THE INVASION OF GAUL (48 page)

“
Move out. Fast.”

* * * * *

Fronto was having difficulty. He was unused to being in the saddle anyway, but this brute of a huge German horse had been increasingly hard to handle since they had left the confines of the wood. With the unfamiliarity of the terrain and the darkness weighing against him, he considered it a lucky thing that he’d made it this far without pitching off the animal or falling into something and ending with the beast lame. Although there was nothing behind them as far as he could see, he felt uneasy. They had made too much noise and commotion in the woods once the signal had gone up. He felt absolutely sure the Germans were following them, even if he couldn’t see them. Once more he pulled the madly charging animal over towards Ingenuus, who had refused to set any speed for the unit other than charge.

“
Prefect!”

He had to shout to be heard over the thunder of hundreds of hooves around them. For a moment he wondered how a cavalry unit was ever able to give or respond to orders on the battlefield. Ingenuus turned his face to the legate and Fronto was surprised to find him smiling.

“
Sir?”

“
Why are you grinning like an idiot?”

Ingenuus laughed.

“
I’m enjoying myself sir.”

Fronto shook his head.

“
I’m worried about you. You’re starting to sound like one of my centurions!”

More laughter.

“
Aulus, I’m pretty sure there are German scouts after us.”

Ingenuus nodded vigorously.

“
I know.”

“
You know
?”

“
Yes. I’ve seen them a couple of times so far. They’re way over to the right. I think they must have come out of a different part of the forest; the track they would have entered on. They’re almost certainly trying to cut us off. That’s why I’m trying to maintain this speed; I don’t want them to reach the cohort before us.”

Fronto nodded emphatically. The legionaries would certainly be able to hold their own against German cavalry, but a lot of good men would be lost if they had little warning.

“
Do you have a plan, prefect, or is getting there first your plan?”

Ingenuus raised an eyebrow.

“
My plan is to get back fast enough to give the cohort time to get on these horses and head for Vesontio, while we re-equip and retrieve our own horses. We’ll take on the scouts and protect your back.”

Fronto thought for a moment.

“
Even if we have time to do that, it’ll be dangerous for you. We don’t know how many there are. Better if we all face them together.”

Ingenuus shook his head.

“
No sir. We need to get as far ahead of the German army as possible, so you need to get your men mounted. And there’s no point your men joining us on horseback. They’re not used to fighting a mounted action. They’d just get in the way, begging your pardon sir.”

‘
Harrumph’.

Fronto didn’t like the idea of leaving the cavalry behind to face unknown odds even under this man, who seemed to have more of both sense
and
guts than the cavalry officers he was used to in the Tenth. On the other hand, the young officer was absolutely right: any attempt to marshal the cohort into a mounted force would likely end in disaster.

“
Alright, but I’m staying with you and I don’t want you going fight-mad. We’ll just hold them off and when they back down or run, so do we. We’ll catch up with them as soon as we can. I don’t want to lose the cavalry.”

“
Me neither sir. I can see the column.”

Squinting hard, Fronto could just make out in the sparse moonlight the column of men on a hill ahead. They were stationary and a number of them would be asleep. He turned his head to the right and squinted off into the darkness that way too. If took a few moments, but finally he saw a number of horsemen, quite well hidden below a ridge. It would be a close-cut thing and Fronto personally doubted whether there would be time to re-arm and change horses.

He turned his attention back to Ingenuus and the cavalry. Peering around him he could see that not only had the cavalry troopers not been blackened up, but they had also taken their swords with them, though no armour. He grimaced at the thought of unprotected cavalry, but then that was how most of the Germans and Gauls fought anyway. He grinned at the prefect.

“
Forget changing your animals, Aulus, there isn’t going to be time. You’re all armed and you all have horses. Give the order to form up and get one of them to give me a sword.”

As Ingenuus nodded, unhappy at the idea, Fronto looked around for Velius and drove in closer to him.

“
Lucius. Take your men back to the column and get them mounted up on the ala’s horses. Do it quick and get them moving toward Vesontio. Ingenuus and I are going to deal with our pursuers.”

For a moment, he thought the centurion was going to argue with him. Velius tended to ignore rank at times like this and had his own very set ideas of what a legion’s commander should do. Instead, the grizzled veteran nodded once and turned his own horse toward the front of the Roman column, gesturing to the other legionaries as he did so.

Fronto was sure he heard the man say “Idiot!” as he left.

He looked back at the cavalry, who had formed into a spearhead formation and slowed enough to maintain the line. Ingenuus, at the head of the unit, gestured Fronto to join him. As the legate pulled into his place in the formation, Ingenuus held out a spare cavalry long sword. Fronto took it and gave it a few experimental sweeps. The weight and balance were so different to the standard Gladius that he almost lost his grip on the blade. He wished he’d had time to retrieve his own sword. Despite the fact that the army was trained to use it in a stabbing motion, the shape and sharpness of the Gladius made it reasonably effective in a slicing motion. Ah well.

The Germans were closing on the column. Velius and his men were a little ahead of them, shouting orders. All along the hill there was activity as wagons were set rolling and men climbed onto the unfamiliar steeds of the cavalry, who would have to move right now or the Germans would be among the cohort. Ingenuus let forth a cry and the ala charged at the barbarian riders down the very slight incline.

The ala hit the Germans from the side. The effect could have been devastating had they been correctly armed and armoured and on their own steeds. Equipped as they were, however, and with no element of surprise, the impact on the mass of Germans was soon dealt with. A few of the scouts tried to pull out to the other side and continue after the cohort, but Ingenuus had sent off a third of the ala around the front to head off any such attempt. The Germans ground to a halt, unable to pursue the column, and began to take out their frustration on the Roman cavalry.

A big man wearing a strangely horned bronze helmet and a breast plate of the same material over a rough woven shirt rose up on his steed and held a large Celtic sword above his head, ready to bring it down on Fronto who was looking the other way. One of the troopers shouted a warning and the legate, turning just in time to see the man begin his downward sweep, pulled his horse in close and ducked. The sword, aided by gravity and its weight came down wide; Fronto was too close for the clumsy blade. Instead, the man’s balled fists and the hilt of the sword smashed into his shoulder.

An explosion of pain and blinding white light went off in his head. He had had such little experience recently of proper combat that he had almost completely grown used to his delicate arm, desensitised to its steady, constant throb. A heavy blow to it, however, brought back all the pain he had felt all those months ago. His arm felt as though it had been dipped in a vat of hot oil. Fortunately he had, over the intervening period of convalescence, taken to wielding blades with his left arm, so the blow didn’t disarm him.

The trooper was rushing in to help him against the big German, but he wouldn’t get there in time. Grunting with the pain, Fronto looked up to see the German leaning back in the saddle and raising the sword for another downward stroke that would surely cut him in half.

Wincing, Fronto brought up the heavy blade with his left arm, wishing once again that he had his own sword with him. With immense effort, he thrust the sword at the German in a stabbing motion that strained the muscles of his arm. Unable to manage an accurate thrust with such a heavy blade, the blow went awry. Shaving a piece of metal from the side of the breast plate, the blade passed through only the very edge of the man’s abdomen, drawing blood but not inhibiting him.

Fortunately, the surprise threw the German’s blow off-target again and the heavy sword swept down a mere fraction of an inch from Fronto’s head. The blade cut deep into the leather horn at one corner of the legate’s saddle and drew blood from both Fronto’s leg and the horse’s back. Fronto held his breath for what seemed an eternity, expecting the horse to collapse with a broken back or to buck with the pain of the blow. Instead, the beast kept its composure, most of the blow having been absorbed by the saddle. A look of surprise crossed the German’s face and Fronto suddenly realised that the blade had jammed in the saddle and the big man was trying to wrench it back out.

The legate tried moving his right arm, gripping his hand into a fist. He could close his fingers though there was precious little strength evident in the grip. His arm moved, so nothing had apparently been re-broken. His shoulder may have been chipped, however. There was immense pain as his arm came anywhere near shoulder height. There was no hope then of using his right hand to take the blade off the German. Instead, he swept the long cavalry blade back and down, and then rolled his shoulder, bringing his left arm over his head in an arc. The sharp, sweeping cavalry blade came down with less force than the German’s blows had, but so much sharper. The big man stared in horror as the top half of his arm wrenched free and sprayed his precious life-blood over the Roman. The lower arm remained attached to the blade jammed in the Roman’s saddle.

Fronto had just enough time to register, with satisfaction, the look on the barbarian’s face, before the man toppled backwards from his horse, out of sight. Wincing again, he grinned at the cavalry trooper who had come to help him, but had not been in time to interfere.

“
Big bastard, wasn’t he.”

The trooper grinned back.

“
Best have the capsarius have a look at that when we get back to the column.”

Fronto nodded and held out the cavalry blade.

“
Hold that for me.”

With a working free hand, the legate prised the fingers free from the hilt of the German sword and let the severed arm fall to the grass. He suddenly became aware of how he must look. Soot-blackened and now liberally covered with sticky drying blood he would hardly be recognisable as the commander of the Tenth, which explained why the trooper hadn’t been addressing him as sir. Fine by him. He didn’t really feel like a legate right now anyway. With a great deal of effort, he levered the Celtic blade from the saddle horn. Below, a thin stripe of red betrayed the minor wound received by the horse. He smiled and, retrieving the cavalry sword, sheathed it at his side, hefting the German’s Celtic blade with his left hand. Now
this
was a heavy blade.

He smiled at the trooper again, weighing the sword.

“
Looks like I’m starting to collect these!”

It took him a moment to realise that the cavalryman was no longer paying attention. He had turned away from Fronto and was urging his horse on into the fray. The legate glanced around him. There had been perhaps two hundred German scouts; maybe two hundred and fifty. The ala had numbered three hundred, so the results were not entirely predictable. The mass of horsemen were now hard to distinguish from one another. The regular cavalrymen wore red and a light leather colour with no armour so that, in the poor light, it was hard to tell who was fighting who. Fronto squinted into the mass until he spotted a man who was clearly a German hammering blows at a Roman.

The legate made for the attacker, sweeping the Celtic broad sword back and out to one side. He doubted he would have the strength required to deliver an overhead blow with it like the Germans did. Coming within reach, Fronto swept the blade around in a wide arc. The edge caught the unarmoured German in the lower back, smashing through ribs and almost certainly severing the spinal cord. A single, violent spasm wracked the man’s body and his blade toppled from his fingers.

Fronto wrenched the sword out of the man’s back and, with a sickening crunching noise, the man’s top half fell forward, all but severed, onto the horse’s neck. Fronto pulled his gaze away from the horrible sight and looked around. The worst of it was over, with pockets of fighting still going on, but the majority of the cavalry had assembled on the nearby rise. Fronto made for the group.

It took him moments to spot Ingenuus, also drenched in blood; some of it his own. The man was laughing and talking to one of his men. Fronto trotted his horse up to the cavalry prefect.

“
Good evening.”

A number of the cavalrymen nodded nonchalantly.

Ingenuus raised his eyebrows.

“
Some decorum please, lads. This here’s legate Fronto of the Tenth and the general staff.”

The cavalry pulled themselves to attention.