Cato 03 - When the Eagle Hunts (19 page)

'Halt! Clear the barricades away! Pass the word!' Macro shouted, aware that his order would barely carry above the noise.

The legionaries quickly sheathed their swords and began pulling at the branches, desperately tugging and shaking the tangle loose. As the men set about the Durotriges' makeshift defences, a wild roar of voices from behind the century carried across the vale. Cato glanced back and saw a dark mass swarming across the snow towards the two centuries at the rear of the square formation. Hortensius bellowed out the order for those centuries to turn and face the threat.

'Nice trap!' Macro grunted as he heaved a thick limb free of the barricade and fed it back to the men behind him. 'Get rid of this stuff as quick as you can!'

As the Durotriges crashed into the rear of the formation, the legionaries at the front tore at the barrier, driven to desperation by the knowledge that unless the cohort could continue to advance, it would be trapped and annihilated. Slowly, the barrier was wrenched apart and small gaps opened that a man could squeeze through. Macro quickly passed the word that no one was to take the enemy on single-handed. They must wait for his order. Some of the Durotriges, however, were not so prudent and dashed forward to get at the Romans the moment an opening appeared. They paid dearly for this impetuousness and were cut down the moment they reached the Romans. But in death they at least delayed the legionaries in their work. At last there were a number of openings large enough for several men to get through and Macro shouted an order to draw swords and form up at the gaps.

'Cato! Get down to the left flank and take charge. Once I give the order, get through and form the men back into line as soon as you can on the far side. Got that?'

'Yes, sir!'

'Away with you!'

The optio eased his way back through the ranks of the century and then ran down to the left-hand corner of the formation.

'Make way there! Make way!' Cato shouted, pushing his way to the front. He saw an opening in the barricade, slightly to one side. 'Close up on me! 'When the centurion gives the order, we go through together!'

The legionaries bunched up on either side of their optio and joined shields so that the enemy would have little chance to strike at them as they forced their way through. Then they waited, swords poised, ears straining for Macro's order above the war cries and screams of the Durotriges.

'Sixth Century!' The centurion sounded very distant to Cato. 'Advance!'

'Now!' Cato shouted. 'Stay with me!'

Pushing his shield out a little way to absorb any impact, Cato led off, making sure that the others kept close and retained the integrity of the shield wall. Although the larger branches had been cleared away, the ground beneath was littered with twisted remnants of wood and every step had to be taken carefully. As soon as the Durotriges became aware of the Roman thrust, their shouting reached a new pitch of rage and they hurled themselves onto the legionaries. Cato felt someone slam into his shield and quickly thrust his sword, sensing a glancing contact with his foe before he whipped his blade back ready to deliver the next blow. On both flanks, and behind, the men of the century pressed through, thrusting deeper into the dark mass of Britons on the far side of the barricade.

The Druids had obviously counted on the volleys of slingshot and the barricade to stop the Roman advance and had manned it with their light infantry while the remains of the heavy infantry assaulted the rear of the Roman square. The well-armoured legionaries easily cut a series of wedges into the enemy's ranks and as more legionaries pushed through the barricade, they spread out on either side. The lightly armed Durotriges were totally outclassed. Even their reckless courage could do little to effect the outcome. Before long the leading centuries of the Roman square had formed a continuous line on the far side of the ruined barricade.

Once before, the Britons had faced the relentless killing machine of Rome, and once again they broke before it, streaming away into the night. As he watched them flee, Cato lowered his sword and found that he was shaking. Whether from fear or exhaustion he no longer knew. Strangely, his sword hand was so tightly clenched round the handle that it was almost unbearably painful. Yet it took all the force of will he could summon to make his hand slacken its grip. Then awareness of his surroundings became more rational and he saw the line of bodies stretched out along the barricade, many still writhing and crying out from their injuries.

'First and Sixth Centuries!' Hortensius was shouting. 'Keep going! Advance a hundred paces and halt!'

The Roman line moved forward, and slowly the flank centuries and supply wagons slipped through the gaps and resumed their place in the square formation, shepherding their surviving prisoners along with them. Only the rear two centuries remained on the far side of the barricade, steadily giving way under the onslaught of the Durotriges' best warriors. While his century was halted, Macro ordered Cato to make a quick tally of their strength.

'Well?'

'Fourteen lost, best as I can say, sir.'

'All right.' Macro nodded with satisfaction. He had feared the butcher's bill would be higher than that. 'Go and report that to Centurion Hortensius.'

'Yes, sir.'

Hortensius was not difficult to locate; a stream of orders and shouts of encouragement were ringing out across the sound of battle, even though the voice now carried the rasp of extreme exhaustion. Hortensius received the strength report and did a quick mental calculation.

'That makes our losses over fifty, and there's the rear cohorts to go yet. How long until dawn, do you think?'

Cato forced himself to concentrate. 'I'd guess four, maybe five hours.'

'Too long. We'll need every man on the formation. Can't spare any more for guard duties…' The senior centurion realised he had no alternative. 'We're going to have to lose the prisoners,' he said with unmistakable bitterness.

'Sir?'

'Get back to Macro. Tell him to round up some men and kill the prisoners. Make sure the bodies are left with those we've just killed on the far side of the barricade. No sense in giving the enemy any greater cause for grievance. What are you waiting for? Go!'

Cato saluted and ran back towards his century. A wave of nausea swept up from the pit of his stomach as he passed the kneeling forms of the prisoners. He cursed himself for being a weak sentimental fool. Hadn't these same men killed all their prisoners? And not just killed, but tortured, raped and mutilated them. The face of the flaxen-haired boy staring lifelessly from the bodies heaped in the well swam back before his eyes and bitter tears of confused rage and a sense of injustice welled up. Much as he had wished death on every member of the Durotrigan nation, now that it came to killing these prisoners, some strange reserve of morality made it seem wrong.

Macro, too, hesitated on hearing the order.

'Kill the prisoners?'

'Yes, sir. Right now.'

'I see.' Macro looked into the young optio's shadowed expression and made a quick decision. 'I'll see to it then. You stay here. Keep the men formed up and ready, just in case that lot get it into their thick British heads to try it on again.'

Cato fixed his eyes on the churned-up snow stretching out ahead of the cohort. Even when pitiful cries and screams rose up from a short distance behind him, he refused to turn and acknowledge the sound.

'Keep your eyes to the front!' he shouted at the men closest to him, who had turned to seek out the source of the awful noise.

At length it died down and the last cries were drowned out by the sound of the fight from the rear of the formation. Cato waited for fresh orders, numb with the cold and exhaustion, his spirit weighed down by the bloody deed Centurion Hortensius had ordered done. No matter how hard he tried to justify the execution of the prisoners in terms of the cohort's survival, or the well-deserved retribution for the massacre of the Atrebate inhabitants of Noviomagus, it felt wrong to kill their captives in cold blood.

Macro slowly threaded his way back through his men to take up position in the front rank of his century. He stood beside Cato, grim-faced and silent. Cato glanced at his superior, a man he had come to know well over the last year and a half. He had quickly learned to respect Macro for his qualities as a soldier, and more importantly his integrity as a human being. While he would hesitate to call the centurion a friend to his face, a certain intimacy had grown between them. Not quite father and son, more that of a much older, worldly-wise brother and his younger sibling. Macro, he knew, regarded him with a degree of pride and smiled on his achievements.

For Cato's part, Macro embodied all those qualities he aspired to. The centurion lived at ease with himself. He was a soldier through and through and had no other ambition in life. Not for him the tortuous self-analysis that Cato inflicted on himself. The intellectual pursuits he had been encouraged to indulge in when he was raised as a member of the imperial household were no preparation for life in the legions. No preparation at all. The lofty idealism Virgil lavished on his vision of Rome's destiny to civilise the world had no relevance to the naked terror of this night's fight, or the bloody horror of military necessity that had caused the prisoners to be killed.

'It happens, lad,' Macro muttered. 'It happens. We do what we must if we are to win. We do what we must to see the light of the next day. But that doesn't make it any easier.'

Cato stared at his centurion for a moment, before nodding bleakly.

'Cohort!' Hortensius bellowed from the rear of the formation. 'Advance!'

The rearmost centuries had passed through the barricade and re-formed on the far side, all the while fighting off the increasingly desperate assault of the Durotriges' heavy infantry. But once it was clear that the attempt to trap and destroy the cohort had failed, the fight went out of the Durotriges in that strange indefinable way that kindred sentiment spreads through a crowd. Warily, they disengaged from the Romans and simply stood in silence as the cohort tramped away from them. The defiant ranks of legionaries remained unbroken, and had left a trail of native bodies in their wake. But the night was far from over. Long hours remained before dawn stretched its first faint fingers over the horizon. Long enough to settle the score with the Romans.

The cohort moved on through the darkness, the square formation tightly compacted about its supply wagons bearing their load of casualties. The moans and cries of the wounded chorused with every jolt and grated on the nerves of their comrades still fit enough to march. They were straining to hear any sound of the enemy's approach and cursed the wounded and the squeak and rumble of the wagon wheels. The Durotriges were still out there, and they dogged the cohort. Slingshot whirred in from the darkness, mostly rattling off the shields but now and then finding a target and reducing the cohort's strength by one more each time. The ranks closed up and the formation steadily shrunk as the night wore on. Nor was slingshot the only danger. The chariots the cohort had last seen at dusk now rumbled along the slopes, and every so often charged in on the cohort with blood-chilling war cries. Then at the last moment they veered away, having hurled their spears into the Roman ranks. Some of these, too, found their mark and inflicted even more terrible injuries than the slingshot.

Throughout it all Centurion Hortensius shouted out his orders, and threatened terrible punishments to those he knew were best motivated by fear, while offering encouragement to the rest. When the Durotriges yelled abuse from the darkness, Hortensius returned it in kind at top parade-ground volume.

Finally the sky began to lighten over to the east, slowly gathering pale luminescence, until there was no mistaking the approach of dawn. To Cato it seemed that the morning was being drawn across the horizon almost by the willpower of the legionaries alone as each man gazed longingly towards the growing light. Slowly the dark geography around them resolved itself into faint shades of grey and the legionaries could at last see the enemy once again, faint figures stretching out on either flank, shadowing the cohort as it struggled on, exhausted and battered but still intact and ready to summon up enough strength to resist one last onslaught.

Ahead the ground gently rose up to a low crest and as the front ranks of the century reached the ridge, Cato looked up and saw, no more than three miles away, the neatly defined outline of the ramparts of the Second Legion's fortified encampment. Over the thin dark line of the palisade hung a dirty brown haze of woodsmoke and Cato realised how hungry he felt.

'Not long now, lads!' Macro called out. 'We'll be back in time for breakfast!'

But even as the centurion spoke, Cato saw that the Durotriges were massing for another attack. One last attempt to obliterate the enemy who had managed to evade destruction all night. One last effort to exact a bloody revenge for their comrades whose bodies lay scattered along the line of march of the Fourth Cohort.

Chapter Sixteen

'Yesterday afternoon, you say?' Vespasian raised his eyebrows as the cavalry decurion finished making his report.

'Yes, sir,' replied the decurion. 'Though more dusk than afternoon, sir.'

'So why has it taken you until dawn to get back to the legion?'

The decurion's gaze flickered down for an instant. 'At first we kept running into them, sir. Seemed that they were everywhere, horsemen, chariots, infantry — the lot. So we swung back and circled round during the night. I realised I'd lost my bearings after a while and had to make a best guess. Before first light, we were way over to the east, sir. Took us a while before we even sighted Calleva. Then we made the best time we could, sir.'