“Shit shit shit shit shit!” Fronto hissed as he collapsed in an awkward heap, trying to remain as quiet as possible despite the agony that tore through his knee, having entangled his foot in a think gnarled tree root and twisted his leg on the way down.
“You alright sir?”
“Fine!” he snapped at Carbo. “Don’t worry about me.”
The primus pilus gave him a look that hovered somewhere between concern and disapproval and wiped the rain from his face. Here in the depths of the woodland, the rain was no longer a hail of watery shards, but a constant battering of heavy, bulbous droplets that formed on leaves and deposited themselves unerringly down the necks of the men.
“You sure you know where we are?” Fronto barked at his senior centurion.
“With respect, legate, finding north in a forest is a very easy task. We’ve already turned back south and we’re heading towards the field.”
“I hope you’re right” Fronto grumbled, using the rough surface of the tree to haul himself to his feet. “I’m remembering now why no famous general has ever led a campaign in a forest.” He glanced around to see the four hundred and twenty seven men who currently comprised the slightly under-strength first cohort, spread out in the woods, glinting in the sunlight between the trees, unable to hold to a formation. “If they anticipate this and come at us in…”
“Shh!” Fronto blinked as Carbo stopped dead and put the finger to his lips. Behind Fronto, the entire cohort came to a halt, the noise of the battering raindrops once more taking the place of the steady movement of soldiers.
“What?” He hissed.
In reply, and frowning at Fronto’s volume, Carbo cupped a hand around his ear. Fronto fell silent, trying to hear over his own laboured breathing and the downpour. As the thumping of his pulse and the wheezing of his lungs died down, he could now just make out the sounds of fighting.
“They’re already engaged!” Fronto hissed in surprise. Carbo nodded and Fronto shook his head in disbelief. The cohort had been ready to move by the time Fronto and Cicero had returned from their wall meeting with Caesar and they had been heading out of camp toward the forest’s edge before the encamped legions had even put out the call for assembly. How long had they been in this damned dripping sylvan nightmare?
“Fully engaged, too” whispered Carbo. “That’s not the opening roar of two lines; that’s the sound of ongoing fighting. We’d best move.”
Fronto nodded as his centurion made several hand gestures that began the cohort moving again, as quietly as they could through the woods, trying not to spook wildlife or snap large twigs. Inevitably, the noise level was louder than any officer would wish it — and certainly a different matter entirely to the surprisingly stealthy Celts — but with the din of battle growing louder with every cautious step and the background roar of the rain, there was little chance of the cohort being heard on the battlefield.
Carefully, slowly, Fronto approached the growing white-green ribbon of light that heralded the tree line and the field of battle. It would be overestimating their contribution to things to say that everything rode on their little manoeuvre, but certainly it would make a vast difference to the way the fight went, and might mean the saving of — or the death of — a great many men. Fronto found himself seething that they hadn’t thought of this earlier. He could have been moving through the forest with his men as soon as the scouts had even finished estimating their numbers. Then they’d have been ready. Now…
The whole plan had been based on the notion that both his and Cicero’s cohorts would be in position at the forest’s edge and ready to pounce when the Britons arrived. Now they were playing ‘catch-up’ and had to commit as soon as they were reasonably able. Would Cicero be there? Had he already arrived and committed his men, cursing Fronto for his absence? Was he still wandering around these cursed Britannic forests getting wet and angry and unaware that the fight was already on? Or was he too creeping through the undergrowth worrying about what might happen?
Finally, he began to see the movement of a vast seething army of men, largely naked or dressed in those curious long trousers such as the Gauls wore, painted and adorned with bronze or even gold where their status warranted. Every man seemed to be armed with a different weapon, like an unruly mob hastily dragged from their beds to save their land. Even in the haze of the downpour it was hard not to be chilled at the number of them.
They would be no match for a Roman legion in top fighting condition, even at two-to-one odds. But at the moment it was at best touch-and-go as to which side would gain the advantage and Fronto knew as well as any experienced commander that morale was half the battle. The army that thirsted for blood would push all the harder and an army that broke was lost in that instant. It was sadly a little too obvious which force had all the morale on that field.
The Roman lines, invisible somewhere behind the mass of warriors, were making only the noises of a group of men fighting for their life: grunting, yelling, screaming, occasional horn calls or bellowed commands. There was no roar of defiance; of the might of Rome, nor the silence that was sometimes called by a commander to frighten the enemy — a totally noiseless armoured advance was a disturbing sight for anyone.
The Britons, on the other hand, were in full spirit, bellowing their war cries and howling their blood lust, exhorting their strange Gods to help them drive these hated invaders from their island, heedless of the rain battering their oft-naked skin. Likely the inhabitants of this accursed island viewed heavy rain as the normal weather for any time of the year. Fronto found himself wondering whether there were druids among them. It seemed that any Celtic force gained a dangerous amount of heart when they knew they were in the presence, and had the support, of that bunch of weird blood-drinking goat-humpers.
Closer now they crept, passing the boles of trees only ten or twelve yards from the edge. The field was becoming clearer all the time, the denser foliage at the periphery returning the roar of driving rain on green leaf.
Fronto felt a slow smile creep across his face as he took in the situation. The Britons had held nothing back in this, their apparently last ditch attempt to drive Rome from their shores. The bulk of the men — nobles and warriors alike — pushed and struggled to get to the Roman lines, formed in a mass. Their cavalry had apparently charged en masse on this flank at the north side of the field, expecting to break the Roman ranks. Whether it had been Caesar’s decision or that of the senior centurion among the Tenth’s ranks there, the Roman lines had pulled the age-old ‘fake flight’ manoeuvre, apparently breaking under the cavalry’s charge, but then consolidating again to slow their advance and enveloping them, wrapping them in a circle of steel. A small reserve cavalry force remained at the rear, on the far — southern — edge of the fight, but not enough to swing the battle. The nobles had all joined the throng, leaving their chariots in the hands of the drivers who, unaware of the approaching danger, had brought them toward the forest’s edge to watch the battle progress and wait for the call from their masters.
There was a chance, then. As long as the centre, a joint command of the Tenth and the Seventh, could hold against the much greater numbers of their enemy, there was a chance.
Glancing across at Carbo, Fronto tried to use his hands to mime the shape of a chariot, drew a line across his throat, pointed to himself and held up two fingers. Carbo nodded his understanding and turned, gesturing for the centurion of the second century to follow their legate. Like a flowing river of shining steel through the forest, the cohort separated, nine centuries forming on Carbo near the forest’s edge. The remaining century moved to Fronto’s location, where he repeated his mime until they all nodded.