The boy went quiet and his chest rose and fell as he did as he was ordered. When he had recovered sufficiently he looked up, his eyes still clouded with fear. ‘King Bodvoc was holding the Romans when we reached him, lord, though he had lost many warriors and we were only just in time. Scarach of the Durotriges led us, and ordered an immediate attack, because the Romans were as hard-pressed as the Regni who faced them.’
‘Your tribe?’
‘The Parisii, lord,’ the boy said, his voice shaking with pride. ‘We were in the forefront of the fighting. Three times we charged, and three times they held. But their line buckled and was close to breaking. One more charge, Lord Scarach said, and he was right. One more charge and we would have sent them fleeing from the field and such slaughter we would have done, but…’ His voice faded and his head dropped. Caratacus lifted his chin and looked into his eyes.
‘I need to hear it all, lad. All.’
‘When we were massing for the final attack a great force of cavalry and infantry smashed into our flank. Where they came from none knew, for it seemed every Roman was needed to hold what they had. But they came, and with such power they cut us almost in two, and as they came the general commanding the legion to our front ordered them to attack. They should not have had the strength.’ The boy’s voice was bewildered, as if he had been cheated in a game of touch rather than being part of a routed army.
‘Yet they did,’ Caratacus said gently. ‘And you ran.’ He could see it in his head. The Roman general had chosen his moment with the utmost precision. He had husbanded his forces as Bodvoc and Scarach flayed his front line, had probably been tempted to reinforce his men as they suffered and died, but had never given in to that temptation.
That was a measure of the general he was. And at the moment the British believed he was beaten he had launched a flanking movement that had torn his attackers in two and, in the same instant, thrown everything he had into an all-out assault that had spread panic and dismay among the undisciplined warriors facing him.
And they ran.
It was over.
He didn’t need to withdraw his Catuvellauni. Word of defeat, or the scent of it, had already reached them and they were conducting a fighting retreat back up the hill with the Romans growing bolder and more numerous on the north bank with every passing second. He reached for his sword and felt it, heavy and comfortable, in his hand. Not the toy ceremonial sword — some Roman would no doubt find that when the huts were looted and take it as a trophy — but his killing sword; the sword he had been itching to wield all day. But it was a commander’s duty to command, not fight. And a commander’s duty to die with his men when the dying needed to be done. Strange that, with everything lost, he felt clean and free for the first time today. Or perhaps not so strange.
He walked through the running men down the slope towards the Romans.
XXXIV
As Caratacus succumbed to the despair of defeat, a mile to his west the sullen mass of Britons confronting Frontinus had been motionless for so long that he dared to hope they had given up. It was Rufus who shouted a warning that told him what he had always known. They were coming again. The Batavian commander drew his sword, reminding himself to mend the new nicks that marred its razor edge, then remembering he probably wouldn’t have to. He took a deep breath.
‘Prepare to receive the enemy.’
His calm voice was echoed along the line by the few surviving officers. Three hundred shields were raised as one and three hundred swords came free of their scabbards in a ragged parody of the nervetingling song the two thousand had created earlier.
Rufus saw the British advance from high on Bersheba’s back. It was obvious they were weary, and some were reluctant, the fire in their blood extinguished by the carnage they’d witnessed, allowing themselves to drift behind the main force of attackers. But there were still thousands of them and they knew how close they were to winning.
Frontinus had used the lull to send out foragers to collect what they could from the heaped British dead, and now the most able-bodied of the wounded were frantically straightening the metal points of throwing spears and handing them forward to their comrades in the line. The Britons were just beyond the mound of their fallen when the shape of the attack changed. A group of forty warriors, champions all, sprinted ahead of the main force and formed an unconscious imitation of the Roman wedges that had destroyed the last cohesion of the ambushers in the battle of the valley. Frontinus screamed a warning, but his men had no time to react. The arrowhead of charging warriors hit the pitifully thin Roman line like a battering ram and Rufus saw the exhausted Batavian defenders smashed aside, opening a gap that was an invitation to the thousands of warriors following behind.
‘Rufus!’ He heard Frontinus’s shout, but he didn’t need it. He was already urging Bersheba forward past the Batavian officer into the gap. He could feel the fear and the anger in the elephant and she flared her ears and raised her trunk and gave an almighty roar of fury that split the skies. The first Britons saw her come and recoiled in terror before the enormous grey monster that was the stuff of their worst nightmares. But behind them came Nuada and Togodumnus, and neither was daunted by the elephant’s power.
‘Kill the beast,’ Togodumnus screamed as he sped forward with a long spear in one hand and a sword in the other.
‘Kill the beast.’ Nuada echoed the cry, and by some trickery or piece of magic a flaming torch appeared in his hand. He thrust the brand into Bersheba’s face and now it was the elephant who recoiled, squealing as she lifted her head to expose the loose skin of her throat to the point of Togodumnus’s spear. The movement threw Rufus off balance and he felt himself being pitched over Bersheba’s shoulder, but even as he fell he still had the presence of mind to draw the short sword at his belt. Every fibre of Togodumnus’s being was centred on the elephant and he barely noticed the sprawling bundle that landed off to his side. With a cry of triumph, the Dobunni king dropped his sword and raised the spear in both hands to thrust the lethal, leaf-shaped point with all his strength into the soft flesh of Bersheba’s neck.
To Togodumnus, it was the merest glint at the corner of his vision, but Nuada saw it come and he cried a warning that was a heartbeat too late. Rufus had launched his gladius overhand with the timing of an athlete and the sure eye of a warrior. It was one of the crude arena tricks Cupido had taught him, but it saved Bersheba’s life. The needle-tipped iron took Caratacus’s brother in the left side of the chest, piercing flesh and bone and heart muscle. Togodumnus felt the breath knocked from his lungs in the same moment he screamed his victory cry. He was surprised when he found himself staring up at a pure blue sky; more surprised still when his mouth filled with liquid and he began to drown in his own blood. He cawed once, like a hungry crow, before he slipped into the eternal darkness of the Otherworld.
Rufus gripped the hilt of the sword in both hands and it came clear from Togodumnus’s lifeless flesh with an obscene sucking sound. Their king was dead and the warriors of the Dobunni were stunned by the loss, but Bersheba was still the only thing holding the gap in the Roman line and Nuada the Druid screamed at them to avenge their leader. He advanced towards the elephant across the dead and dying of both sides, with the sinister bear claw held out before him as he chanted the incantations that would bring his god to his aid.
Rufus didn’t know whether it was the power of the words or the sight of the man who had been within a second of sending him to a fiery death, but he felt himself suddenly gripped by a numbing paralysis. Bersheba shifted uneasily beside him. For a moment there was nothing on the battlefield but the three of them. No Dobunni warriors. No Batavian defenders. No heroes or cowards. No dead. No living. Just man, and beast, and the Druid. Nuada looked him square in the face and smiled as he saw his enemy quail.