registered the change in the situation, the last few pila arced up and over, signalling the end of that particular advantage.
Decius was grinning as he turned to Fronto.
“That’s us. Your turn now!”
The last few arrows whirred into the enemy, picking off the closest and biggest of them. As the final missile flew, Fronto took a deep breath. “Ranks part!” he bellowed.
All along the defence, the line of legionaries shuffled to create gaps through which the archers could move to the relative safety of the camp. Decius ran along the mound to Fronto and gestured. “We’ll do what we can from behind. Good luck!”
Fronto nodded, casting a last glance at the enemy. Perhaps two or three hundred men had fallen in that brutal assault — more than a third of the enemy force. The rest came on slower, a little more carefully, watching the defenders suspiciously, with the blood lust gone from their eyes. With a deep breath and a murmured prayer to Fortuna, he dropped down the slope and moved between the parted ranks where he collected a shield and fell in with the second rank.
“Front line, close ranks to shieldwall!”
As the shields slammed together, the legate closed his eyes for a moment, willing the enemy to break fast. The second rank, himself included, would be ready to plug any holes in the shieldwall, but until a gap opened, all he could see of the enemy was a general mass of howling flesh in the tiny openings between legionaries.
“Ready?” came a voice from behind and Fronto turned to see Decius and his archers gathered in small groups, hefting hammers, mattocks and stakes that had been brought over to help with the work — even a few empty and discarded wine jars. Even as he frowned at the prefect, the first man swung hard and released a heavy- headed mallet, which arced up over the defenders, falling somewhere among the enemy.
Decius caught his glance and grinned.
“Anything that might help, eh?”
A mattock, heavy and sharp, thrummed overhead, plunging into the mass of the enemy, barely making it over the heads of the legionaries and causing a brief bladder release in the soldier who’d almost lost his head to a flying spade.
“Careful!” Decius snapped. “High and far… high and far.”
He turned his grin back on Fronto, who shook his head but could not help but join in with a disbelieving smile.
The crash of close combat drew his attention back. The enemy had finally reached the shieldwall, though from the screaming and gurgling more were still falling foul of the sharpened branches jutting up from the ditch.
From his position in the rear rank, Fronto watched the men of the Tenth and Fourteenth going to work, their shields changing angle every few seconds in a single movement that opened up a foot-wide gap through which every gladius in the line lanced out, biting into flesh before twisting and withdrawing behind shields that closed once again.
It was an almost mechanical process and the enemy began to pile up on the far side of the rampart, several of them falling foul once again of the slippery conditions underfoot, the combat ripping the turf and earth beneath and churning it into a soup of treacherous mud. Here and there a legionary slipped, but managed to maintain his footing due to the heavy hob-nailed sandals they wore. The barbarians, largely unshod or clad in flat-soled boots, were less lucky, every slip bringing them down into the sucking mire, where they floundered as their own tribesmen clambered across them desperately.
Fronto counted almost a minute before the first legionary went down, an overhead blow cutting him almost in two. The gruesome corpse slopped backwards and splattered into the pool of watery grass behind, staining it with a spreading pink tint. The legate opened his mouth to give the order, but a man was already moving forward to fill the gap.
That was the moment in every battle, though.
The legions fought their mechanical fight with a feeling of invincibility until that breaking point. The first death seemed to trigger it, and Fronto prepared himself as first one and then two, then three men fell, some slumping forwards onto the earth bank, their heads smashed and slashed, their bodies opened and spilling their vitals to the wet ground, others tumbling backwards.
Each time, one of the second rank ran forward, stepping into the gap and slamming his shield into place, continuing the butchery.
The legate watched with held breath as his small force of reserves dwindled more and more, twenty five men now down to fourteen. Now thirteen. Now twelve.
Even as he realised he was about to run out of reserves, Fronto blinked in surprise. Three of the auxiliary archers had joined the line of men, armoured in their light mail shirts, less than half as protective as a legionary version, but gripping spare legionary shields and hefting their backup blades ready to join the fight. Decius fell in beside him, grinning, as more Cretan archers armed up and joined in.
“Ran out of things to throw” he shrugged, hefting his sword.
Only seven legionaries were left and now eight auxiliary reserves. Fronto took another deep breath. “Think we might be in the shit, Decius.”
“Seems that’s the only place I ever meet you!”
Fronto laughed a hollow laugh and turned back as a man howled in front of him, falling back with a spear impaling his chest, snapped off near the solar plexus. “My turn!” he shouted and shuffled forwards, limping over the fallen, groaning man with difficulty. He barely got his shield into position before the next blow carved a small sliver off the curved corner of it.
“Bollocks, that was close!”
The legionary next to him grinned and thrust his sword into a man whose hands had risen for an overhead chop with a heavy axe. Even as the man fell away and Fronto stabbed at the nearest open flesh, his eyes strayed up and over the press of men.
“Mars be praised.” The field was largely empty of enemy warriors, more than two thirds of the Germanic attack now lying in heaps around the field or piled up like cordwood before the shieldwall.
“Nearly done ‘em, sir!” the legionary grinned.
“Why haven’t they broken? We must not have frightened them enough.”
“They know we can’t hold forever, sir. They’ll still win in the end.”
The legate turned a vicious smile on his men. “Not today.”
Withdrawing his sword and closing the shield gap again, he rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath.
“Soldiers of Rome: advance!”
Despite the gasps of surprise around him, Fronto smashed forwards with his shield and then turned it slightly, lancing a speedy blow that cut through a man’s neck cord. The warrior fell away, shrieking in pain, his head lolling obscenely to one side, and Fronto took a step forward and then another, almost collapsing as his bad knee negotiated the slope.
Next to him, the other legionaries had reacted with professional discipline, despite the unexpectedness of the command, smashing the nearest enemies out of the way with their shields and stepping forward, reforming the line. Suddenly, Decius was there, pushing his way into the line, half a dozen men along.
“You’re not winning this one without me, Fronto!”
And the auxiliaries were there too, no longer plugging gaps, but forcing their way into the line, expanding it and extending it, following the lead of the legionaries on either side of them, learning the new tactics of legion fighting in the melting pot of battle itself. The men of the Tenth and Fourteenth reacted momentarily with the traditional distaste of legion men regarding the ‘inferior’ auxilia, but these men had proved themselves once and were doing it again, and within moments, the legionaries were giving their new compatriots enough space to work and yelling encouragement.
The barbarians, until a moment ago throwing themselves against an ever-diminishing line of defenders, suddenly quailed in the face of the unexpectedly violent and enthusiastic advance. Across the field, shouts of consternation were raised in the guttural Germanic tongue and, through the periodic flashes of vision Fronto caught every time the shields parted for a sword blow, it was clear that the rear ranks of the remaining barbarians were now turning on their heels and plummeting into the forest in an effort to escape the scene.
