Ben Kane - Hunting the Eagles

It was odd, he thought afterwards, the things that a man remembered before, and during, the mayhem that was close-quarters combat. A Suebian knot on a warrior’s head – out of place, because that tribe was not at war with Rome. A shield with mesmeric, swirling black lines on a blue background. Behind him, one of his soldiers cursing, ‘Bastards. Bastards. Bastards.’ Stubby, gravestone-like teeth in the open mouth of a screaming greybeard. The most impressive moustache Tullus had ever seen – long, bushy, and with twisted end-points – decorating a chieftain’s face.

An almighty crash went up as the two sets of enemies collided. Beside Tullus, Piso was talking to himself. ‘Watch him. Thrust down, at his left foot. That’s it!’ Tullus’ own breath hissed in and out through his open mouth. Teeth splintered and blood spattered as he rammed his sword deep into the greybeard’s gullet. The crone was hard at work, stabbing her sewing needle into his left calf. Down went the greybeard, choking on his own gore.

He was replaced at once by a tall warrior with a club. Snarling, the warrior swung a death-delivering blow at Tullus’ head. Tullus twisted hard to the left. Something – a muscle? – tore in his side, and the club hit his shield rim, almost wrenching it from his hand. Tullus would have died then, but Vitellius was there, shoving his blade so deep into the club-wielder’s chest that the hilt slammed against the ribcage.

It was agony to raise his shield – the blow had damaged the muscles of Tullus’ forearm, but it was death to be without protection. Gritting his teeth, he resumed his place. There was no chance to see what was going on, or to thank Vitellius – another warrior, this one a heavy-set, bearded figure, was driving straight at him. Tullus’ anger towards Arminius, towards every cursed Germanic tribe, bubbled up. He rose above his aches and pains and shoved his shield boss into Beardy’s midriff. His opponent’s look of surprise and the Ooofff sound he made gave Tullus immense satisfaction. With clinical detachment, he drew back his shield and stabbed Beardy in the gut, twisted, wrenched and pulled the crimson-coated blade free. He watched as Beardy sank to his knees, an odd, keening sound issuing from his lips.

Tullus slew the next warrior as well, but he needed Piso’s aid to down the one after that. Tight bands of pain were squeezing his chest, his left arm was losing strength and black dots danced at the edges of his vision. The natural break that happened then – as the two sides pulled back a few steps by mutual, non-verbal agreement – saved his life. Grounding his shield, Tullus sucked in breath after ragged breath. His shield’s iron rim was crumpled where the club had landed, but it would serve. Whether his forearm would take any more pressure was another thing. Time to go back into the second rank, he decided, weariness flooding his veins. It’s that, or die during the next bout. The realisation tasted as bitter as hemlock; never had he needed to withdraw from the fighting so soon.

‘You all right, sir?’ Piso’s voice was by his ear.

‘Eh?’ Tullus glared at Piso. ‘Of course I am.’

‘They’re wavering, sir. Look.’ Piso jerked his head at the tribesmen.

Tullus stared. The warriors opposite – much reduced in number – didn’t seem happy. It wasn’t surprising. The ground was littered with their dead, and they had their backs to the wall. He glanced to either side, along the intervallum. The fighting was still raging to his left, but on his right it had paused. There, too, the tribesmen’s casualties appeared to have been heavy. The legionaries facing them were singing – and there was no barritus being hurled back at them. On the ramparts, he could see warriors climbing back on to their ladders. Retreating.

The tide had turned. A strong attack now would smash the tribesmen facing his soldiers, thought Tullus with rising excitement. He hefted his shield, breathed into the discomfort that radiated from his forearm and let it mix with the needle darts from the torn muscle in his side. I can manage, he decided. It won’t take long. ‘READY, BROTHERS?’ he roared.

‘YES, SIR!’

‘See them, brothers? They’re tired. Scared. Half their inbred friends lie dead, thanks to you. Ready to finish the rest?’ As his soldiers roared back at him, Tullus struck his sword off his shield boss, one, two, three times. ‘Forward!’

He led his men on at a slow but purposeful pace, and the warriors broke before they’d even closed. Pushing and shoving at one another in their panic, they ran to the nearest gate, or scrambled up to the walkway, there to leap over the ramparts. Backs against the earthworks, a few men stayed to fight, too courageous to retreat, Tullus thought, or perhaps giving their lives to save their comrades. He kept his soldiers in formation until those warriors had been cut down, and then he wheeled them to the right, towards the north gate. The intervallum was already a confusion of retreating tribesmen and legionaries from the Fifth’s other cohorts, falling on the enemy from the side. The instant his soldiers entered the maelstrom, control would be lost.

That might happen anyway, Tullus decided, studying the blood-keen faces around him. Gut instinct also told him that the day was theirs. He had seen routs like this before – the surviving tribesmen would be hounded out of the gate and into the bog, where the slaughter would be immense. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help wondering if Arminius still had a trick up his sleeve. Would a hidden force of warriors swoop down on the legionaries as they emerged, disorganised, from the camp?

Tullus wasn’t happy until he had clambered up a ladder and surveyed the surrounding terrain. There any doubts he’d had vanished. All he could see was warriors’ backs as they fled through the mud, and hordes of baying legionaries in hot pursuit. Discarded spears and shields were strewn everywhere. Corpses floated face down in the muddy pools, and lay tangled in the gorse bushes. Trapped in the mud, or too hurt to run any further, wounded tribesmen screamed their distress. Several ravens already hung in the air overhead. How did the corpse-feeders know to arrive so fast? Tullus wondered. There would be a glut of food for the birds; that was certain.

Let Arminius be among the slain, he asked.

As Piso and his companions charged headlong after the fleeing tribesmen, they whooped their joy. Tullus and Fenestela followed, but at their own pace. So many legionaries were hunting the warriors that it was soon difficult to find any living within the walls. It seemed, thought Piso, as if every centurion in the army had sent his soldiers after the quarry the way hunters unleash their packs of hunting dogs. Tullus’ century splintered from the outset, but Piso and his comrades stuck together.

Chasing men and stabbing them in the back was brutal, exhausting work, but Piso didn’t care. These were the whoresons who had evaded the army for months, who had hunted him and his brothers through the bog, and who had killed Saxa. Like as not, many had taken part in Arminius’ ambush six years before. As far as Piso was concerned, they deserved whatever was coming to them.

With hundreds of other legionaries, he and his comrades funnelled through the north gate and pursued the warriors outside. The majority of the enemy ran into the marsh, but some tried escaping on the wooden road. Piso and his comrades cheered as they stumbled over broken planking and fell into the pools of water that had formed under the damaged roadway. With a mob of other soldiers, they pounded after this group, hacking them to pieces even as they begged for mercy.

Hearty warriors, greybeards, bare-faced youths, it didn’t matter. They slew them all. Piso chopped down a man old enough to have been his grandfather, and another who could have been his younger brother. He watched Metilius take on a berserker with an injured knee, laughing as the huge warrior tried in vain to strike at his friend from a squatting position. Dancing around the berserker, Metilius stabbed him three, four, five times in the chest and back, wounds that didn’t kill. ‘Come on, big man,’ he taunted in German. ‘You can take me.’ The berserker threw himself forward with a desperate lunge of his spear. Grinning, Metilius let him fall flat on his face, before straddling the warrior and, with a precise thrust, pithing him through the base of his neck.