Ferox stamped forward, boot on the man he had just killed, and the warrior behind tried to go back, but could not because of the press behind him. He beat aside a sword attempting to parry, twisting his wrist to angle the thrust down. The tip grated on a collar bone, then slid down. Gasping for breath, the warrior was finally able to step back as the men behind him reacted. He was hurt, but not fatally. Ferox had a moment of freedom and swept again back and to his right. His gladius was starting to blunt by now, so the steel cut only part way into the warrior’s neck, and his head flapped down but did not fall. Then Ferox turned back, facing ahead, and the Brigantes gave ground again, stepping back a couple of paces.
‘Still there, Caecilius?’
‘Course I am, sir.’
Ferox was panting, his mail armour like great weights pressing down onto his shoulders. On either side of him the Roman line had advanced and taken a tiny patch of ground, so that it bulged forward. Elsewhere the two sides were where they had started. He blinked because there was sweat in his eyes. Glancing up to the right, he could see Batavians and Roman standards on the grassy mound of the old wall, and the defenders still facing them. There were not many arrows overhead this time, and he guessed the Hamians must have nearly emptied their quivers. The winter sun had climbed as high as it would go, which meant that it was noon, and he tried to work out where the hours had gone.
‘Another few paces, boys!’ Ferox croaked. ‘That’s all we have to do, just drive these mongrels back a a few more paces!’ He had a vague memory of a general telling his men to give him one more step for victory. Was it a Greek?
‘Come on, boys!’ Caecilius yelled so suddenly that Ferox would have jumped if he still had the energy. The boy was waving the gilded eagle. ‘Follow the eagle! Follow the eagle.’
‘The eagle!’ one of the signifers repeated. ‘The eagle.’
Maybe it was just the men still in the rear ranks and not quite so drained, but the legionaries started to chant.
Ferox searched for Arviragus among the enemy and could no longer see him. It did not seem to matter any more.
‘The eagle!’ he screamed, and lurched forward, his legs heavier than when he strapped weights to them to make exercises harder.
The Brigantes came to meet them, and the shouts faded as the two lines of men drew on the last dregs of their strength to fight. Ferox’s shield banged hard against an opponent’s. Neither man gave way, and the warrior was in mail, with a Roman sword and a bandaged head, and he watched the centurion warily. They tested each other, each of their worlds down to just the man trying to kill him.
Ferox feinted a high thrust, failing to draw his opponent’s guard the wrong way, so he put his shoulder behind his shield and rammed it forward again, his foot slipping on the blood-soaked grass so that there was even more force than he had intended. The warrior was barged back, but by the time Ferox recovered balance the man’s guard was up again. On his right the warrior fell with a gladius driven through his head, and the legionary let the weapon go and went over the corpse, pounding the enemy with his shield, until he was among them and a sword swung and took him behind the knee. He went down on the other leg, and they swarmed around, but he kept blocking them with his shield and the blows that got past pounded armour and helmet and did not break through. Barely conscious, somehow the legionary squatted there and defied them until he sagged.
The warrior slashed down hard, his blade striking Ferox’s shield where the edge was already broken and biting deep into the three layers of wood. It stuck fast and as the man tried to wrench it free, the centurion cut upwards, through the man’s chin and mouth. Letting go of his own sword, the man staggered. Ferox twisted the gladius free and sliced through the warrior’s neck. Blood sprayed over his face and eyes and he struggled to see. He shook his shield, but the dead man’s sword was stuck fast and weighed it down.
Caecilius was beside him, eagle in his left hand, and the lad stabbed a warrior in the stomach. A spear came from the second rank, denting one of the plates of the legionary’s armour. It had a huge head, the edge serrated like the ones heroes used in the old songs.
‘Get back, you fool!’ Ferox gasped. He cut at the spear shaft, throwing off splinters, but another man came at him from the front, and with his cumbersome shield there was only just time to block the sword as it swung down. The impact shuddered the shield and the great split in it widened. Another hard blow and the sword dropped down, but the scutum was in ruin. Ferox flung it at his opponent, and then had to slash desperately at a man coming from his right. The gladius rang as it struck the torc the warrior was wearing with such force that it snapped his neck and he dropped.
Caecilius screamed as the spear broke through the lowest plate on his cuirass and went into his stomach. The warrior twisted the weapon, not to free it but to widen the wound, and then let the spear go. Caecilius dropped his sword, and somehow drove the spike of the aquila into the ground before he collapsed. The ground was hard, and his strength ebbing away, so that the eagle-standard leaned forward at a sharp angle.
Ferox spun around, lunging to take the warrior who had killed Caecilius in the side, the point of his gladius driving deep through muscle and flesh. A Brigantian was reaching for the eagle, so the centurion ripped the blade free and slashed at him, slicing down through the man’s skull. Something hit him hard on the side of the helmet, snapping the chin strap and spinning the helmet round until it fell off. His head throbbed and there was wet blood in his hair. The gladius was stuck fast in the man he had killed, the corpse’s weight dragging him down. Ferox let go, nearly tripped on a corpse, and reached the eagle, grabbing it with both hands. There was a blow against his shoulder, where the mail doubled over to fasten, and the rings held, although he was bruised.
Horns blew, dozens and dozens of horns, but they were far away. They did not sound like army signals and Ferox wondered whether thousands more warriors were rushing out to swamp the last Romans, or did he hear the armies of the dead still fighting forgotten wars in the Otherworld?
Ferox wrenched the aquila from the ground and swung it in a great arc at the Brigantes. The gilded bird on top of the pole scarred the air, and took a man in the jaw, breaking teeth and spraying blood from a split lip. One wing bent back with the impact. He swept it round savagely and the warriors made room.
‘Come on, you mongrels!’ he screamed at them in their own language. ‘Let me feed you to the wolves and ravens!’
The horns blasted out again, closer now, and Ferox knew the end would be soon. He no longer cared or thought about anything. There was just the faces of the warriors watching him, waiting for their chance, and all that was left was hate. Let the bastards come and he would pound as many as he could into slush before they got him.
A warrior stepped forward, sword up ready for the swing, and Ferox twisted the heavy standard so that the blade hit the pole, leaving a gouge, but he twisted again and drove the long butt spike into the man’s face.