“We can’t afford another defeat like that brother.” Togodumnus remarked. “These Romans have ways of defeating us that we have never encountered before.” Caratacus didn’t answer he looked away from his brother back to the flames.
“We have to find another way to drive them away from our lands, if we had more numbers and the ground of our choosing we could defeat such battle lines but not like today, trapped between two lines of trees and then enclosed like the jaws of a giant beast.”
Caratacus sighed. “I don’t want to talk of this anymore brother. My mind keeps showing me the disaster that befell us today, that’s bad enough. I don’t need to be told by you like an old pestering woman reminding me, pecking me to a certain death. I’m sorry brother but now isn’t the time for this. Tomorrow we move north away from them, we’ll stay within our territory for the day and then head back to the east and regroup our people. At the same time we’ll send messengers to our neighbours telling them of this disease that’s eating into our land. They have to be persuaded that alone we cannot push them from our lands but together we could number many thousands and together we can crush these Romans.”
Togodumnus agreed with his brother as another cry of agony came from one of the injured where many more lay amongst far too many other wounded warriors, a lot of whom would never walk, let alone fight again.
Early the next morning soldiers from the Second Augusta checked the battlefield again. After the previous days fighting and the last Briton had been taken from the life it had so easily given, General Vespasian had ordered them back to their defensive positions. As sentries were trebled around the perimeter, quiet celebrations were allowed amongst his men although excessive wine was not permitted. There was still a possibility of a counter attack but as time went on, it was reduced with each passing moment.
As the suns warmth began to burn away the night’s dew, soldiers walked slowly across the battlefield with pilums ready or swords drawn. They had only lost eighteen men with thirty six wounded, three seriously who weren’t expected to recover. It was never a good thing to lose valuable, able and well trained men but at the return they had yesterday, it was hundreds to every one of their own. The Britons had suffered a crippling and humiliating defeat, they scattered the ground as the soldiers continued their grim task looking for any who may have survived the carnage and had not been found clinging to life the night before.
Once the field had been checked Vespasian ordered that large burial pits were dug. The half-naked bodies that had sustained inhuman damage were dragged and thrown into heaps on wagons and driven to the ten large holes and thrown in. Soldiers wore cloth over their faces, torn from sacks to limit the stench of death as they toiled throughout the morning to complete the task.
Chapter Seven
Varro and his small group of reconnaissance riders rode out again the next morning. They almost expected to round a corner and find thousands of Britons waiting for them but today it was not to be. The enemy were crawling away somewhere and licking their wounds after the devastating defeat the day before. Every now and again they would come across a hurriedly dug small burial mound where they had buried corpses which showed they were in a hurry as they normally burnt their warriors on funeral pyres. Some of the mounds they found were bigger than others where presumably more than one body was buried. The Romans were curious as to how the Britons had continued to move so quickly and bury their dead but eventually they stopped finding them so the subject became irrelevant.
The Britons were not difficult to track and were clearly making no attempt to disguise the route they were taking. When the sun was high in the sky overhead Varro and his small party had caught up with them, initially they stayed back out of sight and observed them from a safe distance. Stragglers walked along on foot a few hundred feet behind the rear of the main body. Carts, horses, chariots and even the walking warriors carried the wounded slowly moving along the route others walked heads bowed in the main, with little or no conversation taking place.
Some three hundred feet or so distant following at walking pace, Varro studied the Britons who had been so alive and vibrant the day before, but now looked crushed and devoid of life. He felt no sympathy however, not because he was uncaring but because if he allowed thoughts such as those to enter his head, they would eat away at him and he knew he couldn’t allow that. They were after all, the enemy, an enemy that had to been destroyed or beaten so badly that they gave up fighting and never drew a sword against Rome again.
He estimated that they were now half a day’s walk from Brenna’s settlement and wondered how her people would greet their defeated countrymen and women. Would they be welcomed with open arms, their dead mourned, their injured healed or would they be turned away to protect their own people from the wrath of the invaders. There was no doubting that the war party would overwhelm the settlement if it so desired even in its ragged state and he didn’t want Brenna or her people harmed if he could avoid it. They did their best to stay hidden and out of sight as they followed and once or twice a rider would track back and they would have to retreat some distance in order not to be seen.
“We’ll go round them and warn Brenna’s people of their approach. Caratacus could well do anything after yesterday and I wouldn’t want anyone that didn’t agree with him to get in their way especially Brenna and her people.” Varro said after a while.
They moved to the left angling away from the rear of the defeated enemy and began cantering up a slight rise and away around the Britons out of sight. The day was warm with a slight breeze, a good day for riding even if it was under pressure.
By late afternoon they approached familiar paths worn by years of feet, hooves and carts passing through them. The air was still as they rounded a slight bend and entered a clearing. The settlement looked quiet, no dogs or children were busy playing, no animals in the small pens and no people could be seen.
“It looks like they’ve already heard the news.” Veranius remarked as he brought his horse to a halt. Varro looked around at the silent roundhouses, almost eerie with no souls present. Suddenly from nowhere and without any warning arrows thudded into the ground and trees behind them, to a man they turned and retreated further into cover.
“Where the fuck did they come from?” Marcus said from under the canopy of a tree.
“Anyone see how many of them there were?” Varro asked.
“Had to have been at least ten,” Veranius remarked, “the good news is that they weren’t close enough to throw spears.”
“No-one got hit did they?” Varro said checking his horse, they were all uninjured. “We’ve got a choice, we can either try to find them and see how many of them there are or we can get out of here.”