As Lucius waited behind the rock wall with Jovinus and the four other soldiers covering the left, he heard a man yell in terror behind him. He turned to see Amelius being attacked by the blonde woman. She had emerged from the hut stark naked except for a cudgel held in both hands, and now she proceeded to strike the young noble repeatedly with it, her bare breasts shaking violently with each blow. Whatever had happened to the young noble's sword, he did not have it now, and he had little choice but to try to bat away the blows with his arms. Eventually, he lost his footing and fell to the ground. The woman probably could have beaten him to death right then and there because Vitalis was not about to spare a single legionary to save him. But she did not kill him. Seeing that the Romans were more concerned with the approaching spearmen than with her, the young woman dropped the cudgel and ran for the woods, but not without casting a long glance at Lucius. His eyes followed her dancing blonde locks and pale buttocks until they disappeared amongst the trees.
“Eyes front!” Vitalis called, jerking Lucius and the others out of their mesmerized stares.
Spears stopped banging on shields and the Nervii line came to a halt twenty paces from the Romans. As the legionaries watched, two slimy round objects sailed over the line and rolled to a stop just in front of the wall. They were severed heads, bloody and covered with mud, and had presumably belonged to the two legionaries left behind to guard the horses. Laughing heartily from behind their shields, the Nervii spearmen challenged the Romans to come out from behind the wall, but the legionaries only answered them with obscene gestures and curses.
Vitalis was no fool. The rock wall was the legionaries’ only advantage. He wanted the Nervii line to advance on it, but they hesitated. They crept forward a few more paces and then stopped to beat on their shields some more. A few spears flew across the open space, but the missiles either clattered harmlessly against the wall or stuck in the damp earth beyond it.
“Leave them be!” Vitalis called to his men. “Don’t throw them back! And save your javelins!”
One spear thudded into the mud near Lucius, a colorful band of feathers tied to its head by a leather strap. He was tempted to send it back from where it had come, but he resisted as Vitalis had commanded. Vitalis was a shrewd tactician. The fewer spears they would have to face in the coming melee, the better. But Lucius did not want to simply sit and let the enemy go unmolested. Rising from his position, he hurled a stone with all his might, and then ducked back behind the wall, narrowly avoiding a well-thrown dart. Before crouching again, he had seen his stone deflect off of one man’s shield and strike another man in the face, the recoil of the man’s head jostling his dented helmet. Jovinus followed suit, catching a Nervii spearman in the shin.
One warrior with braided locks extending from beneath his helmet was shouting orders to the others. He stood in their rear rank, and was one of the few Nervii wearing any armor to speak of. He was obviously the leader of the war band. Realizing that the Romans were not going to exchange missiles with his spearmen, the Nervii officer gave the inevitable order to extend ranks and advance.
“Watch the flanks!” Vitalis shouted just as the enemy rushed the wall.
The Nervii attack could have been executed better. Instead of focusing on one group of legionaries at a time, the line of spears attacked all three groups at once without any coordination. This created a measure of confusion in the Nervii ranks from the start. The majority of the spearmen migrated toward the band of Romans in the center where the centurion with the impressive cross-plumed helmet stood. It would be a valuable trophy for the man who succeeded in killing him. This overwhelming attack on the middle group had the effect of hitting the two groups of Roman veterans on the flanks with a much lighter assault.
As the spearmen reached the wall, Lucius and the four legionaries with him rose to meet them. The first man to mount the wall received the point of Lucius’s javelin in his exposed groin. The man had no armor, only a shield, which he now dropped as he fell forward onto the Roman side of the wall, the javelin tip driven nearly a foot into his intestines. He was probably a poor farmer, thrown into the ranks at the behest of his chieftain, but he would now die a painful death in the mud beneath the boots of the fighting legionaries.
Lucius was now thankful that Vitalis had order them to retain their javelins. Many of the Nervii, having thrown their spears at the Romans, were now armed with small axes that were of little use standing on the other side of the rock barrier. Encumbered by their shields, and lacking proper coordination, the Nervii were forced to either step up onto the wall, or try to leap over it, in order to get at the Romans. Whichever method they chose, the legionaries were ready for them. Lucius and his comrades maimed and killed as the enemy came, carefully waiting and then thrusting the iron javelin tips upward at the inevitable moment of exposure. Lucius and Jovinus killed those on the wall, while the other three legionaries dispatched any managing to make it over. It would not have been as easy had they not still had their javelins. Like the Nervii axes, the short gladii did not afford a very long reach to strike an opponent several feet above, and would have put them at a distinct disadvantage. But now, they had all the advantage. Stabs to thighs, calves, and groins cleared the wall time and time again, until the stones ran red with blood.
A warrior on the other side of the wall managed to catch one of the legionaries off guard, driving the point of his spear through the Roman’s throat, sending him to the ground kicking with blood spurting from his neck. One quick thrust over the wall by Lucius’s javelin pierced the left eye of the offending spearman, turning it to jelly. As the man fell backward, Lucius tried to jerk his weapon free, but the barbed iron tip had lodged in the man’s eye socket, and the weapon was pulled from Lucius’s hands. In an instant, Lucius had drawn his gladius. A muddy Nervii boot appeared on the wall before his face as an enemy warrior tried to climb over, but Lucius brought the short sword down with a rapid stroke that severed the front half of the man’s foot clean off. The man screamed in agony as he fell back under the mass of men behind him, who were also scrambling to get over the wall. Another legionary appeared on the ground near Lucius’s feet. Lucius had not seen him fall, but the man’s face had been destroyed, presumably by a Nervii spear. Lucius dropped his gladius momentarily to grab the fallen man’s shield, which he then used to sweep the legs of two men that had climbed on top of the wall. They fell to the ground on the Roman side, allowing Lucius to bring the shield’s metal frame down on their exposed necks in two swift, throat-crushing blows. Beside Lucius, Jovinus pulled on a screaming warrior’s long hair while another legionary opened the man’s neck with a single thrust of a gladius.
The remaining Nervii backed off, and instead chose to move toward the center of the wall, where their comrades were having some successes. Lucius saw Vitalis, his blood-speckled face contorted with the battle rage, a dozen blood-covered Roman and Nervii corpses intertwined in death at his feet. He was armed with only a gladius, and he was surrounded by a mass of crouching spear and axe men. The Nervii had succeeded in pushing Vitalis’s party away from the wall, and as the last legionary with him succumbed to a stroke from the longsword of one of the naked warriors, the Nervii officer with the braided hair jumped up onto the wall waving his sword, encouraging his men to close in and take the head of the Roman centurion.
Lucius could see that the group of legionaries fighting on the other flank were hard-pressed with Nervii all around them. No help would come from that side. All of the rage Lucius had felt against his former comrade was suddenly suppressed at that moment, as he watched the brave Vitalis fend off the thrusts of the spearpoints as he had on a dozen battlefield far more important than this one. Lucius’s instincts kicked in, and he sprang into action.
Plucking a javelin from one of the corpses at his feet, Lucius rushed to the aid of the beleaguered centurion. Jovinus and the two other legionaries dutifully followed him. In mid-step, Lucius hurled the javelin at the Nervii officer on the wall. The officer saw it
coming at the last moment, and turned his shield to deflect it, but the sheer force of the weapon managed to knock him down. Then, Lucius and his companions were among the spears, jabbing and hacking at the stunned warriors who had not expected an attack from behind. The legionaries left a carpet of bloody, blonde-haired corpses as they made their way to the struggling centurion. Three of them made it, and quickly joined backs with Vitalis to face the enclosing mass of warriors. They deflected thrust after thrust of the Nervii spears, and blocked the incessant blows of the axes. They ducked behind their shields more often than they fought back. Lucius saw the wild, tattooed face of a yelling spearman appear in the gap between his and Jovinus’s shields. Lucius quickly drove his sword into the man’s open mouth and watched the fierce eyes instantly transform to a look of shock. When Lucius yanked the blade out, a dozen loose teeth came with it, clattering onto a dropped shield at the man’s feet. The next time the gap appeared between the shields, the man’s face was gone.
A legionary cried out behind Lucius, and Lucius knew that one of his comrades had been severely wounded. The spears were pressing in on them. They were still outnumbered, and it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to the spearpoints that were now thrusting by the dozen at the space inside the shields. Lucius turned and locked eyes briefly with Vitalis, both of their faces splattered with blood and both wild with the madness of battle.
“You’re a bloody bastard!” Lucius spat at the centurion, as he ducked another jab from a spear. “A bloody lying bastard!”
Vitalis did not respond. He stared into Lucius’s eyes for an instant longer before crying out in a rage and using his gladius to lop off a set of probing Nervii fingers that had wrapped around the top of his shield. Lucius returned his attention to the enemy in front of him. The press of the enemy on the shields was enormous. Their blood was up. They smelled victory and knew the Romans’ fall was inevitable. Lucius knew it, too, and fully expected the next push of the enemy to break him and his comrades apart that they might be individually hacked to death.
But at that moment, the sound of horses’ hoofs filled the air, and the pressure on the Roman shields relieved instantly. Lucius looked through the spearmen and across the field to see a mass of charging horse emerge from the trees, kicking up great clots of mud behind them. Their helmeted riders leaned forward behind extended lances, forming a continuous line of razor sharp iron points. They were the green-clad, mustachioed warriors of the Aedui, and they were led by a short-limbed, barrel-chested rider who wore a knee-length coat of mail beneath his green cloak. With a wild cry he drove straight for the Nervii officer, who had just regained his footing after falling from the wall. The officer looked dumbstruck at the thundering death rushing at him. Out of desperation, he brought his shield up to his face to deflect the oncoming lance, but the Aeduan leader simply dipped his weapon beneath the shield and plunged the point into the officer’s mid-section. At full gallop, the horse’s momentum drove the weapon with such force that it shattered the links in the Nervii’s mail shirt, skewered the flesh beneath and erupted from his back to leave a crimson splatter on the wall behind him.
Seeing their officer dispatched like a ragdoll, half of the spearmen panicked and ran for the trees. The rest attempted to draw up near the wall to face the onrushing horsemen, but without their leader they succeeded only in forming an incongruous mass of confused soldiers who were quickly crushed under the hooves of the Aeduan horse as the beasts leapt over the wall and bounded into the unorganized ranks, crushing Nervii skulls, caving in ribs, and snapping limbs as if they were twigs.
The group of legionaries on the right had somehow managed to get through the melee with few losses and now rushed to help their centurion and their comrades. The legionaries slew the mortally wounded spearmen whose bodies now twitched in the mud, while the Aeduan horsemen rode down the fleeing Nervii, driving their lances into one back after another.
Lucius saw the Aeduan leader trot his mount over to the dead Nervii officer and then dismount and begin rifling the contorted body. He removed something from the officer’s belt that looked like a rolled letter. The Aeduan leader studied it curiously for a few moments and then, when he noticed Vitalis and Lucius approaching, quickly tucked the document into his own tunic.
“Many thanks to you, my lord,” Vitalis said, eyeing the Aeduan as if he should ask about the document, but he did not.
The Aeduan leader glanced at the centurion sullenly beneath his conical helmet. He seemed irritated, but then, when he made eye contact with Lucius, his face broke out in a wide grin.
“If it isn’t my Spanish-Roman friend,” he said cheerfully, “who likes to hunt for old women’s corpses in the dead of night!” He removed his helmet, and Lucius saw that it was Divitiacus, the Aeduan chieftain. “Lugus’s three pricks, boy, what are you and your mates doing in such a place? You’re fortunate to have escaped with your foreskins intact!”
“We are here on the order of our tribune, my lord,” Vitalis, as the senior officer, stepped in to answer. “We should return to the column without delay.”
The chieftain eyed him and then nodded. “Your tribune was a fool to bring you out here, centurion, but I can see that you know that.” Divitiacus touched the disk-like badges on the front of Vitalis’s mail shirt with the butt of his spear.
“We are most grateful that you arrived when you did, my lord,” Vitalis replied evenly.
“You should be giving thanks to this young lad here, Centurion.” He pointed to Lucius. “He’s the one that saved your neck just now. I saw the whole thing. You were alone, and surrounded, and this lad came to your aid, at great hazard to himself. You would be dead in the mud with the rest of these had he not moved when he did.”
“Yes,” Vitalis replied. It seemed to make him uncomfortable to admit it. “Excuse me, my lord, I must see to my men.”
Vitalis then marched off to examine the line of wounded legionaries being gathered near the mill, evidently uneasy with the direction the conversation was going.
“And how about you, Lucius?” Divitiacus said, once Vitalis was out of earshot. “Did you ever discover who it was that wanted you dead?”
Lucius glanced once at Vitalis, and the chieftain raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise.
“The centurion?”
Lucius nodded. “And the tribune.”
“Tribune Piso? Now this is getting interesting. You must be far more important than you let on, my young friend. Are you sure you’re not Piso’s bastard brother, sent off to the legions to avoid bringing disgrace on his father, perhaps? I must admit, I’ve a few bastard sons riding in my own ranks, though Lugus forbid if anything ever happened to them. Their whore mothers would serve my own balls to me on a skillet. ”
Lucius smiled, but said nothing. He had a feeling he knew the motive, but he did not trust the Aeduan chieftain quite enough to share it with him.
“Divitiacus!” A high-pitched voice called behind them. “Thank Jupiter, it is you!”
Both men turned to see Amelius stumbling out of the hut, his forehead marked by several contusions. Lucius could only conclude that the noble had been hiding inside for the duration of the battle.
“Please come quickly, Divitiacus!” the noble said desperately, almost incoherently. “He’s just inside the hut. We must get him to help quickly! Please come. He’s in a terrible state!”
“Who?” Divitiacus replied perplexedly, unaware of the events that had transpired before the battle. “Who are you referring to?”
“Piso, damn you!” Amelius replied irately, shooting a scathing glance at Lucius. “The tribune! You must help him!”
VI
A nightingale flying high in the night sky would have observed a glow in the blackness below. It was the sparkle of ten thousand torches – light and order, amidst a dark and barbarous land. The Roman army – Caesar’s army – eight legions strong, 40,000 spears and auxiliaries, bedded down in fortified camps on the forested borders of the Nervii lands.
Hammers rang out as the liverymen worked late into the night, fitting shoes on mules and fastening axles to wagons. Sparks streamed from a dozen spinning wheels as cutlers honed the edges of swords and spears.
The army had come out of winter quarters. The spring floods were over. The campaigning season had begun. From his base in the Aeduan lands, Caesar had brought his army north to deal with a new threat looming along the Axona River. The dozen Belgic tribes living there had formed a coalition with the solitary purpose of driving the Romans out of Gaul. The Belgae were many, and they far outnumbered Caesar’s army. In the end, however, their resolve had proven too weak. Upon hearing of Caesar’s approach, many of the southern tribes instantly sued for peace, fearful of the savagery the Romans might exact on their lands. Others capitulated, and some even joined the Roman side against their own kind. Thus, the first weeks of the summer had been spent marching here and there, scattering the few tribes that still resisted. Their armies had disintegrated like chaff in the wind. But now it was mid-summer, and there were rumors of a new coalition – this one led by the Nervii, the fiercest of all the Belgic tribes. And so, Caesar’s army had marched again.
Rome: Fury of the Legion (Sword of the Legion Series) Page 7
