More nods, followed by arcane gestures reminiscent of those Velius had used, as the troops worked out who would do what with not a single word spoken. Fronto moved out towards the guard nearby as the rest of them melted away to deal with their own targets.
The man was considerably more alert than his previous victim. Fronto ducked behind a nearby tree when he thought he’d been observed. Peeking out, he realised that the guard was just clearing his throat. He brought his dagger up ready to make a dive on the man when suddenly, not far from where he stood, an owl hooted.
Not wasting any time, Fronto merely broke cover and ran at the man. The German had been scanning the upper branches of the nearby trees looking for the noisy owl and was surprised enough when a senior Roman officer in a grey-stained tunic leapt out of the undergrowth and hit him in the midriff. The wind was knocked out of the man and as he struggled to draw breath and shout a warning the knife blade entered his torso once; twice; thrice. He stared in horror at the Roman nightmare from the trees as the blade arced in towards his neck.
Fronto stood, sickened by the fact that unfortunate necessity drive him to kill like this in cold blood. He would much prefer an open and fair fight. He sighed and wiped his dagger on the man’s tunic. He obviously hadn’t been fast enough for Velius. He would have to have words with the centurion when they got back. Moments later there was the sound of broken undergrowth as the cavalry moved in to deal with the horses. Velius had been much too soon. A shout of warning in the guttural German language was silenced by a legionary’s blade, but too late. The cry had gone up.
Moments later, as Fronto rushed round the edge of the horses’ corral to the gate to free the beasts for the cavalry that were now arriving, he heard a distant owl hoot and realised. The Gods had played a horrible trick on the Tenth tonight. Velius was now giving his signal, but the cavalry were already on the move and there was little chance the cry of alarm hadn’t been picked up by another German somewhere.
A cavalry officer appeared out of the woods not far from Fronto. He turned to face the man.
“Quick. The alarm’s out. Get the horses and let’s go.”
The cavalry started to pour into the area around the corral and men moved to individual horses. Fronto reached out for a nearby one. Fortunately, not only did the Germans appear to use the same Gaulish-style saddle that was the standard for the Roman cavalry, but they also appeared to have left many of the saddles on the beasts, whether for speed or through laziness he wasn’t sure. He pulled himself up on one of them. These animals were very different from the horses generally used by Rome. By comparison they seemed immense. He hauled himself into the saddle and looked around. Everywhere around him cavalry troopers were climbing onto horses, with or without the saddle. He could see the legionaries struggling onto horses too. There seemed little point now in subterfuge. He called out, still relatively quietly, but loud enough to hear over the rest of the noise.
“Move out. Fast.”
* * * * *
Fronto was having difficulty. He was unused to being in the saddle anyway, but this brute of a huge German horse had been increasingly hard to handle since they had left the confines of the wood. With the unfamiliarity of the terrain and the darkness weighing against him, he considered it a lucky thing that he’d made it this far without pitching off the animal or falling into something and ending with the beast lame. Although there was nothing behind them as far as he could see, he felt uneasy. They had made too much noise and commotion in the woods once the signal had gone up. He felt absolutely sure the Germans were following them, even if he couldn’t see them. Once more he pulled the madly charging animal over towards Ingenuus, who had refused to set any speed for the unit other than charge.
“Prefect!”
He had to shout to be heard over the thunder of hundreds of hooves around them. For a moment he wondered how a cavalry unit was ever able to give or respond to orders on the battlefield. Ingenuus turned his face to the legate and Fronto was surprised to find him smiling.
“Sir?”
“Why are you grinning like an idiot?”
Ingenuus laughed.
“I’m enjoying myself sir.”
Fronto shook his head.
“I’m worried about you. You’re starting to sound like one of my centurions!”
More laughter.
“Aulus, I’m pretty sure there are German scouts after us.”
Ingenuus nodded vigorously.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yes. I’ve seen them a couple of times so far. They’re way over to the right. I think they must have come out of a different part of the forest; the track they would have entered on. They’re almost certainly trying to cut us off. That’s why I’m trying to maintain this speed; I don’t want them to reach the cohort before us.”
Fronto nodded emphatically. The legionaries would certainly be able to hold their own against German cavalry, but a lot of good men would be lost if they had little warning.
“Do you have a plan, prefect, or is getting there first your plan?”
Ingenuus raised an eyebrow.
“My plan is to get back fast enough to give the cohort time to get on these horses and head for Vesontio, while we re-equip and retrieve our own horses. We’ll take on the scouts and protect your back.”
Fronto thought for a moment.
“Even if we have time to do that, it’ll be dangerous for you. We don’t know how many there are. Better if we all face them together.”
Ingenuus shook his head.
“No sir. We need to get as far ahead of the German army as possible, so you need to get your men mounted. And there’s no point your men joining us on horseback. They’re not used to fighting a mounted action. They’d just get in the way, begging your pardon sir.”
‘Harrumph’.
Fronto didn’t like the idea of leaving the cavalry behind to face unknown odds even under this man, who seemed to have more of both sense and guts than the cavalry officers he was used to in the Tenth. On the other hand, the young officer was absolutely right: any attempt to marshal the cohort into a mounted force would likely end in disaster.
“Alright, but I’m staying with you and I don’t want you going fight-mad. We’ll just hold them off and when they back down or run, so do we. We’ll catch up with them as soon as we can. I don’t want to lose the cavalry.”
“Me neither sir. I can see the column.”
Squinting hard, Fronto could just make out in the sparse moonlight the column of men on a hill ahead. They were stationary and a number of them would be asleep. He turned his head to the right and squinted off into the darkness that way too. If took a few moments, but finally he saw a number of horsemen, quite well hidden below a ridge. It would be a close-cut thing and Fronto personally doubted whether there would be time to re-arm and change horses.
He turned his attention back to Ingenuus and the cavalry. Peering around him he could see that not only had the cavalry troopers not been blackened up, but they had also taken their swords with them, though no armour. He grimaced at the thought of unprotected cavalry, but then that was how most of the Germans and Gauls fought anyway. He grinned at the prefect.
“Forget changing your animals, Aulus, there isn’t going to be time. You’re all armed and you all have horses. Give the order to form up and get one of them to give me a sword.”
As Ingenuus nodded, unhappy at the idea, Fronto looked around for Velius and drove in closer to him.
“Lucius. Take your men back to the column and get them mounted up on the ala’s horses. Do it quick and get them moving toward Vesontio. Ingenuus and I are going to deal with our pursuers.”
For a moment, he thought the centurion was going to argue with him. Velius tended to ignore rank at times like this and had his own very set ideas of what a legion’s commander should do. Instead, the grizzled veteran nodded once and turned his own horse toward the front of the Roman column, gesturing to the other legionaries as he did so.