Centurion

Now Cato could hear the creak of saddles and straps and the snorts and champ of the horses, as the riders closed on the Romans at an angle. Cato frantically tried to calculate their path and realised, with a sick feeling of inevitability, that they were riding straight at Macro and his cohort to Cato's left.

'Shit,' he muttered under his breath, and then raged at himself for making the sound. He clamped his lips shut and tightened his grasp on his sword and shield. On they came, looming out of the dark so that now he could clearly see the individual details of helmets, spears and shields in silhouette. There was even the soft sound of muted conversation as they approached the waiting Romans.

A horse suddenly whi

'Get up and kill them!' Macro bellowed, and then a dark wave of armoured men suddenly rose from the desert and charged towards the horsemen with a deafening roar.

08 Centurion

CHAPTER NINE

Cato thrust himself up from the ground and filled his lungs. 'Second Illyrian! Charge!'

There was no attempt to fight as a cohort.The auxiliaries just swarmed forward, racing towards the reeling horsemen, knowing that they must be given no chance to recover. For a moment the riders sat in the saddles, stu

'Go for the horses!' Cato shouted out. 'Kill the horses!'

It infuriated him that he hadn't thought to give the order earlier, when the men were being readied. If these were Parthians, or Palmyran rebels, then they would stand less chance fighting on foot. If they managed to cut their way out and use their bows then it was a different matter. Some of the men nearest to Cato followed his lead and stabbed their blades into the nearest animal's vitals, or hacked at the tendons of the legs causing the stricken beasts to collapse into the dust that swirled around the vicious melee. Cato pressed on warily, glancing quickly around him to make sure that he was not knocked down and trampled. He felt a sudden blast of warm air and turned just in time to see a horse's head loom over his right shoulder. The rider was leaning forward in his saddle, sword rising. Cato swung round, slamming the rim of his shield up under the horse's muzzle.As the beast reared, the rider's blade swished through the air above Cato's head, rustling briefly through the top of his horsehair crest. Cato punched his blade up at an angle, through the loose robes, into the man's side, cracking a rib before the point sliced through a lung and into his heart. The man groaned and slumped over his saddle, the reins dropping from his fingers as the horse swerved away from Cato into the jostling press of the other mounts and their riders.

He drew back a few paces and saw the dim outline of the standard a short distance away across the heads of his men.

'Standard-bearer! On me!'

As he waited for the man to join him Cato glanced round at the fight. From the little that he could make out, the Romans were having the best of it. Macro and his cohort had smashed into the head of the column and rolled it back up, while the Second Illyrian had charged at an angle into the flank. Caught from two directions the horsemen had no chance of forming up to fight back, and were simply trying to survive the onslaught of the infantrymen swirling around the sides of their horses, hacking and slashing at man and beast alike. This was not the style of fighting they were accustomed to, or even remotely wished to engage in.They were at a disadvantage and unless they could find some way to break away from the Romans they would be cut to pieces. For their part, the infantrymen were relishing the chance to butcher these horse-archers whose favoured method of fighting seemed unmanly and unfair.

Cato glanced to his right and saw that the tail end of the enemy column was slipping away from his men, galloping off into the night.

'Keep at 'em!' he shouted. 'Push on! Get stuck in, lads!'

With a nod to the standard-bearer, he took a breath, gritted his teeth, and surged forward into the fight once again. The auxiliaries followed close on his heels as they joined the first wave of their comrades. The fresh weight of men carved a new path through the horsemen, breaking them up into small pockets that were set upon from all sides. From somewhere to his left Cato heard Macro shouting to his men.

'Finish them! Finish the bastards! Don't let them get away!'

Cato picked his way through the bodies on the ground. Some horses were dead, but many were wounded, and they lashed out with their hooves as their shrill whi

The rider shouted an order over his shoulder and several of his comrades wheeled their mounts about and spurred them on, riding straight at Cato and his standard-bearer.

'Oh, shit!' the standard-bearer just had time to mutter before the enemy were on them. Cato threw his shield up and an instant later was hurled to one side as the breast of the big horse smashed into the front of it.The blow stu

The man's breath blasted over Cato's face as he pressed Cato's chest back with his forearm while the other hand released its grip on his sword and went for the dagger strapped at his side. Cato's right hand still grasped his sword but he could not bring the point to bear and instead hammered the pommel into the man's side. For the first time he saw that the man was wearing some kind of cap rather than a helmet and his eyes were fierce with hate and a desire to kill his Roman enemy. There was a rasp as the dagger was drawn and Cato knew he had only an instant to save himself.Tensing his neck muscles, he threw his head up as hard as he could.The man's eyes widened in surprise and the snarl died on his lips as the iron rim of Cato's helmet smashed the bridge of his nose and crushed one of his eyes. The man howled and instinctively relaxed the pressure of his forearm. Cato thrust up with his right knee and threw his fist at the man's cheek for good measure. The blow co