Reign of Iron (17 page)

“Can they not sail their ships round the spit?”

“No, too shallow and cliffs to the south. The only place they can land is the spit and the only way off the spit without swimming or floating is the path through the marsh.”

“But what if—” Chamanca put a hand on his arm and shook her head. This was not the time to be questioning their general. And besides, Chamanca knew what Lowa was doing even if Mal didn’t. The spit looked like a great place to land from the sea, but, once on it, the Roman army would be more or less trapped. Their options would be to go back to sea, or to come inland across water or up the narrow path through the marsh. Either of those latter options, and they’d be torn apart by scorpion and arrow fire.

Mal seemed to get her point, nodded to himself, and strode away.

“Atlas – infantry should not be needed yet. Tell them to hold by the village, to rest, sleep and eat, but to be dressed for fighting with their weapons ready. Ensure your company commanders are ready to run their men anywhere to defend a crossing, then come to the beach to join me and the cavalry.

“Chamanca,” Lowa continued, “same deal with the chariots. They’re to cover the path foremost, but keep an eye for anyone crossing the channel and be ready to move quickly to support the infantry with slings and arrows and
not
get in its way. Once they’re in position make sure your deputy knows the plan, then get on a horse and join us on the beach. I have a role for you and Atlas.”

Chamanca grinned and ran to find her chariots, blood lust fizzing in every limb.

The first ships ran aground, still a good forty paces from the shore. Ragnall gripped the rail and watched legionaries jump from the boats, swords aloft and roaring heroically. He shared their excitement. Ragnall knew that Britain was just Britain, a place of mud and beer and brutes, but to the legionaries this wild land was another world – unknown, exciting and, surely, terrifying. If he’d been one of them he’d have roared, too.

Their ardour was immediately dampened, unfortunately, when they found that the water was deeper than it looked. The tallest sank up to their chests. The shortest went under. Holding swords and shields aloft, some waded in while others helped their smaller brothers in arms. The next soldiers off the boats climbed down a great deal more gingerly.

On Ragnall’s boat, Caesar’s mouth was a line of frustration. Ragnall saw his point. Those cursed Gaulish boat builders should have made transports with shallower draughts! He followed the general’s gaze to the shore, past the legionaries’ slow, ragged and painfully vulnerable advance. If a few hundred archers appeared now, then surely they’d have to retreat? Luckily, all was quiet. More and more boats swished aground and legionaries disembarked more carefully. However, on a nearby boat he saw a lone legionary become frustrated by the delay and jump from too far back in the boat. Ragnall shouted a warning, but too late. The legionary splashed down and disappeared. His hands surfaced, but weighed down by leather and metal, that was the best he could do. A couple of heartbeats later his hand appeared again, just one this time and further out to sea. He was jumping for air and heading the wrong way. On the next jump only his fingertips broke the surface. He was going to drown. Ragnall shouted at the men still on his ship, all queuing to leap off the front, but nobody heard him.

Jupiter’s tits, Ragnall said to himself. He peeled his toga over his head and dived off the side. He swum across with the powerful, overarm stroke that he’d learnt on the Island of Angels, and dived under as he approached what he hoped was the turbulence caused by the drowning man’s thrashing. He found the man straight away, grabbed him around the waist, and, staying underwater himself, hoicked him up above the surface and marched him to the side of the ship. After what seemed like far too long a time, the legionary found a grip that held and hauled himself up. Ragnall leapt, sucked in air and climbed onto the boat where he stood naked save for his sandals. Luckily the waterlogged legionary, the helmsman and a couple of crew were the only people left onboard. The legionary found him a blanket.

While Ragnall had been rescuing the man, he saw hundreds and hundreds – thousands – more Romans had disembarked and were wading for shore, swords and shields aloft. Here we go, thought Ragnall. This is a big moment. The beginning of the Romanisation of Britain. Day One of the Reign of King Ragnall.

“Thanks for that!” said the legionary, high-pitched and happy. “Thought I was a goner, then. And you know what? All I could see when I was down there was my wife telling me how stupid I was. ‘Didn’t even get to dry land!’ she was saying. ‘You’re so thick you can’t even get off the right end of a boat!’ I tell you, I was glad to be dying for a moment. Not that I’m not grateful that you rescued me, I am. And I do love by wife although, between you, me and the lantern post, she can be a right bitch. Now, I’ve got to be going so … oh, by fucking Mars!”

Ragnall followed his gaze, past the thousands of wading Romans. Cantering along the beach towards them were several hundred British cavalry riding in two well-ordered lines. The nearer line hurled spears and took bows from their backs as their first missiles impaled some of the keener shore-bound soldiers. He recognised the woman at their head, speeding up into a gallop, blonde hair dancing behind her, recurve bow pumping shot after shot into the wading Roman ranks – Lowa! And, right behind her, that was Chamanca and Atlas. These latter two dismounted. While the others all carried on with their bows, Atlas and Chamanca walked towards the sea, the African holding his axe, the Iberian her ball-mace and short sword. So she had survived the sea battle. He wondered where Carden was. He hoped he was all right – he’d been thinking of giving a role in his new Britain to the big man who might or might not have saved him from Ariovistus by catapulting him into a lake.

Behind the front row of archers picking targets and shooting directly into the soldiers, the back line of cavalry sent a volley of arrows upwards. The missiles peaked, paused and fell in among the legionaries.

Ragnall looked to the command boat – he should be getting back, he thought – but its oars were in the water and it was swinging south, away from him, along with the eleven other warships. So he could either swim ashore through the storm of arrows and join the fight or stay in the transport. He decided to stay where he was for now.

“Rather them than me!” said the helmsman, walking up to stand next to him. He was a stout man, bearded but bald, with hair sprouting from the neck of his sailor’s jerkin. A Syrian, Ragnall guessed, from the east end of the Mediterranean. “They’re getting their arses handed to ’em!” The Syrian nodded, as if agreeing with himself.

Ragnall did not dignify his defeatist comment with a reply. But he did have a point. Lowa and her Maidunites were slaughtering the legionaries. Ragnall had never seen the Romans anywhere near the trouble that they were in now. Even Caesar, he supposed, was prone to the odd error. Although, in the general’s defence, it was his first sea invasion, and, more pertinently, if the Gauls had built him proper transport boats, the legionaries would be ashore and much more ready to defend against the deadly iron salvos.

They were getting there now. None of the Romans, Ragnall was proud to see, was attempting to return to the boats. Despite arrows stopping as many as one in every two, they waded on. Their courage was stirring. The first legionaries reached the shore and formed their shields into a defensive tortoise. Ragnall cheered. The helmsman gave him an “Oh, you’re one of those, are you?” look, but Ragnall ignored it. On the shore the first tortoise advanced up the beach, becoming more hedgehog than tortoise as arrows zipped into shields. All along the shore, more impregnable tortoises were forming.

Ragnall bounced on the balls of his feet. He was thrilled, but confused. He wanted the Romans to triumph, but he also wanted the Britons to do well. Part of him hated watching the legionaries die, but part of him was glad that Lowa and her army were fighting so intelligently. There was no doubt about it, he was proud of his homeland. The British, as he’d pointed out repeatedly over the last two years, were not Gauls.

Atlas’ first swing smashed two shields and severed a Roman arm. Chamanca dived through the breach in the tortoise’s shell. The Kushite scanned left and right as he brought his axe down again. It was vital that their route back to their horses was left open. Their role was to kill a lot of Romans, quickly, then get out of there. They weren’t seeking to win the war that day, just to give the Romans something to talk about around their campfires.

In front of him legionaries screamed under their shields then the shell fell away to reveal dead Romans, dying Romans, confused Romans – and Chamanca, sucking on a Roman neck. Atlas stepped in to dispatch the confused legionaries. The last of them was a reasonable fighter who dodged a couple of axe blows before an arrow took him in the chest, heralding Lowa’s arrival.

“We’re done,” she said, nodding to the south, where the Romans’ warships teeming with slingers and archers were drawing into a line and about to be in range of the British cavalry, then to the north, where a giant tortoise formation was advancing behind a brave man carrying a gold eagle standard. Lowa took aim, shot, and the aquilifer – the man carrying the standard – went down. Another snatched it up immediately, though, and the Romans kept coming, not slowed at all. The cavalry’s arrows were having no effect on the shielded Romans and soon they’d be cut off from their retreat across the marsh. It was, indeed, time to go.

“Come on,” said Lowa, and ran off.

Chamanca was still sucking away at the moaning legionary’s neck.

“Let’s go!” Atlas said.

She held up a hand to indicate that he should wait a heartbeat. He looked up the beach. A dozen or so of the Two Hundred were galloping at the large tortoise, pumping impotent arrows into it, but drawing it away from their escape route. To the south, the Roman ships came into range and their archers loosed a salvo. At him and Chamanca. He crouched and reached for a Roman shield, but the Sobek-cursed thing was attached to a dead man’s arm. He yanked, just as the arrow took him in the shoulder. It slid through skin, ripped muscle, grazed bone, ripped more muscle, burst skin and the head was out of his back.

“Fucking … Fuck! Pigs’ cunts!” he shouted. Bel but it was painful.

“Let me…” said Chamanca, reaching for it, her bloody face a picture of contrition.

“Get off. Let’s go like we already should have done. Come on!” They had to get clear before the next volley. He stood and ran, glancing over his shoulder. Chamanca was following. Every pace sent jets of agony pulsing along his arm, through his torso and head. They reached the horses and he swung up, kicked the beast and set off at gallop.

“Sorry!” shouted Chamanca behind him. It was, thought Atlas, gripping the shaft of the arrow with his left hand, a bit late for that. She’d had to stop for a drink and now he had an arrow through his shoulder.

He snapped the shaft, chucked away the feathered end, reached over his shoulder and grasped the head. He pulled hard, but it was slick with blood. His hand slipped, the edges of the iron head slicing his palm and fingers open. He gripped again, higher up the shaft so that the iron corners dug into his hand to give him purchase. He pulled and this time, the shaft came through his shoulder and out. Waves of agony pulsed through him. As he lost consciousness, he held the arrowhead to his nose. Was that shit he could smell on there? Yes, he thought as the world disappeared, he rather thought that it was, Sobek curse them.

They were fleeing! The British were vanquished, galloping away inland and northwards. Rome had shown her might and Britain had been found wanting.

“A good start!” Ragnall said to himself.

“Do you think so?” said the Syrian helmsman.

“Well, we won.”

“Did we?”

“Yes, of course we did. Look, the Britons are fleeing. That’s what armies do when they’ve lost.”

“That’s a few horses, not an army. You heard the trumpets, there’s a lot more where that came from.”

“Possibly, but, like I said, a good start.”

“Yeah? How many Britons did you see killed?”

“Um … well Atlas – the African who attacked the tortoise – took an arrow.”

“Yes, that’s all I saw as far as Britons wounded or killed went. How many legionaries would you say lost their lives? Two hundred? More?”

“Probably more…”

“So let me get this straight.” The helmsman smiled. “Hundreds of Romans were killed and one Briton was injured, and that’s a loss for the Britons?”

“It’s more complicated than the butcher’s bill – that means how many were killed or injured.”

“I know what butcher’s bill means. This is not my first war, young man.”

There were two nasty scars on the man’s left cheek and a chunk missing near his right temple, he was about double Ragnall’s age, and as a ship’s captain in the Roman navy, Ragnall conceded, he’d probably seen quite a bit of military action. No doubt he’d served in Pompey’s famously bloody pirate wars. But obviously, like so many junior ranks, he didn’t understand warfare and Ragnall would have to explain.

“The Romans’ goal today was to land and establish a beachhead.” He pointed at the Tenth Legion. They may have lost their aquilifer to Lowa’s arrow, but they were jogging proudly southwards, their feet crunching out satisfyingly well-trained, regular beats on the British shingle.

“And the Britons’ goal was to prevent the Romans landing. Now, the Romans may have lost more men, but if you know about war, you’ll know that a general who’s afraid of losing a few soldiers will not be a general for long. The Romans have landed, the Britons have failed to stop them, so the Romans have won.”

“I see,” said the helmsman.

“Good,” said Ragnall, putting a hand on the sailor’s shoulder.

“So let me get it clear,” said the simple man, “it’s a Roman victory if the Roman goal was to land and the Britons’ goal was to stop them.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for explaining.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Thing is, though, and I’m sure you’re right, but how do we know the enemy’s goal? How do you know the Britons were trying to stop the Romans from landing?”