‘Archers. .’ Along the length of the line the Tungrians eased their shields fractionally sideways, each man allowing the archer standing next to him a thin gap through which to sight his bow on the enemy. ‘Loose!’
The unshielded enemy bowmen were easy meat for the Thracians, and dozens of them fell with the first volley of arrows, some falling to lie motionless while others staggered away from the clumps of arrows they had shoved point first into the ground by their feet. Another volley whipped out from between the Tungrians’ shields, reaping a further harvest from the wavering bowmen, and at a sharp word of command that rang out across the slope they turned and ran, more of them falling even as they fled for the cover of their fellow warriors’ shields.
‘Archers, cease! Rear rank, rest!’
The Thracians stopped shooting, nodding to each other at the ease of their quick initial victory over the tribesmen, while the Tungrian rear-rank soldiers lowered their shields and rubbed at their aching arms, waiting for the Sarmatae leader’s next move. After a moment’s pause the mass of enemy warriors began hammering their spears rhythmically against their shields, working themselves up to attack up the hill’s rippling, boulder-strewn slope.
‘The man in charge down there must still fancy his chances even without his archers. .’
Marcus turned to look at the tribune, but to his relief found no sign in the younger man’s face that he was in terror of what was to come.
‘And so would I, if I were him, given their numbers. But then what we lack in strength we’ve made up for in the fact that Titus and his pioneers had a day with this ground yesterday. Let’s just hope that our men have it in them to stop running when their centurions tell them to stand and fight.’
He raised his voice to be heard over the Sarmatae warriors’ din, bellowing the command that his men were waiting for.
‘Tungrians, prepare to retreat! Archers, retreat!’
The centurions standing behind their soldiers watched in dark amusement as the Thracians obeyed their orders, turning away from the line and heading away up the slope at a fast jog. Spotting the movement the Sarmatae roared in delight, individual warriors stepping out in front of their line to wave their spears at the Romans, screaming threats and curses in crude Latin as they capered in front of their comrades, swinging their swords in extravagant arcs and bellowing their imminent victory at the sky above. The hammering of weapons on shields quickened in pace, and with a piercing shout of command the warband’s leader sent them forward at the Roman line. Before the shout had died away Marcus was roaring out his own orders.
‘Tungrians, retreat!’
The soldiers turned away from the oncoming enemy, running away up the slope at a pace which matched that of the archers moments before, their centurions swiftly outpacing them as they ran full pelt in front of their men. Howling in delight, the tribesmen lost any cohesion they still possessed, the faster men sprinting out of the oncoming mass in their determination to get at the retiring Romans. Fifty paces up the slope from where the retreat had begun the centurions stopped and turned to face their men, pointing their vine sticks at the ground in command, and as the retreating Tungrians reached them the soldiers stopped running and performed a swift about-face, quickly resetting their line and hefting their spears ready for combat. Both ends of the defence were now anchored against the fallen trees felled by the pioneers the previous day, presenting an unbroken defensive face to the oncoming tribesmen.
Undeterred by the apparent rallying of their enemies, the tribesmen came on at the gallop, still screaming their hatred and triumph as the first of them blundered into the mantraps that waited for them beneath thin carpets of turf laid with meticulous care just the day before.The ground collapsed beneath their feet to drop them into knee-deep pits sown with fire-hardened wooden stakes smeared with excrement. Marcus and Sigilis watched grimly as the Sarmatae advance foundered, each fallen warrior tripping two or three of his comrades in their uncontrolled rush. Marcus waited for a moment more as the tribesmen pushed forward, ignoring the pockets of chaos caused by the traps laid out for them, until he judged that enough of them had passed the marker laid out for the purpose.
‘Pull!’
The Votadini waiting at either end of the line dragged hard on their ends of a rope laid across the line’s entire frontage and looped around trees to provide an anchorage, snapping the fist thick line out of the narrow trench in which it had been concealed. Dozens of Sarmatae warriors were sent sprawling by the unexpected obstacle, and the mass of men behind them swiftly descended into chaos as they fought to get around or over their fallen comrades, giving them little chance to rise.
‘Archers! Loose!’
The Thracians had reformed at the head of the slope, ready to use their height advantage to send arrows skimming over the Tungrian’s helmets and plunging into the disordered mass of barbarian warriors. At Marcus’s command they loosed a volley at the warband’s sprawling target, and while the archers poured their missiles onto the milling mass of unordered warriors, the Roman turned his attention back to the men who had managed to struggle through the field of mantraps so carefully laid out for them.
‘Tungrians! Ready spears!’
Several hundred men had made their way through the obstacles, some simply climbing over the bodies of their less fortunate comrades, and were gathering themselves to storm up the slope at the Romans, but their earlier reckless charge had left them tired and Marcus knew that the time had come to take the offensive.
‘Front rank. . throw!’
The Tungrian line took two quick steps forward to build momentum, then slung their spears with all the power they had, sending their iron-tipped javelins arcing into the mass of enemy warriors. A chorus of screams rent the air as the heavy missiles ripped into the barbarians, killing and wounding enemy warriors and painting their comrades with sprays of their blood.
‘Rear rank. . throw!’
The remaining soldiers slung their spears over the heads of the kneeling front rankers, shivering the advancing line of Sarmatae again with a second barrage of sharp-edged iron, then closed up to their comrades, ready to fight.
‘Swords!’
With a rustle of blades on scabbard throats the soldiers drew their swords, setting themselves to receive the enemy assault with feet planted and shields raised. Hundreds of the barbarians lay dead and wounded on the ground before them, but the mass of the enemy was still far stronger in numbers than the perilously thin line of defenders. Roaring their rage at the Romans the Sarmatae stormed past and over their dying comrades, hurling themselves onto the defenders’ shields with howls intended to chill their blood as they battered and tore at the Tungrian line.
‘What do we do now?’
Marcus looked down at his spatha’s patterned blade for a moment before answering Sigilis’s question, pulling the eagle-pommelled gladius from its place on his other hip as he spoke.
‘Now, Tribune, we stand and wait to see if our plan succeeds. The archers will keep shooting into the enemy rear until they’ve run through their arrows, and my men know very well that they must either stand fast or die here.’
‘Should we perhaps pray to Mars for victory?’
Marcus nodded, raising the spatha to show Sigilis the finely carved intaglio of Mithras stabbing the sacred bull, which he had paid a priest to attach to the sword’s pommel with fine gold wire during the cohorts’ long journey down the river Danubius. The engraved oval of amethyst was a dull purple in the early morning light.