Bran passed word to his captains to continue to enfilade the legionaries as they struggled through the system of ditches-hoping to slacken the stream that poured into the breach-then rushed to take personal command of the defense there.
Snarling chaos engulfed Bran Mak Morn at the breached wall. Legionaries crowded through-slowed in part by the jumble of broken stone and the reeking mouth of the hell-worm’s burrow. Vicious hand-to-hand combat surged and ebbed. It was impossible for archers to distinguish friend from enemy in this, and ordered tactics were useless in the crush.
Bran yelled encouragement to the defenders and threw himself into the affray. The beleaguered Picts took new heart, seeing that their king fought beside them. The legionaries recognized the Pictish king, redoubled their efforts in an attempt to slay the leader of their enemies.
Steel on steel. Muscle against muscle. Bran exulted in the familiar grip of a Pictish sword and oval buckler-dealing death like a blood-mad panther. Blades hacked at his buckler; a javelin slipped under his sword to skitter against his mail. Bran slashed, severed the wooden haft-then caved in the ribs of its wielder. More feces spitting hatred over scutum rim. More Roman blades thirsting for his blood. Bran’s Pictish blade dealt final answers to each challenge.
Roman weapons and discipline, but no one could mistake these soldiers for Romans. As face after face swam past him, Bran understood another reason for Nero’s pride. Bran thought of Nero’s legionaries as half-human, but clearly in most of these warriors the human blood was rather less than half. Even in Roman harness, some of these legionaries looked no more human than did the serpent-folk-some of them less so. The legate’s pride was that his own ophidian blood was not such a taint that he could not pretend to be human. Bran’s blade made a ruin of a flat-skulled, wattled face that was no more human than a toad’s.
Grimly the struggle dragged on. Bran’s buckler was notched and splintered; blood seeped from shallow cuts, and his side ached from where his mail had turned the edge but not the force of a sudden sword-thrust. His own blade was dulled from pounding on Roman armor and inhuman flesh. His shoulders were numb with fatigue, and each breath was a luxury. How Grom had fared, he had no means of knowing-as he was forced by the press beyond the breach, but off for the moment from those within. Bran was not certain how he himself fared. The breach was barricaded with dead Picts and legionaries, and still Nero’s soldiers seemed to rush upon them in an unchecked tide.
Wearily Bran put his back to a portion of the shattered wall, laying about him as the endless file of enemies continued to press him. The legionaries, with their armor and rectangular shields, had the advantage in close fighting over the Picts, few of whom wore mail and who needed more space to wield their longer swords effectively.
“Ha! King Bran wears his crown a last time!” came a cry from above the tumult.
Bran disemboweled his latest assailant, and glanced past the crumpling body. Claudius Nero had obtained a horse in some manner, evidently deeming it indecorous for a legate to command his troops on foot.
“How is it that a crawling thing has learned to ride!” Bran sneered, raising his blade.
With a hiss of rage, Nero spurred his anxious bay through the ranks of his men-pilum poised to hurl at the Pict. As his mount bolted past, Nero feinted, then cast the javelin.
Bran had waited the move, caught the pilum on his buckler. The tempered iron point drove through the frame, narrowly missing his arm. Wedged in the shield, the untempered forte bent under the weight of the haft. Bran threw aside his useless buckler, as Nero galloped back, sword in hand.
Their blades met in a shiver of steel, as the legate swung with the full impetus of his charge. The Roman blade shattered against the heavier Pictish sword, almost knocking the legate from his saddle. The jarring impact delayed Bran’s recovery just long enough for Nero to wheel past. Bran’s sword slashed the trailing red cloak, as Nero cursed and flung the useless hilt at his enemy.
A scatter of arrows streaked past the legate now, as the archers on the wall directed their fire toward him. There should be more arrows, Bran thought. The desultory archery meant either there were no more arrows, or that the archers had been driven from the wall.
Claudius Nero laughed derisively and galloped beyond effective bowshot. Bran guessed the legate had only ridden in to judge for himself how the siege progressed. What Nero saw must have pleased him.
The legate committed his reserve as soon as he reached their ranks. In close order, the rest of Legio IX Infernalis advanced upon Baal-dor to administer the killing blow to its faltering defense.
Cutting his way back within the breached wall, Bran gained the rampart and assessed his position. No new word from Grom. While those who had invaded Baal-dor from the hidden passage had thus far not fallen upon the wall’s beleaguered defenders from the rear, Bran saw that a number of buildings were ablaze within the enceinte. Here at the wall, the defenders barely held their own against the legionaries who pushed through the cleft in ever increasing numbers. And now advancing from where they had waited in the mist, perhaps a thousand or more of Nero’s reserve.
The outcome was not hard to predict. With an unbreached wall, or with sufficient men to hold the breach against assault, Nero would have stood little chance against Baal-dor. But the legate had plotted too well.
Bran shook his bloody fist at the advancing legionaries. And there was still another reserve wing coming up from the mist behind this one. Finish.
The nearer wing abruptly halted. In some disorder they turned to confront the troops that followed. Troops who now drove a wedge directly into the milling legionaries.
Even before the distant echoes of combat reached his hearing, Bran was shouting like a madman. This last army to rise from the mists of the strath was an army of Picts. It was Claudius Nero who was caught in the pincers now.
Yelling, Bran plunged back into the melee below. What clans these were who had answered his summons was impossible to tell in the darkness and distance, but their coming was a gift of the gods. The sudden appearance of Pictish reinforcements completely swung the momentum of battle. The weary defenders fought with new strength, and the besiegers started to think about ways to escape with their fives.
When presently Grom returned to the wall with his victorious force, the melee became a rout. Throwing down their weapons and shields, the legionaries at the embattled wall broke and ran. The Picts fell upon them like wolves on fleeing sheep-cutting them down as they fled across the open ground, slaughtering those who struggled to clear the earthworks.
At the sight of their comrades in headlong flight from the walls of Baal-dor, those of Nero’s reserve abandoned their efforts to regroup in the face of the newly arrived Pictish force. Panic and massacre became wholesale. Nor did it save matters for the legionaries, that among the first to flee the battle on the slopes of Baal-dor was a lone rider whose flapping red cloak made a banner behind him in the night.
Bran did not tarry to witness the second death of the Ninth Legion. Once the outcome of the battle was evident, the king of Pictdom pounded across the slopes below Baal-dor astride his own mount.
He was not surprised to find Liuba there, calmly wiping the blood from her blade as the rout carried away from her to the moors beyond. Windrows of slain legionaries attested to her coming. Bran, haggard and gory, marvelled at the girl’s cool poise.