Vespasian raised an arm, halting the auxiliaries. He looked up to his left; the silhouetted palisade was still devoid of archers. ‘Shit!’ he hissed under his breath, turning to Cogidubnus next to him. ‘We can’t afford to wait. We’ll have to do this with your slingers; how many have you got?’
‘The front rank of each century, so two hundred.’
‘They’ll be spread out along the column; how do we sort them out to send them forward first?’
‘I’ve already done it; they’re all at the front. I’ll take them forward with five of the ladders to about fifty paces behind the rebels’ line and get them into position. As soon as we’re there I’ll give a signal of a repeated short note on the cornu and we’ll start shooting into their rear.’
Vespasian waited until the slingers were clear before ordering the cohort’s primus pilus to lean the remaining ten ladders at intervals along the side of the ditch with the remains of the centuries, each headed by its centurion, waiting in readiness at the bottom. He took his place at the foot of the first.
As he watched the cohort get into position in the gloom of the ditch, Vespasian caught his breath and tried to steady himself after the frenetic race to save the legion. It had been less than half an hour since he had stepped out of the first cohort’s formation realising that there was an unseen danger approaching from the north; his pulse quickened again as he contemplated what would have happened had he not made the connection in time. He looked at Magnus next to him. ‘If it hadn’t been for Hormus we could well be dead by now.’
‘So even the humblest of slaves can save a legion.’
‘Indirectly, yes. I realised what I had overlooked: the significance of Cogidubnus’ scouts in the north not sending any message: they were all dead. Then I put together two things that we’d talked about the other night and realised that we had been drawn into a trap. Caratacus put himself up as bait and sacrificed those people in the last hill-fort to draw me here; he’d arranged to meet up with all those horsemen after he’d escaped to make his tracks obvious. He wanted me to know where he was going. But to make absolutely sure I followed, Alienus gave his name to the auxiliary prefect knowing that I would have found out by now that it was he who had betrayed Sabinus — and to find Sabinus I need Alienus; so I had to come.’
‘I suppose when you look at it that way it was all too neat.’
‘Exactly; and then when there was no alarm raised in the fort and I remembered those condemned men shouting so urgently I knew that there was no one in there; it was a trap and we’d been goaded into a night attack.’
‘And the savages were just waiting out there to the north and they very nearly got us.’
‘They still might.’
Magnus felt the weight of his gladius, contemplating the honed blade. ‘Not if I have any say in the matter.’
Vespasian looked along the ditch; the centuries were in position. ‘Come on, Cogidubnus, what’s keeping you?’
After a few more thumped heartbeats that added to the tension racking his body, Vespasian heard the low call of a cornu from behind the Britons’ line. With a nod to the primus pilus he pushed the ladder upright so that its head appeared over the top of the rampart and scaled its twenty-foot height with a speed that reflected the desperation of the situation. Propelling himself onto the top of the rampart he found himself level with the third rank of the Roman defence, who were struggling to keep their footing on the steep slope, hunched down behind their shields as they pushed them into the backs of the men in front in a desperate attempt to hold back the horde that had pressed them for so long. Unlike the Romans, the Britons were not tightly packed but rather in loose formation to best utilise their long slashing-swords; they flowed back and forth hacking and cutting at the rectangular semi-cylindrical shields and iron helmets of the rigid front rank of the II Augusta’s élite cohort, braving the blood-dripping blades that punched out from between the gaps in the shields.
With a quick glance to his right to assure himself that Vibius had brought the cavalry into position, Vespasian swept his sword from its scabbard and pelted along the crown of the earthwork, Magnus and the primus pilus following, as slingshots cannoned into the exposed backs of the rearmost Britannic warriors, felling many and causing consternation to spread through their haphazard, loose ranks. Taken by surprise, the Britons looked up to see Roman soldiers, with long hair flowing from beneath their helms and drooping moustaches framing their bellowing mouths, appearing above them; for many the lapse in concentration meant that it was the last thing they saw.
‘Second Augusta! Second Augusta!’ Vespasian roared in warning to the legionaries below, hurling himself into the midst of their foes, punching his shield boss into the upturned face of a startled warrior and taking him crashing to the ground underneath him as all around the unblooded auxiliaries of Cogidubnus’ cohort leapt down onto their fellow countrymen in the name of Rome.
Raising himself to his knees, Vespasian jabbed his sword tip under the ribs of the concussed man beneath him whilst raising his shield over his head, deflecting a downward cut from his left. Bellowing obscenities, Magnus barrelled past, body-checking the perpetrator as behind them more and more auxiliaries piled down from the earthworks, crashing into the Britons’ flank, using their downhill momentum to great advantage. Without order in their attack they had no formation but careered on regardless of lack of support to either side, creating a melee of individual combats as they inveigled their way deep into the Britons’ fracturing flank. The aim of the slingers adjusted with the auxiliaries’ progress, thinning out the rearmost warriors so that the push through them was becoming oblique. But then came the sound that Vespasian had been hoping for: the wet hollow thuds of arrows thumping into chests close by.
Punching his sword into the temple of a kneeling wounded warrior, Vespasian pulled back from the front rank of the advance and shouted at the auxiliary primus pilus, ‘Get some order into your lads, close them up!’ The officer acknowledged and drove forward roaring at his men to form up on him. Vespasian stood, breathing deeply, allowing the rest of the cohort to stream past, their rate of progress gradually increasing in line with the panic spreading along the Britons’ line.
But Vespasian knew that it was far from over. Looking behind him he saw that they had cleared about twenty paces of the first cohorts’ frontage; it was enough. ‘Pull your men back from the rampart, Livianus!’ he ordered, picking out the centurion from amongst the bloodied, exhausted front-rank legionaries by the transverse horsehair plume on his helmet. ‘Make a gap for the cavalry.’
Livianus nodded his understanding and immediately began shouting at his battle-weary men as Vespasian ran back to the rampart and scrambled up it. Looking down along the battle’s front from his high position on the hill his heart faltered: it was concave and the two cohorts that he had left in reserve with Maximus had been deployed; there were no reinforcements left. But worse stilclass="underline" there was now fire in the II Augusta’s camp; he could do nothing but pray that Caepio, with the last two Gallic cohorts, could deal with the incursion. ‘Valens, where are you?’ he muttered to himself as the gap between the first cohort and the ramparts finally opened. Vibius’ arrival at the head of the cavalry was as prompt as Vespasian could have wished for. The young tribune stopped by Vespasian to return his horse; Vespasian mounted and spoke to Vibius privately. ‘Our centre could break very soon if it’s not supported. Cause as much carnage to them there as you can, buy us time with your lives or we’re all dead; understand?’
Vibius swallowed hard and sucked in a lungful of air through his nose as he realised what was being asked of him and his men. ‘Yes, legate, I understand; trust me to do my duty.’