An ugly thought occurred to him.
‘Could either of you throw a spear across the river?’
The men looked at each other, then at the river, calculating the distance. The chosen man nodded slowly, his eyes still calculating the throw.
‘Not sure that I could, but I’ve got plenty of big strong boys that would make it easily…’
Marcus motioned to Qadir, signalling a withdrawal.
‘Get them back ten paces, Qadir, we’re in spear range. I suggest you do the same, Cho…’
The instruction died in his throat as he turned away from his men, the iron head and ash shaft of a Venico spear hissing past his face close enough that he felt the wind of its passing on his cheek. The other century’s chosen man jerked backwards a pace as the spear, having missed its target by the merest fraction, buried itself in his throat and took his life as compensation. Another half-dozen men were hit as they retreated from the river’s bank, two of them Hamians. While the first archer’s mail coat saved him from any harm worse than a severe bruise, the second man hit was less lucky, and went down with a spear through his back as his mail’s rings parted under the weapon’s impact. Qadir ran forward and grabbed the fallen Hamian by the collar of his ring mail, snatching up his shield and raising it against further attack as he dragged him back to safety. Marcus knelt by the man’s head and put a finger to his throat.
‘He’s dead.’
The men of the 8th watched him lying motionless in the mud with what the young centurion momentarily took for numb detachment, until he realised that the dead man was the first casualty the century had suffered since his assumption of command. Marcus and Qadir stood behind their men, watching as the Hamians systematically shot down any man that set foot on the fallen tree trunks, steadily depleting their remaining arrows.
‘They’re manoeuvring us neatly into position to be mobbed once we’ve run out of arrows and shot back whatever they’ve shot at us. We can’t defend the bank, they’ll just shower us with spears and bleed us dry, and that means they can throw men across until they’ve built enough strength to roll us over. Make sure every arrow finds a target
…’
He stalked away, forcing himself to ignore the arrows aimed at his distinctive helmet as he approached the 2nd Cohort soldiers cowering behind their shields. With their chosen man dead the century was leaderless, at least until Appius returned from whatever task he had decided would provide an answer to the fallen trees’ threat.
‘Watch officer and standard-bearer, to me!’
A pair of soldiers detached themselves from the century, using their shields for protection against the intermittent barbarian arrows. Marcus hefted the shield he had picked up from beside the dead chosen man, and ducked into its cover.
‘With your chosen man dead you’re the only leadership left for your men.’
The two men regarded him unhappily. Content to enforce their officer’s discipline, and to organise the more mundane duties of the century, neither looked particularly eager to assume the burden of command. He stepped in closer to the pair, leaning to put his face only inches from theirs and to allow him to speak more quietly, but with an unmistakable edge to his voice.
‘I can see that you don’t like the idea, but you have no choice in the matter. Without your leadership these men will break and run once my archers run out of arrows, and the barbarians will come across that bridge with their tails up and looking for the revenge on us for all the men we’ve killed here. And if your men run, if you let that happen, they will be hacked to pieces inside five minutes. As will we all. Within half an hour every man in both cohorts will either be running for their lives or have their guts laid out for inspection. So, gentlemen, what will it be? Death, or glory?’ The two soldiers looked at each other, each of them seeing his own uncertainty mirrored in the other’s face. Marcus changed tack, reaching for humour where the plain facts weren’t succeeding. ‘You’re both scared shitless, right?’
They nodded reluctantly, the standard-bearer cracking the thinnest of smiles as he spoke.
‘I’ll probably manage one good shit once those bastards are across the river.’
Marcus sighed gently, thanking his gods for the soldier’s unfailing gift of humour in the darkest situations. He looked quickly to Qadir, who held up a hand with the five digits splayed out. Five arrows per man, perhaps three more minutes.
‘I’ll let you into a secret, then. I’ve just led these lads, all scared out of their wits by those headhunting bastards, through rain and mud and blood to get across the river in one piece. All that time, hiding up hills and in ditches, and I’ve been busting for a good long sit-down all that time.’ The two men goggled at him. An officer, and clearly a nicely brought-up boy too, telling them that he needed the latrine? ‘And if I can hold on to my arse all afternoon on the wrong side of the river with that lot running around, then I’m sure that you two can give me a few minutes of leadership for these poor buggers. So here’s the deal. You take four tent parties each, and you deploy them to either side of my lads, one left, one right…’
His plan explained, he hurried back to his century, drawing his cavalry sword and praying for both men to find their courage when the time came.
‘How many left?’
‘One or two arrows apiece.’
He took a deep breath.
‘Eighth Century, every man without any arrows remaining, raise your right hand.’
Two dozen or so hands went up. When another dozen barbarians had been toppled from the tree trunks he shouted again.
‘If you’re out of arrows, right hand up and keep it up!’
About sixty this time. Looking back into the mist he could see nothing, no sign of reinforcement. That they would have to fight hand to hand was now inevitable. That there was only one way that they could fight successfully, and even then only for a very limited time, seemed equally likely.
‘Eighth Century, those of you with arrows, keep shooting, but listen to me! When you run out of arrows put your arm in the air. When enough men have run out, I will give the order to draw swords. If you’re still shooting, put your bow down and air your blade. Pick your shield up and form a line, two men deep just as we trained you.’
More hands went up in the air, until about ninety per cent of his men were no longer able to shoot at the attacking Venicones.
‘Draw your swords!’
The remaining archers stood, and with the rasp of metal on metal the century drew their swords and jostled into something approaching the standard defensive formation, twenty paces or so from the riverbank. The Venicones were already crossing the trees in numbers, perhaps a dozen men now visible on the western bank. Marcus muttered under his breath, judging the right moment to commit his men.
‘Mithras forgive me sending these innocents to face those animals.’ He drew breath and bellowed in his best parade ground roar. ‘Eighth Century! At the walk! Advance!’
For an awful moment nothing happened, as the archers struggled to digest the terrible novelty of their situation. From his place behind the century Qadir suddenly roared a command, his voice unrecognisable compared to his usual mannered speech.
‘FORWARD!’
Where the formal command had failed to galvanise the Hamians, the sudden bellow from their rear set them moving. Crouching behind their shields like terrified recruits faced with their first practice battle perhaps, but nevertheless advancing on the baying tribesmen. Marcus shot a surprised look at Qadir, and was amazed at the fierce stare he received in return as his chosen man spoke, his voice an angry snarl.
‘They’re dead, whether they attack or simply stand and wait for it to happen. They might as well go to meet their goddess with their dignity intact.’
Marcus nodded, stepping forward to stay close to the rear rank, pushing at their backs with the dead chosen man’s long wooden pole as Qadir followed suit with his own. The bellowing Venicones were less than ten paces away, hammering swords against their sma
ll shields to raise a din calculated to stand off the numerically superior Roman force while more men crossed the river behind them. Qadir’s voice boomed out over the tumult again.
‘Forward! Board and swords, gut the bastards!’
The Hamians edged forward, their reluctance to take the fight to the wild-eyed warriors railing at them painfully obvious. The Venico tribesmen’s confidence visibly grew as they took in their opponents’ clear desire to be somewhere else, half a dozen of them stepping boldly across the slowly narrowing gap to hammer at the archers’ shields with their long swords. One of them, his confidence in the face of such poor opposition clearly sky high, angled his sword down over a shield in a powerful thrust, putting the blade’s tip through the throat of the man behind it. The dying Hamian convulsed with the wound’s shock, his struggles disrupting the century’s line of shields and encouraging another tribesman to step in and attempt a kill. The blade flashed down in a vicious arc, missing its intended target by a hair’s breadth but, more critically, scaring the wits out of the men to either side and suddenly, decisively, splitting the century into two distinct halves separated by a two-foot gap. Unless it was closed at once the tribesmen would be in there, hacking furiously to either side and in all likelihood shattering the 8th’s already fragile confidence completely. Marcus dropped the wooden pole, drawing his spatha with a flourish and reaching for the hilt of his gladius in readiness to throw himself into the gap, but as he pulled the short sword from its scabbard and steeled himself to fight he was elbowed aside by a bulky figure.
‘Syria!’
Qadir had snatched up a shield and beaten him to it, leaving him standing impotently with both swords ready to fight, but without any means of getting at the Venicones hammering at the shield wall behind which he was trapped. Watching helplessly and aghast at his chosen man’s likely fate, he was amazed to see the previously placid Hamian bury his sword deep in the closest tribesman’s guts, then kick him off the blade while parrying an attack from his left with an almost dismissive flick of his borrowed shield. He swung the blade, already running red with blood, backhanded, hacking into another man’s neck and almost severing his victim’s head from its shoulders with the force of the blow. A spray of hot blood showered the front rankers around him, its coppery stink filling the air.
‘Deasura!’
The scream came not from the near-berserk Qadir, but from one of the archers standing close to him, and like the clap of thunder that presages the full fury of a gathering storm, it galvanised the Hamians to sudden, almost unbelievable action. In the space of a heartbeat their blood was up in a way that Marcus would never have predicted, most of the front rank screaming their defiance and, amazingly, gloriously, actually fighting back with their previously useless swords. Not all of their thrusts were anywhere near a target, but within the space of ten seconds there were half a dozen more dead and dying tribesmen at their feet for the loss of one man, who charged out of the line in the full grip of his newly discovered bloodlust, and died quickly and messily once separated from the protection of the century’s line of shields. The century had been transformed from hapless terror to clumsy but effective attack by Qadir’s sudden lunge into their front rank, and with their blood up the Hamians showed no sign of backing off their intended prey.
Thinking quickly, Marcus abandoned his original plan and gestured to the 2nd Cohort watch officers to hold their ground, then ran to the end of the 8th’s line, bellowing down its length to get his men’s attention.
‘Eighth Century!’
A brief, somehow unnatural quiet fell across the tiny battlefield, the remaining Venicones’ attention grabbed by his appearance at the end of the Roman line just as much as that of his own men.
‘Eighth Century, advance to the riverbank!’
A pair of barbarian warriors, one lean and sinewy with a pair of throwing spears and a small hand shield, the other a giant of a man with a six-foot-long broadsword, broke from the knot of surviving warriors and sprinted across the narrow gap towards him with furious purpose. Allowing no time for the Hamians to respond, Marcus stepped forward purposefully to meet their charge, ducking and twisting under the first of the thin man’s spears as it hissed past his head. Taking the spearman for his first target, given the lanky warrior’s two-pace lead on his larger companion, he slapped the man’s shield with his extended spatha before spinning in a lightning-fast full circle to the spearman’s right. The unexpected move put the barbarian between him and the broadsword’s greater threat, and Marcus scythed the long cavalry sword round in a long arc that ended in the spearman’s unprotected flank. The devastating backhanded spatha cut open his side beneath his ribcage to his spine. The grievously wounded warrior dropped his shield with a howl of agony, his bowels voiding themselves in a stinking rush as he tottered on legs turned to jelly by the wound’s fearful pain.
Shifting his balance swiftly from his bent left leg, Marcus sprang upright, kicking the grievously wounded warrior on to his comrade even as the other man drew his massive sword back, only to be thrown off balance as the dying spearman flew backwards into him. Without hesitation Marcus stepped in fast and thrust the spatha’s three-foot length through the dying spearman’s body and into the swordsman’s guts, letting go of the sword’s hilt and raising the gladius over his head. He flashed the blade down to point at the frozen Venicones, snarling at the Hamians behind him.
‘To the riverbank! No prisoners!’
The archers swept forward with the irresistible force of an incoming tide, gladius blades licking in and out of their line in silver and red flashes as they put the suddenly terrified tribesmen to the sword. The Venicone warriors that remained either went down fighting against impossible odds or broke and ran for the fallen trees’ bridge to the eastern bank. Barely a dozen escaped the Hamians’ onslaught, two of them tripping in their haste to cross the river and falling into the fast-moving flow, washed away into the mist in seconds.
The Hamians, left in gloriously undisputed possession of the riverbank, were suddenly exhausted as the brief, exhilarating combat rage washed out of their bodies. More than one man found himself yawning uncontrollably where he had felt godlike power only a moment before.
‘Now I see why you people speak of battle the way you do…’
Marcus turned from wrenching his spatha from the bodies of the two Venicone warriors to find Qadir standing at his shoulder, his sword and shield hanging loosely by his sides. This was the Qadir he had grown accustomed to, once more quietly spoken and considered.
‘It was quite amazing. One moment I was watching my men suffer at the hands of those barbarians, the next…’
He ran out of words, a small tremor in the corner of one eye evidencing his sudden exhaustion. Marcus slapped his shoulder hard, a blow calculated to sting.
‘The next minute, brother, the animal in you found his release. You took your iron to the men that were killing your men and you fought like a demon. Don’t try to rationalise your rage, recognise it for what it was, and what it will be again, if need be. Old Julius had better watch out, you could give him more than a run for his money. Oh yes, one more thing. Deasura?’
Qadir nodded.
‘She is Atargatis, our goddess. In battle we call on her as the Dea Syria…’
A sudden yelp from the riverbank had them both ducking for cover, Marcus from long practice, Qadir with a certain self-consciousness but no less speed. A flight of arrows from across the river slammed into the slumping archers, dropping one man choking with a barb in his mouth and wounding several others in arm and leg, beyond the protection of their ring mail. The 8th shuffled backwards out of the heavy rain of arrows, each man’s shield studded with feathered shafts by the time they had gained the safety of their previous position, all but invisible to the barbarian archers. Qadir stalked away up the line, counting under his breath and shaking his head sadly on his return.
‘How many?’
The chosen man’s reply was delivered in a downcas
t tone.
‘One hundred and forty-three men capable of fighting. We have eight dead, including the men we left by the river, and the rest are wounded in varying ways. Some of them will live… if we can get medical attention.’
Marcus shook his head.
‘Little chance of that, I’m afraid. The nearest real medic is miles away, with the legions. We’re more likely to see the Venicones face to face again. And soon.’
10
The two prefects and their first spears were standing on the hillside behind the 1st Cohort’s defence of the ford, watching the Venicone warriors on the far bank as they stood immobile in silent ranks, eerily quiet as they waited behind the mist’s diaphanous veil.
‘They can’t ford the river here, not while it’s flowing this fast and not with our spears waiting for them, and they can’t cross up or downstream because we’ve got men waiting for them there too. What else can they do but wait?’
Frontinius fell silent for a moment as he stared down at the silent tribesmen massed on the river’s far bank, then turned to his opposite number.
‘How many of them would you say there are down there?’
The 2nd’s Cohort’s first spear pursed his lips.
‘I can see… four, perhaps five thousand of them or so. Why, are you wondering where the rest are?’
Frontinius nodded slowly.
‘So am I. That many of them just don’t seem enough for their leaders to have made the gamble to throw their lot in with Calgus. I would have been expecting ten thousand at the very l… hang on, what’s that?’
A body of barbarian warriors was advancing quickly into view up the Red’s western bank, running ten paces behind a single man with his sword drawn, and for a moment the watching officers believed that some great catastrophe had occurred farther to the south and the Venicones were upon them. Then, even as Frontinius opened his mouth to start shouting orders, he found Neuto’s hand on his arm in unexpected restraint.
Arrows of Fury e-2 Page 31
