The Druid’s amber eyes, which reminded so many men of a stooping falcon, glittered with hatred, but, in a moment of revelation, Rufus looked into them and saw not a hawk but the memory of a saviour. He heard the earth-shaking roar of a male lion in his head and his hand automatically sought the worn charm at his neck. In that instant his strength returned and Nuada’s spell was broken. The high priest felt the moment too and frowned in puzzlement.
‘You have no hold over me, Druid,’ Rufus cried in a voice distorted with contempt. ‘Go back to the black pit you came from and take your dogs with you.’
In the same instant there was a blood-chilling howl from the left and a new army fell from the tree-cloaked heights there. Adminius and the Cantiaci had come to the battle. The traitor king had watched as the drama was fought out below him. More than once he had been tempted to leave the Romans to their doom, but always something had made him stay. Now he sensed victory and loot the way a soaring buzzard senses the stink of a rotting carcass.
The Dobunni saw them come and ran. With a final venomous curse at Rufus, Nuada ran with them.
Two miles downstream Caratacus waited at the foot of the low hill above the river and watched the disciplined lines of legionaries wading towards him through the flooded lagoon he had created. There was nothing to slow them but mud and the floating corpses of dead Catuvellauni warriors. The traps he had set had all been trampled by his own advance. The army that should have been waiting to slaughter them was gone, scattered like autumn leaves in a sudden gale. Only his small rearguard stood between the legions and the retreating British tribes. Here they would stand, and here they would fall, and he would fall with them. He had failed, and he knew that in failing he had condemned his country and its people to Roman domination and all that meant. Death, for some, certainly. Slavery for more. What wealth they had would be taken to fill Roman coffers and what honour they retained would be trampled beneath Roman feet. But not his honour. His honour would die here with him and he would feast with his fallen warriors — like brave Arven — in the halls of the Otherworld.
He felt a firm hand grip his shoulder, and shrugged it off.
‘Leave me,’ he snarled, half turning and surprised to see Ballan, and behind him the men of the royal bodyguard. ‘You had your orders. Your place is protecting the women and children.’
‘No, lord, my place is with you, and your place is with your people.’ The Iceni’s voice was hard-edged with urgency. ‘Don’t you understand, lord? You are Britain’s hope. Without you they are nothing. With you, they will fight.’ Caratacus shook his head. No, they wouldn’t fight. They were defeated and demoralized. Their fighting days were done. Ballan persisted. ‘Yes. They will fight because you are there to lead them.’ He pointed to the crest of the hill behind them. ‘Twenty thousand warriors and more are waiting for your call. Yes, they are beaten and, yes, they will need time to recover their strength and their courage, but they will fight. Throw your life away in some pointless gesture and you are betraying them and every one who fell today. Those men died for you. Live for them.’
The Iceni’s words were echoed by the captain of the rearguard. ‘He is right. Go, lord. Do not let our sacrifice be in vain.’
Caratacus bowed his head. He didn’t have the strength to suffer this again. Wouldn’t. But neither did he have the strength to resist the hands that pulled him away from the advancing Romans and back up the whaleback hill towards the encampments. He stopped just once, and forced himself to look down over the battlefield that should have been Plautius’s bane, but instead had become his own and that of his people. The long lines of armour-clad legionaries were halfway across the shallow lagoon now, advancing with dogged, purposeful steps towards the rearguard. Behind them, the flooded plain was dotted with British dead, while, at the river’s edge, the three Roman bridgeheads were linked by a pale rampart of Catuvellauni flesh. Beyond that, the Tamesa flowed on, unmoved and unhindered, except by the narrow bridges that dissected its broad waters and still carried the last elements of the three legions across to the north bank. ‘Lord!’ He heard the concern in Ballan’s voice, knew he was endangering them all, but knew also there was one last thing he must do. His eye was drawn to the brightly coloured cloth pavilion where he knew Plautius had watched the battle. He tried to stretch his mind across the gap, to seek out what he did not want to know, but what he must endure. For if his warriors had suffered the spears of his enemy, surely he could suffer his enemy’s scorn? Yet, as he stood there on that field of blood, he realized that the man who directed this terrible killing machine had already forgotten the name of Caratacus of the Catuvellauni. And that was worse than any insult.
He allowed himself to be led in a dream through the chaos of defeat. Among the huts of the encampment a hundred small battles were being fought between the retreating Britons and the victorious legionaries of the Second Augusta. A hundred small tragedies played out.
Not every legionary had pursued the fleeing tribesmen, and it was clear that if they had stood and fought, the remnants of the Regni, the Durotriges and the Iceni could have comfortably kept the Romans at bay to cover the retreat of their women and children. But defeat drives logic from a man’s head and those who had lived through the carnage of the day’s fighting had only one thought: survive. An auxiliary cavalryman who should have stayed with his unit speared a fleeing British chief in the spine with a roar of triumph, but a second later he was hauled from the saddle by a dozen of his victim’s tribesmen and butchered among the obscene filth of a latrine area. Moments later, muffled screams attracted Ballan’s attention to a scattered clump of rowan trees beside their path between two encampments. He knew he didn’t have time to investigate, but an image of his woman and the bastard children he affected to despise convinced him he must. Two Romans were holding down a Catuvellauni maid of about fourteen, while a third humped and bucked between her legs. Without a word, he cut the rapist’s throat and Caratacus’s royal bodyguard chopped the accomplices to pieces as they screamed for a mercy they knew would never be forthcoming. One of the guards took the girl by the arm, but she slipped from his grasp and ran, screaming, into the chaos and the confusion. Men on both sides who showed no inclination to fight simply ignored each other. Two Romans entered one hut looking for plunder, while five paces away a British family gathered what they could for the long retreat. One of the Romans threw a British child a loaf of bread and the boy’s father nodded his thanks as they departed. A few paces ahead, Ballan found his way blocked by twenty surviving champions of Bodvoc’s Regni involved in a savage little battle against a similar number of legionaries from the elite first cohort of the Second Augusta, whom they had faced in the morning. The two sides stopped hacking at each other long enough to allow Caratacus and his bodyguard to pass before resuming their personal war.
They had almost reached the horse lines when Caratacus halted. ‘Wait here,’ he told Ballan, and walked over to the group who had caught his attention.
Scarach of the Durotriges was a warrior feared in battle and a ruler who would bend the knee before no man. But he was a father too. Now he knelt at the centre of his royal guard, head down over the still body of his giant son. As Caratacus drew closer he could see the king’s shoulders shuddering, shaken by grief that was torn from him in great heart-bursting sobs. He almost turned away. No man should see a friend like this. But just as Ballan had shown him his duty, Caratacus required Scarach to do his.