This time Cato thought he must surely drown. His head felt as if it would burst, and his frantic writhing achieved nothing. He stared at the silvery surface of the water. The life-giving air, a scant foot away, might just as well have been a mile off, and as his world began to dim, Cato's last thought was of Macro: regret that he had failed to avenge the centurion. Then the water turned red and the sunlight was dimmed by thick blood. The Briton's hands still grasped him by the throat. but now another hand reached down through the water, grabbed his harness and yanked him up into the brilliant sunshine. Cato burst from the surface through a pool of red and filled his burning lungs with air. Then he saw the body of the Briton. The head was almost severed, only some gristle and sinew attaching it to the torso.
'All right?' asked the legionary holding his harness, and Cato managed to nod as he gulped down more breaths. A small band of men from the century stood guard about them and fended off blows from the nearest Britons.
'My sword'?'
'Here you are, sir.' The legionary fished it out. 'Nice blade, that. You ought to look after it.'
Cato nodded. 'Thanks.'
'All right, sir. Century can't afford to lose more than one centurion a day.'
With a final shake to clear his head, Cato retrieved his shield and raised his sword. The pace of the fight had noticeably slackened as exhaustion took its toll. Neither Romans nor Britons seemed as keen for martyrdom as they had a while before, and in places small groups faced each other, each waiting for the other to make a move. Glancing back across the river, Cato saw that the second wave had almost finished embarking on the transports.
'Not long now, lads!' he called out, coughing with the effort of shouting with water still lodged in his lungs. 'The next wave's on its way!'
A series of thumping cracks from the trireme drew his attention, and as his eyes followed the arc of the bolts he saw a fresh column of British warriors approaching along the river bank. In the middle of the column was a chariot, ornate even by native standards, upon which stood a tall chief with long, flowing blond hair. He raised his spear and called out, and his men answered with a deep-throated roar. Something about their attire and the confident way they ignored the missiles from the ship was horribly familiar.
'Are those the bastards that jumped us last night?'
'Could be.' The legionary squinted. 'I didn't stay around long enough to memorise the details.'
The Druids had been working themselves up into a frenzy as they tried to drive their reluctant levies back onto the first wave of Romans. As they caught sight of the new column, they shrieked with delight and urged their men on with renewed ferocity.
'Heads up, lads! New enemy on the left flank!'
The word was quickly passed down the line and the centurion nearest the new threat swiftly organised his men into a flank guard, closing up on the remainder of the first wave – just in time, as the fresh arrivals didn't even attempt to deploy but just broke into a wild charge and hurled themselves at the Roman line. With a savage cry and sharp ringing of weapons the Britons hacked their way in among the Romans and it was clear to all that the fight was flowing in favour of the natives.
An anxious glance towards the river showed Cato that the first of the transports had set off, sweeps working furiously to gain the opposite bank. The war cry of the fresh troops and the exhortations of the Druids rekindled the fighting spirit of the levies who once more charged the Roman shields.
'Hold them back!' Cato cried. 'Just a little longer! Hold them!'
The remains of the Sixth Century closed up with a handful of other legionaries and grimly held on to the patch of ground they had won on the bank of the Tamesis. One by one they fell, and the shield wall closed up into an ever tighter knot of men until it seemed that their destruction was moments away. The left flank, if the battered groupings of defiant Romans could be said to constitute a line, slowly caved in under the ferocious attack from the elite British warriors. Since there was no chance of surrender or escape, the Romans fought until they died where they stood.
Of the thousand or so men who had made the first assault no more than half held on, and Cato was horrified to see that the transports were being carried downriver by the current. They grounded two hundred paces beyond the desperate struggle of their comrades and the second wave landed without opposition, so intent were the Britons on destroying the remnants of the first wave. Cato glimpsed the scarlet crest of the legate and beside him the eagle standard as the new arrivals hurriedly formed a battle line and marched swiftly upriver. The Britons saw the danger and turned to face them. Cato watched in desperation as Vespasian's advance slowed and then halted to deal with the fierce resistance fifty paces from the battered first wave.
From the left the Romans had been pushed back into a compact arc with its base on the river, and the Britons scented imminent victory. Their war cries now sounded with a new frenzied pitch as they hacked and slashed at the legionaries. In a moment it would an be over and they would trample the last men of the first wave and grind them into the mud.
But the end did not come. A British war horn sounded a series of notes above the cacophony of battle, and to Cato's astonishment the Britons began to disengage. With a last exchange of blows the warrior he was fighting stepped back carefully until he was well beyond the reach of Cato's weapon. Then he turned and trotted up the river bank, and on all sides the bright colours of the Britons flowed back from the Roman shields, back towards the Druids clustered about the chief mounted on his chariot. Then in good defensive order the enemy marched over the slight rise of the river bank and out of sight, under renewed fire from the trireme.
Cato stared out across the battlefield, strewn with the hacked bodies of the dead and the screams of the wounded, hardly able to believe that he was still alive. About him the remains of his century stared at each other in wonder.
'Why the fuck did they leave?' someone muttered.
Cato just shook his head wearily, and sheathed his sword. Vespasian's new arrivals altered the direction of their advance and formed a screen between the retreating Britons and the pitifully small number of survivors from the first wave.
'Did we beat them off? Couldn't they take it?'
'Use your brain!' Cato snapped. 'It must have been something else. Must have been. '
'Look there! To the left.'
Cato looked and saw tiny dark shapes rise up round the bend in the river: cavalry. 'Ours or theirs? I suppose it has to be ours.'
Sure enough a Roman cavalry pennant was visible at the front of the column. Plautius' deployment of forces upriver in search of a ford had not been in vain. Some of the Batavian cohorts had arrived on the British flank in time to save the vanguard of the Second Legion. But the new arrivals were not greeted with any cries of triumph. The men were simply relieved to have survived, and were too tired to do anything more than slump down on the river bank and rest their exhausted limbs. But Cato realised he could not do that just yet. His sense of duty would not permit it. First he must do a roll call of his century, check their fitness to continue fighting and then make his report to the legate. He knew he must do this, yet his mind was stupid with fatigue now that the immediate danger had passed. He yearned more than anything for a rest. Even the thought of it seemed to add vastly to the physical need to sleep. His eyelids slowly dropped before he was aware of it; he started to slip forward and would have fallen to the ground had not a strong pair of arms caught him by the shoulders and held him in place.