Each of the four legion vexillations had its nominal command. Cicero and one of the tribunes had taken their group north, the senior tribune Terrasidius and one of the others had taken a group south. The three remaining junior tribunes had gone northwest — and were probably hopelessly lost, given the general abilities of their kind — while Lutorius had brought his command southwest.
“Who’s going to persuade ‘blue eyes’ to stay after dark?”
“I’ll do it. You’ve been pissing him off all day, so he won’t listen to you.”
Furius nodded and Fabius turned to make his way over to the primus pilus, just in time to see an arrow whip out from the woodland that surrounded the golden field-bowl, smashing into Lutorius’ eye and driving into his brain, killing him instantly.
The air suddenly filled with the thrum of arrows as men screamed and fell all around the clearing. Even as Furius turned to address the cornicen standing close by with his horn on his arm, Fabius bellowed “Shields! To Arms!”
“Cornicen: Sound the alarm!”
The musician put the horn to his lips, but all that came out of his mouth was a gobbet of blood as a thrown spear suddenly burst through his neck. His eyes went wide and he clutched at the crimson spear head sticking a foot from his front before toppling over forward, making a bubbling noise. Furius cursed.
“Testudo! Form testudos!”
The field was alive now with desperate legionaries. Furius and Fabius’ two centuries were already falling into formation, their shields coming up to form the missile-proof tortoise. The two centurions jogged across to their men, well aware that most of the centuries in the clearing were doomed, having dropped their shields and weapons and some even their armour while they worked. Men were being scythed down like the wheat they’d been harvesting.
“Get to the centre! Collect your gear and get out of missile range!”
It was all he could really do, and he hoped the other soldiers’ centurions would follow the lead and try to protect their commands. In the meantime, he and Fabius moved outside missile range, behind their centuries.
“Prepare yourselves for the next move!”
They didn’t have long to wait. Having lost, at Fabius’ estimation, some two hundred men just to an initial volley, the remaining legionaries had pulled back to the centre of the clearing, out of the reach of the arrows and spears, where many were hurriedly arming themselves and jamming on helmets. Only half of them wore their mail shirts, though, and a number were missing shields. Furius and Fabius shook their heads in disbelief as their two centuries, the only two in the Seventh to be fully equipped and fighting fit, backed up to join their comrades.
“Drop testudo. Form a defensive circle!” Furius shouted. “Everyone! Form a circle. Three lines deep, those with armour and shields on the outer line!”
Warriors were now beginning to step out of the woods, spears, axes and swords raised, some with shields or helmets, even some with mail shirts. Many of them were decorated with blue designs, and their hair was spiked long and white with dried mud. It hardly came as a surprise to note that the legion was completely surrounded, though it was with some dismay that the centurions recognised the shape and sound of both cavalry and chariots thundering down the numerous pathways and tracks into the wide bowl-shaped clearing.
They were trapped.
Having secured their prey and being wary of the shieldwall that had caused so much havoc at the beach, the native warriors advanced slowly, moving cautiously out into the open.
“Why didn’t they just keep peppering us with arrows?” shouted an optio nearby. Furius ground his teeth angrily. The men were nervous enough without officers giving them extra reasons to panic.
“Because, shit-streak, they’ve got us where they want us now. Their ‘noble’ warriors want a chance to carve us up themselves. It’s only noble to a Celt if they can look into your eyes when you die.”
Fabius forced a grin. “But that’s not going to happen. We’re going to give these native piss stains something to think about. For Rome!” he bellowed and started to smack his gladius blade against the shield edge of the man next to him, lacking one himself.
The battle cry had the desired effect, building the courage of the trapped men rapidly, and the crash of swords on shield rims slowly rose to a deafening crescendo.
Fabius was focusing on the warriors opposite him who blocked the track that led back toward the camp where the Tenth would be busy cutting timber and constructing buildings and palisades around the new annexe for the storehouses.
“Silence!” he bellowed, as he squinted at the mass of warriors. A slow, grim smile spread across his face. In the wide, grassy, rutted track, stood one of the carts of wheat, already fully laden. Two legionaries were waving from the top of the cart, as yet unseen by the Briton army that lay between them and their fellow legionaries.
“Get to camp” Fabius bellowed. “Go. Get help!”
For a moment, he worried that the cart was too far away for the men to hear, despite the fact that the legion had silenced immediately at his call, stilling their swords. He watched anxiously as the two figures apparently conferred. Taking the risk, Fabius waved his arms away, gesturing for them to leave.
One or two of the natives seemed to catch on to what the centurion was saying and turned, spotting the cart several hundred yards down the track and shouting to their friends. To Fabius’ relief, the cart suddenly lurched and started to move, the two men on top almost falling with the sudden jerk.
With a roar, a sizeable group from the army of Celts raced after the cart and Fabius watched tensely as the vehicle built up speed slowly. They would never make it. Why didn’t…
Even as the notion occurred to him, it seemed to have struck the men on the cart, who were hurling the sheaves of wheat from the vehicle to lose some weight and give it an extra turn of speed. The warriors closed on them, regardless, and the two desperate legionaries began to actually hurl the sheaves at the pursuers themselves, knocking aside the nearest of them.
Fabius’ gut soured as a thrown spear caught one of the cart-riders dead centre in the chest, impaling him and throwing him from the bouncing vehicle. The scene was becoming difficult to make out now, the retreating cart and pursuers shrinking with distance, but he was fairly certain he saw the vehicle continue to bounce off down the track as the warriors came to a tired halt, pushing and shoving each other as they tried to assign the blame for letting some legionaries escape.
Fabius nodded to himself.
“That’s it lads. Help will be coming soon enough. We’ve just got to hold them for a bit.”
Even as he said it, he wondered how many of the other officers and men of the Seventh realised that the ‘bit’ he was talking about would in all likelihood be an hour. It would take probably twenty minutes for the cart to reach camp — fifteen at even a dangerous speed. It would take twenty minutes for the Tenth to come to their aid, even at a run. And there would be at least ten minutes of getting the army ready in between, calling back the workers from the woods and so on. It was distinctly possible that this vexillation of the Seventh legion would be corpses picked over by crows by the time the Tenth came to relieve them.
But it was a chance; a hope. Moreover, it was something for the men to believe in; to cling on to.
“Every man that makes it out today will go down in my book and when we get back to Gaul, you’ll all get a bonus, an extra acetum ration, and a week off duties in rotation.”
From somewhere to the right, out of sight, he heard Furius’ raised voice. “Any man who distinguishes himself in the next hour earns himself ‘immune’ status!”
There was a roar of approval from the men of the Seventh and Fabius grinned. A dead man’s boots had just given his friend a field promotion and made him effective primus pilus and commander of the vexillation. And that made Fabius the second centurion of the legion.
“Alright men. I’ve just had a ‘blood promotion’ and I’m bollocksed if I’m going to die now and give it up straight away. Lock shields and ready yourself to kill as many of these blue-skinned goat-humpers you can. Any man who kills more of them than me gets an amphora of good wine.”
Another roar of approval from the men was almost drowned out by the matching roar of the Britons who burst into a charge.
“Come on, then. Time to die!”
Fronto stood on the raised parapet of the camp’s wall next to the west gate, watching the men of the first to fourth cohorts gradually widening the killing ground around the camp by reducing the treeline into the distance.
