scorch mark on the ochre. But they learned quickly. First they cleared the far slopes of the hillside across the river of the tinder-dry, oil-heavy gorse bushes that filled the spaces between the farms and dragged great bundles into the city. While this was done, others were busy on the roofs stripping tiles from the insulae, the former barrack blocks, the basilica and the villas in their fine gardens, and baring the pitch-covered wood. Now the torches could do their work, while inside the walls the gorse burned with all the intensity of Greek fire. From within the temple precinct it appeared innocuous at first, just a few tendrils of smoke rising above the roofline. But, in minutes, the tendrils turned into great writhing columns, with the bright red and gold of the fires at their heart reaching high into the sky, speckled with millions of infinitesimal dancing sparklets that lived and died in a second. House by house and street by street the city was consumed by the flames of Boudicca’s vengeance. The wrath of Andraste had come to Colonia.
But Valerius knew it would not be enough for her.
She came as the sun reached its peak, carrying a long spear but this time without fanfare because no chariot could make its way along the choked main street, which was one of the few not yet burning. Valerius watched the crowd of warriors part to allow the flame-haired figure to emerge from their midst. For the first time she was close enough for him to study properly. She looked older than he’d imagined, perhaps in her late thirties, and her features were striking rather than beautiful, which he found oddly disappointing: a wide forehead and a nose any Roman would be proud of. A plaid cloak covered her shoulders, held at the breast by a large golden brooch which was outdone by the thick neck-ring of the same metal that graced her throat. But it was her eyes that made her who she was, glittering like translucent emeralds with the raging fires of her desire for vengeance burning in their depths. He remembered his earlier feeling of being stripped bare and experienced it again, her hatred projecting itself to shrivel and unman the defenders. Boudicca stood, stern and erect, surrounded by her advisers and the British nobles who had risked everything to join her. Valerius found himself drawn to one, a warrior with his head swathed in bandages, possibly a survivor of the action at the bridge, supported by a thin man in a grey cloak which shimmered in the sunlight.
He saw the spear rise.
‘Make ready,’ he shouted, and ran back to the double line of legionaries.
They came in waves twenty deep and if Valerius had more spears they would have died in waves. Instead, only the first two hundred champions were thrown back as they clambered to the top of the wall and the needle points punched through bare flesh, muscle and bone and then flesh once more. But for all the impact the slaughter made on the attackers the legionaries might have been throwing rose petals.
‘Forward.’ Valerius accepted a shield and placed himself in the centre of the Roman front rank. There would be no directing this battle from behind.
The sweat-stained legionaries marched ten paces in tight ranks behind the protection of their shoulder-high shields, and rammed the iron bosses in the faces of the first men to cross the wall. Valerius felt the impact on his left forearm and punched his gladius through a gap at a fleeting seam of bronzed skin. All along the line he could hear the familiar, almost animal grunts as his legionaries forced the short swords into pliant flesh and the shrieks as the points bit home. At first, not enough warriors could breach the precinct to force the defenders back, and the soldiers pinned them against the wall while at the same time ensuring those who attempted to cross behind them had nowhere to land but on top of their fellows. The men on the wall pranced and raged, attempting to find a way to reach the enemy and howling their hate, but their antics exposed them to the few archers Lunaris had managed to place on the temple roof and one after another the well-aimed arrows plucked them from their perches. For the moment, Valerius’s legionaries more than held their own, but a hail of spears from beyond the wall landed without distinguishing friend or foe and took their toll on the defenders. A legionary in the second rank screamed and staggered from the line as one of the broad-bladed points pierced him through the thigh. In almost the same instant, the man beside Valerius was blinded by a spear thrust from one of the trapped warriors and reeled back with his hands to his face and blood spurting through his fingers. Valerius found himself facing three of the heavily tattooed rebels.
The first long sword, wielded by a snarling, grey-haired ancient who should have been too old to fight, came at him in a curving arc designed to take his head off at the shoulders. With a desperate parry he managed to block it, forcing the blade upwards and leaving the man’s naked belly exposed to a sword point that flickered out of the second Roman line. The Briton went down with a disbelieving howl, just as the second warrior battered Valerius’s shield aside with his own. Any blow would have brought the Roman down, but with screaming, sweating bodies crowding on every side his opponent could only make an awkward overhead stroke that gave Valerius the heartbeat he needed to drive the gladius under the Briton’s chin and into his brain. Still there was no respite. The killing stroke left him open to a howling, red-eyed figure who burst from his left and chopped down two-handed with a massive woodsman’s axe. Valerius cursed, knowing he couldn’t turn quickly enough. This was where his neighbour, now blinded and coughing his life out among the trampling feet, should have covered him. The axe was angled to strike his left shoulder and he knew his armour would be no protection against such a fearsome weapon. The great blade would cleave collarbone, breast and ribs. He screamed in desperation just as a bulky figure stepped into the gap at his side to lock shields with a crunch and an instant later the blade of the axe appeared through the three layers of seasoned oak of Lunaris’s scutum. The big man grinned, hauled the shield sharply to one side and stabbed with his short sword. He was rewarded with a groan. Valerius nodded his thanks and returned to the task of staying alive.
The din of the fighting was fit to burst his ears; screams of pain, howls of triumph and the terrible rhythmic grunting, all punctuated by the clang of iron against wood and the spine-tingling zuuppp of arrows flying inches overhead. His movements became automatic and it gave his mind the opportunity to rove over the battlefield, some deep-buried sense tasting the scent and sound and feeling the movement of everything around him.
‘The right.’ He shouted to make himself heard and Lunaris croaked acknowledgement but shrugged as if to say What do you want me to do about it? as he fended off a series of blows from the front. ‘We have to reinforce the right.’
‘You want me to do it myself’ the duplicarius asked conversationally.
‘What about the reserves?’ Valerius ducked as a spear clattered against his helmet and skidded into the rank behind. Every instinct told him that the pressure on the right flank was growing.
‘Gracilis is in charge. He knows what to do.’
‘I hope…’
The howl of triumph from behind could not have come from any Roman throat, and suddenly the right didn’t matter at all. Because the Britons had done what they should not have been able to, and climbed the east wall in enough force to attack Valerius’s diminishing band of legionaries from the rear.
He glanced over his shoulder and was just in time to see Gracilis’s section of reserves smash into a mass of warriors racing from the northeast corner of the complex.
‘Back,’ he screamed. ‘Back to the temple.’
With even three feet of respite he would have ordered the testudo, but there wasn’t even an inch; every man was shield to shield and sword to sword with two or even three opponents. The only chance was to stay in formation and retreat one step at a time to the temple steps. The efforts of the archers on the temple roof kept the crisis on the right flank from becoming a rout, but he doubted that Gracilis would hold the attack from the rear for more than a few seconds. When he was overcome, the only Romans outside the temple would be dead men.
Foot by agonizing foot Valerius allowed the line to be pushed back. The pressure on his shield was growing unbearable, the scything blows of the British swords threatening to smash even the scutum ’s sturdy structure. Beside him, Lunaris snarled and sweated, cursing his inability to fight back.
Every step they retreated allowed more of Boudicca’s warriors to pour over the wall. The soldiers of any other army would have broken. But these were Romans. Roman legionaries. They knew how to fight like no other. And they knew how to die.
Only a single, tattered rank remained. Those left behind, the dead and the injured, were trampled under the feet of Celts whose battle frenzy increased with each step closer to the temple that symbolized everything they had grown to hate in the long years since Claudius set foot on their land.
By the time Valerius felt the cool shadow cast by the temple roof less than a hundred men remained, exhausted, each bleeding from multiple cuts, scarce able to hold the heavy shields which were the only things keeping them alive. Then a roar from his left told him the inevitable had happened and Gracilis and his men were gone.
