As Fronto drew his sword, he smiled gratefully and jabbed his pila down into the ground, leaving them behind. Masgava may consider them useful against the men, but they would be of little advantage in dealing with horses. Quietus followed suit.
Palmatus waited until all were ready and poised, and his hand came down in a chopping motion. Fronto moved in the wake of the two men in front, using his free hand to vault the fence, wincing as his knee, still troubled by the wet weather, jarred upon landing, but not allowing it to slow him. And he was running, Quietus keeping pace at his heel. Now, he could see the horses through the trunks, eating the lush grass close to the trees. They had been tethered by thin ropes attached to the harnesses and variously tied off on branches or to pitons in the ground.
By the time they were closing on the beasts, which were whickering and stamping nervously at the sudden commotion nearby, the sounds of battle rang out deeper in the copse, where the rest of the singulares were dealing with the thirteen scouts. Fronto burst from the trees and the rain came back with a force once out in the open, smacking him in the face like a slap. Blinking away the water, he ran to the nearest horse and brought his blade down on the thin rope, freeing the animal, which trotted a few paces away from him and hovered nervously. Quietus arrived and freed a second horse, and Fronto crossed to the next, slashing through the rope.
Again and again, the two men cut bonds and shooed the horses, which invariably danced out of their way and the legate rose from his latest rope, looking around for the next tether. Quietus was nearby, busily sawing through a rope that was thicker and hardier than the rest and had resisted his initial cut. Fronto blinked out the rain once more and opened his mouth to shout a warning.
He was too late.
A Gaul, hitherto unseen at the edge of the woods and presumably set to guard the horses, was on Quietus from behind, that long Gallic blade sweeping out and down onto the big Roman’s neck, where it hacked through the tendon holding neck to shoulder and through muscle, lodging itself in the bone. Quietus gasped, his head tipping involuntarily to the side as his body began to register the fact that he was dying, the spinal cord snapped and blood fountaining from his severed artery.
The legionary’s sword fell from loose fingers as he collapsed to the ground, still spraying lifeblood and gurgling a blood-filled scream.
Fronto drew his pugio with his free hand and advanced on the Gaul, but the man was both big and quick, wrenching his long sword from the dying Roman’s neck with a horrible cracking sound and bringing it up ready. The warrior had a body shield, a mail shirt and a killer’s blade. The only thing he lacked was a helmet, which no doubt rested somewhere nearby where he had been crouched. Fronto, conversely, wore a fine quality russet woollen tunic and held two short blades. He felt woefully inadequate and eyed the long blade nervously.
Memories of his many training sessions with Masgava flashed into his mind. ‘If a man has a long sword,’ the big Numidian had explained, ‘he is limited at close range. Do not be afraid to close on him. The closer you are, the harder it will be for him to use his blade, and he will be limited to using body parts against you.’
Instead of hesitating and keeping out of reach of the long blade, Fronto picked up his pace, throwing himself at the Gaul and praying that the man didn’t have time to hold the sword forth to impale him.
Sure enough, the unwieldy size of the blade prevented the warrior from bringing it to bear in time, and Fronto hit the man as hard as he could, putting all his weight into the charge. The man recoiled only slightly, his foot pushed back to brace himself as he hunched behind the shield. Fronto felt the collision as though he’d been sideswiped by a chariot at full speed, the shield’s rib, which ran down its length, bulging out to a metal boss at the centre, cracking a rib and bruising him instantly.
He had no time to recover. Although the Gaul had been barely shaken by a charge which had already hurt Fronto, the legate knew it had given him a brief advantage, making the man’s sword effectively useless until he could back-step out of the press. He allowed his gladius to fall from his right hand and reached up in a fluid move, gripping the top of the man’s painted blue shield and dragging it down with every ounce of strength he could muster, ignoring the throbbing of his ribs and hip.
Gods, but the man was strong. Fronto felt the shield coming down, but the Gaul was fighting him every inch of the way, the big sword seemingly forgotten as the struggle for the shield raged.
But gradually, finger-width by finger-width, the shield dropped, revealing the chest and shoulder of the warrior behind, the doubling of the man’s mail shirt at the shoulder giving him extra bulk. Up came Fronto’s other hand, gripping the pugio.
The warrior was not done yet, though. Seeing the knife approaching, he ducked his head to the side, away from the weapon, simultaneously bringing up his right hand. As they had struggled, the man had somehow reversed his grip on the sword and now brought it up pommel first, smashing it at Fronto’s face. The legate saw the blow coming and tried to dip his face out of the way but, without releasing the shield, he was limited. The blow landed, not centrally on the bridge of his nose as intended, but on his cheek. He felt the heavy pommel smash into his back teeth and scrape up his cheek bone, drawing blood. Waves of agony washed through him and he felt blood and tooth fragments on his tongue as his mouth opened in a cry.
But he was not the only one yelling out. Just as the Gaul’s pommel had smashed into his cheek, so Fronto’s other hand had found its mark, the dagger driving into the warrior’s neck just above the mail shirt’s collar and driving down above the collar bone into unprotected soft flesh. Through the pain, Fronto could barely see what he was doing, but even blinded by the agony and the rain, he raked the blade and twisted it, ripping it back up through what felt like a tendon.
He faltered and almost fell as the Gaul collapsed, Fronto’s fingers still clamped around the shield rim, and he staggered back, shaking, the rain still blurring his eyes as much as the pain in his mouth. Taking a ragged breath, he spat and felt pieces of tooth come out with the saliva and blood.
Shaking like a leaf, he reached up, wincing at the pain in his ribs as he did so, and wiped the rain from his eyes.
The Gaul was still alive, but was convulsing and jerking as blood pumped from a wide, savage and ragged hole above his clavicle. Fronto stared down at him. The warrior was younger than he’d thought, seventeen or eighteen summers old at most. Ridiculous. When Fronto had been in Spain with Caesar, standing at that statue of Alexander the Great, this man who’d nearly killed him today had been a howling babe! When the Tenth had first followed the Helvetii into this land, the dying Gaul here had probably been running around the fields and playing war games with his friends, using sticks and wicker shields. How long had they been in Gaul now?
He felt very old all of a sudden.
Taking care to knock the sword away from the Gaul’s twitching hand he crouched, turning his head to spit out another gobbet of blood. He looked down into the young warrior’s eyes with an empathy that surprised him, given what had just happened. The young man wore a perplexed expression, as though he simply could not fathom what had happened. Not the defiant dying gaze of a seasoned warrior, but the innocent bewilderment of a boy.