Vindolanda

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  Rufus nodded. His face was dark with patches of soot. ‘What about the other gap in the wall?’

  Titus Annius slapped his hand against his leg in annoyance. ‘I’d forgotten. I’ll put men there.’

  ‘I did not know that there was another way in,’ Ferox said.

  ‘It’s not a real gate,’ Rufus told him. ‘Just a bit of a gap on the far side where they bring sheep in and out. We came through with the mules.’

  The smoke was getting denser and Ferox realised that sparks from burning thatch must have set the bracken and heather alight. It was mainly on the slope of the big valley, but the wind had veered more westerly and was driving the banks of smoke back over the fort.

  ‘Shields up!’ Rufus’ men braced their big curved shields as javelins hissed through the air towards them. There were dull thumps as the heads struck hard against the leather-coated wood and bounced back, and a high-pitched ping as another deflected off the domed iron boss in the centre of one shield. The legionaries stood three abreast and three deep in the gateway. Each man carried a pilum, the heavy javelin used by the legions and no one else, with a small pyramid-shaped iron head at the end of a slim two-foot-long iron shank attached to a four-foot-long wooden shaft. Its weight gave the pilum a short range, but was concentrated behind that small point to drive through shield or armour as if it were soft butter.

  ‘Wait for the order!’ Rufus burst into another fit of coughing, but the young centurion sounded calm and confident. The carnyxes were blowing outside, gathering the warriors together and lifting their spirits. With a sudden shout dozens of warriors surged forward at the men in the gateway. They were led by a tall man with a bronze helmet and white horsehair plume waving behind him. He had a long sword and large round shield painted with the symbol of a boar in white. Behind him came others in tunics and trousers, with little shields and javelins or blunt-tipped slashing swords.

  ‘Wait!’ Rufus stood to the right of the nine legionaries holding the gateway, his unshielded side to the enemy but sheltered by the rampart. Five more soldiers waited just behind him and the rest were formed in ranks ready to support both groups. The piled stone ruins of a house stood on the other side of the gateway, which would make it hard for anyone to come across the rampart there. Even so, Ferox drew his sword and stood ready. Titus Annius was beside him, a shield as well as sword in his hand, and the two auxiliaries from his personal escort on either side of him. Ferox had not seen anyone bring the commander his shield.

  ‘Throw!’ Rufus shouted to his men and the three legionaries in the first rank took two paces forward, right arms swiftly back before they hurled the heavy pila forward. As they threw the second rank followed them and loosed their own pila. The three men in the rear allowed the same slight pause before they followed. Pila were big and bulky and the slight delay reduced the chances of weapons hitting each other and being wasted.

  ‘Charge!’ Rufus screamed, for legionaries were taught to be aggressive. The yelling men surged out of the gateway, reaching down with their right hands to draw swords as they ran. Ferox, Annius and the others followed them. Clear of the gateway, he saw that the enemy leader was down, a pilum having punched through his shield and pinned it to his body. Another man was wailing in high-pitched agony with the long javelin driven into his groin. He sat on the grass, blood bubbling from his mouth. Beside him a warrior was dead, the pilum still stuck in his head, and a fourth man had the slim shank sticking out for a good six inches from the back of his impaled thigh.

  The rest had halted, confused and shocked, as the legionaries ran forward ten paces into them. The Romans punched with their heavy shields – Ferox saw one of the Selgovae lifted off his feet by the blow – and followed up with jabs of their swords. It was over almost as soon as it began. Three more warriors were down, the wounded finished off with economical thrusts, and the rest fleeing back.

  Neither Ferox nor Annius had got close enough to cross blades with the enemy. Rufus had blood on his sword and a spatter of enemy’s blood across his face. The legionaries were chattering excitedly, some of them trying to recover their pila and having little luck. One of the ones to hit the ground had broken when it had hit a stone. Two more were intact and usable, but the ones that had found victims were stuck fast, designed to penetrate rather than to slide out with ease.

  ‘Given us some time anyway,’ Titus Annius said.

  A legionary grunted as a javelin came at him from his unshielded right side. It hit one of the plates of his segmented cuirass, the force knocking him over even though it did not pierce the soft iron.

  ‘Get back!’ Titus Annius called. ‘Re-form in the gate.’

  Warriors were beginning to close on them. Another javelin arced down, not sticking when it hit the ground, but sliding forward through the grass to stop just in front of Ferox. One of his comrades helped the man knocked down as the legionaries walked backwards, using their shields to stop the missiles. Stones from slings smacked against them, and one went low, cracking on a man’s shin, breaking bone. The legionary dropped, and as the man beside him leaned down to help a javelin hit him in the right arm. He hissed, dropping his sword.

  ‘Run!’ Ferox shouted. The gate was close and it was better to dash back to the protection of the ramparts rather than try to block missiles coming from all around. He ran to the fallen man, grabbing his arm and dragging him across the grass. Someone else took the legionary’s other arm and to his surprise he saw Titus Annius, sword back in its sheath and trying to use his shield to protect them all. The cohort commander grinned.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Annius said, and then a stone grazed the bridge of his nose and slammed into his right eye, turning it into bloody pulp. He staggered, letting go of the man’s arm and raising his hand to his face.

  Ferox dragged the legionary another pace, to where one of his comrades was waiting. The two Tungrians escorting the cohort commander were at his side, one leading him away and the other doing his best to cover them. More legionaries came out of the gate to help.

  A long ululating scream and a naked warrior came bounding towards them, spear in one hand and a little axe in the other. He was covered in tattoos and for the first time today Ferox saw the mark of the horse on his forehead. The warrior threw his spear at the Tungrian auxiliary who caught it on his shield, the point bursting through a couple of inches, but not enough to reach him. A pilum would have pierced the wood and slid through to hit the man behind. The auxiliary swayed back from the blow and the warrior ran past him, ducking the thrust spear and raising his axe to cut down at Ferox, who caught the man by his wrist and stabbed him in the throat. No more warriors followed him and instead they hung back, content for the moment to lob missiles.

  ‘Come on!’ he said to the Tungrian, turning to run. A sling stone brushed the doubled-up mail armour on his shoulder, stinging a little, but doing no damage. They were through the gate, the last to retreat, and Rufus shouted at his men to re-form in the gap. Titus Annius was sitting propped up against the wall of the collapsed hut beside the gate. His helmet was off and his escort and another Tungrian were cleaning and bandaging the wound as best they could. It looked bad, an eye destroyed at least, and the centurion was clearly in no state to command.

  Ferox strode over to Rufus. ‘I am Flavius Ferox, centurio regionarius, and I am senior here.’ That was probably true and he hoped that the man would accept it without debate. ‘I’m also from the Second, albeit on detached service.’

  ‘Oh,’ Rufus said in surprise. ‘That Ferox.’ Ferox thought he caught a low ‘omnes ad stercus’ from one of the soldiers nearby. He guessed that they had heard about the disasters on the Danube, and maybe they thought him unlucky to be around.

  The young centurion checked himself and stiffened to attention. ‘Of course, sir, you can rely on the Capricorns.’ Ferox had not heard the nickname before, but then since he had spent no time with the legion that was not surprising. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are they hol
ding back? They could swarm all over these walls and there isn’t much we could do about it.’

  ‘My guess is that they’re waiting for dark. If they come now, we will take a lot of them with us.’ He spoke loudly so that the men could hear as well. ‘A hell of a lot of them if I know Second Augusta.’ The legionaries looked pleased. ‘And these Tungrian boys can handle themselves as well. They won’t get in easily and they might not get in at all. So they’ll wait for night and try to overwhelm us. What they don’t know is that we won’t hang around for that.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We’re pulling out back to the column, but we have to be smart. Hold here with your lads while I sort out the others. We will pull back from the walls into the centre of the fort before we bring back the men from the gates. We also need to get all the wounded away. Your mules, too. I don’t want anybody to have their pay docked for losing army property!’ A few of the men grinned.

  Before he left he had the Tungrians rig up a stretcher from a couple of spears and some cloaks to carry the now unconscious Titus Annius. He got the legionaries to make something similar for their own man wounded in the leg. The heather was burning for a long way along the slope behind them. He looked at the little gap in the rampart that Rufus had mentioned, but saw that the hillside beneath it was ablaze so that they could not use it. That meant the other main entrance, the one near the saddle and in plain view of the Selgovae. The optio of the Tungrians had taken charge of the gateway and had a line of men occupying it. So far no warriors had tried an attack, but a few were skirmishing with javelins and slings, so he had sent his own slingers out to hold them in check and even drive them back some distance. One auxiliary had an injured knee and another man had had his nose smashed, leaving his face swollen and bloody, and there were several bundles of rags down the slope – tribesmen who had not spotted the cast lead bullets used by the auxiliaries. They were harder to see than pebbles and flew straighter because of their even shape, but by now the Tungrians were running low and using whatever stones they could pick up. So far the Selgovae had not noticed and were keeping their distance.

  It was getting darker, and not just because of the fires that kept the air thick with ash and unpleasantly hot. Ferox looked for the tesserarius, a quiet veteran with face and arms the colour of teak.

  ‘Pick a dozen good men and come with me.’ As the man gathered his detachment, Ferox told the optio to keep the men at the gate, but to form the rest up in a deep column inside the fort. The wounded commander arrived, carried by four men. ‘Detail ten men to stay with him at all times.’

  Ferox hurried back to the far end of the fort, the tesserarius jogging alongside. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Gambax, my lord.’

  ‘You and your men wait here, but keep off the path.’ There was a narrow track winding through the centre of the old settlement. Over to their right, the thatch of a burning house collapsed, sending up a flurry of sparks. ‘I’ll be back to take charge, but your job is to cover the retreat of the legionaries, so once they go by, you form a line across the path and hold. Someone else will be waiting to cover us. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. I’ll be back.’

  The legionaries had two more wounded, both in the foot or shin where missiles had gone under their shields. Four more corpses in front of the gateway showed that they had thrown back another little attack. Three men too injured to walk, four to carry each of them, and another man with a wounded arm left fourteen fit men to stand with the centurion. Ferox sent the wounded and the carriers back and got Rufus to divide the others into two groups. Seven men went back along the path to where it turned the first corner.

  ‘Count to fifty and then bring the rest back. If no one is following then get everyone back. I have a covering party waiting to protect you.’ He snatched up a shield left by one of the wounded men, feeling the weight, but glad of the hours he had spent using a heavier practice shield.

  Ferox counted in his head and was past fifty before he reached the Tungrians. Turning, he saw the first legionaries come into sight, coughing from the smoke. Rufus and the others appeared a moment later. He beckoned them on, and told the auxiliaries to open out and let them through. Sweat poured down his face from the heat, leaving pale rivulets in the grime from the smoke.

  He repeated the count and reached fifty again. ‘Go. Form on the back of the column. I’ll be right behind you.’

  The Tungrians doubled away and he stared down the path. The shout came from his left, and he saw a warrior crouching on top of the rampart, calling back to the others that the Romans were fleeing. Ferox followed the auxiliaries.

  ‘Sound the charge!’ he shouted at the cornicen. ‘Now!’ The man was standing next to the dense column of Tungrians, with the signifer carrying the vexillum. Both had bearskins over their helmets, the paws crossed and pinned into place on their chests. The cornicen licked his lips and played the three rising notes of the charge, the last one drawn out.

  ‘Go!’ Ferox yelled.

  ‘Charge!’ That was the optio at the head of the century. The Tungrians guarding the gate dashed forward and down the slope towards the Selgovae. The warriors skirmishing scampered away, not sure how far the Romans were going. Behind the optio and his men, the main column jogged out of the gate, shields and equipment thumping, and then wheeled to head up to the saddle. Ferox panted as he ran to catch up, for he needed to be there if he was to make this work. Behind the Tungrians came the wounded and the legionaries’ mules, with Rufus and his fourteen men and Gambax’s party at the rear.

  The Selgovae were chanting war cries, blowing their tall trumpets, the noise growing louder all the time, but were still unsure what was happening. It would not last. The optio halted his men. Ferox was near the top of the pass and yelled at the Tungrians to split into two halves. The front of the column kept going, vanishing over the crest, while the others turned about as the wounded were carried or limped past them.

  Ferox stopped on the crest beside the waiting auxiliaries. He looked down into the valley and saw the front half of the column going rapidly downhill. For a moment he worried that they were panicking and had forgotten their orders, but then they halted and faced about. A bigger worry was that there was no sign of any troops from the main force coming back for them. For over a mile the valley side was empty. Back nearer the fort there was only flames and masses of dense smoke, which should at least make it harder for the Selgovae to follow them that way. A great howl of rage and excitement surged up as the tribesmen realised that their enemy was not only in the open but running.

  Rufus and the rearguard struggled up to the crest, the legionaries burdened with their bulky red shields, the Tungrians loping up the slope with more ease. ‘Stop fifty paces down the slope,’ Ferox told him, pointing down towards the main valley.

  The optio and his men were turning now, running back as he had ordered, but the closest warriors sprang forward very fast. Javelins flashed as they went through the air. An auxiliary fell, a spearhead driven deep into his thigh, and beside him another man slipped or tripped. Two Britons were on him before he could push up again. They jabbed with their spears, piercing his mail, and the man writhed, back arching from the pain. Another warrior reached the soldier hit in the leg and slashed down with his long sword, easily beating aside the wounded man’s feeble attempts to block the blows. Scores more Selgovae were bounding up the slope. Hundreds more were surging around from the heights at the far end of the old fort, racing to join the hunt.

  Ferox saw the optio in the middle of his men, the two upright feathers on his helmet making him seem taller than the rest, but then the man fell, perhaps hit by a stone. Two of the Tungrians went back for him only to be engulfed by the tide of warriors streaming up the slope. Ferox heard a long piercing scream, saw flashes of swords hacking and the three auxiliaries were gone. The optio’s remaining men sprinted away, some dropping shields and spears in a desperate quest for speed.

  ‘We
are going forward,’ Ferox announced to the thirty or so Tungrians formed in three ranks at the top of the pass. ‘When I give the order, I want you to cheer harder than you ever have in your life. Then we march forward ten paces and keep banging your spears against your shields. Front rank will throw spears and the rest keep theirs ready. But we halt!’ He turned to stare at the faces, the usual mixture of young and old, all of them nervous, but some hiding it better than others. ‘Once we are done, you wait for the order and then we go back at the double the way we came and down the other side. Understand?’

  Men nodded.

  ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Sir!’ they shouted.

  ‘Good.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Forward, march!’ Ferox banged the blade of his gladius against the brass edging of his borrowed shield. The auxiliaries cheered and beat the shafts of their spears against their own shields as they went down the slope.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘Make these scum hear you!’

  The Selgovae looked up, surprised to see the Romans come on. Many hesitated, slowing down or stopping. A few chased after the fleeing remnants of the optio’s men.

  ‘Go to the side!’ Ferox yelled angrily at the fugitives and pointed with his sword. He was counting the paces in his head.

  ‘Halt! Front rank, throw!’

  Moving gave force to a thrown spear, but these men had all trained to throw from the halt as well and the slope was in their favour. Eleven broad-shafted spears spun through the air, leaf-shaped heads glinting. One lucky throw hit a charging warrior squarely in the chest and burst out through the man’s back, flinging him over. Two more warriors were hit and the rest ran back a short way.

  ‘Back! Back!’ Ferox yelled. The Tungrians needed no urging and turned and fled, equipment banging as they jogged up the slope, barging into each other. Ferox followed. There were fresh shouts of triumph from the Selgovae and the trumpets blared again.