Reign of Iron (49 page)

The cavalry swarmed out in fifty squads of six, modelled on Lowa’s own cavalry company from Zadar’s army. Each team of six had a leader, the role that Lowa had taken almost a decade before, and they trained and trained until they could move like flocks of birds in their sixes, and in synchronisation with the other teams. With wonderful unity they swept towards the mighty enemy.

Half the squads shot arrows to suppress the elephant archers, while the others galloped in holding aloft spears with long, serrated blades. The elephant commander saw the threat, but rather than swing to meet it, he waved his arms for the elephants to gallop on, deep into the press of infantry.

One of the trumpeters touched her arm and pointed to the west, to the far side of the battlefield from the elephants’ charge where a multitude of legionaries was sprinting towards the gap between her fort and her infantry. There were thousands of them, on course to block her infantry – almost her entire army – from returning to safety. More and more appeared, running into the field between her and her army, well clear of the fort’s scorpions’ and catapults’ range. Lowa saw two eagle standards, which meant almost ten thousand men.

Ten thousand men who were meant to be half a day’s march to the north.

False shouts. She now knew that Caesar had captured her shouters and forced them to shout what he wanted. The previous year’s mindless landing, the utter failure of the first invasion, the simple charge and attack at Big Bugger Hill, all of Caesar’s actions so far had convinced Lowa that he wasn’t the military genius he was reported to be. Had it all been a ruse, leading to this moment? She’d believed that she was the only general using vaguely advanced tactics, the superior commander, because she’d wanted to believe it.

What was it they said about pride?

She gave the order for the chariots on the left flank to retreat, out of the path of the Roman infantry, but it was too late. The elephants hit the right flank of her foot soldiers at the same moment as the legionaries hit the archer chariots on the left. They had similar, devastating effects. Chariot archers shot at the charging legionaries, but shields caught most of the arrows, then the legionaries were at them, hacking and stabbing at horses and charioteers. On the right, elephants were swinging their great tusks, goring and scything down crowds of soldiers – some Romans as well as British – and trampling them with iron boots.

Lowa ordered the infantry on the left to form a shield wall and push westwards, to save the archer chariots and meet the coming legionaries. She looked to the right. Her army was standing its ground, but all cohesion had been ripped to shit by the bladed tusks of the elephants. They’d felled one of the animals, but many more – at least thirty – were raging through the ranks. Chamanca’s cavalry took down two more of the beasts, but the horses were struggling to push through the press of bodies, living and dead. Trampling through the infantry as if it were grass, the elephants ran clear of the cavalry archers’ accurate range. Dark-skinned men popped up in the turrets and shot arrows into the surrounding Maidunites.

To the left the Romans had obliterated a good many of Lowa’s chariots. Some legionaries were pursuing the surviving vehicles back to the fort, but most charged on, heading for the body of her army.

The enemy were still outside the range of her large fort-based projectile weapons, but some of the legionaries chasing the chariots came within range of her bow. She strung it and aimed.

Chamanca spat. The infantry was blocking her horses. Most of the soldiers, to be fair, were dead or dying and it was perhaps a bit much to expect them to crawl out of the way, but still, they were impeding her troops’ progress and there were elephants’ tendons to sever.

“Follow me! And do as I do!” she shouted to the cavalry near her, then leapt from her horse, grabbed a shield off a dead legionary and ran towards the nearest elephant. She sprang from gap to gap between the casualties like a particularly nimble deer crossing a tussocky marsh, arrows from elephant turrets missing her and zipping into the flesh of the downed. Some of the arrows punched shouts from the not quite dead and a couple more thwocked into her shield.

It was the messiest battlefield Chamanca had seen, and she’d seen some messy ones. Being sliced apart by tusk-blades and trampled by iron-shod elephants was not a tidy way to go. There were guts everywhere and so much blood that it collect in pools on the blood-saturated earth. So much blood. Blood … She stopped and crouched behind her shield next to a dying legionary, arrow-shot rather than crushed and split open like so many of the others. She stabbed her teeth into his neck and drank deep while arrows whacked into her shield.

Satisfied, for now at least, she glanced back. The cavalry were following, not as fast as her, but protected by shields and carrying their newly made leg-severing spears. She didn’t need a special spear, she was good enough with her blade and ball-mace. She didn’t need the shield either, she’d picked it up only to show the others what to do. She tossed it aside and leapt on, much faster now she was blood-fuelled, and more than able to dodge the elephanteers’ arrows. She reached the first great grey animal and chopped into its leg.

Jagganoch shot arrows into spear-carriers as Bandonda trampled puny humans and butchered them with his tusks. There was nothing finer. Riding an armoured Yonkari war elephant through crowds of infantry was better than all sex, all food, all drink – everything. Bandonda was eviscerating and crushing a good number of fool Romans as well as dozens of Britons, but Jagganoch was not concerned. They should have learnt from the battle at the coast. If you want to live, do not block the path of Bandonda and his herd.

He saw that two legions of Romans were attacking from the west, directly towards him, so he commanded his squad to turn north. Killing allies when they were in the way was fine, but charging them directly when they weren’t mixed up with enemy troops was not good form. As Bandonda responded to the reins, Jagganoch looked over the rest of his elephants. He could see only one killed, but two more went down as he watched, bucking, rolling and crushing some crew who didn’t have the wherewithal to leap clear. What was this new threat?

It was the Iberian woman! Gripping an elephant’s ear with one hand, she swung up to the turret and over its wall. She was wearing almost nothing and she moved like a cheetah. The crew were all dead in the blink of an eye. She grabbed the elephant’s reins and pulled. It must have been luck, but somehow she got the succession of yanks and tweaks exactly right to make the elephant turn, bow its head and then ram its tusks up into the belly of the beast next to it.

He wanted that woman.

Behind her, in line with the speared elephant, a few dozen Maidunites advanced with bladed spears. He gave the order for the elephants to swing round to meet the challenge, at the same time as steering Bandonda directly for the Iberian’s new mount.

Chamanca’s beast thrashed around, destroying its herd-mate’s stomach and ribs, but its tusks became trapped and it could not pull free. The crew of the tusk-speared, bucking elephant balanced like acrobats in their little fort, shooting arrow after arrow at her. From that short range, with her own animal tossing its head and lurching like a burning bear in a desperate attempt to free itself, the missiles were impossible to dodge. One sliced the side of her neck, another lodged in her arm. She somersaulted backwards off her mount and landed neatly, but something whacked the back of her head and she fell.

The world swam back into focus. She was on her back and Jagganoch was standing over her, reaching down for his long club. He must have thrown it at her, she realised. She rolled away but the arrow in her arm stuck in the soil. It didn’t hold her for long, but it was long enough for Jagganoch to swing his club into the side of her head. She felt her skull smash, then everything went black.

Jagganoch had intended to keep the Iberian and mate with her. He’d never seen a better fighter, apart from himself, of course, so breeding with her was likely to create children at least nearly as capable as they were. So he was annoyed that, in his anger, he’d hit her too hard. He felt the wound, then her neck – yes, the bone was crushed and she had no pulse. No matter, he told himself. He had defeated her easily, so she was clearly not such a great fighter. There was a truism that even the best fighter could be unlucky. But Jagganoch believed that you made your own luck.

Back up on Bandonda, he took stock. He could not see any of the long-speared attackers still standing; his elephants had dealt with the new assault in moments, without further loss. It had surprised him at first when people attacked his elephants, rather than surrendering immediately or fleeing, but he’d learnt the reason for their foolishness. Previously the pink people had encountered only the forest elephants of the Carthaginians from north Africa and the even smaller eastern war elephants of the Persians. Jagganoch’s elephants, bred and improved for centuries by his ancestors in the heart of Africa, were completely different animals – larger, braver and much stronger. Bandonda and the others were to the eastern and northern elephants what war dogs were to the pet pups of the pampered women of Rome.

Thinking of war dogs, he’d seen some running about, but could see no more. That was a shame. People expected his elephants to be afraid of dogs because all other types of elephants were, but Yonkari elephants trampled all animals as happily as they trampled people.

So the British dogs were defeated, and to the west and south the Romans had formed lines between the enemy and their hillfort, blocking their route to temporary safety. To the north, the half-destroyed Roman legion had rallied and, further to the north, he could see Caesar and his retinue of praetorians marching southwards followed by two more legions. The Romans were winning, but only because they had greater numbers and because Jagganoch’s troop had killed so many. The British were better fighters than Jagganoch had expected, better than the Romans. Even now, the Roman lines pressing on three sides of the British infantry were static where the Romans’ superior numbers should have allowed them to advance.

He was about to give the order for his elephants to turn back to the main battle and finish off the British infantry, when he heard a new horn note, ringing out from beyond the fort to the south.

T
hey rode north as fast as the aurochs could go. Atlas was nauseous from the lumpy downing of a lumpenly pulped version of Nan’s invigorating stew, and the rhythmic lurching of the giant armoured bull beneath him was not helping.

The two hundred other riders from the forest of Branwin showed no signs of discomfort. Armoured in ringmail shirts and armed with stout-handled blades that were halfway between spears and swords, they looked grimly determined. They knew that they had much to atone for. Ula, riding along next to him, was still in her simple blue dress and armed with a long, elegant sword. Atlas had told her not to come, since she’d never ridden an aurochs and was no fighter as far as he knew, but she pointed out that she’d kicked his arse twice, wanted to make up for that, and besides, what did he know about her skills? And indeed she was riding the aurochs much more confidently than he was, so perhaps she might be useful in the battle to come.

His own aurochs snorted and he worried again that it might collapse under the weight of plate iron strapped to its flanks and head, the long iron blades attached to its forward-pointing horns, plus his own unusual bulk, but, no, it ran on, showing no more signs of fatigue than its herd-mates.

They crested a rise and he saw the fort, the legions and, dead ahead, the elephants. Immediately he knew where the beasts had come from. When Atlas had been no more than four years old, raiders on huge elephants from the Yonkari tribe to the south-west had invaded his tribe’s land and rampaged northwards, killing all who didn’t flee. His father and mother had been joint rulers of their village. Understanding that they could not defeat the elephants, they had surrendered, hoping that the rest of the village would be spared. That day was Atlas’ earliest memory. He remembered them telling him to stay put and walking away, his mother steely-faced, his father unable to hold his tears as they bade farewell.

The Yonkari elephant captain tied up his parents and all the adults in the village. He explained that, as thanks for surrendering and making their task easier, all children would be spared. The rest would be killed. They forced the children to watch as the adults were murdered in a variety of ways, each more horrible that the last. His father had been one of the first, simply whacked on the head with a club, then his flesh stripped from his bones by the elephants. He could remember that his mother had been the last, but he couldn’t remember what they’d done to her. He assumed his mind had obliterated the memory to preserve his sanity. He was both ashamed and glad that it had.

Atlas spent the next few years as a Yonkari slave, working in their fields and becoming stronger. When he was about eight years old, he escaped and killed the three men sent to hunt him down. He had not seen a central African elephant since, nor laid eyes on any Yonkari. Yet here they were. He was looking forward to killing a few more of them.

He nodded to Ula. She raised her horn to her lips and blew. The Aurochs tribe yelled, the giant cattle bellowed and they charged.

The remaining archer chariots reached the shelter of the fort’s projectile weaponry. A cohort of legionaries followed, but scorpion bolts from the fort cut swathes through their ranks and they retreated. Lowa ordered the charioteers to spike their vehicles and bring their horses into the fort. It was the same command she’d given when surrounded on Frogshold by the Murkan, Dumnonian and Eroo armies. This situation here was not as bad, she told herself.

It wasn’t great, though. The cavalry was gone, Chamanca nowhere to be seen. They’d had some effect on the elephants, killing maybe a quarter of the beasts, but the rest were still rampaging through the infantry.

The infantry, however, was holding out against the Romans on three sides, moving back steadily towards Saran Fort. It might take all day, but at this rate the majority of them would make it back to shelter.