The Eagles Conquest

Cato stared out across the battlefield, strewn with the hacked bodies of the dead and the screams of the wounded, hardly able to believe that he was still alive. About him the remains of his century stared at each other in wonder.

'Why the fuck did they leave?' someone muttered.

Cato just shook his head wearily, and sheathed his sword. Vespasian's new arrivals altered the direction of their advance and formed a screen between the retreating Britons and the pitifully small number of survivors from the first wave.

'Did we beat them off? Couldn't they take it?'

'Use your brain!' Cato snapped. 'It must have been something else. Must have been. '

'Look there! To the left.'

Cato looked and saw tiny dark shapes rise up round the bend in the river: cavalry. 'Ours or theirs? I suppose it has to be ours.'

Sure enough a Roman cavalry pennant was visible at the front of the column. Plautius' deployment of forces upriver in search of a ford had not been in vain. Some of the Batavian cohorts had arrived on the British flank in time to save the vanguard of the Second Legion. But the new arrivals were not greeted with any cries of triumph. The men were simply relieved to have survived, and were too tired to do anything more than slump down on the river bank and rest their exhausted limbs. But Cato realised he could not do that just yet. His sense of duty would not permit it. First he must do a roll call of his century, check their fitness to continue fighting and then make his report to the legate. He knew he must do this, yet his mind was stupid with fatigue now that the immediate danger had passed. He yearned more than anything for a rest. Even the thought of it seemed to add vastly to the physical need to sleep. His eyelids slowly dropped before he was aware of it; he started to slip forward and would have fallen to the ground had not a strong pair of arms caught him by the shoulders and held him in place.

'Cato!'

'What? What?' he managed to reply, eyes struggling to open.

The hands shook him, trying to break him out of his exhausted stupor. 'Cato! What the fuck have you done to my century'?'

The question might have sounded bitter but beneath it was the familiar grudging tone he had grown used to over recent months. He forced himself to look up, to open his stinging eyes and face his questioner.

'Macro?'

The Eagles Conquest

Chapter Twenty-Seven

'Glad to see you still recognise me under all this crap!' Macro smiled and clapped his optio on the shoulder, carefully avoiding his injured side.

Cato silently beheld the spectacle standing before him. The centurion's head and chest were covered in dried blood and soiled with mud; he looked like a walking corpse. Indeed, for Cato, whose recent ferocity had been driven by grief at his centurion's death, the vision of Macro alive and grinning into his face was too shocking to accept. Stupid with exhaustion and disbelief, he just stared blankly, mouth open.

'Cato?' Macro's face creased with concern. The optio swayed, head drooping, sword arm hanging limply by his side. All around them stretched the twisted bodies of Romans and Britons. The bloodstained river lapped gently along the shore, its surface broken by the glistening hummocks of corpses. Overhead the sun beat down on the scene. There was an overwhelming sense of calm that was really a slow adjustment from the terrible din of conflict. Even the birdsong sounded strange to the ears of men just emerging from the intensity of battle. Cato was suddenly aware that he was covered in filth and the blood of other men, and a wave of nausea swept up from the pit of his stomach. He could not stop himself and threw up, splashing vomit down Macro's front before the centurion could step back. Macro grimaced but quickly reached out to grab the lad's shoulders as Cato's legs buckled. He slowly lowered the optio onto his knees.

'Easy, boy,' he said gently. 'Easy there.'

Cato threw up again, and again, until there was nothing left inside him and then he retched, stomach, chest and throat in spasm, mouth agape, until at last it passed and he could gasp for air. A thin trail of drool curved down through the acid stench between his spread hands. All the weariness and strain of the previous days had found its release and his body could cope with no more. Macro patted his back and watched with awkward concern, wanting to comfort the boy, but too self-conscious to do so in front of the other soldiers. Eventually Cato sat back and rested his head between his hands, the grime on his face spattered with blood. His thin body trembled with the coldness of total exhaustion, and yet some final reserve of mental strength kept him awake.

Macro nodded with full understanding. All soldiers reached this moment at some point in their lives. He knew that the boy had finally passed the limit of physical and emotional endurance. He was past any exhortation to duty.

'Rest, boy. I'll take care of the lads. But you must rest now.'

For a brief moment it looked as if the optio would try to protest. In the end he nodded and slowly lowered himself onto the grassy river bank and closed his eyes, asleep almost at once. Macro watched him for a moment and then unclasped the cloak from a Briton's body and gently laid it over Cato.

'Centurion Macro!' Vespasian's voice boomed out. 'I'd heard you were dead.'

Macro rose to his feet and saluted. 'You were misinformed, sir.'

'Evidently. Explain yourself.'

'Nothing much to explain, sir. I was knocked to the ground, took one of them with me, and they left us both for dead. Soon as I could, I made my way back to the legion. Arrived just in time to hop on one of the boats in the second wave. Thought Cato and the lads might need some help, sir.'

Vespasian glanced down at the huddled form of the optio. 'Is the boy all right?'

Macro nodded. 'He's fine, sir. Just exhausted.'

Over the legate's shoulder the fresh-faced tribunes and other staff officers mingled with the weary legionaries who had survived the river assault. The legate's presence suddenly caused Macro to frown with concern.

'The lad's finished for the moment, sir. There's nothing more he can do until he has rested.'

'Easy there!' The legate chuckled. 'I wasn't looking to use him for another duty. I just wanted to make sure he was all right. The boy's done quite enough for his Emperor this morning.'

'Yes, sir. He has.'

'Make sure that he gets all the rest he needs. And see to your century. They've performed magnificently. Let' em rest. The legion will just have to manage without them for the remainder of the day.' Vespasian exchanged a smile with his centurion. 'Carry on, Macro. It's good to have you back!'

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

Vespasian saluted and then turned and marched off to organise the defence of the hard-won bridgehead. The staff officers parted to let him through and then scrambled along behind.

With a final glance to check that his optio was still resting peacefully, Macro went off to see to the comforts of his surviving men. He carefully picked his way over the sprawled bodies and shouted out the order for the Sixth Century to assemble.

Cato woke with a start and sat up, bathed in a cold sweat. He had been dreaming about drowning, held down by an enemy warrior in a river of blood. The mental image slowly dissipated and was replaced with the colour blue which dissolved into orange. His ears filled with the crackle and clatter of campfire cooking. A pungent odour of stew filled his nostrils.