“Marcus!”
Glancing over his shoulder, Fronto grinned at the sight of Galronus heaving his way through the water to catch up, his long Celtic cavalry blade unsheathed in his hand, no shield visible.
“Decided to join in then?”
“Contrary to common Roman belief, we Belgae are surprisingly adaptable” he grinned. “I can fight, piss, and even sleep without a horse between my knees.”
“We need to force them back on to the beach where we can form up into lines. Then we’ve got ‘em”
Galronus nodded and grinned as he caught sight of Petrosidius, only ankle deep in the water’s edge, mercilessly beating a cringing, disarmed native to death with the gleaming silver eagle of the Tenth.
“I fear the general would have a fit if he saw your standard bearer doing that.”
“So long as he doesn’t break the bloody thing. He’s not the carefullest of men.”
Fronto baulked for a moment as he bumped into something soft and malleable and glanced down to see a bloodied, sightless eye staring up at him from a smashed head. The sea was becoming a sight to sicken even the hardiest of soldiers.
Accustomed to fighting on land, Fronto was used to the unpleasant aftermath of battle: the slick of blood and organs that covered every inch of the field; the bodies lying in gruesome, twisted positions, sometimes four deep.
The pieces of head and limb that you couldn’t avoid treading on.
The stench.
What he wasn’t used to, and was wholly unprepared for, was that such an action fought in waist deep water resulted in the same carnage, except that there it flowed around you as you walked, occasionally bumping into you. A hand here; half a head there.
If he’d had anything to bring up, he’d have done it as he surveyed the scene.
Galronus seemed to be judiciously ignoring the grisly sea, the tidal currents dragging floating detritus back out from the areas of more intense battle in the shallows.
Closing on the knot of more intense fighting, Fronto yelled at the top of his voice to be heard over the din. “The horses! Take out the horses!”
The focus of the struggling men changed as they began to attack the steeds while using their shields to protect themselves from the constant hammering blows from above. Pausing, he once more took stock of the situation, the water’s surface now tickling the back of his knees. The enemy warriors had only partially committed to the attack. A fresh volley of fire from the ships had strafed the screaming, advancing horde and many had drawn up short at the sudden threat and run back to their comrades beyond the beach.
Others, however, had made it to the sea, where the ballistae wouldn’t fire for fear of hitting their own, and had joined the horsemen in the desperate struggle to prevent the Romans reaching solid land. But the numbers were tilted in the favour of the invaders now and every moment saw fresh legionaries arriving from the ships that had been at the rear of the fleet against a diminishing number of natives.
“Come on, let’s finish this.”
Galronus grinned by his side and the two men sloshed through the knee-deep water, racing toward a small group of howling, half-naked men wielding spears.
Galronus found himself running lightly, almost enjoying himself as he left the last lapping wave and crunched onto fine gravel. He barely paused in his run to pull back his heavy long sword to his right and bring it round in a wide swing that took the leg clean off the nearest Briton. The man’s screaming turned from that of rage to that of agony as he fell to the shingle in two separate pieces.
This was what every Remi son was born for.
Life was the gift. Battle was the method. Blood was the price.
There would be some, especially the druids, who would condemn or chastise him for this: for running with an army of Rome and bringing blood and death to fellow tribesmen — fellow worshippers of Belenus. But the history of the Belgae was a history of tribal warfare — of brother against brother. Had not the Belgae fought amongst themselves for centuries before the coming of Rome? And now, simply because a new force had entered the arena, the secretive druids expected the tribes to band together against Rome? To deny a thousand years of warfare and enmity?
Galronus shook his head to discard the thought and the subject entire as a screaming, moustached face beneath a shock of spiked white hair rose up in front of him. The projected spittle of the warrior’s yelled invective had hardly touched his cheek before the blood spatter joined it. Galronus paused for only a moment to heave his sword back out of the man’s neck and push him to the ground with his foot, leaving him shaking out his life spasmodically on the pebbles.
The thing was that Galronus had fought with the legions for more than two years now, and in those long months he had not once visited his tribe. Truth be told, he rarely thought of them. Oh, he knew of them, for he had sent and received word these past two winters while they endured the bitter wet cold and he sheltered in warm, cosy Rome. They had thrived, despite the supposed loss of their freedoms. He had heard that they had begun to re-road the oppidum of his birth with flag stones and drainage ditches after the Roman fashion. He could only imagine the relief the children and women would feel not having to slop through six inches of muck as they left their house.
The druids had abandoned them, of course. Most of the strange, powerful cult had crossed the water to the believed safety of Britannia and their sacred isle of Ynis Mon, while others had stayed in Gaul, but retreated from the open world to carry out their own little hate campaigns against Rome.
Galronus was not stupid. Far from it. He would never delude himself and suggest that the Belgic tribes were anything other than subjects of Rome now, or that he was still a chief of the Remi, for all that he held the title. He was now an officer of Rome. He had learned their language to the extent that people were often unaware of his origins. He had taken a liking to their wine, though not watered as they would drink it — a habit he shared with Fronto. He liked their chariot racing and their taverns. He liked their culture — apart from the dreadful theatre. He liked…
He liked Faleria.
A quick glance to one side confirmed that Fronto was still beside him, fighting with all the fury and strength of a battle-crazed Remi warrior, with the energy and agility of a man half his age. With the certainty and sureness of a man whose life is panning out exactly as he had planned it.
With the blessings of Sucellus and Nantosuelta, Galronus would bind hands with Faleria this year and the man fighting furiously by his side would become his brother.
He grinned and casually beheaded a yelling youth with a sharp spear but absolutely no ability to use it.
Strange, really. He was suddenly aware for the first time that he appeared to be thinking in Latin, with all its idioms and intricacies. When had that started?
He was so blood-tied to the inhabitants of this island that he shared not only Gods, names and culture, but even language. Despite the oddities of their regional dialects, if he concentrated, he could follow three quarters of all the shouting going on around him. The swords that were being raised against him bore so much more resemblance to his own than did the short stabbing weapons of the legions. He could very easily discard his Roman-style helmet and slip among the Britons and they would not even know him for an enemy.
But Rome was the future. Better to embrace the future than to fight it and disappear without trace, such as the Aduatuci, executed or enslaved entire after Caesar’s conquest.
Again, Galronus shook his head and pushed the thoughts aside. Such reflection was best saved for the dark of the night after battle’s end.
“Galronus!” yelled an insistent voice.
Looking around in surprise, the Remi officer realised that the Roman forces had stopped advancing, cornu and buccina calls going out to mass the troops, standards waving, circling and dipping, whistles blowing, centurions’ voices carrying across it all. In his reverie, Galronus had not stopped with the rest and was standing in a strange twenty-yard no-man’s-land between the assembling legions and the expectant Britons who had drawn back up the beach. Fronto was desperately beckoning him.