Marius' Mules V: Hades' Gate (29 page)

Not so the two officers at the front.

Four steps further into the water and the primus pilus was half deafened by the sound of horses and riders entering the river just to their left, the spray of green-brown water splashing across the men and soaking their bull-emblem-painted shields.

And then all became a sensory battering of discomfort.

The sound of shouts and pained cries as men called out to one another, officers urged their men on, and Gallic and Belgic cavalry ploughed through the water noisily, yelling in their own tongue combining with the brief, flashing, strobe-like vision as the disturbed water's surface lapped at his face, interspersed with open sky and a view of the far bank with its defenders. The numbing cold of the torrent vied with the burning of his muscles to see which could cause him the most discomfort.

Somewhere in the first rank just behind him, a man stumbled, his ankle caught in weed, and his mate went to help him, moving aside his shield just long enough to haul the first man back up above the surface. The recovered legionary turned to thank his mate only to see his rescuer disappear beneath the water, a grey-fletched arrow shaft protruding from his open mouth, blood fountaining out around it.

The legionaries - and the officers leading them - found a renewed reserve of strength in their muscles for an extra turn of speed at this sudden reminder that they were well within range of enemy archers.

Felix pushed on, his feet finding the heavy sunken logs that formed the base of the ford, covered with sand and gravel and treacherous sharp rocks, weed growing up from the cracks here and there, threatening to bring him down the same way it had the man just behind him.

With a measured regularity, he called out encouragement and yelled profanities at his men every three steps - a practiced talent that required no attention; he had none to spare if he were to keep moving and retain his footing.

The location of the hidden stakes was lost to him in the chaos and the murk. From the bank, they had been just about revealed by the whitening of the water rushing over them, but with the foam kicked up by the cavalry who had already charged past on the left, the water was too turbulent to give any indications.

The first stake he came across almost did for him, angled towards him with its wicked point at sternum height. With a surprising hand from the lady Fortuna he hit it at a slight angle, turning as he was to shout at Montanus. Had he walked straight into it, he would now be a Roman-on-a-stick. Instead, the surprisingly sharp point tore a few links from his mail shirt and then he found himself snagged as his leather medal harness caught on it as he slid past.

"Stakes!" he bellowed in warning to his men.

Desperately, and yet trying to retain his outward composure, he unhooked the leather harness, cursing as he saw one of his prized silver phalera - the one with the double-faced Janus - disappearing through the murky water and down to the river bed, where it was lost to him for good.

A sling-stone 'whupped' past his head, tearing off a piece of his earlobe and re-focusing his attention on the task in hand, forcing him to forget the vanishing medal.

Now his arms, vine staff providing an extension, were sweeping out ahead beneath the water. Four paces on, his wrist found the next stake, its point drawing blood and leaving splinters.

Nine paces to the next stake. Beside him, Montanus disappeared with a shriek that was cut off almost instantly as his mouth filled with the dirty water, his face a mess where the sling shot had neatly struck directly between his helmet's cheek guards, pulping nose and eye and driving into the brain behind.

Before he could shout the order a legionary behind grabbed the falling standard, discarding his own shield, and raised it proudly. Should he survive the day, that man had gained promotion the old-fashioned way.

Six paces to the next stake, which caused a bruise upon its discovery. Somewhere behind, the second century would be starting to remove the stakes as their companions waded on past them. Felix looked up and realised suddenly how close he was to the enemy. Perhaps eight paces away, the bank rose steep and evil, more jagged points jutting out towards them barely a foot apart, with others offset below. The climb would be difficult and all the more so with the enemy above. He could make out the infantry above, seething, awaiting their arrival.

No. Not seething like that. Seething almost in panic! He frowned and looked around as he closed on the bank.

The cavalry were gone from the waters now. Already hundred upon hundred of the Gallic buggers had stormed across and gained the far bank with relative ease. His roving eyes caught the sight of their arrival point and he winced.

Dozens of men and beasts lay dead and dying at the river's edge, impaled on the spikes and turning the torrent crimson with their sacrifice. But their rapidly-pulping remains had formed a living ramp for the rest and had protected them from the spikes. With no more than a passing thought for their fallen comrades, the surviving bulk of the cavalry had leapt up to the fresh grass, their spears jabbing, their big barbarian swords cleaving and slicing, smashing and crushing.

In fact, the western half of the north bank was already clearly in Roman hands, the savage, unstoppable and almost suicidally-reckless assault of the auxiliary riders having pushed the defenders back and back, partially with the weight of muscle and the strength of their iron, but mostly with the brutality of their charge and the unwavering ferocity of their desire to win the bank and kill the enemy.

So it seemed to be with the Belgae in Felix's experience. As often as not, they didn't care who they were fighting, so long as they
were
fighting.

The natives ahead and above Felix were pulling back from the bank, joining in the general, panicked, disordered retreat of the enemy. Gallic riders pushed along the bank to aid the clearance, and Felix suddenly felt his tension at the dangerous crossing and his urge to get 'stuck in' to the bastards give way to the most astounding frustration. For the first time in many months, the Eleventh had been granted the opportunity to win glory, and it had been snatched from their grip by a bunch of hairy Gauls on glorified donkeys!

Just as he remembered his silver Janus phalera disappearing into the murk of the river, so the mental image of the Mural Crown that would adorn either his harness or the century's standard retreated into a depth of sweaty barbarian horsemen.

"You alright, centurion?" asked the legionary who'd taken on the standard, his attention suddenly drawn to the angry mutterings of his commander.

"No I'm bloody
not
! I'm buggered if this win goes to the Gauls. Treble time. Get the men up on that turf long enough to kill a few of the bastards and take some prisoners."

The legionary grinned.

"Will do sir. Mopping up time."

Felix glared at him as he reached for the stake driven into the bank and began to climb.

* * * * *

Sego of the Catuvellauni watched the first figures of the Roman infantry rise from the river like a swarm of midges at dusk. They were shockingly fast, given their equipment and what was being asked of them. They had crossed the river relentlessly, even with arrows and sling stones pelting them, felling one man in every ten. They had negotiated in short order the sharpened points that had taken the defenders half a day to position, the front rank climbing past them as the second fought off any warrior brave enough to get close to this killing force. The ranks that followed up would then remove the stakes, clearing the way for the great steel beast to follow.

Alongside their unexpected and astonishing cavalry charge that had essentially outflanked Sego's force at the outset, this unrelenting assault made it abundantly clear that the river was not going to be the barrier Sego had hoped.

The young warrior shook his head in amazement. Their trade-brothers from across the waves had told them the Romans were unstoppable. Cassivellaunus had laughed at that, pointing out that the Romans had been driven away the previous year with little difficulty. The greatest chieftain the tribe had ever had was a charismatic man. His words grabbed the brain and soul of the listener and made him want to follow. Without Cassivellaunus, his people would not have managed to band with the other tribes north of the great river and several south of it too.

But it now occurred to Sego, as he watched the steel monster tramp across the grass, shedding water like a wet dog, that Cassivellaunus had dreadfully miscalculated.

Here, the combined forces of three large tribes were intended to stop the Romans crossing the great river. The Catuvellauni - probably by their chieftain's design - formed only one tenth of the force, the bulk being made up of warriors from the Dobunni and the Trinovantes, who were like slave dogs now to Sego's tribe.

But no matter how much fear or respect they had for the Catuvellauni or the charismatic chieftain, nothing was going to hold the allied tribes in place against this beast of an enemy. It was clear to Sego that the Dobunni, who were mostly to the right of the field, were in chaos, many having already disappeared into the surrounding woodland after the crushing charge of the cavalry and run to find their cowardly women and runts. The Trinovantes would likely have done the same, even though they had not faced the horses, had they not been largely trapped between the Romans and Sego's own men.

It would be over in a hundred heartbeats. Sego took a deep breath and lifted off his precious bronze helmet - a prize that had been taken from a dead Roman the previous summer and had reached Sego via an enterprising trader of the Cantiaci. Rubbing his short, wild, blond hair and biting his lip, he tried to decide what to do. He was young for a war leader, but fearless and bright, and both he and Cassivellaunus knew it.

Many warriors would surrender their wits to the song of the blood at this point and lead their men to a hopeless, if valiant, death by the riverside.

Sego could not afford such heroic insanity. The Romans could not be held here and that was obvious. And when they marched on against the tribe's sacred settlement at Wheat Valley, even though the main force of the Catevellauni waited there and the ditches were deep, they would be fighting for their life against a powerful foe. To waste men here was a foolish notion. The chieftain would need every spare warrior at Wheat Valley if he was to hold off the Romans long enough.

It was, Cassivellaunus had said with certainty, all a matter of time. The Romans would not winter here, when the tribes' brothers across the sea were already starting to rise and throw off the Republic's yoke. All the Catuvellauni would need to do was keep the Romans at the hut's door until the snows and rains came and the temperature fell, and this chieftain-dog Caesar would take his men back across the sea. There he would be kept by other troubles until he was finally killed or thrown back to Rome an abject failure.

The tribes of this sacred island, beloved of the Druids and of Belenus would hold against this would-be invader.

But Sego must end this madness first.

The Roman infantry smashed their way through the first gathering of Trinovanti warriors in the manner of a smith's hammer on a too-brittle sword. Sego was close to the front, as was fitting of the nephew of a great chieftain, and he would have to withstand the initial assault and hold it back long enough for the Catevellauni to abandon the fight. If he made to run without facing down a single man, his honour would be lost to him and the Trinovantes might just kill him themselves.

With gritted teeth, he locked his gaze on the man with the strange head-plumage that marked him as a leader, but the Roman chief was quickly lost in the press of men, and Sego found himself instead looking at a common warrior of Rome. The man, some decade older than Sego and far heavier equipped, threw up his shield and made to barge him, the bulging bronze boss meant for the young war-leader's face.

But these Romans were also slow, weighed down with the water of the river that dragged their sodden clothes and armour towards the ground. Almost contemptuously, Sego battered the large shield aside with his own sword and stuck his spear in the Roman's gut, snarling his distain at the man's mail shirt as the decorative leaf-head of iron tore through the links and sank into warm guts.

Just to be sure, Sego took a step to his left, wrenching the spearhead a foot sideways inside the man's belly, before turning it through half a twist and yanking it back out. The Roman screamed and fell to his knees, his sword discarded as he clutched at his ruined gut.

It was a glorious feeling to destroy these men in battle, and Sego savoured the moment as long as he could, but it could not last and he could not repeat it. Already the man was down and a handful more were jostling to take his place. He had been seen to kill and the allies would fight for him.

Allowing two warriors of the Trinovantes to take his place, he stepped back. There, not far behind, were Sego's own men: three strong warriors selected by Cassivellaunus to serve the young war-leader.

"Get the warriors away from here and back to Wheat Valley."

The older of the three nodded his agreement and reached for the horn at his side. The younger, roughly Sego's age, pointed at the fray.

"What of the Trinovantes?"

"They will hold the Romans until we are gone and then flee back to their hovels."

As the warrior nodded and watched the raging battle with the gaze of one who will miss all hope of glory, the third man, a distant cousin of his, gave a brief bow.

"I must leave, Sego."

"What?"

"Cassivellaunus saw this. He is wise, and so I ride for the Cantiaci at Durovernon with a message from their overlord. I must go. The gaze of Belenus be on you, uncle's son."

Sego fumed for a moment, angry that their chieftain might plan for an eventuality without even informing him, but nodded and gripped the man's shoulder. "Luck surround you."

The man jogged to the treeline, where his horse was held by the bearer, and leapt onto the mount with practiced ease, disappearing into the woodland, where he would follow hidden, secret trails to the crossing only five miles away. In a few days, the rider would be at Durovernon near the coast, speaking to the Cantiaci. About what, Sego would not cast a guess, and he could not afford the time to think upon it. Already his men were pulling away from the fight.