warrior on the hill listened intently. The hammering stopped and there was a momentary silence that was quickly replaced by a noise that sent a shiver through the defenders. A sharp, rhythmic rattling as thousands of feet shod in hobnailed sandals marched in step over the three wooden crossings.
The sun broke clear above the eastern horizon and the mist burned off the river as if it had never existed.
Caratacus felt his warriors tense all around him; a mass tightening of muscles, thousands of fists firming their grip on sword or spear, the shuffling of feet as warriors readied themselves to fall upon the enemy. The enemy. He saw them arrayed below him and he found himself breathing hard as if he had just tackled some strenuous physical task. His heart beat faster and his mind raced. Calm, he told himself. Stay calm. Of all men here, you and only you have the will to prevail.
They frightened him. Of course they frightened him; he would be a fool if they didn’t. He had seen them from afar with Ballan as well as when he had disguised himself as a cavalry trooper to infiltrate the baggage train. But this was the first time he had witnessed them in full battle order. When he was a child, he had once found a giant insect, a long sinuous thing with a body made up of many parts and countless legs on either flank. It didn’t walk so much as ripple across the ground. The legions reminded him of it. The men, and the sections, and the centuries and the cohorts, were the body parts, each a separate entity, but creating a single unit which moved as one. Their armour glinted in the sun as they marched, just as the armoured carapace of the insect had gleamed as it flowed from place to place between the stones. The monstrous thing had been a bright, sulphurous orange, but the predominant colour in the monster that was a Roman legion was red. The cloaks and the vestments of the officers were a uniform scarlet, but the tunics of the rank-and-file troops varied according to their length of service and the conditions they had served in. Some were sun-bleached to a pale pink, others so dark they could almost be called brown, and in between was every colour of that spectrum.
A rush of air heralded the arrival of the first of the catapult-launched missiles he knew would flay the British line all day. But they must be ignored. If the gods wanted him, they only had to take him.
Plautius had ranged a single legion as if they were on parade at the far end of each bridge, and that convinced Caratacus he had been right to leave Togodumnus to cope alone. Three legions to his front, another on his left flank where Antedios should by now have reinforced the battle line of the Atrebates and the Regni. That meant Togodumnus must be facing a relatively small force of auxiliaries. It was the vanguard of each legion who now thundered across the bridges. Caratacus knew these would be crack troops. The heavy infantry. He watched them advance, short, squat men heavily burdened by their weapons and armour, but running as easily as if they were naked. They were close, perhaps twenty paces from the end of the bridges, when they began to fall. An officer, a centurion, at the very point of the centre column, spun and dropped from the bridge to disappear soundlessly and instantly into the swirling waters of the river. Another fell, jerking convulsively, and the British leader watched in admiration as the legionary deliberately rolled over the side — to certain death — so as not to impede his comrades. What mark of men these were, he thought; an enemy worthy of any king.
He turned his attention to the near bank where the slingers, spearmen and archers he had placed sweated to kill as many of the charging men as they could before they were overwhelmed. They had orders not to get into a fight, but to retire to the battle line along cunningly sited paths to a position at the base of the hill where they could kill and kill again. Not all would escape. A few would stay to cover the retreat of the others. The Romans were not the only people who knew the meaning of sacrifice.
The first legionaries leapt from the end of the bridges into the shallows and the Britons on the bank launched their final few missiles as the enemy floundered knee deep in the water. But as one fell he was replaced by two more and two more still, and at last the red-clad figures reached the shore. They spread out, forming a perimeter, just short of the swamp he had turned into a death-laced lagoon. He believed he detected confusion among them, and his heart soared. Let them come. Let their pathetic diversions smash themselves against the rocks of his champions. He had them now.
A shout from behind distracted him. He turned to see Scarach, white-faced, listening to a bear-like man who knelt before him. Ballan, but a Ballan worn thin by whatever horrors he had experienced in the last few hours. The Iceni scout’s clothing was torn and mud-stained and his face was so swollen as to be almost unrecognizable.
Ballan saw him, and raised himself to his feet, reeling with exhaustion. ‘Lord,’ he croaked from a throat serrated by thirst. ‘You must reinforce Lord Bodvoc.’
Caratacus stared at him. He trusted Ballan more than any other man he had ever met, but the scout’s mind must have been unhinged by his ordeal. ‘I have already sent your Iceni compatriots to support Lord Bodvoc and Lord Epedos. Surely twenty thousand men can hold a single legion?’
He turned away. He had no time to spare for conversation with fools, even if the fool was Ballan.
‘Not twenty thousand,’ the Iceni whispered, and Caratacus froze. ‘No more than ten. King Epedos and the Atrebates vanished in the night. Antedios, my king, is dead. Bodvoc fights alone.’
XXXII
Rufus was puzzled. He was still alive. They were all still alive.
The British force on the far side of the western battleground dwarfed the thin line of auxiliaries. One all-out charge was surely all it should have taken to sweep the Batavians aside, yet they had made only three half-hearted attacks before withdrawing to the far side of the clearing. Occasionally, one of their champions would emerge to shout insults and a challenge at one of the Roman officers, but the auxiliaries only jeered at their antics. The high tide of the barbarian attack was visible in the scattering of crumpled bodies just in front of Frontinus’s shield wall, the harvest of Batavian throwing spears, but they were only a tiny fraction of the losses the Britons could have afforded to ensure a quick victory.
‘Why don’t they come?’ he asked Frontinus.
The Batavian shrugged, unmoved as he had been when the British attacks had splintered on the Roman spears. ‘Perhaps they are afraid of Bersheba?’
‘That would be like Bersheba being afraid of a rabbit.’
Frontinus grinned. ‘Then I think they lack a leader. By now they will know they are attacked on three sides.’ He had informed Rufus of Plautius’s battle plan once he was certain the Second’s crossing would be complete. ‘They will be nervous. If two forces have crossed the river by stealth, why not three? Even now an army could be cutting off their retreat and ensuring their annihilation. They are brave, but their women and children are in the camps yonder, and even a brave man will look to his family when all hope of victory is gone.’
His words made Rufus think of Gaius, back with the Roman baggage train. Was he wondering where his father had gone, or was he too young to understand? Whatever the answer he wished he was with his son now.
‘Commander!’ The warning shout came from one of the auxiliaries in the front rank. Frontinus marched over to him and looked to the far side of the field, where a horseman in a silvery grey robe rode at the side of a British chariot, the first they’d seen that day. The man standing beside the chariot driver wore the glittering symbols of his rank, heavy golden torcs which ringed his neck and arms. His green cloak was pushed back from his shoulders, but otherwise he was naked to the waist, and even from three hundred paces Rufus could see he was powerfully built.
‘There is your leader,’ Frontinus shouted back to him.
Nuada had finally tracked Togodumnus down to his hut in the centre of the Dobunni encampment. It had been evident as soon as the Druid set eyes on the tiny Roman force that Caratacus’s brother had exaggerated the danger, and equally evident that Caratacus would not have ordered Togodumnus merely to hold his line if he’d known the paucity of the Roman forces. The sub-chiefs of the Dobunni were unable to meet his eyes when he demanded to know where Togodumnus was, but he’d soon discovered the king had retired, sulking, to his hut when he’d heard of his brother’s refusal to support him. He could have used subtler methods to stir him from his torpor — Togodumnus was a king, after all — but Nuada was a Druid, and a Druid of little patience. It hadn’t been difficult. A man who has been brought up in the shadow of priests will be for ever susceptible to their magic. The knowledge that his private parts would turn black and fall from his body if he remained where he was soon restored Togodumnus’s courage, if not his spirit.
