by Angus Watson
They were watching from the edge of woods on a hill to the west, all on horseback, ready to scarper the moment any British paid them too much attention. Ferrandus and Tertius had been against the plan to have a peek at the British fort, in fact there would have been a fight between them and Clodia’s guards, but Clodia had smiled at them, suggested that the two praetorians be wholly in charge of security for the trip, and tensions had cooled.
Now it looked like they were going to see a lot more than the British fort. Spring shuddered as British and Roman infantry formed up, three hundred paces between each. Behind the British were the walls of Saran Fort. Looking out from the centre of the wall, next to a trumpeter, was a blonde woman holding a longbow.
Spring hoped it was going to be different from the last British battle she’d seen when a force could have stayed in a hillfort but didn’t–at Barton, where she’d watched Zadar’s army massacre an entire tribe. She ached to be down there with them, but unfortunately Ferrandus and Tertius knew that. Her hands were tied with a leather cord, and leather thongs attached her to both praetorians.
“Why aren’t they attacking each other?” asked Clodia. She was wearing her short white dress with the broad belt and its double jewelled daggers. Her hair was perfectly coiffed to look like it hadn’t been, her graceful limbs a flawless and sun-kissed bronze. If there was ever a Roman mural painted of Lowa on horseback, thought Spring, then it would look more like Clodia than the British queen. Not that there was anything wrong with how Lowa looked on the back of a horse; she was just more athletically set than the Roman ideal of feminine beauty, her hair saw only ever the briefest attention from a comb, she wore boyish leather riding shorts and tough, iron-soled boots, her skin was permanently pale, and she always had scabs on her knees and elbows.
“The Romans will be waiting for the British to attack,” said Tertius. “That’s how they like to fight. But they’re happy attacking, too, which they will if–oh, hang on, here we go.”
Clacker-mouthed trumpets blared in alarming cacophony from the Maidunite lines. The front ranks of the British infantry charged, yelling and waving swords above their heads. Roman shields lowered to meet the onslaught.
“And they looked so disciplined on the approach,” said Ferrandus. “But that’s your barbarian for you. He can march like a cockerel, but control goes to shit when the battle starts. They’re like children. It’s sad, really. Just you watch how the legionaries deal with this. First up, a salvo of pilums will kill a good many of them and put the shits up the rest. Then the barbar will hit the Roman shields, maybe dent a couple but no more, get bounced back a couple of times, then, once they’re dazed and exhausted—”
“Hold up, Ferrandus,” said Tertius. “I hate to interrupt one of your patronising lectures because you do enjoy them so, but take a closer look.”
Ferrandus peered down at the attacking Britons, then said: “Ahhhh!”
“Yes,” said Tertius. “Exactly.”
“What? What?!” Clodia peered at the men in birdlike enquiry.
The two praetorians were too rapt to answer. Spring could see why. Only the front few rows of Britons were attacking. Their charge looked ragtag at first glance, and it would look messy if you were facing it, because the front-running Britons were indeed a mess of men and women waving their arms and yelling. But the attack was far from ragtag. They were all running at approximately the same speed and they were as evenly spaced as the most disciplined marching legionaries. If you looked closely you could see that there were three distinct lines. In the first, the Britons were armed with swords and shields. The third line was armed with long spears. The second line had scabbarded swords, but they were also dragging long iron poles with crosspieces that looked like stretched anchors. What, wondered Spring, could they be for?
Behind them, several hundred strange chariots were sweeping in from right and left–unusually broad vehicles with high platforms. Towering on the platforms over each driver, strapped into place by legs and waist, was an archer. Their bows were plain, not the recurve ones that cavalry used, and almost as long as Spring and Lowa’s longbows. Standing high gave the archers the space to use full-powered bows.
Following theses weird chariots were thousands of infantry in ordered lines.
“Fuck me,” said Tertius. “We could be about to see something here.”
“What?” cried Clodia.
“Shush and watch,” said Spring.
Clodia pouted at the girl’s impertinence, but did as she was told.
When the howling Maidunites were twenty paces away, the Romans hurled their pilums. Spread out as they were, the British dodged the missiles and Spring didn’t see a single one of them hit.
A good number of the British let fly with slings. All along the Roman front line, shields banged down with a fearsomely synchronised clap. The second, third and fourth legionary ranks lifted their shields overhead to form the standard, impregnable tortoises.
Three paces out, the running, howling Maidunites stopped running and howling and formed into three tidy lines. Behind them, the chariot archers drew and loosed, aiming high. At that moment, the second row of the infantry lifted their ten-pace-long iron poles with two-pace-wide crossbars at the end, and slammed them down on to the Roman tortoise.
The heavy metal crosspieces smashed through the tortoise roof. Holding the poles, the Britons ran back, yanking shields from Roman hands and pulling men off their feet. The front ranks of the Romans fell apart in a muddle of shields and men. A moment later the arrows landed, with beautiful, horrible accuracy, tearing through leather and ripping flesh. Long spears flashed out from the third row of the Maidun infantry, impaling those not hit by the archers.
The front three rows of Romans were destroyed. The next few lowered their shields as the second salvo of arrows swished down towards them. The Maidunites lifted their cross-barred poles again and charged the Romans like besiegers with mini battering rams. The shield wall was destroyed again. Again the arrows fell and spears lashed into the defenceless Romans.
“I thought the Romans knew how to fight?” said Clodia, in the same tone that she might employ to complain about someone using an unfashionably scented oil at an orgy.
“They do, they do,” said Tertius. “Unfortunately, so, it seems, do the British.” Spring felt a flush of pride. “But don’t worry, this is only the beginning. Look.”
By the time the shouted orders reached their vantage point the Romans were already reforming, spreading out, each man now alone with his sword and shield and no longer vulnerable to the British hook-rams.
Trumpet blasts rang out from the wall of Saran Fort. The British reformed, too. Shields went up along the front line. More shields were unloaded from the chariots and passed forward rapidly to the second and third lines. Together, the three lines positioned their shields into a British tortoise.
“Well, I’ll be a Greek,” said Ferrandus.
The Roman charge hit shields and stopped. Spears lashed out and sliced into legionaries, and now it was the Britons’ shield wall that was advancing, rolling over the spaced-out Romans.
“Fuck!” said Tertius.
“What are those carts?” asked Clodia.
Four huge ox-drawn carts were rolling up to the far flank of the Roman army. Shouts went up and a few legionaries charged the new threat, but the high-mounted chariot archers cut them down. The carts pulled round so that they were parallel to the Roman flank furthest from Spring and the spectators. Large doors dropped open in the side of each and dozens of giant war dogs sprang out. Spring was too far away to see it, but she imagined the huge amount of slobber coming from each animal’s mouth. As legionaries turned to face the war dogs, chariot archers unleashed volley after volley into their exposed sides.
A knot of Roman cavalry galloped in to attack the dogs, but the archers let fly again and within moments most of the horses were riderless.
Spring was so intent on watching the dogs leap at the Romans, and so upset to see so
many disembowelled by Roman swords–she thought, with a pang, of Sadie and Pigsy–that she didn’t hear the new trumpeting, a blaring much louder than any previous fanfare, until Clodia said, “What’s that?”
“With any luck,” said Tertius, “that is what we call a battle-changer.”
Chapter 5
Atlas stayed down and watched Nan hobble up the hill. He wasn’t sure if he could have got to his feet and the threat of another kick from Ula kept him from trying.
And still Nan came, struggling now. He hadn’t realised how difficult she found walking. Yet she’d spent hour after hour in the forest foraging for the ingredients to cure him. His initial ingratitude shamed him, and he vowed never to judge so hastily again. He had thought ill of her when she had saved him at great effort to herself. But what could she do against the druid from Eroo?
A look of cheery disdain on her face, Manfreena shouted:
“Who’s this now? Are you a friend of Atlas? What do you hope to achieve? You look like a sweet old crone, but I am not known for my sympathy.”
Nan held up a hand, supporting herself on her cane with the other. “Wait, wait,” she said, just loud enough for them all to hear. “I’ll get there soon. Don’t kill the Kushite yet. It’s in your interest to keep him alive. I’ll explain why when I get there. Please have some patience for an old woman’s poor knees.” She hobbled on.
A while later, and Manfreena shouted: “I’m not known for my patience either!”
“Well, you’re obviously not Kildare the Healer then,” said Nan.
“What are you talking about? I’ve had enough. Ula… Ula? Where’s Ula?”
“I’m here.”
“But I can’t see you… I can’t see anything. What’s happening? What’s happ—”
Atlas heard a thump that sounded a lot like an Eroo druid collapsing. Nan tossed away her cane, snatched a bag from her back, jogged up to Atlas, squatted next to him and pulled out a water skin. “Danu’s tits,” she said, “I thought she was never going to die. The poison on your dart is the best there is, but you were meant to get closer and hit her in the face, you silly man. Here now, drink this.”
As Atlas drank a hubbub swelled all around. It was the sound, he reckoned, that you’d expect from a crowd of people who’d been asleep for a couple of years, had just woken up somewhere strange, and were asking each other what the Bel was going on.
Standing on Saran’s outer wall, Lowa nodded. This was what all the gruelling training had been for. She almost smiled when the British tortoise formed and drove the Romans back. It was too early for smugness–they outnumbered the Romans here but there were many more of the invader not far to the north–but so far everything was going to plan.
The war dog carts rolled into place and unleashed their canine broadside. The dogs had been trained for years to attack only men dressed as legionaries. She’d considered holding them back, since they were a devastating assault but also likely to be killed so she could use them only once. However, she wanted to crush this advance legion quickly and decisively so that she could get her army back in the fort before the main body of Romans returned.
As the dogs hit the Romans on the left, she gave the command for the chariot archers to switch their fire to the right for two salvos, then retreat, so that the dogs might run amok amidst the legionaries without being hit by their own side’s arrows, and so that the rest of her infantry could advance and fresh soldiers could finish off the legionaries.
The chariots melted away to both flanks then halted, ready to harry any Roman flanking manoeuvres. The infantry behind them filled the gap and filtered forward into the shield line, where they swapped places with tired or injured soldiers. Lowa had seen the sections of her army shuffle and slot like this again and again on the practice field, but she’d never before noticed just how beautiful it was.
The Romans reformed tortoises on their front line, but the dogs ran about below their shields. Lowa couldn’t see them ripping into the Romans’ exposed legs as they’d been trained to do, but she could see the effects. From left to right in waves, sections of the Roman formation lost integrity as the dogs obeyed their training and fanned out, knocking men down with their bulk, ripping chunks from thighs and running on. The dogs had been yet another of Dug’s ideas, inspired by training his own dogs Sadist and Pig Fucker–many, in fact, were Dug’s dogs’ offspring. How many more good schemes might the man have come up with had he lived? The fact that ghost Dug was markedly less helpful made Lowa think that he wasn’t a ghost, and really was a creation of her exhausted mind and the constant stress of repelling an invasion.
The British line capitalised on the destruction wrought by the dogs and advanced steadily. Lowa reckoned more than half the legion were down. Given the distance of the rest of the Roman divisions, as reported by the shouters, she was confident that she could finish them before re-inforcements came. By leaving a single legion within range of her fort, Caesar had seriously underestimated her. It was exactly the false confidence that she’d hope to instil by her retreat from Big Bugger Hill. For the first time in seven years of preparation, she began to believe that they might really beat the Romans.
Her coalescing confidence was ripped apart moments later by the trumpeting of an elephant, then another and another. She looked to the east and saw a herd of armoured elephants charging from behind a hill, heading for the infantry’s left flank. The size of them stunned her. They were like whales that had sprouted legs and run ashore.
More shocking than their appearance, though, was the fact that they shouldn’t have been there.
She’d received three shouts that morning telling her that all the elephants were on the east coast, three days’ hard riding away. So it wasn’t the appearance of the elephants that made it feel like her stomach was falling out of her arse, it was what it implied. She’d had shouts that the demons were just as far away, and that Caesar’s five other legions were several hours’ march to the north. It hadn’t crossed her mind for a moment to question any of them. It did now.
“Legion to the south!” someone yelled from across the fort, confirming her fears. A breathless man arrived moments later. “There’s another legion coming from the south!” he panted.
“Two legions coming fast from the west!” came a shout from the west wall.
“Shit,” said Lowa.
The elephants were beyond the range of the fort’s scorpions and catapults. The chariot archers on the right galloped at them and rained arrows on to the thundering beasts, but the archers on the elephants were protected in their mini mounted forts, and arrows pinged off the animals’ armour. Those few arrows that did strike flesh had no effect. The beasts charged on. A few of the chariots had fire arrows, but the elephants hadn’t heard that they were meant to be afraid of fire and these had no more impact than the standard arrows.
Lowa gave the command for Chamanca’s cavalry, held in reserve behind the chariots, to loop round and attack the elephants from the rear, and then she gave the signal for the infantry to retreat. She needed to get the bulk of her army back into the lee of the fort’s scorpions before too many of them were trampled and before two legions struck their left flank.
The cavalry swarmed out in fifty squads of six, modelled on Lowa’s own cavalry company from Zadar’s army. Each team of six had a leader, the role that Lowa had taken almost a decade before, and they trained and trained until they could move like flocks of birds in their sixes, and in synchronisation with the other teams. With wonderful unity they swept towards the mighty enemy.
Half the squads shot arrows to suppress the elephant archers, while the others galloped in holding aloft spears with long, serrated blades. The elephant commander saw the threat, but rather than swing to meet it, he waved his arms for the elephants to gallop on, deep into the press of infantry.
One of the trumpeters touched her arm and pointed to the west, to the far side of the battlefield from the elephants’ charge where a multitude of legionaries was sprinting
towards the gap between her fort and her infantry. There were thousands of them, on course to block her infantry–almost her entire army–from returning to safety. More and more appeared, running into the field between her and her army, well clear of the fort’s scorpions’ and catapults’ range. Lowa saw two eagle standards, which meant almost ten thousand men.
Ten thousand men who were meant to be half a day’s march to the north.
False shouts. She now knew that Caesar had captured her shouters and forced them to shout what he wanted. The previous year’s mindless landing, the utter failure of the first invasion, the simple charge and attack at Big Bugger Hill, all of Caesar’s actions so far had convinced Lowa that he wasn’t the military genius he was reported to be. Had it all been a ruse, leading to this moment? She’d believed that she was the only general using vaguely advanced tactics, the superior commander, because she’d wanted to believe it.
What was it they said about pride?
She gave the order for the chariots on the left flank to retreat, out of the path of the Roman infantry, but it was too late. The elephants hit the right flank of her foot soldiers at the same moment as the legionaries hit the archer chariots on the left. They had similar, devastating effects. Chariot archers shot at the charging legionaries, but shields caught most of the arrows, then the legionaries were at them, hacking and stabbing at horses and charioteers. On the right, elephants were swinging their great tusks, goring and scything down crowds of soldiers–some Romans as well as British–and trampling them with iron boots.
Lowa ordered the infantry on the left to form a shield wall and push westwards, to save the archer chariots and meet the coming legionaries. She looked to the right. Her army was standing its ground, but all cohesion had been ripped to shit by the bladed tusks of the elephants. They’d felled one of the animals, but many more–at least thirty–were raging through the ranks. Chamanca’s cavalry took down two more of the beasts, but the horses were struggling to push through the press of bodies, living and dead. Trampling through the infantry as if it were grass, the elephants ran clear of the cavalry archers’ accurate range. Dark-skinned men popped up in the turrets and shot arrows into the surrounding Maidunites.
