Fortress of Spears e-3

by Anthony Riches

  ‘A job well done, Centurion Corvus! Now we finish these blue-faced bastards once and for good. Your boys will be along in a moment. Take them to the left, push up the hill and link up with the left flank of the century that went up in front of you. In the meanwhile our axemen will make this gap in the fence big enough that even the Sixth Legion’s road menders will feel safe to join us. Ah, here’s your century now…’

  He pointed back into the empty space between forest and palisade, and Marcus followed his outstretched arm to find his 9th Century marching into view, their one-eyed watch officer striding alongside them with Qadir’s brass-knobbed chosen man’s pole in his hand while Morban, Marcus’s veteran standard-bearer, was at their head. Marcus saluted the first spear, then trotted out to meet his men, returning the watch officer’s salute and barking his orders to the men around him as Qadir retrieved his pole and dropped back to his usual place at the century’s rear.

  ‘Well done, Cyclops! To your places, gentlemen, we’re turning left and advancing up the inner wall until we make contact with the century to our right, then we take our place to their left and keep advancing alongside them!’

  He trotted over to the head of the century, returning the standard-bearer’s salute and shouting over the crash of hobnails and the jingle of equipment as they mounted the fallen palisade’s wooden ramp.

  ‘Morban, take them left! Up the hill!’

  The standard-bearer shot him a quick nod, then bellowed over his shoulder at the lanky trumpeter marching behind him.

  ‘Blow!’

  The trumpet’s harsh note snapped the century’s heads up, and Morban canted the standard to the left. Marcus stepped out in front of the marching century, turning to face the troops and raising his gladius high and pointing to their left.

  ‘Follow me! ’

  He jumped down from the wooden ramp, watching the marching soldiers as Morban led them over the one-foot drop and up the slope to their left. Satisfied that they had made the turn successfully, he turned, gulped a lungful of air and ran hard up the slope, past the leading ranks of the century’s column and on up the hill. He ignored the fact that Cyclops had broken ranks to run alongside him as he searched through the billowing smoke for the century that had preceded them, knowing that nothing he could say would reduce the man’s protective instincts towards his officer. Toiling through the reek drifting slowly across the chaotic battlefield, he suddenly ran into clear air and stopped, aghast at the scene unfolding in front of him. The century that had advanced up the hill only moments before him was being overrun by hundreds of barbarian warriors, the soldiers fighting a desperate but doomed defensive action as their enraged enemy hammered against their faltering shield wall, one man after another going down into the trampled mud to be finished off with swords and spears by the rampaging horde. As he watched, the other century’s centurion, anonymous in the drifting smoke, stepped into the front line with a bellow of defiance and started fighting for his century’s survival. Without his even being aware of it, a growl of anger rippled in his throat as he watched his brother officer fighting for his life, and he put a hand on the hilt of his spatha.

  ‘No!’

  Marcus turned, to find his watch officer’s one good eye fierce with determination.

  ‘No use in your throwing yourself away. Take the lads in there and pull those poor bastards out of the fire, those that’s left.’

  He nodded slowly, turning away from the scene of his comrades’ massacre. When he spoke, his voice was harsh with fresh purpose.

  ‘Get back to your men, Cyclops.’

  He ran back down the slope through the smoke, his mind working quickly, almost falling over Morban in the murk.

  ‘Twenty paces more and then put them into line to the right, facing up the hill. No horns!’

  The standard-bearer nodded at him and stamped away up the hill, while Marcus pulled a soldier out of the marching ranks and barked a command in the man’s ear.

  ‘Run back down the hill to the first spear. Tell him there’s a century being torn to pieces up here and we need urgent reinforcement now! Go!’

  He pushed the soldier hard, sending him away down the slope, then turned back to the marching column. Morban, barely visible through the smoke, had the standard held horizontally over his head with its metal hand pointing to his right.

  ‘Scarface! Make sure they make the turn!’

  The veteran soldier snapped a salute and ran to march at Morban’s shoulder, ready to stand firm once the standard-bearer made the right-angled turn to put the 9th in line facing the enemy, rather than risk encountering them in the vulnerable column of march. The line abruptly turned right, the soldiers following their standard without much of a clue as to what was happening. And just as well, Marcus mused, given what they would be facing in less than a minute. He stepped in alongside his deputy, pointing past the marching soldiers and up the smoke-wreathed slope.

  ‘Qadir, there are hundreds of barbarians less than a hundred paces that way, and they’ve already torn up one century. When we march out of this damned smoke they’ll throw themselves on to us like dogs on raw meat, so give me your pole and get your bow ready, you and your mates. Anyone that looks like they might be important, anyone with a lot of gold or that’s shouting the odds a bit too loudly, put them down.’

  The big Hamian handed over his six-foot brass-knobbed pole, unslinging the bow from across his shoulders and barking a command in Aramaic to the dozen or so other Hamians marching in the 9th Century’s ranks. Marcus shot a glance back down the century’s line, waiting a few seconds to allow the last of the marching soldiers to make the turn, then drew breath to bellow his orders.

  ‘Ninth Century, halt!’

  The column stamped to a halt, troops coughing and spluttering as they breathed in the thickening smoke from the rapidly spreading fires.

  ‘To the left… face! Form lines of battle!’

  He waited while the soldiers straightened their lines, the front-rankers raising their shields and hefting their spears, the rear-rankers crowding close to the men in front of them, ready to grip their belts and hold them steady once the fighting started.

  ‘Ninth Century…’

  Marcus’s voice rang out over the short double line, the din of battle from their right muffled by the smoke and the distant roar of blazing canvas.

  ‘When we march forward, we will soon come upon the remains of one of our sister centuries. They were surprised in the line of march, and never stood any chance of resisting the barbarians. You, however, are ready to fight, armed and armoured, drilled and trained to perfection. Any one of you is worth a dozen of those blue-nosed bastards. So we will go forward, we will find the men that killed our brothers and we will kill as many of them as possible before our reinforcement arrives. At the walk, advance!’

  The century started forward as one man, and while Marcus had Qadir’s pole ready to push between the shoulders of any man hanging back, he quickly realised that he wasn’t going to need it. Ten, twenty paces they advanced, without any sign of an end to the dirty grey smoke what was making eyes water and lungs strain for breath, and then, in the blink of an eye, they were back out in the crisp dawn air with the scene of the other century’s massacre laid out before them.

  The slope was littered with corpses clad in the same equipment his men were wearing, their mail armour a dull iron grey against the barbarian camp’s trampled mud. A few of the fallen soldiers were still moving, their wounds severe enough to leave them helpless but not enough to have killed them immediately. Half a dozen barbarians were moving among them, their swords black with the blood they had spilled, and, as Marcus watched, the nearest of them raised his blade in readiness to dispatch another of the wounded. Qadir snapped his bow up, and, with a sonorous note from the bowstring, put an arrow into his neck, dropping him choking and kicking to the ground beside his intended victim.

  A couple of the barbarians closest to the dying warrior looked up at the sudden commotion, ga
ping in surprise at the 9th Century’s unexpected appearance from out of the smoke even as the other Hamians shot them down with a swift precision that rivalled Qadir’s. Forcing himself to ignore the dead and dying Tungrians scattered across the ground before him, Marcus pushed through the century’s battle line and looked around him for some sign of the barbarians who had massacred his fellow soldiers only minutes before. The smoke eddied with the gentle morning breeze again, affording him a momentary glimpse of the fight taking place down the slope to their right. The Tungrian line was now fully embattled, struggling to hold back easily three times their own strength of enemy warriors who were throwing themselves at the shield wall with the desperate fury of men who knew that if they failed to break through the soldiers they were as good as dead. Before the curtain of smoke closed again he realised, with a sickening jolt, exactly what it was that the barbarians had impaled on their spearheads and were waving up and down in front of the Tungrian soldiers. He turned back to his men with his eyes blazing and the muscles around his jaw rippling as he fought to hold his temper.

  ‘Ninth Century, right wheel!’

  He held his breath for a long moment while the century swung ponderously through their quarter-turn to face down the slope. The Hamians were all at sea with the manoeuvre, still new to the disciplines of infantry fighting after choosing to join the century less than a week before, but the men around each of them gently pulled and pushed them through the line’s reorientation, with more than one kind word or pat on the shoulder for men who had been derided as nothing more than a burden on the cohort only days before. Marcus smiled to himself despite his anger, acknowledging their justified change of status. The battle at the Red River’s ford had seen to that in one desperate, bloody afternoon of seemingly doomed resistance to the Venicone tribe’s assault.

  Within a minute the line was aligned with the direction in which a swelling roar of battle was reaching them through the smoke, the soldiers looking anxiously down their ranks at him as he pulled both swords from their places on his belt, his face grim with purpose. Morban, now no longer the pivot for their swing to the right, scuttled down the line’s rear to his place immediately behind their attack, the trumpeter running behind him. Marcus raised his voice again, steeling himself for the attack.

  ‘Ninth Century, your enemy are down there, hidden in the smoke.’ A few of the soldiers, he realised, were translating his words for those men around them with insufficient Latin to keep up with his angry words. ‘When I give the command we will march down this slope until we have them in sight. They will be close, Ninth Century, close enough for you to smell the shit that will stream down their legs when they see us come out of nowhere at their backs.’ A few men laughed, the delight of imminent combat evident in their wide eyes and flared nostrils. The rest of them were for the most part stone faced, working hard to hold their nerve with battle only seconds away. Marcus nodded to the trumpeter, who blew the advance strong and clear.

  ‘Ninth Century, advance!’

  As the two lines of soldiers stepped off down the hill, Scarface thrust one of his spears at the man behind him.

  ‘You, pass this forward to me when I’ve put the first one through some fucker’s back, and make sure you’re ready with it as soon as I’ve thrown this one, or there’ll be a short and very interesting discussion once we’ve sorted these long-haired cunts out.’ The men around him smiled despite themselves, as amused as they always were by his blend of bombast and single-minded purpose. Without taking his eyes off the ground in front of him, the veteran soldier hawked noisily and spat into the grass. ‘The rest of you, stop your grinning and get your fucking spears ready to throw!’

  Thirty paces down the slope, the century got their first glimpse of the enemy through a momentary gap in the smoke. The mass of tribesmen were pressing harder on the Tungrian line than before, clearly wearing the embattled soldiers down by the sheer weight of their numbers, and the cohort’s grip on its foothold inside the barbarian camp had visibly reduced in size since Marcus’s last quick look. Another ten paces saw the century within a spear’s-throw of the raging tribesmen, and yet still undetected. Marcus lifted his sword and then dropped the blade. Whatever the trumpeter might have been feeling, his lungs seemed unaffected, a loud note from his horn pealing out over the battlefield and snatching the attention of the enemy warriors. The 9th Century’s front rank roared their defiance, shaking their spears at the surprised barbarians, and Marcus raised his sword again.

  ‘Spears…’

  The men in the front rank leaned backwards, their left arms reaching forward for balance as they pulled their spears back until the iron heads were level with their helmets. Scarface turned his face and kissed the cold iron, feeling the blade’s ragged edge on his lower lip, then locked his gaze on a warrior twenty paces distant in the barbarian warband’s rear.

  ‘Throw!’

  The front rank took a collective two steps forward, exhaling noisily as they hurled their weapons into the enemy warriors.

  ‘Spears… throw!’

  Reaching back to take their second spears from the men behind them, the soldiers hurled themselves forward again, and launched a second volley into the barbarian rear. Dozens of the enemy were now out of the fight, some toppled to the ground, others on their knees or held upright by the crush of their numbers.

  ‘Form line!’

  The century was back in line within seconds, staring down at their enemy as a wave of confusion spread through the barbarians.

  ‘Swords!’

  The front rank unsheathed their short swords, a sudden pale gleam in the dawn light. Marcus pointed his sword at the enemy warriors, raising his voice to a roar.

  ‘Attack!’

  Scarface pointed his sword at the barbarian he’d decided to kill first, screaming his challenge.

  ‘Come on, you fuckers!’

  He bounded down the hill, the men to either side of him howling their own battle cries as they made their own charges, punching his shield into the barbarian’s face and stabbing his gladius into his guts before the other man had the chance to recover from the blow. Driven by their recent experience of battle with the tribes, and knowing what would inevitably come next, the front rank pulled their shields together to form a defensive wall, while the rear-rankers stepped in close and caught hold of their belts, steadying them against the assault to come. With a roar of anger the barbarian warband slammed back against their defence, hammering at their shields and helmeted heads with swords and spears as they recovered from their shock and threw themselves at the new threat.

  Tribune Licinius spurred his horse forward up the line of the 20th Legion’s column to meet the scout riders racing towards him from the barbarian camp’s northern face. His cavalry wing was strung out over the hundreds of paces behind him, still making their way through the forest that surrounded the camp, along a tortuous hunter’s path that had been scouted as an approach route in the days that had followed the near-disaster at the Red River. Sending half a legion down the path first had been a necessary measure, given the need for the heavy infantry to break into the camp and defeat the warband before the cavalry could follow up and chase down any survivors, but their lack of urgency in the approach march had tested his patience beyond its limits. The lead rider reined in his sweating horse alongside the tribune’s magnificent grey, his voice urgent as he saluted his superior and launched into a description of what was happening at the head of the column.

  ‘The northern palisade has been breached from the inside, Tribune, and there’s a warband running north in tribal strength. We saw their rearguard heading off into the forest, at least a thousand men strong, and they looked like Venicones.’

  Licinius nodded, thinking quickly.

  ‘Those tattooed buggers must have decided to quit Calgus’s war even before the attack on the camp became evident to them. What about the legion?’

  The decurion shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Too slow and too lat
e, I’d say, Tribune. The leading cohorts are just wasting time forming up on the open ground between forest and palisade, with no sign that they intend getting stuck in any time soon.’

  Licinius’s temper boiled over.

  ‘With me!’

  He spurred the grey down the line of troops followed by his bodyguard, seeking out the group of men that represented the point of the 20th Legion’s spear.

  ‘Tribune Laenas, might I ask exactly what the fuck you think you’re doing?’

  The legion’s second-in-command, a tribune whose tunic bore the broad purple stripe of the Roman senatorial class, and a man unused to having his judgement questioned, turned away from a frustrated-looking group of the cohorts’ senior centurions with a look of incredulity, opening his mouth to snarl a response that died in his throat when he saw who was doing the questioning.

  ‘Ah, Tribune Licinius, we’re, ah just making sure that we’ve got everything in place before…’

  Licinius rode over his half-hearted explanation with a patrician disregard for manners, leaning in close and speaking in quiet but fierce tones.

  ‘What it looks like, Tribune Laenas, is that you’re dithering in the face of a fight. These gentlemen around you know that the time to strike was while the barbarians were still escaping into the forest. Since even my old ears can clearly make out the sound of battle from inside that palisade, I suggest that you get your cohorts through the gap those blue-nosed blighters have torn in the fence and get them into action. If, that is, you don’t want to be dismissed and censured for lack of commitment by the governor. And let me make this very clear; if your soldiers aren’t out of my way very quickly I will simply ride my cavalry through and if need be over them. There’s a Venicone warband making their escape while we sit here wasting time, and I intend making sure that as few as possible of them get away, if you’ll get your men out of my path.’

  He sat back in his saddle with one eyebrow raised. Laenas swallowed unhappily, then turned back to face his officers.