‘What?’
The other legionary’s question became a gasp of shock as his comrade’s blood showered down on his upturned face, giving the young warrior all the time he needed, and he swung the sword’s long blade back over his shoulder and then whipped it around as the legionary opened his mouth to shout a warning, decapitating him with the force of the blow. In the silence that followed, the tent party gathered around him, staring in awe at the two dead legionaries, but Alcaeus pointed to their objective with an urgent whisper.
‘Get the gate open.’
Lifting the thick wooden bar that secured the two halves of the gate, Wigbrand and Lataz dropped it to one side, while the rest of the tent party pulled the heavy wooden doors back to open the camp’s entrance. Lataz looked at the gaping hole in the Roman defences for a moment before speaking, voicing the thought that was on every mind.
‘So what do we do now?’
Before Alcaeus could answer, the silence was broken by a challenge from above them, a sentry leaning over and unwittingly hailing them in jocular tones.
‘Oi, when you pair have finished pulling each other off, what about one of you come and takes a turn up here? I’m bored of …’
He fell momentarily silent at the sight of the intruders, his mouth gaping at his dead comrades sprawled in the mud, then filled his lungs to roar a warning.
‘Alarm! Enemy warriors at the gate!’
For a brief moment silence reigned again, and then men started shouting on both sides of the palisade as the sentry ran down the wall, repeating his call to arms at the top of his voice. Alcaeus roared an order over the rapidly growing tumult.
‘Tent party, face into the camp! Egilhard, lead them!’
Striding out into the open space outside the gate, the centurion set himself, ready for the legionaries running down the palisade’s wall in response to their comrade’s shout, while Egilhard pushed his way into the heart of his comrades, finding himself between his uncle and his brother. In the camp men were stirring, voices raised to bellow orders that would quickly have the legion struggling to its collective feet, bleary-eyed and still half-asleep, but in no doubt that there was something horribly wrong. A legionary came running down the palisade’s internal face from further round its curve, coming to a halt as he saw the tent party’s men in his path. Lataz stamped forward and hurled the spear that he had picked up moments before straight at him, the sharp iron point punching clean through his armour, and the Roman, still not quite comprehending what was happening, died on its long iron shank without even raising his shield. Men were pouring out of the nearest tents and reaching for their weapons, centurions and chosen men bellowing at them to get into the fight, but where the men facing them would have expected a prompt charge, the legionaries milling about amid their abandoned tents seemed strangely reluctant to go forward, even at such thin opposition. A furious centurion drove a ragged wave of a dozen of the braver among them towards the gate, men without armour wielding swords snatched up as they had left their tents and, realising that their opponents’ nerve was already at breaking point, Egilhard led his comrades forward into them. Facing off to the centurion, he killed the man with a swift and economical spear stroke before the officer ever got inside sword reach, and the brutal melee that followed sent the survivors reeling back, leaving half a dozen men dead or dying behind them. More men were gathering behind them with shields and hastily donned armour, but still there was no sign of the overwhelming attack that Egilhard had expected. Half-tempted to go forward into the tremulous enemy, Egilhard called to his men to reform, clamping down on his urge to rampage into the defenders and stepping back towards the spot where his centurion was guarding the opening in the palisade.
‘We defend the gate! Get back in line!’
Glancing over his shoulder as the tent party retreated back to join him, he saw Alcaeus beset by a pair of legionaries and desperately fighting simply to stay alive. As the centurion fended off a vicious swing of one man’s sword, opening himself up to the other’s hacking stroke, the young soldier turned and threw his spear with instinctive speed, taking no time to consider the cast but simply putting the weapon’s needle-sharp point over his centurion’s shoulder and into his would-be killer’s face. Nodding his gratitude the centurion sprang at his other assailant, who was still reeling with shock at his comrade’s horrific death when the wolf-priest put him to the sword. Turning back to the threat confronting them, he flinched as a spear arced out of the torch-lit half-light, blood spattering his face as Wigbrand grunted with the impact, then dropped his sword and shield, staggering back with the weapon’s long shaft in both hands and panting with the sudden, agonising pain. Even as the legionaries finally came at them again, emboldened by their gathering numbers and over a hundred strong, Egilhard’s ability to control his need to fight was abruptly lost, dispelled by the stink of his comrade’s blood. Abruptly gripped by a rage whose ferocity tore away any thought of self-preservation, he charged past his horrified father with a blood-curdling scream and ripped into the men facing them, heedless of the danger as their ranks parted before the incandescent fury of his attack, hacking and stabbing a vengeful path through the enemy soldiers standing in his way.
‘First Spear!’
Antonius looked up from his seat by the watch fire positioned at the river bridge’s eastern end, forcing himself to snap out of the memories that often plagued him when he was tired and then came to full, vivid life in his dreams, as if his mind surrendered its ability to keep the horrors that he had witnessed at bay when the time for sleep approached.
‘What is it?’
The guard century’s chosen man saluted apologetically.
‘The centurion thinks there’s something happening in the camp, sir, and he’s asking if we should—’
Getting to his feet he raised a hand to silence the soldier, listening carefully. The sound of shouting was clearly if faintly audible, a rumour of combat that was rapidly swelling as, he guessed, more of the legion came to battle against whatever force had had the audacity to attack the Twenty-first in its camp. Hurrying across the bridge he found the guard century’s centurion practically hopping from foot to foot with his urge to join the fight.
‘First Spear! There are enemies in the camp! We’re fully equipped, so we have to—’
‘No.’
For a moment the only response was an incredulous stare, but before the centurion could regain his wits, Antonius leaned close to him, his tone loaded with all the grim authority he possessed.
‘No! You want to abandon your assigned post and rush into a fight you have no way of understanding? That is not going to happen, Centurion, so put it from your mind!’
‘But—’
‘The fight will come to us quickly enough, trust me. There are only two objectives for those barbarians, one being to destroy or seriously damage the legions camped here, the other being to find the legatus augusti and kill or capture him. Because if they capture Cerialis then they end this campaign in one battle, at least for this year. They’ll try to push through the camp, cross this bridge and get into Augusta Trevorum, because, and you can trust me on this point, they will know he’s there.’
The other man looked at him for a moment before replying, his tone still one of disbelief.
‘So what do we do? Just sit here and wait for them?’
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’ Antonius shook his head, genuinely angered by the centurion’s mulish need to rush into the fight. ‘If we stay here then when they arrive here they will shower us with spears from both of our pathetic flanks and kill us all here. Get your men three-quarters of the way back across the bridge and into a decent line, ready to hold them off. I’m going to get some archers.’ He reached out a hand, putting his index finger into the other man’s face. ‘One more thing, and I’ll put this in terms you might understand. If you disobey this order then I will hunt you down though the madness of this battle and I will strangle you with your own guts! Is. That.
Clear?’ The centurion nodded, his eyes suddenly wide with the threat’s potency. ‘Then get on with it.’
Striding out into the camp towards the point where the Hamian archers were billeted, he passed hundreds of men struggling into their armour while their officers bellowed at them to do it faster, desperate to throw them into a fight which, from the growing din echoing from the palisade, was swiftly getting larger and deadlier as more and more barbarians rushed into the fray. He found the archers standing in their tent parties, armed and ready to fight, their prefect looking to the embattled perimeter with evident uncertainty as to what he should do with his unarmoured men.
‘Ah, First Spear Antonius! What do you think—’
The hard-eyed centurion abandoned any thought of protocol, raising a hand to silence him and then pointing back the way he had come.
‘There’s no time, Prefect. Gather your men, tell them to bring every arrow they can carry, and follow me to the bridge! Quickly!’
‘Lataz, where’s Egilhard? I need him to …’ The leading cohort had poured through the gate just as Egilhard had charged into the Roman line, and in the chaos that had followed Alcaeus had lost sight of his comrades until the last of the Batavi attackers had passed, pushing through the hapless men of the First and Sixteenth Legions towards the bridge. But having found his men, the centurion fell silent as he realised that Frijaz and Lataz were standing over a corpse around which a handful of dead legionaries were scattered.
‘He’s dead. My son is dead.’
The centurion nodded, seeing the desolation in their eyes.
‘It looks as if he made them pay just as dearly for his life as we could have expected. Get him clear and find somewhere to bury him where the dogs won’t be able to dig him up, we can look after him properly once this war’s finished.’ He waved a hand at the camp’s ransacked and trampled remains. ‘There are plenty of spades lying around. Where’s your other son?’
Lataz pointed at the rear of the cohorts pushing on through the legion’s encampment towards the bridge, hollow-eyed with the shock of his son’s death.
‘With them. Wild for revenge.’
Leading the Hamians back towards the river at a run, Antonius looked to his right, gauging from the roar of battle and the streams of legionaries hurrying to join the fight that the Twenty-first was perhaps holding its own against the barbarian tide, but the scene in front of him told a different story. Where the men of the Rapax were eager to get into the fight, the recently returned defectors clearly lacked any heart for battle, dozens of them streaming away from, rather than towards, the battle.
‘They’re not going to hold, are they?’
He shook his head at the prefect’s question.
‘No. Any moment now we’re going to be arse-deep in angry Germans!’
Running across the bridge he roared a command at the waiting century lined up close to the eastern bank.
‘Friendlies coming through! Open your ranks!’
The legionaries responded with their customary crisp discipline, the rear ranks stepping back to allow the archers to slip through their line. Antonius hurried to the left end of their line to stare across the river, his heart soaring momentarily as he realised that a tide of armoured men was washing towards the bridge, then shook his head as his hopes were cruelly dashed by the realisation that the men in question were not legionaries.
‘They’re Batavians! Stand by to resist attack! Prefect, put a third of your men on either side of the bridge and send the remainder to find some elevation so that they can shoot down into the enemy once they come at us. Tell them not to wait for an order, just kill anyone that sets foot on that wood!’
While the Hamians ran to their positions, and readied themselves to start killing the oncoming enemy, he stalked down the back of the three-deep line, shouting to be heard over the oncoming mob of Batavi warriors as they pounded towards the flimsy defence.
‘You yearn to prove yourselves fit to boast that you’re Blood Drinkers? Here’s your chance! There are thousands of the best men in the enemy army about to come across that bridge, and they’ll all be coming at you! If you hold them here you’ll be famous, the men who saved the legatus augusti and upheld your legion’s proud name! And if you die here, you’ll have immortal glory!’
The enemy warriors stampeded onto the bridge, charging wild-eyed down its hundred-pace length, individuals among them falling as a growing sleet of arrows whipped into them from both sides, the Hamians nocking and shooting with deliberate care intended to ensure that every arrow found a target, and at a pace that Antonius knew they could sustain until their shafts were exhausted.
‘Twenty-first Legion! Stand by to receive the enemy!’
The tightly packed front rank stamped forward with their left legs, crouching into their raised shields so that only their helmeted heads were visible, the men behind them stepping in close to support them, gripping their belts and crouching in their turn to maximise their own protection and get their weight behind the front rankers. With a thunderous hammering clatter of hobnails on wood the enemy were upon them in a pounding rush, seeking to burst through the line and into the open streets behind them, where their superior numbers would make short work of the defenders and allow them free rein to scour the city for Cerialis. They hit the legion line without breaking stride, the leading rank putting their shoulders against their own shields and pushing with all their strength while the men behind them crowded in at their backs and wielded their long spears to stab at the defenders.
‘Hold them!’
The century’s officers were close behind the line, roaring encouragement at their men as they started to slide slowly but inexorably backwards under the weight of the Batavi charge. The men of the front rank were pushing back with all their strength, holding their shields with both hands against the monstrous pressure relentlessly driving against their wooden wall and ducking away from the enemy’s spear thrusts, but as Antonius watched a legionary fell, stabbed in his exposed front foot, dropping to the wooden surface to be finished by punching downward thrusts of the Batavi warriors’ butt spikes. The line slid back one pace and then two more, the legionaries’ booted feet unable to find purchase on the smooth wooden surface, and, standing close behind them, Antonius could see a look of triumph on the face of the closest of the enemy as he bellowed the first line of their paean.
‘Batavi, swim the seas! Worship mighty Hercules!’
The mass of men behind him burst into song, and looking into his exultant eyes the Roman realised the only way that he was going to turn the fight.
‘You!’ He bellowed at the closest of the archers. ‘Here! Now!’ The bowman hurried to his side with an arrow nocked and ready to shoot, looking apprehensively at the senior centurion’s determined face. ‘Him! See him? The smug bastard leading the singing?’ He pushed the Hamian forward until he was almost close enough to the rear of the Twenty-first’s line to be stabbed by their probing spears. ‘Can you put an arrow in his eye?’
The archer nodded, mystified at the simplicity of the request.
‘I could hit him in the eye from—’
‘Just do it! And don’t hit the men between you!’
Drawing the bow taut the archer loosed, his target realising that he was the mark for the arrow at the very last moment before it whipped across the five-pace gap between them and sank a third of its length in his skull, protruding from his eye socket. The other eye was suddenly dark red, burst by the missile’s impact, but the dead man’s corpse, held upright by the press of men to front and rear, swayed with each push by either side, its head lolling loosely. Antonius beckoned more of the archers to join the first, who, having realised the nature of what was expected of him and revelling in the deadly simplicity of the task, was busy nocking and loosing shafts between the legionaries’ heads, each arrow killing another man to lessen the tide driving the legion line backwards. An enraged warrior hurled a spear at him, its long blade transfixing the Hamian’s throat and dr
opping him thrashing to the bridge’s wooden surface, but suddenly there were a dozen more archers behind the Romans, each one alert to any sign of a spear throw and punishing the attackers with their pointed armour-piercing arrows. Shots were also starting to rain down from the buildings behind the bridge, iron-tipped shafts hissing down into the mass of men funnelled helplessly into a mass target that was almost impossible to miss, each shot taking another Batavi warrior out of the fight, while more archers harassed the men on the far bank with shots that were equally unlikely to miss a human target even without being aimed.
‘We’ve got them! Pour it on!’
He watched, still not daring to believe, as the enemy front rank fought and died under the lash of the Hamians’ pitiless barrage, their singing silenced as they struggled to push the Roman line backwards. As increasing numbers of men fell to the archers’ murderously unrelenting hail of arrows the remainder were increasingly seeking the shelter of their shields, having lost all interest in anything other than staying alive, and the legionaries were comfortably holding their ground. On the verge of issuing a fresh order, the centurion turned in surprise as a voice behind him caught his attention.
‘Well, First Spear Antonius, it seems as if your small guard force has saved the day, does it not?’
Cerialis strolled out onto the bridge with his bodyguard walking to either side and in front of him, their shields raised against thrown spears.
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