Well not today, my friend.
The legate raised his small shield in time to take the blow, though the power of it sent a shock along his arm and he thought it might have broken one or two of the small bones in his hand. An arc of red-painted wood and leather edging strip came away with the blow and flipped off into the distance.
Fronto recoiled, adjusting his hold on the battered shield with his stinging fingers, his sword hand whitened with the pressure of its grip. A second Gaul appeared at the side of Cavarinos and lunged at him. Fronto reached out to hack at him, but Masgava was there, a long sword lashing out and smashing into the man’s face, throwing him back from the defences.
There was no respite. Fronto had to raise his diminished shield again to stop another assault from the Arvernian noble before him. He noted, as fresh pieces of painted wood were carved from his defence, the bronze figure of Fortuna swinging beneath the man’s chin, and felt how odd it seemed that the man was clearly more possessed by Nemesis right now than by luck, while Fronto, who wore that sword-wielding Goddess, felt no anger but could do with a little good fortune.
‘Cavarinos, stop!’
There was no life in the man’s eyes as he lashed out again. Nor, it appeared, was the Arvernian putting heart or thought into his attacks. They were animalistic and mechanical. And as the noble lunged again, this time with such force that he overextended and almost lost his grip on the cart, Fronto jabbed out with his sword towards the exposed armpit. It came as no surprise when his heart overrode his brain and his arm jerked short, halting the easy-killing blow before it touched flesh. Instead, he flicked his gladius out and turned the blade away.
As Cavarinos came back from another silent, expressionless attack, Fronto caught sight of Masgava out of the corner of his eye. The big Numidian was giving him the oddest look, and Fronto chose to ignore it as he turned away another of Cavarinos’ lunges with his battered shield and kept his gladius back ready to block others.
Another lunge. And another. A sweep easily turned.
Fronto shook his head at the madness of it. The man was crazed and sooner or later he would have to kill him before the Arvernian got in a lucky blow.
From the corner of his eye, he saw his singulares commander take the arm off an attacker at the elbow and then slam out at another, knocking him back from the makeshift barricade.
‘Masgava?’
The big Numidian turned, taking advantage of the momentary lull, as Fronto blocked yet another blow.
The legate ducked back. ‘Put him down for me, if you would?’
Masgava frowned and, as Cavarinos lunged out for another attack on the legate, the huge former gladiator lashed out with his own sword, hilt first, smashing the heavy steel into the Arvernian’s head. The noble disappeared with a sigh, falling away from the barricade to be replaced by another warrior, this one exhibiting much more life and vitriol as he snarled and slammed his sword forward. Fronto felt relief flood him as he released the killer that he held locked behind his eyes and stabbed out into the man’s throat, tearing out his wind pipe and artery as he withdrew his blade in a spray of crimson that soaked the cart and the men fighting over it.
‘You’re going soft,’ grunted Masgava next to him as he turned back to take down the next of the attackers. Soft or not, he’d done the only thing he could with Cavarinos. The man might well die down there, taken by a stray blow or just trampled to death by his own people, but at least there was a chance, and Fronto had not had to skewer him. There was nothing he could do about the man’s fate right now. Perhaps when they had fought off this small attack he could be retrieved. All Fronto could do was hope that his beloved patron goddess continued to look after the man around whose neck she now hung.
Along the wall above, he could hear the centurion calling his men to greater feats of arms and marksmanship, so the fight must be going on as brutally elsewhere. Certainly the mob in the gateway seemed to have increased as the enemy realised that their compatriots had forced what appeared to be a breach.
Another Gaul appeared over the cart, hauling himself up and to Fronto’s left, Aurelius hacking out at him. Fronto heard a tell-tale thrumming noise and his keen eyes caught the missile in flight. His left arm lashed out, almost flattening Aurelius as the near-destroyed shield still in his grip caught the arrow in the wood surface. Aurelius blinked, and Fronto flashed him a grin.
‘I told you: no one else dies. Keep your eyes open.’
Down among the seemingly endless press of bodies in the gateway, Fronto caught a momentary glimpse of a mail-shirted man amid the bodies, bow still raised from the shot, his unpleasant, maniacally-grinning face lowering as he disappeared again amongst the crowd.
In defiance of Fronto’s ‘no more deaths’ order, one of the legionaries staggered back from the wall, clutching a ragged hole in his chest from which blood issued in gouts. It was only as the man fell to the ground that Fronto realised the man had not been the first. He joined three other legionary corpses in the dust. Gritting his teeth, Fronto looked back at the next attacker, slamming his blade point into the man’s face even as he brought the pitiful remains of his shield up.
Time rolled on in the small, ‘U’-shaped theatre of death as the Gallic bodies piled up and more and more of his defenders hit the ground. Without his having to send a request, one of the nearby officers had clearly seen the danger and sent two more contubernia of legionaries to bolster the gate defence. Biorix suddenly staggered away from the wall, his shield cast aside, clutching his own arm as crimson rivulets ran down his mail shirt from somewhere near his armpit. Fronto threw him a stark, questioning look but Biorix shook his head with a smile. Not critical, then, but debilitating. Without two serviceable arms and busy bleeding a man was no use on the redoubt. A capsarius appeared from nowhere and helped Biorix back from the fight to tend to his injury.
And on it went. Half an hour passed — perhaps three quarters — and Fronto took advantage of a pause to rise and peer over the makeshift barricade into the pit of seething forms, both living and dead.
‘Is it me or are there more now, despite everyone we’ve killed?’
Masgava nodded as he scythed off the jaw of a Gaul. ‘Looks that way.’
Fronto looked up at the wall, where a commotion cut across the fighting. The centurion commanding the wall defence was in close discussion with two of his men even as the others continued to fight off attackers, and Fronto felt a frisson of anticipation as he saw the officer pointing off to the southeast.
‘Hold the barricade,’ he shouted to Masgava, somewhat redundantly, as he dropped back down from the cart and turned, running across to the rampart and clambering up the bank. His heart, pounding heavily from both the fight and the climb, skipped a beat as he looked out from the wall-walk, seeing what the centurion had spotted.
Almost the entire Gallic force along the inner defences, which had issued from the oppidum and spread out to try each position, had turned in response to some unheard signal and was now leaving the circumvallation, their sights set on the Mons Rea camp. Many thousands were even now approaching the poorly-defended camp.
‘Oh shit.’
* * * * *
Molacos watched his shot thud into the officer’s shield and nocked another arrow, his sight shifting to Cavarinos of the Arverni. The man had fought like a wolf against the Roman atop the cart, but something about him disturbed Molacos, and he felt his mistrust bolstered when, rather than simply killing him, the Romans knocked him out. Drawing back the string, he marked the heap on the ground that was the Arvernian noble. Perhaps a waste of an arrow, but the man simply did not appear trustworthy. With a held breath, he let the missile fly, barking his annoyance as some unidentifiable warrior in the press barged into him, knocking him aside. The mob had closed up and he’d lost sight of Cavarinos, unsure whether his arrow had struck true or not.