Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two (44 page)

With a clear view over the river for the first time, Marcus’s eyes widened at the sight of hundreds of Venicone warriors, more than could ever have made their way down the rocky path alongside the falls. He turned to speak to Qadir and saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Pointing, he bellowed the only warning that the two centuries were going to get, ripping his spatha from its scabbard.

‘
Venicones!
’

The warriors came out of the mist to the Romans’ rear, over one hundred strong, their swords flashing orange in the fire’s flickering light, and fell on the Hamians with savage war cries. Caught unawares, the archers dithered for a moment, dying by the dozen as the barbarians hacked and thrust at their unprepared line. Marcus bellowed a desperate order, knowing that his command was seconds away from rout and slaughter.

‘
Turn and fight! Fight or die!
’

With thirty-odd men having been felled by the sudden attack, the men not already dead or dying lifted their shields into a rough wall and momentarily halted the slaughter. Marcus bellowed an order at the Tungrians, pointing with his sword to emphasise the urgency in his voice.

‘
Flanks!
’

The two men nodded and ordered their men, waiting behind the Hamians, to run to either side of their wavering line, temporarily preventing the barbarians from overlapping their defence. Qadir walked down the decimated Hamian line’s rear, bending to shout into his centurion’s ear over the guttural cries of their attackers.

‘They must have a crossing point somewhere downstream!’

Marcus nodded grimly, his swords held ready by his sides.

‘Nothing we can do about that. Our only hope now is that the fire attracts some attention …’

A soldier in front of the two men spun on his feet and dropped
with his throat opened and fountaining blood, and Marcus stepped into the gap before his chosen man had the chance. He battered away the killer’s bloodied sword with his gladius, thrusting the spatha’s point into his throat. Another warrior stepped into the fight and swung his sword up for a downstroke, opening himself up long enough for Marcus to take a fast step forward and whip a booted foot into his groin. Doubled over with the pain, the swordsman was an easy kill as the young Roman hacked hard at the man’s bowed head, chopping into his skull and dropping him to the sodden turf.

Around him his century was slowly, remorselessly being taken to pieces, a continual stream of Venicone warriors strengthening their attackers as they hacked and chopped at the Hamians. The Tungrians alongside them were suffering equally, and Marcus guessed that he had less than half his original number of men facing perhaps twice as many of the enemy. He parried a Venicone spear with his gladius, killing the man wielding it and then the men to either side with swift, economical attacks that seemed to happen with unconscious volition, his mind focused more on their predicament than the fight. The man next to him went down with a spear thrust through his mouth, choking on the blood that was gushing down his windpipe with a horrible gurgle, and Qadir stepped in alongside him, scowling over his shield at the odds they were facing. As the two men shared a momentary glance, preparing to die where they stood, a shout rang out over the din of their doomed fight.

‘Tungria!
Tungriaaaa!
’

With a start Marcus realised that there were helmeted heads looming over the barbarian left flank, big men, their faces contorted with rage as they hammered into the abruptly wrongfooted Venicones, their axes rising and falling in arcs of bright silver and sprays of blood. The Bear’s 10th Century had discarded their shields to a man and were wielding their weapons like barbarian berserkers, each man painting himself with blood from head to toe as they raved at the Venicone warriors like men possessed.

‘Eighth Century, attack. Attack!’

The remaining Hamians responded to Qadir’s exhortation like punch-drunk boxers, their sword-thrusts no better than a reflex reaction to the bellowed command. Hardly a man put his blade to his intended target but, with Titus’s men to their flank and rear in full battle rage, and the soldiers to their front seemingly intent on revenge where a moment before they had been all but out of the fight, the Venicones were unable to offer resistance. They turned and fled, still dying under the Tungrian axes, running wildly in all directions to escape their implacable enemies. The Hamians stood in their uneven line, unable to offer pursuit as the barbarians ran, able only to watch hollow eyed as another Tungrian century appeared out of the mist. Julius and Frontinius hurried to the 8th’s line, seeking Marcus. He saluted, aware that he was trembling on the edge of exhaustion. The first spear clapped a hand to his young officer’s shoulder in delight, ignoring the blood that stained his armour.

‘It’s good to see you, Centurion, we’d written you off hours ago. Your situation?’

Marcus pulled his helmet off, dragging a bloody hand through his sweat-soaked hair.

‘First Spear, the Eighth Century and our Second Cohort colleagues here have held this crossing since we used it to reach this side of the river. As you can see it’s now useless, thanks to the bravery of Centurion Appius.’

He told the story of their defence of the crossing point in swift, economical terms.

Frontinius nodded approvingly at the short tale’s end, turning to the two centuries’ remnants and raising his voice to make himself heard.

‘Well done, all of you, very well done. I’d say you’ve more than played your part today. Centurion Corvus, take your men back to the ford. You can stand guard at the camp in case any of those tattooed bastards get past us.’ He turned to Julius, pointing south into the mist. ‘Centurion Julius, take all four centuries south down the riverbank and find their other crossing point, and quickly. That can only have been a probe, and wherever it is they’re crossing
they’ll still be putting men across the river. We can’t afford for them to build their strength up. Whatever they’re using to get across, make it unusable and then form a stop line in case they’ve already got more men across than we know about. I think a few of them got past us, but all they’ll find is the rest of our two cohorts. Now, Centurion Corvus, let’s you and I march for the camp, and you can tell me about how you came to be here at all rather than face down in the mud on the other side of the river. And, for that matter, how you managed to scatter barbarian dead around quite so liberally, given your men’s lack of any battle experience …’

Martos led his warriors away from the ford without any of the defenders seeming to notice, climbing the steep hill to the south of the defences in long rangy strides that put them on the flat summit within two minutes. With their leader setting the pace the Votadini headed south along the crest’s rolling surface, Martos staring intently down into the mist for a sight of the place he was looking for. After a few minutes he saw the Hamians marching tiredly north along the river’s bank, followed closely by the survivors of the Tungrian century.

‘Can’t be too far now …’

He led his men cautiously down the valley’s steep slope, their swords drawn and ready, his eyes scanning the ground.

‘There!’

A man to his right had spotted the scene of the battle to hold the riverbank, marked by both the burning trees’ billowing smoke and the corpses scattered across the river’s narrow plain by the score. Martos waved his men forward and down the hill.

‘Make it quick. The longer we’re here, the more chance of our being surprised …’

Julius took his four centuries south at a gentle jog, balancing the need to make haste with that of his men being ready to fight when they met the inevitable opposition. The other three centurions ran alongside him, their faces grim as they listened to his instructions.

‘It has to be another warband. That’s the reason those lads back
at the ford haven’t attacked again, they’re waiting for this lot to turn our right flank. They’ll be building up their strength ready to attack the riverbank, hoping to sweep away any blocking force and fall on the defenders at the ford without warning. When we find them, we form a three-century line and then advance to make contact, with the Bear’s lads held back in reserve. We kill every blue-nose we can find, then we let the axemen loose on whatever they’re using as a bridge while the rest of us use our shields and spears to protect them as best we can. Right, it’s time to slow down and listen.’

He signalled the advance to slow to walking pace, and ordered a quiet deployment into battle line, the muffled jingling of the soldiers’ equipment the only clue to their presence as they drew their swords and hefted their shields, ready to fight. They could hear the enemy now, a distant murmur of voices in the mist as they advanced cautiously down the riverbank. Julius signalled to his brother officers, pointing to his eyes and calling softly to them.

‘They’re closer than they sound in this fucking mist. Keep your eyes open.’

With a gentle gust of wind the mist shifted, momentarily opening a window on the Venicones gathered by the river’s bank.

‘
Fuck me sideways …
’

The veteran Scarface, in his usual place at the centre of the 9th Century’s line, stared aghast at the scene revealed as the mist rolled aside for a moment. Hundreds of Venico warriors were milling about on the riverbank less than fifty paces in front of them, clearly waiting for their leaders to send them along the river in force. Behind them a continual stream of men were crossing the trunks of three trees that had been felled and lashed together to span the river’s churning course. The Red now foamed and gurgled around rocks that protruded from the water, as the river approached the first in a series of falls that dropped it abruptly into a stone-walled canyon that would prevent any further progress down either of the river’s banks.

Behind the Roman line Julius took one look at the scene laid
out before them and stepped up behind his men, taking a deep breath and bellowing his orders.

‘Spears ready! Advance!’

The Venicone warriors, alerted to the presence of their enemy by his voice, came bounding forward to the attack, their voices raised in a clamour of screamed abuse and swords brandished over their heads.

‘
Front rank, throw …!
’

The front rankers ran swiftly forward and launched their spears across the twenty-five-yard gap between their line and the oncoming warriors, the heavy-bladed missiles slamming into the barbarian charge and dropping dozens of the Venicones to the steaming turf screaming in agony.

‘
Rear rank, throw …!
’

The front rank had followed their training and gone down on one knee once their spears were in the air, ignoring the oncoming warriors to allow their fellows an unrestricted throw. The second volley of spears was thrown lower than the first, their trajectories flatter as their targets raced closer, and the missiles again took a vicious toll of the attackers, who were for the most part unarmoured. All along the front of the mass of charging warriors men fell under the thumping impact of the spears, the flying blades piercing their limbs and bodies and dropping them helplessly to the ground, impeding their fellows, who trampled over the fallen in their urgency to get at the Romans.

‘
Line!
’

The Tungrian front rank drew their swords with a massed scrape of iron on scabbard fittings, slamming their shields into an unbroken wall that stretched from the riverbank to almost a third of the way up the valley’s side. With a mighty roar the tribesmen recovered the momentum stolen from them by the volleys of spears and dashed themselves against the Roman shields, swords flashing as they rose and fell in vicious arcs. Unlike the Selgovae tribesmen that the cohort had fought to a standstill at the battle of Lost Eagle the Venicones were incandescent in their battle fury, disdaining any pretence of self-preservation as they hacked and chopped at the Tungrians’ shields and the helmeted heads that
peered over them, taking any opportunity to attack the men behind them even if it opened them up to devastating counter-attack from the soldiers’ short thrusting swords.

Julius stalked down the rear of his command’s line to find Rufius marshalling his century’s defences, feeding men into the line as the soldiers to their front suffered under the barbarian swords. His brother officer nodded grimly, inclining his head to the warriors railing at the shields, almost close enough to reach out and touch, and shouted over the clamour of their assault.

‘This is more like the old days. If the lads that faced us at Lost Eagle had been this fired up I doubt we would have survived long enough for the legions to show up.’

Julius nodded grimly, one hand gripping his sword’s hilt tightly.

‘And they’ve still got men crossing the river behind them. Unless we can chop that bridge off they’ll just wear us down with numbers.’

A soldier to their left went down under a barbarian axe-blow that cleaved through the curved iron plate of his helmet, staggering blank eyed back from the shield wall before pitching headlong to the bloody grass with the weapon still embedded in his head. Rufius’s chosen man thrust a rear ranker into the breach, the soldier stepping forward to put his sword into the disarmed axeman’s throat as the man leapt at him with only his teeth and nails for weapons. Rufius raised an eyebrow, ducking momentarily as a spear flashed past the two men, clearly aimed at the enticing target of their helmet crests.

‘Fuck me, they’re keen. Perhaps we should send the Bear’s boys round them to attack the bridge?’