‘Fuck me, it actually works. Who said all senior officers were full of shit?’
Sanga spat on the ice, putting a foot on his own shield.
‘As I recall it was you, you stupid bastard. Here, you,’ — he put a hand out to the man behind him — ‘give me my spear, and I’ll have that shield. .’
His eyes met those of the rear ranker, and narrowed in calculation as he realised it was one of the Sarmatae foot soldiers who had been given to the Romans to plug the gaps in their ranks.
‘Oi, Saratos, or whatever your name is. Am I going to let you finger your blade behind me while your mates do their best to put their iron through me? Not likely!’
He grabbed the man’s mail shirt at the collar and dragged him forward, pushing the man to his right backwards into his vacated place in the circle’s rear rank. Switching places with the hapless Sarmatae so that he was sandwiched between the two veterans, he patted his spear with a meaningful glance.
‘You so much as twitch the wrong way and I’ll put this little darling up your nose!’
Scarface regarded the trembling man levelly for a moment.
‘I think you’re being a little harsh on our new friend, my old mate. Let’s face it, he’s wearing our kit and standing in our fuckin’ line, ain’t he? He either fights for his life or else he ends up with one of them long spears of theirs poking out of his arse like a backwards prick.’ He slapped the Sarmatae on the shoulder, thrusting his head forward to shout in the man’s face. ‘You fight?’
While the previous discussion had been unintelligible to the recruit, the unequivocal challenge left no room for misunderstanding. He nodded vigorously.
‘I fight! Horseman kill!’
Sanga nodded to his friend.
‘Best keep an eye on him all the same. Hold on, Latrine’s shouting the odds again. .’
Rapping the flat of his sword’s blade against his dagger, Julius was looking about the circle with a look that brooked no argument.
‘Tungrians, make some noise! Tell those horse-fuckers that we’re not going anywhere!’
Within seconds the flat tapping of blade on blade had swollen to a thunderous pulsing rattle of spear shafts on the bosses of the soldiers’ shields, a wall of sound that echoed across the lake as the horsemen manoeuvred into a rough line and began to advance on the waiting Tungrians, their horses stepping gingerly down onto the lake’s frozen surface.
‘And so it comes down to andreia. .’ Julius turned to glance at his tribune with a curious expression, and Scaurus shook his head in self-deprecation. ‘I’m sorry, First Spear, random outbursts in foreign languages are the price to be paid for having education thrust upon one at an early age, I suppose. My history tutor used to fill my head with tales of the Greek wars, and time and time again he used the word andreia to describe the nature of a man’s courage.’
‘Greek was he, Tribune?’
Scaurus laughed at the question.
‘A fair guess. Yes, he was Greek, and if my uncle had known the disregard in which he held our empire by comparison with the glories his country once knew, well then I expect that he would have had the man beaten and thrown out of the house. He used to take me out on the balcony and point out across the city, all those buildings as far as the eye could see, and tell me that “All this will one day crumble, as mighty Greece’s time in the sun came to an end, when we lost the collective andreia that allowed us to triumph over Troy and repel the Persians.”’
He watched as the Sarmatae horsemen gathered pace, the horses snorting out their breath in plumes of vapour as they accelerated to a canter across the ice.
‘And now this dirty little battle becomes a matter of whose andreia is the greater, ours or theirs. If we break in the face of their charge then we are all surely dead, but if we hold long enough for them to skate onto our spears, then we may yet hold the whip over them.’
Julius craned his neck to stare over his men’s helmeted heads, then turned to Tertius and muttered a quiet instruction. The Second Cohort’s senior centurion nodded, pacing away to the back of the circle where his own men stood. The enemy were closer now, their screams and shouts piercing the air as they waved their lances over their heads. Directly facing the riders’ onrushing wall of horseflesh, Scarface rolled his shoulders and ducked into the cover of his shield with his spear held ready to throw.
‘Fuck me, but would you look at that lot?’
Sanga laughed grimly.
‘Your leggings full then, are they?’
His mate shook his head dourly.
‘Not yet. After that shit you cooked up for dinner last night you’ll know when my ring gives up the fight, ’cause it’ll smell like I’ve dropped a week-old corpse.’ He raised his voice, as the horsemen lowered their lances in a glittering wave of polished iron, speaking to the men to either side of him with a tone that dripped with bored contempt. ‘Hold your ground, you fuckin’ women! You heard what the tribune said! We can beat these!’
Marcus stepped up behind his men, raising his voice to be heard over the oncoming horses’ thunder and the chorus of brutal reassurance and imprecation being shouted by the veteran soldiers at their less experienced comrades.
‘Ready spears!’
The front rankers leaned back, eager for the command to unleash their spears on the horsemen, but Marcus guessed that Julius would wait until the last possible moment, knowing that his men would be unable to get the usual power into their throws given that the ice would prevent them from performing the forward step to add momentum to the missiles’ flight. He watched the first spear intently, waiting for his raised vine stick to fall.
‘Ready. . wait. . ready. . throw!’
A hail of wood and iron arched out from the Tungrian line in an untidy cascade, spears raining down onto the oncoming enemy and transforming their relatively ordered formation into chaos in an instant. Riders busy aligning the points of their lances with the Roman line were caught unawares by the onslaught, their spitted bodies falling beneath the hoofs of the horses behind them and unnerving or even tripping the hapless beasts, while those men with both wicker shields and the wit to use them managed in the main only to deflect the flying spears onto the men beside and behind them. The charge faltered momentarily, giving the Tungrian front rankers time to reach behind them for a second spear.
‘Steady!’
All along the Tungrian line centurions and chosen men crouched close to their soldiers, encouraging, cajoling and simply bullying them to hold their positions as the horsemen regained their momentum and covered the last few paces at a canter. Scarface felt a hand on his arm, and glanced round to find Marcus at his shoulder.
‘Wait. .’
Staring up at the looming wall of horseflesh, even Marcus was struck by the apparent impossibility of any attempt to resist the attackers’ oncoming tide, seeing his men’s spearheads wavering in the face of the onrushing charge. He bellowed at his men, knowing that the moment of greatest danger was upon them all.
‘The eyes! Look at the horses’ eyes!’
The animals were panicking, eyes rolling as their riders goaded them forward at the Romans, eager to strike back at the waiting soldiers, but the beasts’ attempts to shy away from the waiting spear points only resulted in their hoofs sliding on the smooth ice. As the rider facing Scarface skated helplessly up to the Tungrian line, he lunged forward with his lance, cursing as the soldier raised his shield and allowed the weapon’s sharp iron blade to punch through its layered board and stick firm. Wrenching at the shield’s grip, the Tungrian fought the rider for possession of the weapon, edging to one side as the soldier to his rear squeezed between him and the Sarmatae recruit alongside him to grab at the horse’s reins. Bracing himself off the shield laid on the ice before Scarface and pulling back with all his strength, the rear ranker physically dragged the protesting animal into spear reach, and even as its rider released his grip on the lance and went for his sword the Sarmatae recruit, Saratos, stabbed forward expertly
with his spear, burying it deeply in the horse’s throat and twisting the shaft before ripping it free.
With an ear-piercing scream of pain the animal reared back, wrenching the reins free from the struggling soldier’s grip and pulling him over onto the ice, but then staggered on its feet as a thick rivulet of steaming blood gushed down its neck and legs from the open artery. Bellowing incoherent rage, the animal’s rider leapt down from his stricken mount’s back, raising his sword to attack only to receive Sanga’s spear in his armpit as the veteran took his brief chance with a lunging strike. The barbarian recoiled from the blow against the horse’s flank as the beast sank helplessly to its knees, horse and rider both crippled by their wounds. The rider alongside him leaned forward and punched his lance into Sanga’s unshielded shoulder, scattering a handful of severed mail rings as the long blade sank deep into the soldier’s chest below his collar bone. He staggered back with his right hand locked on the weapon’s long shaft even as the Sarmatae tried to tear it free from the wound, maintaining his tenacious grip as his eyes rolled upwards and he fell to his knees on his own shield. Scarface bellowed his rage at the distracted rider as the man fought to dislodge his lance from the wounded Tungrian’s grasp, hurling his own spear with a ferocity that buried it deep in the junction of the rider’s trunk and thigh and dropping him writhing to the ground. Drawing his sword the wild-eyed soldier took a step forward, only to find Marcus’s hand on his arm again, the centurion’s raised voice calm amid the storm of iron.
‘No! Get him to safety!’
Pulling his gladius from its scabbard the Roman levelled the two swords’ blades, pushed past his soldier and advanced out of the line in a whirl of flickering steel. Ducking under a lance thrust he swung the spatha’s long blade at his attacker’s mount, neatly severing both of the animal’s front legs at the knee. Dancing away to the right, away from the collapsing beast, he turned another kontos thrust with the gladius, then chopped the weapon’s gleaming iron blade from its wooden shaft with a swing of the spatha. Lunging in close to the horseman’s mount, trapped and unable to move in the crush of its fellows, he ducked under the horse’s belly and rammed the gladius into its belly, tearing the blade out to sever the muscles beneath the skin. The stricken beast staggered, unable to stay on its feet, and keeled over away from the Roman, sending its rider sprawling onto the ice. Looking back over his shoulder to be sure that Scarface had managed to pull his comrade to safety, his boot caught on a shield’s rim, and he staggered for a moment before falling heavily onto his back to lie momentarily helpless as fresh horsemen pushed their mounts forward around the animals he had disabled, their long lances raised to strike.
With a roar of anger Saratos stepped forward and smashed a pair of iron spearheads away with his shield, thrusting his own spear’s point up and through the foremost horse’s jaw and deep into its head, dropping the animal to the ground so fast that its hapless rider was catapulted from the saddle on top of Marcus’s legs. The young centurion thrust his gladius into the stunned warrior’s neck, then flexed his knees and kicked him back under the advancing horse’s hoofs in a shower of dark-red arterial blood. Hands grasped him by his mailed shoulders and dragged him back into the Tungrian line, and Marcus looked up to find his chosen man standing over him with a grin as he pushed more men into the gap.
‘I knew you were a good ’un, Centurion, but I’ll buy you a fuckin’ cup of wine for that, if we ever see the inside of a tavern again.’
He nodded his head to the scene of carnage facing the Tungrians, dead and dying horses littering the ground while the animals behind them pranced and whinnied at the stink of blood and offal.
‘Sanga?’
Quintus shook his head grimly, pointing to where the wounded soldier lay helpless on the ice.
‘Scarface did well getting him out of there, and the bandage carrier’s stuck a wad over the wound, but I doubt he’ll see sunset even if we outlast these bastards.’
Marcus walked over to the prostrate veteran, his hands shaking slightly with the rage still fizzing though his body.
‘Get him onto his feet. He’ll freeze to death if he lies here much longer!’
‘And if he can’t stand?’
Marcus looked down into Sanga’s face, shaking his head grimly.
‘Then he’ll die.’ He bent to speak into the wounded man’s ear. ‘Get on your feet and stay on them, Soldier Sanga. I’ve no time to spend on you now, but when we’re done here I’ll see you safely back to the fort if you’re still upright. Either get up now or go to meet your ancestors!’
The soldier nodded weakly, his face as pale as the ice beneath him, and staggered back onto his feet to stand with his back bent, staring at his own knees. Marcus patted him gently on the shoulder and turned away, looking up and down the Tungrian line to gauge the fight’s progress. Roughly half of the circle’s circumference was embattled, with soldiers fighting for their lives along the entire length of the side facing the Sarmatae attack, and his gaze flicked to where Scaurus and his first spears were watching the fight with calm patience. The tribune nodded his head decisively, and Julius ran towards his cohort’s rear, shouting the instruction Marcus had been expecting.
‘First Cohort, pull back! On me!’
Looking to either side to be sure they were keeping pace with the line’s retreat, the men facing the Sarmatae stepped back from the half-circle of shields along which enemy riders and horses were scattered, the battle’s bloody detritus, some dead while others were still kicking and screaming in their death agonies. At a shouted command those barbarians with bows pushed through the throng of horsemen and started sending arrows at the retreating Tungrians, their leader bellowing his encouragement as he sensed the beginning of a collapse in the Romans’ morale. A soldier in Marcus’s Fifth Century fell with an arrow in his foot, writhing in agony at the pain and staring in disbelief at the long shaft transfixing his boot. Unable to stand, he pitched forward onto the ice too far from his retreating comrades to reach out and drag him back with them.
‘Hold the line!’
The soldiers around Marcus obeyed his command with sullen faces, watching in horror as one of the horsemen leaned from his saddle to push the blade of his lance through the fallen soldier’s thigh. Another spurred his mount forward, raising his kontos with a theatrical flourish and grinning at the Tungrians before stabbing it down into his throat with an ululating scream of triumph. Still the Roman line retreated, and with their spirits buoyed up by imminent victory the Sarmatae pressed in closer, forcing the soldiers to defend themselves from their relentlessly stabbing lances. The Tungrians’ formation was bowing under the barbarian pressure now, the two cohorts within a dozen paces of each other in two long concave lines, and the Sarmatae leader pushed his horse through the mass of men competing to stab down at the soldiers with a savage grin of impending victory.
7
Silus and his men rode into the fortress under the watchful eyes of the bolt-thrower crews standing ready to either side of the main gate, the decurion smiling mirthlessly as the weapons’ commanders ordered their men to remove the heavy iron missiles and release the torsion on their straining ropes. He dismounted, looking to left and right for the duty centurion.
‘Back so soon?’ Silus turned to find the object of his search approaching him with a questioning look. ‘I assume that this isn’t good news you’re bearing.’
He shook his head, leaning close to the grizzled officer and speaking in tones quiet enough to be audible only between themselves.
‘It’s news that I’ve been told to deliver to your prefect, and to share with no-one else.’
The centurion’s expression didn’t change.
‘Which, I suppose, tells me all that I need to know. You!’ He plucked a soldier from the men standing at attention by the gate. ‘Take the decurion here to the headquarters building.’
Leontius was equally unsurprised by the news, although the report of the Sarmatae horsemens’ betrayal of Belletor an
d the slaughter of the legion cohort did set his head shaking.
‘That’s a bloody disaster, Decurion. Three perfectly good infantry cohorts lost in a morning, which only leaves me with the men I have here, given that the units posted down the valley will already have been overrun. Very well, we’d best get ready for a fight. Thank you for bringing me this news, despite what it must mean for you. At least your escape means I have a ready supply of despatch riders with which to alert the legati. Not that their knowledge of this situation is likely to bring reinforcement quickly enough.’ He smiled bitterly at Silus. ‘I strongly doubt that two five-hundred-man cohorts are going to hold the pass against a decent-sized tribal band for long enough for it to matter whether we have a legion marching in our support or not, but we should never give up hope, eh?’
Silus saluted.
‘As you wish, Tribune. Do I have time to share these tidings with our cohort’s doctor? She was a good friend of one of the centurions.’
The senior officer waved a dismissive hand.
‘Do what you need to do, Decurion, and then come back here to collect my first message. We need reinforcement as quickly as possible if we’re to prevent these Sarmatae maniacs from getting past us and into the province. Oh, and send a scout party back down the valley, will you? I want a little more notice as to exactly what’s coming up the road at us before the blighters knock on the gates and tell us they’ve come to repossess the place.’
Silus saluted again and left the room, detailing five of his men to carry out the prefect’s instructions and ride back down the valley road. He hurried to the fort’s hospital where he found Felicia and Annia in the middle of an inventory of the drug stocks.
‘Precious little dried poppy sap, no Mandrake, enough Knitbone for half a dozen patients. .’ Felicia shook her head unhappily at her assistant. ‘Any man that stops a blade is going to have to take his treatment without the benefit of medication. At least we have a good supply of bandages and honey.’ Her eyes flicked up to see Silus standing in the doorway with an unhappy expression, and her eyes narrowed. ‘Decurion, can I help you? This isn’t good news, is it?’
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