Wounds of Honour

12

Frontinius led his centurions down the hunter’s path at the trot. In a minute or so their centuries would follow them down the through the trees, and in those few seconds he needed to lay the foundations of a successful defence. If, he mused humourlessly, while his mind worked on their options for defending an apparently hopeless position, the entire cohort not simply dying in the first barbarian assault could be termed a success. Ten yards from the forest’s edge he stopped and gathered his officers around him, their faces betraying the same grim determination fixed in his own mind.

‘Brothers, there isn’t time for any inspirational stuff or exhortations to heroism. Put simply, we’ve been sent to fight and likely to die in order to buy time for the other legions to jump those blue-nosed bastards from behind and put it to them the old-fashioned way. Your men are going to realise that soon enough, when they see thousands of men coming up the hill for their heads. They will look to you for an example. Give them one. Show them a grim face, but not despair. Lead your centuries with aggression, but keep them disciplined. If we do this right we can still pull a victory out of this disaster, but that depends solely on us. We are now the most important ten men on this battlefield — so let’s live up to that burden in the next hour.’

He paused, looking at each man to take a gauge of their resolve. Good enough.

‘Orders. The cohort will come down this path in number order with the Fifth at the rear and the Ninth in their place in the centre, the prefect will make sure of that. Take your centuries down the slope to the line I point out to you and set up for defence, two men deep and no more, three-foot spacing per man. We’re lucky that the wood curves down on both sides to meet our flanks, so we can anchor the line off the trees. Get the ground in front of you dirty as quickly as possible, and get your caltrops out straight after that. Speaking of trees… Bear?’

The big man stepped forward.

‘Your axemen will be last down the path. Take them to left and right and make me an abatis as fast as you can, three rows of fallen trees deep all the way from each end of the line back round to the path, but leave the path clear of obstruction. When the obstacles are in place, widen the path enough to let four men down it abreast. In the unlikely event of our being reinforced I’d like the way in behind us wide enough for a cohort to move down it at speed. Everyone clear? And remember, brothers, win or lose, this day will be sung about long after the rain washes our blood away. Let’s make it a story worth telling.’

The Tungrians exploded out of the wood on to the open ground, the centuries hurrying down to the line pointed out by Frontinius as they cleared the trees. The First Spear barked at his centurions to speed up their deployment as he pointed each century to its place, aware that the tribesmen, pausing in their assault on the shrinking remnant of the Sixth Legion to watch the new development, could turn and charge towards them at any second. The wood behind the cohort echoed with the growing racket of eighty axes working furiously on the tree-felling that would defend their flanks and rear. Each tree was under attack by two of the 10th Century’s men, as they laboured with expert blows to drop it neatly into position with its branches facing outwards, presenting an impassable obstacle. Once the line was established, each end anchored in the trees to either side as the wood curved around their defence, he gave a small sigh of relief and shouted his next command.

‘Get that slope dirtied up!’

The cohort’s long line marched a dozen paces down the gentle slope, then stopped, the troops fishing under their groin protectors to urinate on to the grass. Selected men ran to the small stream that ran through their new position and filled their helmets with water, carrying the load carefully back to their places in the line before emptying the liquid on to the ground. On command they stamped and twisted with their hobnailed boots, digging at the wet ground beneath their feet, ignoring the spray of acidic-smelling mud that spattered their lower legs and retreating gradually back towards their former positions to leave a five-yard strip of ground in front of their line an oozing mess. Frontinius ignored the drama taking place below them as the 6th Legion’s surviving troops huddled into three ever dwindling groups. With the ground to their front made treacherously slippery, he called for the last element of their defence.

‘Obstacles and tribuli!’

The centuries mustered the heavy five-foot-long staves each man had carried from the camp, each one sharpened to a fire-hardened point at both ends, and lashed them into giant obstacles, each formed of three stakes tied together with rope. Bags full of the small iron tribuli were strewn around the obstacles, presenting sharp points to the feet of the unwary attacker. Julius, standing with his 5th Century behind the main line of defence, both escort to the cohort’s standard and tactical reserve, turned to speak to his chosen man.

‘You can keep an eye on this lot. I’m going down to the front to get a better view and have a chat with my young Roman friend. I see no reason why he should get all the fun.’

He strode down the slope, clapping an arm around Marcus’s shoulders and pointing out across the warband’s presently scattered force. Lowering his head to the younger man’s ear, he spoke quietly, a gentle smile on his face.

‘Well, Centurion, there they are. Twenty thousand angry blue-faced men who will very shortly come up this buttock of a hill to take our heads. Are you ready to die with your men?’

Marcus nodded grimly.

‘Ready enough. But before they take my head, I’ll send a good number to meet Cocidius before me.’

Julius laughed, slapping him delightedly on the back.

‘And you don’t mind if I stay for the fun? I can’t stand being stuck back guarding that bloody statue while you get all the glory. And I might be of some use when the shit starts flying…’

Marcus nodded, but raised a finger in mock admonishment.

‘As long as you contain your contribution to swordplay, and the occasional piece of advice, it’s a deal. If you want to command the scout century, make sure you come second in the competition next year.’ A horn sounded far out across the battlefield, and the milling tribesmen hacking at the remnants of the 6th Legion’s cohorts pulled back in temporary truce. Silence gradually fell across the field, the panting Britons taking an opportunity to get their breath, tend to their wounded and remove their dead and dying from the bloodied grass. Trapped behind the unmoving wall of tribesmen, the remaining legionaries did what they could for their own wounded, little enough in the circumstances.

Sollemnis squinted up the hill over the heads of the barbarians surrounding what was left of his command, making out the auxiliary cohort arrayed in defence across its slope. He tapped his First Spear on the shoulder, pointing at the Tungrians.

‘What… what do you think they’re about up there?’

The other man grimaced as he drew breath, the broken shaft of an arrow protruding through his armour from his abdomen, the price of taking his turn in the cohort’s rapidly contracting perimeter.

‘You’ve got me. Looks like a suicide mission. We’ll be welcoming them to Hades soon enough.’

Sollemnis laughed grimly, hefting his sword.

‘No doubt about that. These bastards are just having a breather, they’ll be back for our heads once they’ve got their wind back.’

He glanced about him.

‘I need to hide this sword, hope that it stays concealed from the blue-noses. Those are Tungrians up there, I can see their banner. My son’s up there with them, and if he lives I want it found and passed to him.’

The other man nodded blankly, too shocked to wonder at the legate’s revelation.

Sollemnis took up a dead soldier’s gladius, testing its balance.

‘This should serve well enough. So many dead men…’

The First Spear coughed painfully and pointed to their dead standard-bearer. An arrow had ripped into the man’s windpipe a few moments before, dropping him to his knees as he choked out his life. The eagle standard still stood proud above his corpse, gripped in lifeless fingers.

‘You’d best stick your sword under Harus’s body… Yes, that ought to do it. They’ll take the eagle, but likely leave his head if you strip away his bearskin. Unlike you and me. We’ll go to our graves in separate pieces…’

Sollemnis smiled again, with genuine amusement this time.

‘It seems we’re to be collector’s items, then?’

‘Roman officers’ heads. No mud hut should be without one.’

A horn rang out with a sudden bray that jerked their attention back to the warband surrounding them. The warriors charged into their pathetic remnant with a revived purpose, their swords rising and falling in flashing arcs as they butchered the exhausted survivors of the 6th Legion’s cohorts. Seeing the man in front of him go down under a powerful sword-blow that cleaved his right arm at the shoulder, Sollemnis stepped into the fight alongside the few men of his bodyguard still standing with a snarl of frustration, striking fast and hard at the man responsible and tasting brief satisfaction as the man’s blood sprayed across his cuirass. The feeling was short lived, his appearance marking him out as a senior officer to the men facing him. He landed one more blow, putting his gladius deep into the chest of another warrior before the man’s comrade thrust a spear deep into his unprotected thigh.

The First Spear, already felled by a sword thrust into his spine, and numbly inert as the barbarians fought to strip him of his fine armour while his life ebbed away into the puddle of blood soaking the ground around him, watched the scene with the unique detachment of a dying man. Sollemnis went down on one knee, helpless to defend himself as the warriors around him gathered for the kill. A sword skidded off his cuirass and sliced into the meat of his right arm, and a vicious blow from a club cracked the elbow joint and left his borrowed sword dangling useless at his side.

‘He’s mine!’

A loud voice sounded over their clamour, a magnificently armoured giant of a man stepping out of the attackers’ midst and calling a halt to their attacks with a simple bellowed command. He batted aside a despairing sword-thrust from the last of the legatus’s bodyguard with his huge round shield, contemptuously smashing the exhausted man to the ground with another punch of the shield’s heavy boss and stabbing down into the space between his helmet’s cheek-pieces. The other warriors backed away, clearly too scared of the man to deny him the moment of triumph. His helmet and armour were coal black, inlaid with intricate silver patterns befitting his obvious status as a tribal champion, heavy iron greaves protecting his thighs and calves to make him almost invulnerable as long as he could carry the weight. Only his booted feet lacked protection.

Sollemnis teetered on the brink of falling on to his face, only willpower keeping him on his knees as he looked up into the swordsman’s face.

‘Go on, then… get it over with, y’bastard.’

His voice was no more than a croak, the words bringing a smile to the big warrior’s face. He hefted his sword in flashing arcs, luxuriating in the pleasure of letting the legatus see what was coming for a long moment before swinging the blade to sever Sollemnis’s head from his shoulders. A warrior retrieved the grisly trophy and carried it back to the legatus’s killer as the Roman’s headless torso toppled slowly sideways to the bloody grass.

As the First Spear’s consciousness slipped from his faltering grasp he saw the big man lift the legion’s eagle standard from the standard-bearer’s lifeless fingers. Stamping down on the standard to separate the spread-winged symbol of imperial power from its pole, he tossed the broken shaft away, took the foot-high statue by one wing and stalked away from the legatus’s headless corpse, back into the warband’s seething mass of men. As the cohort stood helplessly and watched the final destruction of their beleaguered colleagues in the valley below them, a keen-eyed Tungrian called out a sighting, pointing at the valley’s far slope. There, made tiny by the distance, moved a party of three war chariots, accompanied by some fifty native cavalry cantering steadily across the battlefield. A great dragon banner flew proudly in the wind of their passage, its forked tail whipping eagerly from side to side. The prefect stared out at the oncoming horsemen, raising his eyebrows in question.

‘The infamous Calgus, coming for a look?’

Frontinius snorted.

‘Probably wondering what’s going on. I doubt Perennis actually told him that he intended to send us to our doom here, and we’re on rising ground and in good order. Eight hundred spears could make a medium-sized mess of his warband before they roll over us, and slow up his next move. If he’s the strategist I believe him to be, he’ll be worried, keen to take his prizes and get his men away before Second and Twentieth Legions come over the horizon baying for blood. I’d suggest that we might look a little more confident, just to reinforce that nagging doubt. Perhaps we could make some noise?’

Equitius smiled.

‘Hail, Calgus, those about to die salute you?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Very well. Trumpeter, sound “Prepare for defence”.’

The notes sang out sweetly, hanging for a moment over the hill, piercing the continual hammering of axes. After the shortest of pauses Frontinius heard his centurions shouting their commands, then the soft rattle of spears being readied. Frontinius strode forward in front of the cohort, as was his right, drawing his sword and raising it above his head, polished steel shining in the mid-morning sun, then turned back to face the ranks of grim-faced soldiers. He swung the weapon down to waist height, rapping the blade’s flat on to his shield’s scarred surface, repeating the blow to establish a slow but steady rhythm that was easy for the soldiers to follow, as they rapped their spears against the metal bosses of their shields. The noise built quickly, until the pulses of sound echoed distantly back from the slopes about them, a basic, intimidating noise that put heart back into the more timid troops, and swelled the anger of the rest as they stood and waited for the chariots and horsemen to draw close. The dragon banner snaked across the valley floor, drooping limply back on to its standard as the horsemen came to a halt two hundred paces from the Tungrian line.

After a moment a rider came forward, cantering within shouting distance and then stopping to stare across the lines of hard-faced, lean-framed soldiers before calling out his message over their noise.

‘The Lord Calgus suggests negotiation. Man to man, no others to attend. Safety is guaranteed.’

He wheeled his horse, riding back to the knot of barbarian cavalry without a backwards glance. Frontinius glanced over at the Prefect, seeing the Roman’s jawline tighten as his lips pursed to a white line.

‘Well, Prefect, shall we go and meet the man that tarred and torched the inhabitants of Fort Habitus and Roaring River?’

The prefect stared at the distant dragon banner, fitfully prancing in the gusts above his enemy’s bodyguard, for a long moment before responding, putting a hand on his First Spear’s shoulder.

‘The invitation was for one. I’ll go. You’ll stay here, and lead the cohort if this should be some sort of device to distract us, or to capture a senior officer.’

‘And if it is…?’

‘I’ll probably be joining my father rather sooner than I’ve previously thought would be the case. As might “the Lord” Calgus.’

He walked on down the slope, watching his step on the treacherous strip of glutinous mud and stepping carefully to avoid the tribuli’s eager spikes, and came to a stop halfway between his own troops and those of his enemy. A figure had stepped from their ranks as he had, and paced towards the field towards him, carrying a bundle wrapped in a bloodied blanket, until they were close enough for spoken conversation, although beyond sword-thrust.

They stared at each other for a moment, the prefect eying the other man’s bundle with unhappy certainty as to its contents until the Briton chose to break the silence, his Latin unaccented.

‘Well then, Prefect, I am Calgus, lord of the northern tribes. I broke the Wall, I despoiled your forts from Three Mountains all the way south to Noisy Valley and I,’ pointing a thumb back over his shoulder, ‘caught your legatus in a trap of my careful making, with his legion. And now I have something to show you.’

He allowed the bundle to fall open, its contents dropping to the grass at his feet. The highly polished bronze eagle from the 6th Legion’s standard gleamed prettily in the morning sun, its defiant spread-winged pose incongruous under the circumstances, while the helmeted head rolled slowly across the grass and came to a stop on its side, Sollemnis’s dead stare facing out towards the waiting Tungrians. Equitius sank to his haunches, staring intently into his friend’s lifeless eyes. Calgus put his hands on his hips and waited for a response, while the prefect took a long moment before rising silently to his feet. The Roman nodded, still staring down at his friend’s severed head, his face stony, then lifted his gaze to stare back at the waiting Briton.

‘This man was my friend, for more years than I care to recall. We drank together, chased women together in our younger days, and we fought Rome’s enemies together too. Men like you. We tasted the barbarity of combat with men like you, and we rose above it. We kept our humanity, but we always won those battles by doing whatever we had to. So if you’re hoping to unman me with this display you’re going to be disappointed. It’s nothing less than I expected, and nothing less than I would have done in your place. But it changes nothing.’

He took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders.

‘So, Calgus, let’s get this over with. I am Prefect Septimus Equitius of the 1st Tungrian Cohort. I found your cattle in front of the Hill and burned them to deny your men their flesh and prevent your attack on my fortress. I lured your cavalry from the cover of the forest for the Petriana to destroy, and I,’ and he in turn pointed back over his own shoulder, ‘am going to keep your warband here for long enough that the rest of our army will fall on them and utterly destroy them.’

‘Tungrians? Tungria lies over the water, Prefect, closer to Gaul than to Britain. Those men are Brigantes, my people, not yours.’

‘I think you’ll find otherwise if you’re unwise enough to send warriors up that slope to meet them. Local born they may be, but their training and discipline are Roman. I think you know what that means.’

They shared a quiet smile, a spark of communication across the wind-whipped ground. The prefect pulled his cloak tighter about him, seeking to keep out the wind’s questing fingers.

‘Come on, Calgus, let’s drop the bombast. You’re an educated man, Roman educated if the stories are true. I don’t think you believe in shouting insults and arse-slapping any more than I do.’

The other man nodded, his face staying neutral.

‘Go on.’

‘In truth I am more impressed than I expected to be. Your control of those tribesmen is better than I’ve seen before, and your recruitment of a Roman tribune to lure his legatus into your grasp was a clever stroke. Or more likely he recruited you, eh?’

Equitius paused for a moment, allowing the fact of his knowledge of Perennis’s treachery to sink in. Calgus’s green eyes narrowed with unasked questions.

‘So, now that we’ve established that you’ve done a reasonable job so far, let’s get down to business. You could just have sent that rabble to die on our swords, but you chose to talk first, and while I’d like to think that’s because our reputation goes before us…’

Calgus smiled again, shaking his head in amusement.

‘Never let it be said you lacked a sense of humour, Prefect of the First Tungrians. I came to offer you the chance to leave this battlefield intact, before you force me to send my men to slaughter yours. Will you save those lives? My aims in making this war have always been limited to the goal of a negotiated peace with Rome, certain reasonable concessions for my people and honour for both sides. After all, without a settlement, this war could last for several campaigning seasons, and consume tens of thousands of Roman lives, soldiers and innocents both. This victory, combined with the threat my warbands pose to the frontier, should be enough to bring your governor to the negotiating table. Our demands are simple enough, and do not threaten an inch of Roman territory, so there should be no need for further loss of life. After all, I am, as you suggest, an educated and civilised man at heart.’

The prefect wondered what the tribes’ demands were, if not for some retreat from the frontier. Money in tribute and improved trading terms probably, removal of all Roman troops from their forts north of the wall for a certainty.

‘So you ask me to walk away from the fight? And let you away from this place before the other two legions and the rest of the Sixth arrive? I think not, Calgus. I think you know that the time you’ll need to break my line greatly increases the chance of our being rescued, and by overwhelming force. At the least we can buy your deaths with our own. I think you know you already have the victory, and want to save your own men’s lives for another fight. You know there are other legions out there, but you don’t know where, because you haven’t got any mounted scouts to send out. Your mounted bodyguard alone wouldn’t stand a chance, not with the Petriana roaming about looking for heads. Without that knowledge, and now that I have your traitor, you know you should disengage, and get away cleanly, but I’d guess that the tribal leaders won’t let you walk away from a fight this unbalanced. If we don’t leave the field we force you to fight just by standing there. True?’

The Briton smiled easily, gesturing back towards his waiting warriors.

‘Perhaps. The one certainty is that if you and your men don’t leave immediately then you will shortly pay the price for frustrating the will of a man with twenty times as many warriors as your entire cohort musters. Think about that, while you walk back to your command. You have a few minutes in which to spare us both further spilt blood. Otherwise the next time we meet your head will be stuck on a spear’s point.’

The prefect nodded solemnly.

‘Perhaps. But you’ll have climbed a high wall of your own dead to enjoy the sight.’ Calgus walked back to his bodyguard, his mind moving over the calculations. He guessed at ten centuries in the Tungrian line, a full cohort. Given time they would make the thin line’s flanks impossible to turn, protected by impassable barricades of hastily felled trees and rows of sloping wooden spikes to impale the unwary attacker. Attack now, or pull his men away to safety, the victory already under his belt and a Roman legatus’s probably dead?

He stopped and looked up at the Tungrian line again, musing on the grim faces that had stared back at him. His own people, so familiar, obdurate in defence, incandescent in assault, but with the overlay of Roman discipline to temper their courage, which made each one of them the equal of his best warriors in terms of simple killing power. The difference, the key difference, was that no matter what the provocation, the situation, little would persuade them to break their wall of shields, from behind which their short stabbing swords would flicker like the tongues of hundreds of deadly snakes. Refusing to enter the chaotic swirl of man-to-man combat, the Tungrians could afford to fight several times their number, the more numerous enemy without any means of applying that superiority in numbers. Just one cohort, though, eight hundred men against thousands of his own. How long could that take? Even if he lost as many as he killed, or even twice as many, it was an exchange that made more than adequate sense.

He walked on, jumping back into his chariot as he reached his bodyguard. Eyes turned to him, awaiting his command, the men ready to put their lives at risk.

‘They will not withdraw. Their prefect was disappointingly resolute.’

Aed raised his eyebrows, indicating a desire to speak.

‘Then we must fight, my lord. No warrior will willingly walk away from that many heads begging to be taken. Besides, many are not yet blooded…’

‘I agree. But it must be fast. The Roman spoke of other legions, and at the very least the other cohorts commanded by their legatus must be close at hand, and their bloody Petriana too. Handled properly, their cavalry and even one full legion could carve us to ribbons if they caught us here, even though we would be more than twice their number. Send a rider to Emer and Catalus’s warbands — they’ve stood and watched the others kill Romans, they must be raring to get into the fight.’

The tribal bands moved forward at the run, eager after watching their fellows rip the guts out of the hopelessly outnumbered cohorts. The younger men joshed each other as they ran, boasting breathlessly of the heads they would take, the older warriors straining to catch a glimpse of their adversaries and take their measure. The two leaders met as they ran, agreeing swiftly on a simple left and right split, nothing fancy in the amount of time they had, a straight forward charge and hack, using their superior strength in numbers to overwhelm the auxiliaries.

On their slope the Tungrians stood impassively, still hammering out the menacing rhythm of spear and shield, the noise numbing their senses to any fear, replacing the emotion with an incoherent sense of common identity. The cohort had ceased to be a collection of individuals, and had become an engine of destruction ready to strike. The relentless pulse of its fighting heart had stripped away the feeling of self from its members and left them in a state of detachment from reality, ready for the impersonal fury shortly to be required for their survival. They watched, still pounding out their defiance, as the enemy advanced quickly across the open ground to their front, forming up into lines that roughly matched their own, one hundred and fifty paces down the slope, out of spear’s throw. Another brief command rang out from the trumpeter, silencing the drumming and bringing their spears into the preparatory position for the throw. In the sudden silence the slight noises of weapons and armour were suddenly magnified, the dull clink of equipment ringing out across the slope as both sides made ready.

In the 9th Century’s front line Scarface and his mates braced themselves for the fight to come, the veteran soldier talking quietly to the men around him. Even the tent party’s watch officer deferred to the scarred soldier’s twenty years of experience.

‘Now, lads, this is going to be a right gang fuck once they get up the slope, so here’s how it’s going to go. When Uncle Sextus gives the order we’ll sling a volley of spears into them. Aim for the men who’ve lost their footing, the ones too distracted to see your spear coming until it’s tickling their backbone. You’ve carried the bloody thing on your back since the day you joined, and never really had the chance to use it properly, so make the fucking thing pay you back for all those miles you’ve carted it. That’ll be one less blue-nose to wave a sword at you. Once the spears are gone we air our blades double quick and get the shields set strong, ready for them to hit the line with everything they’ve got. You lads at the rear, you get a good fucking grip of our belts and brace us to hold firm. We’re on a nice slope, so it shouldn’t be too hard to hold them if we work together. After that you just concentrate on the same old drills, board and sword, parry and thrust. Put your gladius into a blue-nose’s guts, twist the fucker, kick him off it and get back behind your board. Don’t fucking stand there watching him die, or his mate will carve you up just like you would if you was him.’

He paused, swelling his chest with a great draught of air.

‘Breathe deep, lads, you’ll need all the air you can get in the next few minutes. And just remember, any of you bastards turn from this fight before it’s done and you’ll have me and my blade to deal with once we’re done with this shower of unwashed hairy arseholes. We stand together.’

Along the Tungrian line a few men quailed and were swiftly dealt with by the officers and their older comrades, slaps and kicks putting them back into the line. The majority listened to the cohort’s veteran soldiers tell them how to deal with what was coming and stared impassively down the slope at their enemy, prepared to kill in order to live, a stark equation both understood and accepted. In order to live through, to see their women and children again, they would have to slaughter the tribesmen in great numbers. Almost to a man, the soldiers were ready to start the butchery.

In the tribal ranks men swiftly made their last preparations, discarding heavy items of clothing that would restrict their movements in the coming melee, muttering hasty prayers to their gods for victory. The older warriors, alive to the possibilities of the coming combat, sensibly added the hope for a clean death should their time have come. Without the time to indulge in any lengthy diatribe against the invaders, the chieftains looked to each other, nodded their readiness, then charged forward up the slope, hurling thousands of warriors at the flimsy Roman line.

The Tungrian centurions looked to Frontinius at the line’s centre, waiting for his signal as the barbarian horde surged up the gentle incline. Waiting with one arm raised, he watched the shaggy warriors storm towards his men, thirty yards, twenty-five, the usual range of the initial spear-throw, twenty, until at fifteen yards from the shield wall they hit the strip of greasy mud that his troops had painstakingly stamped into bubbling ruin. The leading wave of attackers slowed, fighting to stay on their feet as they bunched to avoid the giant wooden obstacles’ sharpened points. Crowded from behind and perilously close to falling headlong into the mud, more than a few suddenly shouted their pain as the scattered metal caltrops, half hidden in the mud, pierced their feet. The tribesmen’s attention was suddenly focused more downward than forward.

Scarface raised his spear, shouting encouragement to his comrades, easing the weapon back and forth in readiness to throw, as he searched for a target among the mass of tribesmen struggling towards the Tungrian line.

Frontinius whipped his hand downward in the pre-agreed signal. A volley of spears arced flatly into the struggling tribesmen, finding targets unprotected in their struggle to stay upright. The front ranks shivered with the impact, men screaming as flying steel spitted them through limb and trunk, their flailing bodies adding to the chaos as the barbarian charge faltered.

The veteran soldier found his mark, a big man carrying a six-foot-long sword momentarily distracted by the greasy footing, and stepped forward to throw his spear, arm outstretched as he followed the weapon’s flight through to his point of aim. The barbarian jerked as the spear’s cruel steel head punched into his belly, blood jetting from the wound as he sank to his knees. Drawing his sword with a smile of satisfaction, Scarface backed up the slope until he felt hands grab his belt to steady him, lifting his shield into line with those to his right and left.

Along the line the centurions bawled new commands, their men drawing their swords and crouching deeper behind their shields as the barbarian wave regained some of its momentum, shrugging aside the dead and dying to struggle towards the silent Tungrian line. Seeing their momentary difficulty, Frontinius made a snap decision, lifting his sword and pointing at the barbarians with its blade, bawling the order that unleashed his men down the slope.

With a shrill of whistles from their officers the cohort lunged the few remaining paces down the hill into their enemy, smashing into the struggling barbarian line with their heavy shields and bowling the enemy front line back into the warriors behind, then stepped in with their swords.

Scarface heard the whistle, kicked back to disengage the soldier held fast to his belt and bounded down the slope alongside his comrades with a blood-curdling howl, punching his shield’s metal boss into the face of a warrior with his sword raised to strike, then stabbing his sword’s point into the man’s guts and kicking him off the blade in one fluid motion. He shouted to his mates as he raised his shield into position.

‘Line! Reform the line!’

The cohort’s front rank snapped their shields back into place, presenting the barbarians with an unbroken wall to frustrate their attacks. The soldiers repeatedly punched the metal bosses of their shields into the faces of the oncoming men, upsetting their precarious balance, then stabbed their short swords into their chosen targets, aiming for the body points that centuries of experience had taught would kill a man in seconds. Blood flew across the gap between the two lines in hot sprays as men fell back from the point of combat, weapons falling from their hands as they sought to halt the flow or hold intestines into torn bellies, or simply explored agonising wounds with shocked bewilderment as life ebbed from their bodies. The ground beneath their feet, doused with a mixture of blood, urine and faeces, became steadily more treacherous. The Tungrian rear rank’s role became one of keeping the men in front on their feet, and not exposed to an enemy blow on the ground. Punching and thrusting at the seething throng that railed desperately at their shield wall, parrying enemy sword and axe strokes and striving in turn to murder their deliverers, the Tungrians fought as men who understood that their only survival lay in slaughter, cold blooded and clinically efficient.

In the 9th’s front rank Scarface crouched behind his shield, his left arm shuddering with the shock of sword-blows against its scarred wooden face, watching the barbarians intently through the gap between his helmet and the shield’s top edge, looking for any chance to strike. The long-haired warrior facing him, hemmed in by the men around him, raised his sword to chop the blade downward in the only attack open to him, and presented a fleeting opportunity that the experienced soldier took without hesitation. Stepping forward one pace, he thrust his sword between the other man’s ribs and dropped him, doubled over with the sudden awful pain, into the blood-spattered mud.

A tribesman already fallen with a spear through his thigh gathered his strength to strike at the Roman’s extended leg, but the wily soldier simply slammed the sharpened metal edge of his shield down across the man’s sword arm, slicing down to the bone before stepping quickly back into his place in the shield wall. The man next to him slipped on the mud, going down on to one knee and opening himself up to the blows of his attackers. Without conscious thought, Scarface shifted his shield to protect his mate for the critical seconds required for him to regain his footing, ignoring his own peril. The man to his right killed a tribesman shaping to attack the momentarily unprotected veteran, ripping open his throat with a swift stab of his gladius. Within seconds their wall of shields was complete again, steady against the barbarians railing at its unyielding face.

To Marcus, standing behind the double line of his men with a tent party of soldiers ready to thrust into holes hacked in the line, it looked like a hopelessly unequal battle. As the seconds passed he realised that most of the dying was being done on the other side of their shields. Relatively few of his own men had gone down, despite the thick throng of enemy pressing up the slope.

‘Stand fast, Ninth century, parry and thrust!’

Dubnus’s familiar booming voice gave him heart, and he shouted his own encouragement above the screams and shouts of the battle. A gap opened in the line in front of him, a pair of men felled by the same massive axe blow, and he instinctively pushed the replacements aside and stepped into the breach before any of the enemy could surge through. The tribesman wielding the axe stamped down at his victim, attempting to wrench the blade from deep in his victim’s chest, then gaped as Marcus’s powerful chopping blow hacked away his right arm, a heavy boot striking him under the chin. The maimed man fell back into the wall of frenzied blue-painted faces that confronted Marcus and was lost to view, replaced by another, who, seeing Marcus’s rank, leapt forward in attack, only to be spitted by the cavalry sword’s length. Twisting the blade in a savage half-circle inside the barbarian’s scrabbling hands to loosen it within the body cavity, he punched forward with his shield at the dying man’s chest, ripping the sword free in a shower of gore that painted both the shield and his chest dark red.

To his left a man from the neighbouring century suddenly leapt forward into the mass of the enemy, thrusting about him in a blood frenzy, killing one then another barbarian, then sank blood-soaked into the throng of the enemy, screaming as a dozen battle-crazed warriors bludgeoned him to death. The century’s chosen man pushed a man into the gap, bellowing at his men to keep their heads and hold the line.

To their front, Marcus reckoned, as he parried and stabbed at the enemy in front of him with his men, the onslaught was easing, as the tiring tribesmen found it harder to stay on their feet with so many of their own dead and wounded underfoot. One of the less seriously wounded attempted to cut at his ankles from the ground, provoking a hacking stroke that neatly removed his arm at the elbow. The man rolled back under his comrades’ feet, tumbling two of them on top of him with his agonised writhing.

The mass of tribesmen in front of Marcus parted without warning, allowing a tall and heavily armoured man to step out into the gap between the two lines. His black helmet and chest armour were intricately decorated with silver inlays and already coated with dried blood, his thighs and calves protected by iron greaves. He eyed the young centurion with cold appraisal for a moment, then with a sudden lunge sprang to attack the officer. Three savage hacking blows from his heavy sword smashed into Marcus’s shield, their power numbing his left arm and putting him on the defensive. The big warrior paused in his attack, laughing down into Marcus’s face, his voice a grating boom over the noise of the battle.

‘I’ve already taken the head of a legatus today, so I won’t bother with yours, I’ll leave it to the crows. Are you ready to die, little Roman?’

Marcus held his ground, ignoring the taunts, and readied himself for the next onslaught. The big man sprang forward again, but this time Marcus met his sword not with his shield but blade to blade, turning the blow aside and stepping close in to slam his shield’s iron frame down on the warrior’s unarmoured foot, feeling bones crack under the impact. As the warrior fought to control the pain he attacked again, stabbing downward with his sword and spearing the blade through the man’s shattered foot and into the soft ground below before twisting it savagely and ripping the sword free. Then, while the huge warrior staggered where he stood, paralysed by the crippling pain, Marcus raised his shield to the horizontal and chopped its harsh metal edge into his attacker’s undefended throat with all his strength. With a stifled gurgle the tribal champion fell back from the shield wall, fighting for breath that was never going to reach his lungs through a ruptured windpipe. The barbarian line shivered and inched backwards away from the cheering Tungrians as their hero fell to the ground, his face darkening as he twisted in his death throes.

Along the line the gap between the two forces widened a little, as the tribesmen paused to regain their wind in dismay at the failure of their initial assault. The Tungrians straightened their line, one eye for the man next to them, one on the enemy. Horns blew to the warband’s rear, ordering the tribesmen to pull back and reform, and they backed reluctantly down the hill, still shouting defiance at the Roman troops. No command was given to follow their retreat.

On the slope before the panting Tungrians lay hundreds of enemy warriors, some dead, some dying, all spattered with blood, some moaning pitifully with the pain of their wounds, others screaming intermittently in their agony and distress. The men of the 9th stared bleakly down at the scene, some, those few among them familiar with the sights and sounds of a full battle, with numb indifference, most simply wide-eyed at the horror of the scene. One or two made ineffectual efforts to wipe away the gore that had blasted across armour and flesh with each sword stroke, but most restricted themselves to wiping the blood from their eyes and mouths, knowing that there would be more to replace whatever they removed from their bodies and equipment soon enough. Julius sought out Marcus, pulling him from the front rank with a rebuke softened by the young officer’s wide-eyed look of astonishment.

‘That’s a good place to get killed. Stay behind the line next time, and put your soldiers into the fight. We’ve got a short time before they come back. It would be a good opportunity for the century to drink some water. I’ll check for casualties…’

He looked down at the two men killed by the axeman, one without head and right arm, the other cloven a foot down into his chest.

‘Best you remove these two. They’re already with Cocidius…’

Marcus pointed down at the wounded tribesmen to their front, almost within touching distance.

‘What about them?’

The reply was dismissive.

‘They’re dead, they just haven’t realised it yet. Leave them there; they’ll slow down the next attack.’

The young officer nodded jerkily, calling for the water bottles to be passed along the line, and commanding the closest men to carry the ruined corpses of their dead into the forest at their rear.

In the Tungrian front rank Scarface leaned on his shield, grateful for the chance to get his breath back and take a mouthful of water to swill away the coppery taste of blood.

‘That was good enough. We must have done twenty or so of the bastards and lost, what, two of ours? Who came forward to replace them?’

The promoted rear-rankers raised their hands sheepishly.

‘You two, eh? Welcome to the front rank, boys, this is where the corn gets earned the hard way. Keep your heads for a few minutes more and you’ll have a place here for the rest of your time.’

He laughed at their comical expressions as both men realised that their lives as soldiers had just changed for ever.

‘Oh yes, all that piss-taking the front rank always gives the girls at the back? That’ll be you giving rather than taking from now on. Welcome to my army.’

The 9th drank gratefully, the more composed soldiers discussing the fight almost conversationally, leaning tiredly on their shields like pottery workers taking a break from the kilns. Some, the more experienced and perceptive, knowing the danger of the less experienced men losing themselves to the battle rage when the fight renewed itself, worked on the men next to them, coaxing them back to reality with words of home and family. Morban found Marcus checking the edge of his sword with a careful eye, and offered him a drink from his bottle.

‘Nicely fought, Centurion, you took that big bastard’s arm off like lopping a sapling, and the way you did the boy in black armour with your shield was nothing short of poetic. The lads’re already talking about the way you jumped into the line and got stuck in!’

Marcus nodded, sheathing his sword and holding on to the hilt to hide the shaking of his hand.

‘Thank you. I hope your son escaped injury?’

‘Indeed, I think so, the little I could see of him from here.’

A shout from the line of troops grabbed his attention, pointing arms guiding his stare to the edge of the valley a mile or so to their right, past the small forest’s edge. There, silhouetted against the skyline, a mass of horsemen was moving into position, perfectly placed to sweep down the slope and into the barbarian flank. Their long lances were held vertically, the points making a winking glitter of razor-sharp steel in the mid-morning sunlight.

‘Get the blue-faced bum-fuckers!’

‘Give them the eight-foot enema!’

A chorus of shouts implored the riders, identified as the Petriana and Augustan cavalry wings by their twisting white banners, two thousand men strong, to attack the mass of men below, but their inaction once their deployment was complete was just as Equitius had expected. An unsupported charge against so many warriors could end only in a glorious failure. All the same, anything that gave Calgus one more thing to worry about, and heartened his own men, had to be good. Even as he watched a force of some five thousand men detached themselves from the barbarian mass on the plain below, wheeling at speed to form a rough defensive line of archers and spears, ready to absorb any charge.

He walked on, to the point where his command ended and Caelius’s started, hailing his brother officer. The other man strode down the line of barbarian corpses, keeping one eye on the ground against the risk of being surprised by a wounded man feigning death.

‘Hail, Two Knives, freshly blooded, from the rumour passed down our line, and from the blood painted across your mail. I hope you offered that prayer for me?’

Marcus smiled wryly.

‘I was a little busy at the time. I’ll be sure to mention you next time I can get to an altar.’

‘Good enough. What do you think they’ll do now?’

Both men stared downslope at the milling horde, order gradually returning to their mass.

‘If I were leading them? Keep the cavalry safely at arm’s length, put some archers and slingers out front, harass us with darts and stones to keep our heads down, and pull the rest away before two full legions take them dry from behind…’ Equitius was weighing the same question.

‘We came down here as bait, to keep the warband in place until the main force can be moved up. I don’t believe we’ve been here long enough to have achieved that aim, do you?’

Frontinius shook his head with pursed lips.

‘Another hour at least, I’d say. I presume you’d like to attract their attention some more, rather than letting them slip away into the hills?’

‘Yes. They can break into family bands and worm their way into the folds in the land. We might only take a tenth of them if that happens…’

The First Spear called a man to him, muttered instructions in his ear, and then turned back to the conversation.

‘I have a way to hold them here, but it won’t be pleasant. Especially since they’ll come back up that slope like wild animals.’

The prefect nodded slowly.

‘As long as Calgus doesn’t pull his men away to safety, the price will be justified. Do whatever you have to.’

The First Spear nodded impassively and turned away, walking down the cohort’s line at the high-tide mark of barbarian dead, inspecting the troops as if on peacetime parade, giving an encouraging word here and there. The man he’d sent to help him search for a particular corpse had succeeded, running down the line of shields with a freshly removed head dripping blood on his leggings.

The First Spear took it from him, examining the slack face with an intensity that was almost feral. The owner’s hair was long and greasy, the seams of his face dark with the grime of long days on the march. His eyes stared glassily back, their animation long departed along with the man that had formerly watched the world through their windows.

‘How do you know he was a chieftain?’

The other man held out his hand, showing his superior an impressively heavy torc stained dark red with blood, the gold wrapped in a serpentine arc that had previously been around the dead man’s neck. Frontinius took the heavy piece of jewellery, weighing it in his hand and remembering the one like it that Dubnus’s father had always worn, even after his dethronement.

‘Somebody was important.’

He turned to stare down at the barbarian warband, quiet now, waiting for a command, and spoke again, without taking his eyes off the mass of warriors.

‘Go to the prefect. Warn him to be ready.’

He stood silently on the slope for a moment, the head dangling almost forgotten from one hand, the torc in the other, until the men below him, alerted by those at the front, grew silent at the sight. Calgus came to his decision with his usual speed and insight. At his rear waited the bulk of his warband, rested and ready to move. To his right were the enemy cavalry, at least temporarily neutralised by the screen of infantry and archers he’d thrown out to cover that wing of the warband. Their spears stood out above them in a forest of wood and steel, a full cohort from their density. In front of him, arrayed on the bloodied slope, the Tungrians stood motionless at the high-tide mark of a thick carpet of dead and dying men, waiting for his next move. Between them, slowly regaining a sense of order, the depleted tribal bands were reforming under new leaders, preparing to storm the hill once more.

‘Pull them back.’

Aed raised his eyebrows.

‘My lord, they are not yet successful. We…’

‘I know. But there are two more legions marching in these hills. That prefect was far too relaxed for that cohort to be far from friendly spears. If they come upon us here, with the advantage of the slope, and with those fucking horsemen, we’ll be dead meat. No, we leave now, break into tribal bands and go back to the muster. Then we can…’

A shout rang out across the open space, some leather-lunged Roman officer shouting the odds. Except… Calgus strained to hear the words, a fresh premonition of disaster stroking the hairs on the back of his neck. Frontinius lifted head and torc, the former dangling by its greasy hair, the latter glinting in the early afternoon sun. Inflating his barrel chest, he bellowed out across the mass of men below, silencing their growing noise.

‘Leave this place now, or we will kill you all! Warriors?! You have failed once, and you will fail again like the children that you are compared to real soldiers.’

He paused for breath, and allowed the silence to drag on for a long moment.

‘We killed your leaders and threw you back down this insignificant hill with ease. You came seeking heads and left your own by the hundred! If you come back up again, we will do the same to you. See, the head of a defeated chieftain!’

He swung the dead man’s head in a lazy arc by its hair, resisting the temptation to hurl its obscenity away from him and into the seething tribesmen, raising the heavy torc to glint in the sunshine and be recognised as a symbol of authority.

‘You were weak, and we punished you. Now run away, before we treat you all like this!’

Feeling queasy, he put the head to his crotch and pushed his hips at it in an unmistakable gesture, then threw it high into the air above their heads. With an angry roar the tribesmen surged forward, charging up the hill in their mad fury. Frontinius ducked back into the line of soldiers, shouting for them to ready their spears. To the warband’s rear, Calgus closed his eyes for a moment as the realisation hit him.

‘My lord…’

‘I know. I have no choice. I must kill the prisoners and send the entire warband up that hill. But not on their terms. Get me the tribal leaders.’ The Tungrians loosed their second and last volley of spears, plunging the barbarian front rank into chaos once more, then huddled into their own shields with swords ready. The oncoming rush slowed to a walk across the slippery ground, to a crawl over the wall of their dead and wounded, until the tribesmen arrived, in ones and twos, in front of the Roman shield wall. With Frontinius disdaining a charge against such disorganised opposition, preferring to keep his men on firm ground, they waited for their enemy to stagger exhaustedly on to their shields, then began their slaughter with a professional ease. Even when more men had struggled through the obstacles in front of the cohort’s line, building the attacking force to a more respectable size, the anger that had burnt out of them was replaced by a wary respect, most of them holding off from the Roman swords, content to shout defiance at the Tungrians.

Scarface’s tent party crouched ready to engage behind their shields, sensing that the fight had gone out of their opponents but unwilling to believe the battle could end so easily. A single man leapt from the barbarian line, a huge warrior swinging a six-foot-long blade around his head and bellowing abuse at the Tungrians. Stripped naked and possessed by a mighty rage, he swung his long sword over the top of the shield wall and opened the two new front-rankers’ throats with the blade’s end before whipping it back above his head to hack down into the Tungrian shields. Scarface’s neighbour, caught beneath the sword’s descending blade, raised his shield two-handed in self-defence. He staggered backwards as the savage blow chopped through the iron frame and sank the razor-sharp blade deep into his shield’s wooden layers. Both Scarface and the soldier on the far side of the attacker stepped in and stabbed their swords deeply into the naked warrior’s sides, Scarface backhanding his stabbing stroke into the man’s side and ripping the blade out through his stomach muscles to release a slippery rope of guts. Releasing the long sword’s hilt, the warrior staggered back from the shield wall with blood pouring down his legs from his dreadful wounds. The two men whose throats he had slashed died where they fell, bleeding out from their severed arteries in less then a minute. They were unceremoniously dragged away behind the line, two more rear rankers taking their places.

The prefect and Frontinius had little concern for their front, however, their attention being fixed on the mass of men gathering at the slope’s foot.

‘He’ll put more men in to threaten our flanks to fix us, perhaps throw in some skirmishers to keep our heads down, then throw that mob up the middle and look to crush us under their numbers…’

The prefect nodded unhappily.

As they watched, the warband’s bulk split into three groups. Two smaller groups split to left and right, and began climbing the slope with grim purpose, while a larger third body of men, perhaps ten thousand strong, started moving up to reinforce their attackers.

‘What would you advise?’

Frontinius shook his head unhappily.

‘All we can do is reposition some of the weakened centuries from the centre to the flanks and hope they can hold off the fixing attacks, then strengthen the centre with our reserves.’

‘It isn’t much of an option.’

‘Prefect, it’s no option at all. Either way we’ll all be dead quite shortly unless Prefect Licinius manages to get some troops here within the next ten minutes.’

The other man drew his sword, glaring down at the mass of men moving up the hill to either side of their embattled position.

‘Very well, take the Fourth and Seventh out of the centre and put the Fifth and Tenth in to replace them. I can’t see a reserve being much use when this comes to knife fighting. Good luck to you, First Spear. Let’s hope we meet again under more promising circumstances.’

They clasped hands, then Frontinius strode down the slope, bellowing orders to his centurions and setting their last desperate plan in motion. The 5th and 10th Centuries streamed down the slope to reinforce the centre of the line. Marcus and Julius stood together behind the thin line of their men, watching as their attackers, beaten back once more by the cohort’s swords, gathered their strength. Rufius had strolled across to join them for a moment, his vine stick now tucked into his belt and his sword drawn and bloody. More and more men were clambering over the wall of dead and dying warriors, to swell the numbers facing them. To make matters worse smoke had begun to blow across their line, from trees set ablaze in the forest upwind to their right, making it harder by the moment to see their enemy. The barbarians were hammering on their shields, screaming abuse at the Tungrians, who, understanding the depth of their situation, were increasingly casting nervous glances to their rear rather than to the front. Julius stared out at the clamouring horde dispassionately.

‘If they attack in that strength we’ll have to abandon the line and fight in pairs, back to back.’

Marcus nodded, his mouth dry. As he squinted through the smoke, it appeared that to either side of the position the battle was yet to begin, the thousands of warriors in the flanking warbands apparently content to threaten the Tungrian flanks and hold the bulk of the cohort in position, rather than commit to an attack.

‘Why don’t they attack along our whole length? Surely they could push both flanks in and turn to roll us up with those numbers.’

Rufius answered him without taking his eyes off the advancing barbarians.

‘Calgus wants to blood the men that haven’t fought yet, give them back their manhood after Uncle Sextus put them down so cruelly. The main attack will come through the middle, right here, and we’re the men that will have to stop it.’

‘An interesting life and a short one, eh, brothers?’

They turned, finding Frontinius standing behind them.

‘I thought your men might be feeling a little exposed, so I’ve come to share in the fun and show them that we’re all in the same shitty boat. Julius, it’s time your century stopped sitting about and actually did some fighting, so I’ve brought them down to strengthen the line.’

He pointed to their left, and Julius turned to see his men coming out of the smoke, his chosen man guiding them into the gap opening up as the 4th Century went to ground to let them through and into the line. Caelius, so far unscathed, pulled back with his soldiers, shot Frontinius a quick salute and then led the 4th off down the line, following the First Spear’s pointed direction. Julius smiled broadly at the sight of his men.

‘And about time. Excuse me, brothers. Right, ladies, get your shields up and your spears ready to throw. Let’s show these bluefaced bum-fuckers the entrance to Hades!’

He trotted away to rejoin his men, shouting encouragement as he ran. To the right, beyond Rufius’s 6th, the big men of the 10th Century were replacing the battered 7th. Rufius nodded grimly.

‘That’s going to be a nasty shock for the blue-faces. A century of axes is a terrifying prospect when they start lopping off arms and cleaving heads. The Bear’s boys will be painted black from head to foot before this is over. Right, I’d best go and get my lads ready.’

He headed off to his century, leaving Frontinius and Marcus alone behind the 9th. The First Spear watched the enemy massing to their front impassively from behind his borrowed shield, keeping his eyes on the enemy as he addressed Marcus for what would probably be the last time.

‘Well, Centurion, whether you be Tribulus Corvus or Valerius Aquila, I think you can take comfort in the fact that you’ve proved an exemplary officer these last few days. If I have to meet Cocidius in the next few minutes I’ll be honoured to do so in your company.’

Marcus nodded.

‘Thank you, sir.’

An arrow sailed past his head, as a sudden barrage of missiles made the soldiers hunch deeper behind their shields. The barbarian archers, using the wall of corpses for cover, began sending a continuous rain of missiles against the two centuries. Steel-tipped arrows hummed and whirred through the line, accurate shots punching into shields and clicking off helmets. Frontinius stood straight in the face of the barrage, raising his voice to continue his monologue.

‘They’ll keep this up for a moment or two; pick a few of us off with lucky shots, then charge in for the kill. When they do, you fight in pairs with your partner. If he’s dead, find another, or fight in a three. Watch each other’s backs, and don’t leave your partner. If your partner is wounded, concentrate on killing blue-faces, not looking after him, or you’ll be next…’

And he stopped, his eyes suddenly wide with the impact of an arrow between the greave that shielded his calf and the chain mail that ran down to mid-thigh. The missile had skewered his leg above the knee, toppling him unceremoniously on to the grass with a rivulet of blood seeping around the shaft. With a delighted roar the barbarians that had crossed the wall of bodies surged forward en masse, eager to take the one head that mattered to them above all.

The line disintegrated into a whirling melee, Marcus and Dubnus going back to back over Frontinius as a tide of tribal warriors washed past them. Several men moved to encircle them, drawing a tightening circle of swords around the three men, gathering themselves for the kill. With an incoherent, berserk scream, Antenoch hit the men facing Marcus from behind, thrusting his sword through one’s back and stamping him off the blade before swinging fiercely at the other’s shield. Marcus and Dubnus went on to the offensive, killing two men and putting the other two to startled flight.

Across the century’s frontage knots of men were fighting their own personal wars, still parrying barbarian swords and thrusting back with their short swords, but the fight was descending into a deadly mass brawl, and without the disciplined protection of the shield wall the soldiers were horribly outnumbered. Ten yards in front of Marcus two barbarians had a single soldier cornered, one hammering at his shield while the other outflanked him and sank his sword into the beleaguered man’s neck in the gap between helmet and mail. The soldier crumpled instantly, just as the sprinting centurion hit his attackers from behind, running one man through with his cavalry sword and leaving the weapon sheathed in his back, smashing the other to the ground with a shield swipe and drawing his gladius to finish the stunned warrior where he lay.

As the struggle hung in the balance, and quite without fanfare, a wave of fresh troops charged down the slope into the battle, suddenly equalising the odds and chasing off the startled barbarians. Marcus and Dubnus stood panting over their wounded superior as the reinforcements finished off the enemy wounded around them with swift unconsidered efficiency. Following the bellowed commands of their officers, the new arrivals slotted into the line between the cohort’s decimated centuries, bolstering the defence to more than its original strength.

The men of the 9th Century jeered as they recognised their new companions in adversity.

‘It’s the fucking Second Cohort. Well done, lads, you managed to find the battlefield at last, then?’

A solidly built watch officer muscled his way into the front rank, his spear held ready to throw. He shot Scarface an indifferent glance, his attention riveted on the regrouping warband.

‘That’s better, all front-rankers together. Just about now one of those blue-faced boys would have been hacking your head off to take home to frighten his kids with when they wouldn’t go to their bed at night. But some idiot officer said we had a duty to pull your knackers out of the fire, what with you being our sister cohort.’

He spat on the ground noisily.

‘Sisters being just about right. Anyway, here we are and here we stand. No reason why you lot should get all the fun. When does the next session start?’

Where the line had been thinning to the point of desperate vulnerability there were now three unbroken lines of shields, the newcomers’ strength giving fresh heart to the desperately tired Tungrians. Those of the cohort’s survivors with the energy shouted the time-worn insults that had always been exchanged when the 1st and 2nd Tungrians met in the field. An officer walked out of the smoke that still drifted across the slope in pale grey curtains, his sword drawn, searching for the First Spear. Frontinius winced as Dubnus finished lashing a broken spear shaft to his wounded leg as a makeshift splint, raising a weary hand in salute as the other man stopped in front of where he lay.

‘Prefect Bassus. I can honestly say I’ve never been quite so pleased to see the Second Cohort…’

The prefect laughed, looking out over the rampart of bodies.

‘We heard your trumpet calls on the wind, so faint that some men swore it was only the wind, but the stand fast was clear enough for those with ears to hear it. The other prefects insisted on following their orders, but I never liked that greasy little shit Perennis, and seeing this lot proves I was right. Beside, Tungrians never leave their brothers dangling.’

Frontinius nodded, climbing to his feet with Marcus’s help.

‘I fear all you’ve achieved is to dangle alongside us, but I appreciate the company while we wait to die. And now, if you’ll excuse me?’

The First Spear hobbled off up the slope to make his report to Equitius, using another broken spear to support his weight on the wounded leg. Bassus looked to Dubnus, raising a questioning eyebrow.

‘Excuse us for a moment, Chosen.’

He waited for the big man to walk out of earshot before speaking to Marcus, his face suddenly dark with anger.

‘I received a message yesterday night, a tablet from my wife, respectfully asking me for a divorce. It seems that she has tired of my company and, I can only presume, wishes for that of another. While this is hardly the time for such a discussion, I will be expecting a frank conversation with you once we have these barbarians running.’

He turned on his heel and walked away to attend to his command. Julius strolled back across the slope with a sidelong glance at the senior officer.

‘Trouble?’

‘Nothing I haven’t earned.’

The other man smiled easily.

‘I don’t think he’ll be troubling you after the battle. Not from what I’ve been hearing his troops say in the last couple of minutes.’

Marcus stared at him uncomprehendingly.

‘Never mind. Everything in its time.’

The two men took stock as corpses and the seriously wounded were carried away up the slope by the walking wounded, counting another twenty casualties between their two centuries as their line clung to its ground with what was, even with the reinforcement of another eight hundred men, a tenuous hold. Through a gap in the smoke Marcus saw the Petriana waiting still on their ridge-line, the sparse forest of their spears unreduced and unmoving. Julius followed his gaze, then spat on the bloodied grass.

‘No help to be expected from that direction. Bloody cavalry are all the same, good for the chase once the battle’s won, just never around when the shit starts flying.’

Marcus nodded grimly, watching the barbarians working themselves up for another charge. Julius spat on to the scarred turf again, examining his sword’s edge.

‘This is it. This time they’ll throw everything they have at us, here, on the flanks, everywhere, and that will be it, Second Tungrians or no Second Tungrians. Are you ready to die for the empire?’

‘For the cohort. The empire can kiss my hairy arse.’

The older man laughed with a dark delight, his eyes wild with the fight.

‘Spoken like a real Tungrian. Let’s get into the line and get ready to go out in style.’ Up the slope, the prefect was weighing his options, watching as a medic carried out field treatment on Frontinius. The medic, having cleaned the entry and exit wounds around the arrow’s shaft with water and a clean cloth, took an exploratory grip of the feathered end that protruded from the First Spear’s knee. The prefect winced with his friend’s obvious pain. Frontinius leant back on the grass wearily, closing his eyes as the bandage carrier took a firmer grip of the arrow. With a sudden twist, the medic snapped the arrow’s shaft, then swiftly pulled the barbed end out of the back of the officer’s knee. Frontinius watched with narrowed eyes as he expertly bandaged the wound, winding the cloth tightly as blood blossomed through its weave.

‘You can stand, First Spear, but you have to keep the leg straight. And keep your weight off it.’

Frontinius struggled to his feet, accepting the prefect’s offered hand to pull him erect.

‘I’ll be separated from my head quite shortly, sonny boy. The knee can…’

His retort trailed off as movement up the slope, at the wood’s edge, caught his eye. The Tungrians watched the wall of barbarians slowly wash up the hill towards them, picking their way carefully across the wall of their dead. There was no headstrong charge this time, only a steady advance by the thousands of men to their front, confident in their numerical advantage but made cautious by the sight and smell of the dead and dying littering the ground around them. Facing them, men from both cohorts stood in an ordered line, calm in their resignation for the most part. A man close to Scarface whimpered with fear, quietening as the veteran soldier glared down the line at him and barked out his name. The 2nd Cohort watch officer nodded approvingly.

‘Too late for second thoughts now, my lads. If you can’t take a joke then you shouldn’t have joined in the first place. Just make sure you take some of the bastards across the river with you.’

With certain death at hand, men tightened their sweat-and-blood-slickened grip on swords and shields, waiting to kill for the last time.

The barbarian line passed over the wall of dead, speeding up to walking pace with the obstacle crossed, the lack of spears in Roman hands having reduced it to a hindrance rather than the death trap it had been earlier in the morning. Twenty yards from the Tungrians they stopped at a shouted command, allowing Calgus’s messenger to step into the gap between the two forces.

‘Tungrians, the Lord Calgus offers you one last chance to live. Surrender now and you will be well treated…’

His voice tailed away as Julius stepped forward, his armour painted with the blood of a dozen men, his shield scored and notched by swords, the shafts of three arrows protruding from its wooden face.

‘One step more and I’ll send your cock back to the Lord Calgus while the rest of you stays here. You want these…’

He raised sword and shield into their fighting positions, backing carefully into the line as the men to either side readied themselves in similar fashion.

‘… then fucking well come and get them, cum stain.’

The messenger shrugged indifferently, then turned away and was absorbed into the barbarian mass. The warband’s fresh warriors began banging their swords and shields, creating a wall of sound that bore down oppressively on the Tungrians, first advancing one step, then another, some swinging their swords in extravagant arcs and screaming of the slaughter to come. The Tungrians waited, hollow eyed, for the barbarian line to charge across the narrowing gap and finish the unequal contest.