Douglas Jackson - Enemy of Rome

The Roman dropped back, doubt sending a shiver through him. Had he made the right decision, or should he have retreated towards Patavium? No. He’d done the only thing possible. If he could stop the Vitellians here it would give Primus time to bring his troops forward into the broad flatlands of Venetia. There, the general could choose his battleground and wait for Valens or Caecina to come to him. For the moment though, Valerius could do nothing but wait. In the surrounding darkness two thousand cavalrymen waited with him, every man alone with his thoughts, his hopes and his fears.

It wasn’t dawn so much as the promise of dawn. The sky transformed in a moment from inky black to darkest blue and, in the next breath, to a slightly fainter shade that silhouetted the stakes of the palisaded parapet and the guards patrolling it against the dying night. A plaintive screech split the fading darkness as if a hunting owl was making its final pass over the grasses bordering the ditch. It was the last thing the sentries would ever hear.

Valerius had posted a hundred of his Thracian archers among the men in the ditch. By now they had already picked their targets among the dozen or so unsuspecting sentries. The moment the screech died in Serpentius’s throat Valerius heard the familiar soft ‘thrum’ of bowstrings. It was followed by the unmistakable hiss of arrows carving the air, and a heartbeat later the smack as the iron-tipped shafts struck and the short-lived cries of men pinned by six or seven arrows apiece. In the same instant a single archer set the pitch-soaked cloth of a fire arrow to the bowl of glowing charcoal hidden beneath his cloak and sent the shaft curving through the sky like a shooting star.

Before the arrow fell to earth the men of the First had hauled themselves from the drainage ditch and were dashing silently towards the temporary fort. Valerius knew the death of the sentries wouldn’t have gone unnoticed, but he gambled that the suddenness of it would cause a moment of confusion rather than an instant call to arms. His heart stuttered as the ground dropped away beneath his feet. The ditch. Mars’ arse. He prayed Serpentius had been right about the ditch and the palisade. Fear gripped his guts like a closed fist. This was the moment. If the defences delayed them even for a few heartbeats the defenders would line the parapet above and their weighted javelins would lance down into the attackers. Those spears would easily punch through the light cavalry shields and the tight-knit auxiliary ring mail that would stop an edge, but not a point. Octavius and his men would be slaughtered and Valerius would be slaughtered with them.

He gritted his teeth and drove the fear aside; if he was going to die, let the fates decide. He was Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome and the only survivor of the Temple of Claudius, and this was his attack. It was his plan that had brought these men here to this damp, misty field. Pride would haul him up the slope to die beneath the wooden palisade even if courage didn’t. But Serpentius had been certain and he was proved right. The ditch should have been eight feet deep with a shallow slope on the outward side, to draw an attacker in, but a vertical face on the inner, topped by the earthen bank and the palisade. A virtually unscaleable obstacle the height of three men with defenders at the top. But the enemy had been lazy. The ditch was only half the proper depth, and the earth spoil had been heaped in a soft, easily mounted slope. Above him, Valerius could see gaps in the wooden palisade and already men had climbed to the top of the earthen bank and started to tear at the stakes and rip them free from the loose soil.

The first shouts of alarm rang out and he knew the men of the First Hispanorum Aravacorum would already be carrying their swords into the camp. From somewhere in the distance a trumpet sounded and a torch flared on the far side of the river. Valerius kicked at a four-foot post and squeezed through the gap, knowing Serpentius wouldn’t be far from his side. Already hundreds of men were spilling down the rear of the earthen bank towards the neat rows of eight-man tents. He stepped over a dead man, noting the arrows that pierced his chest and throat. When he saw the dull glimmer of the man’s armour he realized how fortunate he’d been. The sentries were all auxiliaries wearing chain link vests. If they’d been a regular legionary unit wearing the more protective plate, some would certainly have survived to raise the alarm. But they hadn’t and now the killing could begin.

‘Now,’ he roared. ‘Let the bastards hear you.’ The Germans responded with the blood-curling wolf’s howl that was their battle cry and threw themselves at the men spilling from the tents, attempting to fix straps and pull armour over their heads. The Vitellians were unprepared, and men who go into battle unprepared are ripe for the slaughter.

A bearded soldier wearing only a brown tunic appeared from the darkness to Valerius’s left and tried to skewer him with a spear. Valerius swayed to allow the point to slip past his right shoulder and rammed forward with his sword, feeling it pierce soft flesh and solid muscle before the iron jarred against the soldier’s spine. A sharp twist should have torn it from the dying body, but he’d struck too deep. Instead, he had to put his foot on his victim’s chest to lever the blade free, thanking the gods no one was around to kill him for his stupidity.

He tried to gauge the course of the fight from the sounds around him. What he could hear was the noise of a rout. The sound of men exulting in the joy of battle in a guttural, formless tongue; the howls of the eviscerated and the shrieks of the dying; cries for mercy that would go unheard. It all seemed perfect, but something in the background made him uneasy. A headless torso lay nearby, the corpse wearing a set of lorica segmentata plate armour that told Valerius he wasn’t facing only auxiliaries. Not that it made any difference to the German cavalrymen who whooped and laughed as they chased unarmed, half-clothed enemies through the tents. Valerius attempted to restore some order, roaring for Octavius to form a reserve, but the Flavians were driven beyond control by the taste of blood and the ease of the killing. Serpentius appeared at his side like a wraith from the Otherworld, a bloodied sword in his hand.

‘The bastards had better enjoy it while they can,’ the Spaniard said ominously.

‘What?’ Valerius struggled to hear him above the clamour of battle.

‘To the west,’ the former gladiator pointed with his sword. ‘Some of them aren’t running around like headless chickens, and if you don’t do something about it we’ll be the ones with our cocks on the butcher’s block.’

Valerius ran in the direction of the river, cursing his stupidity for getting involved in the fight when he should have been directing it. He’d hoped the surprise attack would panic the Vitellians into either surrendering or retreating. Instead, somewhere among the rows of tents an officer had rallied his men and very soon the hunters would become the hunted.

‘Stay here and try to round up as many Thracians as you can,’ he called as he passed Serpentius. ‘Tell them to conserve their arrows.’

Octavius was trying to form his men into some sort of line using the flat of his sword. ‘I have a feeling that very soon this is going to be no place for a cavalryman,’ the German shouted.

‘Just get them formed up and follow me. Tell them we outnumber the bastards two to one and this is their chance to kill some Romans.’

The other man grinned and waved a reassuring hand.

On the west side of the camp, Valerius found a cleared space where the tents had been flattened and discarded equipment lay scattered all around. Here were the bloodied remnants of what had been the right flank of his attack on the camp. Six hundred strong and a mixture of Germans and Spaniards, they had lost all cohesion and stood shouting insults at the men on the other side of the open ground. The Roman stumbled to a halt, breathing hard, and a chill ran through him at the sight of an unbroken line of shields a few dozen paces in front of the bridge. The bridge was a temporary structure, made up of requisitioned boats and wooden planking, hastily roped together by men in a hurry to create a holding on the east side of the river.