Vitalis turned at the noise, but anything he might have done would have been too late. Nearly tearing the gate off its hinges, the dogs broke from the pen. In a flash of gray pelts and white teeth, the snarling beasts bounded for the door and disappeared inside the hut. The woman’s screams stopped and were instantly replaced by the horrified shrieks of a man being savaged by ravenous jaws and knife-like teeth. One man’s voice called for help. Another cried out in unimaginable pain as animal teeth met human bone and jerking muzzles tore away flesh.
Vitalis responded, perhaps a few moments longer than it should have taken him, entering the hut with gladius drawn. The dogs yelped, and then were silent. The centurion and Amelius then emerged carrying something that once had been a man, but was now a mass of blood and mangled skin. Tears streamed from Amelius’s face as he and Vitalis lowered Piso to the ground. The tribune still lived, but his body was broken and his flesh in tatters. In some places, his bare bones were exposed. Aside from an unceasing trembling, he appeared unable to move.
“Oh, dear Jupiter!” Amelius cried, cradling the tribune’s bloody face in his hands. “Dear Jupiter, what has happened to him? How could this happen? Dear, Piso! My dear Piso!”
Vitalis, on the other hand, did not appear near as touched by the tribune’s condition. He stood, and looked down on the unfortunate young man with what Lucius recognized as disgust.
“He did this!” Amelius shouted between sobs, pointing at Lucius, who still stood by the animal pens. “He is to blame! Slay him, Centurion!”
Vitalis snubbed the order and instead turned his gaze back to the trees, as if something had caught his ear.
“Did you hear me, Centurion?” Amelius demanded maniacally. “I order you to – “
The young noble was cut short by a strike from the back of Vitalis’s hand. “Be silent, you babbling fool! Listen!”
At that moment, a horn sounded in the woods.
"What was that?" Amelius said, rubbing his smarting cheek.
"Legionaries, to me!" Vitalis shouted. "To me!"
The two squads converged on the hut, and formed up in front of their centurion.
Then, as they all looked across the field, the very woods came alive with movement. A chanting began, not one voice but many, the battle cry of warriors. Then, as one man, a long line of spear laden warriors with round shields emerged from the trees. Long hair hung and scraggly manes outlined the fierce, painted faces. They wore the conical helmets of the Nervii, and their shields were freshly painted with elaborate designs, depicting creatures of the woods and of the sky. There were at least one hundred shields bourn by as many warriors.
"Who are they, Centurion?" Amelius said in a panic. "Where in Pluto's name did they come from?"
It was the first time Lucius had seen true fear on the adjutant's face. Until now, the pampered noble's experience with the Belgae was limited to defenseless peasants and a few poorly armed village elders. He was now looking death in the face for the first time since arriving in Gaul.
"Form line behind the wall!" Vitalis barked, ignoring Amelius.
The legionaries sprang to obey, forming an unimpressive line of pila and shields just behind the waist-high, moss-covered rock barrier.
"What should I do with him, sir?" Jovinus called from the animal pens. He had not moved, and was still lackadaisically holding his javelin on Lucius.
Jovinus knew what the centurion's response would be before he gave it, as did Lucius. Five-to-one odds was a daunting prospect, and Lucius was worth any three of the others in a fight.
"Arm him, you bastard!" Vitalis replied grudgingly. "And get both of your arses over here with the others!"
The Nervii line slowly began to advance across the field, the fair-haired spearman shouting and jeering at the outnumbered band of Romans before them. Lucius knew there was little sense in making a break for it. The spearman were coming from the part of the woods where the legionaries had left their horses, so the mounts were probably gone. Running in the other direction was hardly better, as it might only lead them to another band of spearmen hiding in the woods. Their only option was to stand and fight.
The Nervii banged their shields with the butts of their spears as they approached. A few of the more frenzied warriors darted out ahead of the others in a show of reckless bravado. The wild men were completely naked and had cast away their shields to face the Romans only with long swords. They were the younger and less experienced ones whose muscled bodies had been honed in training, but not in battle. Perhaps they thought themselves invulnerable.
Vitalis grabbed a pilum from one of the legionaries and, with a quick sweep of his arm, hurled it at one of these bare-skinned fools. The javelin caught the youth squarely in the center of his rippled abdomen, the two-foot-long iron point emerging from his back with a torrent of blood. He was not immortal, and as he crumpled to the ground clutching the four-foot wooden shaft protruding from his belly, the others lost some of their fervor. But they kept coming on, chanting and moving slowly forward. A second javelin shattered the knee of another naked warrior, splintering bone and tendon and ejecting bloody matter as the iron tip tore its destructive path through the man's hairy leg. Despite these successes, there was no way that a score of legionaries could maintain a front against a hundred well-armed spearmen. Vitalis well knew this, and quickly deployed the twenty soldiers into three groups separated by intervals of thirty paces. Vitalis joined the greener legionaries in the center, and placed the more skilled fighters, like Lucius, with the groups on the flanks. The spearmen would have to divide their own line to take on the individual clumps of legionaries, albeit they would still outnumber them.
As Lucius waited behind the rock wall with Jovinus and the four other soldiers covering the left, he heard a man yell in terror behind him. He turned to see Amelius being attacked by the blonde woman. She had emerged from the hut stark naked except for a cudgel held in both hands, and now she proceeded to strike the young noble repeatedly with it, her bare breasts shaking violently with each blow. Whatever had happened to the young noble's sword, he did not have it now, and he had little choice but to try to bat away the blows with his arms. Eventually, he lost his footing and fell to the ground. The woman probably could have beaten him to death right then and there because Vitalis was not about to spare a single legionary to save him. But she did not kill him. Seeing that the Romans were more concerned with the approaching spearmen than with her, the young woman dropped the cudgel and ran for the woods, but not without casting a long glance at Lucius. His eyes followed her dancing blonde locks and pale buttocks until they disappeared amongst the trees.
“Eyes front!” Vitalis called, jerking Lucius and the others out of their mesmerized stares.
Spears stopped banging on shields and the Nervii line came to a halt twenty paces from the Romans. As the legionaries watched, two slimy round objects sailed over the line and rolled to a stop just in front of the wall. They were severed heads, bloody and covered with mud, and had presumably belonged to the two legionaries left behind to guard the horses. Laughing heartily from behind their shields, the Nervii spearmen challenged the Romans to come out from behind the wall, but the legionaries only answered them with obscene gestures and curses.
Vitalis was no fool. The rock wall was the legionaries’ only advantage. He wanted the Nervii line to advance on it, but they hesitated. They crept forward a few more paces and then stopped to beat on their shields some more. A few spears flew across the open space, but the missiles either clattered harmlessly against the wall or stuck in the damp earth beyond it.