Masters of Rome

CHAPTER III

The sun glowed deep golden as it dropped beneath the covering cloudbank’s western extreme, out towards the horizon. Warm evening light brushed the undulating belly of the low, grey blanket with colour as it dispensed a gentle drizzle; the drops were back-lit by the dying orange rays in a way that Vespasian had never seen before. The weather on this island continually surprised him.

But the quirks of the weather were not what interested him as he sat on his horse surveying the silhouetted hill-fort that the day’s march had brought them to, just a quarter of a mile distant, somewhat detached from a line of hills running to the southwest. ‘We’ll lose a lot of men trying to take that. Any news from your scouts, Cogidubnus?’

The Britannic King shook his head. ‘I’m beginning to think that they won’t be coming back; they would have arrived here about two hours before us. It’s starting to look like they’ve been taken prisoner or killed.’

‘What about the scouts in the north; have you heard from them yet?’

‘No, a message should have arrived today. I admit I’m worried.’

Vespasian contemplated that news for a few moments. In the two years since Cogidubnus had surrendered to Rome he had proved his loyalty and Vespasian had come to trust him; if he was concerned about something it was as well to take notice. ‘Have you sent more out?’

‘Yes, with orders to report back at first light.’

Vespasian nodded his approval and looked again at the three great ditches that encircled the hill’s irregular, triangular summit separated by four concentric earthen ramparts, each the height of a man, the innermost being topped with a stout palisade; a few heads could be seen peering towards the Romans. ‘We’ll never get men across all those obstacles and up to the wall with scaling ladders.’ He examined the main gate in the northeast corner and then looked at the lesser one in the southwest. ‘It’ll have to be coordinated assaults on the two gates if they don’t see sense and surrender.’

‘I ain’t never known a savage see sense,’ Magnus muttered, not altogether to himself. ‘Present company excepted, obviously,’ he added quickly as Cogidubnus shot him a dark look. ‘Not that I think you’re …’ He trailed off before getting himself embroiled in a matter of honour.

Vespasian glared at his friend.

Cogidubnus snorted and turned his attention back to the fort. ‘Even then it would be a bloody day; a force of a few hundred could easily hold both gates if there’re no diversionary attacks on the ramparts.’

Vespasian assessed the problem ahead and saw that the Briton was right. ‘Then we go in at night.’

‘If Caratacus is in there then he will have a very good opportunity to escape in the confusion of the attack under the cover of dark.’

‘Do you think he’s still there?’

‘I doubt it; he would have left at first light, knowing that we would be following him here.’

‘I think so too; so therefore balancing the slight risk of Caratacus slipping through our fingers against the amount of Roman lives that we’ll save by going in at night, it’s worth the risk. That way we’ve a chance of surprising them and also getting a cohort or two to the walls if we can find a weaker spot in the defences.’

As they scanned the earthworks for such a place the gates opened; three men were led out by half a dozen warriors. They were thrown to their knees, shouting at the tops of their voices in words unintelligible at that distance. Three simultaneous flashes in the evening sun silenced them and their bodies slumped forward as their heads rolled away down the hill.

Cogidubnus turned to Vespasian, anger burning in his eyes. ‘We have our answer. They were good men.’

Vespasian pulled on his mount’s reins, turning back towards the labouring legionaries of the II Augusta who were now constructing a new camp having force-marched all day. ‘A night assault it is then.’

‘The lads have been told to get some sleep now, it’ll be a short night,’ Maximus reported to Vespasian in the crowded interior of the lamp-washed praetorium tent.

Vespasian glanced around the shadowed faces of his officers. ‘If you’re all happy with the plan and your orders, then I suggest that you do the same, gentlemen. There’ll be a silent reveille at the sixth hour of the night; any man making unnecessary noise will be dealt with severely. Primus pilus, make sure that your centurions understand that; I know it goes against their nature to give orders in anything quieter than a bellow but tonight they’re going to have to try.’

‘They’ve all been told, legate, and are all prepared to bring down righteous retribution on malingerers with no more than a purr.’

‘Good. So to recap, the four cohorts taking part in the initial phase of the assault, as well as the Hamians, will muster in the Via Principalis immediately after the reveille. The rest of the legion and the auxiliaries will stand-to in the camp ready to march out and form up in front of it in support once the assault has begun and noise won’t be an issue. The gates will be opened at the seventh hour, after the moon has set, and all five cohorts will be in position an hour after that, giving us four hours until dawn to take the fort. Goodnight, gentlemen.’

With a chorus of crashed salutes the officers turned and made their way from the tent. Vespasian slumped down onto his chair and rubbed his eyes, dismissing any thought of writing his report to Plautius about yesterday’s storming of the hill-fort.

‘I’ve warmed you some wine, master,’ Hormus said, stepping out from the private quarters.

‘What? Oh, put it on the desk.’ Vespasian watched his slave approach; his eyes were lowered and everything about his demeanour spoke of subservience. ‘Do you think that I believe you lied to me about the lamp?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think, master; it won’t alter anything.’

‘But surely you don’t want me to think that you are untrustworthy?’

Hormus placed the cup before his master. ‘No, but if you believe me to be so then how can I change that?’

‘By telling me the truth now.’

‘Master, before you bought me I had three owners in my life; my first master, in Lugdunum, in Gaul, used to bugger me brutally from almost before I can remember-’

‘But he was probably your natural father!’ Vespasian cut in aghast.

Hormus raised his eyes slightly so that he almost met Vespasian’s. ‘Whatever I was to him in blood had no bearing upon how he treated me or my sister.’

‘You have a sister?’

‘I did; whether I still have, I don’t know.’

Vespasian picked up the cup and blew on its hot contents. ‘Tell me.’

‘After my mother died our master lost interest in us as he always used to abuse us in front of her; it made it more enjoyable for him. With her gone we were nothing more than two extra mouths to feed, so he sold us. Where my sister ended up I don’t know; she was a couple of years older than me so old enough for the brothels.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘I was sold to an elderly man who not only buggered me but forced me to do the same to him and whipped me if I was unable to. He died two years ago and his sons sold off his slaves as a job lot to the slave-trader, Theron. He locked me and twenty others in an airless wagon and transported us to Britannia to sell at a premium to officers in the invasion force who would rather not have freshly enslaved locals near them, for obvious reasons.’

‘And it was quite a premium that he did charge, the rogue. But what has all this to do with telling me the truth about the lamp?’

Hormus met Vespasian’s eyes for the first time in their relationship. ‘Because, master, in the months since you bought me I have never been happier in my whole life.’ His gaze dropped back down to the floor. ‘You don’t abuse me or beat me; you don’t starve me nor do you give me a cold stone floor to sleep on, and my duties are not arduous. Why would I risk that happiness by lying to you about anything, let alone something as trivial as whether or not I lit a lamp?’

Vespasian looked at his slave, realising that he had never before really noted the young man’s features. He would be able to describe him, yes, but only in broad terms; the fact that his thin nose was slightly upturned, his eyes hazel, his chin weak and slightly undershot beneath a patchy, black beard trimmed without any special attention to regularity had not previously pierced his consciousness. It was an unremarkable face, the face of a man of no consequence, the face of a man whose definition of happiness was made up entirely of negatives. ‘I believe you, Hormus.’

Hormus looked up again; his eyes were moist and a faint smile quivered on his lips. ‘Thank you, master.’

Vespasian waved the gratitude away and instantly regretted the gesture as the smile faded and Hormus’ chest heaved with a suppressed sob. ‘I’m sorry, Hormus; I understand why you feel thankful. Now, enough of this; if you didn’t light the lamp and if you are sure that no one came into my room then how do you explain it?’

‘I can’t, master. All I can say is that my mother told me that when something strange happens it is a god trying to warn us about something and that you should pay special attention to anything that seems not quite right.’

Vespasian thought about this for a few moments, sipping his drink. ‘I suppose that could make some sort of sense,’ he mused eventually. ‘A god, one of my gods, perhaps my guardian god, Mars, would have the power to do that; it’s well known that the gods can manifest themselves. It’s a lot of trouble to go to just to frighten me, but to warn me, now that’s a different matter. What sort of signs have you had?’

Hormus looked momentarily confused. ‘Me, master? What god is going to bother with the likes of me; what god even knows I exist? But a man like you, a powerful man, would easily come to their attention and if you have made a big mistake or overlooked something then it would make sense that they should try to warn you. My mother knew this because she was the daughter of a great man — but he was also a foolish man; she told me that twice he had received a warning from the gods, both times after he’d had a conversation with his younger brother. One time it was a cup that shattered just as he picked it up and the other time it was a torch lighting itself, just as your lamp did. His wife, my grandmother, told him that it was a god trying to warn him that he was making a mistake in trusting his brother and that he should kill him or, at the very least, exile him. He took no notice of her or the god and laughed the whole thing off. The next time the brother came, he came with many men and killed him and his wife and sold all his children into slavery.’

‘So you’re the grandson of a chieftain?’

‘No, master, I’m the son of a slave woman.’

‘Have it your own way.’ Vespasian downed the rest of his wine and stood. ‘I’m going to bed now, wake me in three hours.’

‘Yes, master.’

‘And thank you, Hormus; I shall think about what happened yesterday and see if there is anything that a god might take the time to warn me about.’

Vespasian shivered; his breath steamed in the cold night air as he stood, watching rank upon rank of shadowy figures emerging from the camp’s gates. Even though the men had been given orders to muffle their equipment, tying rags around their scabbards and hobnailed sandals, there was still the occasional metallic clank or jangle that made Vespasian look nervously towards the dark shadow that was the fortified hill. The many fires within the settlement had all died down, leaving just a few trails of smoke rising as darker smudges in a sky that was almost completely devoid of light.

‘It’s a nice night for it,’ a voice whispered behind him.

Vespasian turned to see the dim outline of his friend. ‘What are you doing here, Magnus?’

‘I haven’t had a decent fight for a couple of years so I thought that I’d come and join in this one.’

‘Then you’re mad, risking your life when you could be in bed.’

‘Not as mad as them in the fort; if there are really as few as we think then it’s only a matter of time before we get in and they get dead. I don’t understand them; they actually goaded us into attacking them by killing the scouts in front of us.’

‘Yes, they know that they can expect no quarter now.’

‘So why do it, then? They could have just held out for a few days and then negotiated their surrender once honour had been satisfied. It’s almost as if they want us to kill them.’

‘There is something strange about their behaviour; I can’t quite put my finger on it.’ He told Magnus of Hormus’ theory about the lamp lighting itself.

‘A warning, eh? Well, I suppose it’s possible. The question is: what’s the mistake that you’re making? Is it about attacking this place in general? Or about attacking it at night? Or is it something completely different, like something to do with Sabinus, for example?’

‘I don’t know; but something is nagging me.’

The uneasy feeling continued to gnaw at Vespasian as he advanced with the first cohort to the base of the hill below the northeastern gate a hundred uphill paces away. He waited in the dark, running through the events of the last couple of days in his mind, as the other cohorts moved silently into position: Valens with the second away to his left below the southwestern gate, and Maximus with two Gallic auxiliary cohorts and the Hamians filling the ground between them. From the fort there came no sound; but the relief that Vespasian felt at still being in the position to surprise the defenders was tempered by his inability to exactly place his cause for concern. Unable to discuss the matter further with Magnus, standing next to him, owing to his order of complete silence, he was obliged to wait in fretful contemplation of the puzzle until he heard Valens’ signal telling him that the furthest cohort was in place.

A thrice-repeated series of owl hoots echoed through the night; it was the sign that Vespasian had been waiting for. He nodded to Tatius who raised his arm and slowly brought it down; the signal was repeated by his brother centurions and the first cohort, with scaling ladders at the ready, moved off at the double up the slope.

The assault had begun.

Struggling to keep their footing in the near-total darkness, the men of the legion’s élite cohort increased their speed as they passed through the gap in the outermost ditch; it was now imperative to get their ladders up and men onto the palisade before too many of the defenders were roused from their slumber. Vespasian kept pace with them, with Magnus wheezing at his side, as they ascended in virtual silence; he kept his eyes fixed on the dim outline of the defences but no movement was evident nor were any cries of alarm raised. He pressed on, his heart pounding, as the cohort filed through the gaps in the next couple of ditches, and still the alarm had not been raised within the fort. Then he remembered the urgency with which the three prisoners had been shouting before their execution.

Shit.

He swerved away from the cohort and stopped dead.

‘What is it?’ Magnus puffed, pulling up next to him.

‘There’s no one in there! That’s what Cogidubnus’ men were trying to warn us about before they were executed; they weren’t pleading for their lives, they were shouting at us.’

‘What about the men who killed them?’

‘They are the only ones inside; enough men to light all those fires to make it look as if there’s a whole war band in there. They’ve sacrificed themselves to draw us into the trap; the threat’s from the north. I’ve got to get back. Find Tatius, and tell him to form the cohort up on the slope facing north as soon as he can.’

‘Will he take an order from me?’

‘He’d better or we could all end up dead.’ Vespasian pushed his way back against the oncoming surge of legionaries until he reached the optio of the sixth century of the first cohort in his position at the rear of his men. ‘Optio, get a message to Valens to forget the assault and to have the second cohort take up position outside the southern gate, facing west; he’ll get reinforcements and fresh orders soon.’

The man stared at him in incomprehension for a moment.

‘Now!’

The optio saluted and raced off as the cohort came to a halt and ladders were thrown up the wall.

As the first men began the ascent of the palisade to either side of the gate a long booming note rumbled from a cornu; its call was taken up by the cornua of other cohorts. To his right, Vespasian saw the glow of the Hamians’ oil-soaked portable braziers igniting; within a few moments hundreds of fire-arrows were streaking through the dark leaving trails of sparks in their wake as they disappeared over the walls into the hill-fort. No screams came from within as the Romans raised their voices into a battle roar.

Cursing the fact that he had, for silence’s sake, left his legionary cavalry in the camp, Vespasian ran as he had never run before.

Almost tripping over his own feet, he hurtled back down the hill, grateful for the faint light provided by the Hamians’ repeated, but wasted, volleys. After a lung-tearing final burst across the flat ground from the base of the hill, he came to the camp as the third cohort was marching out at the head of the rest of the legion.

Spotting their primus pilus, Vespasian slowed and turned, falling in next to him, catching his breath. ‘Take your men at the double and form up facing north at the base of the slope. The first cohort will arrive on your left flank and the rest of the legion will form up on you; we will be taking a defensive position, understand?’

‘What’s happening, sir?’

Vespasian glanced to his right; and then he saw them coming out of the north. ‘That’s what’s happening. Now go!’

In the distance a dozen or so faintly luminescent, tiny figures were seemingly gliding slowly towards them; behind them was a shadow, darker even than the night. The primus pilus took one look, bellowed an order, a cornu boomed twice and the cohort sped off with a jangling of gear and regular pounding footsteps across the dark ground. The rest of the legion streamed along behind them, orange flickers from the fires now burning up in the fort playing on their burnished iron armour and helmets.

Vespasian ran on to where the legion’s cavalry detachment and his five thin-stripe tribunes were mounting, having walked their horses out of the camp. He pushed the youngest one out of the way. ‘I need this, Marcius.’ Leaping into the saddle he shot a glance at the most senior of the young tribunes. ‘Blassius, now get this right: ride to Maximus and tell him to bring the Hamians and one of the Gallic cohorts to the bottom of the hill and then you take the other Gallic cohort round to the southern gate and link up with Valens and the second cohort; if he’s not there get him out of the fort. Tell him that we’re under attack from the north and he’s to prevent any attempt to outflank us. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If they don’t try and take our flank, he’s to work his way around the fort and come at the bastards from the west; I’ll send the Batavians to him. Report to me when you’ve done that. Now ride!’

With the briefest of salutes Blassius spun his horse on its hind legs and took off.

Vespasian glanced north over the heads of the legionaries still spilling out of the camp; he shivered. The spectral forms were less than two hundred paces off, their arms raised and waving. Behind them, now dully illuminated by the blazing fires on top of the hill, ran thousands of darkling figures, stretched out to either side and fading into the night.

Vespasian turned back to his tribunes. ‘Caepio, find the other two Gallic cohorts and tell them to prevent any of the bastards coming around behind the camp, and tell Cogidubnus to bring his Britannic auxiliaries to me as soon as he can.’ Without waiting for an acknowledgement he looked down at the young man he had unhorsed. ‘Find the Batavian Cavalry, Marcius, and send them after Blassius and then get yourself a horse and bring the Gallic auxiliary cavalry to the bottom of the hill. Sergius and Vibius, you follow me.’ Cruelly kicking his mount into action, he sped away with the remaining tribunes and legionary cavalry following as a howl of hatred issued from the night-shrouded host bearing down on them.

The pace of the II Augusta’s deployment was now frantic as the threat closed but Vespasian sensed that it was not fast enough as he raced along the column of doubling cohorts. Reaching the front he glanced to his right: the Britons were less than a hundred paces out and their pace seemed to have increased. Ahead he could see the first cohort forming up on the slope but to the left the Hamians and the Gauls were still a quarter of a mile away. ‘Turn and face!’ he bellowed at the third cohort’s primus pilus.

The centurion shouted the order, raising his arm in the air, a cornu rumbled and the cohort’s standard rocked from side to side; the third cohort came to a standstill a hundred paces short of the first’s right flank.

There was no time to fill the gap.

Along the column the deep call of the cornu was echoed and the remaining cohorts halted and turned to face the enemy as the first long-range javelins struck. The luminescent figures could now clearly be made out as matted-haired, long-robed druids whose filthy garments glowed dimly in patches with an uncanny light; in their hands they brandished writhing snakes. Next to the central druid ran a huge man in a winged helmet shouting his triumph at having caught the legion deploying: Caratacus. Caratacus, the Britannic chieftain whom no Roman had seen since his defeat at the battle of the Afon Cantiacii two years previously; since then he had struck terror into every legionary in the new province for his ruthless irregular resistance to Rome’s conquest. With ambushes, lethal harrying of supply columns, patrols and outposts and pitiless usage of prisoners and collaborators, Caratacus had more Roman blood on his hands than any other Briton on this island; and now he was about to cover himself in more. Vespasian realised that Caratacus had played him all along.

Vespasian led on the one hundred and twenty men of the legion’s cavalry detachment to cover the gap as the javelin shower intensified, drumming down with a rapid staccato beat onto the upturned shields of the II Augusta.

With the Britons now no more than thirty paces from contact, Vespasian reached the right flank of the first cohort who had just completed a scrambled deployment four ranks deep. He slowed his mount. ‘Turn right and form line!’ The lituus blared and the troopers reined their horses in and around, turning from a column two abreast into a line two deep. Without waiting for the decurions to dress the line, Vespasian drew his sword, raised his arm and roared, ‘Charge!’

As one, the legion’s cavalry surged forward, taking their wild-eyed, frothing mounts directly into a canter and then quickly accelerating them into a gallop, swiftly closing the distance between them and the warriors heading for the gap in the Roman line and the chance to cut it in two with fatal consequence. Missiles rained down on them, felling a dozen horses as if an invisible tripwire had been placed in their path.

‘Release!’ Vespasian yelled, his voice raised an octave by the tension in his chest and belly. At a low trajectory, more than one hundred sleek javelins hissed towards the oncoming front rank of Britons, thumping into them, punching many back with arms flailing and mouths gaping with sudden agony. To either side hundreds of pila hurtled from the Roman ranks. The druids flung their squirming serpents with shrill curses at the legionaries as they drew their swords; they then stopped still, letting the warriors behind, led by a baying Caratacus, engulf them and take the full force of the barbed-pointed, lead-weighted weapons flitting across the gap between the two forces. Back and down many went, but the survivors dashed on for the final twenty paces, following with glee their leader who had worked the first chance in two years of annihilating one of Rome’s killing machines.

Vespasian bellowed incoherently, urging his horse on as troopers drew their spathae and tensed their thighs around their mounts, bracing for impact. The joy of the warriors charging for the gap vanished and they cried in terror as the dim shapes of horsemen thundered towards them, threatening the horrific death of infantry caught in the open by cavalry. The men in the front ranks wavered and slowed, but the weight of numbers behind them pressed them ever forward; an instant later they collided in a maelstrom of human and bestial limbs. Vespasian swept his sword horizontally, cleaving heads and raised arms as if scything ripe barley as his mount ploughed on, head raised in fright, neighing shrilly, trampling every man in its path, leaving them broken and twisted. As the cavalry crunched into the fracturing Britannic line their momentum decreased violently; the horses shied from desperately wielded spears and swords and the troopers found themselves fighting in pockets, having failed to keep formation in the desperation of their disaster-averting charge. Vespasian reared his mount, using its flailing forelegs as weapons as he punched and cut with his short infantry gladius at the howling warriors around him, slicing open chests and splitting faces as the troopers to either side slashed their longer cavalry spathae to greater effect; but now, with the initial drive of the charge soaked up, the infantry began to regain the advantage of numbers. Without the benefit of a shield-wall the cavalry were in danger of being overwhelmed; many were ripped from their mounts.

Then a massive communal grunt of exertion rose from the left as the first cohort made contact and the brutal, mechanical sword work of the Roman war machine began to the accompaniment of the shrieks of eviscerated men. A similar sound followed from the right, but much amplified, as the rest of the legion slammed into the tribesmen who had so suddenly appeared out of the night.

Now the killing began in earnest.

Vespasian parried a wild cut from a long slashing-sword, its inferior quality iron buckling in the spark-strewn impact; kicking his right leg forward, he slammed his hobnailed sole into the wielder’s face, crushing the nose and punching the warrior back into the men behind, knocking them off balance. Taking advantage of the momentary lack of adversaries, he pulled his horse back and signalled for the second-rank trooper to take his place. Looking around he saw that the Hamians and Gauls behind them were now close enough to relieve them. Just to his right he glimpsed Sergius, one of the two tribunes whom he had brought with him, dragged screaming from his horse. Now was the time to withdraw his cavalry before too many more succumbed in what was, essentially, an infantry fight. They had served their purpose; the young man had not died in vain.

‘Disengage!’ he called to the liticen.

The shrill call of the lituus rose above the surrounding clamour; Vespasian urged his horse back towards the Hamians as the surviving troopers pulled away from the surging Britons, if they could. The warriors began to follow the retreating cavalry, mercilessly cutting down those still trapped in their midst, as they saw once again the gap open in the Roman line.

But the prefect of the Hamian archers knew what was required of him as he saw Vespasian galloping towards him yelling and pointing at the obvious danger. He immediately halted his command thirty paces from the gap; as the retreating troopers swerved left and right out of the Hamians’ line of sight the eastern archers let fly a volley of shocking, close-range intensity. The front two ranks shot directly at the Britons racing through the rend in the Roman formation, drilling their shafts deep into the lead warriors, twisting them to the ground, long hair wrapping around agonised faces, whilst the rear two ranks aimed high; the second low-trajectory volley from the front ranks hit as their arrows poured down from above to bring the surge to an abrupt halt as if it had slammed into an unseen wall. A third and fourth volley, each with fewer than five heartbeats between them, beat the Britons back as if the wall itself was shunting forward, leaving only the dead behind it. Suffering grievous losses both from the head-on barrage and the metal-tipped hail pelting from the sky the warriors turned to flee, leaving the ground carpeted with their dead.

But their retreat exposed a new threat, a threat that made the blood run cold in all who beheld it. A dozen druids were revealed as the last of the warriors escaped to the safety of their shield-wall; they stood motionless, chanting, unheard above the ringing resonance of battle. But it was not their presence that chilled the heart, nor was it the fact that despite the continued volleys of the Hamians not one fletched missile touched the softly glowing figures; it was another presence, a presence unseen but not unfelt, a presence that surrounded them, protected them and exuded an air of malevolence that caused despair to well up within all who suffered it.

Vespasian gasped as if the air was in short supply as he gazed upon what he could not comprehend. Verica’s words telling him of the druids while sailing back from the Isle of Vectis almost two years previously came back to him:

‘When my people came to this island — the bards deem it to be about twenty-five generations ago — the people we supplanted worshipped different gods; they had built great henges in their honour, ancient beyond reckoning. The druids dedicated these places to our gods but still the presence and power of some of the island’s gods persisted and they demanded worship. The druids took on that responsibility and uncovered their dark secrets and rituals; they keep the knowledge to themselves and they’re welcome to it; but what I know of it fills me with dread.’

Was this then that power that the old King had spoken of? That ‘cold power that cannot be used for good’?

For a few moments there was an audible lull in the fighting as the malice emanating from the eerie company pierced the consciousness of both Roman and Briton. The Hamians’ archery tailed off; the druids began to move forward.

Vespasian roused himself from the dread-induced paralysis. If the power that the druids wielded was allowed to carry all before them then the line would be split asunder and the II Augusta would soon cease to exist. He kicked his reluctant horse onward, heading directly for the luminous group of priests as they slowly moved forward protected by an invisible aura; behind them the Britons had started to advance again.

Suppressing the horror welling up inside him, Vespasian screamed incoherently, brandishing his sword as he closed on the druids; such was their concentration on their incantation that they took no notice of the oncoming threat. He urged on his increasingly unwilling mount, ready to swipe the head from the lead druid’s shoulders, but when he pulled his arm back for the killing blow he felt himself suddenly rise as if he had been hauled out of the saddle by an unseen hand from above. His horse reared, screeching; it toppled backwards as if violently shoved and Vespasian flew from its back. He landed with spine-jarring force amongst the dead; the air was pushed from his lungs and his eyes lost focus. As his vision cleared he saw the druids coming on in the glow of their own luminescence and the flicker of the conflagration now raging in the hill-fort: old and young, dark-haired or grey, all wore a symbol of the sun around their necks and had an image of the crescent moon hanging from their belts. All chanted in unison and all stared at him with cold satisfaction as he lay catching his breath on the ground, and Vespasian knew, with profound certainty, that they had come for him; they had drawn him towards them in a reckless charge.

Vespasian felt a chill grasp at his feet as the druids approached and the malevolent atmosphere enshrouding them began to slip over him; he stared in terror, unable to move, although he instinctively knew that not to do so would mean yielding to the power that was gradually creeping up his body. He screamed ‘No!’ repeatedly, deafening himself, and yet no sound came from his lips. He could see nothing else but the hunger of the druids for him alone; he could hear no sound from the battle that he knew was still raging. The chill had become so intense that his teeth were now chattering and his heartbeat, which should have pounded with fear, decreased. A flash crossed his vision from the right and he felt a jolt in the power, now slithering up his thighs, freezing his bones to the marrow. His muscles spasmed in shock and his chattering teeth clenched in sudden pain; his head jerked back and his jaw relaxed. The chill abruptly disappeared. He could hear again, he realised, and the sound was the cries of men dying in torment, men dying very close by; and mingled with their cries was a word, shouted repeatedly: ‘Taranis!’

Pulling his arm from over his eyes he saw, as if Time’s chariot had slowed, a sword rising through the air, flashing reflected firelight, trailing dark gobbets of blood, as it left a head spinning in its wake above the robed body to which it had once belonged, standing as rigid as a statue. Mesmerised, he followed the sword’s arc as it carved through the air to slice into the cheek of another druid, exploding his teeth from his mouth as his jaw slumped open to hang by a few gory sinews that vibrated with the inarticulate, bestial roar that issued from the gaping throat. Cogidubnus kicked the stricken man aside and slammed his weapon, point first, into the chest of the next druid; the rest turned and ran. Vespasian came back to his full senses; he grasped his sword lying next to him and jumped to his feet as the Britannic King despatched the rearmost druid with a savage, double-handed cut across the small of his back, severing the spine and slicing the kidneys in two.

Vespasian looked past the fleeing druids; the Britons were wavering, unwilling to advance into the gap now that the spell their priests had woven was broken; to either side the fighting had resumed with renewed intensity, the cold malice now replaced by hot blood-lust. ‘Cogidubnus! With me!’ Vespasian grabbed his horse’s reins, leapt into the saddle and urged the beast away over the carpet of dead, out of the line of the Hamians’ aim as they, as if coming out of a trance, prepared to release another volley.

The King chased after him as the shafts began to fly, picking off the remaining druids and felling many of the warriors who had moved closer.

‘Thank you, my friend,’ Vespasian croaked, once they were clear. ‘I’ll wait till later for an explanation.’

Cogidubnus grimaced. ‘It will be hard for a Roman to understand.’

‘Try me.’ Vespasian pointed to the Britannic auxiliaries formed up behind the second cohort, along with the Gallic cavalry with Marcius at their head; behind them the last three cohorts of the II Augusta had deployed in a second line as a reserve. ‘But in the meantime have your men ready, I’ll need them soon.’ With a nod, Vespasian kicked his horse and drove it towards the Hamians who were keeping up a relentless barrage of missiles at the shield-wall across the gap. But Vespasian knew that arrows would not hold the Britons back forever; arrows would eventually run out.

‘Open your ranks to let the Gauls through,’ he called to the Hamian prefect as he sped past, ‘and then get your men onto the fort’s palisade.’ He just caught the man’s hurried salute as he pushed on towards the Gallic infantry, directly behind. A series of cornua rumbles told him that his order had been promptly obeyed as he came to a skidding halt next to the cohort’s command post.

Identifying the prefect as the same man who had let Caratacus through the line just two days previously, he resolved to forgive him if he played his part well. ‘Prefect Galeo, take your men through the Hamians and link up with the first and second cohorts.’

‘Yes, sir! Do you want-’

‘Don’t talk about it, do it!’

The prefect swallowed and crashed a salute. He bellowed the order to advance and the eight hundred Gauls moved forward at the double. Within a few moments they were filtering through the Hamians’ formation; the archers ceased their volleys as they passed and then turned towards the fort once they were clear.

As the Gauls reached the open ground they broke into a charge, preventing the Britons from encroaching too far forward now that the arrows had stopped flying. Roaring the battle cry of their forefathers they threw themselves at the Britons’ shield-wall with a mighty clash of iron.

The gap had been plugged but as Vespasian looked along the Roman line he saw that, in the centre, it had started to buckle and the reserve cohorts were retreating.

Once again digging his heels into the bruised flanks of his mount, Vespasian forced the tiring beast into action; speeding past the depleted legionary cavalry now rallying next to their Gallic comrades he caught sight of his prefect of the camp. ‘Maximus! With me!’

The veteran spun his horse and accelerated it after his commander.

Within a hundred pounding heartbeats, Vespasian reached the first reserve legionary cohort as the bulge in the line deepened and the clamour from the Britannic host intensified. ‘What the fuck are you doing marching away?’ he roared at the primus pilus. ‘Get your cohort in to support the centre with its weight.’

‘But you just sent a legionary cavalry messenger with orders for us to fall back, sir.’

‘Fall back? With the line threatening to break? I gave no such order; now, get forward before we’re all dead.’

The centurion saluted and bellowed the order to turn and advance. Vespasian rode on up the reserve line of a further retreating two cohorts, halting them. ‘You stay here with these cohorts, Maximus. We’re holding a defensive position. Hold the line at all costs, understand?’

Maximus nodded and grinned. ‘How long do you expect us to hold?’

Vespasian offered a quick prayer to Mars to guide him in the art of war as he turned his horse. ‘Until I hear from Valens and can contrive a counter-attack that will break the Britons’ will.’