the three enemy legions took them by surprise. Now he waited in the torchlit darkness with his bodyguard clustered close around him, eager to see if the man was as good as his word.
After a few minutes’ wait a voice called softly out of the darkness.
‘Bring him to me. Don’t damage him.’
Four men walked forward into the night with torches, finding Perennis waiting for them fifty yards down the road, his open hands raised to show that he was unarmed. He walked back to where the barbarian leader waited, seemingly as relaxed as ever despite the spears pointing at him from all angles.
‘Calgus. I see your hunger for victory has overwhelmed the risk that I might be leading you into a trap?’
‘I have more than twenty thousand men at my back, Roman. I doubt there’s a trap you could spring that I couldn’t batter to pieces.’
Perennis smiled, the gesture half hidden in the torchlight.
‘I warned you a week ago that the southern legions were farther advanced in their progress than you believed. Now I can tell you that they’ve reached the Wall, and are hurrying to join with the Sixth Legion. Once they’ve joined your chance to take advantage of my plan will be at an end, and you and I will be firm enemies rather than allies of convenience. I estimate that you have until noon tomorrow in which to strike, and no more time than that. We must conclude our business quickly if you’re not to find yourself rudely interrupted by the Second and Twentieth Legions. So what’s it to be, bloody victory or an ignominious retreat back into the hills? You know you can’t face them in open battle.’
Calgus turned away, staring out into the darkness, his features unreadable.
‘What do you propose? Even a single legion will cause my people grievous losses if I allow them to face us in line of battle with the support of their auxiliary cohorts. Have you brought my army here just to tell me we’ve no alternative but to run, or give battle in the very way that has always resulted in our defeat? Because if you have…’
The Roman interrupted him impatiently.
‘I propose the ambush that’s been in my mind since the first time I scouted this ground six months ago. I propose your warriors taking the legion by surprise while it’s still deployed for the march. That way you can strike from both sides, and avoid the danger of the cohorts getting into line. There’s a place not far from here that fits the bill perfectly, funnily enough.’ Later on in the evening, with most of the troops bedded down if not actually sleeping, and the legatus safely back among his own men, Equitius invited Frontinius to join him in a cup of wine, as was often their habit in the field. They sat in the flickering lamplight and talked as friends, the artificial restrictions of their ranks temporarily abandoned.
‘So what did Sollemnis say while you were out walking the cohort with him?’
Frontinius took a sip of his wine.
‘After we’d spoken to a couple of the centurions he asked me what I really thought about his intention to attack Calgus tomorrow.’
Equitius grimaced.
‘And you said?’
‘I told him that his role of late seems to consist mainly of putting my cohort in harm’s way.’
Equitius grimaced again.
‘Ouch. And what did he say to that?’
‘He apologised for sending young Marcus to us, explained how he had no option under the circumstances. Then he asked what I thought of the boy. I told him that it was an unfair question under the circumstances, and that he should form his own opinions when he met him. Well, we walked into the Ninth’s area just after that, got challenged very smartly, had a chat with young Two Knives and a few of his men, made our excuses and moved on. We can’t have been there for more than two or three minutes, but it was enough for the legatus. He stopped to wipe his eyes in the shadow of a tent. When he spoke to me again he was obviously choked up by seeing his boy again. And, bearing in mind that he might not get to see him again, that seemed understandable. Now, Prefect, show me exactly what it is that our august leader plans for the morning.’
He stared at the map spread across the table in front of them, putting a finger on the position where the barbarian warband was reported to be camped.
‘They’re here…?’
‘As reported by the younger Perennis, yes.’
‘Hmm. We break camp at dawn, make a swift march to contact… can’t be more than six or seven miles… and if they’re in the same place when we arrive it should be a reasonably straightforward fight unless they decide to run away. Our ten thousand men against their ten thousand men, and us with the advantages of at least partial surprise and able to fight on our own terms.’
‘Yes. Although you’ve failed to guess one aspect of the plan. He intends splitting his force into two parts, hammer and anvil. We’re not going to let them run away, we’re going for a battle of annihilation.’
Frontinius’s eyebrows rose.
‘And you think that’s wise? Risk them catching and defeating each of our smaller forces in turn?’
‘He’s set on it. The fact that Perennis’s scouts have set the whole thing up for him doesn’t leave him with much alternative from his point of view.’
Frontinius shook his head.
‘Well, that goes against the style of warfare that I was taught. If it all goes right we could kill lots of barbarians tomorrow, but if anything goes wrong, if they’ve moved since the last scout report, or if there’s more of them around that we haven’t found, we could both be decorating Calgus’s roof beams in a week or two. I’d better go and treat this tired old body to a few hours’ sleep.’ The legion and its supporting cohorts snatched a hasty breakfast in the dull grey light of dawn, and were on the march less than thirty minutes after the sun had cleared the horizon. Taking another calculated risk, Sollemnis had decided that they would camp in the same place that evening, and thus avoided the lost time of actually striking camp, leaving their tents standing ready for the legion’s return. The long column of men snaked north, led by a detachment of the Asturian cavalry who had returned from their place watching the warband late the previous night. Only Perennis and a few picked men had remained in place, and they would have pulled out at first light, heading for a prearranged meeting point to provide the legatus with a last-minute briefing on the warband’s dispositions.
While the Tungrians were far back down the order of march, back behind the 6th’s last cohort, Equitius had ridden away with Sollemnis’s officers to participate in the final orders group that would start once Perennis and his scouts rejoined the column. As the legion moved forward he stopped his horse for a moment to take the sight in, turning in the saddle to stare back down the line of soldiers marching four abreast up the rough track that had been chosen as their approach route for the battle to come. Sollemnis ranged up alongside him, his horse steaming slightly in the chilly dawn air. He recognised a cohort’s senior centurion and saluted gravely, getting a brief nod and hurried salute back from the officer as he passed.
‘It isn’t often you’ll see a whole legion bashing along this fast. Even on exercise the centurions have to lay the vine stick on pretty hard to get their boys really sweating, and yet just look at them this morning…’
The hard-bitten legionaries were slogging past them at a pace reserved for those times when the legion needed to be somewhere else very quickly indeed, and some of them were clearly already suffering from the exertion. They had been forbidden to sing this morning for fear of making too much noise – any song would in any case have quickly been blown out by their blistering pace. Equitius could already see faces in the ranks that were stretched by the effort of sucking in enough air to keep men and their sixty-pound load of armour and weapons moving so quickly. Another century passed, the officer ranging easily alongside his men with one eye on the road and the other on his people, sparing a quick glance and a sardonic smile for the officers sitting comfortably on their horses. Other glances lacked the hint of humour and were simply surly in the face of such relative luxury.
‘My officers were about as happy with the prospect of today’s battle as you were last night. They also asked about our lack of a defined reserve, and some of the senior centurions were quite vocal on the subject. If anything goes wrong, Mars protect us, there’ll be a long queue of them ready to testify that they warned me about the dangers.’
Equitius nodded sagely.
‘Quite possibly including myself, if you have the misfortune to end up with your head on the end of a spear. But if we succeed…’
‘Ah, if we succeed, the old saying comes into play. You know, “victory is a child with a thousand
