The Wolf's Gold: Empire V

by Anthony Riches

  ‘I knew you were a good ’un, Centurion, but I’ll buy you a fuckin’ cup of wine for that, if we ever see the inside of a tavern again.’

  He nodded his head to the scene of carnage facing the Tungrians, dead and dying horses littering the ground while the animals behind them pranced and whinnied at the stink of blood and offal.

  ‘Sanga?’

  Quintus shook his head grimly, pointing to where the wounded soldier lay helpless on the ice.

  ‘Scarface did well getting him out of there, and the bandage carrier’s stuck a wad over the wound, but I doubt he’ll see sunset even if we outlast these bastards.’

  Marcus walked over to the prostrate veteran, his hands shaking slightly with the rage still fizzing though his body.

  ‘Get him onto his feet. He’ll freeze to death if he lies here much longer!’

  ‘And if he can’t stand?’

  Marcus looked down into Sanga’s face, shaking his head grimly.

  ‘Then he’ll die.’ He bent to speak into the wounded man’s ear. ‘Get on your feet and stay on them, Soldier Sanga. I’ve no time to spend on you now, but when we’re done here I’ll see you safely back to the fort if you’re still upright. Either get up now or go to meet your ancestors!’

  The soldier nodded weakly, his face as pale as the ice beneath him, and staggered back onto his feet to stand with his back bent, staring at his own knees. Marcus patted him gently on the shoulder and turned away, looking up and down the Tungrian line to gauge the fight’s progress. Roughly half of the circle’s circumference was embattled, with soldiers fighting for their lives along the entire length of the side facing the Sarmatae attack, and his gaze flicked to where Scaurus and his first spears were watching the fight with calm patience. The tribune nodded his head decisively, and Julius ran towards his cohort’s rear, shouting the instruction Marcus had been expecting.

  ‘First Cohort, pull back! On me!’

  Looking to either side to be sure they were keeping pace with the line’s retreat, the men facing the Sarmatae stepped back from the half-circle of shields along which enemy riders and horses were scattered, the battle’s bloody detritus, some dead while others were still kicking and screaming in their death agonies. At a shouted command those barbarians with bows pushed through the throng of horsemen and started sending arrows at the retreating Tungrians, their leader bellowing his encouragement as he sensed the beginning of a collapse in the Romans’ morale. A soldier in Marcus’s Fifth Century fell with an arrow in his foot, writhing in agony at the pain and staring in disbelief at the long shaft transfixing his boot. Unable to stand, he pitched forward onto the ice too far from his retreating comrades to reach out and drag him back with them.

  ‘Hold the line!’

  The soldiers around Marcus obeyed his command with sullen faces, watching in horror as one of the horsemen leaned from his saddle to push the blade of his lance through the fallen soldier’s thigh. Another spurred his mount forward, raising his kontos with a theatrical flourish and grinning at the Tungrians before stabbing it down into his throat with an ululating scream of triumph. Still the Roman line retreated, and with their spirits buoyed up by imminent victory the Sarmatae pressed in closer, forcing the soldiers to defend themselves from their relentlessly stabbing lances. The Tungrians’ formation was bowing under the barbarian pressure now, the two cohorts within a dozen paces of each other in two long concave lines, and the Sarmatae leader pushed his horse through the mass of men competing to stab down at the soldiers with a savage grin of impending victory.

  7

  Silus and his men rode into the fortress under the watchful eyes of the bolt-thrower crews standing ready to either side of the main gate, the decurion smiling mirthlessly as the weapons’ commanders ordered their men to remove the heavy iron missiles and release the torsion on their straining ropes. He dismounted, looking to left and right for the duty centurion.

  ‘Back so soon?’ Silus turned to find the object of his search approaching him with a questioning look. ‘I assume that this isn’t good news you’re bearing.’

  He shook his head, leaning close to the grizzled officer and speaking in tones quiet enough to be audible only between themselves.

  ‘It’s news that I’ve been told to deliver to your prefect, and to share with no-one else.’

  The centurion’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘Which, I suppose, tells me all that I need to know. You!’ He plucked a soldier from the men standing at attention by the gate. ‘Take the decurion here to the headquarters building.’

  Leontius was equally unsurprised by the news, although the report of the Sarmatae horsemens’ betrayal of Belletor and the slaughter of the legion cohort did set his head shaking.

  ‘That’s a bloody disaster, Decurion. Three perfectly good infantry cohorts lost in a morning, which only leaves me with the men I have here, given that the units posted down the valley will already have been overrun. Very well, we’d best get ready for a fight. Thank you for bringing me this news, despite what it must mean for you. At least your escape means I have a ready supply of despatch riders with which to alert the legati. Not that their knowledge of this situation is likely to bring reinforcement quickly enough.’ He smiled bitterly at Silus. ‘I strongly doubt that two five-hundred-man cohorts are going to hold the pass against a decent-sized tribal band for long enough for it to matter whether we have a legion marching in our support or not, but we should never give up hope, eh?’

  Silus saluted.

  ‘As you wish, Tribune. Do I have time to share these tidings with our cohort’s doctor? She was a good friend of one of the centurions.’

  The senior officer waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘Do what you need to do, Decurion, and then come back here to collect my first message. We need reinforcement as quickly as possible if we’re to prevent these Sarmatae maniacs from getting past us and into the province. Oh, and send a scout party back down the valley, will you? I want a little more notice as to exactly what’s coming up the road at us before the blighters knock on the gates and tell us they’ve come to repossess the place.’

  Silus saluted again and left the room, detailing five of his men to carry out the prefect’s instructions and ride back down the valley road. He hurried to the fort’s hospital where he found Felicia and Annia in the middle of an inventory of the drug stocks.

  ‘Precious little dried poppy sap, no Mandrake, enough Knitbone for half a dozen patients . . .’ Felicia shook her head unhappily at her assistant. ‘Any man that stops a blade is going to have to take his treatment without the benefit of medication. At least we have a good supply of bandages and honey.’ Her eyes flicked up to see Silus standing in the doorway with an unhappy expression, and her eyes narrowed. ‘Decurion, can I help you? This isn’t good news, is it?’

  He shook his head sadly, recounting the disaster which had overtaken Belletor’s cohort.

  ‘The tribune ordered me to ride back here before the barbarians finished tearing the legionaries to pieces. If he hadn’t then the thirty of us would be dead now, regardless of whether the poor bloody infantry won, lost or drew. So I’m grateful to him for my life . . .’

  Felicia tipped her head to one side, her eyes shining with barely contained tears.

  ‘But you wish you’d stayed to fight with them, don’t you?’

  The cavalryman took her hand and held it in his own.

  ‘No true soldier ever wants to run away from a fight, Doctor, no matter all the jokes we make about the best defence against enemy iron being twenty miles of road between them and us. And your husband and his comrades were my friends.’

  Annia shrugged and turned back to the medical supplies.

  ‘A little more faith is called for, Decurion, in both our gods and our men. Neither this woman’s husband nor my own big stupid oaf of a man will have rolled over and died as easily as you seem to imagine.’

  Silus smiled and bowed.

  ‘I hope and pray that you’re ri
ght, madam. And now if you’ll excuse me?’

  ‘Second Cohort!’ The waiting centurions braced themselves for the command as Tertius’s voice rang out over the battle’s din. ‘Attack!’

  The rearmost cohort’s line split in the middle to form two wings, both rotating on the pivot points where it joined with the First’s with the two central centuries running as fast as they could on the slippery ice to swing the leading edges of the formation out from behind the embattled line. In the space of a dozen heartbeats, and before the Sarmatae leader had time to realise that he had fallen for the tribe’s own tactic of the feigned retreat, the two wings slammed into his warband’s unprotected flanks in a furious assault. Stabbing with their spears at the horses’ vulnerable sides, half a dozen men swarmed each of the riders exposed on either flank, dragging their riders down and bludgeoning them to death with their hobnailed boots and the brass-bound edges of their shields. As the horses either collapsed from their grievous wounds or were simply pulled from the fight by their reins, the cordon to either side of the Sarmatae closed tighter, and their leader looked about him in growing horror as he realised that his warriors must either escape or die where they stood. Waving his arms frantically, he attempted to turn his mount about to lead his men in a bid to escape, but only succeeded in providing Qadir with the target for which he had been waiting with his customary patience. A feathered arrow shaft sprouted from his side, and the barbarian chieftain stared down at it in terror before subsiding onto the rider alongside him, insensible with the wound’s pain. Julius turned back to the centurion of his reserve century, standing behind him at the head of his men with both hands resting on the well-worn handle of his axe.

  ‘Your time has come, Bear! Take your men around the right flank and close off the bag we have them in!’

  The big man nodded his understanding, growling a command to his men and lumbering away at their head with a purposeful look, winking at Marcus as he passed the rear of the Fifth Century.

  ‘Hold them a while longer, little brother!’

  The first spear looked up and down the length of his cohort, recognising the signs of desperate exhaustion in his men as the battle’s focus switched away from their line and the Sarmatae pressure on them relented.

  ‘First Cohort!’ The centurions looked at him from either side, wearily waiting for his command with the expressionless faces of men ready to carry out whatever order their leader ordered. ‘Straighten the line and hold!’

  Marcus nodded, gesturing Qadir to help him push his surviving men forward alongside the centuries to either side, straightening the cohort’s formation until, while still ragged from the centuries’ losses and exhaustion, it had taken on at least some semblance of a straight line of defence.

  ‘They have little fight left in them, I fear.’

  The Roman nodded, surveying his men with a grim but professional expertise, taking in the way that many of them had slumped onto their shields the instant that the line was straight, while others were leaning against their fellows.

  ‘True. But we’re not done yet.’ He raised his voice in a bark of command to be heard above the battle, smiling inwardly as backs stiffened and heads lifted at the harsh tone in his voice. ‘Soldiers, this fight is not yet over! When the Tenth Century attacks the enemy rear, and with no escape route left to them, these barbarians will attempt to flee in panic. And their horses are facing us! You must make one last effort if we are to avoid this victory turning to disaster . . .’ He looked up and down the cohort’s line to find his fellow officers bellowing similar instructions at their equally weary soldiers. ‘One last effort, gentlemen, but then it’s hardly a fair fight, is it? On this side we are unbroken, experienced soldiers with more battle experience than most legions, whereas they are surrounded and in terror, their only motivation to escape from this circle of spears! Very soon now, when their last desperate attack fails, these bloodied warriors before us will be begging for mercy! And I say we should give it to them in the only way their treachery has earned. I say we give them the mercy of a quick death! No prisoners!’

  ‘No prisoners!’

  The soldiers took up the cry, bellowing it at the tops of their voices at the horsemen milling about before them, and the centuries to either side took it up until the entire cohort was bellowing the sentiment in unison.

  ‘You really are a bloodthirsty little beast, beneath all that civilised veneer, aren’t you?’

  Marcus shrugged at Julius, who had walked across to stand alongside him.

  ‘Aren’t we all, when the spears fly and the smell of blood is thick in the air? And besides, you know what’s going to happen when—’

  The battle’s noise sharpened, a fresh note of terror raising the hairs on the soldiers’ necks as men and beasts screamed in fresh horror at the violence being done to them.

  ‘That’ll be the Bear’s men engaged. There’s nothing puts the shits up a horseman like a century of big bastards with axes carving their way in through the back door. And here they come!’

  As if commanded by some secret voice that only they could hear, the horsemen to their front spurred their horses as one and drove them forward at the Tungrians in a desperate, instinctive lunge to escape the ring of sharp iron closing about them. Riders kicked furiously at their mounts, driving them at the Romans despite their rolling-eyed reluctance, until the terrified animals were practically nose to nose with the defenders. The soldiers held their ground, those men with spears as yet unthrown and intact, stabbing them into the oncoming mass of horseflesh to inflict horrendous wounds on the helpless beasts, the front rankers held upright by the men behind them.

  A rider leaned out of his saddle to stab down at the Tungrian line with his long kontos, sending a soldier reeling back from his place with his jaw opened to the bone by the iron blade’s cold kiss, and Qadir pushed a man into his place with a growled instruction to keep his shield up. The wounded man staggered away to the century’s bandage carrier, who simply pulled the scarf from round the soldier’s throat and pressed it to the wound before turning away to deal with a more serious casualty. Along the length of the Tungrian line the Sarmatae were railing at their prison of spears and swords, unable to persuade their horses to drive into the array of shields confronting them, and the soldiers facing them gained in confidence with every moment.

  Saratos drew his knife and looked at Marcus with an eyebrow raised in question, pointing with his other hand to the sagging Sarmatae leader who was hanging grimly onto his horse’s neck with Qadir’s arrow protruding from his side. Nodding his consent, the young centurion watched as the man dropped his shield and crawled into the forest of horses’ legs, crouched low to avoid becoming a target for the enemy’s lances. As his new comrades watched with incredulity, he nestled under the belly of the wounded man’s mount and slid the knife between its flesh and the rider’s saddle straps, slicing the thick leather with a quick sawing action before pulling at the Sarmatae leader’s leg and dragging him down from the horse’s back with the saddle still between his legs. As the hapless barbarian hit the ground, the knife flickered out to rest on his throat, leaving the fallen rider gasping in terror and the remaining horsemen utterly leaderless.

  Like the last guttering of an exhausted candle, the fight went out of the Sarmatae warband in less than a dozen heartbeats. The men nearest to the First Cohort’s line fell from their horses and threw down their weapons, raising their empty hands to the soldiers still tearing into their ranks and imploring the Tungrians to spare them from the massacre that was already in train behind them, looking around in terror at the axes and spears slashing into the steadily shrinking perimeter of their doomed warband. Now that the rage of battle was seeping out of him, leaving the young centurion more amazed than angry, given his men’s survival against such odds, he found himself unable to carry though the threat of slaughter that he had bellowed out only moments before. He looked round to find Julius, waving a hand at him and then putting his wrists together to mime the b
inding of a prisoner’s wrists. The first spear looked to his tribune, who nodded solemnly.

  Silus was mounted and ready to ride to the north-east with the tribune’s message in the company of four of his men, when the scouts sent west to determine the Tungrians’ fate came galloping back up the valley, and he dismounted to wait for them to reach the gate while the duty centurion stood his disgruntled bolt-thrower crews down for a second time.

  ‘The Tungrians, Decurion! They won! They’re marching back up the road!’

  He grinned in disbelief, shaking his head at the duty centurion.

  ‘You’d better send a runner to fetch your tribune, hadn’t you?’

  The dour-faced officer nodded, then shouted for his chosen man.

  ‘Send a man to the headquarters and tell the tribune that some of the auxiliaries seem to have escaped from the barbarians. Then get the carts moving, those poor bastards are going to be carrying their wounded on their backs. And warn the hospital to expect casualties.’

  Silus turned to the men he had picked to accompany him on his mission to deliver the dispatch to Porolissum.

  ‘I’ll take that task. You four, ride south with that message. And if you fail to deliver it don’t bother coming back, because we won’t fucking well be here!’

  He mounted up and took a dozen men down the valley, finding the Tungrians labouring up its slope two miles from the fort. Reining his horse in alongside Scaurus he jumped down from the saddle with a swift salute as his superior officer stepped out of the cohorts’ slow, weary column of the march.

  ‘I suggest you stop your men, Tribune, there’s mule carts on the way for your wounded . . .’

  The expression on the other man’s face stopped him in mid-sentence.

  ‘We’ll march in unaided, thank you, Decurion.’

  ‘But the wounded, sir?’

  ‘Are either already dead or will last long enough to see the inside of the hospital. And you miss the point, Silus. These men are Tungrians, and they will not leave a man behind for the enemy to despoil, not while they have the strength to carry their bodies.’