In a flat voice the trooper on Bela’s left said, ‘We charged them six times, and six times they repulsed us. We are all that is left. He would have stayed and died with the rest if we had not carried him away.’
‘I know,’ Valerius said, patting him gently on the arm. ‘Take him to the infirmary and get some rest. Say nothing of this to anyone.’
He sent for Falco, who read the look on his face and turned pale.
‘All?’ he asked quietly.
Valerius nodded. ‘The Thracians did what they could, but there were not enough of them.’
Falco closed his eyes and swayed on his feet and Valerius knew he was thinking of his plump wife, as courageous as any soldier as she sat stiff and erect with their nine-year-old son in the first wagon. But he could not be allowed to think for too long.
‘Will your men fight better for knowing or not knowing?’
The wine merchant’s eyes snapped open and his nostrils flared. ‘You forget yourself, tribune,’ he rasped, and Valerius had a glimpse of the old Falco, who had terrorized the Twentieth legion for two decades. ‘The Colonia militia will fight and that is all you need to know.’
‘I need them to fight with fire in their bellies not tears in their eyes.’ Valerius kept his voice hard. This man was his friend, but he could not afford to show weakness.
‘If I can fight with both, they can fight with both,’ Falco said fiercely. ‘The answer is that I have served with these men for a lifetime, they are my comrades and they deserve to know. The veterans of the Colonia militia will stand, they will fight and they will die, tribune, and you will go on your knees and seek my forgiveness before the end.’ He turned and walked stiffly away, an old man carrying all the burdens of a life on the march on his shoulders in a single moment.
XXXII
Late in the afternoon, Valerius gathered his officers in the long room in the temple’s east wing — the one with the painting of Claudius accepting the surrender of Britain. He doubted whether they saw the irony of it. What wouldn’t he give now for even one of those four legions displayed there on the wall, their armour and their spear points glinting? With a full legion at his back he would have marched northwards to meet Boudicca and left the rebellion stillborn, her army either shattered or so mauled that she would have no choice but to turn back and regroup. But he didn’t have a full legion. He had two thousand of Falco’s veterans, the two hundred men he had brought from Londinium and a few hundred of Bela’s cavalry.
The young Thracian lay back stiffly on a padded couch recovered from the temple’s barricade with his chest heavily bandaged and his eyes fever bright with whatever drug he’d been given to ease the pain. He had insisted on attending the final briefing even though he could barely stand. Falco stood among his cohort commanders with his face set in a mask of grim intent and refused to meet Valerius’s eyes. The men surrounding him took their mood from their leader, but there were those who couldn’t hide the signs of their grief or their nervousness. He searched for any other suggestion of weakness, but found none. These men still had their pride, even though time had marked them as it had marked the uniforms they wore. He knew some resented his youth, but with Falco’s support he had no doubt they would accept his authority. Lunaris leaned against the side wall, his tall frame relaxed and his face expressionless.
‘I have had word from our scouts.’ Valerius’s voice silenced the subdued murmurs. ‘If the Britons march hard, their vanguard will be here well before dawn. It is difficult for one man to judge, but the trooper who carried the message believes that Petronius’s spy did not exaggerate their strength.’ He paused and waited to see if any of them reacted to that terrible truth. There were no doubts now. They would be enormously outnumbered. ‘Yet any man who has studied history knows that sheer numbers need not guarantee the outcome of a battle. Alexander had only half as many troops as the Persian Darius when he triumphed at Issus. Caesar himself defeated Pompey the Great at Pharsalus when he was outnumbered by more than two to one.’
‘Not twenty to one, though.’
Valerius was surprised at the intervention from Corvinus, whose support he had assumed. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Not twenty to one. But these were soldiers fighting soldiers. We are soldiers fighting barbarian warriors. Does any man here doubt that ten legionaries are worth a hundred of these Britons?’
‘No!’ At least half of them growled the reply, and Valerius smiled.
‘Two to one, then.’ To a man, they laughed, even Falco. He allowed them their moment and then continued seriously. ‘I do not intend us to fight fifty thousand or even ten thousand. We will burn every bridge but one and the rebels will be drawn to the remaining crossing like wasps to a rotting peach. Only a few thousand will be able to cross at one time and those thousands will die before our swords.’ He didn’t allow any arrogance to creep into his voice. These men were not fools. ‘No, I do not expect to win,’ he answered their unspoken question. ‘I am no Caesar or Alexander and there are too many of them. Even a veteran’s arm must tire. We will bleed, just as they do. That is why I have fortified the temple. At the last we will withdraw here.’ And here we will die. They all knew it. No one needed to say it.
‘Why not fight from the temple in the first place?’ Corvinus demanded, and was rewarded with a rumble of support. ‘With close to three thousand men and enough food and water we could hold the grounds for a month.’
Valerius shook his head. ‘And watch Boudicca burn your city to the ground around you?’
‘She will burn it in any case.’
‘Yes, but she won’t just leave a few thousand warriors to starve us out and march on Londinium with her army intact. If they are fifty thousand strong now, how many will rally to their cause if they destroy all that is best of Roman Britain? A hundred thousand, perhaps more. Enough even to overwhelm Paulinus and his force. It would be the end of the province. We cannot allow that. By forcing her to do battle we have the opportunity to tear the heart from the rebel army, here at Colonia.’
‘Why do we exist if not to fight, Corvinus?’ Falco agreed. His voice was tight with emotion. ‘Were all those days on the exercise ground just for sweat? No. I have lost everything I loved today and I will not watch idly as the woman responsible marches past to bring the pain I feel to thousands more.’
Valerius knew Falco’s was the decisive opinion. Time was running out. There could be no more debate. ‘Send engineers to burn the bridges. Prepare your cohorts. We will move into position before dark.’ He had deliberated long and hard whether it was better to subject the veterans to a night in the open and the stiffening of ageing limbs, or risk the confusion of deploying in the darkness an hour or two before dawn. ‘Bela?’ The cavalry commander raised his head with a grimace of pain. ‘Pull your horse soldiers back. They can do no more now.’
As the officers filed out he called Lunaris across. ‘I want you in the temple and you are promoted to decurion.’ The big legionary opened his mouth to protest, but Valerius raised a hand. ‘No arguments. I need a man I can trust in command of the place where we will make our stand. We don’t know how things will be when we fight our way back here.’ He smiled sadly. ‘At least with you in command I know I will have somewhere to run.’
As dusk fell, he stood by Colonia’s north gate listening to the evening sounds and staring north. It was a blessing to have time to stop and think after a day of constant decision. The night was warm and the air still, and pairs of bats chased unseen insects between the buildings and the trees down by the river. He heard the unmistakable shriek of an owl and felt a sudden deep melancholy. Where was she now? He remembered the sweet scent of her silken hair and the softness of her flesh, the tenderness of lips he had never had the opportunity to kiss often enough, and dark eyes that flashed like wildfire; the wonder of a knowing like no other. She would support the rebellion, he guessed; her father’s death had given her enough reason to hate. But would she join it? No. Cearan would keep her safe; honest, dependable Cearan who would now be torn between his duty to his queen and his determination to prevent his people from suffering. How different things would have been if he had taken the throne for himself. With a conscious effort he put the Iceni nobleman from his mind. This was no time to be feeling sympathy for a warrior he might face on the battlefield in a few hours. Had he done enough? That was the question he must ask himself. Was there any detail, however small, he had not considered that might save one legionary’s life or cost one of Boudicca’s warriors theirs? He felt a twinge of doubt boring into his left temple like a carpenter’s drill. Doubts? Of course he had doubts. Even Caesar must have had doubts on the night before a decisive battle, but like Caesar he had to hide his doubts from everyone. He could have withdrawn the veterans back to Londinium with
