Fortress of Spears e-3

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Ah, gentlemen, we will advance into the enemy camp and join battle immediately.’

  The legion’s most senior centurion nodded briskly, his smile speaking volumes for his pleasure at the cavalryman’s intervention.

  ‘At the double march, Tribune?’

  Laenas swallowed and nodded.

  ‘Indeed. At the double march, First Spear Canutius.’

  ‘It’s a good thing we’ve got the advantage of the slope!’

  Qadir nodded in response to Marcus’s shouted comment. The century were starting to tire, the front rank becoming more interested in keeping their feet and fending off the barbarian spears than taking their iron to the enemy, who in their turn had burned through their first rage and were attacking with less vigour than moments before. A horn sounded across the smoke-wreathed camp from the northern palisade, and the front rank of a legion cohort swept into view through a gap in the camp’s northern fence. Marcus shot the oncoming legionnaires a dark glance.

  ‘About bloody time too.’

  Qadir shook his shoulder, pointing across the Tungrian line.

  ‘Look!’

  Fresh troops were pouring into the space behind the Tungrian cohort, moving quickly to bolster their sagging line.

  ‘It’s the Second Cohort. First Spear Neuto was never going to leave us in the sh-’

  Marcus stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes suddenly caught by an object being waved around over the heads of the barbarians a dozen paces from the century’s line. Qadir caught his stare and looked to see what had taken his attention. It was a man’s head, still wearing the cross-crested helmet that denoted his centurion’s rank, evidently hacked from his body and impaled on the point of a spear as a crude trophy with which the Romans could be taunted. As Qadir watched, Marcus’s face went white with anger, and his eyes narrowed in calculation. He turned to the Hamian, reaching down and picking up a fallen shield, his voice stony as he turned to face the howling mob railing at the century’s shields.

  ‘Shoot to my right, and keep shooting.’

  Guessing what was about to happen, Qadir reached out a hand to restrain his friend, but Marcus was too quick for him, pushing through the astonished rear-rankers and stepping into the front rank alongside Scarface. Stopping a sword-blow with his shield, he stepped forward and stabbed his gladius into the tribesman’s throat as the enemy warrior fought to free his blade from the painted wooden surface, turning back to stare with a blank-eyed intensity at the wide-eyed soldiers.

  ‘Guard my left.’

  He turned back and stepped into the seething mass of warriors, hacking down a man to his right and blocking another sword-blow from his left with the shield, shouting a terse order over his shoulder.

  ‘Qadir! Shoot to my right!’

  The Hamian shook himself free from the amazement of seeing his centurion actually throw himself into the mass of his enemies and bellowed a command in his own language.

  ‘Hamians, to me!’

  Nocking an arrow and loosing it with one fluid motion, he sent the iron-tipped head through the throat of a warrior poised to bury his axe into Marcus’s helmet. Ramming his gladius deep into another barbarian’s chest and feeling the blade’s reluctance to come free of the wound’s tight grip, the young centurion released the weapon’s ornate handle without a second thought, kicking the dying warrior back into the men behind him. Grabbing the axe from the tribesman tottering backwards with Qadir’s arrow buried in his throat, he levelled his shield and hurled it horizontally into the press of the enemy, flattening another of the men facing him with a ruptured throat, then raised the axe two handed and gathered himself to attack again. Another Hamian reached Qadir’s side at the same second, ripping his bow from its place across his back and reaching for an arrow with the same unconscious grace with which the chosen man exercised his craft. With only a split second’s time spent finding a point of aim, he sent the missile into the fray around his centurion with an almost thoughtless speed that nevertheless sent another of the men facing Marcus staggering back into the men behind him in a spray of his own blood. At the same instant Scarface shook off his own momentary panic, hurling a furious command at the front-rankers to his left as he waded forward into the barbarians.

  ‘With me, you bastards!’

  Slamming down his shield to block off a spear-thrust aimed at his legs, he thrust his sword’s blade into the barbarian’s throat and twisted the hilt, opening the warrior’s neck wide in a shower of hot blood that flicked across the half-dozen men who had advanced into the barbarian mass alongside him. Glancing up, he was momentarily open mouthed at the sight of his officer hurling his shield into the warband’s mass and grasping an axe two handed before throwing himself at the warriors gathering around him with an incoherent scream, clearly lost to his rage. The speed and savagery of his onslaught cleared a path into the heart of the warband as warriors fell away from him with their bodies rent by the weapon’s heavy blade, those as yet untouched by the unexpected attack backing away from the berserk Roman. Qadir and his fellow archers were ten strong now, and their arrows were killing the warriors to Marcus’s right faster than they could be replaced by the men behind them, the barbarians’ eyes flickering from their unhinged enemy, his armour dripping with the blood of the dying men scattered around him, to the archers dealing out impersonal death to them from behind the Roman line.

  Scarface and his fellow soldiers now formed the other side of their centurion’s tenuous link to his century, their shields forming a diagonal wall from the century’s line to Scarface at its farthest extension. A man fell forward into the seething mass of barbarians facing them, his throat skewered by a barbed spear thrust over the rim of his shield and then pulled back to haul him bodily out of the shield wall, and Qadir pushed a rear-ranker forward to take his place before lifting his bow to shoot again. The soldiers were holding out well enough, stabbing into the mass of their enemies and parrying the inevitable counter-attacks in a way that the veteran soldier knew could only last so long before they succumbed to the overwhelming strength gathering against them. He dragged in a deep breath, meaning to entreat Marcus to retreat from his exposed position, but before he could do so the axe snagged between a dying man’s ribs and stuck fast. A warrior in the mass facing him stabbed at Marcus’s face, the blade slicing a long cut in his cheek as he swayed backwards to evade the attack, releasing his grasp on the axe’s handle as he bent to scoop up a dying warrior’s sword from the ground beside him. Stamping forward, he hacked the sword’s blade at his attacker’s legs, dropping the man to his knees with the muscles of both thighs opened to the bone. Drawing his spatha, the Roman roared his blood-soaked defiance at the barbarians now visibly shrinking away from him. A single man stepped forward to meet him in the space that had opened around the Roman, one hand grasping a massive battleaxe, the other a spear on which the centurion’s head was impaled, and as Scarface realised whose the head was his eyes narrowed in pain.

  ‘Oh, dear fuck…’

  Marcus jumped forward to meet the newcomer’s attack, a fresh flight of arrows punching into the men to his right as he stopped the barbarian champion’s axe with crossed swords, halting the blade inches from his head before slamming his helmet’s brow guard forward in a vicious head-butt which sent the enemy warrior staggering backwards, blood streaming from his shattered nose. He followed up with lightning speed, his spatha hacking off the reeling barbarian’s right arm at the wrist before the other man ever realised what was happening to him. Thrusting forward with the barbarian weapon, he ran the warrior clean through, leaving the blade sheathed in his opponent’s chest and tearing the spear from his grip. While the barbarians around him watched in amazed silence, he pulled the severed head from the bloody blade, tossed the weapon aside and tucked the grisly trophy under his left arm. Stepping back a pace, he growled a quiet order to Scarface.

  ‘Fall back. Slowly.’

  The tribesmen watched in silence as the Romans retreated to their line one pace at a
time, never once looking back from their enemies, while the Hamians waited with arrows nocked and ready to fly. Regaining the relative safety of the Tungrian line, Marcus blew out a long shaky breath, tears running through the blood painted across his face between his cheek guards as he stared down into the pain-contorted face that stared back up at him. He lifted his head to watch numbly as the 20th Legion’s leading cohort smashed into the barbarian rear less than a hundred paces from the Tungrians’ place on the slope.

  ‘I’ll see you buried properly, Tiberius Rufius, and then I’ll take as many of my men as will follow me, track down that bastard Calgus and make sure he dies in agony for you.’ He turned back to Morban, who was standing at his shoulder, aghast at the death of the man who was both Marcus’s saviour and his closest friend, his voice hoarse with sudden grief. ‘Standard-bearer, at the slow march, retreat back up the slope. Now they’ve finally got here we’d best give the bloody legion some room to work.’

  2

  King Drust looked about him as the Venicone warband climbed the bare hillside high above the doomed barbarian camp, scanning the empty ground to either side before glancing back over his shoulder, panting with the effort of the climb up the wooded slope below. The forest’s upper limit was five hundred paces behind the rearmost of the Venicone warriors, whose initial headlong charge from the embattled camp had quickly been reduced to a long loping stride as they had weaved their way through the densely packed trees. His warriors were marching in a long, straggling column as they climbed the mountain’s unforgiving slope, moving in family groups of spearmen and archers whose breath steamed around them in the cold morning air. He spat on to the hillside’s thin turf and grunted a comment at the leader of his personal bodyguard jogging along beside him.

  ‘Perhaps we got away clean, but I doubt it. Those Roman bastards don’t give up that easily.’

  The other man grimaced at the pain gnawing at his chest, as the effort of the long climb started to tell upon him.

  ‘Aye, and we’re leaving a trail that a blind man could follow.’

  The king nodded, looking back at the treeline again.

  ‘Their soldiers will never catch us, not over this ground and carrying that much weight in weapons and armour. It’s their horsemen that worry me.’

  ‘Worry you, Drust? I thought you and your tribesmen feared no man?’

  The king looked up, to find that Calgus, still being carried over the massive shoulder of the man who had beaten him into unconsciousness, had regained his wits. His voice was weak with the after-effects of being stunned, but the acerbic note was unmistakable. He reached out and tapped Calgus’s head with his knuckle, causing the rebellion’s former leader to wince in pain.

  ‘Calgus! You still live, then? I thought Maon might have hit you too hard, but I see your skull is every bit as thick as I imagined.’

  Calgus smiled wanly.

  ‘Insult me as you will, Drust, I can see that I am due a long period at your mercy before you sell me to the Romans. If they let you escape, that is…’

  Drust laughed in his face, hefting his hammer with a grim smile.

  ‘Oh, they’ll do their very best to stop us, Calgus, and they might kill a few of us, but all they’ll really manage to do is pick off a few weaklings and provide us with fresh…’

  A horn sounded back down the slope, and Drust turned back to stare down at the trees. A single horseman had fought clear of the forest’s thick growth, and was sounding the signal to alert his comrades of the Venicone warband’s presence high on the hill to their north. Drust laughed at Calgus’s expression, caught between hope and fear.

  ‘It’s a tough choice, eh, Calgus? To be carried off into slavery by me, or to be rescued by the Romans, whose strongest desire is to put you on a cross and watch the crows pull your eyes out while you’re still breathing. Cut his bonds and put him down, Maon, I’ll have your sword-arm free for more important work. Calgus can either keep up this gentle pace we’re setting, or he can fall behind and find out what the Romans have in store for him.’ He raised his voice to a bellow. ‘My brother warriors, very soon now the Roman horsemen will be snapping at our heels, eager to take our heads for the bounty they will earn for each man they kill! We must keep moving, no matter how many times they attack! If they can stop us here, they will bring their soldiers up the hill to surround us and slaughter us from behind their shields! Keep moving, and use your spears to make them keep their distance. Archers, pick your targets well, and wait until you cannot miss before you shoot! We must keep moving, cross this miserable bump of a hill and make for our own land! The horsemen will give it up soon enough. And remember, brothers, tonight we dine on horse flesh!’

  Calgus, initially unsteady on his feet after being unceremoniously tipped on to them by the massively built Maon, gritted his teeth and fell in alongside Drust, a cynical smile playing across his face despite the pain throbbing in his head and the weakness in his knees.

  ‘“Tonight we dine on horse flesh?” And I thought I was the expert at keeping the facts from my people!’

  The Venicone king looked back at the forest’s edge again, where another half-dozen horsemen had emerged from the trees and were trotting their mounts easily up the bare slope behind the warband.

  ‘Enjoy your good humour while it lasts, Calgus, I’m away to find my body slave and relieve him of a heavy burden. Those bastards are going to keep us in sight until enough of them have gathered to start picking off the stragglers with their spears, and shooting arrows into us from our flanks. And you, Calgus, have no shield.’

  ‘Look at him, strutting around like he had anything to do with the fighting.’

  Soldier Manius poured a small measure of water on to his cupped palm, rubbing it vigorously on to his face to dislodge as much of the dried blood as possible, then poured another measure on to his sweat-crusted hair, grimacing at the dirt that came away on his hand. He shot another glance at the 20th Legion’s first spear as the senior officer walked past the Tungrians, bellowing a command at his men, and nudged the man standing next to him.

  ‘All big and brave when it’s all done bar the shouting, but nowhere to be seen when the iron’s flying, from what I’ve heard. A legionary from their First Cohort was telling me that…’

  A roared command from their centurion, a twenty-year veteran with a battered face by the name of Otho, silenced him.

  ‘Stand to, Seventh Century! Stop your moaning and get in line! There’s work to be done and we’re the men to do it!’

  The voices of the cohort’s other centurions were ringing out along the length of the defensive position that the Tungrians had fought grimly to defend in the dawn’s pale light, urging their men back on to their feet.

  ‘Good old Knuckles, now there’s an officer who’ll stand in line when the time comes. And you wouldn’t want to trade blows with…’

  ‘Anyone with his mouth still open, shut it now, or I’ll come and shut it for you!’

  Manius nodded to his mate with a knowing look, but kept his mouth closed. Otho glanced along the line of his men for a long moment, satisfying himself that he had their full attention before speaking again.

  ‘That’s better. We have new orders, Seventh Century. We are to search whatever parts of this camp the legions haven’t already burned to the ground for anything that might be of value to the empire. There will still be a few of the blue-faced bastards hiding and waiting for dark to fall, so don’t use the door of any tent unless you want your head taken off. Cut a flap in the side of the tent with your sword, have a good look through it, and if it’s empty step inside to see what you can find. If you can see anyone inside the tent do not go in after him, but call on him to surrender. If you have to, surround the tent and use your spears to drive him out. And don’t kill any of the bastards unless you absolutely have to, they’re worth a lot of money to the empire. Tribune Scaurus will catch shit from above if we don’t bring a few of them out alive, and we all know that shit rolls downhill! Inside th
e tent you may find weapons and personal effects abandoned in the battle. Do not try to hang on to any such item, not if you don’t want me in your face. Any man found attempting to hide any booty will probably be flogged in front of the cohort, but he’ll already have a set of lumps courtesy of this…’ He held up his right fist, the knuckles criss-crossed with the scars of fights long forgotten. ‘Right, get to it! Seventh Century, advance!’

  The centuries advanced slowly up the hill, skirting round the smouldering remains of tents which had caught fire during the battle and concentrating on those which had survived, enjoying the late morning’s gentle sunshine as they searched the camp at as leisurely pace as their officers would allow. After an hour of slow climbing with nothing more than the occasional discovery and capture of a hiding barbarian to show for their efforts, the cohort entered the section of the camp which had been used by the Venicones.

  Approaching the next in an apparently unending succession of tents to be searched, Manius’s tent party went about their task in exactly the same way they had approached every other search that morning. Hacking an upside-down ‘V’ out of the tent’s wall with his razor-edged dagger, the senior soldier looked cautiously through the opening he’d made, calling a warning back to his comrades.

  ‘Body! Looks like he’s dead…’ Dropping his shield, he stepped in through the hole with the dagger held ready to fight, looking round the tent’s interior for any lurking enemy. ‘Clear! This one’s definitely dead, he’s got a ballista bolt through his spine. Might be something here, though…’ Putting a boot on the crouching corpse’s shoulder, he pushed the dead barbarian away from a small wooden chest. ‘What have we got here? All the usual barbarian rubbish, I suppose… spoon, knife, cloak brooches…’ He slipped the jewellery into his purse, then frowned as he caught sight of something gleaming brightly in the sprawled barbarian’s hand, reaching down to pry it loose from the dead man’s cold fingers with his pulse quickening.