‘Shields up!’ Rufus’ men braced their big curved shields as javelins hissed through the air towards them. There were dull thumps as the heads struck hard against the leather-coated wood and bounced back, and a high-pitched ping as another deflected off the domed iron boss in the centre of one shield. The legionaries stood three abreast and three deep in the gateway. Each man carried a pilum, the heavy javelin used by the legions and no one else, with a small pyramid-shaped iron head at the end of a slim two-foot-long iron shank attached to a four-foot-long wooden shaft. Its weight gave the pilum a short range, but was concentrated behind that small point to drive through shield or armour as if it were soft butter.
‘Wait for the order!’ Rufus burst into another fit of coughing, but the young centurion sounded calm and confident. The carnyxes were blowing outside, gathering the warriors together and lifting their spirits. With a sudden shout dozens of warriors surged forward at the men in the gateway. They were led by a tall man with a bronze helmet and white horsehair plume waving behind him. He had a long sword and large round shield painted with the symbol of a boar in white. Behind him came others in tunics and trousers, with little shields and javelins or blunt-tipped slashing swords.
‘Wait!’ Rufus stood to the right of the nine legionaries holding the gateway, his unshielded side to the enemy but sheltered by the rampart. Five more soldiers waited just behind him and the rest were formed in ranks ready to support both groups. The piled stone ruins of a house stood on the other side of the gateway, which would make it hard for anyone to come across the rampart there. Even so, Ferox drew his sword and stood ready. Titus Annius was beside him, a shield as well as sword in his hand, and the two auxiliaries from his personal escort on either side of him. Ferox had not seen anyone bring the commander his shield.
‘Throw!’ Rufus shouted to his men and the three legionaries in the first rank took two paces forward, right arms swiftly back before they hurled the heavy pila forward. As they threw the second rank followed them and loosed their own pila. The three men in the rear allowed the same slight pause before they followed. Pila were big and bulky and the slight delay reduced the chances of weapons hitting each other and being wasted.
‘Charge!’ Rufus screamed, for legionaries were taught to be aggressive. The yelling men surged out of the gateway, reaching down with their right hands to draw swords as they ran. Ferox, Annius and the others followed them. Clear of the gateway, he saw that the enemy leader was down, a pilum having punched through his shield and pinned it to his body. Another man was wailing in high-pitched agony with the long javelin driven into his groin. He sat on the grass, blood bubbling from his mouth. Beside him a warrior was dead, the pilum still stuck in his head, and a fourth man had the slim shank sticking out for a good six inches from the back of his impaled thigh.
The rest had halted, confused and shocked, as the legionaries ran forward ten paces into them. The Romans punched with their heavy shields – Ferox saw one of the Selgovae lifted off his feet by the blow – and followed up with jabs of their swords. It was over almost as soon as it began. Three more warriors were down, the wounded finished off with economical thrusts, and the rest fleeing back.
Neither Ferox nor Annius had got close enough to cross blades with the enemy. Rufus had blood on his sword and a spatter of enemy’s blood across his face. The legionaries were chattering excitedly, some of them trying to recover their pila and having little luck. One of the ones to hit the ground had broken when it had hit a stone. Two more were intact and usable, but the ones that had found victims were stuck fast, designed to penetrate rather than to slide out with ease.
‘Given us some time anyway,’ Titus Annius said.
A legionary grunted as a javelin came at him from his unshielded right side. It hit one of the plates of his segmented cuirass, the force knocking him over even though it did not pierce the soft iron.
‘Get back!’ Titus Annius called. ‘Re-form in the gate.’
Warriors were beginning to close on them. Another javelin arced down, not sticking when it hit the ground, but sliding forward through the grass to stop just in front of Ferox. One of his comrades helped the man knocked down as the legionaries walked backwards, using their shields to stop the missiles. Stones from slings smacked against them, and one went low, cracking on a man’s shin, breaking bone. The legionary dropped, and as the man beside him leaned down to help a javelin hit him in the right arm. He hissed, dropping his sword.
‘Run!’ Ferox shouted. The gate was close and it was better to dash back to the protection of the ramparts rather than try to block missiles coming from all around. He ran to the fallen man, grabbing his arm and dragging him across the grass. Someone else took the legionary’s other arm and to his surprise he saw Titus Annius, sword back in its sheath and trying to use his shield to protect them all. The cohort commander grinned.
‘Nearly there,’ Annius said, and then a stone grazed the bridge of his nose and slammed into his right eye, turning it into bloody pulp. He staggered, letting go of the man’s arm and raising his hand to his face.
Ferox dragged the legionary another pace, to where one of his comrades was waiting. The two Tungrians escorting the cohort commander were at his side, one leading him away and the other doing his best to cover them. More legionaries came out of the gate to help.
A long ululating scream and a naked warrior came bounding towards them, spear in one hand and a little axe in the other. He was covered in tattoos and for the first time today Ferox saw the mark of the horse on his forehead. The warrior threw his spear at the Tungrian auxiliary who caught it on his shield, the point bursting through a couple of inches, but not enough to reach him. A pilum would have pierced the wood and slid through to hit the man behind. The auxiliary swayed back from the blow and the warrior ran past him, ducking the thrust spear and raising his axe to cut down at Ferox, who caught the man by his wrist and stabbed him in the throat. No more warriors followed him and instead they hung back, content for the moment to lob missiles.
‘Come on!’ he said to the Tungrian, turning to run. A sling stone brushed the doubled-up mail armour on his shoulder, stinging a little, but doing no damage. They were through the gate, the last to retreat, and Rufus shouted at his men to re-form in the gap. Titus Annius was sitting propped up against the wall of the collapsed hut beside the gate. His helmet was off and his escort and another Tungrian were cleaning and bandaging the wound as best they could. It looked bad, an eye destroyed at least, and the centurion was clearly in no state to command.
Ferox strode over to Rufus. ‘I am Flavius Ferox, centurio regionarius, and I am senior here.’ That was probably true and he hoped that the man would accept it without debate. ‘I’m also from the Second, albeit on detached service.’
‘Oh,’ Rufus said in surprise. ‘That Ferox.’ Ferox thought he caught a low ‘omnes ad stercus’ from one of the soldiers nearby. He guessed that they had heard about the disasters on the Danube, and maybe they thought him unlucky to be around.
The young centurion checked himself and stiffened to attention. ‘Of course, sir, you can rely on the Capricorns.’ Ferox had not heard the nickname before, but then since he had spent no time with the legion that was not surprising. ‘Sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why are they holding back? They could swarm all over these walls and there isn’t much we could do about it.’
‘My guess is that they’re waiting for dark. If they come now, we will take a lot of them with us.’ He spoke loudly so that the men could hear as well. ‘A hell of a lot of them if I know Second Augusta.’ The legionaries looked pleased. ‘And these Tungrian boys can handle themselves as well. They won’t get in easily and they might not get in at all. So they’ll wait for night and try to overwhelm us. What they don’t know is that we won’t hang around for that.’