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'They're coming, lads! The legion's coming for us.'
At the front of the square Cato looked over the ranks of the Britons – scarcely forty paces off now – and saw the cohorts trickling out of the camp's southern gate, polished helmets glinting in the early morning sun. But they were miles off, and might not make it in time to save the men of the Fourth.
'Keep moving!' shouted Hortensius. 'Keep moving!'
Every step forward closed the distance between the two Roman columns. Cato clenched his teeth and raised his sword towards the writhing mass of the Durotriges' heavy infantry.
'Watch it!' Macro yelled. 'Slingshot!'
The Romans only just managed to shelter behind their shields in time as the first volley flew in diagonally from the flanks of the enemy line. With a roar the Durotriges charged home behind the volley. The sharp rattle and crack of the slingshot on the front of the square showed that the slingers had made sure of their aim. But one shot flew over Cato's head and struck one of the mules harnessed to a wagon in the centre of the formation. It pulverised the eye and the bone surrounding the socket and with a shriek of agony the mule plunged about in its traces, terrifying the other three beasts harnessed to the same wagon. In an instant the wagon swerved into its neighbour and with a protesting groan from the straining axle, it slowly tilted to one side and overturned. The injured were thrown out, scattered beneath the thrashing hooves of the panicked mules. One man, crushed by the side of the wagon, let out a terrible groan before choking on the blood that gushed from his mouth. He fell back lifeless. The shrill braying of the injured mule split the air and made Cato shudder. The wounded on the ground desperately tried to crawl out from under the terrified mules but many were trampled before they could get free. Then another wagon went over and fresh cries of terror and pain rent the air.
'Cohort! Halt!' Hortensius shouted. 'Get those fucking mules sorted out!'
He dived towards the injured animal who had started the chaos and plunged his sword deep into the mule's throat before tearing the blade free. The blood gushed out. For a moment the mule stood stupidly hanging its head, looking at the crimson pool splashing about its hooves. Then its knees went and it collapsed into the blood, mud and snow.
'Kill 'em all!' Hortensius yelled, and thrust the nearest soldiers towards the terrified animals.
It was all over in a moment and the surviving injured were hauled back into the scant shelter of the undamaged wagons. The cohort could not move any more, not without abandoning its wounded to the bloody savagery of the Durotriges. For a moment Cato wondered if Hortensius was cold-blooded enough to save what was left of his cohort and try to break out towards the relief column. But he remained true to the credo of the centurionate.
'Close ranks! Close ranks around the wagons!'
The legionaries engaged to the rear and sides slowly backstepped, thrusting out with their swords as the Durotriges stabbed and slashed against the shield wall, driving it back until the Romans compacted into a small knot round the surviving wagons. Those legionaries who stumbled and fell as they gave ground were crushed underfoot and then hacked to death by the Britons. Cato stuck close to Macro, tucked in behind his shield and striking out at the sea of enemy faces and limbs in front of him.
'Careful, lad!' Macro called out. 'We're right by the mules!'
Cato's foot splashed into the animals' blood and he felt the rasp of mule hide against the back of his calf. On either side of him, men of the Sixth Century were backing up against the bodies of the mules, too hard pressed by the Durotriges to clamber round or over them. With a roar of defiance Macro stabbed the tip of his sword into an enemy's face. As the man fell, he seized the chance to scramble over the flank of the mule.
'Come on, Cato!'
For a moment the optio stood facing two Britons, young men like himself, but thicker set with hair limed into crazy white spikes. One carried a broad-leafed war spear, while the other had armed himself with a short sword he had snatched up from a Roman body. Both of them made a feint, hoping to distract the optio enough for a fatal thrust, but he kept his shield moving, presenting it first one way, then the other, his eyes darting from spear to sword and back again. He dared not try to get over the dead mule while the two warriors waited for his guard to slip. Suddenly the spear tip flickered forward. Cato instinctively swung his shield to counter the threat, sending the tip glancing down. Seizing his chance, the other Briton leaped forward and thrust at Cato's stomach. A rough hand grasped Cato by a harness strap and bodily yanked him over the mule's body. The sword missed him and Cato sprawled on the ground, winded and gasping.
'They nearly had you there!' Macro laughed and jerked Cato back to his feet. Struggling to draw breath and clutching at his chest, Cato could not help wondering at the way his centurion seemed to exult at the prospect of imminent death. A strange thing, this madness – this euphoria – of battle, Cato reflected. Shame he would not live long enough to consider the phenomenon more fully.
The men of the Fourth Cohort instinctively closed ranks in an uneven ellipse around their wounded comrades. The enemy swarmed round them, hacking and chopping at the Roman shields in a rising frenzy as they sought to destroy the cohort before it could be reached by the relief column quick-marching towards them, but still far off. In the savage intimacy at the heart of the struggle Cato's mind was wonderfully cleared of any thoughts but the need to take the life of his enemy and preserve his own. His shield and his sword felt like natural extensions to his body. Warding off blows with one then striking with the other, Cato moved with the deadly efficiency of a well-trained machine. At the same time, tiny sensory details, frozen images of the fight burned themselves into his memory: the acrid stink of mule sweat and the sweeter odour of blood; the churned-up ground about his muddy boots; the blood-spattered faces of friend and foe, feral and snarling; and the aching cold of the winter morning shuddering through his exhausted body.
The Durotriges whittled away the men of the cohort one by one. The wounded were drawn back into the centre while the dead were thrown out of the formation to stop their bodies being a hazard underfoot to their surviving comrades. And still the cohort lived on; the enemy dead piled up in front of their shields so that the Durotriges had to clamber over them to get at the legionaries. They presented perfect targets for the short swords as they balanced precariously on the uneven, yielding mass of dead and dying flesh, from which the terrified cries of the still living rang out above the thud of shields and sharp ring of metal on metal.
The intensity of the moment robbed Cato of any sense of the passage of time. He stood shoulder to shoulder with his centurion on one side, and young Figulus on the other. But Figulus was no longer Figulus the soft-featured lad perpetually fascinated by a world that was so very different from the squalid slum he had been born into in Lutetia. Figulus had been slashed above one eye; the torn flesh was hanging from his brow and half his face was dripping with blood. The gentle lips were drawn back in a savage snarl as he hissed and spat with the effort of battle. The months of training might never have taken place; as agony and rage took hold of him, he slashed and hacked with his short sword in a ma