Two legionaries and an optio were swiftly surrounded by half a dozen horsemen, their long swords rising and falling as they battered at the three men, jostling to maintain a position where they could reach. The Romans had moved back to back and their shields were raised to take the blows but their strength was ebbing fast with the sheer effort of fighting in waist deep water.
Snarling imprecations, Fronto laboured towards them, his sword slipping from its sheath beneath the water. The three men would not last long surrounded by cavalrymen with the advantage of both height and numbers.
The silent, oppressive void of the submarine world closed over him again as he slipped on a rock, his bad knee giving way and plunging him down into the salty, choking sea. Desperation grasped him and he let go of the shield he’d been gripping to free him a little from the weight and bulk. Despite the salty discomfort, his eyes remained open and he looked up to see his discarded shield bob to the surface, creating an oblong shadow above him.
A memory of muttered conversations with an angry Varus over too many drinks to be truly healthy flashed into his head as he looked up from his submarine world, and his face split into a hard smile.
He knew how to turn the tables.
Bursting from the surface with the renewed vigour that comes with certainty of purpose, Fronto began to push and fight his way through the water toward the fracas. One of the legionaries had already taken a sword blow from the horsemen and his shield was being split into kindling with the repeated hammering as he desperately clung onto life, failing to find an opportunity to use his gladius.
Closing on them, Fronto grinned, aware that they hadn’t seen him. At a distance of perhaps ten feet, he took a deep breath and plunged beneath the surface, scrambling along in a half-crawl, half-swim in just over three feet of water.
A shadow fell across his strange, ethereal world just as he saw the injured legionary succumb to another blow and drop beneath the waves, clouds of dirty brown indicating the horrible extent of his wounds as the blood bloomed out of his chest and tainted the water.
There was plenty more of that to come.
Crouching, Fronto used the combination of his bunched muscles and the hard pebbled seabed to launch himself through the surface and straight into the horse’s underbelly. Germanic tactics. It was horrible — a dirty way to fight a war — but needs must when Caesar drives…
His gladius plunged into the horse’s gut and ripped this way and that. Urgently, Fronto ducked to one side to avoid the writhing of the agonised animal.
The beast screamed and tried to leap, the Celtic rider suddenly bucking from the saddle and being thrown into the water. It would have been nice to finish the bastard off, but that could come later. With gritted teeth, Fronto plunged beneath the surface, through the glowing slick of horse’s blood and sought out the next equine shadow that blotted out the sun.
Quickly, efficiently, and with a rising distaste, Fronto located another of the Celtic riders and, aware that the swinging swords and danger of battle was taking place just above the surface, concluded he was better off remaining hidden. Closing his eyes and sending a mental apology to the poor beast, Fronto lifted his hand to just below the water’s surface and drove his gladius into the horse’s upper leg, feeling it grate off the central bone as it pushed through and out the other side.
The horse crumpled on its bad leg and Fronto barely managed to push himself out of the way as the beast collapsed into the water almost on top of him, slipping sideways. He felt the tug as the sword was almost wrenched from his grasp with the movement and it was only through a superhuman effort that he managed to maintain his grip on the hilt as it tore free of the leg.
Half-swimming backwards, he watched with sick fascination as the rider, tipped unceremoniously from his blanket seat by the screaming horse, found himself suddenly beneath both the waves and his crippled mount, pinned to the pebbles as the horse thrashed, grinding him to a pulp.
Turning from the grisly scene, Fronto moved along to the next horse, repeating the unpleasant ‘gutting’ tactic of the Germanic warriors, ducking back into the water as the slick of the beast’s blood drenched him from above.
Moving out away from all the action for a moment’s breather, he stood again, aware that the quantity of blood churning in the water was now making it almost impossible to see and that he was in as much danger of bumping into the beleaguered soldiers as he was of finding another horse to deal with.
Two of the beasts that he’d attacked were dying already, thrashing in the water, part bleeding out and part drowning, while another was desperately trying to reach the ‘safety’ of the beach, a constant rain of blood falling from its undercarriage to the surface of the sea. Of their unfortunate riders he could see no sign, though the pair of legionaries who had recently been fighting to preserve their own skins had now taken the initiative and were battering native warriors down into the surf with their shields as their swords rose and fell in rhythmic butchery; likely the fate of the men Fronto had unhorsed.
The legionaries had no time to thank him for the relief, though. Two of the riders who’d been attacking them had wheeled their mounts and pounded away through the waist deep water in search of easier targets, while the last rider, now unhorsed, floundered in the waves, trying to fight off the revenging legionaries. The fight was far from over.
The small pockets of combat had begun to spread and increase, melding together to form one great half-submerged melee, stretching from the very edge of the water, where Petrosidius fought like a man possessed, to the waist deep area, where the last men from the two Gallic vessels struggled to catch up. Two ships’ worth? Where was everyone else?
Horses screamed as the legionaries attacked them viciously, unable to reach their riders. Soldiers hacked and battered with sword and shield, sloshing this way and that, taking advantage of the blood-tinted sea to drop beneath the surface and disappear whenever danger loomed, rising out of the water like some avenging spirit once the trouble had passed and moving on to the next likely target.
A quick glance around the beach revealed a sickening truth: the number of legionaries committed in the water was barely enough to hold their own against the native cavalry. If the rest of the horde decided to brave the artillery and move into the fray, all would be lost. Frowning, Fronto peered past the two nearest ships, their high-sided Gallic hulls rising majestically from the water. To his dismay, he could see soldiers lining the rails of the two triremes. Caesar had held back the men of the Tenth on his ship, and Cicero had done the same with the Seventh on his.
Unbelievable: both officers so stubborn, even in these circumstances! Despite Fronto’s leading of two centuries from the Tenth, the general had clearly put out the call to hold the rest of the legion back, expecting the Seventh to carry out his initial orders. Cicero, equally, had either refused to commit his men, or possibly had found it impossible to force his reticent officers to lead them into the fight. Either way, the entire struggle for the beach was being carried out by two centuries from each legion.
Insane!
His wandering gaze took in the numerous scuffles in the water and settled on a musician with a wolf-pelt over his helmet, struggling to free himself from the bronze hoop of a bent ‘cornu’ horn in which he had somehow become tangled as a Briton rider bore down on him, bloodied long-sword raised and ready to land the blow. He was almost on the unfortunate soldier.
“Over here!” Fronto bellowed to the endangered musician, waving his sword arm. The man turned and began to wade desperately towards him, the sodden wolf fur half obscuring his vision, the horn almost comically constricting him. The legate’s brow furrowed in concentration even as he began to move to intercept. With his shield gone he would stand about as much chance against the horseman as the entangled musician did if he tried to wade out and take him in a fair fight.