The Selgovae’s brow furrowed.
‘My lord King, surely we can leave them to stew in the cauldron of their own forging? They must by now have exhausted whatever rations they carried with them, and they will have been through the same ordeal by fire that has so horribly burned our own men. Why not simply bottle them up and wait for them to surrender? After all, any chance of their being rescued by the men that were camped along the wall has just marched south …’
He stopped talking as the king shook his head, his face set hard. When he spoke his voice was the harsh bark of a man set upon violence.
‘Perhaps you can ignore the pain that these invaders have inflicted on me, Calgus, but I cannot! They killed my son, cut him down and threw him from the mountain as he fought to defend our fortress! No, they must be made to pay for the havoc they have visited upon my family and my people! I will lead my warriors to victory over them, grind their last scraps of resistance into the dirt and take their heads for my walls. I will prove that I am fit to be king by taking my revenge upon these invaders!’ The men around him nodded their agreement, and Brem shook his head at his adviser with a derisive sneer. ‘And besides, it is not the way of my tribe to shrink from battle when the enemy flaunts his presence on our land!’ He stared levelly at him. ‘Perhaps it is different for the Selgovae?’
Calgus laughed bitterly.
‘No different, my lord King, no different at all. Less than two years ago I stood on the battlefield listening to a man who played much the same role for me that I play for you now tell me just the same thing. My people would not tolerate leaving a single cohort of auxiliaries alive on a battlefield slick with the blood of half a legion, he told me. My warriors would think less of me if I were to do the sensible thing and leave them to stand and stare while we left the field with the legion’s eagle, and the head of its leader. And so I sent my men up a hill to take their heads, only to watch as their attack broke that cohort’s line like bloody waves upon a beach. And just as my men were finally getting to the point of overrunning that sorry, tattered last cohort, two fresh legions arrived on their flanks and put them to flight in an instant. My acceptance of that advice cost me thousands of warriors, ridden down and trampled as they fled from the legions’ bloody revenge, and I learned a bitter lesson, never to attack the Romans when they have time to prepare their defences. And Brem, just in case you doubt my story, it might help to add one more small piece of detail.’
He paused, shaking his head at the irony of the situation.
‘That cohort that managed to hold up my tribe’s attack until the legions could bring their terrible strength to bear? None other than the same cohort that we have at our mercy now, if only we have the discipline to wait for them to either surrender or make one last futile attempt to break through to the south. The same cohort that will surely kill your warriors in great numbers if you seek to attack them on ground of their own choosing.’
Brem shook his head again, waving a dismissive hand as if to push aside the Selgovae’s argument.
‘You don’t listen well, do you Calgus? I can still muster over two thousand spears even with the losses that we took in the forest, enough men to roll over a few hundred tired and hungry soldiers, I’d say.’ He raised his voice, challenging the clan leaders gathered around him. ‘We go to fight, my brothers! We’ll advance until we find our enemy, use our numbers to pin them down on all sides, and then pull them to pieces at our leisure. Our swords and spears will show these invaders what it means to enrage the Venicone people! Bring me my crown!’
The gathered nobles erupted into a riot of cheering acclaim, their fists punching the air as Brem put the circle of gold upon his head and bellowed orders to his men to follow him, jerking his head at his champion with a curled lip and a glance at Calgus. The grinning warrior took the mare’s bridle in his hand and then kicked his own horse forward to join Brem’s, pulling Calgus’s mount along beside him as the remaining mounted bodyguards closed in around them, knotting the mare’s reins to the saddle of the king’s massive war horse. Led by the royal party the war band formed into one dense mass and followed closely behind their ruler, their voices raised in the old songs of battle and victory, bellowing their imprecations at the sky as they worked themselves up into a killing frenzy.
Watching the ground before them carefully as he rode behind Brem, Calgus was the first to notice the horsemen cantering towards them when they were still a thousand paces or so distant from the war band. At five hundred paces, as the king’s bodyguard were growling to be set loose upon the incoming horsemen, the enemy riders pulled up abruptly, each of them shedding a second man from his beast’s back. The dismounted men hurried forward another few paces, forming an orderly line and standing immobile for a moment until a command made almost inaudible by the distance set them into action. Raising their arms they sent a flickering flight of arrows high into the air, the missile’s iron heads glittering in the sunlight as they hung for a moment at the highest point of their trajectories before plunging earthwards. Whipping down into the mass of warriors, their impact excited a roar of anger and fear beyond the few casualties inflicted, and the king turned in his saddle to bellow an order for shields to be raised, the men to either side of him having already leaned out of their saddles to put their boards between him and the threat.
Another volley fell, and a few more men were struck down as those that had shields raised them over their heads to protect themselves and those around them close enough to huddle underneath.
‘Delaying tactics!’ Brem fumed, pointing at the archers and raising his voice to shout over the war band’s hubbub. ‘Charge them down, my bro—’
He jerked sideways with the impact of an arrow in his left side, and as Calgus’s horse shied back a half-step another shot flew past him, close enough that he knew he too had been a target for the men who had waited in the trees to ambush them with such skill. The king slumped over his horse’s neck, and Calgus responded the only way he knew, instinctively snapping a command at the closest of the clan leaders gathered behind them and pointing at the forest’s edge.
‘Send men into the trees! Root out those archers and have them track our progress along the forest edge to prevent any more ambushes!’
The noblemen responded without question, and Calgus urged his horse forward into the protection of the shields that had been raised by the king’s bodyguards. Brem had managed to force his body back into an upright position, panting with the pain and shock as he stared at a blood-covered hand.
‘Fool … to have … fallen for that … old trick.’
He put the hand back to his side, shut his eyes in anticipation of the pain to come and swiftly snapped off the arrow’s shaft where it protruded from his wound. Swaying in the saddle, he would clearly have fallen if not for the strong hands to either side. The Selgovae waited until his eyes opened again, nodding dour respect at the king’s resolve.
‘Can you continue, my lord King?’
Brem nodded, his face white with shock.
‘I have no choice. You men –’ he gestured to the bodyguards to either side of his horse ‘– hold me up. Try not to make it look –’ a racking cough shook the king’s body, and he coughed a wad of bloody phlegm on the animal’s neck ‘– too obvious. And march faster. I do not know how long I will be able to stand this pain.’
Their task of distraction complete, the enemy archers re-mounted behind the horsemen who had carried them to their shooting position and cantered away, vanishing into the trees a thousand paces or so further to the north.
‘Kind of them to show us the way to wherever it is that they’ve taken refuge.’
Calgus nodded distractedly at the king’s painfully grunted statement.
‘Indeed so, my lord King. Although I cannot help wondering why they would choose to face such overwhelming superiority in numbers in the forest, where we will be able to surround them and attack from all sides.’
Brem coughed again, a bubbling, half re
tch, and spat blood onto the ground to leave his lips flecked with red, and his eyes wide in a face pale with pain.
‘I care little. We find them, we crush them, and then I will bear the ordeal of this arrow’s removal.’
The path down which the archers had made their way back to their fellows was clear enough, already trampled wide and flat by the passage of hundreds of men, and Brem bent stiffly to look down from his horse with a bitter, painful laugh.
‘No deception this time, I see, just …’
He fell silent, cocking his head to listen. In the distance, the sound almost inaudible, they could hear the sound of axes striking wood, so many axes that the noise was a continuous hammering. With a creaking tear a tree fell, the noise of its impact with the forest floor lost beneath the continuous racket of chopping, and Calgus smiled to himself at the realisation of what the Tungrians were doing.
‘They will use trees as walls.’
Brem spat again, his mouth a sour gash in his face’s white mask.
‘It makes no difference. We will overwhelm them like hunting wolves. No wall can protect them from my fury –’ He coughed again. ‘For no wall can be long enough to prevent our washing around it to tear them apart. Onward!’
The warriors surged around them, fanning out on either side of the path with their weapons and shields ready to fight, and all the while they advanced into the forest’s dim green light the noise of axes hewing on wood continued, the unmistakable sound of trees falling seeming to reach Calgus’s ears with every few steps that his mare took. As the sound of the chopping grew louder the trees began to fall less frequently, until the war band crested a ridge and found the place where their enemies had chosen to make their stand. Calgus stared over the heads of the warriors surging round and past the small knot of horsemen protecting their wounded king with a half-smile. From his position, hunched white-faced over his horse’s neck, the king saw the expression flicker into life, and his voice was weak and peevish when he summoned the strength to speak.
‘What’s so fucking funny, Calgus?’
The Selgovae replied without taking his gaze off the spectacle before him, shaking his head slowly.
‘I could never have predicted it, and yet it’s just so obvious, my lord King. The enemy have constructed a line that your men will never outflank.’
Before them in the clearing below the Tungrian axe men had formed a great circle, almost two hundred paces across, it seemed, and had then felled every tree around its circumference so that they had fallen into the circle with their tops pointing to its middle. Almost the entire perimeter of their impromptu stockade was refused easy access by the interlocked branches of the fallen trees, and where there were gaps that the axe men had failed to fill the Tungrians were already waiting four and five men deep, their lines formed and ready to fight.
‘I have no doubt that we can defeat these tired, hungry men, my lord King, but I also have no doubt that they will make us pay a stiff price for the pleasure. Are you sure that you wouldn’t prefer the cheaper option of starving them out over a day or two?’
Brem shook his head, still unable to raise his head into an upright position, his voice even weaker than before.
‘Never. Why should I risk the eagle being smuggled away in the night when I can have every man down there dead before the sun sets? Why allow the man who killed my son the chance of escape from my retribution? No! Sound the horns! I will recover that eagle if it is my last act before I go to meet my ancestors.’
‘They’re coming then.’
Julius nodded, watching the Venicones pour over the lip of the ridge from which he could see the mounted royal party staring down at their improvised defences, the barbarians cheering at each sounding of their horns, shouting insults and threats at the waiting soldiers.
‘You didn’t expect them to be frightened off by a few trees?’
Scaurus shrugged, looking about the circular space in which his men were preparing to make their stand.
‘I had wondered if good sense would prevail. If the positions were reversed I’d be more than happy to wait for them to realise that without food or water they have no choice but to surrender.’
Julius shook his head.
‘Not these boys.’
The tribune sighed.
‘No. It was always a bit of a false hope. At least Dubnus and his men have allowed us the chance to go down fighting with a little pride, rather than simply being mobbed and ripped apart without much of a chance to let those bastards know they’ve been in a fight.’ He drew his sword. ‘I suggest that you take command of the reserve, First Spear, and be ready to hurry them into whichever of the gaps in our defence the tattooed buggers manage to breach first. I’ll just wander around and see what good I can be wherever the fighting gets a little warm, if that’s all right with you?’
Calgus stared impassively down as the first of the war band’s warriors charged into the Tungrians’ defences, hundreds of warriors streaming towards a ten-pace-wide gap between two fallen trees at the urging of their clan leaders.
‘Good choice.’
‘What was that?’
He turned to the king.
‘I said “good choice”, my lord King. Your men are striking the weakest point in the enemy’s defence, throwing themselves into the attack with the ferocity that will be needed if we are to break open this improvised fortress. You can be proud of them Brem, they are spending their lives lavishly in the hope of giving you victory.’
A victory to make your passing a little less sour, he mused, and to lighten the blow of your having died without an heir. I’ll play the role of the disinterested statesman to the hilt, I think, and seek to arbitrate between the various claimants to the throne whilst strengthening my position with them all to the point where no matter who wins I will be seen as an indispensable adviser. And if the Tungrians managed to take the eagle then presumably they will have put an end to that bloody priest and his predictions of death. The son, the prince and death, indeed? It seems that what he saw was only your death, Brem, as it turned out …
The king suddenly sat up bolt upright, staring down at the battle raging below him. He was sweating profusely, his left side dark and wet with the blood that continued to stream from the arrow wound in his side, but his face was set hard in remorseless lines, as if he had been granted a last moment of lucidity and strength by the gods.
‘I see the place where our breakthrough will be made!’
In the gap between two fallen trees Marcus’s Fifth Century were fighting for their lives against the mass of barbarians seeking to push them back into the circle, their front rank a dozen men wide, each of them stabbing into the tightly packed Venicones with his sword whenever the opportunity presented itself, their shields scored and notched by enemy blades. Another fifty soldiers were packed in tightly behind them, all of them wielding spears over the front rankers’ shoulders to punch the sharp points into the faces and throats of the men facing them. While the Romans’ discipline and training enabled them to pull their wounded back through the ranks, the Venicones who fell to their attacks had nowhere to go but down into the foaming blood- and urine-soaked morass beneath the two sides’ feet, their attempts to crawl out of the fray adding to the chaos in the war band’s ranks as they raged at the Tungrian line. A warrior climbed up onto the tree trunk to the century’s right, raising his axe and bellowing a challenge at the men below him, then toppled backwards into the branches with an arrow in his chest, shot by one of the Hamians standing behind the straining century.
‘Push!’
Quintus had cast his chosen man’s staff aside and thrown himself into the struggle with a spear taken from a wounded man, stabbing it repeatedly into the barbarian horde even as he took an involuntary step backwards, his feet sliding through the mud as the Venicones’ superior numbers started to tell against the tiring Tungrians.
‘A little help seems to be in order here, eh Centurion?’
Marcus turned to find th
e tribune standing beside him with his sword drawn, but before he could answer Scaurus had swivelled to shout an order at Julius.
‘First Spear! Reinforcements are required here!’
Brem pointed down at the circle of trees, and Calgus saw what it was that he was indicating. In the spot that Calgus had seen the tribesmen attack, the Romans were starting to weaken, falling back one step at a time as Brem’s warriors pushed them off their ground in the gap between the two trees through simple strength of numbers. A moment before their line had been no more than a dozen paces from the stumps of the trees that formed the battleground’s flanks, but now the distance was more like twenty. As the royal party watched, soldiers ran from both sides to reinforce their comrades, sent in groups of six to eight from the centuries that were under less pressure, the officers standing behind the embattled century ordering them into action in support of their men. With a roar that the men on the ridge heard clearly enough they stopped the retreat and started to press the Venicones back. The reinforced Romans seemed to gain fresh purpose, chanting in time as they smashed forward into the war band, battering the warriors backwards with their shields and stepping over the Venicones’ dead and wounded, swords and spears stabbing down to finish off the men crawling helplessly in the mud beneath them.
‘No!’
Brem turned to the leader of his bodyguard.
‘Now is the time, my brother, time for me to face the enemy in battle and inspire my people to rip into these invaders until they are no more. Take me to the fight!’
The warrior nodded, looking about him at the rest of the king’s guard and jerking his head at the fight below them.
‘You heard the king! We fight!’
The mounted men roared their approval, and with a sudden start Calgus realised that his horse’s bridle was still tied to the king’s saddle.
‘But—’
The word was barely out of his mouth before the royal party was in motion, moving down off the ridge and trotting towards the spot that the king had indicated would be the point of decision. Calgus’s horse lurched into movement, compelled to accompany Brem’s by its tether, and the Selgovae bit his tongue with the first jerk, the sudden pain reducing his protests to a thick mumble. Brem drew his sword, his hand steadied by that of the man riding alongside him, and the guards around him did the same, their weapons gleaming dully in the forest’s dim light. The king somehow managed to find the strength to raise himself out of the saddle, lifting the sword high and shouting a battle cry loud enough for the warriors packed into the breach to hear him.
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