Simon Scarrow - Britannia

Cato did his best to stay at the head of his men, hacking with his sword and sharing their wild exhilaration as they shattered the enemy’s will to fight and routed the natives. They had reached the top of the slope before he was aware of it, and at the ridge he looked up and reined in, aghast. On the far side of the hill, no more than a mile away, marched the rest of the enemy’s army. There was no organised column such as the Romans used, but scores of large groups of men, the vast majority on foot. Most carried bulging slings, no doubt filled with their marching rations, Cato thought bitterly, his stomach aching with hunger. The rest of the Blood Crows halted along the ridge, while the surviving natives streamed down the far side of the hill. It was the first time Cato had seen the Druid-led army in its entirety, and he estimated that there were at least fifteen thousand of them in clear view, with more emerging through the distant loom of falling snow. More than enough to chase down and destroy Quintatus and his exhausted and starving men.

Thraxis edged his mount alongside his commander and let out a low whistle as he saw the native horde. ‘Fuck me . . . We’re in deep trouble, sir.’

‘Thank you for your strategic assessment, Trooper,’ Cato remarked. He took a last look and tugged on his reins to turn his horse away. ‘We’ve done all we can here. Let’s go . . . Blood Crows! Fall back!’

The Thracians swung about and formed up in a column of fours. Cato led them back down the slope, around the fallen enemy, to where the legionaries were waiting. Macro greeted him with an expression of warm delight, rubbing his hands together briskly.

‘Fine work! The lads on the bolt-throwers gave them a real drubbing. Pricked their confidence very nicely indeed.’

‘Indeed.’ Cato turned in his saddle and pointed towards the centurion commanding the battery. ‘Set them alight. Make sure they burn properly and leave nothing for the enemy, then get your men back to the main column. Macro, same for you. We’re done here. Get moving.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Macro replied with terse formality and strode back towards his colour party, bellowing for the Fourth Cohort to form line of march. The crews of the bolt-throwers scurried over to the braziers to light brands, and returned to their weapons to set the small piles of kindling alight, before feeding more combustibles to the small flames licking up. The pitch smoked before catching, and soon the first of the weapons was blazing, dark acrid smoke curling into the air. Once the last of them was on fire, the centurion gave the order for the men to withdraw, and they marched off with Macro’s cohort in the direction of the main column.

Cato lingered for a short while to make sure that none of the bolt-throwers would escape destruction from the flames and then turned to Decurion Miro.

‘Start sowing the caltrops. No need to concentrate them, just a wide band across the tracks we’ll be leaving.’

As the rest of the Blood Crows pulled back a hundred paces, their comrades began to scatter the iron spikes. Cato looked up at the falling snow. It would soon cover any indents left by the caltrops, though it was not settling fast enough to obscure the route taken by the Romans. Some of the enemy were bound to suffer crippling injuries when they trod on the vicious little spikes. Enough to slow their comrades down and make them proceed very warily. All of which would buy the Romans badly needed time to keep ahead of their pursuers.

Once the final caltrops had been laid, Cato turned the cohort to the east and gave the order to advance. Behind them the hungry flames roared as they eagerly devoured the wooden frames and sinewed springs of the bolt-throwers. Cato glanced at the spectacle with a sense of foreboding. There would be no repeating the ambush when the enemy closed up on them again. Next time it would be down to hand-to-hand fighting, blade against blade, man against man. And for all the fine training and discipline of the Roman army, the men still needed rest and food. Both of which were going to be in increasingly short supply in the days to come.

‘Poor bastards,’ said Macro as he looked along the long strip of shingle. To his right were the stragglers from the column, the walking wounded, the hungry and the exhausted, plodding along through the snow and ice. A handful of centurions and optios were moving along with them, shouting at them to get moving, and beating those who needed it to stir them into making an effort to pick up the pace. Some, however, had given up and sat where they had slumped to the ground, staring vacantly, too weary to care any more about the authority and threats of their superiors.

But they were not the men to whom Macro was extending his pity. He was looking at the line of corpses stretching along the shingle, amid the flotsam of the wrecked ships that had been carrying the injured to safety. The shattered hull of a warship lay on its side on some rocks a short distance out across the rough grey sea, while sections of other ships rocked in the shallows as they were buffeted by crashing waves.

‘They must have been caught in a storm and driven on to the shore,’ Cato concluded. ‘As you say, poor bastards. The wounded stood no chance. Nor the crews, in all likelihood. But I doubt they’d have been much safer if they had been with the column.’

Two days had passed since they had ambushed their overeager pursuers. The snow had fallen intermittently ever since, creating more drifts that slowed the pace of the march. Fortunately the same snow had hampered the enemy, who had been content to merely keep up with the Romans and made no further attempt to attack, other than the odd harassing sortie carried out by cavalry against individual soldiers or small groups who had ventured too far from the main column as they attempted to forage for food in the villages and farmsteads that the army marched past. There was seldom anything to be had. The inhabitants had disappeared entirely, taking with them their valuables, and their winter provisions. Cato guessed that they had been ordered or coerced to leave nothing for the Romans and their food supplies had either been hidden – easy enough given the snowfall – or simply destroyed. No rations remained and many of the mules had already been slaughtered, and the path of the army was littered with abandoned carts and wagons, discarded kit and those who were too tired to go on and had accepted whatever grim fate the enemy might visit upon them. Of the ten thousand men who had set out on the campaign, Cato doubted that even half remained, thanks to losses in combat and straggling.

The men of the rearguard detachment had held together well during the past two days, mostly down to the iron will of their commander. More than two hundred of Macro’s legionaries were still marching behind the cohort’s standard, while the Blood Crows numbered nearly a hundred still on their mounts and as many marching on foot. Cato had not let them string out along the way, but had kept Macro’s legionaries in column while the Blood Crows led their horses along the flanks to rest the beasts as much as possible and prevent them from developing saddle sores. There was little feed to be had for the horses either, just what could be gleaned from the bottom of the emptied grain pits and barns they passed. Some of them were weakening badly, and two had already been slaughtered after being unable to continue, their flesh shared out amongst the men.

For his part Cato felt the hunger badly enough, but it did not bother him as it did those he commanded, as he was constantly distracted by the need to drive them on. There were times, plenty of them, when he thought again of Julia, and what it was to live in a world without her. It was tempting to let such thoughts deaden his soul and banish any last trace of hope. But instead he fixed his mind on the welfare of his troops. It had been impossible for him to save Julia, but he could save these men: Macro’s bearded, gaunt-faced legionaries, who still carried their marching yokes, much lightened by the discarding of unnecessary kit, and stood stiffly to attention at roll call at dawn and dusk; and the Blood Crows, who looked after their mounts before themselves as far as they could, and chased off enemy raiders who came too close to the tail of Quintatus’s army. But now they were flagging, and Cato feared that soon he would no longer be able to count on their innate pride in their units and their willingness to defend the standards that had led them into so many battles under his command. All men could reach a point where authority mattered no more and simple, raw self-survival reigned supreme in their hearts. Looking at the two units now, drawn up in a line reaching from the shingle to a steep crag-topped slope facing the enemy, Cato wondered how much longer he would be able to hold them together.