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?’
‘Perhaps not, little brother.’
They turned to find Titus standing behind them, surveying the Venicones’ strength beyond their shields with a face equally as grim as their own.
‘There must be five hundred of them. We wouldn’t even get to the bridge before they cut us down like dogs. What this little skirmish is crying out for is a flank attack to get them fighting on two sides… then I’d have some chance of succeeding. Without something to distract them we’ll only hold them off until they get enough men across that bridge to overwhelm us…’
Julius started, looking over Rufius’s shoulder.
‘Fuck!’
He started running up the Tungrian line, his sword out of its scabbard, and Rufius and Titus turned to look at what had caught his eye. In the shield wall to their right, where the valley floor met the steep hillside that rose above it, the crested helmet of a centurion rose proudly above the helmets of the men to either side. Barbarian swords were rising and falling in flashing arcs around the embattled officer, clearly drawn to their chance of taking a Roman officer’s head like wasps to honey.
‘Dubnus!’
Even as Rufius realised his friend’s predicament the centurion staggered back out of the line, and a mighty roar went up from the men facing the 9th Century, pressing forward with the scent of victory in their nostrils.
Antenoch and Lupus’s afternoon had been relatively non-eventful. The pair had been kept busy taking rations to the centuries manning the riverbank. With each brief visit to their comrades both had taken a moment to stare out between the waiting soldiers at their enemy, standing with apparent patience on the opposite bank. Antenoch pulled the child away from the Tungrian line, thinned out by the removal of the four centuries the first spear had taken south down the riverbank to the degree that the boy no longer had to duck to stare between the soldiers’ legs to see the Venicone warriors lurking on the far bank.
‘There’s more of them over there than we can see in this bloody mist. That lot are waiting there because their leaders know they keep us here to face them down just by being there. The question is, where are the rest of them?’
Prefect Scaurus was asking the same question of himself, two or three times on the verge of sending another two centuries down after the first four. Each time he weakened, however, one look at his colleague’s face was enough to convince him not to do so. Prefect Furius was staring pale faced and trembling down at the massed warriors on the far bank, his eyes wide with the same fear that Scaurus had seen on his face ten years before. He watched Antenoch and the boy toil past his perch on the hillside once more and smiled wanly, wondering whether a position with such simple responsibilities would be better than the crushing burden of command bearing down on him.
Movement in the mist to the south caught his eye, a century or so of weary men marching over the brow of the steep escarpment from the south. His first reaction, as he recognised the centurion leading the soldiers behind him out of the murk alongside First Spear Frontinius, was a wolfish smile of triumph, but the emotion faded quickly as he realised the sheer number of men missing from the ranks marching exhaustedly behind his officers, even with what appeared to be another century bringing up the rear. The Hamians staggered to a halt, clearly at the end of their tether, most of them bearing the marks of men that had been in a desperate fight, their shields scored and notched and their armour black with the drying blood of their enemies. Many of them were supporting walking wounded. As he watched his men’s obvious distress with pity and pride, Scaurus’s attention was drawn away from what was happening in front of him for a terrible, fateful moment.
Antenoch saw them first, half a dozen ragged warriors loping down the hill in front of them towards the unguarded supply carts in the Tungrian rear, their swords gleaming dully in the mist. He pushed the child under the cart from which they were unloading the rations, snatching up his shield and unsheathing his own blade as he turned to face the barbarians bounding down the slope to attack, shouting a warning to the soldiers two hundred paces away on the far side of what remained of the previous night’s camp. His cry sounded weak and muffled in the mist’s dampness, and the Venicone warrior leading the pack grinned in anticipation, swinging his sword in a vicious hacking blow at the lone soldier.
Antenoch parried the strike upwards with his gladius, stepping in fast to drive his helmet’s brow guard into the other man’s face so hard that he felt bone shatter under the blow’s force. Reversing his grip on the sword’s hilt he ducked under the next man’s spear-thrust, burying the gladius’s length in his side and snatching away the spear, leaving the blade sheathed in the crippled barbarian’s liver. The remaining warriors spread out around him, wary of the spear’s long reach but quickly surrounding him with blades and forcing him to twist and turn, continually stabbing with the weapon’s wide blade in a doomed attempt to hold them off. One of the warriors slid silently around to his rear, stepping close to the cart and landing a slashing blow across the back of the Roman’s thigh, dropping him on to one knee with his hamstring severed. The warrior’s howl of victory became a scream of pain as Lupus scuttled out from under the cart and dragged the razor-sharp blade of his knife across the back of the barbarian’s ankle. The tendon parted with an audible thump, and the Venicone staggered away on his good leg and fell to his knees, waving his sword at the child and screaming with fury. Antenoch turned to the boy, grimacing with pain, and muttered a single word between gritted teeth.
‘Run!’
As Lupus watched, his eyes wide with the shock of combat, another warrior stepped in and butchered the stricken soldier, grabbing his helmet’s broad neck protector and jerking it up to expose the back of his neck. Slamming his sword through the space between Antenoch’s mail coat and his helmeted head, the tribesman speared the sword’s blade through his throat. A fine drizzle of the dying man’s blood flicked across the boy’s face as he stared without comprehension at the horror inches from his face. Antenoch’s mouth gaped open, but no sound issued other than his croaking death rattle. His eyes rolled upwards as he lost consciousness, and his body sagged twitching to the ground. Lupus, still frozen to the spot, looked up into the face of his protector’s killer as the warrior ripped his sword free from Antenoch’s neck, then drew back his arm to hack the child down, swinging the blade out in a wide arc that held Lupus mesmerised as the Venicone screamed his rage into the boy’s face.