Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two (32 page)

Marcus nodded again.

‘Can your men take them down with this much light?’

Even in the gloom he saw the white of his chosen man’s teeth bared in a fierce smile.

‘We can, but we need better light for the next task. Besides, I expected more than these two. A short while longer would be wise, I think?’

Marcus whispered agreement, and the two men waited while the glow of the eastern horizon slowly brightened. He was on the verge of ordering the attack when another silhouette climbed up
the fort’s slope, seeming to rise up out of the earth in front of them, and joined the other two men, now clearly outlined against a pink dawn sky.

‘He must have been at the foot of the slope, perhaps praying silently to his gods?’

Marcus snorted mirthlessly.

‘Emptying his bowels, more likely. It’s time. Another five minutes and they’ll have enough light to see us. Antenoch, stay here to guide the Ninth Century to us once the excitement starts. I don’t want to risk them missing their way in the dark and leaving us without any means of fighting back if the barbarians get past our arrows.’

Qadir nodded, muttering a quiet command to the dozen archers he had picked out for this critical first task. Still indistinct to Marcus’s eyes, their capes merging with the fort’s deep shadow, they nocked arrows to their bows and took up the first slack. Marcus nodded to his chosen man.

‘Now.’

Pulling back their bowstrings until the weapons made tiny creaking sounds under the strain, the archers made the last adjustments to their points of aim, waiting for Qadir’s command. The chosen man paused for a long breath to allow them to settle, then hissed a terse command. The barbarian sentries staggered under the impact of a dozen arrows, all three slumping to the ground as the humming note of the bowstrings died away, hopefully unheard from within the fort. Marcus drew his cavalry sword and bounded forward up the slope, reaching the top in thirty seconds of scrambling climb, then dropped on to his chest and hugged the earth wall’s parapet alongside the fallen barbarians. One of the men was quietly choking on his own blood in the dawn’s silence, his bubbling breaths silenced by a swift stroke of the blade across his throat.

From the wall’s vantage point the enemy camp was laid out beneath him, their fires still burning across the area enclosed by the circular rampart. In the dawn’s pale light, with the sun still below the forested horizon, the mass of the enemy gathered 250
paces away on the slope of the hill fort’s southern wall was an indistinct seething wall of shaggy warriors baying for blood. Only the warband’s front rank was standing on the earth wall’s parapet, presumably to protect the remainder of the warband against the possibility that the legion artillery’s bolt throwers might yet make an unwelcome appearance. The remainder were gathered in the southern rampart’s protection for the time being. Marcus could clearly hear the shouts of their leaders, building their men up for the bloodletting to come and obviously determined to make the invaders pay dearly for every foot gained. Scanning the wall to the east and south, he quickly spotted the expected groups of sentries still watching the ground to their front, clearly still unaware of the threat to their rear. Crawling back to the edge of the rampart, he beckoned Qadir and his selected archers to join him, muttering into the big man’s ear.

‘I need you to take down the other two groups of sentries …’

He pointed out the fresh targets to Qadir, who swiftly detailed a target to each of his men.

‘… but two arrows each may not be enough for a silent kill. I suggest you bring up the rest of the century, and have them ready to start shooting the second the sentries are down.’

Qadir nodded, and waved the rest of the century forward to just below the rampart’s lip. Grim faced, they nocked arrows and held their bows pointing downwards, ready to lift, draw and shoot. Marcus looked at Qadir one last time.

‘Ready?’

The chosen man nodded.

‘Shoot.’

Qadir jerked a hand forward to unleash his picked marksmen’s arrows. The sentries fell under the Hamians’ volley, one man clearly attempting to call out a warning despite his wounds, but the clamour of both the waiting cohorts and the warband’s imprecations drowned out his efforts long enough for another arrow to slam into his back and drop him face down on to the wall’s dried mud. As the sentries fell the remainder of the 8th’s men scrambled up the last few paces of climb, quickly forming
two lines with their bows held ready to shoot, every one of them now staring at Qadir in readiness for his order. Without waiting for permission, Qadir spread his arms to indicate that the whole century was to shoot, then pivoted to point at the mass of warriors unwittingly waiting under the threat of their bows.

The Hamians’ first volley of arrows arced down on to the unsuspecting barbarians out of the dark western sky. Dozens of men fell, some dead before they hit the ground but most of them screaming out their sudden agony as the barbed iron slammed deep into their heads, necks and chests. Even as the first victims reeled under the shock of impact another volley punched down into their ranks, taking a fresh toll of their strength as the archers’ still uncomprehending victims fell with blood frothing from their horrific wounds. Marcus grinned wolfishly, pointing at the enemy warriors with his cavalry sword.

‘Keep them shooting! Pour it on!’

Qadir nodded without taking his eyes off the target as he nocked another arrow and sent it into the warband’s screaming mass, shouting to his men to rain arrows on to the still-defenceless barbarians. Marcus’s eyes sought and found the 8th’s trumpeter.

‘
Sound the advance. Blow, man, blow!
’

As the sweet notes of the call to advance sounded above the warband’s howls, he drew his short gladius and held it alongside the longer cavalry weapon, testing the weight and balance of the blades in readiness for what he knew must come soon enough. Already the warband’s rear ranks were struggling to regain some semblance of order, those men with shields sheltering behind them as best they could while fighting their way through the human wreckage of the 8th’s stricken victims. A lone warrior broke away from the pack and sprinted towards the archers with his shield held close to his body, followed over the next few seconds by several more, the men’s swords glinting in the dawn’s pale light as they charged across the gap between the Hamians and their targets in a growing tide of fury. Marcus turned back to find Qadir still pulling arrows from his quiver and loosing them into the warband with impressive speed.

‘Keep shooting! I’ll deal with anyone that gets through!’

The chosen man nodded grimly, lowering his bow a fraction to shoot an arrow into the legs of the closest barbarian before shouting a command over his shoulder.

‘Front rank, target the runners. Rear rank, keep shooting!’

As Marcus watched, his swords raised in their familiar stance with the blade points level, the front rank took aim at their attackers and loosed a volley of arrows that dropped half of them with head and leg injuries. A warrior who had been brave enough to attack without the protection of a shield reeled under the impact of half a dozen arrows and toppled to the ground without ever breaking stride, his legs kicking even as he sprawled full length in blood-slickened grass. Even with half the century now focused on their defence, they were still shooting hundreds of arrows into the defenceless warband every minute, giving the cohorts priceless moments of opportunity to smash through their defence of the hill fort’s walls.

‘
You!
’

The trumpeter jerked his eyes from the charging barbarians and on to his centurion with a guilty start.

‘Keep sounding the advance. If they break through to the archers you will drop that horn, pull your sword and defend them to the death.’

The other man nodded jerkily, putting the trumpet back to his lips and drawing breath. Marcus turned back to their attackers, judging that the survivors had closed to within thirty paces. He shouted over his shoulder to Qadir over the trumpeter’s renewed efforts, readying himself for the first clash.

‘I’m going down on to the dance floor to try my luck. Try not to shoot me!’

‘
What?
’

The chosen man paused in mid-shot as his centurion stepped down the earth wall and out into the space between the front rank and the charging barbarians, fewer with each volley that ripped at their tattered ranks but gathering strength with every second as more men fought their way out of the warband’s milling chaos to
run towards the 8th’s position on the earth wall. He drew the arrow back to the limit of the weapon’s capacity, forcing his strength into its stressed wood-and-bone frame, waited a second to allow his target to run on to the point of aim, then loosed the missile into the warrior’s face at less then twenty paces, skimming the arrow’s point across the top of the barbarian’s shield and squarely through one eye socket. The tribesman spun to the ground with the arrow’s immense impact, only half of the shaft protruding from his otherwise undamaged face.

Marcus forced his fascinated attention from Qadir’s victim to the next-closest attacker, watching as two, then three arrows slammed into the man’s shield, heavy iron heads punching through the layered wood with ease at such close range. The warrior’s arm was probably pinned to his board by at least one of the arrows, his blood flowing down the inner bowl, but from the wide-eyed rage contorting the man’s features it wasn’t going to hamper the damage he would do if he fought his way through to the Hamians. Another arrow slammed through the attacker’s calf but he staggered on, charging towards the centurion with his long sword sweeping down in a vicious blow at the unshielded officer.

Marcus stepped to one side with an easy grace, caught the barbarian’s blade with his own long-bladed spatha and steered it away to his right, pushing his attacker’s right arm across his body to open up his unshielded right side before stepping in fast, hooking his short-bladed gladius round to punch hard into the warrior’s ribs, then straightening to shrug the grievously wounded man off his blade. Another man charged in to attack him from the left, too close for Marcus to reorient himself in time but giving him enough time to see the pair of arrows protruding from the warrior’s left shoulder. The limb would be pinned in place by the arrows’ unyielding intrusion, useless for anything better than holding the man’s shield in place. Diving to the ground, he scythed the spatha in under the shield’s immobile defence, severed the warrior’s calf muscle and rolled back on to his feet, leaving the staggering cripple to the Hamians’ bows.

A flight of arrows whipped past Marcus and into the oncoming barbarians, close enough that he heard the breathy whistle of the
closest as it flicked past his ear. Several more tribesmen went down with wounds to their heads and legs, but enough had survived to narrow his eyes in calculation as to which would be his next combat. The two leading runners made his mind up for him, drawn to his cross-crested helmet’s dull shine in the early morning sun, one of the pair a split second in front of his companion with his eyes fixed wide in the fierce joy of combat. Marcus’s thrown gladius spun one precisely judged revolution through the dawn’s chill air before embedding itself in his throat and dropping him choking into the dew-soaked grass. Parrying the other man’s sword blow with the blade of his spatha, the centurion dropped to one knee to grasp his fallen comrade’s long sword by its carved bone hilt, lifting it to deflect the warrior’s next attack before jabbing the spatha’s blade up into his attacker’s jaw. After an instant of resistance the blade penetrated the roof of the barbarian’s mouth and sank deep into his brain. He staggered backwards out of the combat, his eyes rolling up as he sagged lifelessly to the ground.

Recovering his footing, Marcus saw a trio of warriors closing on him fast, and beyond them another half-dozen advancing with their shields raised, and realised with a sickening lurch that he had allowed the heady exhilaration of combat to put him in extreme danger. A fresh wave of energy washed through the young officer as he steadied himself to meet the threat, his vision seeming to narrow and darken slightly as his body fed every usable drop of blood to his muscles. Nostrils flaring to suck in air, he rose on to the balls of his feet as if preparing to dance as the first three men charged in to attack.

The leading warrior made a straightforward lunge with his long sword, his eyes widening comically as Marcus smashed the blade aside with his left-hand sword, then thrust the other into his thigh, shifting his weight on to the weapon to force it through the heavy muscles and out of the man’s leg in a shower of blood from the severed artery.

As the wounded man screamed in sudden pain, staggering where he stood with one leg unable to support his weight, Marcus hacked the spatha into the face of the warrior to his right so fast that it
was all the man could do to parry the blow upwards, leaving himself open to a brutally powerful half-fist that ruptured his throat and dropped him choking to the ground. Marcus hacked at his first victim’s head with his spatha, gripping the sword buried in his leg and kicking the grievously injured warrior backwards to impede the last of the three from bringing his weapon to bear, tearing it free as the barbarian fell away from him. He ducked reflexively as the last man’s sword hacked through the air where his head had been, but before he could move to either attack or defend an arrow flicked over his shoulder and buried itself deep in the barbarian’s ribs, the shock dumping the man on to his backside with eyes slitted against the pain.