Cursing the fact that he had, for silence’s sake, left his legionary cavalry in the camp, Vespasian ran as he had never run before.
Almost tripping over his own feet, he hurtled back down the hill, grateful for the faint light provided by the Hamians’ repeated, but wasted, volleys. After a lung-tearing final burst across the flat ground from the base of the hill, he came to the camp as the third cohort was marching out at the head of the rest of the legion.
Spotting their primus pilus, Vespasian slowed and turned, falling in next to him, catching his breath. ‘Take your men at the double and form up facing north at the base of the slope. The first cohort will arrive on your left flank and the rest of the legion will form up on you; we will be taking a defensive position, understand?’
‘What’s happening, sir?’
Vespasian glanced to his right; and then he saw them coming out of the north. ‘That’s what’s happening. Now go!’
In the distance a dozen or so faintly luminescent, tiny figures were seemingly gliding slowly towards them; behind them was a shadow, darker even than the night. The primus pilus took one look, bellowed an order, a cornu boomed twice and the cohort sped off with a jangling of gear and regular pounding footsteps across the dark ground. The rest of the legion streamed along behind them, orange flickers from the fires now burning up in the fort playing on their burnished iron armour and helmets.
Vespasian ran on to where the legion’s cavalry detachment and his five thin-stripe tribunes were mounting, having walked their horses out of the camp. He pushed the youngest one out of the way. ‘I need this, Marcius.’ Leaping into the saddle he shot a glance at the most senior of the young tribunes. ‘Blassius, now get this right: ride to Maximus and tell him to bring the Hamians and one of the Gallic cohorts to the bottom of the hill and then you take the other Gallic cohort round to the southern gate and link up with Valens and the second cohort; if he’s not there get him out of the fort. Tell him that we’re under attack from the north and he’s to prevent any attempt to outflank us. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘If they don’t try and take our flank, he’s to work his way around the fort and come at the bastards from the west; I’ll send the Batavians to him. Report to me when you’ve done that. Now ride!’
With the briefest of salutes Blassius spun his horse on its hind legs and took off.
Vespasian glanced north over the heads of the legionaries still spilling out of the camp; he shivered. The spectral forms were less than two hundred paces off, their arms raised and waving. Behind them, now dully illuminated by the blazing fires on top of the hill, ran thousands of darkling figures, stretched out to either side and fading into the night.
Vespasian turned back to his tribunes. ‘Caepio, find the other two Gallic cohorts and tell them to prevent any of the bastards coming around behind the camp, and tell Cogidubnus to bring his Britannic auxiliaries to me as soon as he can.’ Without waiting for an acknowledgement he looked down at the young man he had unhorsed. ‘Find the Batavian Cavalry, Marcius, and send them after Blassius and then get yourself a horse and bring the Gallic auxiliary cavalry to the bottom of the hill. Sergius and Vibius, you follow me.’ Cruelly kicking his mount into action, he sped away with the remaining tribunes and legionary cavalry following as a howl of hatred issued from the night-shrouded host bearing down on them.
The pace of the II Augusta’s deployment was now frantic as the threat closed but Vespasian sensed that it was not fast enough as he raced along the column of doubling cohorts. Reaching the front he glanced to his right: the Britons were less than a hundred paces out and their pace seemed to have increased. Ahead he could see the first cohort forming up on the slope but to the left the Hamians and the Gauls were still a quarter of a mile away. ‘Turn and face!’ he bellowed at the third cohort’s primus pilus.
The centurion shouted the order, raising his arm in the air, a cornu rumbled and the cohort’s standard rocked from side to side; the third cohort came to a standstill a hundred paces short of the first’s right flank.
There was no time to fill the gap.
Along the column the deep call of the cornu was echoed and the remaining cohorts halted and turned to face the enemy as the first long-range javelins struck. The luminescent figures could now clearly be made out as matted-haired, long-robed druids whose filthy garments glowed dimly in patches with an uncanny light; in their hands they brandished writhing snakes. Next to the central druid ran a huge man in a winged helmet shouting his triumph at having caught the legion deploying: Caratacus. Caratacus, the Britannic chieftain whom no Roman had seen since his defeat at the battle of the Afon Cantiacii two years previously; since then he had struck terror into every legionary in the new province for his ruthless irregular resistance to Rome’s conquest. With ambushes, lethal harrying of supply columns, patrols and outposts and pitiless usage of prisoners and collaborators, Caratacus had more Roman blood on his hands than any other Briton on this island; and now he was about to cover himself in more. Vespasian realised that Caratacus had played him all along.
Vespasian led on the one hundred and twenty men of the legion’s cavalry detachment to cover the gap as the javelin shower intensified, drumming down with a rapid staccato beat onto the upturned shields of the II Augusta.
With the Britons now no more than thirty paces from contact, Vespasian reached the right flank of the first cohort who had just completed a scrambled deployment four ranks deep. He slowed his mount. ‘Turn right and form line!’ The lituus blared and the troopers reined their horses in and around, turning from a column two abreast into a line two deep. Without waiting for the decurions to dress the line, Vespasian drew his sword, raised his arm and roared, ‘Charge!’
As one, the legion’s cavalry surged forward, taking their wild-eyed, frothing mounts directly into a canter and then quickly accelerating them into a gallop, swiftly closing the distance between them and the warriors heading for the gap in the Roman line and the chance to cut it in two with fatal consequence. Missiles rained down on them, felling a dozen horses as if an invisible tripwire had been placed in their path.
‘Release!’ Vespasian yelled, his voice raised an octave by the tension in his chest and belly. At a low trajectory, more than one hundred sleek javelins hissed towards the oncoming front rank of Britons, thumping into them, punching many back with arms flailing and mouths gaping with sudden agony. To either side hundreds of pila hurtled from the Roman ranks. The druids flung their squirming serpents with shrill curses at the legionaries as they drew their swords; they then stopped still, letting the warriors behind, led by a baying Caratacus, engulf them and take the full force of the barbed-pointed, lead-weighted weapons flitting across the gap between the two forces. Back and down many went, but the survivors dashed on for the final twenty paces, following with glee their leader who had worked the first chance in two years of annihilating one of Rome’s killing machines.
Vespasian bellowed incoherently, urging his horse on as troopers drew their spathae and tensed their thighs around their mounts, bracing for impact. The joy of the warriors charging for the gap vanished and they cried in terror as the dim shapes of horsemen thundered towards them, threatening the horrific death of infantry caught in the open by cavalry. The men in the front ranks wavered and slowed, but the weight of numbers behind them pressed them ever forward; an instant later they collided in a maelstrom of human and bestial limbs. Vespasian swept his sword horizontally, cleaving heads and raised arms as if scything ripe barley as his mount ploughed on, head raised in fright, neighing shrilly, trampling every man in its path, leaving them broken and twisted. As the cavalry crunched into the fracturing Britannic line their momentum decreased violently; the horses shied from desperately wielded spears and swords and the troopers found themselves fighting in pockets, having failed to keep formation in the desperation of their disaster-averting charge. Vespasian reared his mount, using its flailing forelegs as weapons as he punched and cut with his short i
nfantry gladius at the howling warriors around him, slicing open chests and splitting faces as the troopers to either side slashed their longer cavalry spathae to greater effect; but now, with the initial drive of the charge soaked up, the infantry began to regain the advantage of numbers. Without the benefit of a shield-wall the cavalry were in danger of being overwhelmed; many were ripped from their mounts.
Then a massive communal grunt of exertion rose from the left as the first cohort made contact and the brutal, mechanical sword work of the Roman war machine began to the accompaniment of the shrieks of eviscerated men. A similar sound followed from the right, but much amplified, as the rest of the legion slammed into the tribesmen who had so suddenly appeared out of the night.
Now the killing began in earnest.
Vespasian parried a wild cut from a long slashing-sword, its inferior quality iron buckling in the spark-strewn impact; kicking his right leg forward, he slammed his hobnailed sole into the wielder’s face, crushing the nose and punching the warrior back into the men behind, knocking them off balance. Taking advantage of the momentary lack of adversaries, he pulled his horse back and signalled for the second-rank trooper to take his place. Looking around he saw that the Hamians and Gauls behind them were now close enough to relieve them. Just to his right he glimpsed Sergius, one of the two tribunes whom he had brought with him, dragged screaming from his horse. Now was the time to withdraw his cavalry before too many more succumbed in what was, essentially, an infantry fight. They had served their purpose; the young man had not died in vain.
‘Disengage!’ he called to the liticen.
The shrill call of the lituus rose above the surrounding clamour; Vespasian urged his horse back towards the Hamians as the surviving troopers pulled away from the surging Britons, if they could. The warriors began to follow the retreating cavalry, mercilessly cutting down those still trapped in their midst, as they saw once again the gap open in the Roman line.
But the prefect of the Hamian archers knew what was required of him as he saw Vespasian galloping towards him yelling and pointing at the obvious danger. He immediately halted his command thirty paces from the gap; as the retreating troopers swerved left and right out of the Hamians’ line of sight the eastern archers let fly a volley of shocking, close-range intensity. The front two ranks shot directly at the Britons racing through the rend in the Roman formation, drilling their shafts deep into the lead warriors, twisting them to the ground, long hair wrapping around agonised faces, whilst the rear two ranks aimed high; the second low-trajectory volley from the front ranks hit as their arrows poured down from above to bring the surge to an abrupt halt as if it had slammed into an unseen wall. A third and fourth volley, each with fewer than five heartbeats between them, beat the Britons back as if the wall itself was shunting forward, leaving only the dead behind it. Suffering grievous losses both from the head-on barrage and the metal-tipped hail pelting from the sky the warriors turned to flee, leaving the ground carpeted with their dead.
But their retreat exposed a new threat, a threat that made the blood run cold in all who beheld it. A dozen druids were revealed as the last of the warriors escaped to the safety of their shield-wall; they stood motionless, chanting, unheard above the ringing resonance of battle. But it was not their presence that chilled the heart, nor was it the fact that despite the continued volleys of the Hamians not one fletched missile touched the softly glowing figures; it was another presence, a presence unseen but not unfelt, a presence that surrounded them, protected them and exuded an air of malevolence that caused despair to well up within all who suffered it.
Vespasian gasped as if the air was in short supply as he gazed upon what he could not comprehend. Verica’s words telling him of the druids while sailing back from the Isle of Vectis almost two years previously came back to him:
‘When my people came to this island – the bards deem it to be about twenty-five generations ago – the people we supplanted worshipped different gods; they had built great henges in their honour, ancient beyond reckoning. The druids dedicated these places to our gods but still the presence and power of some of the island’s gods persisted and they demanded worship. The druids took on that responsibility and uncovered their dark secrets and rituals; they keep the knowledge to themselves and they’re welcome to it; but what I know of it fills me with dread.’
Was this then that power that the old King had spoken of? That ‘cold power that cannot be used for good’?
For a few moments there was an audible lull in the fighting as the malice emanating from the eerie company pierced the consciousness of both Roman and Briton. The Hamians’ archery tailed off; the druids began to move forward.
Vespasian roused himself from the dread-induced paralysis. If the power that the druids wielded was allowed to carry all before them then the line would be split asunder and the II Augusta would soon cease to exist. He kicked his reluctant horse onward, heading directly for the luminous group of priests as they slowly moved forward protected by an invisible aura; behind them the Britons had started to advance again.
Suppressing the horror welling up inside him, Vespasian screamed incoherently, brandishing his sword as he closed on the druids; such was their concentration on their incantation that they took no notice of the oncoming threat. He urged on his increasingly unwilling mount, ready to swipe the head from the lead druid’s shoulders, but when he pulled his arm back for the killing blow he felt himself suddenly rise as if he had been hauled out of the saddle by an unseen hand from above. His horse reared, screeching; it toppled backwards as if violently shoved and Vespasian flew from its back. He landed with spine-jarring force amongst the dead; the air was pushed from his lungs and his eyes lost focus. As his vision cleared he saw the druids coming on in the glow of their own luminescence and the flicker of the conflagration now raging in the hill-fort: old and young, dark-haired or grey, all wore a symbol of the sun around their necks and had an image of the crescent moon hanging from their belts. All chanted in unison and all stared at him with cold satisfaction as he lay catching his breath on the ground, and Vespasian knew, with profound certainty, that they had come for him; they had drawn him towards them in a reckless charge.
Vespasian felt a chill grasp at his feet as the druids approached and the malevolent atmosphere enshrouding them began to slip over him; he stared in terror, unable to move, although he instinctively knew that not to do so would mean yielding to the power that was gradually creeping up his body. He screamed ‘No!’ repeatedly, deafening himself, and yet no sound came from his lips. He could see nothing else but the hunger of the druids for him alone; he could hear no sound from the battle that he knew was still raging. The chill had become so intense that his teeth were now chattering and his heartbeat, which should have pounded with fear, decreased. A flash crossed his vision from the right and he felt a jolt in the power, now slithering up his thighs, freezing his bones to the marrow. His muscles spasmed in shock and his chattering teeth clenched in sudden pain; his head jerked back and his jaw relaxed. The chill abruptly disappeared. He could hear again, he realised, and the sound was the cries of men dying in torment, men dying very close by; and mingled with their cries was a word, shouted repeatedly: ‘Taranis!’
Pulling his arm from over his eyes he saw, as if Time’s chariot had slowed, a sword rising through the air, flashing reflected firelight, trailing dark gobbets of blood, as it left a head spinning in its wake above the robed body to which it had once belonged, standing as rigid as a statue. Mesmerised, he followed the sword’s arc as it carved through the air to slice into the cheek of another druid, exploding his teeth from his mouth as his jaw slumped open to hang by a few gory sinews that vibrated with the inarticulate, bestial roar that issued from the gaping throat. Cogidubnus kicked the stricken man aside and slammed his weapon, point first, into the chest of the next druid; the rest turned and ran. Vespasian came back to his full senses; he grasped his sword lying next to him and jumped to his feet as the Britannic King despa
tched the rearmost druid with a savage, double-handed cut across the small of his back, severing the spine and slicing the kidneys in two.
Vespasian looked past the fleeing druids; the Britons were wavering, unwilling to advance into the gap now that the spell their priests had woven was broken; to either side the fighting had resumed with renewed intensity, the cold malice now replaced by hot blood-lust. ‘Cogidubnus! With me!’ Vespasian grabbed his horse’s reins, leapt into the saddle and urged the beast away over the carpet of dead, out of the line of the Hamians’ aim as they, as if coming out of a trance, prepared to release another volley.
The King chased after him as the shafts began to fly, picking off the remaining druids and felling many of the warriors who had moved closer.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ Vespasian croaked, once they were clear. ‘I’ll wait till later for an explanation.’
Cogidubnus grimaced. ‘It will be hard for a Roman to understand.’
‘Try me.’ Vespasian pointed to the Britannic auxiliaries formed up behind the second cohort, along with the Gallic cavalry with Marcius at their head; behind them the last three cohorts of the II Augusta had deployed in a second line as a reserve. ‘But in the meantime have your men ready, I’ll need them soon.’ With a nod, Vespasian kicked his horse and drove it towards the Hamians who were keeping up a relentless barrage of missiles at the shield-wall across the gap. But Vespasian knew that arrows would not hold the Britons back forever; arrows would eventually run out.
‘Open your ranks to let the Gauls through,’ he called to the Hamian prefect as he sped past, ‘and then get your men onto the fort’s palisade.’ He just caught the man’s hurried salute as he pushed on towards the Gallic infantry, directly behind. A series of cornua rumbles told him that his order had been promptly obeyed as he came to a skidding halt next to the cohort’s command post.
Masters of Rome: VESPASIAN V (Vespasian 5) Page 8
