Sword of Rome(135)

He looked over his shoulder to where Juva marched beside his standard-bearer in front of the right-hand cohort of the third rank. The Nubian’s pilum looked small in his big fist and his face was a mask of menacing concentration. He felt Valerius’s eyes on him and turned and met the Roman’s waved salute with a broad grin. Beyond him, the tight-packed cohorts of the Praetorian Guard held to the line of the road, and far off on the right flank the standards of the Thirteenth rocked and stuttered as their bearers forced their way through the vegetation.

A centurion’s bark cut through the silence. ‘Stay in line, you bastards, you’ll get there soon enough.’ Valerius noticed that now the enemy was closer the gladiators strained against the enforced leisurely pace like dogs on a leash. And not just the gladiators. The marine legion marched with the pent-up energy of men determined to prove themselves worthy of the eagle they followed. By now, in the space between the leading cohorts, he could see the individual formations that made up the enemy legion and identify the colours that marked them as the Twenty-first Rapax. A shiver ran through him at the sight. They looked impressive. No, they looked invincible.

Yet this was one of the legions Spurinna had sent from Placentia with their tail between their legs. The question was how it would react to that defeat. Valerius was again burdened by a sense of unease at facing Roman soldiers on Roman soil. Spurinna had told him Twenty-first Rapax had been raised and recruited in the Padus valley. Some of the men he faced behind the big shields would have been born here, perhaps even ploughed these very fields. He shrugged off a melancholy he could ill afford and felt an icy calm settle on him. Well, they would die here and their own earth would provide them with a permanent resting place. Perhaps he would die with them. After all, he was a soldier, and that’s what soldiers did. No matter how good you were, there was always the chance that someone was faster or better. As he had told Juva, a battle was very different from a siege and he had never fought Roman soldiers in battle before. He remembered a recurring dream that had haunted him in the years following his return from Britannia. He would be fighting for his life when his legs suddenly felt as if they were encased in mud and his sword weighed ten times more than normal. He’d feel Boudicca’s warriors chopping him to pieces and wake screaming. These legionaries he would fight today were the veterans of the Rhenus legions. They carried the same arms and equipment as the First Adiutrix, but they were battle-tested and had years more training. Perhaps among them was a man who was faster, or better, or had Fortuna on his side.

Well, Valerius Verrens had Serpentius on his side. He looked to his right and took comfort from the former gladiator’s presence. The Spaniard had found a set of auxiliary armour from somewhere, but he preferred not to fight in a helmet because he said it restricted his vision. The hatchet face read his thoughts and twisted into a smile. ‘Would you rather die in your bed?’

Valerius grinned back, but whatever he had been going to say was lost in the clamour of horns.

‘Form line!’





XLVII


The leading ranks moved swiftly from four cohorts, including the elite First with its double strength contingent of eight hundred legionaries, into two solid shield walls manned by eleven hundred men apiece. Legionary training dictated that each man required three feet of space to fight in, roughly the width of a standard scutum. Against Boudicca’s champions or German tribesmen the combination of a stout shield, a gladius with a strong arm behind it and Roman discipline would all but guarantee victory. But the men of First Adiutrix were fighting Romans – Romans with the same stout shield and short, deadly sword, who were just as disciplined. When they met, it would be a question of who had the strength of will, the strength of arm, and who cracked first.

With less elegance, Valerius helped shepherd the gladiators into their place in a third shield line, formed by the three centre cohorts of the original formation. When men fell or were wounded, or when their sword arms tired, the third line would provide replacements for the first and second under the directions of their centurions. As he had agreed with Benignus, he kept four centuries back as a mobile reserve to reinforce any weak spots in the Othonian ranks, or capitalize on any weakness in the enemy’s. The three remaining rear cohorts would perform the same function, but on a larger scale, and their very presence would be a constant threat to the opposition because of the danger they posed of a flanking movement.

On the far side of the field the men of Twenty-first Rapax went through similar motions, but in a series of much smoother movements. ‘Soon now,’ Serpentius muttered.