‘If it will help you, Tribune, then yes, indeed you should pray to your god. As you can see, I give my faith to Mithras to strengthen my sword arm, but divine help from any of the gods you care to mention would be very welcome about now.’
He turned away, waving his sword at the reserve century under Centurion Caelius, who were waiting at the slope’s crest behind the Thracians. Caelius waved back, shouting the order for his men to march around the archers and make their way down the slope. The Sarmatae numbers were already starting to tell, pushing the Tungrians back up the slope towards the archers. The Tungrians were still butchering the barbarian warriors whenever the soldiers could bring their swords to bear, but were nevertheless slowly but surely losing the fight as the Sarmatae inexorably drove them off their ground by sheer crush of numbers. The air was filled with the hum of arrows as the Thracians launched volleys of arrows over the top of the soldiers’ helmets and into the enemy’s tightly packed throng, but the missiles seemed to be no more than an irritant to the enraged tribesmen. Caelius’s century dived into the battle, adding their weight to the centre of the Tungrian line, but their additional muscle seemed to have almost no impact on the struggle. Marcus shook his head at the sight of the reinforcements’ booted feet churning the soft ground as they too were pushed back by the crush of the enemy, realising that his command was all but doomed.
‘They don’t even have to kill us. All they have to do is push us back another hundred paces and it’s all over. Once we don’t have the slope to help hold them back they’ll force us over the crest without any trouble at all, and then they’ll break the line and hunt us down individually.’
Marcus looked back, hoping for any sign that his message to Tribune Scaurus had born fruit, but he knew the runner would barely have reached the valley floor. Sigilis stepped forward with a clenched fist.
‘Surely we can’t just let this scum push us off the field? What can we do? There must be something. .’
Marcus looked levelly at the young tribune and shook his head slowly, but it was Arminius who spoke first, his face hard.
‘What can we do? Nothing, except fight and die like men when the time comes. Are you ready to fight and die, Lugos?’
The huge Briton standing beside him grunted, hefting his hammer and staring at the warriors raving against the Tungrian shields.
‘Lugos ready. I send many warriors before me.’
A shout from the archers on the ridgeline one hundred paces behind them caught Marcus’s attention, and he craned his neck to peer over his men’s shields at whatever it was their centurion was indicating with his pointing hand. Realising what it was that the Thracian officer was trying to tell him, his shoulders slumped momentarily as the enormity of their predicament became clear.
‘Holy Mithras above, there are more of them!’
More men were emerging from the trees behind the first wave, at least a thousand well-armed men in full armour and wearing metal skullcaps in the Sarmatae fashion, some wielding bows, other armed with axes and long spears. Marcus shook his head grimly at Sigilis again, raising his swords ready to fight.
‘Well if ever there was a time for that prayer, Tribune, this is it.’
4
The detachment’s senior officers watched from the top of the turf wall as the Sarmatae cavalry cantered across the defensive line’s frontage in a straggling mass of horsemen. They were showing no sign of any eagerness to mount an attack beyond the occasional speculative bowshots whose arrows fell dozens of paces short of the wall. Tribune Belletor raised an imperious eyebrow as he stared out across the space that the soldiers had cleared of all vegetation for a distance of several hundred paces.
‘Well they certainly don’t seem to be in any hurry to come in and get us. I thought these barbarians were fearless animals, but all I see here is fear and uncertainty. Perhaps this is going to be easier than you expected, eh colleague?’
Scaurus nodded his agreement, staring out at the motionless infantry waiting well out of bowshot as their masters rode up and down the wall’s length in a compact mass of riders.
‘It certainly doesn’t fit with the behaviour I’m used to. In the German Wars these men would have been fighting to get over the wall since an hour before dawn.’
His colleague shrugged, huddling deeper into his cloak.
‘Perhaps these barbarians are a little more concerned for their own skins than the men you fought in Germania? It looks to me as if they’re looking for a weakness in our defences.’
Scaurus snorted his laughter.
‘Well if that’s the case, they’re unlikely to find any. We’ve had too long to get this place ready. But that still doesn’t ring true for me. .’
The ground in front of the wall was sodden, saturated with water drained from the lake high on the Ravenstone’s eastern wall and carefully channelled down a stream bed carved into the valley’s long slope by Sergius’s legionaries, then carried under the wall by pipes set in position before the first turfs had been laid. Archers waited with nocked arrows along the defence’s entire length, each of them flanked by a pair of Tungrians ready to repel any attempt to climb the earth defence. The valley’s sides to either side of the wall were defended by forests of wooden stakes backed by Belletor’s legionaries, and the watching Romans could well understand why the Sarmatae commander was loath to commit his men forward into the teeth of such a formidable defence. Julius watched for a moment longer as the horsemen wheeled and rode down the wall’s length again, still careful to stay beyond the reach of the defenders’ bows. He frowned, tilting his head to one side in puzzlement.
‘Something isn’t quite adding up here.’
His tribune raised an eyebrow, while Belletor stared morosely out at the wheeling horsemen.
‘What’s troubling you, First Spear?’
The big man stepped forward, pointing out at the warriors waiting patiently behind the line along which the Sarmatae cavalry were cantering up and down.
‘A discrepancy, Tribune. Centurion Corvus estimated that four thousand infantrymen passed his position yesterday. How many infantry can you see?’
Scaurus fell silent for a moment, scanning the men waiting in silence on the valley’s sloping floor.
‘Not many. A thousand?’
‘Exactly. There ought to be more of them. And if they’re not here. .’
‘Then where are they?’
The two men looked at each other for a moment before Scaurus nodded decisively, turning for the steps cut into the wall’s rear and ignoring Belletor’s incredulous gaze.
‘Well spotted, Julius! You stay here with Tribune Belletor in case they decide to become a little more aggressive. I’ll take the reserve centuries, and with a bit of luck it won’t be too late!’
He hurried across to the remaining four centuries of the Tungrians’ First Cohort who were waiting fifty paces behind the wall under the command of Dubnus, ready to be used as reinforcements in the event of a serious threat to any section of the defence. Before he had time to explain his fears as to the suspiciously small Sarmatae force facing them, a single soldier ran breathlessly up to him and panted out his message. Scaurus listened for a moment before pointing up at the Saddle, his voice taut with urgency as he addressed the centurions.
‘It’s as I feared. The enemy have turned what we took for a diversionary attack into their main thrust. They’ve left enough men down here in the valley to avert our suspicions while their infantry deliver the decisive blow. We have to get up there and reinforce our comrades, before they’re thrown down into the valley with a mob of blood crazed barbarians at their heels.’