Wounds of Honour: Empire I (41 page)

Sollemnis teetered on the brink of falling on to his face, only willpower keeping him on his knees as he looked up into the swordsman’s face.

‘Go on, then … get it over with, y’bastard.’

His voice was no more than a croak, the words bringing a smile to the big warrior’s face. He hefted his sword in flashing arcs, luxuriating in the pleasure of letting the legatus see what was coming for a long moment before swinging the blade to sever Sollemnis’s head from his shoulders. A warrior retrieved the grisly trophy and carried it back to the legatus’s killer as the Roman’s headless torso toppled slowly sideways to the bloody grass.

As the First Spear’s consciousness slipped from his faltering grasp he saw the big man lift the legion’s eagle standard from the standard-bearer’s lifeless fingers. Stamping down on the standard to separate the spread-winged symbol of imperial power from its pole, he tossed the broken shaft away, took the foot-high statue by one wing and stalked away from the legatus’s headless corpse, back into the warband’s seething mass of men.

As the cohort stood helplessly and watched the final destruction of their beleaguered colleagues in the valley below them, a keen-eyed Tungrian called out a sighting, pointing at the valley’s far slope. There, made tiny by the distance, moved a party of three war chariots, accompanied by some fifty native cavalry cantering steadily across the battlefield. A great dragon banner flew proudly in the wind of their passage, its forked tail whipping eagerly from side to side. The prefect stared out at the oncoming horsemen, raising his eyebrows in question.

‘The infamous Calgus, coming for a look?’

Frontinius snorted.

‘Probably wondering what’s going on. I doubt Perennis actually told him that he intended to send us to our doom here, and
we’re
on rising ground and in good order. Eight hundred spears could make a medium-sized mess of his warband before they roll over us, and slow up his next move. If he’s the strategist I believe him to be, he’ll be worried, keen to take his prizes and get his men away before Second and Twentieth Legions come over the horizon baying for blood. I’d suggest that we might look a little more confident, just to reinforce that nagging doubt. Perhaps we could make some noise?’

Equitius smiled.

‘Hail, Calgus, those about to die salute you?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Very well. Trumpeter, sound “Prepare for defence”.’

The notes sang out sweetly, hanging for a moment over the hill, piercing the continual hammering of axes. After the shortest of pauses Frontinius heard his centurions shouting their commands, then the soft rattle of spears being readied. Frontinius strode forward in front of the cohort, as was his right, drawing his sword and raising it above his head, polished steel shining in the mid-morning sun, then turned back to face the ranks of grim-faced soldiers. He swung the weapon down to waist height, rapping the blade’s flat on to his shield’s scarred surface, repeating the blow to establish a slow but steady rhythm that was easy for the soldiers to follow, as they rapped their spears against the metal bosses of their shields. The noise built quickly, until the pulses of sound echoed distantly back from the slopes about them, a basic, intimidating noise that put heart back into the more timid troops, and swelled the anger of the rest as they stood and waited for the chariots and horsemen to draw close. The dragon banner snaked across the valley floor, drooping limply back on to its standard as the horsemen came to a halt two hundred paces from the Tungrian line.

After a moment a rider came forward, cantering within shouting distance and then stopping to stare across the lines of hard-faced, lean-framed soldiers before calling out his message over their noise.

‘The Lord Calgus suggests negotiation. Man to man, no others to attend. Safety is guaranteed.’

He wheeled his horse, riding back to the knot of barbarian cavalry without a backwards glance. Frontinius glanced over at the Prefect, seeing the Roman’s jawline tighten as his lips pursed to a white line.

‘Well, Prefect, shall we go and meet the man that tarred and torched the inhabitants of Fort Habitus and Roaring River?’

The prefect stared at the distant dragon banner, fitfully prancing in the gusts above his enemy’s bodyguard, for a long moment before responding, putting a hand on his First Spear’s shoulder.

‘The invitation was for one. I’ll go. You’ll stay here, and lead the cohort if this should be some sort of device to distract us, or to capture a senior officer.’

‘And if it is … ?’

‘I’ll probably be joining my father rather sooner than I’ve previously thought would be the case. As might “the Lord” Calgus.’

He walked on down the slope, watching his step on the treacherous strip of glutinous mud and stepping carefully to avoid the tribuli’s eager spikes, and came to a stop halfway between his own troops and those of his enemy. A figure had stepped from their ranks as he had, and paced towards the field towards him, carrying a bundle wrapped in a bloodied blanket, until they were close enough for spoken conversation, although beyond sword-thrust.

They stared at each other for a moment, the prefect eying the other man’s bundle with unhappy certainty as to its contents until the Briton chose to break the silence, his Latin unaccented.

‘Well then, Prefect, I am Calgus, lord of the northern tribes. I broke the Wall, I
despoiled
your forts from Three Mountains all the way south to Noisy Valley and I,’ pointing a thumb back over his shoulder, ‘caught your legatus in a trap of my careful making,
with
his legion. And now I have something to show you.’

He allowed the bundle to fall open, its contents dropping to the grass at his feet. The highly polished bronze eagle from the 6th Legion’s standard gleamed prettily in the morning sun, its defiant spread-winged pose incongruous under the circumstances, while the helmeted head rolled slowly across the grass and came to a stop on its side, Sollemnis’s dead stare facing out towards the waiting Tungrians. Equitius sank to his haunches, staring intently into his friend’s lifeless eyes. Calgus put his hands on his hips and waited for a response, while the prefect took a long moment before rising silently to his feet. The Roman nodded, still staring down at his friend’s severed head, his face stony, then lifted his gaze to stare back at the waiting Briton.

‘This man was my friend, for more years than I care to recall. We drank together, chased women together in our younger days, and we fought Rome’s enemies together too. Men like you. We tasted the barbarity of combat with men like
you
, and we rose above it. We kept our humanity, but we always won those battles by doing whatever we had to. So if you’re hoping to unman me with this display you’re going to be disappointed. It’s nothing less than I expected, and nothing less than I would have done in your place. But it changes nothing.’

He took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders.

‘So, Calgus, let’s get this over with. I am Prefect Septimus Equitius of the 1st Tungrian Cohort. I found your cattle in front of the Hill and burned them to deny your men their flesh and prevent your attack on my fortress. I lured your cavalry from the cover of the forest for the Petriana to destroy, and
I
,’ and he in turn pointed back over his own shoulder, ‘am going to keep your warband here for long enough that the rest of our army will fall on them and utterly destroy them.’

‘Tungrians? Tungria lies over the water, Prefect, closer to Gaul than to Britain. Those men are Brigantes,
my
people, not yours.’

‘I think you’ll find otherwise if you’re unwise enough to send warriors up that slope to meet them. Local born they may be, but their training and discipline are Roman. I think you know what that means.’

They shared a quiet smile, a spark of communication across the wind-whipped ground. The prefect pulled his cloak tighter about him, seeking to keep out the wind’s questing fingers.

‘Come on, Calgus, let’s drop the bombast. You’re an educated man, Roman educated if the stories are true. I don’t think you believe in shouting insults and arse-slapping any more than I do.’

The other man nodded, his face staying neutral.

‘Go on.’

‘In truth I am more impressed than I expected to be. Your control of those tribesmen is better than I’ve seen before, and your recruitment of a Roman tribune to lure his legatus into your grasp was a clever stroke. Or more likely he recruited you, eh?’

Equitius paused for a moment, allowing the fact of his knowledge of Perennis’s treachery to sink in. Calgus’s green eyes narrowed with unasked questions.

‘So, now that we’ve established that you’ve done a reasonable job so far, let’s get down to business. You could just have sent that rabble to die on our swords, but you chose to talk first, and while I’d like to think that’s because our reputation goes before us …’

Calgus smiled again, shaking his head in amusement.

‘Never let it be said you lacked a sense of humour, Prefect of the First Tungrians. I came to offer you the chance to leave this battlefield intact, before you force me to send my men to slaughter yours. Will you save those lives? My aims in making this war have always been limited to the goal of a negotiated peace with Rome, certain
reasonable
concessions for my people and honour for both sides. After all, without a settlement, this war could last for several campaigning seasons, and consume tens of thousands of Roman lives, soldiers and innocents both. This victory, combined with the threat my warbands pose to the frontier, should be enough to bring your governor to the negotiating table. Our demands are simple enough, and do not threaten an inch of Roman territory, so there should be no need for further loss of life. After all, I am, as you suggest, an educated and civilised man at heart.’

The prefect wondered what the tribes’ demands were, if not for some retreat from the frontier. Money in tribute and improved trading terms probably, removal of all Roman troops from their forts north of the wall for a certainty.

‘So you ask me to walk away from the fight? And let you away from this place before the other two legions and the
rest
of the Sixth arrive? I think not, Calgus. I think you know that the time you’ll need to break my line greatly increases the chance of our being rescued, and by overwhelming force. At the least we can buy your deaths with our own. I think you know you already have the victory, and want to save your own men’s lives for another fight. You know there are other legions out there, but you don’t know where, because you haven’t got any mounted scouts to send out. Your mounted bodyguard alone wouldn’t stand a chance, not with the Petriana roaming about looking for heads. Without that knowledge, and now that I have your traitor, you know you should disengage, and get away cleanly, but I’d guess that the tribal leaders won’t let you walk away from a fight this unbalanced. If we don’t leave the field we force you to fight just by standing there. True?’

The Briton smiled easily, gesturing back towards his waiting warriors.

‘Perhaps. The one certainty is that if you and your men don’t leave immediately then you will shortly pay the price for frustrating the will of a man with twenty times as many warriors as your entire cohort musters. Think about that, while you walk back to your command. You have a few minutes in which to spare us both further spilt blood. Otherwise the next time we meet your head will be stuck on a spear’s point.’

The prefect nodded solemnly.

‘Perhaps. But you’ll have climbed a high wall of your own dead to enjoy the sight.’

Calgus walked back to his bodyguard, his mind moving over the calculations. He guessed at ten centuries in the Tungrian line, a full cohort. Given time they would make the thin line’s flanks impossible to turn, protected by impassable barricades of hastily felled trees and rows of sloping wooden spikes to impale the unwary attacker. Attack now, or pull his men away to safety, the victory already under his belt and a Roman legatus’s probably dead?

He stopped and looked up at the Tungrian line again, musing on the grim faces that had stared back at him. His own people, so familiar, obdurate in defence, incandescent in assault, but with the overlay of Roman discipline to temper their courage, which made each one of them the equal of his best warriors in terms of simple killing power. The difference, the key difference, was that no matter what the provocation, the situation, little would persuade them to break their wall of shields, from behind which their short stabbing swords would flicker like the tongues of hundreds of deadly snakes. Refusing to enter the chaotic swirl of man-to-man combat, the Tungrians could afford to fight several times their number, the more numerous enemy without any means of applying that superiority in numbers. Just one cohort, though, eight hundred men against thousands of his own. How long could that take? Even if he lost as many as he killed, or even twice as many, it was an exchange that made more than adequate sense.

He walked on, jumping back into his chariot as he reached his bodyguard. Eyes turned to him, awaiting his command, the men ready to put their lives at risk.

‘They will not withdraw. Their prefect was disappointingly resolute.’

Aed raised his eyebrows, indicating a desire to speak.

‘Then we must fight, my lord. No warrior will willingly walk away from that many heads begging to be taken. Besides, many are not yet blooded …’

‘I agree. But it must be fast. The Roman spoke of other legions, and at the very least the other cohorts commanded by their legatus must be close at hand, and their bloody Petriana too. Handled properly, their cavalry and even one full legion could carve us to ribbons if they caught us here, even though we would be more than twice their number. Send a rider to Emer and Catalus’s warbands – they’ve stood and watched the others kill Romans, they must be raring to get into the fight.’

The tribal bands moved forward at the run, eager after watching their fellows rip the guts out of the hopelessly outnumbered cohorts. The younger men joshed each other as they ran, boasting breathlessly of the heads they would take, the older warriors straining to catch a glimpse of their adversaries and take their measure. The two leaders met as they ran, agreeing swiftly on a simple left and right split, nothing fancy in the amount of time they had, a straight forward charge and hack, using their superior strength in numbers to overwhelm the auxiliaries.