Rome’s Fallen Eagle (43 page)

The sun rose over the hill in the east, bathing the field of battle with morning light to the accompaniment of the long rumble of cornua and the blare of litui; massed horns crying from the top of the hill. The Britons looked up as they backed away, their faces falling in despair; at that instant the first man turned and ran.

The rout began.

Vespasian looked up to his right; along the hill’s crest was lined the VIIII Hispana and its auxiliaries, silhouetted against the golden, newly risen sun. On they came, marching in battle order over the hill and down, another deadly Roman war machine, fresh and ready to do the work that justified its existence. Having just faced three legions and been pushed back at great loss, the sight of a fourth was too much for even the most reckless warrior and the rout spread like fire through a field of wheat stubble.

The first cohort’s shoulders touched the flank of the XIIII Gemina; the line was complete. Vespasian ordered the auxiliaries and the legion’s cavalry up. Now was the time to finish it.

A deep booming from the cornua told the cohorts to open their ranks; gaps appeared between each unit. Taking his place at the front of the legionary cavalry, Vespasian kicked his horse forward and led them, along with Paetus’ ala and the Gallic ala, through the gaps towards the exposed backs of the fleeing warriors; behind them came the infantry cohorts. As they sped across the body-strewn ground more horns blared, this time from the hill occupied by the Batavian foot; Vespasian glanced
up to see all eight cohorts charging down the slope towards the chaotic, porous flank of the broken horde. Vengeance for the hot and bloody time they had endured the previous day would soon be theirs and, as Vespasian’s sword slashed open the first exposed back that he came across, the Batavians carved into the other side of the rout with deadly intent.

The cavalry broke formation to sweep through the fleeing warriors, hacking and stabbing at them as they pounded back up the hill for their very lives. Here and there they came across little pockets of roughly organised resistance, men banded together for safety in clumps of a hundred or more retreating in tolerable order; these they avoided, not wishing to fall at the very moment of victory, concentrating instead on the plethora of individuals. They went down in their hundreds, shrieking curses as the invaders’ blades ripped the life out of them and they crashed to the blood-soaked earth of their homeland that Rome would now claim for its own.

Vespasian showed no mercy as he weaved his horse left and right, picking off as many of the vanquished as possible. He took care, however, that he and his cavalry did not venture too far into the main body of the Britons and risk being isolated and surrounded and, no doubt, subjected to a vengeful death. Further up the hill the XX Legion’s cavalry had broken out to reap their share of easy lives in amongst the more dense formation of the rout. A quick glance behind told him that the XIIII Gemina had moved aside and the first units of the VIIII Hispana were preparing to cross the bridge and begin their lightning march west to the Tamesis crossing point. Closer to him a group of Roman cavalry galloped in his direction with Aulus Plautius, resplendent in his general’s cloak and helmet crest, at their head.

‘Legate!’ the general shouted as he approached. ‘Pull your cavalry back before they get cut off. We’ll follow up with the auxiliary infantry; we’ll push them north into the Tamesis and hopefully a few thousand will drown trying to cross.’

‘Yes, general.’ Vespasian shouted at the nearest
liticen
, ‘Sound the recall!’

The man raised his horn and the order was sounded.

‘Your legion has served Rome and the Emperor well, Vespasian; I shall make sure that the right people know that. Today has been a good day for all our careers.’

Vespasian looked at Plautius; under the veneer of his cloak he was blood-splattered and cut and there were huge dents in his cuirass. ‘The Fourteenth had the hardest time, I should think; how is my brother?’

Plautius frowned, dislodging scrapings of crisp, dried blood from his forehead. ‘He’ll survive; he took a spear-thrust in his right shoulder just before the Britons broke. The bleeding has been stopped but he won’t be fit for command for a couple of days or so. I’ve got my personal doctor looking after him.’

‘Thank you, general.’ Vespasian struggled to keep his mount steady as, all around, the cavalry was rallying; frisky horses with the smell of blood in their nostrils stamped and snorted. ‘I’m sure he’s had worse. What are your orders for the Second, general?’

The high-pitched call of a lituus from further up the hill sounded before Plautius could reply; everyone recognised its meaning.

‘They’re in trouble,’ Vespasian said, looking in the direction of the call. About half a mile away he could see that a small group of the XX Legion’s cavalry had been sucked into the retreating mass of Britons.

Plautius spat, ‘Fucking idiots, that’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I’ve got few enough cavalry as it is, I can’t afford to lose those fools if we can avoid it. Legate, bring your men and follow me.’

Plautius flicked his reins on his mount’s neck and the beast took off up the hill. Vespasian charged after him, yelling at his men and Paetus’ ala to follow as the II Augusta’s auxiliary infantry caught up with them on their way to harry the enemy’s retreat.

Galloping up the hill they soon caught up with the rearmost stragglers; they ran them down if they could but made no attempt to chase them, such was their haste to come to the rescue of the isolated cavalry. The little pocket was surrounded by hundreds of warriors, herding them further away from the
Roman lines and picking them off one by one. The lituus let out another shrill call that was abruptly terminated with a squeak, testifying to the demise of its owner.

Plautius crashed into the rearmost tormentors of the isolated cavalry, trampling two and bowling a few more aside with shattered bones. His horse reared, forelegs thrashing, raining down blows on skulls and shoulders as he swiped the head clean off a warrior; the man’s astonishment showed on his face as his headless body stood for a moment, emitting a fountain of blood, and then collapsed onto his severed head as the last of life faded from his eyes.

Vespasian followed his general in, his cavalry to either side, cleaving a bloody path through the Britons, who had been too intent upon their prey to notice the threat from behind them. Plautius’ wrath, aimed as much at his cavalry for getting themselves into this position as it was at the men who were trying to kill his precious mounted troops, drove him on in a fearsome killing spree that none dared oppose. Vespasian hunted in his wake, cutting down any who had managed to avoid the mounted terror scything its way through them, urging his mount on, its flanks drenched in blood, sticky beneath his calves.

Having already broken once that day, the Britons swiftly yielded up the prize they had surrounded and fled on up the hill. The eighty or so survivors of the XX Legion’s cavalry were left, shocked by their losses at the very close of the battle, facing their irate general.

Plautius rounded on the nearest decurion. ‘Get up the fucking hill after them and restore some pride!’ He turned to Vespasian. ‘Take your lads with them and make sure they don’t behave like raw recruits again. Just kill the stragglers and stop at the hill’s crest. Five each and that’s a thousand less of the bastards next time we face them.’

‘Halt!’ Vespasian shouted, raising his sword arm in the air; blood trickled down the blade onto his fingers and wrist. On the ground to his right lay the body of the final warrior he had killed in the harrying of the retreat. Grass was entwined with his
drooping moustache and his bottom teeth were sunk into the ground; his eyes stared blankly at the gory crown of his skull that lay upright before him like a ghastly chalice.

As the cavalry rallied behind him, Vespasian surveyed the scene from the hilltop. To the north the bulk of the defeated army streamed towards the Tamesis, glittering in the warm sun just ten miles away. They were pursued, in good order, by the Batavian infantry and the II Augusta’s auxiliaries, picking off the rearmost but making no attempt to make contact with the main body as they drove them north. The rest of the Britons were heading west; a few chariots could be seen at their head a couple of miles distant and the lucky stragglers, who had narrowly escaped the cavalry spathae, were no more than two hundred paces away.

‘The sight of an enemy running always warms the heart, eh, legate?’ Plautius observed, pulling his horse up next to Vespasian. ‘A decent day’s work; we must have killed nearly forty thousand of the buggers. It’s ironic that after such a victory I have to write to the Emperor requesting his help.’

‘You’ve left him a few to deal with.’

‘Yes, a few too many for my liking; there must be twenty thousand heading west and another forty thousand making for the river.’

‘Why don’t you try and finish it, general?’

‘Because I don’t have enough fucking cavalry. They’re not stupid enough to turn and face legions again, but if I had fifteen thousand cavalry I wouldn’t need them to turn, I could just mop them up. But never wish for what you don’t have, it takes your mind away from using what you do have to full effect. I’ve sent orders to the auxiliaries to let the river and the fleet’s catapults do the rest of the day’s killing and I’m sure that they’ll be happy to leave it that way; the Ninth will follow the others west and take the Tamesis crossing point. And then Caratacus and Togodumnus will have to decide what to do.’

‘Togodumnus is dead, sir, I saw him die.’

‘Really? Who killed him?’

‘My horse.’

Plautius looked at the beast beneath Vespasian with an appreciative eye. ‘Quite an animal you’ve got there.’

‘It wasn’t this one, it was another; Togodumnus killed it and then managed to get underneath it as it hit the ground.’

‘Very careless of him. But I’m grateful for your horse’s sacrifice, that’ll make things a lot easier politically. Caratacus rules in the west but Togodumnus’ realm was to the north of the Tamesis based in Camulodunum, the capital that Claudius wants to enter himself. If they’re defeated and leaderless and we hold the north bank of the Tamesis I think that we could get them to see sense, provided that we don’t give them any more cause to hate us. Well done, legate, your horse might just have saved thousands of lives.’

Vespasian was tempted to ask Plautius to tell Geta that, but refrained. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Plautius nodded with satisfaction and turned to the remnants of the XX legion’s cavalry. ‘Which one of you unsponged arseholes is responsible for losing so many of my cavalry?’

The decurion who had been the object of Plautius’ wrath earlier ventured a reply. ‘It was our legate, sir.’

‘Geta? Where is the idiot?’

The decurion indicated down the hill with his head. ‘Back there, sir; he fell just as you broke through to us. I think he’s dead.’

Vespasian and Plautius retraced their steps down the hill littered with corpses and stained with blood in every direction. Vespasian stared about him aghast at the magnitude of what had happened: thousands upon thousands of dead Britannic warriors lay sprawled on the battlefield from the Batavians’ hill in the north, along the line of the XIIII Gemina’s stand by the pontoon bridge – which the VIIII Hispana was now traversing – and on to the line of the II Augusta’s first combat, the previous day in the south. They lay singly, in groups or in long rows, like driftwood marking the extent of high tide, showing where they had taken on the might of Rome, head on, with little hope of victory. There were Romans too amongst the dead, not nearly as many, probably one for every forty Britons, Vespasian estimated. It had been
a decisive victory at relatively little cost but its aftermath was a sombre sight: endless corpses of young men cut down in their prime as they defended their homeland from an invasion that, as far as Vespasian could make out, was motivated not by any strategic necessity but by the desire of three freedmen to keep their unmartial, drooling master in power so that they could enjoy its benefits. He quickly banished the bitter thought from his mind, knowing that unless he retired back to his estates and forewent a career in Rome he would always be a witness to the selfishness of politics.

‘Apart from the Fourteenth’s defensive line this must be one of the few places on the field where more than twenty or so of our lads lie together,’ Plautius reflected as they approached the point where the cavalry had been rescued.

Vespasian surveyed the tangle of troopers and their mounts, nearly forty in all; their comrades were working their way through them looking for any signs of life as the auxiliaries of the VIIII Hispana marched by, acting as the vanguard for their legion. ‘My Batavians also took heavy losses buying us time to form up across the bridge.’

‘Yes, I watched that, it was bravely done; I shall see that Paetus comes to the Emperor’s attention when he gets here. And Civilis of the Batavian Foot, the diversionary action on that hill was the key to the battle. Did you know that he’s the grandson of the last Batavian King?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘His men treat him as if he was the King himself, they’d follow him anywhere.’

‘General!’ a trooper shouted from the midst of the corpses. ‘It’s the legate, he’s still breathing.’

Vespasian and Plautius dismounted and picked their way through the dead to where Geta lay. Blood seeped from under his breastplate; it was pierced just below the ribcage. He was unconscious but definitely breathing.

Plautius looked down at him with a mixture of regretful disapproval and sorrow. ‘Get him to my doctor, trooper, you’ll find him in a tent across the river.’

The trooper saluted; he and three mates began to prise the wounded legate out of the tangle of dead flesh.

Plautius shook his head. ‘He’s a fine soldier but why he made such an elementary mistake is beyond me. Everyone knows that you don’t take cavalry too deep into an enemy rout; it’s asking for trouble.’

‘Perhaps he saw Caratacus, and tried to get to him.’

‘We’ll find out, if my doctor manages to save him. You should get back to your legion now; I want a full report of casualties first thing in the morning. We’ll march west at dawn the following day once I’m sure that Togodumnus’ men are either dead or across the river; I wouldn’t like to have a force that size come and bite my arse. I want your legion to lead the way, seeing as you’ll be the only fit legate left to me.’ He looked at the first cohort of the VIIII Hispana now marching by with its Eagle at its head. ‘It’s their turn now.’ He spotted Corvinus sitting proudly on his horse riding to the side of the column and rode over to him. ‘March your lads hard, legate, it’s down to speed now and you’ve got thirty miles to go; I want you at the Tamesis by tomorrow afternoon.’