sprawling over previously unseen obstacles while the men behind them were felled in their turn by the chaotic sprawl of bodies. In seconds the onrushing warband’s attack was reduced to a crawl, those men still on their feet having to pick their way around those still recovering their balance. Hacking furiously at the ropes which had tripped them, raised from the thumb’s-width trenches in which they had been run across the hillside the previous day, each one snapped up and tied fast by men hidden in the woods to either side, the Venicones were quickly able to remove the unexpected impediment, but as Drust looked over his men’s heads at the scurrying Roman troops he shook his head and spat on the ground with disgust.
The cohorts had formed a rough line by the time their enemies had resumed their progress up the slope, Tungrians and legionaries intermingled by the speed of their rush from the trees and kept that way by a decision made by the three tribunes the previous afternoon. Licinius had watched the 6th Legion’s men going about their preparations for the following day’s battle and turned to the other two senior officers with a questioning look for Laenas.
‘Tribune, have your men actually seen any fighting this year? I believe your cohort was shipped in from Germania after the disaster at Lost Eagle, and you were too late into the battle to destroy the rebellion to see any proper fighting.’
Laenas had slowly nodded his reluctant agreement.
‘In that case they are an unknown quantity, whereas our Tungrian cohorts have fought in two battles this year already. We know that they will cope when the barbarians’ first attack breaks on their shields, but we cannot know how your men will react. I suggest that we deliberately mix some of your legionaries in with the Tungrians, and let them work out their ranking when they get to the line of defence. That way the experienced men will help the new boys cope with what they’re about to experience. The rest of you can form our reserve. After all, no good commander ever put everything in the shop window, did he?’
Marcus’s 9th Century were among the first men to the point where Licinius had decreed the defensive line would be held, in the company of the first men of the legion cohort out of the trees. Scarface pushed himself into his accustomed place in the front rank, hefting his spear and looking to either side at the legionaries beside him, grinning at their expressions as they watched the barbarians regain their momentum to charge up the slope at them.
‘Nice shields, ladies. Best get ready to use them, the tattoo boys will be here in a moment. Get your spears ready to throw!’
‘Thank you, soldier, I’ll be the one that decides what we’re to do if that’s all right with you?’
Marcus, standing to the line’s rear with his gladius drawn, kept his rebuke level enough and his eyes fixed on the oncoming Venicones. Julius’s 5th Century had taken their place in the line next to his men, as equally mingled with the legion cohort’s men as were his own, and the big centurion was stalking along the line of his men and barking his last instructions over the din of the approaching barbarians.
‘There’s no river to stop them this time, only your shields and your desire not to end up with your head on the point of a blue-nose spear.’ Marcus winced with the involuntary memory of his first glimpse of Rufius’s head held aloft at the battle of Forest Camp as his brother officer raised his voice to bark an order at his men. ‘Both ranks, spears ready!’
All along the straggling Roman line the soldiers that had reached their places gripped their spears more tightly, readying themselves for the next command as the Tungrian and legion centurions waited for the right moment. Julius, gauging that the Venicones were as close as he wanted them without starting the fight, bellowed an order that rang across the battlefield.
‘Front rank, spears… throw!’
Legionaries and auxiliaries alike ran forward the few short paces needed to give them the momentum to throw their weapons, hurling their spears and javelins into the onrushing Venicones and dropping to one knee in order to provide the rear rank with a clear throw.
‘Second rank, throw!’
The rear-rankers threw their spears in flatter arcs, their targets fewer than a dozen paces distant, the auxiliaries’ broad-bladed spears and the legionaries’ arrow-headed javelins dropping hundreds of the enemy warriors to the slope’s turf in screaming, writhing agony. The soldiers quickly reformed their line and braced for the barbarian charge’s impact as the stricken warriors were shrugged aside or trampled underfoot by the warband’s charging mass. Scarface grimaced at the sight of a dying warrior, a spear spitted clean through him, being propelled forward on faltering legs by the mass of men behind him, and set himself a little lower behind his shield as he waited for the warband’s impact. Muttering as much to himself as to the men around him, he raised his gladius until the sword’s point was held level with his shield’s brass boss, ready to strike.
‘Steady, boys, steady. We get this wrong and we’re all fucked…’
The Venicone charge broke on the defenders’ shields with an impact that rocked the Roman line back half a dozen paces, the warband’s wild-eyed warriors hammering at the wall of shields that confronted them with a rabid intensity, a wild desperation born of their realisation that they were trapped inside their enemy’s line. The Romans gave ground grudgingly, forced back one pace at a time by the barbarian onslaught and fighting back from behind their shields with well-timed sword thrusts. Aiming for the barbarians’ vulnerable thighs, guts and throats, their stabbing thrusts ripped open the warriors’ unprotected skin in hot sprays of blood, killing or disabling several of the enemy for every legionary or soldier who fell to a barbarian weapon.
The soldier Scarface, his tunic already wet with blood running down his neck from a shallow spear wound to his chin from the initial barbarian attack, pushed his shield forward as the spearman stepped forward and struck at him again, watching as the weapon’s long blade punched through the board’s layered wood and stuck firm. Wrenching the shield back to pull the weapon from its wielder’s hands and drag the barbarian forward an involuntary pace, he stepped forward to meet the momentarily unbalanced warrior with a snarl of triumph. Stabbing his gladius deep into the other man’s thigh, he twisted the blade savagely to open the blood vessel running beneath the ruined flesh, wrenching it free and punching the stricken spearman back into the mass of men behind him with his shield’s heavy boss.
Behind the battling soldiers, centurions spaced down the length of the line watched hawk eyed for casualties, bawling at the men of the rear rank to pull any casualty who failed to stagger clear of the fight out of the line by his arms and throw him clear, quickly pushing a replacement in. Where the majority fought back in silence, save for their grunts of exertion, a few of the Romans, those close to being unhinged by the horror unfolding around them and those for whom these few precious minutes of combat were the potent elixir of their lives, screamed in desperation and wide-eyed defiance at the barbarian warriors railing at their shields as they fought.
Drust climbed the slope behind his men with a speed born of his sense of urgency, Calgus close behind him as he pushed through the warband to reach the Roman line with his bodyguard gathered close about him. Looking between the heads of his warriors he saw the Roman line holding firm, the determined soldiers fighting hard to hold off his men’s attack, and the evidence before him told its own story. Many more warriors than soldiers lay dead and wounded in the trampled mud between the two lines, and the sour stink of their blood and the contents of their guts was already strong enough to make his gorge rise. Stepping back a few paces, he looked grimly around the men of his bodyguard, nodding slowly at them as the knowledge of what would be required to escape from the Roman trap became clear on their faces. He spoke over the battle’s din, looking each man in the eye in turn as he told them what he needed.
‘Warriors of my household, you above all other men of the tribe are as brothers to me, after all these years together. And now, my brothers, I must ask a difficult thing of you. Unless we break this Roman line, and quickly, our own dead will form a wall over which we must climb to make our escape, making such a thing nigh on impossible. We few must do what another five hundred champions might struggle to achieve, hamstrung by their very numbers. We must throw ourselves into the Romans without regard for our lives, and kill enough men in one place to allow our warriors to exploit the gap we carve in their line, and break it asunder. When their line breaks I will lead the warband through the gap and fall on them from the rear. Victory will be ours, but to break their line will need a mighty sacrifice, my brothers. I will lead you in this, but you must be willing to attack the Romans with desperate speed and raging fury if we are to make this happen. Can you do that for me, my brothers, knowing that many of you will be drinking with your ancestors tonight?’
He looked around his men again, seeing the resolution harden in their faces as they met his gaze, some nodding their assent while others simply stared back with the expressions of men who knew full well that their time had come. Brushing away tears of pride, he opened his arms and beckoned them into a huddle of bodies, smelling
