‘You so much as twitch the wrong way and I’ll put this little darling up your nose!’
Scarface regarded the trembling man levelly for a moment.
‘I think you’re being a little harsh on our new friend, my old mate. Let’s face it, he’s wearing our kit and standing in our fuckin’ line, ain’t he? He either fights for his life or else he ends up with one of them long spears of theirs poking out of his arse like a backwards prick.’ He slapped the Sarmatae on the shoulder, thrusting his head forward to shout in the man’s face. ‘You fight?’
While the previous discussion had been unintelligible to the recruit, the unequivocal challenge left no room for misunderstanding. He nodded vigorously.
‘I fight! Horseman kill!’
Sanga nodded to his friend.
‘Best keep an eye on him all the same. Hold on, Latrine’s shouting the odds again. .’
Rapping the flat of his sword’s blade against his dagger, Julius was looking about the circle with a look that brooked no argument.
‘Tungrians, make some noise! Tell those horse-fuckers that we’re not going anywhere!’
Within seconds the flat tapping of blade on blade had swollen to a thunderous pulsing rattle of spear shafts on the bosses of the soldiers’ shields, a wall of sound that echoed across the lake as the horsemen manoeuvred into a rough line and began to advance on the waiting Tungrians, their horses stepping gingerly down onto the lake’s frozen surface.
‘And so it comes down to andreia. .’ Julius turned to glance at his tribune with a curious expression, and Scaurus shook his head in self-deprecation. ‘I’m sorry, First Spear, random outbursts in foreign languages are the price to be paid for having education thrust upon one at an early age, I suppose. My history tutor used to fill my head with tales of the Greek wars, and time and time again he used the word andreia to describe the nature of a man’s courage.’
‘Greek was he, Tribune?’
Scaurus laughed at the question.
‘A fair guess. Yes, he was Greek, and if my uncle had known the disregard in which he held our empire by comparison with the glories his country once knew, well then I expect that he would have had the man beaten and thrown out of the house. He used to take me out on the balcony and point out across the city, all those buildings as far as the eye could see, and tell me that “All this will one day crumble, as mighty Greece’s time in the sun came to an end, when we lost the collective andreia that allowed us to triumph over Troy and repel the Persians.”’
He watched as the Sarmatae horsemen gathered pace, the horses snorting out their breath in plumes of vapour as they accelerated to a canter across the ice.
‘And now this dirty little battle becomes a matter of whose andreia is the greater, ours or theirs. If we break in the face of their charge then we are all surely dead, but if we hold long enough for them to skate onto our spears, then we may yet hold the whip over them.’
Julius craned his neck to stare over his men’s helmeted heads, then turned to Tertius and muttered a quiet instruction. The Second Cohort’s senior centurion nodded, pacing away to the back of the circle where his own men stood. The enemy were closer now, their screams and shouts piercing the air as they waved their lances over their heads. Directly facing the riders’ onrushing wall of horseflesh, Scarface rolled his shoulders and ducked into the cover of his shield with his spear held ready to throw.
‘Fuck me, but would you look at that lot?’
Sanga laughed grimly.
‘Your leggings full then, are they?’
His mate shook his head dourly.
‘Not yet. After that shit you cooked up for dinner last night you’ll know when my ring gives up the fight, ’cause it’ll smell like I’ve dropped a week-old corpse.’ He raised his voice, as the horsemen lowered their lances in a glittering wave of polished iron, speaking to the men to either side of him with a tone that dripped with bored contempt. ‘Hold your ground, you fuckin’ women! You heard what the tribune said! We can beat these!’
Marcus stepped up behind his men, raising his voice to be heard over the oncoming horses’ thunder and the chorus of brutal reassurance and imprecation being shouted by the veteran soldiers at their less experienced comrades.
‘Ready spears!’
The front rankers leaned back, eager for the command to unleash their spears on the horsemen, but Marcus guessed that Julius would wait until the last possible moment, knowing that his men would be unable to get the usual power into their throws given that the ice would prevent them from performing the forward step to add momentum to the missiles’ flight. He watched the first spear intently, waiting for his raised vine stick to fall.
‘Ready. . wait. . ready. . throw!’
A hail of wood and iron arched out from the Tungrian line in an untidy cascade, spears raining down onto the oncoming enemy and transforming their relatively ordered formation into chaos in an instant. Riders busy aligning the points of their lances with the Roman line were caught unawares by the onslaught, their spitted bodies falling beneath the hoofs of the horses behind them and unnerving or even tripping the hapless beasts, while those men with both wicker shields and the wit to use them managed in the main only to deflect the flying spears onto the men beside and behind them. The charge faltered momentarily, giving the Tungrian front rankers time to reach behind them for a second spear.
‘Steady!’
All along the Tungrian line centurions and chosen men crouched close to their soldiers, encouraging, cajoling and simply bullying them to hold their positions as the horsemen regained their momentum and covered the last few paces at a canter. Scarface felt a hand on his arm, and glanced round to find Marcus at his shoulder.
‘Wait. .’
Staring up at the looming wall of horseflesh, even Marcus was struck by the apparent impossibility of any attempt to resist the attackers’ oncoming tide, seeing his men’s spearheads wavering in the face of the onrushing charge. He bellowed at his men, knowing that the moment of greatest danger was upon them all.
‘The eyes! Look at the horses’ eyes!’
The animals were panicking, eyes rolling as their riders goaded them forward at the Romans, eager to strike back at the waiting soldiers, but the beasts’ attempts to shy away from the waiting spear points only resulted in their hoofs sliding on the smooth ice. As the rider facing Scarface skated helplessly up to the Tungrian line, he lunged forward with his lance, cursing as the soldier raised his shield and allowed the weapon’s sharp iron blade to punch through its layered board and stick firm. Wrenching at the shield’s grip, the Tungrian fought the rider for possession of the weapon, edging to one side as the soldier to his rear squeezed between him and the Sarmatae recruit alongside him to grab at the horse’s reins. Bracing himself off the shield laid on the ice before Scarface and pulling back with all his strength, the rear ranker physically dragged the protesting animal into spear reach, and even as its rider released his grip on the lance and went for his sword the Sarmatae recruit, Saratos, stabbed forward expertly with his spear, burying it deeply in the horse’s throat and twisting the shaft before ripping it free.
With an ear-piercing scream of pain the animal reared back, wrenching the reins free from the struggling soldier’s grip and pulling him over onto the ice, but then staggered on its feet as a thick rivulet of steaming blood gushed down its neck and legs from the open artery. Bellowing incoherent rage, the animal’s rider leapt down from his stricken mount’s back, raising his sword to attack only to receive Sanga’s spear in his armpit as the veteran took his brief chance with a lunging strike. The barbarian recoiled from the blow against the horse’s flank as the beast sank helplessly to its knees, horse and rider both crippled by their wounds. The rider alongside him leaned forward and punched his lance into Sanga’s unshielded shoulder, scattering a handful of severed mail rings as the long blade sank deep into the soldier’s chest below his collar bone. He staggered back with his right hand locked on the weapon’s long shaft even as the Sarmatae tried to tear it free from the wound, maintaining his tenacious grip as his eyes rolled upwards and he fell to his knees on his own shield. Scarface bellowed his rage at the distracted rider as the man fought to dislodge his lance from the wounded Tungrian’s grasp, hurling his own spear with a ferocity that buried it deep in the junction of the rider’s trunk and thigh and dropping him writhing to the ground. Drawing his sword the wild-eyed soldier took a step forward, only to find Marcus’s hand on his arm again, the centurion’s raised voice calm amid the storm of iron.