Altar of Blood: Empire IX (31 page)

‘Tenth Century! Disengage!’

As one man they stepped back, retreating from the baying Germans without turning their backs, raising their shields against the threat of Bructeri arrows and sling stones as they pulled away from the line of spearmen. A scattering of dead and dying warriors marked the limit of their brief advance, their bodies wrecked by the axes’ awful blows, the spectacle they presented so terrifying that the enemy warriors standing and watching the Tungrians walk backwards out of the fight were unwilling to advance past the ruined bodies of their comrades in search of revenge for them. When his men were twenty paces from the enemy line Dubnus turned and flicked two pointing fingers towards the riverbank, still half a mile distant.

‘Tenth Century, at the run!’

Jogging past the archers he nodded to Qadir, who was already shouting the command for his archers to resume shooting. As the Bructeri regained their will to go forward, shamed by the imprecations of their leaders and heartened by the Tungrians’ retreat, those men who were the first to step forward became the targets of a fresh volley of shafts, precisely aimed shots that dropped several more men writhing and kicking at the pain of the iron arrowheads lodged deep in their bodies, and sent the remainder into cover once more. Seeing the enemy momentarily cowed, the Hamian centurion made a swift decision.

‘One more arrow! Pick your targets!’

The Hamians nocked one last time, selecting their marks with care to send shots into the mass of men attempting to shelter from their cold rain of iron behind their shields, then looked to their centurion for his next command.

‘Disengage!’

Waiting while his men hurried after Dubnus’s retreating axemen, he settled into the cover of the tree next to him, knowing that he needed to give them a few moments of grace to prevent the Bructeri bowmen targeting their retreating backs. Nocking an arrow he pulled it back until the flight feathers were level with his ear, waiting motionlessly with the bow pulled taut for a target to reveal itself. After a moment an archer stepped out from behind the tree he’d been using for cover, putting an arrow to his own bow and raising the weapon to loft the missile at the retreating Hamians’ backs. Qadir waited for an instant, holding his breath to steady his body, until the Bructeri bowman had his bow bent almost to its fullest extent, then killed the man with a clinical shot and reached back to his quiver for another arrow. He waited for a long moment for another target to present itself, but the remaining Bructeri seemed intent on keeping their skins intact, and the Hamian smiled wryly as he stood, backing cautiously away from the tree with the arrow still nocked in case of a sudden change of heart by any of the Germans. When he had paced backwards a dozen times he removed the arrow from his bow’s string, sliding it back into the quiver on his right hip, then turned to lope away in pursuit of his men.

With a dull clang, a sling stone struck the back of his helmet with enough power to dent the iron bowl, sending him sprawling unconscious to the sun dappled forest floor.

‘I have an idea, my King! Give me thirty men and I will break this resistance for you!’

The Bructeri had followed up on the retreating Romans eagerly enough until the retreating soldiers had formed a rough defensive line. Having turned to face the tribesmen they crouched behind their shields in small knots of men, clearly waiting for the tribesmen to advance upon them in another charge that could only end the same way as the last, in the face of their enemy’s viciously effective archery and brutal axe-work. In the distance behind them Amalric had twice caught a flash of blue among the forest’s more sober shades, fleeting glimpses of Gerhild’s distinctive cloak as her captors hurried her away towards the river.

‘What do you plan, Uncle?’

He threw an arm out to indicate the Roman left flank.

‘There is a weakness in their position, too much ground cover on our right for their archers to see us coming. You keep their attention and I will overrun them from the right. When they turn to face me you will have your moment of glory! Then you must charge!’

Amalric nodded, and Gernot pointed to two of his senior warriors.

‘Bring your men! We go to claim the victory!’

He bounded away to the west in a long, looping run that took his small force out of sight of the Romans, and as he threw his head back to suck in the cold morning air, he wondered briefly if anyone on the other side had seen their departure, and whether they would make the connection between the unexpected departure of so many men from the Bructeri line and the lack of clear ground for shooting on the Roman left. Concentrating on the uneven ground before him, wary of turning an ankle in a rabbit hole and losing the fight before it was properly joined, he dismissed the concern without a second thought. If Wodanaz willed it, his would be a mighty victory, a song to be shouted at roof beams studded with new heads, and the weapons and armour of the men he was about to tear apart with his audacious strategy.

‘Have you seen Qadir?’

Angar shook his head, staring out at the Bructeri war band less than two hundred paces distant, drumming their spear shafts against shield rims in a rhythmic pattern that was slowly increasing in tempo. Dubnus cursed and looked about him, shaking his head at his comrade’s disappearance. Angar pointed at the waiting Germans, hefting his blood-slathered axe, ready to fight again.

‘Never mind Qadir, his boys will cope without him. Concentrate on dealing with this lot, there must still be nearly a hundred of them.’

The big centurion nodded, scanning the battlefield with the seasoned eye of an old campaigner, his eye coming to rest on the far left of the small field of battle.

‘I don’t like that left flank, and I could swear there are less of them than there were last time I looked, so perhaps they’ve spotted it too. Take two men and reinforce it, I’ll manage this.’

Angar nodded and called to two of his remaining eight men, hurrying along the detachment’s short line to find a pair of archers nervously staring at a wall of foliage less than a hundred paces from them. With a sudden roar the Bructeri’s main line was lurching forward, the tribe’s warriors reflexively starting forward after a single man whose will to stand and wait in the face of the Romans’ rhythmic drumming had suddenly and decisively snapped, sending them forward at their enemy in an involuntary, screaming charge. As the chosen man watched the Hamians unleashed the full power of their long years of practice on the oncoming warriors, each men calmly and systematically nocking, drawing and loosing a shaft once every two heartbeats, their arrows hammering into the Germans’ shields and finding the gaps between them while Dubnus readied his remaining axemen.

‘They won’t even reach us, look, they’ve already lost a dozen men.’

Angar turned to speak to the retired legionary Lucius, standing alongside his son and watching the Bructeri suffer as they came on, but a faint movement in the bushes to their left caught his attention for an instant.

‘What the …?’

‘We must attack!’

Gernot nodded grimly at the warrior’s outburst, peering through the bushes behind which his small party was regaining its breath from their swift run. The main attack was already faltering, slowing under the Romans’ unceasing barrage of arrows. Every step forward took them closer to the Roman line, increasing the force with which the missiles’ wicked iron heads slammed through their raised shields to maim the flesh behind the layered wood, or pierced unprotected legs and arms, and a disquietingly large number of men lay silent or screaming in the wake of the advance.

‘Some idiot … decided to go … too soon … and those fools … followed him!’ The Bructeri chieftain sucked in one last breath. ‘Our time is here!
Follow me!
’

He burst through the bushes, praying to Wodanaz that his men were following, raised his sword and charged, too badly out of breath to shout a war cry.

‘To the left! Shoot to the left!’

The two archers in front of Angar took a moment to realise their deadly predicament, then swivelled and loosed their next arrows into the twenty or so men running at them in ominous silence, nocking and loosing again, but the pioneer officer could already see that the tribesmen would overrun them before they had time to shoot more than one more shaft apiece.

‘Ready!’

His men stepped alongside him, both tensing their bodies to fight, and the civilians made ready alongside them, the retired soldier exchanging a knowing glance with him while his giant of a son flexed his muscles and roared a deafening challenge at the Bructeri. Each of the archers managed one more arrow apiece, then were beaten down by the oncoming Germans before they could nock again, both men dying with spears through them as the Bructeri took their savage revenge for the punishing damage the Hamians’ bows had done to their brothers. The axemen charged into the melee, separating themselves widely enough that they could swing their axes with complete abandon in the manner demanded by the odds against them, arcs of blood flying as their brutal weapons hacked a path into the enemy. One of them went down with a spear blade in his foot, and Angar flung his axe in a wide arc into a hastily raised shield to smash down the man wielding the spear, knowing that he would be unable to reach his man before he died under the blades of the warriors gathered over him, only to goggle as Magan waded into the fight. Ignoring a stabbing attack that opened a wound in his side, he grasped two warriors by their heads, smashing them together and dropping them senseless to the forest floor. Another spear stabbed into his back, but, turning as if nothing had happened, he took the man who had inflicted it by his throat and squeezed, his knuckles white as the flailing warrior’s larynx collapsed under the pressure.

Angar found himself facing an older man, clad in furs and wielding a sword, parrying the German’s first stabbing lunge with his shield and sweeping the axe down while the weapon was still outstretched, snapping it in two close to the hilt and grinning ferociously as the swordsman backed away with a look of consternation. Two tribesmen were stabbing at the giant now, their spears bloody as they thrust and wrenched the blades free, and stabbed again, and then, as he tottered on the edge of collapse, his father was among them with a bellow of horrified rage at the blood streaming down his son’s body, gutting one with a lunge of his sword and distracting the other for long enough that the axeman who had fallen with a pierced foot could swing his weapon in retaliation from the spot where he lay, hacking the man’s back foot in two and leaving him screaming his agony at the forest’s canopy, his arched body open for the retired legionary’s death blow. And then the remaining Bructeri were gone, half a dozen men falling back, most of them wounded, while Angar and his remaining soldier bellowed imprecations after them.

Dubnus ran up with another two men, and Angar looked over at the main Bructeri force to find them in retreat, more corpses and struggling, kicking, arrow-shot men littering the ground before them. The chosen man spat on the forest floor, examining his axe’s notched, bloody blade.

‘Looks like you handed me the short straw.’

The centurion nodded dourly.

‘You held though. The Hamians?’

‘Died like men. Must have taken some balls to stand and keep shooting while that lot ran them down.’

They turned to look at Lucius, who was cradling his son’s bloody body as best he could, tears washing down his cheeks as he mourned the giant’s loss.

‘He had no idea … He was just a boy, really …’

The two men looked at each other for a moment before Angar spoke.

‘He saved us though, distracted enough of them for long enough that they couldn’t mob us. And died like a man. You can be proud.’

Lucius looked up at him and nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

‘I can’t leave him. He’s my son. I have to bury him.’

Dubnus shook his head peremptorily.

‘You can’t. They’ll tear you to pieces once we pull back to the river, and we can’t carry him.’

‘Then …’ Lucius nodded to himself, hardening his face. ‘Send me with him. I have nothing to live for now that he’s gone. At least we can be together when we cross the river.’

Angar looked at Dubnus, nodding his head.

‘I’ll do it. You get the men ready to move. You …’ he pointed to the remaining soldier from his small party, ‘help your brother get back to the river, and tell the Hamians to come and get their mates’ arrows, there must be a hundred or so unspent in their quivers.’

‘They can’t escape! Their backs are to the water, we just have to wear them down!’

Several of the spearmen closest to Gernot cheered lustily, but their advance remained as careful as before, moving from tree to tree and keeping the protection of the thick wooden trunks between them and the deadly archers who were doggedly retreating before them. An arrow sighed past his head, and he reflexively ducked into the cover of a sturdy oak, looking to either side and realising that most of his men were doing just the same thing.

‘We
have
to charge them again!’ Looking over his shoulder he found Amalric a dozen paces back, crouched at the base of a tree and pointing forward at the Roman line. ‘They are only one hundred paces ahead of us! If we attack together we will smother them with our numbers!’

The nobleman pursed his lips, unable to shake the memory of the horrendously mutilated corpses that were the remnant of the last charge he had led at the deceptively small enemy force. To his horror Gernot had been forced to tolerate the ignominy of retreating from their deadly axes with his remaining men while knowing that their number should have been sufficient to deal with a handful of equally tired Romans. Crouching behind their shields his men had backed away from the blood-soaked enemy, pursued by their taunts and shouts of derision as the Romans retreated towards the river. They were calling out to the tribesmen now, while their archers, retreating from tree to tree, shot arrows at anyone who showed themselves for more than a brief moment, taunting his warriors for their timidity in their rough version of the Roman tongue. Running the gauntlet of the archers once more he zigzagged his way back to the tree behind which the king was sheltering, ducking behind its trunk as another arrow struck the wood with a heavy
thwock
.