With a tumultuous roar and a crash of shields, blades and bone, the two sides came together. Pavo’s spear clashed with the dromedarius’ blade and the blow jarred him to his core, sending him spinning into the melee. For a moment, he could see nothing but thick dust. Then it cleared like a curtain being whipped back and he saw the dromedarius again, only feet away. The man leant out and tried to cut down over Pavo’s shield. Pavo butted out with his shield, deflecting the strike and the boss bloodying the camel’s nose. Then he swept his spear up and into the rider’s armpit, bringing forth a shower of dark blood. The man crunched to the ground. Pavo swung round to see another blade swooping down towards him. He parried weakly, dropping his spear, but then tore out his spatha and sliced it up and across the rider’s throat. The camel hared from the melee, dragging the flailing, dead rider in its wake.
Pavo stooped to take up his spear once more, twisting this way and that to make sense of the surrounding chaos. In every direction the cries of torn men were incessant, the swirling, crimson-streaked dust offering only glimpses of flashing steel. Dull shapes barged and battered at his shield, an iron blade glanced off his helmet and another nicked the skin on his nose. As the dust thinned, he saw the bloody tumult all around. Legionaries disappeared under sweeping, charging camels. Heads spun clear of bodies as the curved blades swept to and fro. Camel riders were skewered on legionary spear tips and toppled from their saddles. He saw one rider barged from his camel, toppling to the dust only for another beast to trample across his skull, which burst like a watermelon, instantly stilling his thrashing body.
Pavo backed away, choking on the dust, straining to seek out his comrades. Only feet away, the banners of the XI Claudia and the XVI Flavia Firma waved to and fro defiantly, dust-coated and blood-spattered. Many legionaries had fallen. He saw one Flavia Firma comrade surrounded by two desert raiders. His spatha was bent and his mail vest torn. Pavo barged through the fray to his comrade’s aid, but was halted in his tracks as a blade swept up, slicing the legionary from gut to jaw. The force of the blow spun the legionary around and sent a wet splatter of blood and gut wall across Pavo’s face. Then the riders turned their attentions to Pavo. Their blades sang, swiping down at him. One he met with a parry, and the second blade crashed off his helm, sending him staggering backwards, half-blinded, before toppling into the slick carpet of gore. A legionary spear hurled from somewhere in the dust cloud took one of the riders in the throat, then a plumbata punched the other one in the gut. Pavo glanced up to see the pair of Flavia Firma legionaries who had saved him cry out as another camel rider thundered past behind them, tearing across the backs of their necks with his blade and bringing forth thick sprays of lifeblood. Moments later, this rider was punched from his horse on the end of a legionary lance. This battle teetered on the edge of a blade. If they could stand together, it could be won, he thought, seeing Habitus and Sura fighting nearby.
But all hope drained from him when he saw something, through the battle and to the south-east. The horizon was rippling once more. The blood in his veins turned to ice. More riders. At least five hundred.
‘We’re dead!’ Habitus cried.
‘Enough of that talk!’ a blood-soaked Sura snarled, cutting down one camel rider then barging through to bunch up beside the beanpole legionary.
Pavo pushed up to stand by Habitus’ other side. ‘Think only of your sword and of the guts of the riders before you,’ he snarled as the three hacked and parried desperately. Yet he could not help but glance at these new riders as they drew closer. They were different, he realised. Horsemen, not camel riders. They wore light robes like the raiders, but they were armoured in dark-brown, hardened leather cuirasses, and many wore iron helms, some plumed. Many of them stretched in their saddles, lifting bent bows into the air. Then they loosed.
Pavo gawped up at the incoming hail. It hovered, then turned to rain down for them. He clutched the phalera on his chest instinctively, waiting on the blow that would end the quest for the scroll, end his quest to find what had become of Father.
He shuddered at the series of wet thuds and gurgling cries that rang out all around him. But he, Sura and Habitus were unharmed. He blinked and the trio shared an incredulous frown. All around them, the desert raiders had fallen limp, arrows quivering in their backs and necks, blood washing from their mouths, swords slipping from their lifeless grasps, their bodies sliding from saddles to thump into the dust like butchered meat. Not a single legionary had been harmed by the volley. The few raiders – just seven of them – who had avoided the strike broke out in a babble of panic, twisting in their saddles, only just noticing the approaching horsemen. ‘Maratocupreni!’ they cried. Then, as if the word had tainted the air with some dark curse, they broke from the melee and thundered off to the south-east.