Adrian Goldsworthy - Vindolanda

In the centre the Batavians were just about holding their own and might even have gained a few paces. As Ferox watched, the furthest group – that must be cohors III – shuffled forward, but with none of the enthusiasm of the earlier charges. The Britons met them and held on, refusing to give way. They had numbers on their side and the hot passion of a prophet in their midst who had promised them victory. Against that the soldiers had years of training and practice, better equipment, and pride in themselves and their units.

There were no reserves. Both cohorts of VIIII Hispana had wheeled round and marched several hundred paces to form a new line facing north. The Vardulli and Tungrians had been fed into the line to reinforce the Batavians – Ferox saw the last group of auxiliaries jog forward as a centurion led them to join the fighting. He could not see the singulares and had no idea where they had gone for they were not part of the line facing north. Flaccus was with the legionaries, and he wondered what the man was doing, but then Crispinus appeared as well and he could only guess that the Legate Marcellus had ordered the redeployment.

A couple of soldiers helped an officer back from II Augusta. The man shook them off, and Ferox recognised their senior centurion, even though his helmet was gone and a dirty bandage was wrapped around his head. There were wounds on both arms, he had lost his shield and his armour was rent and stained, but the man lurched forward, going back to the fighting, until he collapsed. Even then he tried to crawl back to his men.

‘Keep them busy as long as you can,’ Ferox croaked to Masclus. His throat was parched, in spite of the snow still tumbling down around them, and it seemed an age since he had had a drink. ‘You help him,’ he said as Vindex looked ready to follow him. ‘Try to hold them back as long as you can.’

He trotted the horse towards II Augusta, jumping down beside the centurion, who was still pulling himself across the grass, leaving a trail of blood behind.

‘Get him away,’ he said to the soldiers. He turned to another man, a young soldier who looked to be no more than a boy. ‘Who is in charge now?’

‘Don’t know, sir,’ the man said, seeing Ferox’s crest. ‘Must be one of the optiones because all four centurions are down.’

‘Wrong answer, lad.’ Ferox grinned at the pale-faced youth. ‘I’m in charge. Now come with me.’

THERE WAS NO trace left of the neat three-deep line in which the cohort had begun the battle. A lot of legionaries – Ferox guessed as many as two hundred – had drifted back so that men were scattered alone or in loose clusters as far as a bowshot behind where the line had once been. Most of these men were bloodied, and plenty of them had wounds to the legs, right arm or face, all the places a shield did little to protect. The handful of medici , the soldiers trained to deal with wounds, had long since been overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of casualties. They were doing their best to help any who could be helped on a snowy moor in the middle of a battle. Lots of other men, unscathed and reluctant, had used the excuse of helping the wounded back to slip away.

Ferox saw a couple of legionaries leaning on their shields, their heads bowed so that they did not have to meet anyone’s eye. ‘You!’ he bellowed from a few feet away, his voice suddenly full of strength and with enough of a parade-ground tone to make their faces jerk up. ‘What are your names?’

‘Longus, sir,’ one answered before he could think. His comrade glanced at him, but knew that he could not refuse.

‘Terentius, sir.’ He was younger than the other man, probably no more than twenty, but he had the sharp features of someone who planned to grow as old and rich as possible.

‘Good. You are with me. Stay right behind me and if ever I lose sight of you, I’ll make sure they have the skin off your back before the week is out. Understand!’

‘Sir.’ The voices were weary and lacked enthusiasm, but the habit of discipline was strong and his crest marked this man out as a centurion – and his tone as a right bastard likely to remember.

Everyone knew that the worst slaughter happened when a unit broke and fled, and as a fight drew on and on and everyone tired, they all knew, too, that the collapse could come at any moment. So men hung back and waited. No one wanted to be seen to start the panic and be blamed. No one wanted to die either, so they lurked well behind the fighting line until they could follow the lead of everyone else.

Terentius and Longus trailed after the centurion as he went forward, ignoring men who were wounded but yelling at the rest to follow. Ferox scooped up a shield that lay on the ground, hefted it to test that the handgrip was still firmly in place and the boards solid, and pushed on. There were a dozen archers nearby, waiting and not shooting.

‘Running short of arrows, sir,’ the optio with them reported. ‘Down to four or five each.’

‘Right. Every second man gives his to the soldier next to him. Then he draws his sword and follows me. You stay with the others.’

‘Sir.’

He expected more show of resentment at being asked to fight hand to hand rather than do what they were paid and trained to do, but the archers’ faces were impassive.

Ferox ran forward. The front of the cohort was now a row of seven or eight clusters of weary men. Some of them may have started out as the centuries of the cohort, but there was little regularity any more. Legionaries still determined to fight on bunched together because that made them feel safer. Most of the clusters were ten or twelve deep and there were big gaps between them. If the Britons had been fresh and eager then they could have swarmed through the spaces and overwhelmed the remnants of the cohort, but they were just as exhausted and their line looked much the same and was no more solid.

The six signa carried by the cohort were in the biggest group at the centre of the line and Ferox headed towards them, running through the gap to get in front. ‘Form there.’ He pointed with his sword to show that he wanted them to stand level with the standards in the space between this cluster and the next. ‘Terentius, you’re there as right marker. Longus next to you, then you and you.’ He gestured to two more men. ‘The rest in three ranks behind them. When I say go, you follow me. Understood?’

‘Sir.’ Terentius stamped to attention and clashed his sword against his shield. ‘We’ll be ready.’

‘Good.’ He turned his back on the enemy to face the other legionaries, praying that there was no one still with a missile and the energy to throw it into his back. The Britons were no more than four spear lengths away, but all looked spent – at least for the moment. Some were even on their knees or bent double as they gasped for breath. There were bodies of the dead and badly wounded strewn on the ground between the two sides. One was a Roman, just a few paces away.

‘Water, please, water,’ the wounded man begged.

Ferox ignored him and shouted with all his strength. ‘Capricorns! You are Second Augusta.’ Some of the men looked up to see who it was, but some were too tired to care. He could see that only one of the signa was still carried by a signifer wearing the usual bearskin over his helmet. The other five were held by ordinary soldiers, which meant that the standard-bearers were down. Ferox could see no sign of a centurion anywhere along the front, which meant that the report must have been right. He saw a soldier by the standards. The man’s shield was gouged by two big cuts, the calfskin outer layer peeled back to show the boards underneath. The man had no staff, and his segmented armour was bent and dented on the shoulders, but a red feather stood up high on one side of his iron helmet and the stub of another showed that there had once been a second feather on the other side, marking him out as an optio.