line with such brutal ease. For the first time in months, it seemed, he felt his heart lift with the moment’s simplicity, felt liberated from the need to worry about the slow bleeding away of his reputation at the hands of his subordinate. Fighting back a sudden wild urge to laugh aloud in the first spear’s terrified face, he pointed his sword down the slope at the Venicones.
‘First Cohort! Follow me!’
Stepping off down the slope without looking behind him to see whether his men were following, he locked eyes with the Venicone king, watching the man with an almost detached interest as the warlord lifted his massive war hammer and strode forward to meet the reinforcements, his bellowed challenge lost in the fight’s tumult. The two men stalked closer to each other with their eyes locked together, neither willing to look away in the last seconds before they met. Above the roar of the fight Laenas thought he heard his name being called again, but ignored the distraction as the barbarian warrior broke into a run, covering the last few paces between them in seconds with his hammer swinging high.
The weapon slashed down in a humming diagonal attack, its spike intended to crack the tribune’s breastplate and smash his ribs, but he sidestepped and ducked beneath the blow, slashing at his opponent with the his sword’s blade and drawing a bloody line across the man’s thigh. Drust staggered and snarled, reversing the hammer and thrusting the heavy iron counterweight at the base of its handle into the Roman’s face, sending him reeling backwards. While Laenas was off balance, blood spurting from his shattered nose, a tribesman leapt forward and rammed his sword deep into the tribune’s armpit before dying on the shaft of a thrown javelin as the 1st Cohort’s centuries hurled their weapons in a devastating low-slung volley that withered the ranks of the attacking Venicones.
With a roar of anger the legionaries drew their swords and charged at the stunned barbarians, stabbing viciously at their enemy in their fury at seeing their officer fall. Drust and what remained of his bodyguard fought in a tight knot, briefly holding the legionaries at bay in a circle around them until Maon, standing back to back with his master, was spitted by a javelin thrust, staggering forward on to his enemy’s blades with blood frothing on his lips, falling under a hail of hacking blows. Another legionary stepped in and drove his spear through the Venicone king’s back, heaving and twisting on the weapon’s wooden shaft to force its barbed iron head deeper into the stricken barbarian’s body. Drust’s spine arched with the cold iron’s first agonising thrust into his kidneys, and he stared down in disbelief as the spear’s head ripped through his stomach wall. Dropping to his knees in agony, he allowed the hammer’s handle to slip from his grasp as he reached down to grasp the javelin’s iron head with both hands, his teeth bared in a silent scream of pain. Scaurus ran the few paces from his place at the rear of the Tungrian line, a dozen of the 10th Century’s axemen around him hacking a path into the remaining barbarians before them. He pointed his sword at the breach in the line, hurling an order at the legionaries over the fight’s hubbub.
‘Sixth Legion, advance! Close this gap!’
At the shouted command the cohort’s front rank marched onwards down the slope, their implacable attack scattering the remaining barbarians to either side in panicked attempts to escape before the line was re- established. Behind the marching centuries another soldier raised his gladius and chopped down at the fallen king’s exposed neck, the blow sufficiently strong only to half-sever Drust’s head from his body but enough to put him face down and unmoving in the grass. The sword rose and fell again, and its bearer lifted Drust’s severed head by its mane of red hair with a bellow of triumph while the owner of the javelin buried in his corpse’s back tore its barbed- iron head free from the headless body. The king’s gold torc fell from his severed neck into the hillside’s long grass, and the spearman bent to retrieve it, goggling at the fortune in gold in his hands.
‘I’ll take that! And the torc!’
The legionaries turned to find First Spear Canutius striding towards them, his panic of barely a moment before wiped away by his men’s success.
‘Those both belong to the Emperor. I’ll make sure they reach the governor, rather than have you thieving bastards…’
The legionary who had decapitated the Venicone king looked about him quickly, getting a quick nod from his mate, who had raised his spear as if to examine its bloody blade with a critical eye. He allowed the dead king’s head to dangle at his side and replied to the officer’s challenge with a curled lip, fixing Canutius with a disparaging glance.
‘Not this time, Centurion. You’re too shy when the fight’s on for my liking.’
Canutius raised his vine stick, his face hard with fury, only to stagger as the legionary behind him lunged forward, ramming the javelin’s vicious point through his armour and deep into his body. The man holding Drust’s head bent close as the officer stiffened, jerking spasmodically as the spear’s barbed-iron head tore into his heart.
‘That’s what you’ve been terrified of all this time, pushing us forward to keep your skin intact. Not so bad now, is it?’
He nodded to the spearman, who deftly withdrew his weapon’s pointed head through the hole it had punched in Canutius’s armour, and lowered the dying officer to the ground alongside the spot where Laenas lay, his open eyes staring blankly at the clouds above them.
‘That’s vengeance for you, I’d say, young Tribune. You fought well enough for a lad when you finally got the chance…’
He reached out to close Laenas’s eyes and then, spotting a minute movement of the fallen officer’s chest, bent closer to examine the fallen tribune with a critical eye.
‘Young gentleman’s not dead, not yet anyway. Bandage carrier!’
While the battle raged on fifty paces down the hill’s slope, Scaurus and Licinius hurried to the rear of the attacking legionaries surrounded by their escort of Tungrian axemen, heading for the spot where they had seen Tribune Laenas go down under Drust’s attack and finding a huddled knot of men gathered around the bodies of several men. Licinius scattered them with a barked command, pushing one man out of his path.
‘Stand aside!’
The legionaries cleared a path through to the stricken Laenas, and Scaurus, noting the body of Canutius alongside that of the young tribune, hung back behind his colleague with his eyes roaming across the scene. The bandage carrier shook his head unhappily, looking up at Licinius with a look of certainty.
‘Nothing I can do for him, Tribune, the wound’s too deep inside. He should be dead already, by rights.’
Scaurus found what he’d been looking for, a pair of legionaries sidling towards the edge of the group with neutral expressions on their faces.
‘You two! Stop where you are! The rest of you, get back in line and fight. This battle has a while to run yet!’
The two soldiers snapped to attention, eyeing the hard-faced tribune as he stalked towards them. Licinius put a toe under Canutius’s shoulder, turning the dead man’s body over.
‘He was speared in the back, from the look of it.’
Scaurus reached out and took the spear from the taller man, examining its point with a critical eye.
‘There’s blood on this weapon, legionary.’
The soldier shook his head dourly.
‘Barbarian blood, sir. I did for their king.’
The tribune shook his head in turn, then handed the weapon back and turned away, bending to kneel alongside the dying tribune.
‘Well now, Popillius Laenas, you’ll be in the company of your ancestors soon enough. Hold your head up high when they greet you, for you’ve won this fight for us. See?’ He lifted the Venicone king’s head for the dying man to see. This was their king. Without him to lead them they’ll give it up soon enough, and you’re the man that took the fight to him and sealed his fate. I’ll make sure your family know you died with a soldier’s honour…’ He bent closer to the prostrate tribune, speaking quietly into his ear. ‘But now I need you to tell me one more thing, brother. You see, your first spear lies dead alongside you, murdered by one of your own men in all likelihood. It’s common enough when an officer is hated by his soldiers, of course, but we can’t allow it to stand unpunished. So tell me, Tribune, did you see it happen?’
Laenas moved his head with painful slowness to stare at the two soldiers standing behind the kneeling tribune, a faint smile ghosting across his face, and his lips moved in speech so quiet that Scaurus had to put his ear to the dying man’s mouth to hear them.
‘Saw… nothing…’
