Falling in next to them, he glanced at the tribune. Now that he was closer he could see the extent of the officer’s wound between the flapping folds of cloak. The man’s white tunic was soaked crimson with his blood, centred around a wide slash that had cut the man’s gut almost from side to side. Even as he moved, Rufus saw a hint of purple intestine through the blood-soaked tunic.
Reaching across, he put two of his fingers to Cilo’s neck just beneath the jaw line. The pulse was hardly there at all.
“Leave him!”
“Sir?” One of the legionaries stared at him in disbelief.
“He’s a dead man; as we’ll be if we don’t leave him.”
“He’s alive, sir.”
Rufus reached across and jerked Cilo’s arm from the legionary’s shoulder. The dying tribune slumped between them.
“He’ll be dead before we reach the gate. Leave him; that’s an order!”
The other legionary released his grip on the tribune’s right arm and the officer collapsed to the floor, too far gone to even groan at the agony. The body slapped into the mud and shit, one leg shaking involuntarily.
“Come on!” Rufus bellowed, already breaking into a run. Next to him, the two legionaries sprang to life, racing after him. A count of five heartbeats later, half the population of Gesoriacum rounded the corner, yelling and waving swords, spears, axes and even tree branches.
“We’re in the shit, sir!”
“Not if we can reach the fort. We can last a siege for at least a month there.”
Up the slope they pounded, trying not to lose their footing in the slippery muck that flowed down the hill into the town. With a cry in familiar Latin, three legionaries suddenly dropped over a side wall from a garden to their left — some of the defenders of the town’s new walls, no doubt. From their urgency and curses it was clear that they also ran from pursuing natives.
“Report!” he bellowed between laboured breaths as they came alongside the new arrivals, one of whom was clutching a wounded, bloody arm, all three held swords, their shields abandoned in the rush to clamber over the walls.
The legionary glanced at the speaker in surprise and realised that it was his senior commander. Between wheezing breaths, he shouted as they ran.
“The wall’s over… overrun, sir. Dozens of ‘em… they… they came from every… everywhere inside the town… The lads on the… wall and down at the port…. are screwed, sir.”
“They control… the town now…. then?”
“Yessir. And… and I think there’s… more coming out… of the woods.”
“The whole… damned tribe, then!”
Rufus fell silent, saving his breath for the run, grateful for the fact that his military boots with their hobnailed soles gave him a better grip on the mucky slope than civilian wear would. It also gave them the edge over the mob that chased them up the hill who were struggling to keep their feet at speed, several going over in the mud and crap.
Ahead, the fort walls loomed ever closer and finally, in the murky grey, the shapes of individual men resolved themselves on the parapet. Finally the alarm went up inside; the poor visibility must have prevented the fort’s soldiers from spotting the warning beacons at the harbour.
It was a disaster all round.
“Open the damn gate” Rufus bellowed at the top of his voice. Figures were moving around the gate now, and more and more heads and torches began to appear along the wall, backed by the bellow of numerous buccinae and cornu.
The din was growing detestable as the six men closed on the fort, the cacophony of a legion preparing itself for action mixing with the unintelligible cries and curses of the Morini mob behind them.
A loud tortured groan arose from the walls ahead of them and, despite expecting it, Rufus flinched as the scorpion released with a ‘crack’, sending a foot-long bolt down the slope. Despite the skills of the artillerists, the bolt whipped over the heads of the mob and disappeared down into the town harmlessly.
“Angle it down more, you idiots!” Rufus snapped as he bore down on the gate, whose left hand leaf was now swinging open.
In response a second scorpion from the other side of the gate released with a ‘crack’, the bolt whistling over the heads of the six soldiers with only two or three feet to spare. Rufus felt his bowels clench involuntarily at the shot as the passage of the bolt actually ruffled his hair. He was about to snap out a curse at the firer when a shriek of pain and the sound of falling behind them confirmed the perfect accuracy of the shot.
Rufus clamped his mouth shut and hurtled through the gate, the others close at his heel.
“Close it!” he cried, somewhat unnecessarily, given the fact that the portal had already begun to swing shut as they passed through it.
Above, an unseen centurion bellowed out the order for pilum fire and there was the distinctive noise of dozens of missiles arcing out into the air, followed by the thud and rip of the javelins falling into a mass of men, then the screams of the wounded and dying.
The duty centurion stomped towards the six men as they variously bent double, clutching their knees and spitting or leaned heavily against timber and coughed painfully, heaving in breaths.
“Anyone else likely to come back, sir?”
Rufus blinked away the sweat and focused on the centurion.
“I very much doubt it. They’ve got the town’s defences under their control, as well as the port. Watch those two points where the walls meet the fort very carefully and get a good force there. As soon as you’re sure it’s safe enough, get some men out there and tear down a five yard section of the new town walls. I want plenty of open ground around the fort. We don’t know how many of them there are or what they want.”
He straightened. “But they’ve clearly planned this for a while, and there are other Morini coming from nearby to their aid, so I think we have to assume we’re here for a while. I’m hoping it’s just a small rabble of local civilians that we can draw out into open battle and flatten, but I have the horrible feeling that we’re looking at a sizeable uprising that we’re woefully ill-equipped to deal with until one of the other legions makes contact.”
The centurion nodded professionally.
“Then we’d best settle in and hope we can get control of the situation before the general returns, sir.”
Rufus felt his heart sink again. They’d lost the port and there was no way to warn Caesar. Where was Fortuna when she was really needed?
Chapter 17
(South east Britannia)
Lucius Fabius, centurion of the third century, first cohort of the Seventh legion, gestured at a chattering legionary with his vine stick.
“I’m watching you, Statilius. Shut your trap and concentrate on your job. We need to be back in the camp by nightfall and you are without a doubt, the laziest, slowest, most pointless dullard I’ve ever seen don a tunic. How in Hades you manage to get it on the right way round every morning is beyond me. You must have helpful tent-mates.”
The legionary flushed and the half dozen men scything the wheat awkwardly with their swords laughed.
“And the rest of you shower of shit are little better. Shut up and work.”
Turning his back on the labouring soldiers, the centurion spotted his colleague and old friend, Tullus Furius striding through the unevenly cut stubble, staff jammed under his arm and a look of irritation on his face.
“We’ll never make it back to camp before dark with this lot. We might as well make the decision now. Do we leave some of the harvest, hope it survives the night well and come back in the morning, or keep working into the dark and hope we find our way back without too much trouble?”
“I say we keep working. It’s only three miles and pretty much a straight line. We can — Legionary Macrobius, if I see you put that sword down or take that helmet off, you will be emptying latrines with your remaining hand for the next month, while I use the other as a back-scratcher. You got that?”