The Legion

'Forwards!' He nudged his horse in the flanks and it obediently advanced. The other men rippled into motion on either side, and then Ajax increased the pace to a trot. There was no point in charging the Romans. He wanted his men to arrive in one wave, to maximise their effect. The arrows continued to plunge down, creating more havoc in the enemy ranks, and for a moment Ajax feared that the Arabs might become too carried away with the effect of their handiwork and keeping shooting even as he and his comrades entered the fray. However, at the last moment, Karim shouted to his men and they obediently lowered their bows.

The mounted gladiators swept into the disordered Romans, getting up close where their shields could be used to strike their opponents and their swords would be more effective than the unwieldy lances. Ajax slashed at the shoulder of the first man who stood in his path. The edge of the blade failed to cut through his chain mail, but the force of the impact still broke bones beneath and the horseman cried out as he swayed in his saddle. Ajax urged his mount on, striking at the man's neck with a backhanded blow. He did not have time to swing with any force but the blade still found a way under his guard and cut through skin and the spine. As the rider slumped forward, Ajax recovered his sword and steered his mount towards the decurion who sat in his saddle, close to the wounded signifer, protecting the standard. The air about Ajax was filled with dust and the clash and thud as men cursed each other or cried out in pain. A quick glance was enough to tell him that his men were having the better of the fight. Only one of the gladiators had been injured, run through his side with a lance, but it only seemed to have enraged him as he hacked and slashed at the Romans around him with savage fury.

A flicker of light and shadow alerted Ajax to the danger from his side and he threw up his shield in time to block the head of a lance as a Roman made an overhead thrust. The point flicked up, just missing the top of his head. At the same time Ajax swivelled in his saddle and swung his sword in a wide arc with ferocious force. The blade cut right through the Roman's wrist and the lance clattered to the ground, the severed hand flopping into the dust alongside.

'Fall back!' the decurion shouted. 'Back!'

One by one the Romans who were not engaged turned their mounts and galloped down the defile. The rest did their best to free themselves and flee. The decurion thrust the signifer away and stood his ground to cover the retreat of his men. It was a brave gesture, Ajax conceded, but a costly one. Two of the gladiators came up on either side of his horse. The decurion blocked the first attack with his shield and then hurriedly parried a thrust from the other side. As he turned back in his saddle to face the first threat, the gladiator raised his sword high and level and plunged it into the decurion's face. Blood spurted from inside the helmet and the officer flung both arms out before his torso flopped back against the saddle horns.

Karim's archers shot several more arrows at the fleeing Romans, until they had passed out of sight around the next bend in the gorge. Ajax breathed hard as he looked round. Half the squadron had been killed or wounded, mostly by arrows. One of the gladiators lay dead amongst them, the end of a broken lance piercing his chest. Two men had been wounded, the first had been run through. The battle rage was slowly draining from the man's face and now he looked down and saw the ragged tear in his leather cuirass and the blood spreading quickly through the folds of the tunic beneath. It was clear to Ajax that the wound was fatal as soon as he saw it. The other casualty had been injured in the leg, a long gash in the back of his thigh that had ripped apart his hamstrings, crippling him.

'Help them down,' Ajax ordered the nearest of his men. 'Get them to some shade, inside the entrance to the tomb there. The rest of you, finish off their wounded.'

Karim came slithering down the steep slope beside the cliff and dropped amid a fall of shingle on to the floor of the gorge. He smiled brilliantly at Ajax. 'That put paid to their pursuit!'

'For now.' Ajax sheathed his sword and lowered the strap of the shield on to his saddle horn before dismounting. 'The survivors won't be charging up here blindly again. We can be sure of that. No, they'll keep watch on us while they send for reinforcements.'

'Then we'd better find a way out of here.'

Ajax gestured towards the rocks towering on all sides. 'Be my guest. The only way out is a steep climb on foot. We'd have to abandon the horses. Without them we have no hope of escape.' He looked round at the openings in the rocks and smiled grimly. 'If we die here, then we die in the company of kings, my friend. Think on that.'

Karim pursed his lips. 'That is a slender source of comfort, General. Frankly, I'd rather die somewhere a little less barren. If I have to die at all.'

Ajax ignored him. He glanced at the entrances to the tombs. 'When they come for us, we can still give them a good fight. Come, let's have a closer look.'

He strode towards the mouth of the tomb he had seen earlier, and after a brief hesitation Karim followed him, not relishing the dark depths that stretched back into the cliffs. It seemed an ill omen to be trapped amid a valley of the dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

'They put up quite a fight,' said Macro as they stood in the larger of the two courtyards in the temple. Cato, his left arm in a sling, nodded as he surveyed the bodies littering the ground. It was late in the morning and the air was already stifling. The cloying odour of blood added to the discomfort of the setting. Several legionaries were picking their way across the courtyard looking for wounded comrades to carry into the columned hall where the chief surgeon had set up his field hospital. Any of the enemy wounded were quickly despatched to put an end to their suffering.

'Quite a fight,' Macro repeated, arms on hips. 'Now comes the fun part. Finding the body of Ajax. I haven't seen him anywhere yet. I'll have to order a more thorough search.'

'Assuming he stayed to fight to the end.'

'You still think he had something to do with those horsemen that were seen earlier?'

'It's possible.'

Macro shook his head. 'I think we would have noticed if he had ridden out of here, right through our patrols. It's not his style. Not from what I recall of him.' Macro's expression darkened as he briefly recalled his period of captivity. 'Ajax would rather make a stand than run off and leave his men to die. Trust me, he's here. We just have to find him.' Macro nudged a severed forearm with the toe of his boot. 'Or what's left of him.'

He looked round the courtyard again and shook his head. 'Have to hand it to them, this lot fought to the last. Not one prisoner. If the rest of the Nubian army is anything like this then we'll have quite a fight on our hands when we finally meet.'

Cato pursed his lips. Despite what Macro said, the legionaries had had no difficulty in driving off the sortie that the enemy had made in the hour before dawn. They had made it as far as the breach and been held there while reinforcements were rushed forward to drive them back into the temple. None of the bolt throwers had been damaged. At dawn the legate launched the second attack in person. He stood in the breach, in full armour, sheltering behind a shield, as he bellowed the order for the bolt throwers and archers to commence bombarding the walls of the temple. This time the missiles were loosed at close range and the legionaries made short work of any Arabs who showed themselves on the walls of the temple and on top of the pylons.

Safe from the danger of arrows, Macro led the First Century forward again. A section of auxiliary archers advanced with them, ready to shoot any defender who risked rising up behind the barricade to try and dislodge the assault ramps. The legionaries trotted up the ramp and fell on the defenders behind, cutting a path through their ranks until they emerged into the courtyard. After that it had merely been a question of finding and cutting down the small groups of survivors who made their last stand in the temple's more easily defended chambers. The last group, led by one of Ajax's gladiators, an African, held out for over an hour in the main pylon, gradually being forced back up the narrow staircase and on to the platform. The gladiator, mortally wounded, had thrown himself off the top of the pylon rather than be taken alive.