Cato 02 - The Eagles Conquest (23 page)

‘Steady, lads!’ Cato shouted again and again as he cut and thrust at any faces and bodies that came within reach of his sword. The shield he presented to the enemy shuddered and thudded with the impact of their blows; a waste of effort and indicative of the poor training of these British levies who fought with unguided rage and simply attacked whatever part of the invader that fell before their weapons. But what the Britons lacked in quality they made up for in quantity, and although the ground was littered with their dead and dying, they came on as if they were possessed by demons. And maybe they were. A glance over their ranks revealed to Cato a scattered line of strangely garbed men with wild beards, urging the Britons on with arms raised imploringly to the heavens, and screaming savage curses. With a thrill of horror Cato realised these men must be Druids, tales of whose exploits were told to terrify Roman children.

But there was time for only the briefest of glances before he had to deal with the next crisis. A body of Britons, better armed and more determined than their comrades, suddenly confronted the Sixth Century and forced them back into the river. Several of Cato’s men were down, some knocked over, others losing their balance in the slippery mud, and suddenly the shield wall was breaking apart. Before Cato could rally his men, he was aware of a presence at his side. He just had time to glance right and glimpse the snarling face of a black-haired Briton before the man slammed into his side and both men went tumbling into the shallows of the river.

A blinding flash of the sun. Then an instant of glittering spray and the world went dark before Cato’s eyes. Water filled his mouth and lungs as he instinctively gasped for the next breath. The Briton was still on top of him, hands frantically fumbling for his throat. Cato had dropped his sword and shield as he fell; he grabbed at his attacker, trying to use the man to haul himself up out of the water, strangely devoid of the sounds of battle. But the Briton had a powerful physique, and firmly held him down. The agonised desire for air and the imminence of his death lent Cato a reserve of desperate strength. His hands groped for the man’s face and his fingers thrust into the Briton’s eyes. Abruptly the man released his grip on Cato’s neck and Cato burst to the surface, spluttering water and gasping for breath. He kept his fingers clamped on the man’s face and the Briton shrieked with pain, clawing at Cato’s arms before some instinct made him smash a fist down at his opponent. The blow struck Cato’s cheek and the world went white an instant before he was back under water with the weight of the man on top of him again.

This time Cato thought he must surely drown. His head felt as if it would burst, and his frantic writhing achieved nothing. He stared at the silvery surface of the water. The life-giving air, a scant foot away, might just as well have been a mile off, and as his world began to dim, Cato’s last thought was of Macro: regret that he had failed to avenge the centurion. Then the water turned red and the sunlight was dimmed by thick blood. The Briton’s hands still grasped him by the throat, but now another hand reached down through the water, grabbed his harness and yanked him up into the brilliant sunshine. Cato burst from the surface through a pool of red and filled his burning lungs with air. Then he saw the body of the Briton. The head was almost severed, only some gristle and sinew attaching it to the torso.

‘All right?’ asked the legionary holding his harness, and Cato managed to nod as he gulped down more breaths. A small band of men from the century stood guard about them and fended off blows from the nearest Britons.

‘My sword’?’

‘Here you are, sir.’ The legionary fished it out. ‘Nice blade, that. You ought to look after it.’

Cato nodded. ‘Thanks.’

‘All right, sir. Century can’t afford to lose more than one centurion a day.’

With a final shake to clear his head, Cato retrieved his shield and raised his sword. The pace of the fight had noticeably slackened as exhaustion took its toll. Neither Romans nor Britons seemed as keen for martyrdom as they had a while before, and in places small groups faced each other, each waiting for the other to make a move. Glancing back across the river, Cato saw that the second wave had almost finished embarking on the transports.

‘Not long now, lads!’ he called out, coughing with the effort of shouting with water still lodged in his lungs. ‘The next wave’s on its way!’

A series of thumping cracks from the trireme drew his attention, and as his eyes followed the arc of the bolts he saw a fresh column of British warriors approaching along the river bank. In the middle of the column was a chariot, ornate even by native standards, upon which stood a tall chief with long, flowing blond hair. He raised his spear and called out, and his men answered with a deep-throated roar. Something about their attire and the confident way they ignored the missiles from the ship was horribly familiar.

‘Are those the bastards that jumped us last night?’

‘Could be.’ The legionary squinted. ‘I didn’t stay around long enough to memorise the details.’

The Druids had been working themselves up into a frenzy as they tried to drive their reluctant levies back onto the first wave of Romans. As they caught sight of the new column, they shrieked with delight and urged their men on with renewed ferocity.

‘Heads up, lads! New enemy on the left flank!’

The word was quickly passed down the line and the centurion nearest the new threat swiftly organised his men into a flank guard, closing up on the remainder of the first wave - just in time, as the fresh arrivals didn’t even attempt to deploy but just broke into a wild charge and hurled themselves at the Roman line. With a savage cry and sharp ringing of weapons the Britons hacked their way in among the Romans and it was clear to all that the fight was flowing in favour of the natives.

An anxious glance towards the river showed Cato that the first of the transports had set off, sweeps working furiously to gain the opposite bank. The war cry of the fresh troops and the exhortations of the Druids rekindled the fighting spirit of the levies who once more charged the Roman shields.

‘Hold them back!’ Cato cried. ‘Just a little longer! Hold them!’

The remains of the Sixth Century closed up with a handful of other legionaries and grimly held on to the patch of ground they had won on the bank of the Tamesis. One by one they fell, and the shield wall closed up into an ever tighter knot of men until it seemed that their destruction was moments away. The left flank, if the battered groupings of defiant Romans could be said to constitute a line, slowly caved in under the ferocious attack from the elite British warriors. Since there was no chance of surrender or escape, the Romans fought until they died where they stood.

Of the thousand or so men who had made the first assault no more than half held on, and Cato was horrified to see that the transports were being carried downriver by the current. They grounded two hundred paces beyond the desperate struggle of their comrades and the second wave landed without opposition, so intent were the Britons on destroying the remnants of the first wave. Cato glimpsed the scarlet crest of the legate and beside him the eagle standard as the new arrivals hurriedly formed a battle line and marched swiftly upriver. The Britons saw the danger and turned to face them. Cato watched in desperation as Vespasian’s advance slowed and then halted to deal with the fierce resistance fifty paces from the battered first wave.

From the left the Romans had been pushed back into a compact arc with its base on the river, and the Britons scented imminent victory. Their war cries now sounded with a new frenzied pitch as they hacked and slashed at the legionaries. In a moment it would an be over and they would trample the last men of the first wave and grind them into the mud.

But the end did not come. A British war horn sounded a series of notes above the cacophony of battle, and to Cato’s astonishment the Britons began to disengage. With a last exchange of blows the warrior he was fighting stepped back carefully until he was well beyond the reach of Cato’s weapon. Then he turned and trotted up the river bank, and on all sides the bright colours of the Britons flowed back from the Roman shields, back towards the Druids clustered about the chief mounted on his chariot. Then in good defensive order the enemy marched over the slight rise of the river bank and out of sight, under renewed fire from the trireme.

Cato stared out across the battlefield, strewn with the hacked bodies of the dead and the screams of the wounded, hardly able to believe that he was still alive. About him the remains of his century stared at each other in wonder.

‘Why the fuck did they leave?’ someone muttered.

Cato just shook his head wearily, and sheathed his sword. Vespasian’s new arrivals altered the direction of their advance and formed a screen between the retreating Britons and the pitifully small number of survivors from the first wave.

‘Did we beat them off? Couldn’t they take it?’

‘Use your brain!’ Cato snapped. ‘It must have been something else. Must have been. ‘

‘Look there! To the left.’

Cato looked and saw tiny dark shapes rise up round the bend in the river: cavalry. ‘Ours or theirs? I suppose it has to be ours.’

Sure enough a Roman cavalry pennant was visible at the front of the column. Plautius’ deployment of forces upriver in search of a ford had not been in vain. Some of the Batavian cohorts had arrived on the British flank in time to save the vanguard of the Second Legion. But the new arrivals were not greeted with any cries of triumph. The men were simply relieved to have survived, and were too tired to do anything more than slump down on the river bank and rest their exhausted limbs. But Cato realised he could not do that just yet. His sense of duty would not permit it. First he must do a roll call of his century, check their fitness to continue fighting and then make his report to the legate. He knew he must do this, yet his mind was stupid with fatigue now that the immediate danger had passed. He yearned more than anything for a rest. Even the thought of it seemed to add vastly to the physical need to sleep. His eyelids slowly dropped before he was aware of it; he started to slip forward and would have fallen to the ground had not a strong pair of arms caught him by the shoulders and held him in place.

‘Cato!’

‘What? What?’ he managed to reply, eyes struggling to open.

The hands shook him, trying to break him out of his exhausted stupor. ‘Cato! What the fuck have you done to my century’?’

The question might have sounded bitter but beneath it was the familiar grudging tone he had grown used to over recent months. He forced himself to look up, to open his stinging eyes and face his questioner.

‘Macro?’

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘Glad to see you still recognise me under all this crap!’ Macro smiled and clapped his optio on the shoulder, carefully avoiding his injured side.

Cato silently beheld the spectacle standing before him. The centurion’s head and chest were covered in dried blood and soiled with mud; he looked like a walking corpse. Indeed, for Cato, whose recent ferocity had been driven by grief at his centurion’s death, the vision of Macro alive and grinning into his face was too shocking to accept. Stupid with exhaustion and disbelief, he just stared blankly, mouth open.

‘Cato?’ Macro’s face creased with concern. The optio swayed, head drooping, sword arm hanging limply by his side. All around them stretched the twisted bodies of Romans and Britons. The bloodstained river lapped gently along the shore, its surface broken by the glistening hummocks of corpses. Overhead the sun beat down on the scene. There was an overwhelming sense of calm that was really a slow adjustment from the terrible din of conflict. Even the birdsong sounded strange to the ears of men just emerging from the intensity of battle. Cato was suddenly aware that he was covered in filth and the blood of other men, and a wave of nausea swept up from the pit of his stomach. He could not stop himself and threw up, splashing vomit down Macro’s front before the centurion could step back. Macro grimaced but quickly reached out to grab the lad’s shoulders as Cato’s legs buckled. He slowly lowered the optio onto his knees.

‘Easy, boy,’ he said gently. ‘Easy there.’

Cato threw up again, and again, until there was nothing left inside him and then he retched, stomach, chest and throat in spasm, mouth agape, until at last it passed and he could gasp for air. A thin trail of drool curved down through the acid stench between his spread hands. All the weariness and strain of the previous days had found its release and his body could cope with no more. Macro patted his back and watched with awkward concern, wanting to comfort the boy, but too self-conscious to do so in front of the other soldiers. Eventually Cato sat back and rested his head between his hands, the grime on his face spattered with blood. His thin body trembled with the coldness of total exhaustion, and yet some final reserve of mental strength kept him awake.

Macro nodded with full understanding. All soldiers reached this moment at some point in their lives. He knew that the boy had finally passed the limit of physical and emotional endurance. He was past any exhortation to duty.

‘Rest, boy. I’ll take care of the lads. But you must rest now.’

For a brief moment it looked as if the optio would try to protest. In the end he nodded and slowly lowered himself onto the grassy river bank and closed his eyes, asleep almost at once. Macro watched him for a moment and then unclasped the cloak from a Briton’s body and gently laid it over Cato.