the tang of their sweat as he spoke the words he knew would unleash their full fury on their enemy.
‘Brothers you have been to me, but no longer will I call you so. From now you are not brothers to me, but sons! Those of you that fall will be venerated as my children, those of you that live respected as members of my family. We shall be remembered far beyond our lifetimes, my sons, for what we are about to do, for we go to bite out our enemy’s throat, and tear his body to pieces. With me, my sons!’
The huddle broke as the king stepped forward to face the Romans, swinging his hammer in an overhead stroke to bring it sweeping down on the head of a legionary, the heavy iron head smashing the Roman to the ground with his helmet staved in, and while the men to either side goggled at their comrade’s inert body he swung the hammer low, breaking the ankles of one man and upending another with a vicious hook and pull that used the last of the weapon’s momentum. As the line’s rear-rankers stepped in to take their places, peering from behind their shields at the fallen soldiers, his bodyguard surged forward with snarls of defiance, taking their iron to the men to either side of the breach in order to stop any attempt to reinforce the endangered section of the line. Their reckless attacks broke on the obdurate Roman defence in sprays of their own blood, but their sacrifice, as Drust had predicted, gave him a precious moment of time in which the soldiers to either side of the terrified rear-rankers were preoccupied with their own defence, and could give no thought to reinforcing the point of his attack. Turning back to face his warriors, Drust raised his hammer high and bellowed the only command his men would require.
‘Forward, my brothers! Forward to victory!’
Turning back to the Romans, he sprang forward and swung the hammer up and then straight down, punching the pointed end of the weapon’s head down into a soldier’s helmet, breaking through the iron shell and felling its wearer instantly, blood flowing from the fallen man’s ears as he pitched full length atop the turf. The warband surged forward with a roar of triumph, pouncing on the weakened section of the Roman line in a welter of blood and iron, killing half a dozen soldiers and smashing its way through what was left of the defence in an unstoppable stream of men. First Spear Neuto ran from his place behind his cohort’s line towards the break in the defence, shouting a request to his colleague Frontinius as he drew his sword and plunged into the fight.
‘Quickly, send me your rear-rankers!’
Julius and Marcus, the nearest of the 1st Tungrian Cohort’s officers to the break in their sister unit’s line, had already reacted exactly as Neuto had requested, ordering their rear-rank men to leave the fight and follow them towards the slowly but inexorably expanding hole in the Roman defences. They ran head on into the Venicones who had fought their way past the soldiers struggling to contain the breakthrough, dozens of wild-eyed warriors spilling out into the open space behind the line, whose next act, unless they were contained, would be to fall on the rear of the men still struggling to hold back the barbarian wave.
Marcus drew his spatha and pointed it at the warriors, urging his men forward alongside those led by Julius, their few dozen soldiers advancing into the teeth of the barbarian attack, and momentarily shoring up the right-hand side of the line’s breach. Facing fresh opposition where they had thought to find nobody to oppose them, some of the barbarians turned to fight while others pushed up the slope towards the legion cohort waiting under the forest’s edge, seeking to outflank the newcomers. Reinforced by the increasing numbers of men running to re-establish the line’s integrity, even as more warriors pushed and fought their way through the slowly widening gap, forcing the defenders back pace by anguished pace, the 2nd Cohort stood their ground and fought back, despite their precarious position. Stubborn determination, and the knowledge that to break under the pressure being applied to them could result only in their deaths, fuelled their desperate resistance, but the two centurions shared a knowing glance, both realising that the defence was hanging by a thread that must snap at any moment with the Venicones’ simple but irresistible weight of numbers. Marcus looked in puzzlement up the slope to the reinforcements standing in front of the forest before turning to shout a question to Julius above the cacophony of battle.
‘What are they waiting for!?’
11
Tribune Laenas stood in front of the detachment’s reserve, five centuries of his legionaries waiting one hundred paces to the rear of the Roman line, and watched with growing unease as Drust’s hammer rose and fell above the defenders’ heads. He had been every bit as unhappy as Scaurus had predicted would be the case when he was detailed to stand ready with the reserve centuries, one hundred paces behind the main line of defence.
‘Tribune Scaurus, I must…’
Scaurus’s response had been terse, his patience stretched thin by the young aristocrat’s pressing desire to put his cohort in the coming battle’s front line.
‘Follow your orders, Tribune? That would be wise!’
The young Roman had recoiled at the harsh tone in his superior’s voice, seeing something unexpected in Scaurus’s face as the older man had turned to face him in the previous evening’s gloom.
‘I only…’
Scaurus had shaken his head uncompromisingly, putting a finger firmly on his subordinate’s breastplate.
‘No! I understand, Laenas, but you’re just going to have to do as I tell you. This is going to be a world away from anything you or your men have ever experienced before. I need battle-hardened soldiers in the line when the Venicones realise that they’re the rats in this particular trap, because they’re going to fight like wild animals to escape. My auxiliaries have faced down barbarians exactly like these more than once this summer, which means that they know they can beat Drust’s men given the right circumstances. If some of your legionaries can get into the line alongside them then so much the better for all concerned, but my men need officers that they can trust standing behind them. Your first spear is going to be of questionable value in a fight from what little I’ve seen of him, and you’ve never experienced this scale of bloodletting at close quarters, for all your unquestionable willingness to fight…’
He’d smiled tightly at the younger man, shaking his head slightly, and when he spoke again his tone had been gentler.
‘I’d be content to stand as our reserve, if I were you, Tribune Laenas, and let your first experience of this vicious way of fighting be an easier introduction than my Tungrians had at Lost Eagle. And while you’re standing there, you should pray to all of your gods that there’s no need for your men to unsheathe their swords. Because if there is, then the barbarians will have broken through, and you and your five centuries will be all that stands between my command and bloody disaster. And in such circumstances, colleague, your chance for death or glory will be upon you quicker than you can appreciate.’
With a sudden, sick lurch of his guts, Laenas realised that the line was breaking before his eyes. As he watched, the tiny breach in the detachment’s defences began to widen as the inexorable force being exerted by the mass of barbarians pressing upon it forced apart the soldiers fighting to hold them back, and despite the reinforcements running from the line’s rear on both sides of the breach. Realising that he had only seconds in which to react, the young tribune ripped his sword from its scabbard and turned to Canutius.
‘Come on, then, First Spear, it seems that we’re needed after all
…’
His subordinate was staring across the narrow space between the reserve centuries and the milling barbarians, his eyes pinned wide and his face red with fear. Laenas stared at him for a moment, both horrified at the man’s apparent loss of control in the face of battle and uncertain of how he should react. As the moment of decision hung in the balance, a shout rang across the battlefield, Scaurus’s voice cutting through the fight’s rising din.
‘Tribune Laenas! Your time for glory is here!’
He nodded decisively and turned away from Canutius with a slight smile, suddenly calm in the realisation that there was only one possible course of action. Raising the weapon above his head, he summoned the strength to steady his wavering voice.
‘First Cohort! Ready spears!’
The legionaries pulled their javelins from the damp earth into which they had been pushed butt spike first moments before, and hefted their shields from their resting places in a dry rustle of wood and iron. Laenas turned back to the barbarians forcing their way through the rupture in the Romans’ line, their numbers already doubled in those scant seconds, and fixed his gaze on the redhaired giant who had smashed his way through the detachment’s
