by Ian Ross
At once the cry was echoed back at him from the mass of men behind him, a thousand-strong yell bursting forth in unison. Over to his right Castus could hear the horns signalling the centre legions to begin their charge, and even as the brass notes were fading a vast yell went up from the heart of the line, and the men began to surge forward. Gazing from behind the rim of his shield, Castus watched the attack columns of the Minervia and Primigenia legions advancing, a fast march at first, quickening into a jog and then into a run. He saw the ranks of the Praetorian Guard tighten to oppose them, but the rushing wedges of armoured men closed the distance with breathtaking speed. The columns held together, shields tight, and they looked like machines, like mighty rolling engines of war. Two more heartbeats, and they crashed into the front ranks of the Praetorians. Shields boomed together, and the noise was like grinding iron and bone, cut through with screams. At the moment of impact, Castus almost thought he could see a mist of blood spraying up, bright in the morning sun.
‘We’ll be next,’ Brocchus said grimly. ‘Gods be with us now…’
He had barely spoken before the trumpets sounded behind them. The Second Britannica gave a massed collective shudder and began to move. Castus kept his head down behind the rim of his shield. The men pressed close on his left flank and pushing up behind him felt like extensions of his own body. When he raised his eyes he saw the enemy, very close and distinct now, their mouths open in shouts of rage and defiance. He saw a centurion, his face blanched white, yelling at his own men to close their ranks tighter. Several of the enemy were already hurling darts and javelins: too soon; the missiles fell short.
The men at the front of the column broke into a jog, their armour and equipment clattering around them. Now the javelins were arcing out from the men at the centre, raining cruel shanked steel into the opposing line. Castus watched the missiles fall, judging the moments that remained. His life had contracted to a simple choice: break through the mass of the enemy formation or to die in the attempt.
Twenty paces. Castus felt his heart like a fist in his chest, the pulse beating in his neck. He threw his head back. ‘BRITANNICA!’ he yelled.
‘Britannica! Britannica! Britannica!’ the men behind him shouted.
Then he bellowed out the order to charge, and broke into a run.
For a few heartbeats he was conscious only of the rushing momentum, the impetus of the charge. Thoughts sparked through his mind. Don’t slip now, don’t stumble. Vital to keep the formation together, even at the run, to hit the enemy line in one solid mass like a battering ram. And then there was nothing but the fury of his blood and noise of his own heaving breath.
One quick glance, the enemy line rearing up before him, sickeningly close, then Castus dropped his head and threw his shoulder into the hollow of his shield. The collision almost punched him back off his feet. Then other men were piling in behind him, crushed against his back, all of them yelling, and the noise was an explosion of thunder that drowned all thought, all feeling.
He was forcing his way into a thicket of spears, a wall of shields and armoured bodies. Iron all around him, and he could see no more than an arm’s reach to either side. A blade struck his helmet, grating across the gilded bronze with a shriek that made his teeth ring. Pushed from behind, shoved from in front, he struggled to stay upright, to keep forcing his way forward. His boots skidded and stamped at the wet grass underfoot. There was a noise in his ears, a frenzied bellowing like an agonised bull; Castus realised it was coming from his own throat.
His sword arm was trapped against his body, and he wrestled it free and angled his blade around the rim of his shield. He stabbed wildly, underarm, grunting with each blow. Each fifth stab found flesh: unprotected thighs, hands, faces. Heaving at his shield, Castus sensed the wall ahead of him beginning to flex and weaken. He dragged the shield to his right, hooking the rim around the edge of an opponent’s shield and twisting, levering open a gap and then slamming his sword into it. The man fell suddenly and Castus stumbled forward, clambering over the dying body as others pressed in behind him. He heard the shouts from the rear of the enemy: ‘PARTHICA! PARTHICA!’
Into the second rank now, Castus got his sword up and slashed over his shield. He saw the white-faced centurion in front of him and struck at once, jabbing his blade between the man’s cheek guards. He could sense the enemy giving ground, their lines beginning to fray as the blunt head of the wedge pressed between them. Moving forward was like trying to breast a powerful current, a rushing tide. Castus felt his legs trapped among fallen men; he lifted his boots, stamped, kicked. He realised that he had his eyes closed; when he opened them, men’s faces were only feet away from him. He saw their widened rolling eyes, the tongues straining in their mouths. For a moment he was shoved hard against one man and he felt teeth gnash close to his cheek. A sword whipped past his face so close he could smell the bloodied steel.
Behind him he could hear a man screaming: ‘Help me. O gods, help me!’
Another voice, Brocchus, screaming back: ‘Get on your feet! Get up and push!’
Castus felt a bright haze surrounding him. He knew he had been hit, probably more than once. The palm clenched around his sword hilt was hot and sticky. Still he forced himself forward, lashing out with a wheeling blade.
He had carved his way deep inside the enemy formation now, the men of his legion bunched close around him. But he could sense the opposing mass gaining strength and solidity, starting to press tighter on every side. Castus felt a flash of panicked intuition. The enemy had brought up their second line, he realised. His column was trying to hack their way through a massed phalanx thirty-two men deep. They were in a vice, and they were being slowly crushed, and the enemy would not give ground.
The momentum of the advance had stalled and died, and Castus heard men falling behind him, dying in the seething crush. He backed a step and found himself pressed up against Brocchus: the eagle was raised above his head in both hands and he was striking down with the spiked butt. Parthica shields on all sides, a dense pack of men, but they were keeping their distance. Castus realised that he was standing on the bodies of the slain, his boots sliding in blood and filth.
He tried to shout, but his throat was locked and he could only gasp for breath.
Forward; the only way was forward. If he died here, he would die on his feet and not trampled in the mess of the slain. Castus raised his sword, then swung it down and the knot of men behind him jolted into motion. Shields raised, they pressed forward in a last ragged charge, hurling themselves at the ranks of the enemy.
It was like slamming into a solid wall. For a few moments, a few heartbeats, shields banged and ground together, iron clashed and whined. Castus kept his head down, striking blindly, pushing forward with all his weight and strength.
Then, sudden as a sunburst, he felt the mass of enemy troops ahead of him shiver and begin to break. Castus lifted his head, and could not believe what he was seeing. The enemy formation was thinning rapidly, their lines unravelling and disintegrating. Blinking, dazed, Castus saw the rear-rank men stumbling backwards out of the fight with confusion on their faces.
He looked to his left and saw the yellow and red shields pushing forward, each marked with the smudged black charcoal symbol of Constantine’s dream-vision. Realisation came to him – these men at the rear of the enemy phalanx were the conscripts, the men from southern Italy and Africa. They were Christians… and the sight of their own symbol etched on the shields of the enemy was collapsing their morale. They were breaking from the rear, men spilling away in terror as the cohesion of the array collapsed. Now, for the first time, Castus saw open ground around him, the churned turf thick with fallen bodies.
Wheeling his sword above his head, he let out a savage roar of triumph. ‘Haaaaaah!’
Brocchus was yelling too, brandishing the eagle as the second column came smashing obliquely through the ranks of the enemy. At the head was Modestus, his face and torso sprayed red; the two columns meshed at o
nce, driving the attack back into the disordered enemy phalanx. Castus felt too battered to speak, but his men needed no order. With the enemy breaking all around them they pressed forward, their hacking advance turning into a rolling tide of destruction, the melee turning to outright murder.
Here and there knots of the enemy tried to make a stand, but the men of the Britannica surged over them, bearing them down and trampling them underfoot. At their head, Castus kept himself staggering forward, his shield a lead weight in his left hand. Men appeared before him and he struck them down without thinking, without feeling.
Then the ground ahead of him was clear, only a litter of discarded weapons and shields on the turf to show where the enemy lines had crumbled. Castus realised that the sun was high to his left, the sky blue and the morning getting hot. Steam was rising from the damp grass.
Looking to his right, Castus saw a struggling mass of soldiers still locked in combat. To his left the Maxentian recruits were streaming back towards the river and the bridge of boats, with Hrodomarus’s warriors in pursuit. But there were cavalry out on the plain as well, their own or the enemy’s he could not tell. And now his own men were breaking formation, cheering as they spilled forward across the field.
An arrow thwacked into Castus’s shield.
‘Hold!’ he yelled, the word rasping in his throat. ‘Form a line! Modestus – pull your men back and form them!’
Modestus was shouting too, but in bursting through the enemy phalanx the columns had lost all order. If the enemy rallied, or if even a small force of cavalry opposed them, they could be cut to pieces. Castus saw Macer striding ahead of his men and bellowed at him. The drillmaster had lost his helmet, and his hair was stiff with sweat and dried blood. He was grinning, and appeared demented.
‘Macer! Hold them – hold them!’
Castus was breathing hard, confusion beating in his head. What was happening? Was the battle won? There were only a few hundred paces to the bridge of boats, but the ground was filled with milling enemy troops.
Then he dropped his gaze, and his breath caught.
Right in the centre of the field, the Praetorians were retreating. But they were not falling back in confusion, as their comrades in the other legions had done. They were still moving in formation, in a close-order block of shields with their standards at the centre, every man taking two steps back and halting, then two steps back and halting, oblivious to the rain of darts and arrows falling on them. Castus could only stare in wonder. It was the most impressive feat of discipline he had ever seen on a battlefield.
A batter of hooves, and Eumolpius was beside him, sliding down from Dapple’s saddle with a waterskin over his shoulder.
‘How did you get here?’ Castus gasped, then seized the skin and drank deeply. He coughed, choked, then leaned forward and spat bile onto the grass. Then he drank again. His men had formed a line once more, but many had sunk down to their knees, too exhausted to stand. He would let them rest – they needed it.
‘The emperor’s cavalry’s broken the tyrant’s Horse Guards!’ the orderly was saying, stumbling over the words in his excitement. ‘The enemy are fleeing on the right, down off the high ground towards the broken stone bridge, and the emperor’s pursuing them!’
‘Is he?’ Castus said, wincing as he began to feel the pain of his cut hand, his lacerated thigh, his bruised shoulders for the first time.
‘Tribune!’ Modestus called. ‘Signal!’ He pointed to the rear. Castus turned and saw the red banner waving, heard the trumpet’s cry. General advance on the left.
‘That’s it,’ he said, passing the waterskin back to Eumolpius. ‘Now get back there.’ He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, and Eumolpius leaped up into the saddle again.
‘Advance!’ Castus shouted, raising his sword, but the men had seen the signal and were only waiting for his order. Falling into step, in a close formation eight men deep, they began to move forward across the steaming grass towards the disordered ranks of the enemy.
*
The riverbank was a slaughtering ground.
As his advancing troops crested the slope that dropped to the water, Castus saw the warriors of the Bucinobantes butchering the fugitives in the shallows. Everywhere enemy soldiers were throwing off their helmets and mail and splashing into the water, trying desperately to swim clear of the savage barbarian spears. A band of Mauri archers had pushed forward through the advancing legionaries and were lining the bank, pelting the swimmers with arrows. Already the Tiber was flowing red.
Further downstream, around the curve of the river, Castus could see the floating pontoon bridge packed with retreating troops. The bridgehead was a furious chaos of men and horses scrambling to get onto the bridge and escape to the far bank. Beyond it, the broken stone arches of the Milvian Bridge still stood above the flood; even there, men were crowding the approaches, trying in vain to clamber across.
Castus stared at the river, and felt only a mounting sense of horror. The banks were heaped with the slain, wounded men groaning and screaming. And on the pontoon bridge, thousands of men of Maxentius’s broken army struggling in panicked flight, so tightly packed that they could barely move forward. He saw men falling from the bridge, shoved off into the water to struggle and thrash before sinking under the weight of their armour. The river upstream was already churning with mud and blood, bodies and staggering men. Cavalrymen of the Equites Dalmatae were riding along the bank, herding the fugitives into the water.
‘Tribune!’ Brocchus said, grabbing his arm and pointing. Away to the right, the crowd around the bridgehead had opened, men falling aside as a party of horsemen came galloping through them. Castus saw the purple draco standard; but this was not Constantine. The lead rider wore armour of burnished gold, tall purple plumes on his helmet, the same gleaming panoply that Castus had last seen when he had sat in the Circus Maximus, watching the tyrant’s army in review.
Maxentius forced his way out onto the bridge, his horse kicking aside the fleeing men of his own army, the remaining troopers of his cavalry guard following behind him. On the riverbanks, the archers continued to rain arrows into the seething water, killing men before they could drown. Castus could only gaze at the slaughter, open-mouthed. He remembered sitting in the exedra of the palace as Maxentius had told him of his plans to restore Rome to greatness. Where was that greatness now?
The tyrant and his guards had reached the central span of the bridge, their panicked flight almost halted in the press of men struggling around them. Then Castus heard a massed wailing cry go up. One of the boats carrying the central span had broken free, and the roadway above it was sagging under the weight of the crowd. For a few heartbeats Castus saw the crush of bodies as the men on the bridge scrambled to get clear, the tyrant’s horse backing and kicking; then there was a loud groan of timbers, a crack, and the bridge gave way.
Screaming, the horde on the bridge surged and slid, bodies cascading into the foaming water as the timbers of the roadway collapsed beneath them. Maxentius was still up on the bridge, his armour gleaming golden in the sun. Then his horse shuddered and reared. Slowly, almost gracefully, it toppled backwards, bearing the rider beneath it. Together they crashed down into the churning water, and the Tiber closed over them.
*
The tyrant was gone, but the battle was not yet done. As he tore his gaze from the bridge Castus saw a staff officer cantering up from the rear – he looked immaculate on his white gelding, but when he spoke his voice was a high cracked yell.
‘The Praetorians are still holding on the riverbank! Form your legion, tribune, and swing them around against their flank!’ Castus gave him a brief nod, and he rode on.
There was a hornblower beside him, and Castus ordered him to give the signal to form column of attack. The man blew a dull farting sound, coughed and spat, then blew again and the notes rang out loud and true. As the men formed up Castus turned and looked back at them: only half his legion were still with him, the rest scattered across the
field in disarray. Those that remained were stumbling, their eyes empty and their faced glazed from the slaughter, but Castus knew that they still had the strength to fight. Raising his sword, he felt the tremors of fatigue running up his right arm. Then he swung the blade down, and the column behind him lurched forward into a jog, their shields clattering against their sides.
The crowd around the bridgehead parted before them, most of the demoralised enemy troops already throwing down their weapons. Castus led his men straight through them; other columns were converging around him, all as battered and bloodied as his own men but moving with a regular disciplined step. Ahead of them they could see the block of Praetorian survivors, backed up against the riverbank with the water foaming red at their heels. Only a few thousand remained, huddled within their ring of shields, and all around them were archers and light troops with javelins, showering missiles upon them.
‘Surrender!’ an officer was yelling. ‘Your emperor is dead! Throw down your arms!’
But the Praetorians were holding fast, determined to fight to the end. Castus remembered the men he had met at the baths, those soldiers from the legions of the Danube. Men like himself. Had they fallen already, somewhere in the mesh of combat, or in that slow disciplined retreat across the field? Or were they standing still, in that grim bulwark of shields upon the riverbank?
Leontius was calling to Castus from the head of his own Eighth Augusta column. ‘Wedge attack!’ he cried. ‘Drive in their flanks!’
The horns screamed, and Castus felt the men at his back already beginning to surge forward. Raising his shield, he threw himself into a charge. He could barely feel his legs as he ran, only the breath dragging at his throat and the ache in his arm as he tightened his grip on his sword. Then the battle cry rose around him, the wall of shields broke as the Praetorians surged forward into a counter-charge, and Castus slammed himself between the bodies of the enemy.
There was no order to this fight. No formations remained, only the fury of combat. The Britannica wedge had smashed aside the charging Praetorians and thrust deep into their flank, but now men fought as individuals or in small knots, hacking and striking. Castus forced his way onwards, punching with his shield. There were three men at his back, and he could hear their screams as they fought. All around him the enemy mass was breaking up. Somebody aimed a spear at him from below, and he slashed down and killed the man without even looking at him.
