Glory of Rome: (Gaius Valerius Verrens 8)

by Douglas Jackson

  ‘Yet they think they have us where they want us,’ Valerius continued. ‘And they may be right. It’s my belief that the force that is blocking the ridge ahead may well be only half, or perhaps a third, of the true Ordovice strength.’ They totted up the numbers in their heads and the atmosphere turned solemn. ‘When we attack King Owain Lawhir he will allow himself to be pushed back on to the very crest of the ridge, but his retreat will be a feint. As the valley narrows our lines will lose their cohesion and become compressed. At the moment of greatest confusion perhaps twenty thousand of his best warriors will fall on us from the surrounding hills and swamp our flanks. Trapped between three superior forces, we will be overwhelmed. At least that is what King Owain hopes.’

  ‘Then surely, sir, we should retreat and fight them on ground that suits us, sir?’

  Valerius marked the speaker as one of the young centurions who would one day be a candidate for primus pilus. He smiled, but before he could reply another voice broke in.

  ‘A Roman legion does not retreat from barbarians.’ Naso repeated his mantra of a few hours earlier.

  ‘If I had the choice, camp prefect,’ Valerius told him, ‘that is precisely what I would do. Centurion Candidus is right. The only prudent action when faced by overwhelming odds in a superior tactical position is to withdraw. Unfortunately, in this case it would cost me my head. This, gentlemen, is not a matter of tactics. It is a matter of strategy. I am under direct orders from the governor to fight the Ordovices wherever and whenever I find them. So we will attack, but not in the way King Owain expects.’

  He rose from his seat and went to the spot he’d had roped off on the earth floor, picking up a lamp on the way. The flickering light illuminated lines he’d drawn on the ground earlier and the men crowded round and craned their necks to get a better view.

  ‘We will attack with six cohorts, in line formation …’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘Yes,’ Valerius agreed. ‘That is precisely what the Ordovices will expect. Three ordered lines of legionaries advancing across open ground to meet them, with cavalry protecting their flanks. The old way, as we have always done it. Except we have no cavalry.’

  ‘They rode out to the rear an hour ago,’ Candidus said. ‘We thought they were exercising their horses.’

  ‘I’m glad you noticed.’ Valerius smiled. ‘I hope the Ordovices did not. But don’t worry. You will have horsemen on your flanks.’ He lifted his eyes from the map and allowed them to drift over the assembled men. ‘Our orders are to bring the enemy to battle and that is what we will do.’

  ‘Even if we are walking into a trap?’

  ‘Especially if we are walking into a trap. The attacking cohorts will be the Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth, plus the First Tungria and Second Pannonia, replacing the Sixth and Seventh cohorts. The actual Sixth and Seventh cohorts of the Ninth legion will remain in reserve,’ he ignored the rumble of anger from the disappointed centurions, ‘under the command of the camp prefect.’ Naso shot him a glance of astonishment and despair, but he continued outlining his plan. ‘The men of the Sixth and Seventh will exchange shields and cohort standards with their auxiliary counterparts.’

  ‘This is an outrage,’ the Seventh’s cohort centurion cried.

  ‘On the contrary.’ Valerius turned to him, his voice cold. ‘It is a ruse of war that could save many lives, perhaps your own. But if you wish to be relieved of your command all you have to do is say so.’

  The man’s eyes radiated fury, but his answer was an emphatic ‘No, legate’.

  ‘Then listen.’ He crouched to scratch a line in the dirt. ‘We will advance until we make contact with the enemy. If I am right they will retire rather than accept serious casualties. We will continue to press them as if we seek their destruction, but at our own pace. It is vital that our front ranks maintain discipline.’ He looked up to meet each of their eyes once more. ‘There can be no fever-crazed dash after the enemy. At that moment, if I am right, their reserves will fall on us from either flank.’

  A murmur of dismay, because they could all envisage the panic and the carnage as the enemy poured from the hills and crashed into their unprotected flanks, smashing the defenceless lines into oblivion.

  ‘But that will take time,’ Valerius reassured them. ‘Time enough for us to form square.’ He saw the blank looks. ‘We will form a single unit square of six cohorts, because if we do not we will all die, but that will be as nothing,’ he turned to where a figure had appeared through the doors at the prearranged moment, ‘when compared to losing this to the enemy.’ Every eye went to the eagle carried aloft by the legion’s aquilifer, his face a mask of resolve, eyes glittering like those of his gilded burden. ‘You would tell me to send it back,’ he challenged them. ‘Because the enemy is too numerous and their position too strong. But that is to admit defeat before we begin. Your men will fight all the better for knowing the legion’s eagle is in their midst. They will fight for it and they will die for it.’ Men who had gladly faced death in battle took a step back at the savagery in his voice. ‘I will not lose the eagle of the Ninth. Not as long as I have breath in my body. This is how it will be.’

  They listened as he outlined his plan, nervous, but determined not to show it, each concentrating on his own part in the complex manoeuvre. When he finished the silence seemed to quiver like a taut bow string.

  ‘Are your men capable of this?’ he demanded.

  ‘We’ve never practised creating a full legion square in battle conditions,’ Naso said quietly. ‘Legate Fronto believed it would never be used and thought it too much trouble.’

  ‘Would cohort squares not be just as formidable, sir?’

  Valerius shook his head. ‘If the six squares operate in close formation we lose the advantage of seven hundred spears. Too far apart for mutual protection and the Celts will slaughter our cohorts one by one.’

  ‘They can do it.’ The hard voice came from a little apart, where a man stood with the phalerae of a primus pilus dangling from his chest armour. His intervention generated a murmur of disquiet because he’d only recently arrived from the Twentieth legion to replace the disgraced Tertius. ‘Any soldier capable of finding his place in a cohort square can do the same in a full unit square … as long as their officers know their jobs.’ Disquiet turned to anger as the centurions of the Ninth realized their competence was being challenged, but the primus pilus seemed to find their displeasure amusing. ‘I’ll make sure they know their jobs if it takes all night, legate.’

  ‘Then we’re agreed. Have the men ready an hour before dawn.’ Valerius signalled the end of the conference and they began to file out. He exchanged a nod with the primus pilus and pulled Naso aside. He felt the other man stiffen.

  ‘I know you want to be part of the attack, Quintus, but I need someone I can trust to lead the reserve. Do not let your disappointment cloud your judgement. This plan has three working elements and if any one of them fails we all die. The Celts will think we’ve left auxiliaries to guard the camp and the baggage train. You have two cohorts of heavy infantry.’ He brought his face close to the other man and the power of his authority shone from his eyes. ‘Think of it, Quintus. They believe they have us trapped in the narrow gap between the hills, but if you time your attack perfectly it is they who are trapped, between the anvil of the square and the hammer of your legionaries. But the decision must be yours. Too early and they will have time to turn and attack you. Too late and they may already have annihilated us.’

  ‘How will I know?’ The enormous responsibility had knocked all the anger out of Naso and replaced it with doubt.

  ‘You’re a good soldier, Quintus.’ Valerius clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You will know.’

  XLI

  Gaius Rufus gently reined in his mount and stared into the darkness. He could feel the mountains towering over the narrow gully, and eyes utterly attuned to the night picked out details in what would otherwise be a uniform black. The trees beside the narro
west of paths were rowan and scrub oak, because they lost their leaves not long after the first frost, unlike the birch which would keep hers for another month. Through the skeletal weave of branches and twigs he could see the stars, which told him he was going north: the right direction. From a few paces behind came the soft snort of a horse breathing through its nostrils and he winced at the sound. Nothing he could do about that, of course, the animals had to breathe, but he’d ordered the men to cover their horses’s hooves in sacking to deaden the noise of their passage. This horse belonged to a scout stationed an agreed distance behind, and beyond him there was another, to relay his whispered instructions to the commander of the column.

  The burden of the column felt like the weight of a full grown bull on Gaius Rufus’s narrow shoulders. A thousand men on a thousand horses strung out in pairs for almost a mile, on a path barely wide enough to take a single animal. A thousand chances for a carelessly slung spatha to clatter against a rock outcrop. All it would take was one of the cavalry-trained horses to break the discipline of thousands of hours and let out a whinny and the entire country would rise against them. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, every heartbeat another precious second wasted. But some instinct kept him frozen in position. The night was trying to tell him something, even though he couldn’t understand what it was.

  Gaius slipped out of the four-pronged cavalry saddle and dropped soundlessly to the ground. He moved forward up the rocky path at a crouch for another twenty paces, then sank on to all fours. Something inside his head screamed at him that danger was near. A sound. Just the merest whisper. His night owl’s eyes picked out the track ahead, rising to cross a shoulder of rock. He moved left on to the rock slope and slithered his way upwards. When he reached the top he waited until the softest glow became apparent somewhere to the right, seeming to originate deep in the bowels of the earth. He crept forward until he had a view of a cave mouth. Inside, five warriors wrapped in cloaks crouched around the tiniest of fires trying to keep warm. The light from the fire destroyed his night vision and he backed away until he was in darkness again, waiting for it to return. There. To the right of the cave mouth a sixth warrior stood, merging with the rock and watching the track below.

  His hand instinctively dropped to the cold hilt of his dagger, but his mind had already made the decision. Too many. Too well protected to be killed with any certainty of silence. And there would be more out there. You didn’t place a guard post unless you had enough force to take on whatever it was guarding against. Reluctantly, he slipped backwards down the slope and ran to warn the second scout.

  The man bent low out of the saddle so Gaius’s lips were close to his ear. ‘Tell the prefect we have to turn back again,’ Gaius whispered. ‘We’ll try further east.’

  A muffled curse that would be repeated a thousand times when word reached the column. Gaius returned to his horse and waited, imagining the chaos and confusion as a thousand men tried to turn their mounts in complete silence on that narrow path. He leaned against the animal’s haunch and closed his eyes. ‘Epona aid us,’ he whispered. Gaius had forsaken Roman gods after his father’s death in the temple. He’d chosen Epona, the Celtic horse goddess, as the most appropriate for his calling. She’d never actually been there when he’d needed her, but it made him feel better.

  But time was running out.

  Darkness covered the land like a blanket. Valerius stood on the rampart wall staring west, but even the glow of the Celts’ campfires had faded. All around him he could sense movement as century after century poured from the gates to form up in their cohorts ready to march across the river. Engineers had worked through the night to construct three bridges that, along with the ford, would allow the legionaries to reach their assigned positions in a quarter of the time. The familiar clink of metal equipment accompanied the movement, along with whispered exhortations from centurions and decurions. He could hear the creak of the bridges as they took the weight of fully equipped soldiers crossing on planking deadened with pieces of felt. If the gods were kind, somewhere to the north little Gaius would be leading the horsemen of the Ala Indiana and the Ala Thracum through the hills to form up out of sight on the Ordovice flank. The knowledge that those same hills might be empty of any support sent a shiver through him. Could he win without them? Four thousand against thirty thousand? It was possible, if the four thousand were Roman soldiers whose fighting qualities and discipline had carried them to the very edges of the earth. But it was much less likely. Cavalry caused panic and he needed panic to ensure victory.

  Enough reflection. He ran down the dirt embankment to join his escort. Didius Gallus held his horse and helped him into the saddle before mounting his own.

  ‘I hope you slept well, Felix?’ Valerius said to the escort commander.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ the decurion assured him, having spent the last six hours with his men helping Didius Gallus complete the near impossible task Valerius had assigned them.

  ‘What’s that strange smell?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ the other man replied. His nostrils had become so accustomed to the fierce stink that it no longer registered. ‘Perhaps the latrines are upwind this morning.’

  Valerius looked to the east. Did he see a thin line of something not quite black? ‘Let’s take our positions. Does the Second know we’re coming? It would look careless if someone put one of my own pila through my liver.’

  ‘Centurion Candidus knows and I waited while he issued his instructions, sir. They won’t launch at any mounted men.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Valerius pulled on the reins and steered his mount towards the west gate. Confidence. He must show confidence, because it had become apparent how little confidence the centurions had in their men, and the men in each other. Julius Ulpius Canalius, the primus pilus from the Twentieth, had visited him during the night to report his fellow centurions’ doubts about their men’s ability to carry out Valerius’s instructions in the time allowed and during a battle.

  ‘I thought you might like a last opportunity to consider cohort squares instead, sir,’ he suggested.

  Valerius had shaken his head. ‘No, primus,’ he replied lightly. ‘The dice are thrown. We’ll stay with what we have. It’s amazing how it concentrates a man’s mind when another fellow is trying to chop his head off.’

  They were outside the fort now and passing through the shadowy rear ranks of Naso’s reserve cohorts, identifiable by their oval auxiliary shields, and lack of treasured unit standards. For once he was glad his men couldn’t recognize him because he doubted he was popular with the legionaries of the Sixth and Seventh. A small group stood a little way in front, close to the river’s edge, and Valerius made his way towards them. The camp prefect saw him coming and met him a short way from his fellow officers.

  ‘Your men look well, Quintus.’

  ‘They’re ready, sir.’ Naso accepted the lie as the compliment it was intended to be and Valerius could hear a lightness in his voice that had been missing a few hours earlier. ‘You could even say they were spoiling for a fight.’

  Valerius laughed. ‘I’m sure they are, and I can imagine who with.’ Naso reached out and stroked the forehead of Valerius’s mare, winning a soft ‘hrrumph’ of pleasure from the animal. ‘I don’t envy you, Quintus. You have the most difficult job of any of us. When you’re in the middle of things you don’t have time to worry. The waiting and watching and wondering are the worst of it.’

  ‘We won’t let you down, sir.’

  ‘I know, Quintus.’

  ‘About last night …’

  Valerius cut off the apology. ‘I would have felt the same. May Fortuna favour you today.’

  ‘May Fortuna favour us all, sir, and I look forward to meeting you later.’

  Across the ford, hooves clattering on the rocks and splashes of freezing water soaking those behind, accompanied by gasps and muffled curses. On the far side they advanced at a slow walk over turf made firm by the frost.
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  ‘Who goes?’ a voice demanded from the gloom. ‘And what is the watchword?’

  ‘Legate’s party,’ Felix replied without hesitation. ‘The watchword for the day is Vulcan.’

  ‘Pass through the Fifth cohort, but be careful of those Gaulish madmen ahead of us in the second line. They’re jumpy as cats and don’t much mind whose head is hanging from their tent poles tonight.’

  Felix thanked him and they advanced until they could see a line of dark shadows. ‘Make way for the legate,’ the decurion called softly. The line parted. The Fifth cohort provided the right side of the final rank of the attack, with a Pannonian auxiliary cohort on their left flank completing the line. The ‘Gaulish madmen’ were the Second Nervian cohort on the right of the second line, alongside the Fourth cohort. Two cohorts of legionaries, Second and Third, made up the front rank.

  Each rank was composed of a solid line of nine hundred shields, backed by men armed with a pair of pila and twenty-two inches of tempered, needle-pointed iron as familiar in their hands as the spoons they ate with every day. A legionary fought beside the seven men he slept, ate and shared the latrine with. They were as close as any family, and, at their best, they would die for each other rather than abandon a tentmate. Some of them would undoubtedly be dead before sunset. If he was not one of them Valerius would walk among them in the aftermath of the fight, making himself look into the dead faces, and at the shattered skulls and spilled guts, and telling himself it had all been necessary. But was that true? Valerius was as certain as he could be that Agricola’s strategy of dividing his force was a mistake. The Ninth and Twentieth legions combined would have brought Owain of the Ordovices to battle eventually. Honour and his Celtic pride would have ensured that. But the Ninth was here, and nothing would change that. So they would fight. The only difference between this and the previous battles Valerius had fought was that the outcome depended on the actions of men he barely knew. If Gaius Rufus failed to find a way through the hills with the auxiliary cavalry or Quintus Naso made the wrong decision there would be three or four thousand Roman corpses feeding the foxes and the crows by tomorrow’s sunrise. Valerius had already decided that if the eagle was in danger he would have Felix and the escort break out and take it to safety. He knew they would be reluctant to leave him to die with his men. But they were soldiers. When it came to it they would obey orders. He smiled despite the nerves that had turned his stomach into a bellyful of mating toads. Well, perhaps not Hilario.