evident to them. What about the legion?’
The decurion shook his head dismissively.
‘Too slow and too late, I’d say, Tribune. The leading cohorts are just wasting time forming up on the open ground between forest and palisade, with no sign that they intend getting stuck in any time soon.’
Licinius’s temper boiled over.
‘With me!’
He spurred the grey down the line of troops followed by his bodyguard, seeking out the group of men that represented the point of the 20th Legion’s spear.
‘Tribune Laenas, might I ask exactly what the fuck you think you’re doing?’
The legion’s second-in-command, a tribune whose tunic bore the broad purple stripe of the Roman senatorial class, and a man unused to having his judgement questioned, turned away from a frustrated-looking group of the cohorts’ senior centurions with a look of incredulity, opening his mouth to snarl a response that died in his throat when he saw who was doing the questioning.
‘Ah, Tribune Licinius, we’re, ah just making sure that we’ve got everything in place before…’
Licinius rode over his half-hearted explanation with a patrician disregard for manners, leaning in close and speaking in quiet but fierce tones.
‘What it looks like, Tribune Laenas, is that you’re dithering in the face of a fight. These gentlemen around you know that the time to strike was while the barbarians were still escaping into the forest. Since even my old ears can clearly make out the sound of battle from inside that palisade, I suggest that you get your cohorts through the gap those blue-nosed blighters have torn in the fence and get them into action. If, that is, you don’t want to be dismissed and censured for lack of commitment by the governor. And let me make this very clear; if your soldiers aren’t out of my way very quickly I will simply ride my cavalry through and if need be over them. There’s a Venicone warband making their escape while we sit here wasting time, and I intend making sure that as few as possible of them get away, if you’ll get your men out of my path.’
He sat back in his saddle with one eyebrow raised. Laenas swallowed unhappily, then turned back to face his officers.
‘Ah, gentlemen, we will advance into the enemy camp and join battle immediately.’
The legion’s most senior centurion nodded briskly, his smile speaking volumes for his pleasure at the cavalryman’s intervention.
‘At the double march, Tribune?’
Laenas swallowed and nodded.
‘Indeed. At the double march, First Spear Canutius.’
‘It’s a good thing we’ve got the advantage of the slope!’
Qadir nodded in response to Marcus’s shouted comment. The century were starting to tire, the front rank becoming more interested in keeping their feet and fending off the barbarian spears than taking their iron to the enemy, who in their turn had burned through their first rage and were attacking with less vigour than moments before. A horn sounded across the smoke-wreathed camp from the northern palisade, and the front rank of a legion cohort swept into view through a gap in the camp’s northern fence. Marcus shot the oncoming legionnaires a dark glance.
‘About bloody time too.’
Qadir shook his shoulder, pointing across the Tungrian line.
‘Look!’
Fresh troops were pouring into the space behind the Tungrian cohort, moving quickly to bolster their sagging line.
‘It’s the Second Cohort. First Spear Neuto was never going to leave us in the sh-’
Marcus stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes suddenly caught by an object being waved around over the heads of the barbarians a dozen paces from the century’s line. Qadir caught his stare and looked to see what had taken his attention. It was a man’s head, still wearing the cross-crested helmet that denoted his centurion’s rank, evidently hacked from his body and impaled on the point of a spear as a crude trophy with which the Romans could be taunted. As Qadir watched, Marcus’s face went white with anger, and his eyes narrowed in calculation. He turned to the Hamian, reaching down and picking up a fallen shield, his voice stony as he turned to face the howling mob railing at the century’s shields.
‘Shoot to my right, and keep shooting.’
Guessing what was about to happen, Qadir reached out a hand to restrain his friend, but Marcus was too quick for him, pushing through the astonished rear-rankers and stepping into the front rank alongside Scarface. Stopping a sword-blow with his shield, he stepped forward and stabbed his gladius into the tribesman’s throat as the enemy warrior fought to free his blade from the painted wooden surface, turning back to stare with a blank- eyed intensity at the wide-eyed soldiers.
‘Guard my left.’
He turned back and stepped into the seething mass of warriors, hacking down a man to his right and blocking another sword-blow from his left with the shield, shouting a terse order over his shoulder.
‘Qadir! Shoot to my right!’
The Hamian shook himself free from the amazement of seeing his centurion actually throw himself into the mass of his enemies and bellowed a command in his own language.
‘Hamians, to me!’
Nocking an arrow and loosing it with one fluid motion, he sent the iron-tipped head through the throat of a warrior poised to bury his axe into Marcus’s helmet. Ramming his gladius deep into another barbarian’s chest and feeling the blade’s reluctance to come free of the wound’s tight grip, the young centurion released the weapon’s ornate handle without a second thought, kicking the dying warrior back into the men behind him. Grabbing the axe from the tribesman tottering backwards with Qadir’s arrow buried in his throat, he levelled his shield and hurled it horizontally into the press of the enemy, flattening another of the men facing him with a ruptured throat, then raised the axe two handed and gathered himself to attack again. Another Hamian reached Qadir’s side at the same second, ripping his bow from its place across his back and reaching for an arrow with the same unconscious grace with which the chosen man exercised his craft. With only a split second’s time spent finding a point of aim, he sent the missile into the fray around his centurion with an almost thoughtless speed that nevertheless sent another of the men facing Marcus staggering back into the men behind him in a spray of his own blood. At the same instant Scarface shook off his own momentary panic, hurling a furious command at the front-rankers to his left as he waded forward into the barbarians.
‘With me, you bastards!’
Slamming down his shield to block off a spear-thrust aimed at his legs, he thrust his sword’s blade into the barbarian’s throat and twisted the hilt, opening the warrior’s neck wide in a shower of hot blood that flicked across the half-dozen men who had advanced into the barbarian mass alongside him. Glancing up, he was momentarily open mouthed at the sight of his officer hurling his shield into the warband’s mass and grasping an axe two handed before throwing himself at the warriors gathering around him with an incoherent scream, clearly lost to his rage. The speed and savagery of his onslaught cleared a path into the heart of the warband as warriors fell away from him with their bodies rent by the weapon’s heavy blade, those as yet untouched by the unexpected attack backing away from the berserk Roman. Qadir and his fellow archers were ten strong now, and their arrows were killing the warriors to Marcus’s right faster than they could be replaced by the men behind them, the barbarians’ eyes flickering from their unhinged enemy, his armour dripping with the blood of the dying men scattered around him, to the archers dealing out impersonal death to them from behind the Roman line.
Scarface and his fellow soldiers now formed the other side of their centurion’s tenuous link to his century, their shields forming a diagonal wall from the century’s line to Scarface at its farthest extension. A man fell forward into the seething mass of barbarians facing them, his throat skewered by a barbed spear thrust over the rim of his shield and then pulled back to haul him bodily out of the shield wall, and Qadir pushed a rear-ranker forward to take his place before lifting his bow to shoot again. The soldiers were holding out well enough, stabbing into the mass of their enemies and parrying the inevitable counter-attacks in a way that the veteran soldier knew could only last so long before they succumbed to the overwhelming strength gathering against them. He dragged in a deep breath, meaning to entreat Marcus to retreat from his exposed position, but before he could do so the axe snagged between a dying man’s ribs and stuck fast. A warrior in the mass facing him stabbed at Marcus’s face, the blade
