Douglas Jackson - Hero of Rome

They cheered him, and pride rose up inside him like water from a spring. He felt a bond with these men that was stronger than family; a comradeship of the spirit, tempered in the heat of battle. They had marched together and fought together, and there was a fair chance that when the sun came up they would die together, their blood mingling in the mud of a British ditch. All of them knew that some of the men who marched up that hill would not be coming down again. But instead of weakening them, the knowledge gave them strength. That was what made them what they were. Soldiers of Rome.

He issued detailed instructions to each of the unit commanders in turn, finally approaching Crespo, who was to lead the Second cohort. He found it difficult to hide his dislike for the man, but the hour before an attack was a time to put aside petty rivalries. He could see the pale eyes glittering in the darkness, but he couldn’t read what was in them.

‘May your god protect you, Crespo.’ The centurion followed Mithras and somewhere in the camp was the hidden shrine where he would have made a sacrifice to the bull-slayer. It was a secretive cult but anyone who survived the initiation was worthy of respect — for courage at least. Soldiers did well not to ignore the gods, but Valerius worshipped them the way most men did, doing just enough to keep them happy and calling on them in time of need. ‘Stay close on the way in. Once we’re past the gates, the First will hold the enemy in position while you punch a hole through their line with the Second. When you’re beyond them, turn and we’ll crush them between us.’ It was a good plan, but its success depended on many different factors. He had fought the Celtic warriors of western Britain before and, for all his confident talk about their weaknesses, he knew them for courageous fighters prepared to die in defence of what was theirs. Today, they would have no choice, because they had nowhere to run.

Crespo grunted suspiciously. ‘So we do the fighting and dying while you hide behind your shields and take all the glory?’

Valerius felt the anger rise in him, but bit back the words that accompanied it. No point in getting into an argument with the embittered Sicilian. ‘Dying is what we are paid to do, centurion,’ he said, and turned away before Crespo could reply.

The barrage paused and for a few seconds the soft, false light of the grey predawn was accompanied by an unearthly calm, the serenity broken only by the crackle of burning wood from the hilltop. At the head of his men, Valerius closed his eyes and tried to read the sounds. At first, nothing. But a moment later he heard the muted growl he knew was the start of the auxiliary attack. He kept his eyes shut a little longer, enjoying a final moment of peace, and when he opened them a fire arrow arched through the sky like a shooting star.

Now!

He led the legionaries at the trot, eight abreast in their centuries. The legate had placed a screen of archers to the right and left of the assault point and, as the spearhead of the attack passed them, the bowmen loosed a flight of arrows that harvested the defenders from the first of the three ramparts. Valerius had spent the two days preparing for the attack, examining every inch of the eastern slope, and he had noted something that gnawed like a maggot at his brain. The most obvious route to the gate had a very clear entrance, but no apparent exit. Of course, the way out could be hidden, a tunnel perhaps, but that, even in a fortress of this size, would be the expenditure of enormous effort for very little gain. The longer he looked at it, the less he liked it. The anomaly might have a perfectly innocent explanation but, in Valerius’s experience, nothing in war was innocent. Now he made his choice, knowing he was gambling his soldiers’ lives on the result. He led his men swiftly past the first opening and on to a sloping platform running parallel with the fortress walls, and when it took a sharp uphill turn he followed it. The route brought the first legionaries within range of spears hurled from the palisade that topped the second rampart. ‘Form testudo!’ At the order, each man in the first century locked his shield above his head with those of the man next to him. Only those in the front and rear ranks and the men on the edges of the formation kept their shields vertical. The result was a solid carapace which made the eighty men inside the testudo invulnerable to attack from above. Behind him, Valerius knew each century in the attacking cohorts would be following his example. Now he was operating on pure instinct, following the well-worn path upwards, and praying the Silurians had placed no more false exits or hidden traps; a dozen knee-deep pits could shatter a testudo in less time than it took to draw his sword. No. A fortress this size must be a place of commerce as well as refuge, and commerce meant ease of access. Whoever had designed the defences would have been forced to make that compromise. His chest was heaving, his arm ached from holding the heavy shield above his head and the breath rasped in his throat. Sweat blinded his eyes in the little oven of his iron helmet, with the big cheek flaps that restricted his vision but wouldn’t save him from a blade to his throat. The clatter of spears and arrows against the outer surface of the testudo was almost constant now, like a heavy shower of rain. Death was everywhere around him but he had never felt more alive.

He thought of his father, mouldering in semi-retirement on the country estate in the pretty, wooded valley close to Fidenae and making his plans to revive the family’s political fortunes; plans which had Valerius at their very heart. Next year he would have to return to resume his legal career, touting for minor cases outside the Basilica Julia; snapping up the crumbs left by brighter minds. It wasn’t that he disliked the law; to sit and listen to one of the great practitioners wield logic and rhetoric the way a champion retiarius wielded net and trident was one of life’s pleasures. But to stand up before a court didn’t light a fire in his belly the way he knew it must do in a Cicero or a Seneca. Only combat did that, and — The gate! They had reached the gate!

‘Ram to the front.’ The missiles had destroyed the gate structure beyond recognition, but the Britons had used the smashed timbers to form a makeshift barrier. It wouldn’t take long to clear, though it would delay the assault, and he’d seen what happened when attacks became delayed. The battering ram was with the second century, but the legions practised re-forming the testudo under fire until it was almost habit, and the big rectangular shields quickly formed a tunnel that allowed the ram squad forward. Most legionaries were small men, iron tough but more gristle than muscle. Compared with them, the soldiers who wielded the legion’s battering ram were broad-chested giants; they had to be to handle the specially reinforced oak trunk that was their stock-in-trade. Still it took too long and he heard the inevitable crashes and screams that told him the Britons were making good use of the boulders the catapults had hurled at them. Now they were dropping those stones, some of them weighing as much as a small ox, on to the testudines following him. The defences were sure against light weapons, but a big boulder would smash a gaping hole in the shields, and then the spears and arrows could seek out the soldiers below. The testudo would reunite quickly enough but, behind him, he knew men were dying.

At last! He stepped sharply aside to allow the ram to do its work, the massive head of carved stone surging forward with the strength of twenty men behind it to smash the pathetic blockage aside. One. Two. Three. Yes, three, that would do it. ‘First cohort, with me. For Rome!’