Aristius fought the irritation at this display of novice incompetence, noting with a small spark of pride that his own garrison troops were now managing to hold tight formation as they moved into a charge and bore down on the terrified Gauls.
The centurion called out new commands and as the slope became gentler once more the legionaries who had kept their feet reformed into a tight unit and moved into a charge. The optio, left behind on the lower slope, was beating his staff down on the hapless fallen men, yelling at them to get up and run. Gradually the flounderers dragged themselves into a run with no formation at all, following on in the wake of their compatriots, hungry to redeem themselves.
Aristius found that despite his intentions of leading from the rear, he had ended up automatically running at the front, parallel with the centurion. As they leapt over narrow irrigation ditches running with icy water and through the muddy, empty wheat fields suffering the throes of winter, he saw farmers emerging from the huts with pitchforks and sickles and staves — any makeshift weapon they could produce from their farm stores.
With a slight detour to race through the open gateway in a fence rather than having to hurdle it, Aristius raised his gladius, wishing he had a large body shield like the legionaries under his command. One particularly tall man with golden hair shot through with grey and moustaches that hung to below his jaw, ran straight for him, a sickle in his right hand and some sort of small knife in his left.
As the sickle came out for a side sweep, Aristius found that despite the somewhat formulaic and rigid training his father had him receive from a retired soldier, the reactions that flowed through him in response seemed to have been born more from careful observation of the better gladiators than the stab, twist, withdraw he had been taught.
His body automatically shifted left and back, allowing the sickle free path through the air in front of him, though the blow was so close that it caught the baldric that held his scabbard and he felt the weight of it drop away to the ground. Damn, that sickle must be sharp!
The man might be a farmer, but he was quick. Before Aristius had recovered himself, the knife was coming for him and, though he desperately dodged back to the right, the blade dug a deep line across his bicep, bringing white hot pain with it.
Something happened then. Without conscious thought or intent, the tribune found his sword hand coming up. He had no room for a thrust, but his body seemed to have registered that long before his brain and his hand, apparently with a mind of its own, crashed into the man’s face. Wrapped around the bone hilt of the gladius and largely protected by the wide pommel and guard, his fist smashed the man’s nose and cheek together in one blow, as well as mangling an eye.
Aristius watched his victim in astonishment as the famer staggered back, blood pouring from his face. The tribune actually blinked in surprise as his fist struck again and repeated the blow, knocking the farmer back a few more paces.
As the man shuddered, his arms out at his sides and still gripping the twin weapons, the world and all its sounds and smells came rushing back in to Aristius’ senses and with a cry of pure fury, he slammed into the reeling farmer, knocking him flat to the ground, the sickle and knife skittering off to the sides.
The tribune, his first taste of the horrifying, thrilling adrenaline of battle suffusing him, went down with the floundering Gaul and his arm bent back at the elbow and then shot forward, stabbing the steel point into the man’s chest. The Gaul tried to yell something, and Aristius could not quite hear it, let alone understand it, but he was certain it was a cry of defiance, for the man’s one good eye carried only hate and strength.
Pulling back again, his blade left the man’s chest with a spray of blood that washed across the tribune’s face and filled his mouth with a cloying iron tang, and yet still the Gaul seemed to be trying to rise. With a cry to Mars for strength, the tribune smashed his sword down into the man’s gut, and then again into the chest.
Again…
Again.
He was not at all sure how long he had been here and when the uncontrollable anger had begun to subside, but Aristius blinked as a hand closed on his shoulder in a gentle yet firm grip.
‘Come on, sir.’
‘I… I…’
‘He’s dead sir. Stand up, sir.’
Surrendering to the calm voice, Aristius stood, his eyes taking in the shape beneath him, ripped ragged with half a hundred stab wounds. He blinked in surprise. He remembered three… maybe four. He turned with a confused expression to see the veteran centurion standing next to him, an unperturbed look on his face.
‘It… he just…’
‘First barney, sir?’
All Aristius could do was nod dumbly. The centurion smiled, showing two missing teeth and a badly split lip, long-healed. ‘Takes everyone different, sir. Some dither and some panic. Those who do either don’t last long. Most well-trained soldiers just accept it and get on with it. Some odd ‘uns get the spirit o’ Mars and Minerva right in the gut, sir, just like that. Shame you wear the tribune’s tunic, sir. You’d make a fuckin’ dangerous centurion, beggin’ your pardon.’
With a grin, the centurion patted him on the back.
‘It’s over?’ Aristius managed without shaking too heavily.
‘Yessir. Just farmers. We tried to be selective. We let more than half a dozen escape, though, sir. More like two dozen. None of the new lads much wanted to deal with the children, though there’s a few captive women in them huts as is becomin’ well-acquainted with the odd soldier if you get my drift, sir.’
Aristius could not find it in himself to argue with the leniency of allowing children to flee. These tribes folk may be the enemy, but they were little different from the Gauls of Narbonensis who paid their taxes and enjoyed the benefits of Rome. He couldn’t quite imagine putting his sword through the chest of a six year old boy in Narbo’s fruit market.
‘Well done, centurion. I think we can count this a success.’
‘One thing occurs, sir. There were no warriors here. None at all. I reckon as they’re all in the north with the rebels.’
Aristius nodded. ‘Then we may feel a little less nervous about our position, centurion, so far from our allied legions.
‘Yessir. This was a bit of a mess, I’ll grant you, but it’s the first time any of these lot have ever seen their own sword draw blood, I reckon, and most of ‘em are only part trained, so we have to give ‘em a bit o’ leeway. Next time will go smoother, and in between we’ll start drilling some sense of discipline into the buggers.’
As the centurion saluted and jogged off to a call from the optio, Aristius took in the scene of carnage before him and the iron tang of blood in the air made him shudder.
This is just the beginning. How many of these attacks would it take to bring Vercingetorix down on them?
* * * * *
Cavarinos trod warily, his boot slipping on the mossy stones. The Carnute magistrate who administrated the settlement of Briga had been reluctant to give him directions to this place, his eyes constantly flicking to the carved sacred stone in the village’s centre, but Cavarinos’ reasoned argument that the druids had been the ones to raise Vercingetorix to his position and that it was that same leader who had sent him to recover the curse had swayed him.
It seemed that none of the — clearly highly superstitious — inhabitants of Briga ventured into this section of woodland that made up part of the great forest of the Carnutes yet was considered wholly separate and sacred to Ogmios above all. As was his wont, Cavarinos had scoffed at their credulity in the privacy of his own head while maintaining a polite façade.