the entry and exit wounds around the arrow’s shaft with water and a clean cloth, took an exploratory grip of the feathered end that protruded from the First Spear’s knee. The prefect winced with his friend’s obvious pain. Frontinius leant back on the grass wearily, closing his eyes as the bandage carrier took a firmer grip of the arrow. With a sudden twist, the medic snapped the arrow’s shaft, then swiftly pulled the barbed end out of the back of the officer’s knee. Frontinius watched with narrowed eyes as he expertly bandaged the wound, winding the cloth tightly as blood blossomed through its weave.
‘You can stand, First Spear, but you have to keep the leg straight. And keep your weight off it.’
Frontinius struggled to his feet, accepting the prefect’s offered hand to pull him erect.
‘I’ll be separated from my head quite shortly, sonny boy. The knee can…’
His retort trailed off as movement up the slope, at the wood’s edge, caught his eye. The Tungrians watched the wall of barbarians slowly wash up the hill towards them, picking their way carefully across the wall of their dead. There was no headstrong charge this time, only a steady advance by the thousands of men to their front, confident in their numerical advantage but made cautious by the sight and smell of the dead and dying littering the ground around them. Facing them, men from both cohorts stood in an ordered line, calm in their resignation for the most part. A man close to Scarface whimpered with fear, quietening as the veteran soldier glared down the line at him and barked out his name. The 2nd Cohort watch officer nodded approvingly.
‘Too late for second thoughts now, my lads. If you can’t take a joke then you shouldn’t have joined in the first place. Just make sure you take some of the bastards across the river with you.’
With certain death at hand, men tightened their sweat-and-blood-slickened grip on swords and shields, waiting to kill for the last time.
The barbarian line passed over the wall of dead, speeding up to walking pace with the obstacle crossed, the lack of spears in Roman hands having reduced it to a hindrance rather than the death trap it had been earlier in the morning. Twenty yards from the Tungrians they stopped at a shouted command, allowing Calgus’s messenger to step into the gap between the two forces.
‘Tungrians, the Lord Calgus offers you one last chance to live. Surrender now and you will be well treated…’
His voice tailed away as Julius stepped forward, his armour painted with the blood of a dozen men, his shield scored and notched by swords, the shafts of three arrows protruding from its wooden face.
‘One step more and I’ll send your cock back to the Lord Calgus while the rest of you stays here. You want these…’
He raised sword and shield into their fighting positions, backing carefully into the line as the men to either side readied themselves in similar fashion.
‘… then fucking well come and get them, cum stain.’
The messenger shrugged indifferently, then turned away and was absorbed into the barbarian mass. The warband’s fresh warriors began banging their swords and shields, creating a wall of sound that bore down oppressively on the Tungrians, first advancing one step, then another, some swinging their swords in extravagant arcs and screaming of the slaughter to come. The Tungrians waited, hollow eyed, for the barbarian line to charge across the narrowing gap and finish the unequal contest.
13
The barbarian line gathered itself to pounce, the mass of shaggy-haired warriors baying for blood as the Tungrian cohorts waited grimly for their assault. Frontinius’s voice rang out over the din, his command the last Marcus would have expected.
‘Tungrians, on the ground! On the ground!’
The line went to the ground after a second’s bewildered pause, the brighter soldiers realising what it meant and twisting to look back to their rear as they fell. The barbarian line wavered at the sight, as a line of hard-faced soldiers, fresh and unblooded, came out of the smoke. These men were different to those in the Tungrian line, their armour fashioned from overlaid plates rather than chain mail, their javelins topped with slender iron shanks sprouting viciously barbed points. Scarface and the 2nd Cohort watch officer exchanged looks of amazed glee.
‘Legionaries? Fuck me, it’s the Sixth, or what’s left of ’em. They must be gagging to get into this lot.’
The watch officer nodded as he hugged the blood-sodden grass.
‘They do look a tiny bit pissed off.’
‘Halt!’
Prefect Licinius’s voice was authoritative above the warband’s din, all urbanity lost in the harsh command. The newcomers’ force stretched all the way across the small battlefield behind the Tungrians, three lines of men with spears held ready to throw. More men were advancing out of the smoke behind them. A lot more men.
‘Front rank, throw!’
The advancing soldiers took an unhesitating three-step run-up and launched a volley of spears into the warband’s front rank.
‘Front rank, kneel! Second rank, throw!’
Another rain of spears showered on to the barbarians.
‘Second rank, kneel! Third rank, throw!’
The warband shuddered under the third volley, hundreds of men having fallen in the previous few seconds. Licinius’s voice hardened.
‘Sixth Legion, on your feet. Form line for attack.’
The legionaries were on their feet with their line dressed and ready in seconds, a wall of shields and swords suddenly presented to their amazed enemy.
‘Sixth Legion, for the honour of your fallen dead…’
The hairs on the back of Marcus’s neck lifted with the emotion in the prefect’s voice. A sudden silence descended on the battlefield as the warband grew quiet with apprehension, their presumed easy victory suddenly impending disaster. Only the cries and moans of the wounded broke the silence. Licinius growled into the hush the last command that would be needed to start the slaughter, his harsh voice audible from one end of the line to other.
‘… no… prisoners!’
The depleted legion’s centurions echoed the command, ordering the surviving cohorts forward in a deliberate advance. Their determined tread took them over and past the Tungrians, the supine bodies trampled by men fixated with the view to their front. As the warband’s front rank quailed at their remorseless advance, unable to retreat owing to the sheer mass of men packed in behind them, the legionaries closed the gap between them and started their slaughter with ruthless efficiency and barely restrained fury.
‘Find the officers!’
Marcus recognised the voice, and stood up in the shelter of the legion’s line.
‘No need, Prefect, we’re here.’
Licinius nodded impassively, then switched his gaze to stare out across the valley.
Through the smoke’s dying efforts Marcus could just make out a mass of men emerging from the cover of the wood to their right, a cohort at the least. The thick column kept on coming, pouring on to the slope like a monstrous armoured snake. Julius, staring at the mass of troops with eyes that seemed unfocused, pulled off his helmet and scratched his sweaty scalp.
‘How many?’
The prefect smiled grimly.
‘Six thousand. That’s the entire Twentieth Legion. And to our left is the Second, the other half of the nutcrackers. These barbarian bastards are going to pay in blood for what they’ve done today.’
From the cover of the wood’s other arm another tide of men was washing down the other slope, another legion in full cry. On the crest above them the cavalry’s armour still glittered in the morning sun, but as Marcus’s eye found them they started to pour down off the hill, the Petriana on the move at last, seeking targets for their lances. The warband, in severe danger of being encircled by the legions, shivered under the shock of their sudden appearance on its flanks, then broke into hundreds of family groups, falling over each other in their haste to escape