‘They’re dead, they just haven’t realised it yet. Leave them there; they’ll slow down the next attack.’
The young officer nodded jerkily, calling for the water bottles to be passed along the line, and commanding the closest men to carry the ruined corpses of their dead into the forest at their rear.
In the Tungrian front rank Scarface leaned on his shield, grateful for the chance to get his breath back and take a mouthful of water to swill away the coppery taste of blood.
‘That was good enough. We must have done twenty or so of the bastards and lost, what, two of ours? Who came forward to replace them?’
The promoted rear-rankers raised their hands sheepishly.
‘You two, eh? Welcome to the front rank, boys, this is where the corn gets earned the hard way. Keep your heads for a few minutes more and you’ll have a place here for the rest of your time.’
He laughed at their comical expressions as both men realised that their lives as soldiers had just changed for ever.
‘Oh yes, all that piss-taking the front rank always gives the girls at the back? That’ll be you giving rather than taking from now on. Welcome to my army.’
The 9th drank gratefully, the more composed soldiers discussing the fight almost conversationally, leaning tiredly on their shields like pottery workers taking a break from the kilns. Some, the more experienced and perceptive, knowing the danger of the less experienced men losing themselves to the battle rage when the fight renewed itself, worked on the men next to them, coaxing them back to reality with words of home and family. Morban found Marcus checking the edge of his sword with a careful eye, and offered him a drink from his bottle.
‘Nicely fought, Centurion, you took that big bastard’s arm off like lopping a sapling, and the way you did the boy in black armour with your shield was nothing short of poetic. The lads’re already talking about the way you jumped into the line and got stuck in!’
Marcus nodded, sheathing his sword and holding on to the hilt to hide the shaking of his hand.
‘Thank you. I hope your son escaped injury?’
‘Indeed, I think so, the little I could see of him from here.’
A shout from the line of troops grabbed his attention, pointing arms guiding his stare to the edge of the valley a mile or so to their right, past the small forest’s edge. There, silhouetted against the skyline, a mass of horsemen was moving into position, perfectly placed to sweep down the slope and into the barbarian flank. Their long lances were held vertically, the points making a winking glitter of razor-sharp steel in the mid-morning sunlight.
‘Get the blue-faced bum-fuckers!’
‘Give them the eight-foot enema!’
A chorus of shouts implored the riders, identified as the Petriana and Augustan cavalry wings by their twisting white banners, two thousand men strong, to attack the mass of men below, but their inaction once their deployment was complete was just as Equitius had expected. An unsupported charge against so many warriors could end only in a glorious failure. All the same, anything that gave Calgus one more thing to worry about, and heartened his own men, had to be good. Even as he watched a force of some five thousand men detached themselves from the barbarian mass on the plain below, wheeling at speed to form a rough defensive line of archers and spears, ready to absorb any charge.
He walked on, to the point where his command ended and Caelius’s started, hailing his brother officer. The other man strode down the line of barbarian corpses, keeping one eye on the ground against the risk of being surprised by a wounded man feigning death.
‘Hail, Two Knives, freshly blooded, from the rumour passed down our line, and from the blood painted across your mail. I hope you offered that prayer for me?’
Marcus smiled wryly.
‘I was a little busy at the time. I’ll be sure to mention you next time I can get to an altar.’
‘Good enough. What do you think they’ll do now?’
Both men stared downslope at the milling horde, order gradually returning to their mass.
‘If I were leading them? Keep the cavalry safely at arm’s length, put some archers and slingers out front, harass us with darts and stones to keep our heads down, and pull the rest away before two full legions take them dry from behind…’ Equitius was weighing the same question.
‘We came down here as bait, to keep the warband in place until the main force can be moved up. I don’t believe we’ve been here long enough to have achieved that aim, do you?’
Frontinius shook his head with pursed lips.
‘Another hour at least, I’d say. I presume you’d like to attract their attention some more, rather than letting them slip away into the hills?’
‘Yes. They can break into family bands and worm their way into the folds in the land. We might only take a tenth of them if that happens…’
The First Spear called a man to him, muttered instructions in his ear, and then turned back to the conversation.
‘I have a way to hold them here, but it won’t be pleasant. Especially since they’ll come back up that slope like wild animals.’
The prefect nodded slowly.
‘As long as Calgus doesn’t pull his men away to safety, the price will be justified. Do whatever you have to.’
The First Spear nodded impassively and turned away, walking down the cohort’s line at the high-tide mark of barbarian dead, inspecting the troops as if on peacetime parade, giving an encouraging word here and there. The man he’d sent to help him search for a particular corpse had succeeded, running down the line of shields with a freshly removed head dripping blood on his leggings.
The First Spear took it from him, examining the slack face with an intensity that was almost feral. The owner’s hair was long and greasy, the seams of his face dark with the grime of long days on the march. His eyes stared glassily back, their animation long departed along with the man that had formerly watched the world through their windows.
‘How do you know he was a chieftain?’
The other man held out his hand, showing his superior an impressively heavy torc stained dark red with blood, the gold wrapped in a serpentine arc that had previously been around the dead man’s neck. Frontinius took the heavy piece of jewellery, weighing it in his hand and remembering the one like it that Dubnus’s father had always worn, even after his dethronement.
‘Somebody was important.’
He turned to stare down at the barbarian warband, quiet now, waiting for a command, and spoke again, without taking his eyes off the mass of warriors.
‘Go to the prefect. Warn him to be ready.’
He stood silently on the slope for a moment, the head dangling almost forgotten from one hand, the torc in the other, until the men below him, alerted by those at the front, grew silent at the sight. Calgus came to his decision with his usual speed and insight. At his rear waited the bulk of his warband, rested and ready to move. To his right were the enemy cavalry, at least temporarily neutralised by the screen of infantry and archers he’d thrown out to cover that wing of the warband. Their spears stood out above them in a forest of wood and steel, a full cohort from their density. In front of him, arrayed on the bloodied slope, the Tungrians stood motionless at the high-tide mark of a thick carpet of dead and dying men, waiting for his next move. Between them, slowly regaining a sense of order, the depleted tribal bands were reforming under new leaders, preparing to storm the hill once more.
‘Pull them back.’
Aed raised his eyebrows.
‘My lord, they are not yet successful. We…’
‘I know. But there are two more legions marching in these hills. That prefect was far too relaxed for that cohort to be far from friendly spears. If they come upon us here, with the advantage of the slope, and with those fucking horsemen, we’ll be dead meat. No, we leave now, break into tribal bands and go back to the muster. Then we can…’
A shout rang out across the open space, some leather-lunged Roman officer shouting the odds. Except…
