Watching the ground before them carefully as he rode behind Brem, Calgus was the first to notice the horsemen cantering towards them when they were still a thousand paces or so distant from the war band. At five hundred paces, as the king’s bodyguard were growling to be set loose upon the incoming horsemen, the enemy riders pulled up abruptly, each of them shedding a second man from his beast’s back. The dismounted men hurried forward another few paces, forming an orderly line and standing immobile for a moment until a command made almost inaudible by the distance set them into action. Raising their arms they sent a flickering flight of arrows high into the air, the missile’s iron heads glittering in the sunlight as they hung for a moment at the highest point of their trajectories before plunging earthwards. Whipping down into the mass of warriors, their impact excited a roar of anger and fear beyond the few casualties inflicted, and the king turned in his saddle to bellow an order for shields to be raised, the men to either side of him having already leaned out of their saddles to put their boards between him and the threat.
Another volley fell, and a few more men were struck down as those that had shields raised them over their heads to protect themselves and those around them close enough to huddle underneath.
‘Delaying tactics!’ Brem fumed, pointing at the archers and raising his voice to shout over the war band’s hubbub. ‘Charge them down, my bro-’
He jerked sideways with the impact of an arrow in his left side, and as Calgus’s horse shied back a half-step another shot flew past him, close enough that he knew he too had been a target for the men who had waited in the trees to ambush them with such skill. The king slumped over his horse’s neck, and Calgus responded the only way he knew, instinctively snapping a command at the closest of the clan leaders gathered behind them and pointing at the forest’s edge.
‘Send men into the trees! Root out those archers and have them track our progress along the forest edge to prevent any more ambushes!’
The noblemen responded without question, and Calgus urged his horse forward into the protection of the shields that had been raised by the king’s bodyguards. Brem had managed to force his body back into an upright position, panting with the pain and shock as he stared at a blood-covered hand.
‘Fool … to have … fallen for that … old trick.’
He put the hand back to his side, shut his eyes in anticipation of the pain to come and swiftly snapped off the arrow’s shaft where it protruded from his wound. Swaying in the saddle, he would clearly have fallen if not for the strong hands to either side. The Selgovae waited until his eyes opened again, nodding dour respect at the king’s resolve.
‘Can you continue, my lord King?’
Brem nodded, his face white with shock.
‘I have no choice. You men — ’ he gestured to the bodyguards to either side of his horse ‘- hold me up. Try not to make it look — ’ a racking cough shook the king’s body, and he coughed a wad of bloody phlegm on the animal’s neck ‘- too obvious. And march faster. I do not know how long I will be able to stand this pain.’
Their task of distraction complete, the enemy archers re-mounted behind the horsemen who had carried them to their shooting position and cantered away, vanishing into the trees a thousand paces or so further to the north.
‘Kind of them to show us the way to wherever it is that they’ve taken refuge.’
Calgus nodded distractedly at the king’s painfully grunted statement.
‘Indeed so, my lord King. Although I cannot help wondering why they would choose to face such overwhelming superiority in numbers in the forest, where we will be able to surround them and attack from all sides.’
Brem coughed again, a bubbling, half retch, and spat blood onto the ground to leave his lips flecked with red, and his eyes wide in a face pale with pain.
‘I care little. We find them, we crush them, and then I will bear the ordeal of this arrow’s removal.’
The path down which the archers had made their way back to their fellows was clear enough, already trampled wide and flat by the passage of hundreds of men, and Brem bent stiffly to look down from his horse with a bitter, painful laugh.
‘No deception this time, I see, just …’
He fell silent, cocking his head to listen. In the distance, the sound almost inaudible, they could hear the sound of axes striking wood, so many axes that the noise was a continuous hammering. With a creaking tear a tree fell, the noise of its impact with the forest floor lost beneath the continuous racket of chopping, and Calgus smiled to himself at the realisation of what the Tungrians were doing.
‘They will use trees as walls.’
Brem spat again, his mouth a sour gash in his face’s white mask.
‘It makes no difference. We will overwhelm them like hunting wolves. No wall can protect them from my fury — ’ He coughed again. ‘For no wall can be long enough to prevent our washing around it to tear them apart. Onward!’
The warriors surged around them, fanning out on either side of the path with their weapons and shields ready to fight, and all the while they advanced into the forest’s dim green light the noise of axes hewing on wood continued, the unmistakable sound of trees falling seeming to reach Calgus’s ears with every few steps that his mare took. As the sound of the chopping grew louder the trees began to fall less frequently, until the war band crested a ridge and found the place where their enemies had chosen to make their stand. Calgus stared over the heads of the warriors surging round and past the small knot of horsemen protecting their wounded king with a half-smile. From his position, hunched white-faced over his horse’s neck, the king saw the expression flicker into life, and his voice was weak and peevish when he summoned the strength to speak.
‘What’s so fucking funny, Calgus?’
The Selgovae replied without taking his gaze off the spectacle before him, shaking his head slowly.
‘I could never have predicted it, and yet it’s just so obvious, my lord King. The enemy have constructed a line that your men will never outflank.’
Before them in the clearing below the Tungrian axe men had formed a great circle, almost two hundred paces across, it seemed, and had then felled every tree around its circumference so that they had fallen into the circle with their tops pointing to its middle. Almost the entire perimeter of their impromptu stockade was refused easy access by the interlocked branches of the fallen trees, and where there were gaps that the axe men had failed to fill the Tungrians were already waiting four and five men deep, their lines formed and ready to fight.
‘I have no doubt that we can defeat these tired, hungry men, my lord King, but I also have no doubt that they will make us pay a stiff price for the pleasure. Are you sure that you wouldn’t prefer the cheaper option of starving them out over a day or two?’
Brem shook his head, still unable to raise his head into an upright position, his voice even weaker than before.
‘Never. Why should I risk the eagle being smuggled away in the night when I can have every man down there dead before the sun sets? Why allow the man who killed my son the chance of escape from my retribution? No! Sound the horns! I will recover that eagle if it is my last act before I go to meet my ancestors.’
‘They’re coming then.’
Julius nodded, watching the Venicones pour over the lip of the ridge from which he could see the mounted royal party staring down at their improvised defences, the barbarians cheering at each sounding of their horns, shouting insults and threats at the waiting soldiers.
‘You didn’t expect them to be frightened off by a few trees?’
Scaurus shrugged, looking about the circular space in which his men were preparing to make their stand.