Rome’s Fallen Eagle (39 page)

The shrill call of a long
lituus
cavalry horn from across the river startled Vespasian, not by its volume but by its significance. He did not bother to look at its source but instead turned his head to the north and saw what he had been dreading. The movement of the II Augusta had not gone unnoticed – how could it? A sizeable force had broken away from the Britannic horde and was now heading along the flat, riverside meadow towards them, led by a large formation of chariots. Paetus’ ala had dressed its ranks and broken into a trot towards the oncoming enemy, just a mile distant.

‘Speed this up, Maximus, or we’ll get caught before we’ve got the first cohort across.’

The prefect of the camp took a look at the last two boats on each bridge still to be positioned and ran off bellowing for more haste.

Magnus frowned. ‘That ain’t going to do much good, the lads are going as fast as they can; I’ve never seen a river bridged so quickly.’

Vespasian ignored him and signalled over to the I Cohort Hamiorum’s prefect to report to him.

‘Shadow our cavalry north, sprint if you have to, but I want there to be eight hundred arrows every ten heartbeats supporting them when they come into contact; and shoot at the horses.’

The prefect saluted and rushed away; within moments the Hamians had turned and were doubling north along the river in pace with the trotting Batavians.

Despite Magnus’ reservations, the appearance of Maximus at the end of the bridge had inspired the men to even greater efforts and the last two boats were now being lashed into position. Vespasian retreated a few paces up the hill and took his place in the front rank of the first cohort, next to Tatius; Magnus took his position on the other shoulder. Behind them the Eagle-bearer of the II Augusta, resplendent in his wolfskin, stood erect, ready to hold his sacred standard aloft with both hands in the coming battle whilst those around him fought to keep it safe from the
enemy. Vespasian needed all his willpower not to fidget as the ropes were secured to the stakes and the final lengths of the wooden road were laid and nailed. A glance to the north told him that half a mile away the Batavians were less than two hundred paces from contact and the Hamians were sprinting in a ragged formation to keep up with them.

‘Don’t look at them, sir, there’s fuck all you can do about it,’ Magnus muttered in his ear.

Vespasian gripped his sword hilt and checked that the weapon was loose in its scabbard in an effort to keep his mind from the excruciating tension. He reflected that this was the first time he had used the Lady Antonia’s gift of her father Marcus Antonius’ sword in combat since the Jewish riots in Alexandria almost five years previously. He had missed it in Germania; the longer auxiliary spatha was not—

‘Clear the bridge!’ Maximus shouted.

The work parties dashed back down the wooden construction’s length, causing it to undulate unevenly.

‘Let’s move, primus pilus!’ Vespasian ordered before the last men were clear.

‘The first cohort will advance at the double.’

The cornu blew, the standards dipped twice and eight hundred men of the five double-strength centuries of the first cohort moved forward.

‘Break step!’ Tatius ordered just before the bridge.

With a series of small jumps they broke step so that their regulated pace would not cause the pontoon bridge to bounce itself to destruction as they pounded along the wooden road.

Vespasian restrained himself from racing across, keeping instead to the speed set by Tatius; hobnails thundered down behind him, amplified in the hollows of the boats below like a constant rumble of thunder in the darkest of storms. His anxiety grew with every step as his eyes continually flicked to the north where Paetus’ men were now engaged in a series of skirmishes with the elusive chariot force. Unwilling to make contact head on, the chariots had veered away at the last moment, their warriors hurling javelins into the Batavian ala, which returned
the compliment, bringing many of the ponies crashing down, sending their wooden vehicles and their occupants hurtling through the air and causing dozens of obstacles in front of the cavalry line when they crunched to the ground. To break formation would have been disastrous; the Batavian line had been forced to stop and they were now fighting hand to hand with the few chariots they had caught and the dismounted warriors who had crawled from the wreckage. A couple of hundred chariots now swirled back at the pinned Batavians, under a continuous rain of arrows from the Hamians on the east bank, to deliver two or three javelins apiece into the stationary ala, felling many in a chorus of agony both human and bestial.

Suddenly Vespasian’s footsteps made no sound, nor did the ground move beneath him; the front rank was over. Half a mile to the north, Paetus’ ala broke and fled, unable to withstand the catastrophic losses dealt to them by a mobile enemy they could not fully engage. The Britons in turn were suffering grievously under the hail of Hamian shafts pouring from the sky, but they pursued their broken foe in the knowledge that they would soon outdistance the arrows of their tormentors. Behind the chariots, thousands of warriors surged forward in their wake in an undisciplined but determined mass.

The first cohort poured onto the west bank, Tatius increasing the pace as he realised they were in imminent danger of being caught in the open whilst forming up. He counted the paces aloud as they raced across the meadow, already trampled by Paetus’ cavalry in their sacrificial charge north. Next to them the Gallic cavalry ala thundered forward towards the hill, equally aware of the need for speed in this very tightly fought affair; behind them their infantry compatriots followed with all haste with their centurions and optiones bellowing encouragement. As Tatius reached the count of fifty the Batavians were no more than five hundred paces away, riding their foaming horses for their lives, outpacing their slower pursuers who in turn had outdistanced the Hamians’ extreme range. Their arrows were now turned onto the surging infantry behind the chariots, which began to pay with their lives for their compact formation.

At seventy paces Vespasian nervously glanced sidelong at the primus pilus but refrained from saying anything, knowing that the seasoned veteran knew just how much frontage his eight-hundred-man cohort needed to form up. With his heart thumping within his chest he pushed himself forward; Magnus grunted with exertion next to him.

‘Right wheel!’ Tatius shouted as he passed one hundred.

The front rank wheeled to the north with the fleeing Batavians now less than three hundred paces away. After twenty more excruciating heartbeats Tatius raised his arm in the air. ‘Halt and form line!’ He gradually slowed his pace to prevent a disastrous concertinaing of the cohort and then finally stopped; behind him the column fanned out, slotting lines of four men into position on either side with the ease and precision that come only from endless drill, turning the column into a line, four men deep. To their rear, the Gallic auxiliaries pounded on towards the high ground and the second cohort cleared the bridge as the Batavians, to their front, swerved to get around their comrades revealing the chariots and massed warriors beyond.

Tatius gave a questioning sideways look at Vespasian.

Vespasian nodded. ‘It’s your century, primus pilus, you give the orders until I decide that the legion should be doing something else other than holding its ground.’

‘Sir! Present pila!’

Throughout the cohort, cornua rumbled, his subordinate centurions repeated his order and all along the front rank, rippling out from either side of Tatius’ central position, left legs stamped forward, shields snapped to the front and the long, barbed-ended shafts of pila protruded over their tops. Although the pilum was not designed as an overarm thrusting weapon, Tatius knew, with his long years of experience, that presenting a solid wall spiked with wicked iron points at the ponies’ eye height would prove to be a savage deterrent to the stocky beasts thundering towards them just a hundred paces away.

Vespasian glanced over his left shoulder. Above the heads of grim legionaries he could see the second cohort’s standard level with him; they had extended the line. The third cohort could be
glimpsed as figures flicking past the gaps in the formation; beyond them Paetus’ cavalry were rallying and the Gauls had begun the ascent of the high ground. He turned back to the oncoming terror, now just fifty paces away, and realised that the third cohort would be caught mid-manoeuvre.

A very quick succession of sharp twangs and heavy thumps caused his eyes to flick right as the faint traces of sixty carroballista bolts flashed low across the river with a resonating hum to slam into the chariots, causing high-velocity carnage. Men, beasts and vehicles were punched away in a heartbeat of violence; just in front of Vespasian, a pony was thumped into its neighbour, a bloodied ballista bolt through its neck, skewering the two animals together as the driver of the chariot next to them was bodily lifted from his kneeling position and thrown, impaled, against the belly of the thrashing beast; there he stuck, gaping-mouthed. The whole tangled mess skewed around, with blood spraying, to crash to the ground in shrieking agony. All through the Britannic charge chariots flipped over, splintering apart, wheels, wickerwork and wood shards flying back up into the faces of those coming behind, as yet untouched; they swerved to avoid the wrecks before them, trampling the prostrate bodies of the wounded and felling half-dazed survivors as they staggered to their feet, all the time slowing as their drivers and warriors looked with fear at the II Augusta’s artillery across the river that was capable of wreaking so much havoc. Within a few moments of the volley’s impact the charge had come to a grinding halt; more than fifty chariots lay in shattered ruins, either as a direct result of the heavy missiles or from collisions with the wreckage that they had caused.

Vespasian knew that now was the time to take the initiative. ‘The Second Augusta will advance!’

Cornua sounded; the Eagle and the first cohort’s standard both dipped and, as one, the eight hundred men moved forward. The second cohort followed their lead as the third cohort, with Maximus in the front rank, finished forming line on the last piece of flat ground before the hill. Behind them more legionaries and auxiliaries doubled across the bridge, all the time adding to the
legion’s fighting strength. Before them, the now stationary chariots, their impetus lost, turned and fled, to triumphant Roman jeers, back towards the mass of supporting infantry, just four hundred paces away, extending in a dark swarm from the river up to the hill’s crest.

‘Halt!’ Vespasian cried as they approached the first of the many wrecks that peppered the field.

The line drew up just short of the first tangle of dead or writhing ponies and men in amongst the smashed remnants of three chariots as the third cohort, now in formation, doubled forward to complete it.

‘That was the easy part,’ Magnus muttered, looking at the horde flowing inexorably towards them.

‘Really? I’d say getting ten thousand men across a river, almost without casualties, under the eyes of the enemy was less than easy. Look.’ Vespasian indicated to his left.

Up the hill the Gallic cavalry were silhouetted by deep golden light on its brow; the first of the auxiliary cohorts had almost reached them. The next two were close behind whilst the final couple were moving into position to form a reserve. As they watched, the lead cohort reached the crest and began to form line; the cavalry gave up the ground and disappeared over the hill. The next two cohorts also manoeuvred to face the enemy before all three jogged forward until the shoulders of the nearest cohort abutted the legion’s left flank, creating a solid line with a file of four men per pace extending for more than half a mile.

As the last two Gallic cohorts moved forward to complete the second line Magnus grunted and turned back to the Britons. ‘Silly me, I didn’t realise that the easy bit was to hold our ground for an hour until sunset against five or six times our number.’

Vespasian watched the massed warriors coming on and noticed that they were slowing. On their left flank, along the riverbank, hundreds of slingers were now engaged in a missile duel with the Hamians; the unshielded archers were having the worst of it as the rounded shot from their shielded opponents cracked into them and scores were already down with the rest retreating, under the pressure, out of reach of the shorter-ranged
slings, back to their supply carts to restock their arrows. In the distance beyond, the Batavian infantry still held the high ground, fending off repeated uphill charges. What was happening with Sabinus’ legion at the bridge was obscured by the multitude before him, who now came to a halt just two hundred paces away.

Again a chieftain stepped forward from the middle of the Britons’ line, tall and proud. Turning to face his followers, he raised his arms and shouted, loud and clear, in his native tongue.

‘That’s not the same one that we faced this morning, sir,’ Tatius said, ‘so he must be Togodumnus.’

A roar went up and, from within the enemy horde, scores of carnyxes, long upright horns with animal mouths, were raised and began a blare of sounds ranging from shrill, staccato notes, like fox calls, through wavering mid-range trills and on to deep rumbles resembling the cornu. The din grew, drowning out the reports of the carroballistae as a volley of bolts streaked with deadly accuracy into the Britons, carving bloody gaps that were soon filled.

Togodumnus ignored the deaths of such a small percentage of his men and turned to face the invaders, raising his sword in the air; it flashed golden in the evening sun, and, howling his hatred, he slashed it down.

The Britons charged.

With Togodumnus leading from the centre the charge bulged forward. It was unlike the one that Vespasian had witnessed only that morning; it was far more measured. No warriors were racing ahead in search of personal glory and, although there were no dressed ranks as such, there was a feeling of order; Vespasian realised that this time they had come to try to overwhelm the legion with their sheer weight of numbers.