soldiers were beginning to tire and the pressure was so great he couldn’t gamble on resting a single man. He stepped on a body and looked down to see the baker from Londinium staring up at him with his single eye. It was the first indication that the line was moving back.

Where was Bela?

The sound of a horn gave him his answer and with relief he stepped out of the line and ran back to the higher ground where the cavalry had formed up. Not Bela, but Matykas, the trooper from the bridge who had advised him to take his little army away. The man must have been in the saddle for more than forty-eight hours, and he led only half the horsemen Valerius had expected.

‘Your commander?’

The Thracian lifted his head and Valerius saw that only his spirit kept him upright. ‘Dead.’

‘And the rest?’ There must have been a hint of unintended accusation in his words because the man’s eyes flared momentarily.

‘Dead too. No one ran, tribune. All fell. You put too much faith in the river.’

Valerius fought off a wave of despair. Another mistake. ‘How many crossed?’ he asked.

Matykas shrugged. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. He groaned and straightened. ‘Your orders?’

Every Thracian bled from at least one wound. Their spears were splintered or gone and the coats of their worn-out cavalry mounts were flecked with foam. How could he ask any more of these men? ‘I need you to take pressure off the flanks.’

The troop commander frowned and looked across the seething horde in front of the bridge as if for a few seconds he’d forgotten the battle existed. Eventually, he nodded and gave the order in his own language.

Valerius saw the reluctance in the men’s faces, and the decurion snapped another spate of words. Then he looked down at the Roman. ‘I told them that tonight we ride with the stars.’

‘I hope it is true.’

The trooper replaced his helmet and tightened the chin strap. ‘I hope so too.’

When they were gone, Valerius took a moment to survey the battle from his slightly elevated position. He was by the north gate with the bridge two hundred paces away to his right front. By now it was impossible to count the Britons who had crossed. Several thousand pressed the thinning wall of Falco’s legionary veterans and thousands more streamed away to east and west, keener to be among the first to Colonia’s spoils than to die on the point of a gladius. The Roman line curved like a hunting bow now and was edging inevitably back towards him with its outer wings threatened, three, four, five Celts hammering at each Roman shield. He watched the Thracian cavalry formation split and ride in a wide half-circle that brought the horses of the two depleted squadrons smashing into the British flanks at the same instant. For a moment a flash of bright metal showed as the long cavalry swords smashed down on exposed British skulls, but it couldn’t last and the next time he looked they were gone; a hundred lives snuffed out like the flame of an oil lamp.

But those lives had not been wasted. A momentary confusion in the Celtic throng allowed Falco to restore his line and gave Valerius time to run to the militia commander’s side.

‘We have only one chance,’ he shouted to make himself heard above the clash of iron against iron. ‘There are too many now. We must form testudo and fight our way to the temple.’

Falco turned to him and Valerius saw that though he breathed like an overworked ox his right arm was bloody to the elbow and his eyes shone bright with the elixir of battle that made a man think he was immortal. The lined face was set in a feral snarl and he shrugged off Valerius’s hand as if it were a stranger’s and turned to go back to the line.

‘ Testudo,’ Valerius shouted again. ‘We have to form testudo.’

For a moment comprehension appeared on the tired features and Falco looked around at the diminishing band of his veterans. Valerius recognized the moment of decision. The little wine merchant sucked in his belly beneath the battered chain mail and came to attention.

‘I fear that this is an order I must disobey, tribune,’ he said. ‘We pensioners have walked as far as we can today. We will stay where we stand and give you as much time as we can buy with our lives. Gather your beardless children and take them where they can do more good.’

‘No,’ Valerius shouted desperately as his friend turned away.

Falco looked over his shoulder and said very deliberately: ‘Get them out, Valerius. Hurry. You only have minutes. I can give you no longer than that.’

He wanted to stay and die with them, but there was still another battle to fight and Lunaris would need his help. ‘Londinium vexillation! Form testudo, on me.’

The response was automatic and immediate, the shell of the tortoise coming together over and around him. Perhaps a hundred and thirty of them were left, all of them breathing hard and many of them bloodied or limping.

Before he joined the front rank of the formation he took a last look about him. The veterans could barely hold their shields now and any man’s sword arm would tire after forty minutes of hard fighting, but Falco’s militia battled on. The Britons had pushed the flanks back until what had been a line was now a small pocket of hacking, grunting, blood-soaked survivors. At the south end of the pocket one opening remained, like the neck of an amphora, but rapidly shrinking. Twenty feet away from him, Falco formed a small squad of a dozen wounded and exhausted men in the mouth of the opening. Valerius heard him shout for one final effort, and as he took his place at the front of the testudo the old wine merchant caught his eye and with a last salute led his men in a desperate charge that forced the opening back a few precious feet.

‘Now,’ Valerius yelled. ‘North gate at the trot. We stop for nothing.’

As one, a hundred and thirty pairs of legs began pumping with all their remaining strength, and the armoured carapace smashed through the screen of warriors towards Colonia. To be inside the testudo after the ceaseless clamour of the battle was to enter a shadow-world where the carnage beyond the shields was of only mild interest to those within. The noise of the fighting and dying was reduced to a muffled roar and the atmosphere was like a crowded sauna shared with wild-eyed, bloodied madmen, stinking of fear and the contents of their fouled underwear, coughing and retching and cursing the gods and themselves. Here, even as your feet tripped over the faces of dead friends, it was possible to believe in a survival that a few minutes before had seemed preposterous.

‘Will they get out?’

Valerius looked over his shoulder and saw that the man behind him in the tortoise was Gracilis, the tough Campanian. A sword blow had badly dented his helmet and a ragged wound scored one cheek, probably the edge of a spear that had been aimed at his eyes. It was still bleeding copiously, but Gracilis ignored it.

‘No,’ he grunted, as something crashed against the outside of his shield. He heard Gracilis whisper what might have been a prayer, but he had no time for prayers. The grass beneath his feet turned to metalled road surface and he made a quick calculation. ‘Half left,’ he called and the formation altered direction by forty-five degrees. ‘Keep your shields up and your legs moving.’ Momentum was everything. They were on the shallow slope up through the gate into Colonia. If he was right and the fighting had kept the Britons clear of the gate they should be able to reach the top of the hill, where they’d be only two hundred paces from the temple complex. But every step was agony now. A fire burned in his calves and thighs and his lower back felt as if it were broken. The shield, never light, seemed to have a dozen men sitting on it and he had lost all feeling in his left arm and shoulder. Around him men groaned and cried out as they called on their bodies for an effort that should have been beyond human capability. Flat. He almost shouted out in relief. The road was flat. ‘Twenty paces and half left.’ His voice was a rasping, wasted thing. ‘Not far now, my Mules. Just one last effort.’

He risked a glance between the shields to his front and the horror of what he saw almost stole the last strength from his legs. Hundreds of rebel fighters streamed from the direction of the west gate towards the temple complex. They were trapped. He fought back panic as his mind raced for another way out, but there was none. They couldn’t turn back. If they stood and fought they would be annihilated. There was only one answer. It was impossible, but it was try or die.

‘They’re in front of us, and if they stop us we’re dead,’ he shouted. ‘Step up the pace and slaughter any bastard who gets in the way. Now.’

The Britons on the decumanus maximus were not the elite warriors the veterans had faced at the bridge; they were the farmers and wheelwrights, carpenters, potters and smiths who made up the heart of Boudicca’s army. Ordinary men, not fighters but willing to fight, and not the shirkers and backstabbers who would come after, when the dying was done. Thousands of them had crossed the river and bypassed the battle in the meadow and now they sought revenge on Colonia for the years of humiliation they had suffered at the hands of the Romans. They destroyed everything that was capable of destruction, regardless of its use or value. In their rage they would batter something innocuous, an old couch or an abandoned bed, as if by destroying the inanimate object they were killing the brain that created it, the hands that made it and the body that had lain upon it. Strangely, although many carried torches and there was a strong acrid smell of smoke in the air, not many of the city’s buildings were burning yet. The tiled roofs and lime-plastered walls of the barracks and the houses defied any casual attempt to ignite them. It would take more than a carelessly thrown brand to turn Colonia into an inferno.

But nothing drew them more strongly than the Temple of Claudius, symbol of Roman power and Roman domination, defiler of sacred ground and usurper of true gods, ruiner of kings and destroyer of hopes.

The testudo hammered into the rear of the first scattered group and the swords of the front rank hacked down any man who stood before them or simply battered them to the ground where iron-shod sandals smashed into disbelieving, upturned faces. It was called the tortoise but to those watching, astonished, from the doors and windows along the street it appeared more like an armoured galley cutting its way through a human sea, leaving in its wake a flotsam of dead and dying bodies and accompanied by an unearthly clattering, as if a hundred shields were being battered simultaneously against a hundred trees. Closer to the hated temple, the street became more crowded and logic dictated that the sheer mass of British tribesmen must slow the testudo, but the power of legs hardened by thousands of miles of marching and driven by an insatiable urge to survive somehow maintained its momentum. Behind his shield in the oven of the interior Valerius felt his mind empty and his exhausted body accept the tempo of the battle line. A screaming, unshaven face appeared and disappeared in a welter of blood. A spear thrust was met by an unbroken wall of shields. A dying man squirming beneath his feet was dispatched with a swift thrust to the throat. The world slowed but his own reactions quickened and it seemed that the gods marched at his side because he was beyond suffering now, in a place where no man could harm him. His body was a weapon of war yet at its centre was only peace. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world and it seemed to last a lifetime, but only moments later a voice he didn’t want to hear shouted in his ear.

‘Sir, the temple.’

Unwillingly, his mind returned to the real world, the world of pain, and he realized that there was nothing in front of them. To his left, the wonderful, tortured creak of a gate opening sounded like the gift of life. Still in formation with their shields raised, he led the survivors of the battle of the bridge through the walls of the Temple of Claudius.