‘Gentlemen, I…’
The sight of the slowly choking Perennis left him speechless for a moment.
‘Who shot him?’
Frontinius shook his head imperceptibly at his prefect before speaking.
‘We did, sir, or rather one of my men who’s a finer shot than I’ll ever be did, and at my command. Tribune Perennis had just admitted to an act of stupidity and treason whose result you can see down there, and was attempting to murder Prefect Equitius.’
Licinius looked around him carefully, fully digesting the scene.
‘Which would explain the dead Asturians scattered around? Not to mention the fact that several of your own men seem to have arrow wounds?’
‘Sir.’
‘You can imagine how that’s going to look if it’s reported back to Rome. Where is the legatus, by the way?’
Equitius stepped forward, pointing down the slope.
‘He’s down there, Licinius. That young bastard suborned the Asturians, or at least enough of them to be able to carry out his plan. He must have passed a message to Calgus in some way while he was supposed to be shadowing the warband. They let the Sixth get into the open and then rushed them while the legion was still in column. He’s got some sort of warrant straight from the imperial palace, empowers him to take command of the Sixth if necessary, so the bastard wanted to make sure Sollemnis wouldn’t survive.’
Licinius leaned in close and half whispered his next question, glancing significantly at the unsuspecting Marcus, who was busy with his wounded.
‘Does he know yet?’
Equitius shook his head.
‘No. Nor should he, under the circumstances.’
‘Agreed. What a fucking mess. So apart from the fact that half a legion is being taken apart under our gaze, what’s the local situation?’
Equitius pointed in the direction that Perennis had taken his command.
‘Four cohorts of the Sixth, the Second Tungrians, Raetians, Frisians and the Aquitani are somewhere over in that direction. They were supposed to be the other half of a plan to attack the warband, but bloody Perennis took them away to where they’d be no use when this happened.’
Licinius pursed his lips.
‘My boys are half an hour’s ride back that way, and I met a messenger a while back who said the Second and the Twentieth are ten miles down the main road. The only problem is that that lot will have gutted the Sixth and buggered off into the hills long before we can bring them into the action…’
He walked to the edge of the slope and stared down for a long moment. Equitius sighed deeply and followed him.
‘Licinius, before my tame Brigantian prince demonstrated his marksmanship with the hunting bow on Perennis, the little shit ordered us to make a stand on the slope here, just in front of this wood. He wanted to destroy us for harbouring the boy, you understand, but in his desire to see us all dead he actually issued the only order appropriate under the circumstances. An order that I and my men will follow if you ask it of us.’
Licinius turned to face him.
‘You’ll likely all be dead within the hour, unless I get lucky and find the other legions a lot closer than they ought to be.’
Equitius returned his gaze.
‘And you think that these men don’t know the meaning of a Roman soldier’s honour?’
Licinius looked him straight in the eye, seeing the other man’s resolve in his steady stare.
‘My apologies to your command. Very well.’
He walked quickly across to where Perennis lay panting his last few breaths, searching his body with swift efficiency until he found the imperial warrant scroll, then leant over to speak into the dying man’s eyes.
‘Listen to me, Titus Tigidius Perennis. You thought what you were doing was clever, that the emperor would thank you for removing a traitor from imperial service. You might well have been right. Your father, however, may not be so sanguine at the loss of his family’s honour. I will make it my sworn task to make sure the full story reaches Rome, to tell him how you connived to destroy half a legion, and how, when the time came, another full cohort volunteered to face the same barbarians and give me a fighting chance to take revenge for those betrayed men. And how I executed you to avoid your suffering anything that might be said to resemble an honourable death…’
He drew his dagger and slit the dying tribune’s throat wide open, watching with satisfaction as life ebbed away from Perennis’s amazed eyes.
‘Well, that at least feels a little better. Prefect, I’m off to find the other two legions. Best of luck.’
He stood up and saluted Equitius, who gravely returned the gesture, then vaulted back on to his horse and rode furiously away, barking orders at his men. The prefect watched him go for a moment, then turned to address Frontinius.
‘Well, Sextus, now it’s our turn to earn our corn.’
The First Spear smiled grimly.
‘Don’t think I’m immune to the irony of our situation, Prefect. Young Perennis should be laughing now, wherever he is.’
Equitius put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Wherever he is, First Spear, we’re quite likely to see at first hand soon enough.’
12
Frontinius led his centurions down the hunter’s path at the trot. In a minute or so their centuries would follow them down the through the trees, and in those few seconds he needed to lay the foundations of a successful defence. If, he mused humourlessly, while his mind worked on their options for defending an apparently hopeless position, the entire cohort not simply dying in the first barbarian assault could be termed a success. Ten yards from the forest’s edge he stopped and gathered his officers around him, their faces betraying the same grim determination fixed in his own mind.
‘Brothers, there isn’t time for any inspirational stuff or exhortations to heroism. Put simply, we’ve been sent to fight and likely to die in order to buy time for the other legions to jump those blue-nosed bastards from behind and put it to them the old-fashioned way. Your men are going to realise that soon enough, when they see thousands of men coming up the hill for their heads. They will look to you for an example. Give them one. Show them a grim face, but not despair. Lead your centuries with aggression, but keep them disciplined. If we do this right we can still pull a victory out of this disaster, but that depends solely on us. We are now the most important ten men on this battlefield — so let’s live up to that burden in the next hour.’
He paused, looking at each man to take a gauge of their resolve. Good enough.
‘Orders. The cohort will come down this path in number order with the Fifth at the rear and the Ninth in their place in the centre, the prefect will make sure of that. Take your centuries down the slope to the line I point out to you and set up for defence, two men deep and no more, three-foot spacing per man. We’re lucky that the wood curves down on both sides to meet our flanks, so we can anchor the line off the trees. Get the ground in front of you dirty as quickly as possible, and get your caltrops out straight after that. Speaking of trees… Bear?’
The big man stepped forward.
‘Your axemen will be last down the path. Take them to left and right and make me an abatis as fast as you can, three rows of fallen trees deep all the way from each end of the line back round to the path, but leave the path clear of obstruction. When the obstacles are in place, widen the path enough to let four men down it abreast. In the unlikely event of our being reinforced I’d like the way in behind us wide enough for a cohort to move down it at speed. Everyone clear? And remember, brothers, win or lose, this day will be sung about long after the rain washes our blood away. Let’s make it a story worth telling.’
The Tungrians exploded out of the wood on to the open ground, the centuries hurrying down to the line pointed out by Frontinius as they cleared the trees. The First Spear barked at his centurions to speed up their deployment as he pointed each century to its place, aware that the tribesmen, pausing in their assault on the shrinking remnant of the Sixth Legion to watch the new development, could turn and charge towards them at any second. The wood behind the cohort echoed with the growing racket of eighty axes working furiously on the tree-felling that would defend their flanks and rear. Each tree was under attack by two of the 10th Century’s men, as they laboured with expert blows to drop it neatly into position with its branches facing outwards, presenting an impassable obstacle. Once the line was established, each end anchored in the trees to either side as the wood curved around their defence, he gave a small sigh of relief and shouted his next command.