Hero of Rome

XXXV

Inside the gate the testudo disintegrated into a slumped huddle of exhausted men. Valerius lay back against a wall with his eyes closed. He could hear the shouts of acclaim, but he really didn’t care. He was alive. For the moment that was enough.

He removed his helmet and ran his fingers through the damp thickness of his hair, relishing the feel of the cool air on his head and neck. Sweat ran in a stream down his back and his tunic felt as if he’d been swimming in it. Someone thrust a water skin into his hand and he suddenly realized how thirsty he was. When was the last time he’d drunk or eaten? His brain didn’t want him to know, but when he placed the skin to his lips the tepid, musty liquid seemed to be instantly absorbed by his brain and the skin was empty before his dust-dry mouth could benefit. He opened one eye. Lunaris stood over him silhouetted by the sun, which was still low and in the east. It didn’t seem possible it was less than two hours since dawn.

‘Bread?’ A hand like an engineer’s shovel emerged from the glare to offer a big quadrant of panis castrensis, the rough peasant bread of the lower ranks. He took it and bit into it, ignoring the wheat grains, hard as road grit, which threatened to break his teeth.

‘More water,’ he mumbled, and tossed the skin at the dark mass looming over him.

He knew they were only delaying the inevitable, but all he wanted to do was rest here against this wall with the sun on his face. Let someone else do the leading. Lunaris handed him another skin and he drank eagerly, this time savouring the feel of the water in his mouth and allowing it to run slowly down his throat.

He looked around at the men he’d brought back from the bridge in the testudo. Falco had saved them all with his suicidal charge. A fat merchant who could barely fit into his armour had never stopped being a soldier. None of them had. What was it Falco had said — you will go on your knees and seek my forgiveness before the end — well, not now and more’s the pity. He would have done it gladly just to share one more cup of wine with the old man. He closed his eyes again, and his head was filled with flashes of incidents he barely remembered witnessing. The Briton with a gladius buried in his guts growling like a dog and trying to tear with his teeth at the man who’d stabbed him. The unarmed veteran whose name he’d never know who had thrust himself into a gap in the line and held it with his dying body until he’d been chopped into ruin. Matykas, the Thracian, riding off to die when he could have run, because that’s what Rome paid him to do. Dead, all dead, yet he lived. Why? His plan had never been to hold the rebels, only to hurt them, yet he felt a terrible sense of failure. And guilt. There was no blame, he understood that. Paulinus and the legate would have applauded his actions. He was a commander who had used the forces at his disposal to do the most possible damage to the enemy. When the time came he had been strong enough to throw them into the abyss. He felt like weeping.

But he had no time for self-pity. ‘Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to give me your report?’ He used the wall to push himself to his feet. It was an effort. The armour on his back seemed to weigh three times as much as normal and his body felt as if every inch of flesh was bruised.

‘Thought you were asleep, sir.’ The duplicarius grinned, but his relief was clear. He’d had more than enough of the burden of command. ‘Three hundred and fifty effectives, if you count civilians, disabled veterans and the ration thieves from the armoury, but not including the women and children in the temple.’ That surprised Valerius. He’d thought everyone had gone with the convoy. Another problem he didn’t need. Lunaris continued: ‘Enough food and water for a week if we go easy. Defences built and manned as ordered, but we’re down to the last two hundred javelins.’ The statistic made Valerius flinch, though he kept his face immobile. He had seen how effective the spears had been at the bridge. They could be the difference between holding out for hours or days. Lunaris continued. ‘I tried to get rid of the chicken murderer who runs the temple, but he didn’t want to go. You could have heard him whine in Glevum when the lads started dumping supplies all over his pretty sanctuary and tearing up curtains for bandages. You’d think he’d be grateful we were here to save him from the barbarian hordes, but he as good as accused me of treason. God-botherers are worse than politicians.’

Valerius managed a tired smile. ‘You’ve done well, Lunaris.’ He considered the meagre forces at his disposal. In his heart he’d always known it would be like this. He had no choice but to defend what he could and be wary of what he could not. ‘We’ll put two hundred and fifty men across here in two ranks.’ He pointed to an area a dozen paces inside the gate. ‘Organize four squads of ten and position them to deal with any breakthroughs. They will be my strategic reserve. I know it’s not much, but it will have to do.’ He looked over to where the young priest, Fabius, stood uneasily with the other civilians alongside a few resting legionaries, like sheep amongst a pack of wolves. ‘The rest we’ll leave in the pronaos redoubt and when we are finally forced back they will cover us until we can join them in the temple.’ He said it matter-of-factly, as if he were discussing the price of grain in the Forum, but the words sent a chill through Lunaris. It did not matter how long the defenders held them, he was saying, or how many they killed; defeat was as inevitable as the next dawn.

Valerius replaced his helmet and the two men walked towards the south wall of the complex and the gate which bisected it. They kept their pace unhurried, aware the eye of every defender was upon them.

Two legionaries were placing the last of the timber baulks to block the arched gateway. The wall on either side of the gate was only shoulder height. Valerius looked beyond it to where the Celts waited in a sullen compact mass, half filling the area of gardens and vegetable plots. There were no taunts or challenges now, only a brooding hate-filled silence that seemed to make the air around him hum with energy. From beyond them came the howls and cries of those looting the city and the thousands more trying to reach the temple through the choked streets.

‘When they first appeared we were certain that you had been wiped out,’ Lunaris said quietly, and Valerius realized how difficult it must have been for the temple’s defenders listening to the sound of battle but able to do nothing. ‘There were only a few hundred but they tried to attack the gate and we had to use half of our reserve of spears to see them off. They’ve been warier since then. Maybe we killed their leader. Now they seem content to wait.’

‘They won’t attack until Boudicca is here to witness it,’ Valerius said with certainty. ‘She will not only want to see her revenge, she’ll want to feel it and taste it. We still have time.’

Time to wait. And while they waited, the legionaries talking quietly among themselves and dictating last messages to the more literate, Valerius watched Colonia die. It was no haphazard destruction. It was organized, directed and designed to wipe the city from the face of the earth. The rebels had already discovered a stoutly built Roman home was not easy to burn. A torch thrown on to a tiled roof only burned itself out, leaving a blackened scorch mark on the ochre. But they learned quickly. First they cleared the far slopes of the hillside across the river of the tinder-dry, oil-heavy gorse bushes that filled the spaces between the farms and dragged great bundles into the city. While this was done, others were busy on the roofs stripping tiles from the insulae, the former barrack blocks, the basilica and the villas in their fine gardens, and baring the pitch-covered wood. Now the torches could do their work, while inside the walls the gorse burned with all the intensity of Greek fire. From within the temple precinct it appeared innocuous at first, just a few tendrils of smoke rising above the roofline. But, in minutes, the tendrils turned into great writhing columns, with the bright red and gold of the fires at their heart reaching high into the sky, speckled with millions of infinitesimal dancing sparklets that lived and died in a second. House by house and street by street the city was consumed by the flames of Boudicca’s vengeance. The wrath of Andraste had come to Colonia.

But Valerius knew it would not be enough for her.

She came as the sun reached its peak, carrying a long spear but this time without fanfare because no chariot could make its way along the choked main street, which was one of the few not yet burning. Valerius watched the crowd of warriors part to allow the flame-haired figure to emerge from their midst. For the first time she was close enough for him to study properly. She looked older than he’d imagined, perhaps in her late thirties, and her features were striking rather than beautiful, which he found oddly disappointing: a wide forehead and a nose any Roman would be proud of. A plaid cloak covered her shoulders, held at the breast by a large golden brooch which was outdone by the thick neck-ring of the same metal that graced her throat. But it was her eyes that made her who she was, glittering like translucent emeralds with the raging fires of her desire for vengeance burning in their depths. He remembered his earlier feeling of being stripped bare and experienced it again, her hatred projecting itself to shrivel and unman the defenders. Boudicca stood, stern and erect, surrounded by her advisers and the British nobles who had risked everything to join her. Valerius found himself drawn to one, a warrior with his head swathed in bandages, possibly a survivor of the action at the bridge, supported by a thin man in a grey cloak which shimmered in the sunlight.

He saw the spear rise.

‘Make ready,’ he shouted, and ran back to the double line of legionaries.

They came in waves twenty deep and if Valerius had more spears they would have died in waves. Instead, only the first two hundred champions were thrown back as they clambered to the top of the wall and the needle points punched through bare flesh, muscle and bone and then flesh once more. But for all the impact the slaughter made on the attackers the legionaries might have been throwing rose petals.

‘Forward.’ Valerius accepted a shield and placed himself in the centre of the Roman front rank. There would be no directing this battle from behind.

The sweat-stained legionaries marched ten paces in tight ranks behind the protection of their shoulder-high shields, and rammed the iron bosses in the faces of the first men to cross the wall. Valerius felt the impact on his left forearm and punched his gladius through a gap at a fleeting seam of bronzed skin. All along the line he could hear the familiar, almost animal grunts as his legionaries forced the short swords into pliant flesh and the shrieks as the points bit home. At first, not enough warriors could breach the precinct to force the defenders back, and the soldiers pinned them against the wall while at the same time ensuring those who attempted to cross behind them had nowhere to land but on top of their fellows. The men on the wall pranced and raged, attempting to find a way to reach the enemy and howling their hate, but their antics exposed them to the few archers Lunaris had managed to place on the temple roof and one after another the well-aimed arrows plucked them from their perches. For the moment, Valerius’s legionaries more than held their own, but a hail of spears from beyond the wall landed without distinguishing friend or foe and took their toll on the defenders. A legionary in the second rank screamed and staggered from the line as one of the broad-bladed points pierced him through the thigh. In almost the same instant, the man beside Valerius was blinded by a spear thrust from one of the trapped warriors and reeled back with his hands to his face and blood spurting through his fingers. Valerius found himself facing three of the heavily tattooed rebels.

The first long sword, wielded by a snarling, grey-haired ancient who should have been too old to fight, came at him in a curving arc designed to take his head off at the shoulders. With a desperate parry he managed to block it, forcing the blade upwards and leaving the man’s naked belly exposed to a sword point that flickered out of the second Roman line. The Briton went down with a disbelieving howl, just as the second warrior battered Valerius’s shield aside with his own. Any blow would have brought the Roman down, but with screaming, sweating bodies crowding on every side his opponent could only make an awkward overhead stroke that gave Valerius the heartbeat he needed to drive the gladius under the Briton’s chin and into his brain. Still there was no respite. The killing stroke left him open to a howling, red-eyed figure who burst from his left and chopped down two-handed with a massive woodsman’s axe. Valerius cursed, knowing he couldn’t turn quickly enough. This was where his neighbour, now blinded and coughing his life out among the trampling feet, should have covered him. The axe was angled to strike his left shoulder and he knew his armour would be no protection against such a fearsome weapon. The great blade would cleave collarbone, breast and ribs. He screamed in desperation just as a bulky figure stepped into the gap at his side to lock shields with a crunch and an instant later the blade of the axe appeared through the three layers of seasoned oak of Lunaris’s scutum. The big man grinned, hauled the shield sharply to one side and stabbed with his short sword. He was rewarded with a groan. Valerius nodded his thanks and returned to the task of staying alive.

The din of the fighting was fit to burst his ears; screams of pain, howls of triumph and the terrible rhythmic grunting, all punctuated by the clang of iron against wood and the spine-tingling zuuppp of arrows flying inches overhead. His movements became automatic and it gave his mind the opportunity to rove over the battlefield, some deep-buried sense tasting the scent and sound and feeling the movement of everything around him.

‘The right.’ He shouted to make himself heard and Lunaris croaked acknowledgement but shrugged as if to say What do you want me to do about it? as he fended off a series of blows from the front. ‘We have to reinforce the right.’

‘You want me to do it myself’ the duplicarius asked conversationally.

‘What about the reserves?’ Valerius ducked as a spear clattered against his helmet and skidded into the rank behind. Every instinct told him that the pressure on the right flank was growing.

‘Gracilis is in charge. He knows what to do.’

‘I hope…’

The howl of triumph from behind could not have come from any Roman throat, and suddenly the right didn’t matter at all. Because the Britons had done what they should not have been able to, and climbed the east wall in enough force to attack Valerius’s diminishing band of legionaries from the rear.

He glanced over his shoulder and was just in time to see Gracilis’s section of reserves smash into a mass of warriors racing from the northeast corner of the complex.

‘Back,’ he screamed. ‘Back to the temple.’

With even three feet of respite he would have ordered the testudo, but there wasn’t even an inch; every man was shield to shield and sword to sword with two or even three opponents. The only chance was to stay in formation and retreat one step at a time to the temple steps. The efforts of the archers on the temple roof kept the crisis on the right flank from becoming a rout, but he doubted that Gracilis would hold the attack from the rear for more than a few seconds. When he was overcome, the only Romans outside the temple would be dead men.

Foot by agonizing foot Valerius allowed the line to be pushed back. The pressure on his shield was growing unbearable, the scything blows of the British swords threatening to smash even the scutum ’s sturdy structure. Beside him, Lunaris snarled and sweated, cursing his inability to fight back.

Every step they retreated allowed more of Boudicca’s warriors to pour over the wall. The soldiers of any other army would have broken. But these were Romans. Roman legionaries. They knew how to fight like no other. And they knew how to die.

Only a single, tattered rank remained. Those left behind, the dead and the injured, were trampled under the feet of Celts whose battle frenzy increased with each step closer to the temple that symbolized everything they had grown to hate in the long years since Claudius set foot on their land.

By the time Valerius felt the cool shadow cast by the temple roof less than a hundred men remained, exhausted, each bleeding from multiple cuts, scarce able to hold the heavy shields which were the only things keeping them alive. Then a roar from his left told him the inevitable had happened and Gracilis and his men were gone.

In the same moment, the line broke.

It did not really break; it disintegrated. Where a second before there had been a battered but disciplined defence, now a hundred individual legionaries fought for their very existence, trying desperately to stay alive as they backed up the steps towards the temple that was their only hope. In the maelstrom of flailing sword arms and falling bodies Valerius, shieldless now, battled with the rest. He could still see Lunaris close by, with Paulus, Luca and Messor fighting at his side. The big legionary had lost his helmet and was bleeding from a cut on his scalp, but the discipline of a dozen years of service never left him. He cut and thrust with parade-ground efficiency, never using more energy than was necessary, and killing or wounding with every stroke. The men he faced had long since learned to respect his blade and that respect allowed him to move upwards, one step at a time, towards the temple and sanctuary.

Valerius sliced at a barbarian face and moved towards his friend. Before he had taken a step, a pulse seemed to surge through the group of warriors facing him and from their midst burst the biggest Celt he had ever seen. He was one of their champions, over six feet tall, his body covered in blue tattoos intricately woven into whorls and vague animal shapes, and he was drunk on blood and possessed by the battle rage. Wounds scarred his torso but the urge to kill had overwhelmed his senses and drove him up the steps with his spear held before him in two hands.

Valerius saw him come and his mind automatically worked out how to kill him. The spear outreached the sword by several feet, but he knew if he could get past the point he could pluck the giant warrior’s life as easily as plucking a rose. A simple parry to send the spear point past his left shoulder and a back cut to chop the jaw from the snarling face. It was all about speed and timing and he had practised the move a thousand times. But he’d been fighting all this long day and maybe he got careless or maybe he’d used up all his luck. When the moment came, the iron nails of his sandals slipped on the blood-slick marble below his feet and he fell, helpless, on the steps as the tattooed Briton screamed his victory cry and rammed the leaf-shaped blade at his throat.

Paulus saved his life. The signifer launched himself across the stairs and diverted the blow with a cut of his gladius. Then, standing protectively over Valerius, he screamed insults at the Britons, daring them to try again. With a roar, the big warrior took up his challenge and darted forward, jabbing the long spear at the Roman’s eyes. Valerius scrabbled for his sword as a second Briton attacked from the left, forcing Paulus to half turn his shield to fend off the danger. It was only a momentary distraction, but, in battle, moments are the difference between life and death. The jab to the eyes was a feint and Valerius watched in horror as the spear point dropped and slipped past Paulus’s defences before he could parry it. Still his armour might have saved him, but the angle of the attack was such that the iron point found a gap between the plates to take him below the ribs, and the big warrior used his enormous strength to force and twist it deeper as the Roman’s eyes bulged and he gave a grunt of shock.

The barbarian loomed over Valerius, so close the tribune could smell the rank sweat of unwashed body. The muscles of the warrior’s massive neck bulged and he growled like an animal as he rammed the spear home still further into Paulus’s body. Only now did Valerius realize his hand held his sword. With all his strength he stabbed upwards into his enemy’s exposed throat until the point jarred against the bone where his spine met his skull. Crimson blood spurted from the gaping wound and vomited in gouts from the open mouth before the Briton finally let go his death grip on the spear.

Paulus was down, but he still lived, whimpering quietly, with that long shaft buried deep in his guts. Valerius staggered to his feet and stood protectively over his dying comrade. But before the Britons could renew their attack, hands pulled him backwards and Lunaris and Messor charged, screaming, down the steps in an attack that made the enemy hesitate. The momentary respite gave another pair of legionaries the chance to pick up their fallen tent-mate and drag him past the statues and the outer columns towards the temple.

They had one chance, but it was fading with every second. Crazed mobs of warriors gathered where Valerius’s legionaries had fought to the last, hacking at the things on the ground until they were no longer recognizable as human. A Briton raised a still twitching heart in triumph, letting it drip blood on to his face before he tore a piece from it with his teeth. Valerius staggered towards the copper-sheathed doors of the temple with the first pursuers close on his heels and then, with a final glance at the noble head of Claudius that was the centrepiece of the entrance, threw himself inside. Lunaris and Messor were the last to escape, backing in side by side and parrying the swords and spears that slashed at them. The work was so close that three barbarians forced their way inside before the men at the doors could bar them shut. The Celts died, screaming, under a dozen swords.

At last they were safe, and trapped, in the Temple of Claudius the God.