He nodded decisively and turned away from Canutius with a slight smile, suddenly calm in the realisation that there was only one possible course of action. Raising the weapon above his head, he summoned the strength to steady his wavering voice.
‘First Cohort! Ready spears!’
The legionaries pulled their javelins from the damp earth into which they had been pushed butt spike first moments before, and hefted their shields from their resting places in a dry rustle of wood and iron. Laenas turned back to the barbarians forcing their way through the rupture in the Romans’ line, their numbers already doubled in those scant seconds, and fixed his gaze on the redhaired giant who had smashed his way through the detachment’s line with such brutal ease. For the first time in months, it seemed, he felt his heart lift with the moment’s simplicity, felt liberated from the need to worry about the slow bleeding away of his reputation at the hands of his subordinate. Fighting back a sudden wild urge to laugh aloud in the first spear’s terrified face, he pointed his sword down the slope at the Venicones.
‘First Cohort! Follow me!’
Stepping off down the slope without looking behind him to see whether his men were following, he locked eyes with the Venicone king, watching the man with an almost detached interest as the warlord lifted his massive war hammer and strode forward to meet the reinforcements, his bellowed challenge lost in the fight’s tumult. The two men stalked closer to each other with their eyes locked together, neither willing to look away in the last seconds before they met. Above the roar of the fight Laenas thought he heard his name being called again, but ignored the distraction as the barbarian warrior broke into a run, covering the last few paces between them in seconds with his hammer swinging high.
The weapon slashed down in a humming diagonal attack, its spike intended to crack the tribune’s breastplate and smash his ribs, but he sidestepped and ducked beneath the blow, slashing at his opponent with the his sword’s blade and drawing a bloody line across the man’s thigh. Drust staggered and snarled, reversing the hammer and thrusting the heavy iron counterweight at the base of its handle into the Roman’s face, sending him reeling backwards. While Laenas was off balance, blood spurting from his shattered nose, a tribesman leapt forward and rammed his sword deep into the tribune’s armpit before dying on the shaft of a thrown javelin as the 1st Cohort’s centuries hurled their weapons in a devastating low-slung volley that withered the ranks of the attacking Venicones.
With a roar of anger the legionaries drew their swords and charged at the stunned barbarians, stabbing viciously at their enemy in their fury at seeing their officer fall. Drust and what remained of his bodyguard fought in a tight knot, briefly holding the legionaries at bay in a circle around them until Maon, standing back to back with his master, was spitted by a javelin thrust, staggering forward on to his enemy’s blades with blood frothing on his lips, falling under a hail of hacking blows. Another legionary stepped in and drove his spear through the Venicone king’s back, heaving and twisting on the weapon’s wooden shaft to force its barbed iron head deeper into the stricken barbarian’s body. Drust’s spine arched with the cold iron’s first agonising thrust into his kidneys, and he stared down in disbelief as the spear’s head ripped through his stomach wall. Dropping to his knees in agony, he allowed the hammer’s handle to slip from his grasp as he reached down to grasp the javelin’s iron head with both hands, his teeth bared in a silent scream of pain. Scaurus ran the few paces from his place at the rear of the Tungrian line, a dozen of the 10th Century’s axemen around him hacking a path into the remaining barbarians before them. He pointed his sword at the breach in the line, hurling an order at the legionaries over the fight’s hubbub.
‘Sixth Legion, advance! Close this gap!’
At the shouted command the cohort’s front rank marched onwards down the slope, their implacable attack scattering the remaining barbarians to either side in panicked attempts to escape before the line was re-established. Behind the marching centuries another soldier raised his gladius and chopped down at the fallen king’s exposed neck, the blow sufficiently strong only to half-sever Drust’s head from his body but enough to put him face down and unmoving in the grass. The sword rose and fell again, and its bearer lifted Drust’s severed head by its mane of red hair with a bellow of triumph while the owner of the javelin buried in his corpse’s back tore its barbed-iron head free from the headless body. The king’s gold torc fell from his severed neck into the hillside’s long grass, and the spearman bent to retrieve it, goggling at the fortune in gold in his hands.
‘I’ll take that! And the torc!’
The legionaries turned to find First Spear Canutius striding towards them, his panic of barely a moment before wiped away by his men’s success.
‘Those both belong to the Emperor. I’ll make sure they reach the governor, rather than have you thieving bastards…’
The legionary who had decapitated the Venicone king looked about him quickly, getting a quick nod from his mate, who had raised his spear as if to examine its bloody blade with a critical eye. He allowed the dead king’s head to dangle at his side and replied to the officer’s challenge with a curled lip, fixing Canutius with a disparaging glance.
‘Not this time, Centurion. You’re too shy when the fight’s on for my liking.’
Canutius raised his vine stick, his face hard with fury, only to stagger as the legionary behind him lunged forward, ramming the javelin’s vicious point through his armour and deep into his body. The man holding Drust’s head bent close as the officer stiffened, jerking spasmodically as the spear’s barbed-iron head tore into his heart.
‘That’s what you’ve been terrified of all this time, pushing us forward to keep your skin intact. Not so bad now, is it?’
He nodded to the spearman, who deftly withdrew his weapon’s pointed head through the hole it had punched in Canutius’s armour, and lowered the dying officer to the ground alongside the spot where Laenas lay, his open eyes staring blankly at the clouds above them.
‘That’s vengeance for you, I’d say, young Tribune. You fought well enough for a lad when you finally got the chance…’
He reached out to close Laenas’s eyes and then, spotting a minute movement of the fallen officer’s chest, bent closer to examine the fallen tribune with a critical eye.
‘Young gentleman’s not dead, not yet anyway. Bandage carrier!’
While the battle raged on fifty paces down the hill’s slope, Scaurus and Licinius hurried to the rear of the attacking legionaries surrounded by their escort of Tungrian axemen, heading for the spot where they had seen Tribune Laenas go down under Drust’s attack and finding a huddled knot of men gathered around the bodies of several men. Licinius scattered them with a barked command, pushing one man out of his path.
‘Stand aside!’
The legionaries cleared a path through to the stricken Laenas, and Scaurus, noting the body of Canutius alongside that of the young tribune, hung back behind his colleague with his eyes roaming across the scene. The bandage carrier shook his head unhappily, looking up at Licinius with a look of certainty.
‘Nothing I can do for him, Tribune, the wound’s too deep inside. He should be dead already, by rights.’
Scaurus found what he’d been looking for, a pair of legionaries sidling towards the edge of the group with neutral expressions on their faces.
‘You two! Stop where you are! The rest of you, get back in line and fight. This battle has a while to run yet!’
The two soldiers snapped to attention, eyeing the hard-faced tribune as he stalked towards them. Licinius put a toe under Canutius’s shoulder, turning the dead man’s body over.
‘He was speared in the back, from the look of it.’
Scaurus reached out and took the spear from the taller man, examining its point with a critical eye.
‘There’s blood on this weapon, legionary.’
The soldier shook his head dourly.
‘Barbarian blood, sir. I did
for their king.’
The tribune shook his head in turn, then handed the weapon back and turned away, bending to kneel alongside the dying tribune.
‘Well now, Popillius Laenas, you’ll be in the company of your ancestors soon enough. Hold your head up high when they greet you, for you’ve won this fight for us. See?’ He lifted the Venicone king’s head for the dying man to see. This was their king. Without him to lead them they’ll give it up soon enough, and you’re the man that took the fight to him and sealed his fate. I’ll make sure your family know you died with a soldier’s honour…’ He bent closer to the prostrate tribune, speaking quietly into his ear. ‘But now I need you to tell me one more thing, brother. You see, your first spear lies dead alongside you, murdered by one of your own men in all likelihood. It’s common enough when an officer is hated by his soldiers, of course, but we can’t allow it to stand unpunished. So tell me, Tribune, did you see it happen?’
Laenas moved his head with painful slowness to stare at the two soldiers standing behind the kneeling tribune, a faint smile ghosting across his face, and his lips moved in speech so quiet that Scaurus had to put his ear to the dying man’s mouth to hear them.
‘Saw… nothing…’
Scaurus stared into his eyes for a moment, watching as the life left them. He patted the dead man’s shoulder and then rose, turning back to the waiting legionaries with a flat stare.
‘Today, legionaries, is your lucky day, or so it seems. Rejoin your century.’
Glancing at each other with scarcely concealed relief, the two men turned back to the fight, freezing into immobility at the sound of the harsh metallic scrape of Scaurus’s sword leaving its scabbard.
‘Of course, I could still have the pair of you lashed to death, or simply execute you both myself, here and now. So I suggest you surrender that pretty gold neckpiece before I decide which of the two would be preferable.’
The spearman turned back white faced, pulling the massive gold collar from inside his armour and putting it into the tribune’s hand. Dismissing the men with a flick of his hand, Scaurus turned back to his colleague, who stared back at him with raised eyebrows.
‘If Laenas was willing to condone their murder of Canutius then who am I to deny him that last pleasure, given the number of times the man was the cause of his humiliation?’
Licinius nodded, taking the torc from his colleague’s outstretched hand and looking over his shoulder at the battle still raging on the slope below them.
‘Agreed. Now let’s go and finish what Drust was so keen to start. We have a chance to bring peace to the north for a generation to come. I’ll see every last one of these bastards dead or a slave before night falls.’
With the gap in their line closed, and reinforced by the five legion centuries that had pinched off the Venicones’ desperate attack and killed their king, the Romans began the process of inexorably grinding the resistance out of the tribesmen trapped between their shields and the forest. Advancing down the slope behind their shields, spears and swords stabbing out to kill and maim those barbarians still willing to face them, they herded the beaten tribesmen into an ever smaller space, until their only alternatives were surrender or death. Increasing numbers of men threw down their weapons and knelt under the detachment’s spears, cursed and spat on by those of their comrades still willing to fight on in defiance of the odds facing them as more and more men fell under the Romans’ unrelenting assault or gave up the struggle.
‘It’s a hard choice. In their place I chose to fight, but…’
Marcus raised an eyebrow at the tone in Arminius’s voice, both men watching as another sullen tribesman was dragged through the Tungrians’ line at spear point, his hands swiftly bound before he was pushed into a group of his beaten comrades under the swords of a pair of lightly wounded soldiers.
‘But what? You’d have missed this life of adventure if he’d just beaten your brains out. Can you really say that you’d…’ He raised his sword and pointed at one of the wounded guards. ‘You! Keep your distance from the prisoners and stop waving your iron at them, unless you want me to come over there and do the same to you!’ The soldier saluted gingerly with his wounded arm and stepped back from the tribesmen, lowering the sword whose blade he’d been passing inches from their downcast faces. ‘Where was I? Yes, can you really say that you’d exchange a quick death and an unmarked grave for…’
He looked up as a squadron of riders rode up to his place in the line, their leader reining his horse to a halt alongside him with another mount led alongside him.
‘Centurion! Would you like to be a cavalryman one last time? There are Venicones who escaped when your line was broken to be hunted down, and Tribune Licinius has ordered me to take the best men available in their pursuit. Leave this hairy gentleman to watch the fun, and join us in the hunt!’
The Roman looked up at the rider, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare.
‘Is that Bonehead you’ve brought for me to ride, eh, Decurion Felix? Perhaps this is really just one more chance to get my neck broken?’
The decurion grinned back, gesturing to the horse with his free hand.
‘Nobody else can ride him, not now you’ve encouraged the unruly bugger to have his own way whenever he fancies it. Come on now, the blue-noses will be gone without trace at this rate, and your tribune gave me a message for you. He said to tell you that Calgus ran…’
‘Qadir!’
The chosen man turned from his place at the line’s rear, where he was supervising the capture of the continual flow of barbarian prisoners.
‘I’ve a score to settle! The century is yours until I get back!’
Felix watched as Marcus plucked a spear from the nearest rear-ranker and jumped into the saddle alongside him.
‘Yes, he said that would have the spring back in your step.’
The two men rode hard up the slope, with the remainder of Felix’s squadron following close behind in an extended line. They quickly overtook the hindmost of the barbarians who had fought their way free as the legion centuries had closed the door on their route to freedom, a tall skinny warrior limping painfully away from the battlefield as fast as his damaged body would carry him. The decurion lowered his spear and rode the straggler down, expertly thrusting the weapon’s long blade through his neck and tearing it free in a shower of blood, not bothering to look back as his victim sank to his knees and then pitched headlong to the turf.
‘There’s more of them! Form skirmish line!’
The horsemen rode down several groups of barbarians, initially wounded men, unable to flee fast enough to have any chance of escape, but soon they began catching the unharmed warriors who had taken their chance to run for their lives. Those that prostrated themselves were spared, and a rider detailed to guard the survivors of each group, while those that continued running or turned to fight were killed without compunction by the fast-riding cavalrymen.
‘There!’
Felix pointed his blood-slathered spear at a small group of warriors running hard for the shelter of a forest still a mile distant, and Marcus’s face hardened at the sight he’d been waiting for.
‘It’s Calgus! Cut them off, but nobody touches the man in the purple cloak!’
Brought to bay too far from the trees for there to be any chance of escape, the barbarians threw down their weapons and pushed the Selgovae king forward towards the horsemen. Calgus shrugged off their hands, stepping forward to meet the point of Marcus’s spear with his head held high, advancing until the point of the weapon’s iron blade rested firmly on his chest.
‘Very well, son of two dead fathers, take my life. If you have no interest in what your real father wrote about you in all those letters he never sent, put that spear through me and take your revenge.’
Stabbing the weapon into the turf, Marcus dismounted and stepped up to the barbarian leader with one hand on the hilt of his gladius and his face dark with anger. Calgus smirked back at him.
‘As I to
ld you yesterday, the legatus was quite a writer, it seems. I captured a writing chest full of his correspondence, and among it was a sheaf of scrolls that he wrote to you, over the years. It was quite touching really, full of his hopes for you, and talking about the few times he managed to see you by visiting your father when you were younger. He…’
‘No.’
The barbarian blinked in surprise and then opened his mouth to speak again, but found himself looking down the length of Marcus’s gladius.
‘No. For all I know you’re spinning me a tale from your own desperation. You want me to escort you back to my tribune, who will send you back to Rome for the triumph that you assume must follow this victory. There, you presume, you might live another year, or more, and there have always been those barbarian leaders who are spared when they get the chance to work their wiles on the Emperor. What’s to say that you can’t pull the same trick?’
Calgus grinned wryly.
‘You’ll never know, then, will you? You’ll have to…’
He staggered back as Marcus punched him hard in the face, a straight jab that sent him reeling dazed to the ground. Before the barbarian leader could respond, Marcus stepped forward with the eagle-pommelled gladius raised, spearing the blade’s point down into the barbarian leader’s left calf with careful precision before pulling it loose through his Achilles tendon. Calgus raised his head and screamed in agony, jerking again as Marcus repeated the process with the other leg. He pulled a knife from Calgus’s belt, ripping the purple cloak away from the prostrate chieftain and cutting two long strips from it before stepping back and tossing them to the wounded man, his eyes pitiless as the barbarian leader twisted in pain.
‘That’s your death sentence, Calgus. Use these to bind your wounds and you’re not likely to die from them, but you’ll never walk unaided again. You can stay out here and take as long to die as you like. Of course, the wolves will find you soon enough, once there’s nobody else here to frighten them away, and if they don’t I’m sure the Votadini will be happy enough to provide you with a protracted death if they get to you first. You could kill yourself, of course, if you have enough will power to open your wrists with your teeth, but I suspect you’ll hang on to the very last moment, hoping against hope for some improbable rescue. Not much of a choice, I suppose, but it’s a good deal more than you gave my birth father.’
Fortress of Spears e-3 Page 33
