Vespasian turned back to his tribunes. ‘Caepio, find the other two Gallic cohorts and tell them to prevent any of the bastards coming around behind the camp, and tell Cogidubnus to bring his Britannic auxiliaries to me as soon as he can.’ Without waiting for an acknowledgement he looked down at the young man he had unhorsed. ‘Find the Batavian Cavalry, Marcius, and send them after Blassius and then get yourself a horse and bring the Gallic auxiliary cavalry to the bottom of the hill. Sergius and Vibius, you follow me.’ Cruelly kicking his mount into action, he sped away with the remaining tribunes and legionary cavalry following as a howl of hatred issued from the night-shrouded host bearing down on them.
The pace of the II Augusta’s deployment was now frantic as the threat closed but Vespasian sensed that it was not fast enough as he raced along the column of doubling cohorts. Reaching the front he glanced to his right: the Britons were less than a hundred paces out and their pace seemed to have increased. Ahead he could see the first cohort forming up on the slope but to the left the Hamians and the Gauls were still a quarter of a mile away. ‘Turn and face!’ he bellowed at the third cohort’s primus pilus.
The centurion shouted the order, raising his arm in the air, a cornu rumbled and the cohort’s standard rocked from side to side; the third cohort came to a standstill a hundred paces short of the first’s right flank.
There was no time to fill the gap.
Along the column the deep call of the cornu was echoed and the remaining cohorts halted and turned to face the enemy as the first long-range javelins struck. The luminescent figures could now clearly be made out as matted-haired, long-robed druids whose filthy garments glowed dimly in patches with an uncanny light; in their hands they brandished writhing snakes. Next to the central druid ran a huge man in a winged helmet shouting his triumph at having caught the legion deploying: Caratacus. Caratacus, the Britannic chieftain whom no Roman had seen since his defeat at the battle of the Afon Cantiacii two years previously; since then he had struck terror into every legionary in the new province for his ruthless irregular resistance to Rome’s conquest. With ambushes, lethal harrying of supply columns, patrols and outposts and pitiless usage of prisoners and collaborators, Caratacus had more Roman blood on his hands than any other Briton on this island; and now he was about to cover himself in more. Vespasian realised that Caratacus had played him all along.
Vespasian led on the one hundred and twenty men of the legion’s cavalry detachment to cover the gap as the javelin shower intensified, drumming down with a rapid staccato beat onto the upturned shields of the II Augusta.
With the Britons now no more than thirty paces from contact, Vespasian reached the right flank of the first cohort who had just completed a scrambled deployment four ranks deep. He slowed his mount. ‘Turn right and form line!’ The lituus blared and the troopers reined their horses in and around, turning from a column two abreast into a line two deep. Without waiting for the decurions to dress the line, Vespasian drew his sword, raised his arm and roared, ‘Charge!’
As one, the legion’s cavalry surged forward, taking their wild-eyed, frothing mounts directly into a canter and then quickly accelerating them into a gallop, swiftly closing the distance between them and the warriors heading for the gap in the Roman line and the chance to cut it in two with fatal consequence. Missiles rained down on them, felling a dozen horses as if an invisible tripwire had been placed in their path.
‘Release!’ Vespasian yelled, his voice raised an octave by the tension in his chest and belly. At a low trajectory, more than one hundred sleek javelins hissed towards the oncoming front rank of Britons, thumping into them, punching many back with arms flailing and mouths gaping with sudden agony. To either side hundreds of pila hurtled from the Roman ranks. The druids flung their squirming serpents with shrill curses at the legionaries as they drew their swords; they then stopped still, letting the warriors behind, led by a baying Caratacus, engulf them and take the full force of the barbed-pointed, lead-weighted weapons flitting across the gap between the two forces. Back and down many went, but the survivors dashed on for the final twenty paces, following with glee their leader who had worked the first chance in two years of annihilating one of Rome’s killing machines.
Vespasian bellowed incoherently, urging his horse on as troopers drew their spathae and tensed their thighs around their mounts, bracing for impact. The joy of the warriors charging for the gap vanished and they cried in terror as the dim shapes of horsemen thundered towards them, threatening the horrific death of infantry caught in the open by cavalry. The men in the front ranks wavered and slowed, but the weight of numbers behind them pressed them ever forward; an instant later they collided in a maelstrom of human and bestial limbs. Vespasian swept his sword horizontally, cleaving heads and raised arms as if scything ripe barley as his mount ploughed on, head raised in fright, neighing shrilly, trampling every man in its path, leaving them broken and twisted. As the cavalry crunched into the fracturing Britannic line their momentum decreased violently; the horses shied from desperately wielded spears and swords and the troopers found themselves fighting in pockets, having failed to keep formation in the desperation of their disaster-averting charge. Vespasian reared his mount, using its flailing forelegs as weapons as he punched and cut with his short infantry gladius at the howling warriors around him, slicing open chests and splitting faces as the troopers to either side slashed their longer cavalry spathae to greater effect; but now, with the initial drive of the charge soaked up, the infantry began to regain the advantage of numbers. Without the benefit of a shield-wall the cavalry were in danger of being overwhelmed; many were ripped from their mounts.
Then a massive communal grunt of exertion rose from the left as the first cohort made contact and the brutal, mechanical sword work of the Roman war machine began to the accompaniment of the shrieks of eviscerated men. A similar sound followed from the right, but much amplified, as the rest of the legion slammed into the tribesmen who had so suddenly appeared out of the night.
Now the killing began in earnest.
Vespasian parried a wild cut from a long slashing-sword, its inferior quality iron buckling in the spark-strewn impact; kicking his right leg forward, he slammed his hobnailed sole into the wielder’s face, crushing the nose and punching the warrior back into the men behind, knocking them off balance. Taking advantage of the momentary lack of adversaries, he pulled his horse back and signalled for the second-rank trooper to take his place. Looking around he saw that the Hamians and Gauls behind them were now close enough to relieve them. Just to his right he glimpsed Sergius, one of the two tribunes whom he had brought with him, dragged screaming from his horse. Now was the time to withdraw his cavalry before too many more succumbed in what was, essentially, an infantry fight. They had served their purpose; the young man had not died in vain.
‘Disengage!’ he called to the liticen.
The shrill call of the lituus rose above the surrounding clamour; Vespasian urged his horse back towards the Hamians as the surviving troopers pulled away from the surging Britons, if they could. The warriors began to follow the retreating cavalry, mercilessly cutting down those still trapped in their midst, as they saw once again the gap open in the Roman line.
But the prefect of the Hamian archers knew what was required of him as he saw Vespasian galloping towards him yelling and pointing at the obvious danger. He immediately halted his command thirty paces from the gap; as the retreating troopers swerved left and right out of the Hamians’ line of sight the eastern archers let fly a volley of shocking, close-range intensity. The front two ranks shot directly at the Britons racing through the rend in the Roman formation, drilling their shafts deep into the lead warriors, twisting them to the ground, long hair wrapping around agonised faces, whilst the rear two ranks aimed high; the second low-trajectory volley from the front ranks hit as their arrows poured down from above to bring the surge to an abrupt halt as if it had slammed into an unseen wall. A third and fourth volley, each with fewer than five heartbeats between them, beat the Britons back as if the wall itself was shunting forward, leaving only the dead behind it. Suffering grievous losses both from the head-on barrage and the metal-tipped hail pelting from the sky the warriors turned to flee, leaving the ground carpeted with their dead.