‘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.