Marcus nodded.
‘Thank you, sir.’
An arrow sailed past his head, as a sudden barrage of missiles made the soldiers hunch deeper behind their shields. The barbarian archers, using the wall of corpses for cover, began sending a continuous rain of missiles against the two centuries. Steel-tipped arrows hummed and whirred through the line, accurate shots punching into shields and clicking off helmets. Frontinius stood straight in the face of the barrage, raising his voice to continue his monologue.
‘They’ll keep this up for a moment or two; pick a few of us off with lucky shots, then charge in for the kill. When they do, you fight in pairs with your partner. If he’s dead, find another, or fight in a three. Watch each other’s backs, and don’t leave your partner. If your partner is wounded, concentrate on killing blue-faces, not looking after him, or you’ll be next…’
And he stopped, his eyes suddenly wide with the impact of an arrow between the greave that shielded his calf and the chain mail that ran down to mid-thigh. The missile had skewered his leg above the knee, toppling him unceremoniously on to the grass with a rivulet of blood seeping around the shaft. With a delighted roar the barbarians that had crossed the wall of bodies surged forward en masse, eager to take the one head that mattered to them above all.
The line disintegrated into a whirling melee, Marcus and Dubnus going back to back over Frontinius as a tide of tribal warriors washed past them. Several men moved to encircle them, drawing a tightening circle of swords around the three men, gathering themselves for the kill. With an incoherent, berserk scream, Antenoch hit the men facing Marcus from behind, thrusting his sword through one’s back and stamping him off the blade before swinging fiercely at the other’s shield. Marcus and Dubnus went on to the offensive, killing two men and putting the other two to startled flight.
Across the century’s frontage knots of men were fighting their own personal wars, still parrying barbarian swords and thrusting back with their short swords, but the fight was descending into a deadly mass brawl, and without the disciplined protection of the shield wall the soldiers were horribly outnumbered. Ten yards in front of Marcus two barbarians had a single soldier cornered, one hammering at his shield while the other outflanked him and sank his sword into the beleaguered man’s neck in the gap between helmet and mail. The soldier crumpled instantly, just as the sprinting centurion hit his attackers from behind, running one man through with his cavalry sword and leaving the weapon sheathed in his back, smashing the other to the ground with a shield swipe and drawing his gladius to finish the stunned warrior where he lay.
As the struggle hung in the balance, and quite without fanfare, a wave of fresh troops charged down the slope into the battle, suddenly equalising the odds and chasing off the startled barbarians. Marcus and Dubnus stood panting over their wounded superior as the reinforcements finished off the enemy wounded around them with swift unconsidered efficiency. Following the bellowed commands of their officers, the new arrivals slotted into the line between the cohort’s decimated centuries, bolstering the defence to more than its original strength.
The men of the 9th Century jeered as they recognised their new companions in adversity.
‘It’s the fucking Second Cohort. Well done, lads, you managed to find the battlefield at last, then?’
A solidly built watch officer muscled his way into the front rank, his spear held ready to throw. He shot Scarface an indifferent glance, his attention riveted on the regrouping warband.
‘That’s better, all front-rankers together. Just about now one of those blue-faced boys would have been hacking your head off to take home to frighten his kids with when they wouldn’t go to their bed at night. But some idiot officer said we had a duty to pull your knackers out of the fire, what with you being our sister cohort.’
He spat on the ground noisily.
‘Sisters being just about right. Anyway, here we are and here we stand. No reason why you lot should get all the fun. When does the next session start?’
Where the line had been thinning to the point of desperate vulnerability there were now three unbroken lines of shields, the newcomers’ strength giving fresh heart to the desperately tired Tungrians. Those of the cohort’s survivors with the energy shouted the time-worn insults that had always been exchanged when the 1st and 2nd Tungrians met in the field. An officer walked out of the smoke that still drifted across the slope in pale grey curtains, his sword drawn, searching for the First Spear. Frontinius winced as Dubnus finished lashing a broken spear shaft to his wounded leg as a makeshift splint, raising a weary hand in salute as the other man stopped in front of where he lay.
‘Prefect Bassus. I can honestly say I’ve never been quite so pleased to see the Second Cohort…’
The prefect laughed, looking out over the rampart of bodies.
‘We heard your trumpet calls on the wind, so faint that some men swore it was only the wind, but the stand fast was clear enough for those with ears to hear it. The other prefects insisted on following their orders, but I never liked that greasy little shit Perennis, and seeing this lot proves I was right. Beside, Tungrians never leave their brothers dangling.’
Frontinius nodded, climbing to his feet with Marcus’s help.
‘I fear all you’ve achieved is to dangle alongside us, but I appreciate the company while we wait to die. And now, if you’ll excuse me?’
The First Spear hobbled off up the slope to make his report to Equitius, using another broken spear to support his weight on the wounded leg. Bassus looked to Dubnus, raising a questioning eyebrow.
‘Excuse us for a moment, Chosen.’
He waited for the big man to walk out of earshot before speaking to Marcus, his face suddenly dark with anger.
‘I received a message yesterday night, a tablet from my wife, respectfully asking me for a divorce. It seems that she has tired of my company and, I can only presume, wishes for that of another. While this is hardly the time for such a discussion, I will be expecting a frank conversation with you once we have these barbarians running.’
He turned on his heel and walked away to attend to his command. Julius strolled back across the slope with a sidelong glance at the senior officer.
‘Trouble?’
‘Nothing I haven’t earned.’
The other man smiled easily.
‘I don’t think he’ll be troubling you after the battle. Not from what I’ve been hearing his troops say in the last couple of minutes.’
Marcus stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Never mind. Everything in its time.’
The two men took stock as corpses and the seriously wounded were carried away up the slope by the walking wounded, counting another twenty casualties between their two centuries as their line clung to its ground with what was, even with the reinforcement of another eight hundred men, a tenuous hold. Through a gap in the smoke Marcus saw the Petriana waiting still on their ridge-line, the sparse forest of their spears unreduced and unmoving. Julius followed his gaze, then spat on the bloodied grass.
‘No help to be expected from that direction. Bloody cavalry are all the same, good for the chase once the battle’s won, just never around when the shit starts flying.’
Marcus nodded grimly, watching the barbarians working themselves up for another charge. Julius spat on to the scarred turf again, examining his sword’s edge.
‘This is it. This time they’ll throw everything they have at us, here, on the flanks, everywhere, and that will be it, Second Tungrians or no Second Tungrians. Are you ready to die for the empire?’
‘For the cohort. The empire can kiss my hairy arse.’