Betrayal: The Centurions I

by Riches, Anthony

  Around him hundreds of men, bent double in crouches made awkward by their heavy equipment, hurried to reform their line close to the river’s edge. Centurions and optios strode down their length tapping men briskly with their vine sticks and staffs, making sure that they lay full length on the soft soil, out of view from the water and then, with their soldiers concealed from the oncoming gladiators by the riverbank’s slight lip, lay down themselves. Nodding to himself in satisfaction Scar looked behind him at the remainder of his command, as the six cohorts wheeled slowly from their position facing the river to point their spears squarely at the exhausted marines.

  ‘Very well, Prefect, shall we see these slaves off?’

  Beckoning to Alcaeus and the Roman to accompany him, he strolled along the line of the prone bodies of the two cohorts, bellowing orders as he watched the enemy boats draw nearer to the bank.

  ‘In just a moment I’m going to tell you to stand up! When I do, you are to face the river and form a straight line in battle formation, four men deep! On the command “attack” you are to advance to the riverbank and fight! We will do this the old-fashioned way, like a Greek army of old, with spear and shield, because these men are professional swordsmen and if we fight them blade to blade then we fight on their terms! But they’re not soldiers, they’re arena fighters, trained to fight in an artful and showy fashion, but also to survive to fight another day like the expensive property that is all they are! We’ll take the fight to them, and while they try to stand off and play at sword-fighting, we’ll drive them back into the water and kill them there without offering them mercy. I want that river to run red with their blood! Priest, will you say the words our warriors wish to hear?’

  Alcaeus raised his voice to be heard over the rhythmic chanting of the oncoming rowers.

  ‘My brothers, this will be a brief fight, and a bloody one. These men will come at you dreaming of glory, and you will shatter their dreams with your shields and spears. You must reap them, hard-eyed and merciless, like Hercules reaped the life of his defeated foe Lityerses after beating him in the harvesting contest to which that bastard son of King Midas had unwisely challenged him. He threw Lityerses’s body into the river Maeander, and so must you throw these men back into the river from which they seek to attack us, equally unwisely but equally murderous if we allow them to master us. There will be blood, a river of blood, but you must never allow pity or sorrow at their deaths to stay your hands. You men of the allied tribes, this is your time to show Hercules the depth of your anger at such a challenge, which you must punish to the fullest extent of your strength and valour!’

  Scar nodded at him.

  ‘I can always trust you to find the right words.’

  He looked up again, gauging from the ramshackle fleet’s proximity to the shore that the moment had come.

  ‘Batavi! On! Your! Feet!’

  Within half a dozen heartbeats the two cohorts were up and formed into an unbroken line, their sudden appearance throwing the oncoming gladiators into confusion just as they were stepping out of their boats into the Po’s shallows. Some of the gladiators waded forward through the calf-deep water, eager to get into the fight, while others recognised the silent ranks of soldiers as the deadly threat they so clearly were, and looked about themselves for any means of escape from what was about to descend upon them.

  ‘Forward!’

  The German soldiers advanced toward their hapless enemies as one, a leather-lunged centurion bellowing the paean’s first line, and as the two cohorts roared out the song the gladiators recoiled visibly, more than a few of them trying to climb back aboard their boats in order to flee, although their sodden clothing and the weight of their armour resulted in more than one of the improvised transports capsizing and adding to the overall air of panic. The remainder came forward, either more resolute than their fellows or simply realising that to retreat from the fight made them just as likely to die at the hands of their own officers, their advance still painfully slow as they waded ashore through knee-deep water, those few who had already reached the river’s bank sprinting at the Batavi line with the courage of desperation. The Germans advanced down the bank’s shallow beach in their usual cadenced step, remorselessly closing down on the amount of firm ground available to their enemies, two and three men at a time meeting the attacking gladiators with shields thrust out to repel their charges and spears flickering out to drop the enemy fighters writhing onto the muddy sand from the agony of their grievous wounds, to be finished off by the men behind the front rank.

  The Romans’ previous habituation to bloody violence seemed to protect a proportion of them from the horror erupting on all sides, continuing in their doomed attacks even as their comrades staggered back into the water with blood spurting from their bodies, some of them pierced through by so many spears that they were dead before they hit the mud. The dying men’s cries of agony and the voiding of their bladders and bowels at the horrendous pain added to the nightmarish scene’s horrific impact, and while some came forward regardless of the mayhem into which they were advancing others were immediately unmanned and threw their weapons aside, fleeing in all directions including that straight into the Batavi line, where they were despatched with ruthless efficiency by swift, merciless spear thrusts.

  As they were herded into the river’s shallows, retreating before the oncoming line of bloodied spears, the gladiators swiftly changed from a formed body of men, albeit one reeling under the shock of the Batavi assault, into a seething mass of individuals compressed into the few yards of water in which they could touch the river’s muddy bottom, stripped of any instinct other than to survive. Those of them facing the Batavi, with no ability to retreat into the close-packed crowd of men behind them, stood and died, some railing against their killers in their last moments, others submitting meekly to the executioners’ spear blades like sheep penned for slaughter, their deaths exposing the next rank of victims waiting behind them to the same fate. The men at the rear of the jumbled pack of desperate soldiers were fighting to divest themselves of their armour before they were forced out into water too deep for them to stand in, those who succeeded splashing away from the shore with no thought except for their own survival, most of them taken by the river’s fast current and sent away downstream faster than a man could swim, while those less successful in shedding their dead weight of iron struggled briefly for their lives before sinking from view, pulled down beneath the water’s blood-stained surface to drown unseen.

  Scar and Alcaeus watched from the riverbank’s crest, and as the gladiators’ fate was sealed the Batavi prefect turned to Varus with a questioning expression.

  ‘It seems to me, Prefect, that our orders have been fulfilled? Having removed their threat to the army’s flank, are we free to act on our own initiative and make some form of counter-attack?’

  The Roman nodded determinedly, watching with horrified fascination as the Batavi line advanced further into the shallows, displacing yet more men on the far side of the shrinking, ever more chaotic jumble of terrified men into the deeper water where they were doomed to drown under the weight of equipment that the press of their encirclement had prevented them from removing.

  ‘I cannot argue with you, Germanicus. Our orders are satisfied, and now our honour can be addressed.’

  The two men looked at each other for a moment before Scar replied.

  ‘Spoken like a gentleman, Prefect. But when we get into the fight you’re to stay close to me. My boys will die before they let any of those usurper bastards get within a sword’s length of me, and the same goes for you. These cohorts will need a live prefect to make sure they get their fair share of the medics once this is all done, not a dead man with a glorious name who’s no use to them. Now let’s go and show your former comrades in the Twenty-First Legion how warriors march to war, shall we?’

  He strode across to the waiting cohorts, nodding approvingly at their crisp formation and evident readiness to fight.

  ‘Your brot
hers of the Sturii, the Marsaci and the Frisavones have tasted blood already! Thin, weak blood, hardly worthy of our iron, but blood all the same! The threat to the army’s flank is dealt with, so now it’s your turn to go forward and earn the same honour for yourselves! Does any man here wish to march north knowing that he must greet his kin as a warrior who failed to wet his blade in this, the battle that must surely win our emperor Vitellius his throne?’

  The men before him bellowed their answer, waving their spears and barking defiance at the enemy ranks.

  ‘To our left are the men of the Twenty-First Legion! They have already fought themselves to a standstill attempting to recapture their lost eagle, and now they stand, exhausted and in need of our strength! On my command we will advance, my brothers, and take their enemy in the flank! We will break these marines, and in breaking them retake the Rapax’s eagle on their behalf! And then, once those sailors are on the run, we will finish this fight by visiting the same terror upon those praetorian bastards beyond them, regaining the honour we lost when they schemed to have our palace guard sent home!’

  He looked up and down the ranks before him, looking with a critical eye for any sign of weakness and finding none.

  ‘Is every man here ready to go and take the glory in rescuing a legion’s eagle? The glory that belongs to the Batavi!’

  A chorus of shouts and imprecations greeted his challenge, warriors clashing their spear shafts and shields in a rapping thunder until Scar held up a hand to silence them.

  ‘Are you all ready to take revenge on those praetorian traitors? The revenge that belongs to the Batavi?’

  Another, louder chorus of shouts answered his question, as the tribe’s soldiers clamoured to be unleashed on their enemy, and the rapping of spear on shield was loud enough to make normal speech impossible. Scar gestured to the Prefect beside him with an open palm, offering him the first step in the advance as was the prefect’s right, then raised his voice to bellow over the racket.

  ‘Our brother in blood Prefect Varus calls on you all to join him in regaining his legion’s lost eagle! He has sworn to retake it by force, or to die in the effort! Will you join him, and fulfil our duty to Rome?’

  Their invective against the waiting enemy was reaching fever pitch, and Scar could sense the mounting nervousness of the Classica’s battered remnant, as they considered the sheer injustice of being assaulted by fresh enemies after all they had been through. It was time. Alcaeus looked at him questioningly, but his superior shook his head with a half-smile.

  ‘Not on this occasion. These men need no tale of the divine to drive them forward, not when those poor bastards over there stand between us and the praetorians.’

  He raised his voice to order his men forward.

  ‘Batavi! Glory and revenge! With me!’

  Striding forward, Varus at his side, Scar pushed his vine stick into his ornately decorated belt and drew the gladius from the scabbard in which it hung at his hip, raising the blade high and then pointing it at the waiting marines.

  ‘Forward!’

  The century behind him hurried to catch the two men, opening their ranks to admit them to the protection of their line as they overtook their officers, Alcaeus giving Scar a knowing look as he secured his own vine stick and drew his blade, shouting to be heard over the noise of their advance, the rattle of mail on wood as men hefted their shields, and the shouts and imprecations of men eager for combat.

  ‘A nice speech, Scar! It looks like the boys of the Twenty-First don’t want us to beat them to it though!’

  Varus glanced to his left, seeing the legionaries moving towards their opponents at the braying command of their trumpeters.

  ‘Their legatus doesn’t want the shame of receiving his eagle back from a mere auxiliary prefect, that’s all! Let’s not allow them to beat us to it, eh!’

  Sucking in a deep breath, Scar bellowed out the order his men had been waiting for.

  ‘Batavi! Ready spears and run!’

  The cohorts quickened their pace to a jog, accelerating towards the waiting marines whose line, pinned in place by the advancing Twenty-First, was bending round at its left-hand end in anticipation of the onslaught looming from the flank. The marines, knowing they had no choice other than to receive an attack in close to legion strength by fresh soldiers, were already wavering and it seemed to Scar that it was only their iron discipline and the violent remonstrations of their centurions that was keeping them in line as the Batavi bore down on them. Still running, he raised his sword and shouted the last command that would be possible before the carnage ensued.

  ‘Batavi! With spears! Attack!’

  Sprinting forward through the thick, blood-spattered mud, his men charged into the waiting enemy, their assault shattering the Classica’s fragile line in a moment of swift, brutal combat and leaving the exhausted legionaries fighting for their lives as the Batavi cohorts stormed into them, punching with their shields to disrupt the enemy line before stabbing out with their spears, the warriors behind them steadying them in the battlefield’s treacherous mud with hands gripping at their armoured collars. Scar and Varus went with them, the latter stabbing a momentarily disoriented marine through the throat as his victim, stunned by a crunching punch from an iron shield boss, fell to his knees and crawled beneath the Batavi shields. Kicking the dying man off his blade, Varus took guard as the legionary’s comrade came at him with his sword raised, stepping neatly aside and tripping the man in mid-lunge, then hacking down into the back of his neck to sever his spine and drop him lifeless into the mud. Flashing him a savage grin of approval, Scar raised his shield to stop a spear-thrust that penetrated the layered wood and trapped the weapon’s blade, wrenching the board down to tear the spear from its wielder’s hands even as he stabbed up into the sprawling soldier’s throat, punching the blade up into his skull.

  In a final desperate effort, thrown forward by the screams and shouts of their centurions, the naval legionaries crowded in behind a massive figure wielding a two-handed boarding axe as he strode forward into the Batavi line, hewing first one man and then another out of his path as he forged a path towards the two senior officers, drawn to the crests that decorated their helmets.

  Alcaeus’s Second Century lurched back under the vicious attack, soldiers on either side of the axeman’s charge into their line momentarily held in place by the legionaries’ last desperate assault upon them as the desperately tired soldiers lurched exhaustedly onto their shields, hacking and stabbing with the last of their strength to either side of their champion’s massive, whirling frame. Alcaeus himself stood aghast as a single soldier stepped forward into the blood-slathered weapon’s lethal arc, raising his shield to meet the axe’s deadly power and releasing his grip on the board’s hand grip at the very moment the weapon’s blade embedded itself in the softer iron of its rounded boss. Stepping swiftly back a pace the Batavi allowed the shield to fall into the mud, its weight dragging the big man’s axe down with it and making him stoop in an attempt to wrench his weapon free, then advanced a pace and struck with his weapon held underarm, throwing his arm out to lance the spear’s blade through the muscles of the giant’s upper arm and tear it free with equal speed. Dancing back as quickly as he had attacked he took a two handed grip on the wooden shaft and wielded the spear over his head, lunging the point downwards to bury the weapon’s long iron blade deep into the unarmoured gap beside the stooping giant’s bull neck between collar bone and shoulder blade. The legionary staggered backwards, his lurching step wrenching the spear’s shaft from the Batavi warrior’s grip to point skywards, his every movement a source of agony as the weapon’s blade moved deep in his chest. Staring in horror at the blood pouring from the wound to soak his left side, numb fingers still tightly locked about his weapon’s bloody haft dragging the shield-encumbered axe through the battlefield’s viscous, clinging mud, he abruptly lurched forward as his senses began to fail, only the prop provided by the axe’s blood-soaked handle keeping him upright.
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br />   ‘Finish him! For Hercules!’

  Whether Egilhard heard his centurion’s command or not he was already in the act of drawing his sword, Lightning’s shining blade whipping up to hang in the air for an instant before he struck, hacking down at the hand still gripping the axe’s handle and severing it at the wrist. With the only thing that had been keeping him upright gone, the big man fell face first into the mud and lay still. The warriors around Egilhard roared their approval as he raised the bloodied sword over his helmeted head.

  ‘BATAVI!’

  With a collective roar of blood-lust, the German line pounced forward, sensing that the moment had come in which their enemy would break, and the legionaries, bereft of their last focal point of resistance, shattered into a mass of terrified individuals intent only on escaping from the howling tribesmen, unable to hold their ground any longer in the face of the Batavis’ bestial assault and the oncoming threat of the Twenty-First legion’s incensed soldiery.

  ‘Batavi! Hold!’

  Varus pointed at the fleeing men with an expression of anguish.

  ‘They’re getting away!’

  Scar shook his head.

  ‘No, they’re not.’

  He pointed to their right, waiting for Varus to realise why it was he had failed to order a foot pursuit. Several hundred of the tribe’s horsemen were cantering past their right flank, their spears held ready for the death strike they practised every day against straw targets, a spear blade punched through plate armour with all the force of a fast-moving horse, spearing deep into the organs around the base of a fleeing man’s back.

  ‘We don’t only use the horses for swimming, and every man in the seventh and eighth cohorts can ride well enough to hunt down the remnants of a shattered legion. I told my cohort centurions to offer a gold aureus apiece to the tent party who retakes the Twenty-First’s eagle, so I wouldn’t imagine it’ll be too long before you have the pleasure of handing it back to the man who was careless enough to lose it. And besides, we have a bigger fish to gut.’