Sword of Rome (49 page)

‘Remember, I am your shield.’

Valerius blinked. He’d entirely forgotten his plan that they would fight together. Without warning, something flashed across Valerius’s vision and Serpentius’s blade swept up to divert the spear point that had been about to take out his throat. Before he could react, they
were surrounded by scarlet and yellow shields and fighting for their lives. The sword in Valerius’s left hand hammered at a painted boar and Serpentius spun a web of bright iron to keep the attackers beyond striking distance. A hulking figure launched itself from Valerius’s left. He knew he was too slow to save himself, but it was Juva, driven beyond madness, his helmet gone and his face a mass of red from a cut that had sliced open his forehead. His bulging eyes were fixed on something in the distance and Valerius followed them to where the Twenty-first’s sacred eagle danced above a swirling mass of men. With a terrible roar the big Nubian tore apart the shields barring his way. A legionary lunged at him with his spear, but as the Roman raised his arm Valerius rammed his sword into the gap above his armour and the man froze as he felt the cold iron enter his body. With a twist of the wrist Valerius hauled the blade free in time to parry a scything cut from a soldier in a centurion’s helmet. The
gladius
deflected the blow, but his attacker kept coming and his weight smashed Valerius to the earth. The centurion’s sword was gone, but he still had the advantage. All Valerius could do was hack at his armoured ribs in a futile attempt to dislodge him. Strong hands gripped his helmet and the chin strap bit into his throat. He tried desperately to wriggle free, but the centurion was so close his nostrils filled with the stink of the other man’s breath and spittle dripped on his face. Lightning exploded in his head as his opponent battered it repeatedly into the ground until his skull rang like the inside of a bell. He knew he was done, but as his mind began to fade the hands loosened and the centurion went limp, his snarls turning into a scream as the point of Serpentius’s
gladius
severed his spine. Valerius lay pinned by the dead weight and for the first time became aware of the screams of the wounded and dying, the howls of men turned animal and the cloying stink of fresh-spilled blood and torn bowels. Serpentius kicked the corpse off his chest and hauled him to his feet.

‘The eagle,’ Valerius gasped. ‘Follow Juva.’

Ten paces ahead, the Nubian was a roaring presence who surged through the carnage like one of the galleys he once rowed and, as if in a dream, Valerius followed in his wake. The men who faced Juva’s
awesome savagery were paralysed for a heartbeat and the marine legionaries accompanying their
optio
used that precious interval to ensure those heartbeats were their last. Juva had taken a dozen minor wounds, but he felt nothing but elation. All he knew was that the eagle was there, just beyond his grasp in the midst of the honour guard, who screamed their defiance at their attackers. They were big men, weighed down with
phalerae
, each at least a ten-year veteran, and they feared no enemy. At their centre stood the a
quilifer
, in a leopardskin cloak with the beast’s mask framing his face as he brandished the eagle high and howled for the Twenty-first to honour their oath to Jupiter. Valerius wondered why they hadn’t retreated to the rear of the cohort, but a glimpse of a First Adiutrix shield beyond the group answered his question. The guard had created a ring of spears around the standard-bearer and dared anyone to enter it. A dozen corpses testified to that ring’s resilience, but they had not reckoned on Juva. The Nubian launched himself at the nearest spear, one big hand brushing it aside while the other bent a second just behind the point. Still he would have died but for the little Scythian throwing axe that appeared magically in Serpentius’s hand and spun to take a third spearman in the face. Valerius and the Spaniard followed him into the gap and the slaughter began. When it ended Valerius stood panting with blood to his elbows and the familiar dull, metallic taste of it on his lips. The guards had died hard, but none harder than the
aquilifer
, who had beaten back every attack until Juva lifted him bodily from the pile of corpses that protected him and crushed him in his great arms so that Valerius heard ribs snapping and the legionary’s body flopped forward as his spine cracked.

Juva stood on the charnel heap he had helped create and lifted the eagle to the skies. His challenge echoed across the battlefield and Valerius experienced a moment of Elysian stillness on that field where two thousand men had already died. The Fifth cohort echoed their champion’s roar of triumph. All except one.

‘Shit. Time we were out of here.’

Valerius turned at the sound of Serpentius’s shocked whisper. Was the Spaniard mad? He shook his head, wincing at the pain. ‘We need
to hold here until the reserves are finished with the front lines. The battle is won, Serpentius. It is only a matter of time.’

But the battle wasn’t won, and it was only a matter of time before the Fifth cohort was annihilated, because Benignus had betrayed them. The two reserve cohorts hadn’t moved from their position and the gap the Fifth cohort had opened was quickly closing.

If they didn’t retreat they would be slaughtered.

Valerius would remember the remainder of the battle the way a man remembers a night march in a lightning storm; as a series of disjointed, flashlit images that had no connection with his own reality, in a world where time meant nothing.

Stumbling on someone else’s legs through a fog of confusion and death with Serpentius at one elbow and Juva, still clutching the Twenty-first Rapax’s eagle, at the other. Hacking another human being into bloody ruin until the Spaniard screamed meaningless words into his face and dragged him to safety through the swiftly closing gap moments before an avalanche of fresh Vitellian troops fell on what was left of the Fifth. Juva on one knee presenting a disbelieving Benignus with the eagle that would bring the legate and his legion eternal fame and glory, and in the same instant winning immediate promotion to centurion and the Gold Crown of Valour that would make him a Hero of Rome. A terrible empty feeling as Benignus, with tears on his cheeks, explained that an order had come from Paulinus forbidding him to use his reserves. Standing with Serpentius in the shield line as wave after wave of attacks broke themselves against it until men were so exhausted they could barely lift their swords and the attackers were impeded by heaped piles of their own dead. The oddly detached sense of disbelief as old Marcus threw his surviving
gladiators into a break in the line before being swept away to oblivion amid a tide race of flashing swords. The legate lying on the crushed grass with the last of his lifeblood leaking in dying spurts from the sword wound in his neck – ‘Save them, Valerius. Do not let the name Benignus be for ever linked with the loss of an eagle and the loss of a legion’ – and the noble head falling to one side. A desperate rearguard action as the First Adiutrix attempted to extricate itself from a battle already lost and the roars of triumph at the left of the line as Valens threw in his Batavian cavalry.

And a sudden moment of terrible clarity.

Claudius Victor had prayed to the old gods that his one-armed quarry was not already dead, and his prayers had been answered. Fifth Alaudae and First Italica had already won their battles among the trees and on the road when two full cavalry wings smashed into the left flank of the First Adiutrix. In a single moment, the Othonian line collapsed like a mud dam in a thunderstorm. This was what horse soldiers had been born for as three thousand surviving foot soldiers fled in terror, their backs inviting the spear points that punched their way through armour into living flesh with the weight of horse and man behind them. Helmets and skulls crushed as the heavy
spatha
swords hammered down and faces cleaved in two by a perfectly timed back-cut. Chaos and confusion everywhere, apart from the centre where one man had managed to hold two centuries in square and was attempting to screen the legion’s eagle as the
aquilifer
carried it to safety.

A man with a missing right hand.

‘Form on me,’ Victor screamed, and the auxiliary wing’s decurions took up the cry. Within moments he had four troops of cavalry at his back. Four troops. Less than a hundred and fifty men. Not enough, but the defeated legionaries were already close to breaking point so he would make it enough. ‘Sound the charge.’ The signaller at his right shoulder echoed the command on the
lituus
, the curved trumpet he carried. His eyes never leaving the man who had killed his brother, Claudius Victor lashed his tired mount into motion and urged his Batavians forward.

As the battle ebbed and surged around the little square of shields, Valerius watched the compact mass of cavalry surge across the battlefield, running down friend and foe alike. All around him was blood and pain and death as men, or small groups of men, fought their individual battles for survival. With the help of Serpentius and Juva he had somehow gathered the remnants of two centuries around the eagles and the walking wounded. Those too hurt to move received the mercy of a quick end from their comrades. Better that than be left on the battlefield to die by inches, or be tortured for sport by some looter or camp follower. With danger on every side, they backed slowly away through the fighting across the gore-stained earth, stepping on the corpses of friend and enemy, slipping and slithering through the obscene detritus of the human form. Valerius didn’t know where they were going, only that he had promised Benignus he would save his eagle and he would die trying to fulfil that oath. As they edged their way east, more fleeing legionaries sought the disciplined sanctuary of the square, staggering up on spent legs and trying to claw their way into the interior. ‘You’ll get in when you deserve it, you bastards,’ Valerius roared at them, ordering them to form a new outer rank. Yet if the men of the First Adiutrix were exhausted, the enemy was equally so, and that was what kept the eagles safe. They were content to butcher the small knots of legionaries who stood and fought, or take a hack at a fleeing man. But they shied away from Valerius’s square to find easier prey. Still, Valerius knew Fortuna couldn’t protect them for ever. If they were to stay alive, they had to fight their way to safety, wherever safety was. In the distance he heard the strident call of a trumpet and he felt a surge of hope. Somewhere, someone was trying to rally the shattered remnants of the army of Otho. Yet that hope was immediately tempered with doubt, because the horsemen he had seen had only one object in mind and that was the eagle of the First Adiutrix. He blinked to clear vision that was still blurred from his earlier knock on the head and a shudder ran through him as he recognized his enemy. The cavalrymen bearing down on the square wore wolfskin cloaks and at their head rode a tall figure whose features were engraved in ice on his heart.

‘Spears.’ The fear in his voice shamed him, even though he knew it was shared by every man in the formation. ‘Prepare to receive cavalry.’

The square stuttered to a clumsy halt and the front rank of each of the four sides crouched behind the big curved
scuta
, while those behind locked their shields in place to protect the heads of the front line and form a solid wall almost seven feet high. But it was a fragile wall, close to breaking just at the sight of the charging horses. Men who had suffered more than any man should endure wept and cursed and prayed and Valerius knew he would have lost them but for the massive presence of Juva, snarling at his former shipmates with the eagle of Twenty-first Rapax still held in his great fist. A pitiful few
pila
poked through between the big shields, held by men who’d had the foresight to scavenge enemy javelins from the battlefield. Being static left the formation more vulnerable to an infantry attack, but the square would have been impossible to defend on the move against cavalry. No ordinary commander would throw his horsemen at a well-formed square, for to do so was to endure certain defeat and heavy casualties. But Valerius understood that the man he faced was no ordinary commander, but one driven mad by a visceral need for vengeance. A man prepared to sacrifice everything in his lust for the blood of his brother’s killer. Even as the thought formed, he saw Claudius Victor drop back from the front rank of the charge, and the first squadron converge into four ranks of eight in front of him. The thunder of hooves seemed to shake the earth and reverberated in the very air around him. A horse will not charge home against formed-up infantry; that was the philosophy that had dictated tactics from Marius down to Otho and Vitellius. Yet the men who rode these horses were goaded by Claudius Victor’s screams of encouragement, promises of advancement and threats of painful death. They were so close Valerius could see the individual features beneath the iron helms. Savage, bearded faces, lips drawn back and mouths gaping as they screamed to cow the enemy and disguise their own fear. Faces that had no intention of avoiding the inevitable collision.

Behind the shield wall, Valerius ran along the line of spearmen calling out his orders. In a normal fight, the
pila
would form an impenetrable
palisade of glittering spear points, but there were not enough of them and these horses were not stopping.

‘On my command.’ He swayed as he fought the exhaustion that fogged his brain and tried desperately to gauge the distance between the horses and the square. Too early and the javelins would be wasted. Too late and even if they did strike home the dead and wounded horses would smash the square into so much human wreckage. ‘The front rank only. Only aim for the front rank.’

Fifty paces.

He licked his lips and tasted blood. Somewhere in the front rank of the square a man was whimpering.

‘You know your orders.’

‘For fuck’s sake, let us throw.’

Forty paces.

One heartbeat.

Two heartbeats.

‘
Now!
’

The upper layer of shields dropped for a split second and a ragged volley of javelins sailed towards the charging cavalry. Valerius had positioned himself to witness the effect of the throw.
Pray Jupiter he’d got it right
. Eight horses all in line, some already shying away from the impact and the others catching their fear. The grey on the left of the Batavian line took a
pilum
in the neck and swerved sharply, pitching its rider howling from the saddle. Three others, on the right, went down like sacrificial bulls under a pole-axe and the rider of the new right flank horse sprouted four feet of ash from his screaming mouth and was catapulted backwards to be trampled by the second line. Of the remaining horses two were mortally wounded, but their riders continued to urge them on. A third fought in vain to turn away, trapped between its dying stable mates.