Simon Scarrow - When the Eagle hunts

'Keep going! Advance a hurdred paces and halt!'

The Roman line moved fo.rward, and slowly the flank centuries and supply wagons, slipped through the gaps and resumed their place in the square formation, shepherding their surviving prisoners along with them. Only the rear two centuries remained on the farside of the barricade, steadily giving way under the onslaught of the Durotriges' best warriors. While his century was halted, Macro ordered Cato to make a quick tally of their str.ength.

'Well?'

'Fourteen lost, best as I can Say, sir.'

'All fight.' Macro nodded with satisfaction. He had feared the butcher's bill would be higher than that. 'Go and report that to Centurion Hortensius.'

'Yes, sir.'

Hortensius was not difficult to locate; a stream of orders and shouts of encouragement were ringing out across the sound of battle, even though the voice now carried the rasp of extreme exhaustion. Hortensius received the strength report and did a quick mental calculation.

'That makes our losses over fifty, and there's the rear cohorts to go yet. How long until dawn, do you think?'

Cato forced himself to concentrate. 'I'd guess four, maybe five hours.'

'Too long. We'll need every man on the formation. Can't spare any more for guard duties…' The senior centurion realised he had no alternative. 'We're going to have to lose the prisoners,' he said with unmistakable bitterness.

'Sir?'

'Get back to Macro. Tell him to round up some men and kill the prisoners. Make sure the bodies are left with those we've just killed on the far side of the barricade. No sense in giving the enemy any greater cause for grievance. What are you waiting for? Go!'

Cato saluted and ran back towards his century. A wave of nausea swept up from the pit of his stomach as he passed the kneeling forms of the prisoners. He cursed himself for being a weak sentimental fool. Hadn't these same men killed all their prisoners? And not just killed, but tortured, raped and mutilated them. The face of the flaxen-haired boy staring lifelessly from the bodies heaped in the well swam back before his eyes and bitter tears of confused rage and a sense of injustice welled up. Much as he had wished death on every member of the Durotrigan nation, now that it came to killing these prisoners, some strange reserve of moratity made it seem wrong.

Macro, too, hesistated on hearing the order.

'Kill the prisoners?'

'Yes, sir. Right now.'

'I see.' Macro looked into the young optio's shadowed expression and made a quick decision. 'I'll see to it then.

You stay here. Keep the men formed up and ready, just in case that lot get it into their thick British heads to try it on again.'

Cato fixed his eyes on the,churned-up snow stretching out ahead of the cohort. Even when pitiful cries and screams rose up from a short distance behind him, he refused to turn and acknowledge the sound.

'Keep your eyes to the ront!' he shouted at the men closest to him, who had turned.o seek out the source of the awful noise., At length it died down anal the last cries were drowned out by the sound of the fight from the rear of the formation.

Cato waited for fresh orders, numb with the cold and exhaustion, his spirit weighed down by the bloody deed Centurion Hortensius had ordered done. No matter how hard he tried to justify the execution Of the prisoners in terms of the cohort's survival, or the well-deserved retribution for the massacre of the Atrebate inhabitants of Noviomagus, it felt wrong to kill their captives in cold blood.

Macro slowly threaded his way back through his men to take up position in the front rank of his century. He stood beside Cato, grim-faced and silent. Cato glanced at his superior, a man he had come to know well over the last year and a half. He had quickly learned to respect Macro for his qualities as a soldier, and more importantly his integrity as a human being. While he would hesitate to call the centurion a friend to his face, a certain intimacy had grown between them. Not quite father and son, more that of a much older, worldy-wise brother and his younger sibling. Macro, he knew, regarded him with a degree of pride and smiled on his achievements.

For Cato's part, Macro embodied all those qualities he aspired to. The centurion lived at ease with himselЈ He was a soldier through and through and had no other ambition in life. Not for him the tortuous self-analysis that Cato inflicted on himself. The intellectual pursuits he had been encouraged to indulge in when he was raised as a member of the imperial household were no preparation for life in the legions. No preparation at all. The lofty idealism Virgil lavished on his vision of Rome's destiny to civilise the world had no relevance to the naked terror of this night's fight, or the bloody horror of military necessity that had caused the prisoners to be killed.

'It happens, lad,' Macro muttered. 'It happens. We do what we must if we are to win. We do what we must to see the light of the next day. But that doesn't make it any easier.'

Cato stared at his centurion for a moment, before nodding bleakly.

'Cohort!' Hortensius bellowed from the rear of the formation. 'Advance!'

The rearmost centuries had passed through the barricade and re-formed on the far side, all the while fighting off the increasingly desperate assault of the Durotriges' heavy infantry. But once it was clear that the attempt to trap and destroy the cohort had failed, the fight went out of the Durotriges in that strange indefinable way that kindred sentiment spreads through a crowd. Warily, they disengaged from the Romans and simply stood in silence as the cohort tramped away from them. The defiant ranks of legionaries remained unbroken, and had left a trail of native bodies in their wake. But the night was far from over. Long hours remained before dawn stretched its first faint fingers over the horizon. Long enough Io settle the score with the Romans.

The cohort moved on through the darkness, the square formation tightly compacted, about its supply wagons bearing their load of casualtie, s. The moans and cries of the wounded chorused with every jolt and grated on the nerves of their comrades still fit enough to march. They were straining to hear any sound Of the enemy's approach and cursed the wounded and the squeak and rumble of the wagon wheels. The Durotriges were still out there, and they dogged the cohort. Slingshot whirred in-from the darkness, mostly rattling offthe shields but now and then finding a target and reducing the cohort's strength by one more each time. The ranks closed up and the formation steadily shrunk as the night wore on. Nor was slingshot the only danger. The chariots the cohort had last seen at dusk now rumbled along the slopes, and every so often charged in on the cohort with blood-chilling war cries. Then at the last moment they veered away, having hurled their spears into the Roman ranks. Some of these, too, found their mark and inflicted even more terrible injuries than the slingshot.

Throughout it all Centurion Hortensius shouted out his orders, and threatened terrible punishments to those he knew were best motivated by fear, while offering encouragement to the rest. When the Durotriges yelled abuse from the darkness, Hortensius returned it in kind at top parade-ground volume.

Finally the sky began to lighten over to the east, slowly gathering pale luminescence, until there was no mistaking the approach of dawn. To Cato it seemed that the morning was being drawn across the horizon almost by the willpower of the legionaries alone as each man gazed longingly towards the growing light. Slowly the dark geography around them resolved itself into faint shades of grey and the legionaries could at last see the enemy once again, faint figures tretching out on either flank, shadowing the cohort as it struggled on, exhausted and battered but still intact and ready to summon up enough strength to resist one last onslaught.