More and more of the enemy had crossed the river and fell at once on the retreating Romans. Cato, in the front rank of his century, kept his shield aligned with the men on either side of him and slowly sidestepped as blows landed continuously on the curved surface. He kept glimpsing the enemy, and repeatedly thrust his sword out to keep them at bay. Now and then his blade struck a man and there would be a cry of pain, or shout of rage. As the cohort crept away from the ford it too suffered casualties. The wounded men dropped out of line, and the spaces they left were quickly filled by men from the next rank. Those injured who could still walk were shoved through to the centre of the formation, the others were left where they fell, to be butchered the moment their comrades had passed by. Once, this had seemed cold-blooded to Cato. Now he accepted it as a grim necessity of war. Much as he dreaded a disabling wound that would leave him helpless on the ground, Cato knew he could not expect others to sacrifice their lives to save his. That was the harsh code of the legions.
A sharp cry of agony sounded close to his left. Cato did not even glance round, not daring to risk tearing his intent gaze away from the enemy. Yet he was aware of someone on the ground as he sidestepped along with the rest.
‘Don’t leave me!’ a voice called out, shrill with terror. ‘For pity’s sake, don’t leave me!’
A hand suddenly grasped Cato’s ankle. ‘Sir!’
Cato had to look down quickly. One of his men, a young recruit not much older than Cato himself, lay on the ground, propped up on one elbow. A sword cut had shattered his knee and severed the tendons and muscles attached to his thigh, felling him at once.
‘Sir!’ the legionary pleaded, tightening his grip. ‘Save me!’
‘Let go!’ Cato snarled at him. ‘Let go of me, or so help me, I’ll kill you!’
The man stared back in shock, mouth hanging open. Cato was aware that the man to his left had taken a small pace to the left and a gap opened between them.
‘Let go!’ Cato shouted.
For a brief moment the grip slackened, then tightened again with renewed panic. ‘Please!’ the man wailed.
Cato had no choice. If he paused a moment longer, one of the enemy warriors was bound to leap into the gap between the centurion and the next man. Gritting his teeth Cato slashed down with his short sword and cut deep into the injured man’s forearm, just above the wrist. The fingers loosened and Cato tore his foot away and sidestepped quickly to link up with the next legionary. He heard the injured man scream in agony.
‘You bastards!’ he choked as his comrades stepped over him. ‘You murdering bastards!’
When Cato next looked round at the cohort he saw that they had left the ford behind and were halfway up the gentle slope on which the track followed the course of the Tamesis. The enemy were still swarming around the formation, intent on obliterating the Romans, but now they were no longer reinforced by those who continued to pour across from the far bank. They were already marching past and swinging upriver, making good their chance to escape the pursuing legions of General Plautius. As the cohort clawed up the slope the enemy warriors gradually broke off their attack and stood leaning on their weapons, panting for breath. The track from the ford was scattered with bodies, Britons and Romans, bloody and mutilated by the cuts and thrusts of sword and spear.
At last the cohort was free of the enemy, and Maximius led it up to the top of the rise before he ordered his men to halt. Three hundred paces away the army of Caratacus marched steadily past, making no attempt to close with the cohort. If Caratacus had a mind to wipe them out it could be done in short order, but the native commander could spare them no time.
‘Lower shields!’ Maximius called out, and all around the exhausted legionaries let their shields rest on the flattened grass as they leaned on them for support and struggled to catch their breath. Down the slope the Britons who had forced Macro and his men back across the ford and then dislodged the rest of the cohort, also rested on their shields. Both sides eyed each other warily for any sign of a renewed will to continue the fight. Neither was willing.
While there was a pause Cato crossed the interior of the formation to find Macro. The veteran centurion was holding out an arm to his optio. Blood welled up from a slash across the bulk of muscle on his forearm and dripped steadily on to the ground.
‘Not too serious,’ the optio was saying. He reached into his haversack, pulled out a roll of linen and began binding the wound as Macro looked up.
‘Ah, Cato!’ he grinned.’Seems I have another scar to tell tall tales about in retirement.’
‘Should you get so old.’ Cato grasped Macro’s spare hand. ‘Good to see you. I was afraid you’d be overwhelmed back at the crossing.’
‘We were,’ Macro said quietly. ‘If there’d been more of us there, we’d have held on.’
Cato glanced round, but Maximius had his back to them and was out of earshot. ‘Quite,’ he muttered, with a brief nod towards the cohort commander.
Macro leaned closer. ‘There’s going to be trouble over this. Watch yourself.’
‘Officers to me!’ Maximius called out.
They came walking over to Maximius, too weary to run. Besides Macro, Tullius and Felix were also wounded, the latter with a deep wound to the face. He was stanching the flow of blood with a bundle of linen that was already drenched. Cato saw the strained look on the cohort commander’s face and could guess at the inner turmoil that tormented the man. He had failed in his duty, and further down the slope the proof of his failure was marching right by him. Nothing short of a miracle could save his career from abject ruin now. Maximius cleared his throat
‘We’re safe for the moment. Suggestions?’ His voice was harsh and grating.
There was an embarrassed silence and only Macro was prepared to meet his eye.
‘Centurion?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Anything you want to say to me?’
‘No, sir.’ Macro shrugged. ‘It can wait.’
Cato looked down towards the ford.’We shouldn’t let them get away, sir.’
Maximius rounded on him angrily. ‘What do you propose? We charge down there and get stuck into them? Look at the state we’re in. How long do you think we’d last?’
‘Maybe long enough to make a difference, sir.’ Cato stiffened.
‘Whatever the cost?’ Maximius sneered, but Cato saw a trace of desperation in his expression.
‘That’s for others to say, afterwards, sir.’
‘And easy for you to say now!’
Cato refused to respond. Instead he stared past the cohort commander and watched Caratacus’ men march across the ford. His eye travelled back over the enemy forces to the far bank and the dark masses waiting beyond. The sun was low in the sky and the distorted shadows of the enemy made them seem more numerous and frightening. As he watched, the flat blasts of war horns carried across the river and all eyes turned towards the far bank. Men were streaming away from the ford and forming up into a line across a low ridge a third of a mile beyond. Several thousand infantry, with cavalry and chariots on each wing.
‘Sir!’ Centurion Antonius raised his arm and pointed downstream. ‘Look there!’
The officers turned their heads and followed his direction. On the far bank, a mile to the right the head of a dense column of men had appeared.
Macro squinted. ‘Ours?’
‘Who else?’ Cato replied. ‘And there’s the Second on our side of the river.’
The officers looked back along the track. Sure enough another column of Roman infantry was marching towards them, disappearing from view behind the hill on the far bank. For an instant Cato felt the blood burn in his veins and he faced the cohort commander.
‘Sir, there’s still time for us to do something. All you have to do is give the order.’
‘No.’ Maximius shook his head sadly. ‘It’s too late for that now. We stay here.’
Cato opened his mouth to protest but the cohort commander raised his hand to stop him.
‘That’s my decision, Centurion. There’s no more to be said.’
That was it then, Cato realised. The matter was decided. The failure of the Third Cohort was complete and its men and officers humiliated. If they were very fortunate, humiliation would be the least of their worries.
The forces of General Plautius arrived at the ford in three columns and immediately deployed and attacked the enemy. From the far side of the river the men of the Third Cohort watched as the Britons on the ridge charged forward, disappearing from view. All that could be heard were the muffled calls of war horns and trumpets and the faint sounds of battle. Then a scattering of figures appeared over the ridge, running towards the ford. More men followed them, and then it was clear that the Britons had broken as the slope was covered with the tiny figures of men.
A flash drew Cato’s eyes to the crest of the ridge and in the warm orange glow of the sun, low on the horizon, Roman cavalry burst upon the fleeing enemy, cutting them down as they raced towards the river. The ford could take no more than fifteen men across its width, and in a short time there was a huge tangle of men, horses and chariots desperately trying to cross the river and get away from the merciless pursuit of the Roman cavalry. Some of the Britons threw down their weapons and swam for it; scores of them splashing across the wide expanse of the Tamesis. Some, too weak or too weighed down by their clothes and equipment, began to struggle, thrashed the water briefly and then drowned.
The first of the Roman legionaries crested the ridge and marched down the slope in well ordered lines. As the men of the Third Cohort watched by the glow of the setting sun a great groan of despair swept through the packed mass of enemy warriors. Some still had enough wits about them to realise that even though they were dead men they could still take some Romans with them, and maybe win some time for the men still crossing the river. But they were too few to make a difference and were cut down as the glittering red ranks closed in around the ford.
The sun had disappeared over the horizon and the light began to fail so that it was impossible to tell the sides apart on the far bank. Only the din of thousands of men screaming in agony and shrieking for mercy told of the massacre taking place, and Cato felt relieved of the burden of seeing the terrible slaughter.
Down the slope, on the near side of the ford, the numbers of the enemy slipping past began to diminish, and they scattered in every direction, trusting to the coming night to conceal their escape. There were Roman voices from the direction of the ford, and out of the gloom behind the men of the Third Cohort came the sound of hoofs pounding along the track.
‘Cohort stand to!’ Maximius yelled, and the legionaries, still in box formation, hurriedly snatched up their shields and closed ranks as the centurions ran back to their units. A column of horsemen emerged from the dusk and drew up a short distance away, horses champing at their bits and pawing the ground as their riders sat silently.
‘Who goes there?’ Maximius bellowed.’Give the password!’
‘Pollux!’
‘Approach friend.’
An order was given and a large body of mounted men trotted past the cohort, heading down towards the ford to hunt down any enemy stragglers. Out of the shadows a small party of horsemen made for the Third Cohort.
‘It’s the bloody legate himself!’ someone close to Cato muttered.
‘Silence there!’ Cato shouted.
The horsemen stopped a short distance from the legionaries and dismounted. Vespasian strode forward and the men moved aside to let him past. As he passed Cato the centurion could see the dark look of fury in his clenched features. Maximius went to meet him and saluted. Vespasian stared at him silently for a moment.
‘Centurion …’ he began in a cold, barely controlled voice. ‘I don’t exactly know what happened here today, but if it reflects badly on me and the rest of the Second Legion I swear that I will break you, and every man in this cohort.’
05 The Eagles Prey
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The inside of the general’s tent was stifling after the cool wash of the moonlit air. Vespasian felt the clammy prickle of sweat on his brow and cuffed it away quickly. He had no desire to let the general think he was nervous. That would imply he had something to be nervous about; like carrying the blame for the failure of the general’s plan. It might be the fault of his subordinates that Caratacus and a large number of his men had managed to escape the trap, but that would not matter a great deal to Aulus Plautius. Vespasian was responsible for the performance of the men under his command - that was the way it was in the army - and he must suffer the consequences. How he subsequently disciplined his men was his own affair.
The legate was kept waiting at the entrance, standing just inside the tent flaps, as the clerk pushed through a linen curtain into the section reserved for Plautius and his staff. A number of lamps glowed through the fine material and the distorted shapes of men flitted across its uneven surface. The entrance was lit by a single lamp hanging by a chain from the tent pole and the dull yellow flame guttered at every waft of air. Outside the entrance, between the squad of bodyguards that lined the approach to the tent, the ground sloped down to the river, gliding serenely by under the moonlight. Down at the ford it twinkled as the current raced over the shallow pebbles and round the dark heaps of bodies that still choked the passage. On the far bank, in the pale silvery light of the moon, he could clearly see the ramparts of the Second Legion’s marching camp. Within its dark outline tiny fires glinted brightly, like fallen stars.
Vespasian had left the camp and ridden across the ford a short while earlier, in response to the terse summons he had received from the general. Every step of the way his horse had had to pick a path through the dead that were strewn on the ground. Some men still lived amongst the corpses, moaning softly to themselves, or still possessed of enough strength to scream out in agony and cause the horse to start nervously. The sickly stench of blood drenched the air and made it seem hotter than it was. There had been no end to the bodies as the legate splashed through the ford and reached the small island in the middle of the Tamesis. More dead men lay along the track and were heaped in front of the remains of Centurion Macro’s rough barricade. But the very worst was saved for last as Vespasian’s horse emerged from the crossing and picked its way up towards the low ridge on which the general had set up his camp.
Bodies had been dragged clear of the track leading down to the ford, and the corpses were piled on either side, a shadowy tangle of torsos and limbs, stiffening as the sultry night dragged on. Beyond the nearest corpses the legate saw a field of bodies stretching out across the moonlit landscape, thousands of them. He shuddered at the thought of all the spirits of the dead that must be wreathing the air about him, lingering a while before beginning the journey to the land of endless shadows where the dead eked out their dreary existence for eternity. He knew well enough that these barbarians believed in an afterlife of endless drunken revelry, but the grim austerity of death made it hard for him to accept such a vision. The awfulness of the scale of human destruction all around him was the most oppressive sensation Vespasian had ever felt. Surely, he thought, next to a battle lost there is nothing so dreadful as a battle won.
‘The general will see you now, sir.’
Vespasian turned towards the clerk, forcing himself to withdraw from thoughts of death that hung like a black mantle across the world outside the tent. He turned and ducked through the gap in the linen curtain the clerk held open for him. Inside, a few clerks still worked at their desks, even though it was the middle of the night. They did not look up as Vespasian was led towards another flap at the rear of the tent, and he wondered if they already knew something about his fate. He was cross with himself for entertaining such thoughts. These men were just busy, that was all. Nothing could have been decided yet. The clerk pulled back the curtain and Vespasian stepped into another, smaller, section of the tent. In the far corner, dimly lit, there was a camp bed and a few chests. In the centre stood a large table on wh
ich rested an ornate lamp-stand with several lights issuing flickering yellow flames as a huge Nubian slave slowly wafted a vast feather fan to cool the two men seated there.
‘Vespasian!’ Narcissus smiled warmly. ‘It’s good to see you again, my dear Legate.’
There was something dismissive about the tone in which Narcissus uttered the last word, and Vespasian recognised the customary attempt to put him in his place. Legate he may be, and from a senatorial family as well. Yet Narcissus, a mere freedman - lower in social status than the meanest Roman citizen - was the right hand of Emperor Claudius himself. His power was very real, and before it all the prestige and haughtiness of the senatorial class was as nothing.
‘Narcissus.’ Vespasian bowed his head politely, as if greeting an equal. He turned to General Plautius and saluted formally. ‘You asked for me, sir.’
‘I did. Take a seat. I’ve sent for some wine.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Vespasian eased himself down into a chair opposite the others, and found some small relief from the gentle current of air that emanated from the slave’s fan.
There was a brief silence before Narcissus spoke again.’The problem, as far as a mere bureaucrat can understand the military situation, is that the campaign is not quite over.’ Narcissus turned towards the general. ‘I believe I have that right. Now that Caratacus has slipped from our grasp . . . once again.’
General Plautius nodded.’It’s true, as far as we know. A few thousand men did cross the river before we brought Caratacus to battle.’
Vespasian’s eyebrows rose briefly in surprise. There had been no battle, just a pitiless massacre. Then he realised that the general’s description had been for the benefit of the Imperial Secretary, who, no doubt, would write a report to his Emperor the moment he reached his own quarters. A battle would win more plaudits than a massacre.
‘Caratacus,’ Plautius continued,’may well be amongst those who escaped across the ford. It is of little consequence. There’s not much he can do with a handful of men.’
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