he had a word of encouragement for every man he knew and many he didn’t and they smiled momentarily before their faces resumed the mask of grim concentration that marked a battle-ready legionary.
He remembered the first time he had seen these men, on the day he had inspected them on this very field. He and Lunaris had laughed at their ancient weapons and worn uniforms, their pot bellies and the scrawny arms that looked as if they could barely carry a spear let alone throw it. The faces ran through his mind: old Marcus Saecularis, the sheep farmer, in the centre of the front rank, with the horsehair of his crested helmet announcing his rank to any enemy; Didius, scratching his nose distractedly at the head of his century, who would lend money to any man as long as the rate of return was high enough, but whose last act before donning his armour had been to annul each and every debt; bearded Octavian, named for an emperor, who had stood in the line against Lunaris and his legionaries and had taught them a lesson in humility. And Corvinus, who had never struck him as a coward, but whose position with the fourth century of the Second cohort was left unfilled. Where was he now, when his comrades were about to…
‘They’re coming!’
Strange that the pulsating crash of sword against shield had calmed him to the point where he could watch without emotion the British champions sprint in a great surging crowd towards the bridge. Thousands of them across a front of almost a mile, each racing to be first to reach the Romans on the far side of that narrow barrier. As they advanced and the mass of warriors began to take on individual identity, he felt his heartbeat increase and his breathing deepen.
‘Spears,’ he roared. Each man had two of the iron-pointed pila embedded in the soft grass at his side and a further pair in reserve in the space between the cohorts. Now they chose one and hefted it in their right fists, balancing the weapon for the cast.
The first of the champions were still a hundred paces from the bridge. Good. They would be the fastest, the strongest and the bravest. He saw that many of them had thrown away their shields in their eagerness and their momentum was taking them ahead of their rivals. He counted down in his head. Ten seconds at most until they reached the bridge, then two more heartbeats and…
‘Ready!’
Bare feet thundering on wooden planking. Two, one. Now!
‘Throw!’
Four hundred javelins hissed through the still air for a flight that lasted a split second. The hands that held the spears might be wrinkled and the arms might have lost the awesome power of a quarter of a century before, but they could still throw and at forty paces the target was unmissable. More than two hundred warriors had crowded on to the bridge, eager to be the first to strike a blow against the Romans. Instead, they were the first to die. Heavy spears capable of punching through light armour slammed the champions in the forefront of the attack back against those behind as they took the points in chest, belly or throat. Valerius had known some of the precious weapons would be wasted, but he had to be certain. The entire bridge must be covered in that first cast. Falco had snorted disdainfully and pledged his fortune on it and the wine merchant was as good as his word. Only a handful of the men on the wooden planking survived the rain of spears and most of those were wounded or disabled. The others were pinned by one, two or even three of the weighted pila. Already, two hundred bodies writhed and groaned and stained the boards of the narrow bridge with their blood. But behind them came thousands more.
‘Ready!’ Valerius was well pleased with the result of the first throw. Every warrior now attempting to cross would be impeded by the bodies of the men who had preceded them. He waited until the first of the second surge of warriors stepped on to the dirt of the south bank.
‘Throw!’
With each cast another few hundred joined the corpses on the bridge floor until a literal wall of dead and dying obstructed the attack. In their fury, those who came behind frantically bundled the bodies of brothers, friends, comrades and rivals over the barriers and into the river in an attempt to clear a path. They clawed their way forward snarling like attack dogs, only to die in their turn.
‘Second cohort, to the front.’ In a carefully choreographed movement the cohort behind stepped forward to take the place of those who had exhausted their supply of spears.
‘Ready!’
‘Throw!’
‘Ready!’
‘Throw!’
‘Third cohort, to the front.’
‘Ready!’
‘Throw!’
It could not last. He knew it could not last.
Inch by inch, the Britons edged their way across the barrier of their dead. They were the invincibles, but even invincibles would use a shield if it was the only way to survive this slaughter. As the veterans’ arms tired, the volleys of spears became more ragged, allowing still more to cross. A dozen turned into a hundred, and a hundred into two. Soon, Valerius knew, unless he stopped them, hundreds would turn into thousands.
‘Shields up. Draw your gladii. Form line. Forward!’
It took time, too much time. The respite from the spears had given another four or five hundred a chance to cross and still more were crowding behind them, hampered but not halted by the dead and dying.
Now the cohorts deployed in single line, each six hundred strong, and as they marched towards the bridge he saw with relief that they still overlapped the British bridgehead, but only just. Where were Bela’s cavalrymen?
He matched step with the outer man of the Second cohort and turned to grin encouragement. It was one of the younger soldiers from the Londinium garrison. He tried to remember his name, but couldn’t, only that he should have been back in barracks baking bread for his century. The boy grinned back and in the same instant his right eye exploded like an over-ripe plum and he dropped to the ground as if he were a sack of river sand.
Shit! Valerius looked up to see where the missile had come from, but a howl announced that the Britons who had survived the bridge were halfway across the open ground and about to fall on the front rank of the Roman battle line. So far, the veterans’ casualties had been light.
Now there was dying to be done as well as killing.
XXXIV
They died well.
The gladii hacked down the first shock of the British attack, and the second, but for every Celt who fell another ten rushed forward to take his place. By now only the mound of corpses and the narrowness of the bridge limited the numbers reaching the near bank. A crack like the sound of a giant axe signalled that the side rails of the structure had given way, throwing dozens to their deaths in the swollen river. Even so, thousands had already crossed and the veterans were only just holding them. Something whirred past Valerius’s head, reminding him of the fate of the young legionary. The Britons had no formal units of archers, but many skilled hunters swelled the ranks of that great mass and now they lined the bushes of the far bank, picking their targets with bow or sling. The centurions’ steady cry of ‘Close the gaps’ rang with increasing regularity as the veterans dropped. Three burly Celts pulled Octavian bodily from the Roman formation and hacked him to pieces. Didius took a spear point in the throat and went to his gods without a murmur of complaint. For now, the casualties in the First cohort could be replaced by the men in the second line, but the old soldiers were beginning to tire and the pressure was so great he couldn’t gamble on resting a single man. He stepped on a body and looked down to see the baker from Londinium staring up at him with his single eye. It was the first indication that the line was moving back.
Where was Bela?
The sound of a horn gave him his answer and with relief he stepped out of the line and ran back to the higher ground where the cavalry had formed up. Not Bela, but Matykas, the trooper from the bridge who had advised him to take his little army away. The man must have been in the saddle for more than forty-eight hours, and he led only half the horsemen Valerius had expected.
‘Your commander?’
