Arthur Britannicus (30 page)

Carausius knew he stood at the hinge of history, when a new nation could create its own future. The Britons had come together as never before to resist an
invader, and here was the flower of Britain’s nobility facing the power of Rome. One or other army must be broken on a lonely stretch of shingle along the southern shore of the misty northern island.

Behind the dunes, the long-moustached warrior barons from the fastnesses of Britain were gathered in front of their chariots, arranged in a half circle around a small woman. The sorceress Guinevia was calling on her witch goddess. “The hellequin Nicevenn leads the Wild Hunt that drives the damned to Hades each year, on the night of Samhain,” she told them. “I am her adept, she gives me power. I am also the disciple of Myrddin, who was born of a demon and a king’s daughter, and is earthlord of the sea god Mannanan mac Lir. They have embraced me with magic and the power of our British gods.” She gestured slowly, pointing her finger upwards and circling it. A small vapour cloud had formed above her, at twice the height of a tall man. The armed warriors stirred uneasily.

Guinevia lowered her pointing hand. For a moment, not one of the hundreds of men or horses made a single small sound. Into that silence, as shocking as a thunderclap, Guinevia bellowed. Her voice had become harsh and gravelled, a tone that seemed to echo from the caverns of the Underworld itself.  The warriors shifted uneasily and their ponies stamped and snorted as the witch’s tones carried across the dunes.  ”I call on Nicevenn and her mounted ghouls to ride with us this day. I call on her to bring dead Boadicea and her spirit charioteers to defend Britain once again as she did with justice before. I call on Nicevenn to claim the souls of these invaders and to take them as her playthings into the deepest pit of torment and to preserve our British warriors while they carry out this task with their emperor.” 

The charioteers, awed and uncertain, stood mute as the words died away. A whirl of wind gusted, spinning a slender spiral of dust across the open end of the half-moon of awestruck, on-looking men. Guinevia broke the spell. “Look,” she said simply, in her accustomed voice.
“The goddess has heard us. Now go, and make these extortionists regret they ever heard of our land. Make them pay with their blood.”

The first of Maximian’s reinforcing fleet was easing into the shallows, a heartening sight for the encamped Romans. Two or three at a time, the ships crunched ashore, grinding the pebbly shore under their keels. Men handed down shields and bundles of arrows, spears and other war gear to waiting comrades, then spilled over the sides to wade ashore.  Offshore, standing to in the tidal calm of slack water, dozens more of the invasion fleet lined up to disembark their cargoes and men.

An alert ensign saw the danger first as they emerged from a line of low-lying haze. From the east, running before the wind like wild geese, came the British fleet, sails stretched as outspread wings, oar blades flashing rhythmically to the boom of drums, a white feather of foam at the foot of each bow. They raced down the strait like wolves on a sheep fold, and they tore into the lines of the Roman ships, ramming them with their iron-bound prows of oak even as the stalled, hove-to barges tried to up sail and turn away. From the British warships poured volleys of darts, fire arrows and javelins, all thudding into the waists of the invaders’ vessels, as archers and soldiers fired down from the fighting towers.

The civilian master mariners from Egypt and Phoenicia, from Greece and Dalmatia who worked the Roman fleet were panicked. Some turned their vessels downwind to escape, unaware that the swirling waters off the promontory concealed ship-killing ridges of rock. Others, sometimes forced at sword-point by their Roman officers, slammed their vessels onto the beach, spilling men and equipment into the shallows. Still more were simply sunk where they were rammed, their clinkered pine hulls fragile against the oaken ribs and iron-bound carvel planking of the British ships. In a half hour, it was over. Some of the invasion fleet was grounded on the beach, some was mere flotsam; the others were foundering in the sea race off the promontory.

XXXIV. Dungeness

On shore, centurions under ever more frantic orders from the despairing beachmaster were battling to restore order from the chaos of men and piles of gear scrambled onto land. Soldiers from the first expedition were wading out to help their comrades ashore when the warning shouts began and they turned to struggle to dry land again, to find weapons and meet the thunderbolt that had erupted through the British lines. A hundred or more war chariots were racing across the firm shingle, axle to axle, charioteers crouched over the reins, flogging their wild-eyed ponies into frenzies of speed. The Romans ran to form ranks, but their efforts were too late. They were still grouped and bunched, struggling with armour and weapons, when the onslaught hit.  At 20 paces, as they still were galloping in, the near-naked, blue-tattooed warriors alongside the drivers launched their heavy javelins, delivering them with all their power, a force boosted by the chariots’ speed. The effect was devastating.

The chariots wheeled, their iron tires spraying shingle, and the spearmen were ready with the next volley. In moments, they were balancing surefooted down the centre shaft between the horses and had launched again, then sent a third javelin. The impact of the triple strike was like a scythe through a grain field. Dead and wounded Romans were collapsed like cornstalks after a reaper’s swathe.  Before the invaders could rally themselves or bring up unwounded troops, the British warriors had leaped back onto their wheeled fighting platforms and were racing away. Constantius turned to his emperor, eyes wide. "Those fucking things haven’t been used in centuries,” he said slowly. “Where did they come from?”  Maximian, teeth gritted at all the setbacks he was encountering, shook his head. “We’ll take them down when the heavy cavalry get here, that’s all. Let’s push these bastards out of the way and go and get that damned harbour.” 

For the next two hours, as harried centurions struggled to dispose their men and equipment, the chariots raced in again and again to sweep the beach head troops with their volleys, although some judiciously-planted stakes ahead of the ranks and a few companies of Roman archers did much to blunt the attacks. Finally, Maximian’s patience broke again. “Let’s move now, shove these nuisances aside and clear the way. I’m not waiting any longer. I have enough force here to do the job.” 

The trumpets and the voices of the centurions joined in a cacophony of orders, and the leading ranks of legionaries formed up in wedges, small triangular formations led by one soldier, who, protected by the shields of the comrades alongside him, spearheaded his unit into the enemy lines. The fighting wedges were designed to isolate and force the enemy into restricted positions that didn’t allow much freedom for hand to hand fighting, but was favourable to the Romans’ thrusting, stabbing attack from behind the protection of their shields.

The legions were lined up; Maximian tapped his sword hilt for luck, then waved his ivory and gold baton of office. “Move forward!” he bellowed. His legions began their steady tramp towards the waiting Britons.

The British tribune Quirinus was beside his emperor in the front rank with the Eagles and their elite guard when the first Roman wedge arrived. The Britons’ shields were edge to iron
edge, their long spears bristled outwards at eye level. At Carausius’ nod, he gave the orders. “Stand by, stand by!” he bellowed. “Now!!” In a disciplined movement the Britons made their spears vertical and raised their shields into the tortoise defence of the testudo. Almost at once, the hail of javelins hurled by the Romans rattled onto the armoured carapace, as Quirinus had expected and countered. “Again!” he bellowed as the second volley beat down on them. “Spears … now!” 

As he had trained them, the rear ranks of his troops dropped their shields and hurled their javelins and heavy darts over their comrades and into the oncoming Romans, many of whom had lowered their shields so they could dispatch their own missiles.
“Spears!” Quirinus bellowed again, and a second volley thumped into the Romans as they stumbled over their own dead and wounded. 

Already, the first Romans were mere paces away from the death pits dug in front of the British ranks. They began swerving aside, breaking formation, as they were forced to funnel themselves into the narrow gaps between the pits. The cohesion of their shield wall crumbled. Men jostled each other desperately to avoid a fall onto the sharpened stakes and gaps opened in the shield wall. Quirinus bellowed the command again.
“Spears! Darts!” Again, the rear ranks poured iron death from the sky and the Roman wounded and dying formed mounds of bloodied, moaning men that obstructed their comrades, but still they came on. Now they were slower and slower as some pushed over their fallen comrades, and others broke ranks to drag them back, out of the way.

Volleys of heavy javelins, darts and the weighted, three-bladed arrows of the Britons slashed and hammered into the Roman ranks. Legionaries were crumpling where they stood, unable even to fall backwards for the press of troops behind them. The sheer weight of oncoming soldiers forced the front ranks into the outnumbered British, and the defenders began to flinch away. Carausius waved the signal for the catapults to fire, and blazing buckets of pitch arced up and then down to splash across the Roman ranks.

Some legionaries fell, but snarling officers goaded and swore their men onwards, and the great phalanx of armour moved forward through the clouds of choking, dense smoke. The left wing of the Britons fell back and the Romans along the shoreline were through the blocking line of death pits. In minutes, Carausius knew, his line would crumple and be rolled up from that side.  He bellowed new orders and imprecations, and the elite guard with their proud red chevrons that were testaments to their role as guardians of the sacred lost Eagle stepped forward with him and their standards into the heaving mass of the oncoming enemy.

The Britons were maddened with battle rage, each oblivious of his own safety and confident in the shield comrade who protected his right side. The unexpected surge pushed the Romans back, and the emboldened Britons began hacking and thrusting with new energy in the corpse-congested gap between two of the death pits.

Inch by inch, the Britons heaved the oncoming legionaries back, and regained their lost line and the defensive pits. Carausius and the Eagles’ guard stepped aside as a rush of troops flooded back to assist, then his attention was caught by a courier. On the Roman left, the invaders were now gaining, battering the British line into submission. The emperor scanned the flank. It seemed inevitable; the British line was flanked and would surely be collapsed. Carausius turned his battered elite and his Eagles and scrambled them to the almost-surrounded ranks before they broke. He was barely in time. The big, scarred warrior king led the counter attack, hewing with Exalter over the shield wall, forcing his opponents back pace by pace. He cleared the enemy from the blood-slick gap between two pits and the Britons pushed their dead and dying enemies into them, making space to take up their stations again.

After that small gain, the next gap was cleared as the front ranks of the legion fell back in formation, and then the next, and the next reopened, too. The moment was right for Carausius’ secret weapon again. He nodded to his tribune and made a gesture to the rear.  Quirinus bellowed his pre-set commands, and the British arrays parted in the strategy the centurions had agreed. At the dead run, chariots raced into the just-cleared spaces, and crashed into the front ranks of the Romans. This time, the Roman ranks did not have the chariot-baffling stakes in place, but it still looked like a losing sacrifice, giving up the flimsy chariots for one small gain.

This time, however, the British warriors didn’t dismount. They hurled two, three heavy javelins into the faces of the stalled legionaries,
then laid about them with heavy swords and axes, hacking and chopping down into necks and heads. More Britons ran up to surround and mount the chariots, fighting down from the platforms, stabbing with long spears over the enemy shields at the cracking Roman ranks. More fiery missiles flew in. The bloodied, burned legionaries backed away through the smoke, stumbling over their tidemark of dead, retreating to the stalled ranks of their comrades.

The chariots were hauled backwards free of the litter of dead and dying, were wheeled, and then run back into their own lines. Attendants dragged out the worst of the wounded horses and harnessed fresh beasts. In minutes, the chariots that had broken the armoured ranks were moving quickly behind the British lines, swerving towards the shore, to be deployed against the flanking right wing of the oncoming Romans, who again threatened to force the Britons away from the constricting pits and into the open where they would be butchered.

White-eyed and foaming at the mouth, the half-wild ponies of the charioteers cantered down the rear of the British line to where  the tide sucked at the shingle, then they wheeled directly at the rear ranks of the Britons, who gave way, opening for them and allowing them free passage to charge the Romans. Again, the chariots did their grim work. The biting, thrashing horses and the warriors’ vicious whirling blades and spears broke the ordered ranks. The Romans exacted a bitter price in men and horses, but yard by yard they were forced back until the British line was re-formed and the surviving charioteers could withdraw and regroup.

Constantius was furious. Twice more, he hurled his legionaries against the British, twice more, he was thrown back, halted by the barrage of javelins into the choke points of the constricting death pits. Worse, more and more of his men were cut down from the surviving chariots as they retreated to reform. “We need the fucking cavalry,” he told his emperor. “These bastards may as well be behind stone walls. We have to get around them.”

Maximian grunted. “The equestrians should be here soon.” He was right. Within the hour, the blue sails of the heavy transports showed. Minutes later, so did the sails of the British fleet. The Roman ground his teeth in impotent fury as he watched the sea battle from the shore. The heavier, shallow-draft vessels of the islanders crunched through his fleet, ramming and burning, only rarely allowing themselves to be boarded. It did not take long before half of the Roman fleet was sent to the sea floor or had fled into the strait.

The surviving warships, deeper keeled than the troop barges, were running aground on sandbanks, forcing the sailors to offload their cargoes of terrified, kicking horses and mules into chest-deep water. By late afternoon, it was done and the surviving fraction of the cavalry was ashore. Maximian’s dispirited, mauled force was all on the beach, only part of the great army with which he had planned to invade, but still a formidable force if he could deploy them properly. “We have to outflank them, we can’t stay here on this godforsaken shingle and we can’t get through their lines. We simply have to go around them with what we have left of the cavalry,” he instructed Constantius.

“Send the horsemen through the edge of the marsh and sweep the Brits up from the rear. If we can roll up these bastards behind the pits, we can crush them.” The general gave the orders, the brass trumpets blared and the vengeful troops moved forward for the fourth time. At a hundred paces from the waiting Britons, the Roman cavalry burst out to attack the British right, plunging into the chest-deep waters of the marsh to outflank the infantry. The first line of horses made a fine sight, surging with the water up to their sheepskin breast bands, their armoured riders waving heavy swords, yelling threats at their enemies.

Deep in the tall reeds of the marshes north of the beach, wading in a water world of swaying head-high grasses, Cragus urged on the cattle drover who was guiding him and his troop. The sounds of the battle, the clashing of metal on metal, the shouts and wails of the wounded were all carried clearly on the wind. “Keep moving, keep going forward,” the officer encouraged the struggling legionaries, holding in his fears that they would be too late or not emerge in the right place. Then he heard the first horse scream, marking the moment that the gods swung the battle’s fortunes to the British and the tide of victory away from the Romans. In seconds, the whole front rank of the invaders’ cavalry was down and thrashing as horse after horse stepped on the crippling caltrops and was lamed. The vicious spikes struck through the horses’ unguarded hoofs deep into the shock-absorbing frog and up into the coffin bone. In moments, the marsh water was red with thick blood, yet more horsemen charged in, saw their mounts crippled and were thrown into the heaving, thrashing melee.

As the dismounted, labouring cavalrymen in their heavy armour waded out of the clinging mud, they were cut down by the waiting British. Those horses not lamed were turned back shivering to safety behind the shocked ranks of infantry, who involuntarily halted. Constantius, his face purple with rage, was bellowing at his officers to move the ranks forward, but they stayed motionless, transfixed by the thrashing agonies of the men and horses who were supposed to swing the battle for them.

And, as the Romans stood stock still, Cragus and his force emerged behind them, out from the marshes they had traversed blindly to arrive miraculously on time and at the right place. Not one of Maximian’s
force spotted the outflanking Britons behind them as they stepped from the bulrushes and reeds, but the British tribune Quirinus did, and he alerted his emperor. Carausius, blood-streaked in the front rank of legionaries, flanked by his Eagles and the remnants of his elite, told his trumpeter to sound the command. At the blasting notes, the reserve infantry emerged from behind the dunes, and the front ranks with their warrior emperor stepped into the gaps between the death pits, which were now filled with Roman casualties.