He bellowed above the fight’s noise, keeping a wary eye on the barbarian warriors gathering on the wall above him.
‘Centurions, to me!’
Cornelius Felix rode west at a measured pace, using the light from the moon overhead to follow the road to the west as it ran parallel to the south of the wall. The big horse beneath him was skittish, unaccustomed to working in the dark, and its ears pricked forward and twitched at every tiny noise. After several miles the road climbed a gentle ridge, providing him with a good view of the neighbouring fort, seemingly afloat in the sea of torchlight from the surrounding attackers. The black stallion beneath him pawed at the ground impatiently, made nervous by the darkness and clearly eager to run. White Strength fort seemed adrift in a sea of flames, from both the blazing buildings within the walls and the hundreds of blazing torches clustered around them. As he watched, a volley of fire arrows arced over the fort’s walls. In the night’s quiet air, the wind having fallen away to nothing for a moment, he could just make out the distant sound of singing. He listened for a moment, then muttered quietly to himself as he spurred the horse on down the track.
‘Well, if you men have still got the balls to sing a marching song with that many blue-noses battering at your gates, I’m sure I’ve got enough to make one quick run past you. Come on, Hades, you cantankerous bastard, let’s go for a gallop and see where it gets us.’
He urged the horse forward, using the reins to hold the big animal’s speed down to a fast trot as they closed the gap to the embattled fort, all the while calculating when to unleash the power rippling through the horse’s flesh beneath him. With half a mile left to run he bent to speak into the horse’s ear.
‘Right then, my lad, if there was ever a time for you to prove you’re not just an evil sod that likes biting grooms, this is it!’
He touched his spurs to the horse’s flanks again, easing his tight grip on the reins to allow Hades to gradually accelerate his pace until they were cantering nicely and then, when it seemed impossible for them to go unnoticed for another second by the mob of tribesmen now swarming around and into the fort, he kicked the big horse’s flanks hard and bellowed encouragement. Clamping his thighs to the animal’s flanks he rose slightly from the saddle as the stallion responded with an exhilarating acceleration to its full speed, a bounding gallop that catapulted horse and rider along the stretch of road that ran past the fort’s southern walls.
They were spotted almost immediately, guttural warning cries alerting the archers closest to the big horse’s path, who swung to fire the next volley of fire arrows not into the burning fort, but at the unknown rider flying past them faster than most of them had ever seen a horse move. Most of the arrows flew too high, archers accustomed to shooting over the fort’s wall failing to adjust their aim sufficiently, but one flaming shaft streaked in low, shooting across the horse’s nose with barely a hand’s span to spare, and the big animal baulked for a moment. Fighting the momentarily terrified beast for control, Felix jabbed his spurs into its flanks with savage intent, firing the animal across the firelit ground in a foam-mouthed charge, both horse and rider intent on nothing more than escaping the rain of fire arrows. One missile hissed unseen past the decurion’s head and another rebounded from his helmet, the incendiary weapons now replaced by the evilly barbed iron-headed hunting arrows that the archers intended showering on to the defenceless garrison once their stock of fire arrows was exhausted. The horse lurched in mid-stride as a dart buried itself deep in its shoulder, lunging sideways away from the source of the pain until the decurion pulled it back straight. Despite the arrow’s impact the beast charged on, if anything made faster by the wound’s pain. A final flurry of arrows whipped past the fleeing horseman, and the last of them found its mark, punching up into his unprotected armpit as he leaned forward over the horse’s neck, and nearly unseating him with the impact. Almost insensible with the enervating shock, Felix slumped across the galloping horse’s neck and hung on to its mane with the last of his strength, as the pair were swallowed up by the surrounding darkness.
The big horse slowed, feeling its rider’s weight across its heavy neck, and turned its head to look at the decurion through the delicately decorated armour that covered its long nose and eyes. The officer rallied his strength, his entire right side numb with the pain of the arrow’s protrusion up under his arm and only his good arm’s grip on the reins keeping him from slipping from the saddle. A figure loomed out of the darkness and the wounded horse reared its head in surprise, only to find its movement restrained by a strong grip on its bridle. Cornelius Felix reached left handed for the hilt of his sword, but found his hand restrained by a strong grip that the pain of his wound left him powerless to resist. He slumped on to the horse’s neck, hanging on for dear life as the animal reluctantly followed its unknown captors into the forest’s moonless gloom.
In the burning fortress the Frisian cohort had retreated from their walls, those men not already felled by barbarian arrows and spears fighting their way back into the fort’s centre to mount a desperate last defence against attackers now railing at their shields from all sides. For every warrior that fell to their spears another two implacable enemies came through the gates, and when the barbarians had gained first a foothold on, and then control of, the fort’s south wall, and began to shower the troops with spears from above, the first spear had had no choice but to order a retreat. Fighting his way back through the tight streets with his men, he had been one of the first to fall to his knees with an arrow buried in his calf, decapitated an instant later by the barbarians pressing hard against the retreating troops.
Bereft of their leader, the auxiliaries had fought on under the prefect’s command, the senior officer donning a soldier’s helmet and shield to take his place in the line, but now they were being steadily ground down by the ceaseless attacks coming from all sides as they consolidated into an increasingly beleaguered defensive square at the fort’s heart, in front of the burning headquarters.
‘Barely two hundred of us still standing now.’
A panting centurion, the last officer still fighting other than the prefect himself, gave his superior a weary look and nodded agreement. The prefect grimaced from the pain of flesh wounds in his right thigh and arm, baring his teeth in a snarl of frustration.
‘We fight on. There’s still a chance that the legions at Noisy Valley have got wind of this. If they moved out an hour ago they could be here in minutes…’ The centurion’s face was blank with battle shock, his eyes alone betraying the combination of hope and disbelief that flickered in his otherwise reeling mind. ‘So we fight on. My turn in the line, I think, you take a moment to get your breath back. If I go down then it’ll be up to you to rally these men, and to hold on as long as you can.’
The centurion nodded, raising his sword in salute as the prefect, his teeth bared in a snarl of defiance, stepped into the square’s thinning line one last time, parrying a barbarian spear-thrust with his borrowed shield before gutting the weapon’s owner with a blow that would have made the dead first spear nod with quiet admiration. The cohort’s remnant fought on in silent exhaustion, their meagre perimeter shrinking by the minute as the barbarians crowded in, eager to kill before the fight ended. The officer parried another attack, shouting above the barbarians’ clamour to his men.
‘One last song, lads, show these bastards we’re not done yet! “The General’s Wife”!’
He led the song off, smiling grimly as the soldiers responded to the familiar words of the first verse, their voices momentarily drowning out the guttural cries of the tribesmen baying for their blood. The cohort’s remnant fought on with desperate purpose, hemmed in by the press of their enemies as the barbarians remorselessly tightened their grip on the remaining defenders. The centurion straightened his helmet and stepped into the line alongside his prefect, filling his lungs to belt out the song’s last verse.