Claudius (6 page)

The noise of the battle was an assault on Rufus’s ears. A cacophony of grunts and screams; howls of mortal agony and roars of frustration; the mighty, reverberating clang of the British warriors’ long iron swords against the hardened wood of Roman shields: the damp, butcher’s-block thud of a sword edge hacking into muscle and bone.

He attempted to move Bersheba away from the fighting through the ranks of panicking baggage slaves with their mules and oxen, but even the elephant’s enormous bulk could only make slow progress. As they went, he felt her twitch beneath him and he struggled to hold her as she danced and shuffled, threatening to crush the terrified men around her. Now another sound registered itself on Rufus’s senses, a whizzing, quicksilver buzz like the high-speed passage of some giant insect. Suddenly he understood why she was so animated. He looked beyond the mêlée of warriors struggling to overcome the Roman line in what had become a great shoving match. A dozen men stood clear of the ruck and he saw one of them swing his arm four or five times in a circular motion before unleashing some missile towards them. This time he heard the smack as a round stone an inch across hit Bersheba on the rump, making her dance sideways. Slingers; of course the British would have slingers. They were at the limit of their range and the stones were as little threat to Bersheba as fleabites, but annoying just the same. Another missile whirred as it passed close above his head and Rufus realized with a thrill of fear that, although the elephant was safe from the attack, her rider was not. If any one of the stones which were bouncing so harmlessly from Bersheba’s leathery skin hit his head it would smash his skull like an eggshell.

He was manoeuvring his way down her flank to a less exposed position when he noticed the spearman. The bright-blue boar tattooed upon his chest made him stand out even in that jostling crowd of warriors. He was tall, with the broad shoulders of a wrestler, and the arm that was thrown back was as thick as one of Rufus’s thighs. His massive fist was wrapped round the shaft of a seven-foot ash spear. As Rufus watched, the arm whipped forward. It was an incredible cast, and he could barely believe the speed with which the spear crossed the hundred paces that separated them. Surely it must fall short? Please be short. But he realized with horror that its arc was bringing it directly towards him. To Bersheba. Its aim would bring it plunging into her ribs close to the top of her right foreleg. If it had enough force behind it, it could penetrate her lungs.

By now he was on the ground beside her. He saw the spear come as if time had slowed to a crawl. Watched it spiral on its own axis, the polished metal of the lethal leaf-shaped point glinting in the sun as it rolled. He screamed in impotent anguish as it dropped, increasing speed, towards her. No! With all the strength he could muster he launched himself into the air so he was almost half his own height from the ground. Still the spear came and for a split second he feared that he had mistimed his jump and that it would be his body that felt the murderous bite of that terrible blade. But the fingers that reached out to snatch the spear from the air a bare four feet from Bersheba’s exposed flank were sure. He landed in a crouch with the long ash shaft clutched convulsively in his right fist, heavy and dangerous, the wood still blood-warm from its thrower’s hand and damp with the owner’s sweat. When he looked up every eye was on him, slaves and auxiliary soldiers staring with that not quite canny look he had seen aimed at Cupido after the gladiator had performed another seemingly impossible feat in the amphitheatre. For a moment he was no longer Rufus, the slave; he was Rufus the entertainer, who had once won over the mob in the crumbling magnificence of the Taurus arena. Very deliberately, he rose to his full height and brandished the spear above his head so all could see it. The acclamation began as a murmur but quickly grew to a roar that almost drowned the death cries from beyond the undulating wall of legionaries. When it reached its peak Rufus threw back his arm and hurled the spear in a great whirling curve over the heads of the Roman line and into the packed mass of British warriors.

Bersheba caught his mood. She turned her huge head in the direction of the fight, flared her galley-sail ears and raised her trunk to let out a trumpeting roar of defiance that echoed along the valley. It was an ear-bursting blast that made even Rufus, who had heard it a hundred times before, quail before its power. The violence and the terror of it cleared a half-moon among the awed baggage slaves in front of her and for a fleeting moment it seemed that even the battle paused. To the Britons she was the terrible beast they had come to kill: the Roman monster whose annihilation would shatter Roman hopes and weaken Roman hearts. Now they saw her in all her might and for a second the sheer visceral force of it unmanned them, but only for a second. For the battle was continuing. Men were dying, Romans as well as Britons, because Rufus could hear the screamed curses as they were dragged, bleeding, from the front rank, and see that the shield line was noticeably shorter than before. If the Britons managed to outflank the legionary shields, only a few lightly armed auxiliaries would stand between them and the helpless baggage train. He looked round for some avenue of escape, but Narcissus touched his shoulder. ‘Wait.’

A rasping signal sounded from the curved horn of one of the
cornicens
– an insignificant echo of Bersheba’s trumpeted battle cry. Then, above the screams and the insane clamour of the battlefield, Rufus heard a rumble that reminded him of a distant waterfall, growing louder with each passing second.

They came simultaneously from both ends of the valley, as if they were practising a parade-ground manoeuvre. Two squadrons of cavalry, big men on big horses, recruited from the flat plains of northern Gaul, armed with iron-tipped lances and heavy swords. If the British war chief had seen them, he would surely have given the order to flee, but he was caught in the crush in front of the Roman line, cursing and screaming at his men to break through, to kill the beast. By the time the warriors at the rear realized what was about to happen, it was too late.

The squadrons came in three extended lines and at the full gallop. The first lines hit both flanks of the enemy attack in the same instant, the charging horses smashing men flat with bone-shattering force, ripping at faces with their yellowed teeth and crushing skulls with flying hooves. The elemental power of the charge gave the lances a killing capability that was almost beyond imagination, the long spears punching through a first body as if it were made of silk, then spearing another, then another, before the weight of dying men forced the cavalry trooper to drop the weapon and reach for his sword.

The first lines were followed ten seconds later by the second, with similar devastating effect, but the third rank of each squadron wheeled away to form an unbroken barrier between the attackers and the sanctuary of the tree-lined valley wall.

The Britons were trapped.

A growl of rage went up from the surrounded men. They understood they were defeated, but they were warriors, they knew how to fight and they knew how to die. If they were to go to their gods they would take as many Romans as they could kill with them. The intensity of the fighting in front of the shield wall, already savage, grew to a kind of wild-eyed mindlessness as men tore at each other to reach the hated enemy. Behind them, the heavy cavalry swords rose and fell, hacking at arms and shoulders and heads, until a spray of blood and brains fell like summer raindrops on killer and victim alike. A man screamed from what was once a mouth as he realized he would never see again because his face had been sheared off by a sword blade, the way a slave would peel the skin from a ripe pear. Another sobbed as he watched, stupefied, while his lifeblood drained from the stumps of his forearms. A few had helmets, but that did not save them. The force of the falling swords was enough to crush metal and bone alike.

‘They’re beaten,’ Rufus said, his voice shaking in wonder at the scale of the carnage. ‘Why don’t they give up?’

‘They are barbarians. They don’t surrender, they die.’ The voice was flat, emotionless. Not Narcissus, but a heavy-set man in elaborate, polished armour and a legate’s scarlet cloak. He was accompanied by a staff of a dozen young officers and a twenty-strong bodyguard of cavalry who reined in their nervous horses well upwind of Bersheba.

‘So you were right, Master Narcissus. They came for the elephant.’

‘And you were right, General, to salt the baggage train with a half-cohort of infantry disguised as slaves. The gap in the column was fortuitous, but I don’t believe they would have attacked unless they believed we were weak.’

Rufus studied the commander of the Second Augusta. Titus Flavius Vespasian had a way of holding himself that suggested he had been carved from solid stone. Now in his mid-thirties, he had used his family connections to rise steadily through the ranks of the aristocracy until the only thing standing between him and a consulship was a successful military campaign. He was tough, ambitious and intelligent, but if its owner was undoubtedly noble, the face was that of a provincial butcher, broad and puffy-fleshed, and only saved from being ugly by a rather handsome nose.

Vespasian frowned, as if Narcissus’s attempt at flattery offended him. ‘Nothing is certain in war. If the cavalry had been less timely it would have been hot work for a while.’ He nodded in dismissal and forced his white stallion forward through the crush of the baggage train, to where his legionaries were still sweating to contain the snarling remnants of the British attack in front of their shields.

‘Steady, comrades. You almost have them. A ration of the best wine for the third cohort tonight.’ The encouragement was greeted by a ragged, dry-throated cheer. Then in a quieter voice to the stern-faced officer who commanded the cohort he said, ‘Give them another minute and form wedge. That’ll finish the bastards.’

The surviving warriors were trapped in a blood-slick square perhaps two hundred paces across, hemmed in by cavalry on three sides and the fourth an impenetrable wall of shields. Five hundred men had launched themselves from the forest, confident they would slice through the thin defensive line and destroy the enemy’s talisman. Thirty minutes into the battle less than half of them were left standing, and more fell to join their dead and dying comrades with every swing of the sword.

‘Wedge formation.’ The centurion’s command was obeyed in three well-practised movements which turned the infantry line into four arrowheads. The legionaries used their shields to batter their way deep into the heart of the enemy ranks, destroying any remaining cohesion or illusion of command. Rufus saw the panic spread through the British force like a ripple on the surface of a wind-blown pool. There was no visible evidence of surrender, only a palpable recognition of defeat. It was accompanied by a sound like a snarling dog as the warriors realized they could no longer fight, but only die. Some of them would have given in to despair, but the trap was sealed so tight they did not even have the choice of falling on their swords. Only one among them retained his composure, on the far edge of the slaughter where the cavalry screen was lightest and the trees closest. Somehow he was able to organize a concerted assault against the weak point of the Roman line. Fifty warriors broke through the gap and sprinted for the wooded hillside and safety.

‘Let them go.’ The legate’s roar halted the cavalry pursuit. He turned to the tribune who was his closest aide. ‘You must always leave a few to tell the tale, Geta. They’ll think twice before they try to tickle us again.’

VIII

The taste of victory was the taste of blood.

Tiny droplets must have carried from the battleground on the breeze and settled on his thirst-dried lips, because when he licked them he could distinguish that unmistakable metallic tang.

Rufus hadn’t realized that the aftermath of a battle could be as terrible in its own way as the battle itself. But Narcissus insisted he see the enemy at close range to understand the primeval force which opposed them. Now they were walking among the dead and the dying, the severed heads and the gobbets of nameless flesh, and the sword-chopped hands that seemed to beckon their former owners. At first he had tried to avoid stepping in the blood, but he quickly realized how pointless it was. There was blood everywhere. Not an inch of the killing ground was unpolluted. It stank, too. There were two distinct varieties of dead, he noticed. Those in the rear had all suffered terrible wounds to the head and upper body as the long, heavy cavalry swords had chopped down on flesh unprotected by armour. In contrast, those who were closest to the shield line had mainly died of stomach wounds, where the three-foot
gladius
had punched into belly and groin. Some had been almost entirely eviscerated and it was their exposed entrails, lying in obscene heaps and twisted strings, which gave the battlefield the odour of a well-used open latrine. It was quieter now; the groans and whimpers of the wounded had faded as the legionaries moved among them, slitting throats as casually as if they were sacrificing chickens and surreptitiously pocketing the golden bracelets they found decorating the arms and necks of the richest corpses.

‘Magnificent, are they not?’

Magnificent? Rufus looked at Narcissus with puzzlement. An hour ago these had been vigorous, powerful young men full of the confidence that came with that stage of life when maturity of body and mind reached its pinnacle. The past was full of growing pains, the future an unavoidable fading. The present? It was for laughing and loving, and, yes, for fighting. But this? He had seen death before; in the arena and in the palace of Caligula how could one not? He had even killed a man, a man who might have been his friend. He remembered the feeling of having lost something for ever: an empty space deep at the heart of his being. This was different. The enormity of it, the scale of the suffering, numbed the mind and froze the body. It overwhelmed that part of him that cared, so he could stand here, in this obscene garden of the dead, and not go mad.

‘Why did they do it?’

‘They wanted Bersheba. They have never seen her like. She is a mystery to them. They fear her, so they must destroy her.’

‘But Bersheba is . . .’

‘Yes.’ Narcissus smiled. ‘We know that but they do not. We stumbled on their tracks about two days ago, when we were coming in from the north. They were shadowing the column, but keeping their distance; then a messenger came, and reinforcements. That was when they closed in and when I informed the legate. At first we weren’t sure where they would strike, but Bersheba drew them like wasps to rotting fruit.’

‘Will they come again?’

Narcissus cast a bleak eye across the sea of dead flesh surrounding them. His gaze settled on the big spearman with the blue boar tattoo who had almost killed Bersheba. The man’s head was cleaved in two from the dome of his skull to the bridge of his nose, with the soft pink of his brains spread under him like a pillow. The unseeing eyes were crossed in a way that was slightly comical.

‘Would you?’

Two marches took the legions through country where the land was gentler and progress more speedy, and Narcissus believed the Britons could not avoid battle for many days longer. ‘Their king, this Caratacus, is gathering his forces. He has the support of many of the tribes – not as many as he would like, but enough to provide him with forty thousand warriors. Once he has them together, he must use them quickly. They are a fractious people, the British, not really one people at all: a hotch-potch of mongrel breeds, each claiming a more noble ancestry than the other. If he does not bring them to fight Plautius, they will begin to fight each other. Then his chance is gone.’

‘What is he like?’ Rufus asked, curious about this nemesis whose name was already legend among the invading army. ‘Have you seen him on your travels?’

‘Not seen him, no. I fear my first glimpse would have been my last. But I have heard much of him. If the tales are to be believed he is an eight-foot giant who eats Roman babies and slaughters Roman maidens for sport. He is said to have killed fifty men in single combat and used their heads to decorate the palisade of his capital at Camulodunum.’ Narcissus shook his head. ‘Just stories, but there are certain facts of which I can be sure. He has the support of the Druids, for without it he could not have brought the tribes together. He is a fighter, because no man who is not a warrior can rule in this land where a strong right arm and a well-whetted blade can win a kingdom. And he is clever. A fool would have thrown his forces at us in small packages and we would have crushed them one at a time.’

‘But that is exactly what happened in the valley.’

‘True, and I find it puzzling. There was no plan behind it that I could discern, just a simple launching of troops at the column. Bersheba was the target, but there are more certain ways to kill her. I believe one of the chiefs acted alone, thinking to please him, but he will have been far from pleased by the result.’

‘And now?’

Narcissus stared at the distant hills to the north. ‘Now this defeat will eat at his confidence and at his authority. Only one thing can wipe away the memory of it. Caratacus needs a victory, and he needs it soon.’