There was movement all around now, men leaping from the animal pens and appearing between the huts. A figure reared up at the far edge of the clearing, a scarred and painted warrior, spike-haired, raising a spear above his head and crying out.
‘Shields!’ Castus yelled, sweeping his sword from the scabbard. He could hear the panic behind him, the clattering con shy;fusion. Already the first javelins were arcing from the pens. Most fell short, but he heard one of them strike, then a high screech of pain.
Shield raised, sword in hand, Castus backed up until he met the man behind him. A barbed javelin head snicked off his shield rim and spun away. He glanced back over his shoulder quickly. Half the men were formed up behind their shields, but the rest clustered in packs or crouched on the ground, paralysed by shock as the javelins lanced and stabbed between them.
‘Modestus! Form the men!’ Castus yelled, and the words ripped at his throat. ‘Double files – face out!’ He pushed his way back, half turning, grabbing and shoving at shoulders and arms, at shields and helmets, trying to bully the men into formation. ‘Optio to me!’ he shouted. Something cracked off his helmet. A slingstone. They were aiming at him now.
For the first few moments of the attack the Picts had stayed behind cover, hurling their missiles from the pens and huts; now they saw the Romans bunching together they came out into the open, clambering across the walls and spilling from the doorways to shout and curse and brandish their spears and square-tipped swords. Castus reached the centre of the line and found Modestus pushing towards him. He grabbed the optio and pulled him close.
‘We need to get amongst them,’ he shouted. His words were punctuated by the rattle of stones and javelins on shields. ‘Take the right wing. I’ll take the left. At my command we charge in wedge formation. When we reach them, split into fours. Understand?’
Modestus nodded, white-faced.
The enemy warriors were moving closer, preparing to rush. Behind them, others continued the javelin barrage. Castus glanced around him: the century was formed into a tight knot now, a rough oval two deep behind locked shields. They had practised this formation scores of times on the drill field over the winter, but now it was real.
Raising his shield high, Castus pushed between the men to his left until the reached the front rank – they were packed too tight to throw javelins or darts. It would be a charge, or die slowly here. The Picts were only twenty paces away, daring themselves to attack. Castus felt his guts tighten, the lock of fear, the blood thick and heavy in his neck. A familiar dread – but he remembered the stone enclosure on the hillock, the tribesmen rushing at the walls… A sudden wave of anger ran through him, prickling across his scalp beneath the helmet’s weight.
‘At my command,’ Castus shouted, ‘form wedge and prepare to charge!’
He could hear the man beside him gagging. There was a sharp smell of urine. A flung javelin punched through his shield and hung there, swaying.
‘Form… wedge!’
A quick glance behind: Modestus shoving his men into position. Most still had their spears, and the rest drew swords.
Unconquered Sun be with me now. Your light between us and evil.
‘Charge!’
Castus launched himself forward as he shouted, shield up, sword low and level. If they don’t follow me I’m a dead man… A roaring behind him, around him – his own men, following his lead. The noise powered him on, five running strides, then ten, the enemy massing to meet the charge. Castus ran at the warrior ahead of him, swerved at the last moment and slammed into the man to his left. The soldier behind him cut the first warrior down; the second fell to Castus’s reaching blade.
‘You’re into them now, Victrix!’ he heard himself shouting, his muscles of his neck bulging. ‘Stick every mother’s son! Hunt the bastards down!’
Running, striking to left and right, he was almost at the huts now. He slashed low, severed a man’s tendons, and smashed him down with the shield boss. A sword swept the air beside his head. Turning on his heel, he cut high and felt his blade bite. Little sound now, only breath against his teeth, hollow battering of blades on shield boards, and the strange high clink and grate of metal.
A face appeared before him, familiar somehow – surprised, Castus recognised the dog-faced man that had wrestled him at the hill fort. He jinked left, and as the man hesitated he threw himself forward behind the shield. The collision punched the breath from his lungs, but he slammed Dog-face against the wall of a hut. Praying that someone was behind him watching his back, Castus angled his sword around the shield rim and drove the blade up under the man’s ribs. A gush of blood across his sword-hand, and he let the man drop.
‘Not so clever this time, eh?’ he said.
Movement from his right as he turned, a grimacing warrior darting in from his unguarded side, driving a spear with both hands. Castus blocked, but too slow – the spearhead punched against the mail on his hip, the blow almost toppling him; then it grated downward and gashed his thigh. One cut hacked the spear aside; a backhand slash split the attacker’s face.
For a moment he felt nothing. There was nobody around him now – just his own trail of destruction stretching behind him. Then he felt the lash of pain from his wound and stifled a cry, almost dropping to his knees. Hot blood poured down his leg, and he clamped his sword hand against the wound and sucked air into his lungs. Limping, glazed in the aftermath of the fight, Castus moved around the wall of the hut. Mailed figures ran between the animal pens, cutting down fugitives.
‘Prisoners!’ he called out through clenched teeth. ‘We need prisoners!’
One of his soldiers was beside him, pointing. Castus limped after the man, trying to keep his head up. Between the stone walls they reached a wattle-walled pen at the rear of the village. Soldiers stood around, silent and gazing, and in the rutted mud and dung Castus saw the bodies of the scouting party.
Julius Stipo still had a startled look on his face, but his throat was slashed open to his spine. Macrinus lay beside him, his head severed and placed upon his chest. The third man had his mail dragged up around his shoulders and his stomach opened. All three had dark bloodstains between their legs.
Castus exhaled slowly. Behind him he could hear men dying, soldiers shouting.
‘Cover them,’ he said quietly to the man beside him, and then limped back between the huts.
In the central compound the prisoners had been herded together. Low-ranking fighters mostly, but a few painted war shy;riors among them. As Castus watched he saw Placidus, the big Gaul, drag a prisoner to his knees and hack off his head with a single blow.
‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Spare the rest. We need to take them back to camp.’
Placidus stared at him, his face boiling, the reddened sword in his hand. ‘You saw what they did,’ he said, raising the blade to point between the huts. ‘They die! All of them!’
Castus glanced at the other soldiers, and saw the look in their eyes. Fierce, half sick, half excited. The killing frenzy still gripped them. Most were new recruits – men who had seen their homes and families destroyed by the Picts last summer. The pain in his leg had shifted to a heavy throb, and his right boot was wet with blood, but Castus urged himself forward. He was still holding his drawn weapon.
‘Sword down, Placidus,’ he said. ‘Remember your military oath. You’re under orders.’
‘Orders,’ the Gaul sneered. ‘And why should we obey you? You left your last century to be massacred, to save your own skin!’ He grabbed another of the prisoners by the hair, pulling him close. ‘I’m not taking any chances…’
Castus held his own blade low at his side. His blood ran cold with fury. Fear as well – but he would show neither. Some of the other men were backing away now, the fire dying from their eyes. All of them knew the punishment for mutiny.