Altar of Blood: Empire IX

by Anthony Riches

  Angar found himself facing an older man, clad in furs and wielding a sword, parrying the German’s first stabbing lunge with his shield and sweeping the axe down while the weapon was still outstretched, snapping it in two close to the hilt and grinning ferociously as the swordsman backed away with a look of consternation. Two tribesmen were stabbing at the giant now, their spears bloody as they thrust and wrenched the blades free, and stabbed again, and then, as he tottered on the edge of collapse, his father was among them with a bellow of horrified rage at the blood streaming down his son’s body, gutting one with a lunge of his sword and distracting the other for long enough that the axeman who had fallen with a pierced foot could swing his weapon in retaliation from the spot where he lay, hacking the man’s back foot in two and leaving him screaming his agony at the forest’s canopy, his arched body open for the retired legionary’s death blow. And then the remaining Bructeri were gone, half a dozen men falling back, most of them wounded, while Angar and his remaining soldier bellowed imprecations after them.

  Dubnus ran up with another two men, and Angar looked over at the main Bructeri force to find them in retreat, more corpses and struggling, kicking, arrow-shot men littering the ground before them. The chosen man spat on the forest floor, examining his axe’s notched, bloody blade.

  ‘Looks like you handed me the short straw.’

  The centurion nodded dourly.

  ‘You held though. The Hamians?’

  ‘Died like men. Must have taken some balls to stand and keep shooting while that lot ran them down.’

  They turned to look at Lucius, who was cradling his son’s bloody body as best he could, tears washing down his cheeks as he mourned the giant’s loss.

  ‘He had no idea … He was just a boy, really …’

  The two men looked at each other for a moment before Angar spoke.

  ‘He saved us though, distracted enough of them for long enough that they couldn’t mob us. And died like a man. You can be proud.’

  Lucius looked up at him and nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

  ‘I can’t leave him. He’s my son. I have to bury him.’

  Dubnus shook his head peremptorily.

  ‘You can’t. They’ll tear you to pieces once we pull back to the river, and we can’t carry him.’

  ‘Then …’ Lucius nodded to himself, hardening his face. ‘Send me with him. I have nothing to live for now that he’s gone. At least we can be together when we cross the river.’

  Angar looked at Dubnus, nodding his head.

  ‘I’ll do it. You get the men ready to move. You …’ he pointed to the remaining soldier from his small party, ‘help your brother get back to the river, and tell the Hamians to come and get their mates’ arrows, there must be a hundred or so unspent in their quivers.’

  ‘They can’t escape! Their backs are to the water, we just have to wear them down!’

  Several of the spearmen closest to Gernot cheered lustily, but their advance remained as careful as before, moving from tree to tree and keeping the protection of the thick wooden trunks between them and the deadly archers who were doggedly retreating before them. An arrow sighed past his head, and he reflexively ducked into the cover of a sturdy oak, looking to either side and realising that most of his men were doing just the same thing.

  ‘We have to charge them again!’ Looking over his shoulder he found Amalric a dozen paces back, crouched at the base of a tree and pointing forward at the Roman line. ‘They are only one hundred paces ahead of us! If we attack together we will smother them with our numbers!’

  The nobleman pursed his lips, unable to shake the memory of the horrendously mutilated corpses that were the remnant of the last charge he had led at the deceptively small enemy force. To his horror Gernot had been forced to tolerate the ignominy of retreating from their deadly axes with his remaining men while knowing that their number should have been sufficient to deal with a handful of equally tired Romans. Crouching behind their shields his men had backed away from the blood-soaked enemy, pursued by their taunts and shouts of derision as the Romans retreated towards the river. They were calling out to the tribesmen now, while their archers, retreating from tree to tree, shot arrows at anyone who showed themselves for more than a brief moment, taunting his warriors for their timidity in their rough version of the Roman tongue. Running the gauntlet of the archers once more he zigzagged his way back to the tree behind which the king was sheltering, ducking behind its trunk as another arrow struck the wood with a heavy thwock.

  ‘My King, we have already spent the lives of fifty and more of your warriors attempting to break their resistance!’ He lowered his voice, the words for his king’s ears alone. ‘And I do not believe that many men here will respond eagerly if I call on them for another attack. They know that if we charge again more of us will fall to their bows, and as many again to their axes. And, my King, the Rhenus is close at their backs now and will prevent them from running any further. We should simply follow them, until they reach the river’s bank and realise that they have nowhere else to go. When their archers run out of arrows, and they tire for lack of food, then they will either surrender or fall to our spears.’

  Amalric reluctantly nodded his consent, and Gernot gave the order for a slow, cautious advance, directing his men to spread their line out to the right, ready to form a wall of spears between the retreating Romans and the bridge fort. As the tribesmen warily followed the intruders in their retreat, the number of arrows being loosed at them began to perceptibly reduce, as the forest’s gloom grew lighter with the proximity of the river’s wide open space. Amalric grinned at Gernot triumphantly, as the nobleman pointed at the withdrawing Romans, disappearing over the last crest and down the slope that led to the river’s bank and the expanse of impassable water.

  ‘You see, my king? We have them now! They have nowhere left to run, and their supply of arrows appears to have been exhausted!’

  Amalric snarled exultantly, raising his sword to urge his men forward.

  ‘The time has come, my brothers! Bructeri!’ He hammered on the boss of his shield with the blade of his sword. ‘Bruc-ter-i! Bruc-ter-i!’

  The men closest to him joined the chant, some of them instinctively drawn to the comfort of its collective strength, others clearly more predatory in their intent, eager for revenge on men who had sought to kill them, and had left dozens of their brothers dead and wounded. They rose from cover, advancing towards the top of the shallow slope that fell away towards the river, their continued chanting bringing no more reaction from the Romans than a few hurried glances back at their oncoming line, as the last of the enemy vanished over the crest and made their way down towards the river bank that would be the scene of their final bloody stand.

  Dubnus looked grimly across the river’s grey water at the warships anchored fifty paces from the shore, then back up the riverbank’s slope to where the Bructeri tribesmen were gathering for their final assault. The remaining men of the detachment were gathered about him, the seer’s blue cloak barely visible among their armoured bodies, archers stringing the last of their missiles and lofting the shafts speculatively up the hill at those of the enemy who were visible on the crest while his pioneers stood with their shields raised against the occasional incoming arrow.

  ‘Kasim!’

  The archer loosed the arrow he had been holding on a taut bowstring, ready to release, and turned away from the enemy to find the big Briton close behind him, his face set in worried lines.

  ‘There’s still no sign of Qadir. What was the last you saw of him?’

  The Hamian shook his head unhappily, looking up at Dubnus and trying not to be intimidated by the big centurion’s blood-slathered armour and weapons.

  ‘He ordered us to retreat after the first time we held them off, Centurion, and stayed for a moment longer to keep their heads down. I made the mistake of not stopping to watch his back as he followed us.’

  Dubnus shook his head incredulously.


  ‘So he’s either dead or captive.’

  He turned away and looked back across the river again, the sides of the warships seeming to ripple with movement as their marine archers readied themselves for action, shaking his head in frustration.

  ‘Shields to the rear!’ The men of the detachment looked round at him, the pioneers instinctively obeying the command and hurrying to face the river. ‘And get down behind them, all of you! The men on those ships are about to turn this slope into a butcher’s back yard, and I for one don’t much fancy getting one of our own arrows stuck in my back!’

  The first of the Tungrians had come into view from the prefect’s flagship a few moments before, one of the big axe-hefting soldiers who had marched from Claudius’s Colony three days before supporting another man able only to hop on one foot. The pair were closely followed by the remainder of the detachment as they retreated down the slope and into view, no longer hidden beneath the canopy of trees that crowned the hill, the archers shooting carefully aimed arrows back up the slope at their pursuers while the axemen protected them from the occasional return shots with their shields. At their commander’s order, bellowed loudly enough to be heard on the other two ships, the vessel’s archers raised their bows and pulled back the arrows ready to loose, as those Tungrians who had made it back to the river huddled into a tight knot, shields presented towards the ships in a gesture of self-preservation that made the naval officer’s mouth twitch with amusement.

  The governor’s next pronouncement wiped the smile away in an instant.

  ‘I’m half tempted to leave them to it, you know.’

  The prefect frowned momentarily at Albinus’s words, then turned to his navarchus.

  ‘Hail the squadron. Archers are ordered to commence shooting when our bolt throwers engage the enemy.’

  ‘After all, even ignoring all those times in the past when that insubordinate shit Scaurus has sought to put me down, he has rather made a mess of it this time. I wouldn’t imagine it’s going to do him very much good when my report reaches Rome and details his refusal to follow my suggestions, and the all-out war with an otherwise neutral tribe that’s resulted. Perhaps the best outcome of all this would be for them all to die, and the problem to quietly disappear.’

  The prefect’s mouth tightened to form a line, his jaw muscles hardening as he turned to his superior.

  ‘On the other hand, Governor, imagine the political consequences that would ensue when my family discovered that you’d abandoned one of their sons to the degradation and torture that we know these barbarian animals routinely practise with their captives. Not to mention the more meaningful consequences.’

  Albinus raised an eyebrow at him, his mouth tightening into an angry line.

  ‘Consequences, Prefect? Am I to consider that a threat?’

  Varus stared at the governor for a moment, then shook his head slowly. When he spoke again his voice was soft, barely audible to Albinus who was forced to lean closer to hear his words.

  ‘A threat, Governor? Of course not. I will execute any legal order you give me, as is my duty. But I can’t vouch for the considerable number of men in my family who are likely to feel less bound by imperial duty and rather more by their familial obligations. I know what my responsibility to my cousin would be, were I in their place.’

  ‘And?’

  The prefect shrugged.

  ‘I expect it’s a moot question, Governor, since I’m sure you have no intention of following through with such an unlikely course of action. And now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  He strode down the rail, staring across the fifty paces of water that separated the three anchored warships from the river’s bank. On the slopes above the tribesmen were gathering for the kill, coming out of the shelter of the trees as the Tungrian bowmen stopped shooting and sought the cover of the last feet of dry ground, advancing down the slope with murderous intent. Nodding to his Navarchus he snapped out the order that the captains of his engine crews had been waiting for.

  ‘Engage!’

  The older man dragged in a lungful of air, then lunged forward to point at the advancing enemy in an unmistakable gesture.

  ‘Bolt throwers – shoot!’

  Amalric raised his sword, lowering its point to aim at the Romans.

  ‘We have them now! Kill them all! With me, my brothers, with me!’

  The Bructeri spearmen responded to their king’s enraged command with a sudden rush down the hillside, eighty men with Amalric at their head, their spear blades raised and eager for blood, and Gernot followed in the body of his warriors. Their charge down the slope suddenly slowed, and, craning his neck, the noble realised that the men leading the charge had found their path down the hill obstructed by the branches of several trees that had been felled and dragged into position with their tops pointing towards the river, presenting a more or less continuous barrier of branches with only one clear path through around which the war band was unavoidably bunching, almost fighting to get through the gap that would let them at the cowering Romans crouched at the river’s side.

  Looking up, he started as he saw the wooden hulls of three ships anchored close to the shore, and with a horrible lurch in his guts realised in an instant the nature of the trap into which they had been lured. He bellowed a warning at Amalric, but the shout was lost in the general cacophony as the tribesmen vied for position at the opening in the unexpected obstacle.

  ‘My King! The ships! This is a tr—’

  The man alongside him opened his mouth to bellow at the trapped Romans cowering at the water’s edge and then suddenly wasn’t there, the salt sting of his blood monetarily blinding the noble as his men’s roars of impending vengeance became a cacophony of screams.

  The fleet’s bolt throwers spat their bolts into the milling warriors, perfectly presented to their eager crews by the tactic that had been agreed with the detachment’s tribune two days before, trees expertly felled to present the Bructeri with a near impossible obstacle and with only one clear path through to the river’s bank. Varus nodded to his fleet captain, and the grizzled veteran pointed at the bank again, raising his voice to bark a fresh command.

  ‘Archers – shoot!’

  Thirty archers lined the rails of the vessels to either side of the Mars, and at the navarchus’s command they unleashed a volley of arrows that sang across the space between ship and shore in an instant, their arrows lancing down into the Bructeri war band in a new and unexpected savagery.

  Gernot looked around, momentarily puzzled, then found the man’s corpse a dozen paces behind him, the body only recognisable by the heavy silver torque around its neck, a heavy iron-tipped bolt having reduced the warrior’s face to no more than a bloody crater in the front of his head. Looking up, he stared at what had been concealed from them by the trees until their charge had taken them close to the water’s edge, a trio of Roman warships moored so near to the bank that he could see the individual archers’ faces as they bent their bows, waiting for the command to shoot. Another bolt had pinned a man to the tree behind him with his feet dancing on thin air a foot above the ground, his lifeblood sprinkling the earth beneath him as he twitched and shuddered in his death spasms. And then, with an eerie sigh that made the hairs on the back of Gernot’s neck stand up, a flight of arrows fell across the Bructeri in a volley, a deadly sleet that peppered the hillside and took men’s lives as indiscriminately as the wrath of a vengeful god.

  The tribesmen dithered momentarily and then ran for cover, cringing as another flight of arrows tore at them, men falling with leg wounds that reduced their attempts to flee to no more than frenzied crawling. The noble ducked into the cover of a tree, watching in horror as a wounded spearman no more than five paces from him was struck by a succession of arrows, his attempts to find shelter from the murderous rain of iron weakening with each impact until, with five shafts protruding from his back and legs, he slumped face down into the slope’s earth and stopped moving altogether.

 
Looking around he found Amalric staring at him grimly from the cover of a felled tree further down the slope, a grievously wounded tribesman hunched over the feathered shaft of an arrow beside him. The king made a gesture for him to stay where he was, a suggestion whose common sense was reinforced by the abrupt despatch of a man whose nerve had broken, his frantic attempt to flee up the hill’s difficult slope being terminated by a pair of feathered shafts that sprouted between his shoulder blades in swift succession and dropped him writhing to the ground.

  ‘Stay where you are, Gernot! This battle is lost!’

  Squinting around the tree’s bole the noble watched as the Tungrians climbed into boats that had been lowered from the warships, cursing volubly as he saw Gerhild’s blue cloak among the men boarding the first of them. He looked about him frantically for one of the tribe’s archers, but the only man with a bow that he could see was already dead, the weapon’s limbs protruding out from beneath his body. Unable to watch any longer as the boat pulled away from the shore, he sank back into the tree’s cover and closed his eyes, listening to the groans and cries for assistance from the tribe’s wounded as the arrows fell in a harsh iron sleet, the marine archers shooting at anything that moved across the slope’s deadly killing ground.