‘There you go. What a delightful sound…’
Higher notes were piercing the berserk roar of the Venicone onslaught, screams of agony rising as the warriors charging across the empty camp found the other defences readied to greet them. Scaurus’s grimace when the older man had first outlined his plan for the battle had brought a smile to Licinius’s face, and blank incomprehension to Laenas’s.
‘Lilies? That’s a bit classical, colleague.’
Licinius had smiled grimly, holding the fire-blackened stake up for his brother officers to examine more closely.
‘You like the idea, then?’
Scaurus had nodded, taking the sharp sliver of wood and testing the point on the ball of his thumb before handing it to Laenas.
‘Very much so. If it was good enough for the Divine Julius in his conquest of the Gauls, it’s more than good enough for us to use on these animals.’
Judging that the volume of agonised screaming had risen to the level they were waiting for, he raised an eyebrow at Licinius, who nodded his agreement, raising his voice for the centurions waiting behind them to hear.
‘Very well, gentlemen, let’s go and show these tattooed bastards what it means to push Rome too hard.’
All three men climbed to their feet, and behind them the wood that overlooked the decoy camp came alive with the shouting of centurions and the rattle of equipment, as three cohorts stirred from their long wait and came to battle.
Still standing on the false camp’s front wall, Drust watched in dismay as his warriors blundered into the trap waiting for them, As they charged through the sea of tents, intent on bringing the defenders to battle, dozens of men lurched and fell within a few seconds, their screams merging with the war cries of their uninjured comrades in a cacophony of rage, pain and terror. The warriors following them turned to the left and right, seeking a way round the sudden chaos of fallen bodies twisting in the agony of their wounds, and blundered into more of the hidden traps, each hastily dug pit containing several stakes arranged to point in different directions like the petals of a flower.
‘Lilies. Nobody could ever accuse the bastards of failing to learn from their mistakes.’
Drust turned to find Calgus standing alongside him atop the low turf wall. The Selgovae leader shook his head slowly, watching as Drust’s warriors gingerly felt their way across the field of traps laid out in front of the rear wall’s entire length. Even advancing with caution, their progress suddenly reduced to a slow walk, the occasional man still found his foot vanishing into the apparently solid ground and impaled on the fire-hardened wooden stakes concealed in their well-camouflaged pits. Both men watched as the first warriors reached the defended rear wall, snaking around the long stakes protruding from the earth wall’s defence to attack the men waiting for them behind their shields. Calgus shook his head slowly.
‘I’ve seen this before this year. They’ll hide behind that wall and slaughter your men with their spears as they try to climb it. You’ve been fooled, Drust, they’ll hold us off all morning…’
‘So we’ll kill them all by the afternoon. They’re still stuck there behind that wall, and all I have to do is send a force around to their rear and we’ll have them bottled up like rats in a barrel.’ Drust turned to look at Calgus, who was staring at the defenders with an uncertain look in his eye. ‘What?’
The Selgovae king’s frown deepened.
‘There’s something wrong here. The Tungrians have oval shields…’ Drust turned to look again with fresh focus.
‘You’re right, they’re round. Like… those fucking horsemen!’
He spun and looked back up the slope, his jaw dropping at the sight of armed and armoured men pouring from the trees to their rear. Turning back, he pointed at the member of his bodyguard who carried the signal horn used to gain the warband’s attention in battle.
‘Blow!’
As the horn’s echoes rang across the field, and the Venicones paused in their struggles to reach the camp’s defended rear wall, Drust raised his hammer high over his head, then pivoted to point the weapon’s heavy iron head up the slope at the trap closing around the warband.
‘Warriors, there is our enemy! Attack!’
The detachment’s first centuries broke from the trees at a dead run, their centurions bellowing encouragement as hundreds of men hurled themselves from their hiding places and sprinted for the line that Licinius had indicated to Scaurus and Laenas the previous afternoon. The three men had walked across the long shallow slope as the late afternoon’s shadows slowly lengthened, discussing the course that they expected the next morning’s fight to take.
‘Assuming that Drust displays his usual bull-headed behaviour, and attacks quickly rather than standing back to consider what might be wrong with this scene…’ Licinius paused and waved a hand at the soldiers labouring to construct the marching camp that he hoped would lure the Venicones into their trap. ‘… then there will come a moment when he knows he’s been fooled. And at that moment he will turn his men round and they’ll come charging back up here like the hounds of Hades, and if they get here…’ He pointed at the ground they were standing on. ‘… before we can get a decent line established to stop them then they’ll overrun us in no time.’
Scaurus had looked back at the trees behind them, then turned to stare down the slope, gauging the distance with a practised eye. He shook his head unhappily.
‘Hiding three cohorts in that wood is all very well, but the men will be packed in like spectators at the circus games. It’ll take longer to get them out and into line than we’ll have. We might be better just meeting them on open ground…’
Laenas put a hand on his arm.
‘What if…’
The two tribunes turned to look at him, Scaurus raising an inquisitorial eyebrow and Licinius frowning slightly. His voice when he spoke was impatient with the younger man’s interruption and Scaurus saw his subordinate flinch almost imperceptibly at the tone.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I was thinking…’
Licinius put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes with frustration.
‘Tribune Laenas, we are…’
‘Colleague?’
The older man looked at Scaurus in slight surprise, taken aback at the studiedly neutral tone of his brother officer’s voice.
‘Rutilius Scaurus?’
‘If our colleague has an idea, then I’d like to hear it.’
He’d raised an eyebrow at the younger man, opening his hands in encouragement, and Laenas had stolen a nervous glance at Licinius before speaking again, his voice riven with uncertainty.
‘I was just thinking that if our problem is the time we’ll have to get our soldiers out of the trees and into line, then we’ll have to find a way to slow the Venicones down as they come back up this way. A way they won’t notice on their way down the slope.’
Both men had stared at him curiously, their interest piqued. As he kept talking, his voice strengthening as the idea took shape, Licinius’s sceptical expression had transformed into a slow smile by the time he turned to call to the nearest officer.
‘Decurion!’
Silus had hurried across to the trio, saluting briskly.
‘Tribune?’
‘I need you to take a party of twenty men back to the Dinpaladyr. There’s something the Votadini will have plenty of that we need, and as much of it as you can find.’
The Venicones massed at the decoy fort’s wall turned at their king’s command and surged back up the slope, yelling out their fury and frustration. A clear trumpet note rang out across the battlefield, and, as if by some arcane magic, the horde of charging tribesmen were suddenly reduced to a chaos of struggling bodies, hundreds of them
