‘But sir…’
Atenos ignored the man’s imploring tone and shoved through the press of men, making for a small gap where missiles and battle-maddened warriors had caused a breach. Howling Cadurci were smashing down with swords and axes and jabbing with spears, and no sooner had Atenos plugged the gap than a gleaming spearhead glanced off his cheek plate and tore through the leather strap at his shoulder that held his medal harness. There was a snap and the whole thing slumped to one side, one of his hard-won phalerae falling away to the ground below. Atenos bellowed in fury and his first blow entered the spear-man responsible at the cheek, almost cutting his head in half horizontally.
‘Bastard. Those medals are mine!’
Fury, tempered with experience and discipline, took over. His second blow all-but severed the sword arm of the man to his right. His third took an axe man in the throat. Stab, hack, slice, stab. Shield up. Shield locked. Smash with the boss and back into position. Stab and thrust. Stab and thrust.
The press was too much. He knew it. The shield wall was doomed even as those reserves arrived and began to fall into position. A stray axe blow took the corner off his shield and carried on into the sword arm of the legionary to his left who shrieked and fell back to be replaced a heartbeat later by a man from the second line, his teeth gritted.
‘Juno’s tits!’ someone shouted away to the left. Atenos was too experienced to allow himself to be distracted by conversation. He concentrated on the axe man before him as he asked what was going on without turning his head to look. His sword caught the man’s axe arm in the pit, sinking in with satisfying ease – one of the killing blows any sword trainer in the army will teach early on. Along the line, that same voice called out.
‘More cohorts. It’s a general advance. They’re storming the place from all sides!’
No. Atenos felt the anger rising. After all this mess buying time, the general cannot have been so unprepared and stupid as to throw away six legions in such a foolish manner. But the centurion could hear the buccinae of the other legions in their advance up the slope. What was Caesar doing? He must not have wasted this opportunity!
Above, the heavens opened with a boom, and torrents of water battered the fighters on both sides. Bowstrings would be unusable in a few heartbeats’ time, when they had been stretched beyond drawing. The fires might even be extinguished. It was a small blessing now in the grand scheme, but a truly unpleasant one for the men locked in mortal combat with the enemy.
A sword came out of nowhere and slammed into his forehead. He heard the projecting brow of his helmet give and split with a metallic crack, felt the lip of the helm bite into the flesh of his forehead, felt the sharp, hot pain as the blade’s edge struck skin.
* * * * *
Marcus Antonius turned to Caesar, his expression pained and impatient. ‘The spring is about to fall back into their hands, and we’ll have lost four cohorts of men there alone, forgetting the rest of this insane assault. It’s perhaps half an hour past the point where we should have sounded the general order to fall back. We’ve lost.’
Caesar turned a sly smile on his friend.
‘Have you so little faith in me?’
Antonius narrowed his eyes angrily. ‘If you have some ridiculous plan then put it into action while we still have an army.’
‘It is all a matter of timing, Marcus.’
‘Don’t be so bloody infuriating, Gaius. One day you’ll keep your plans too close to your chest and one of your fits will take you off to Elysium without the rest of us knowing what to do!’ The general’s sharp glance did nothing to shut him up. ‘Yes I know about your episodes. Atia told me all about it. She worries about you. But that’s not the issue now. Fuck the timing, Gaius. Legionaries are dying by the century out there.’
‘Then I think you will be pleased by that sound.’
Antonius frowned and cocked an ear. Over the hiss of the falling rain – warm rain, even the downpour wouldn’t make the sticky heat any more bearable – he could hear rumbling. Not the first peal of thunder he’d heard while he watched the legions falling like reaped wheat on the slopes of Uxellodunon. They should have ridden out the siege, even if it took a year.
‘Thunder. Very helpful. Their archers will be less trouble. And I can see some of the fires going out. It’s not going to help. You’ve committed the legions to their death for what? To buy time?’
‘Precisely,’ Caesar smiled. ‘And the moment is upon us.
‘Thunder is…’
‘Not thunder, Marcus.’
Antonius blinked and his gaze rose to the spring along with Caesar’s pointing finger.
‘Sacred Venus, mother of man, what in Hades is that?’
* * * * *
Atenos blinked. His world was a red blanket. Reaching up in automatic panic, he balled his fists and rubbed his eyes, squeezing the sheet of blood from them. Again and again he blinked. His hand went up to his forehead. His helmet was gone and someone had thoughtfully tied a wrapping around his wounded head, but the blood was free-flowing and that wrapping was now crimson and saturated. Beneath the wrapping he could feel a lump the size of a hen’s egg.
He deflated. In the press of men, he’d been certain that that was his death blow. He’d been waiting for one for over a year now. The centurionate had a ridiculously high mortality rate and though he continually claimed invulnerability on account of his Gallic bones, there was a saying among Caesar’s legions since Alesia. Lead the Tenth to glory, but put a coin in your mouth first. Priscus, former primus pilus of the Tenth, had fallen at Alesia. Carbo, latest in that role, had fallen in the disastrous retreat at Gergovia. How long until the latest incumbent fell? He was sure the other centurions in the Tenth were running a lottery on when it would happen, though he’d never caught them at it yet. But it seemed that the spring at Uxellodunon would not be his time. He had a thundering headache and had seemingly lost quite a lot of blood, but he was able to think and move. He was, to all intents and purposes, intact.
He sighed as another rivulet of blood blinded his left eye. Unseen hands suddenly loosened the wrapping and the blood came again. Then there was the feel of something slimy being slapped on the wound. Honey. Dear goddess Minerva let it be honey and not one of the dung-based poultices used by some hopeless medics. He felt some relief as a fresh dressing was tied in place, and a damp sponge – not a shit-sponge, please – wiped away the blood from his face.
A concerned, young face appeared in front of him.
‘What is your name, centurion?’
‘Atenos, primus pilus of the…’
‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
‘Four, if you count the thumb as a finger.’
‘You’re fine,’ the capsarius pronounced. ‘Took a bit of a knock there, centurion. You might want to stay seated for a while until your brain stops rattling around in your skull.’
Atenos wanted to berate the young medic for any implication that he had a small, wizened brain, but as he turned sharply, he felt suddenly very sick and had to concede that perhaps the man had a point.’
‘How’s it going?’ he asked, wincing.
The medic shrugged. ‘Into Hades by the moment. ‘Scuse me, but my talents are required.’
Atenos nodded at him, and the man was gone.
He took a moment to look around himself. Whoever had pulled him out of the fighting line had not only got him back to safety and a capsarius, he had thoughtfully kept him in the vicinity of the fight. He sat with his back to the earth mound, the creaking, smouldering tower looming above him, the ropes maintaining its stability passing above him, anchored there at the other side of the spring.