The battle’s noise sharpened, a fresh note of terror raising the hairs on the soldiers’ necks as men and beasts screamed in fresh horror at the violence being done to them.
‘That’ll be the Bear’s men engaged. There’s nothing puts the shits up a horseman like a century of big bastards with axes carving their way in through the back door. And here they come!’
As if commanded by some secret voice that only they could hear, the horsemen to their front spurred their horses as one and drove them forward at the Tungrians in a desperate, instinctive lunge to escape the ring of sharp iron closing about them. Riders kicked furiously at their mounts, driving them at the Romans despite their rolling-eyed reluctance, until the terrified animals were practically nose to nose with the defenders. The soldiers held their ground, those men with spears as yet unthrown and intact, stabbing them into the oncoming mass of horseflesh to inflict horrendous wounds on the helpless beasts, the front rankers held upright by the men behind them.
A rider leaned out of his saddle to stab down at the Tungrian line with his long kontos, sending a soldier reeling back from his place with his jaw opened to the bone by the iron blade’s cold kiss, and Qadir pushed a man into his place with a growled instruction to keep his shield up. The wounded man staggered away to the century’s bandage carrier, who simply pulled the scarf from round the soldier’s throat and pressed it to the wound before turning away to deal with a more serious casualty. Along the length of the Tungrian line the Sarmatae were railing at their prison of spears and swords, unable to persuade their horses to drive into the array of shields confronting them, and the soldiers facing them gained in confidence with every moment.
Saratos drew his knife and looked at Marcus with an eyebrow raised in question, pointing with his other hand to the sagging Sarmatae leader who was hanging grimly onto his horse’s neck with Qadir’s arrow protruding from his side. Nodding his consent, the young centurion watched as the man dropped his shield and crawled into the forest of horses’ legs, crouched low to avoid becoming a target for the enemy’s lances. As his new comrades watched with incredulity, he nestled under the belly of the wounded man’s mount and slid the knife between its flesh and the rider’s saddle straps, slicing the thick leather with a quick sawing action before pulling at the Sarmatae leader’s leg and dragging him down from the horse’s back with the saddle still between his legs. As the hapless barbarian hit the ground, the knife flickered out to rest on his throat, leaving the fallen rider gasping in terror and the remaining horsemen utterly leaderless.
Like the last guttering of an exhausted candle, the fight went out of the Sarmatae warband in less than a dozen heartbeats. The men nearest to the First Cohort’s line fell from their horses and threw down their weapons, raising their empty hands to the soldiers still tearing into their ranks and imploring the Tungrians to spare them from the massacre that was already in train behind them, looking around in terror at the axes and spears slashing into the steadily shrinking perimeter of their doomed warband. Now that the rage of battle was seeping out of him, leaving the young centurion more amazed than angry, given his men’s survival against such odds, he found himself unable to carry though the threat of slaughter that he had bellowed out only moments before. He looked round to find Julius, waving a hand at him and then putting his wrists together to mime the binding of a prisoner’s wrists. The first spear looked to his tribune, who nodded solemnly.
Silus was mounted and ready to ride to the north-east with the tribune’s message in the company of four of his men, when the scouts sent west to determine the Tungrians’ fate came galloping back up the valley, and he dismounted to wait for them to reach the gate while the duty centurion stood his disgruntled bolt-thrower crews down for a second time.
‘The Tungrians, Decurion! They won! They’re marching back up the road!’
He grinned in disbelief, shaking his head at the duty centurion.
‘You’d better send a runner to fetch your tribune, hadn’t you?’
The dour-faced officer nodded, then shouted for his chosen man.
‘Send a man to the headquarters and tell the tribune that some of the auxiliaries seem to have escaped from the barbarians. Then get the carts moving, those poor bastards are going to be carrying their wounded on their backs. And warn the hospital to expect casualties.’
Silus turned to the men he had picked to accompany him on his mission to deliver the dispatch to Porolissum.
‘I’ll take that task. You four, ride south with that message. And if you fail to deliver it don’t bother coming back, because we won’t fucking well be here!’
He mounted up and took a dozen men down the valley, finding the Tungrians labouring up its slope two miles from the fort. Reining his horse in alongside Scaurus he jumped down from the saddle with a swift salute as his superior officer stepped out of the cohorts’ slow, weary column of the march.
‘I suggest you stop your men, Tribune, there’s mule carts on the way for your wounded. .’
The expression on the other man’s face stopped him in mid-sentence.
‘We’ll march in unaided, thank you, Decurion.’
‘But the wounded, sir?’
‘Are either already dead or will last long enough to see the inside of the hospital. And you miss the point, Silus. These men are Tungrians, and they will not leave a man behind for the enemy to despoil, not while they have the strength to carry their bodies.’
The decurion looked down the length of the column slowly making its way past him, the cohort’s soldiers clearly on their last legs from the effects of the battle and subsequent march. The bigger men were working in pairs to carry either dead bodies which had been stripped of their armour and weapons or those of their comrades too badly hurt to walk, while the walking wounded were each supported on either side by one of their fellow soldiers. He recognised the scarred soldier who was frequently to be seen around Marcus with his arm locked under another man’s shoulders, the wounded man barely managing to stagger up the road’s steep slope, his face grey with the pain and exertion. Scaurus broke off from their conversation to exhort his men to one last effort.
‘Keep moving Tungrians! One last mile, and you can march back into Stone Fort with your heads held up!’
Julius joined them, his expression every bit as exhausted as those of his men, and Silus took his arm in a warm greeting. The first spear nodded at him with a look of calculation.
‘Just the man I wanted to see.’
Silus frowned in puzzlement.
‘Really? I’d have thought you’d never want to see another horseman for as long as you lived?’
Julius shook his head with a weary smile.
‘No, Silus, you’re exactly what we need to motivate these men to cover the last distance to the fortress with their heads held up. Get back on your horse and lead your men to the head of the column and you’ll see what I mean.’
Scaurus thought for a moment before nodding sagely.
‘Indeed. I can’t think of any better encouragement for these men.’ He patted Silus on the shoulder. ‘Off you go, Decurion, lead us home.’
Shaking his head in puzzlement the cavalryman remounted his horse, leading his men back up the column’s length at an easy trot. The soldiers he was passing barely acknowledged his presence, and those that did so shot him looks of disdain before returning their gazes to the backs of the men marching before them. From behind him he heard Julius’s voice raised to bellow above the rapping of hobnails on the road’s cobbles, and with a sudden dawning of realisation he put a hand to his face in disgust just as the words Julius was shouting became clear.
‘The cavalry don’t wash their cocks when something dangling itches. .’