As he said the words, a clarion call rang out over the battlefield and told Valerius the Twenty-first’s legate had completed his dispositions and sounded the advance. The hair on his neck felt as if it was standing on end. A shiver ran through him, the last vestiges of a fear that would soon fuel the fury building inside. To his front, the extended ranks of the First Adiutrix seemed to shimmer as men checked their station and tightened the grip on their pila. ‘Now, Benignus,’ he whispered. ‘Now.’ The braying notes of the cornicen were echoed all along the line by brisk orders from the centurions.
The battle had begun.
Six hundred paces separated the two legions. Three hundred paces before the collision. Some men counted their steps as they marched; anything to keep their minds off what was to come. Others stared at their enemies, but saw only the faces of their bastard children or their sweethearts. A few ejected the day’s breakfast and claimed it was not fear but excitement. Many muttered prayers and wished there had been time for a sacrifice that would have given some indication of the day’s outcome. A surprising number relished the thought of the coming battle. The men of the First were proud of their legion. Proud of the fact their Emperor had called on them for help. It didn’t matter that another had treated them worse than dogs, or that it was a third who had given them their eagle to follow. What mattered was that they had an eagle. They were the Legio I Adiutrix and they would make the name of the First Adiutrix ring through the ages. It began today. Hadn’t Juva and the five centuries who’d returned victorious from Placentia taught these rebel scum a lesson? They had trained and marched and counter-marched, spent countless hours hammering at posts and each other with the heavy practice swords, dug roads and built bridges. They were the First and they were the best. Now they would do what they were trained to do. Fight.
They marched in silence, with the measured, implacable tread that had made the legions feared from one side of the world to the other. They marched for Rome.
And towards them marched five thousand men equally certain of victory.
At four hundred paces, the scorpiones and onagri began the killing, the five-foot arrows of the ‘Shield-splitters’ living up to their feared nickname and the big boulders crashing through shields to smash bones and crush skulls. ‘Close up! Fill the gaps!’ The cries of the centurions rang out along the line, as they would until the day was won or lost. Men moved forward from the second line of shields to the first, and from the third to the second. Valerius stepped over a twitching body with half a head and a single staring eye. To his right, where Benignus had taken up position, an ambitious young tribune on the legate’s staff cried out in agony as a scorpio bolt tore a gaping hole through his mount’s chest and carried on to pierce his thigh, pinning him in place as the beast fell and crushed his ambitions for ever. And still the missiles came.
‘Close up. Fill the gaps.’
Less than three hundred paces now, and the enemy was an unbroken line of brightly painted shields, the twin boar legend of the Twenty-first Rapax proclaiming their identity to the world. If the veteran centurions of the First hadn’t been so occupied, they could have scanned the enemy ranks for faces they knew beneath the distinctive transverse crested helmets of their counterparts. Men they had fought with in bar brawls and screwed alongside in brothels during twenty years of postings. But they concentrated on holding their men in check. They could feel the eagerness of the marine legionaries and hear the distinctive throaty snarls of dogs desperate to be unleashed. But not yet.
‘Steady. Hold the line.’
Valerius dropped back to Marcus, who marched beside his century’s signifer with the mobile reserve. ‘Remember, when the first three lines charge, these men’s instinct will to charge with them. But we must hold them fifty paces back and wait.’
‘They won’t like watching other men doing the fighting,’ the lanista warned him.
‘I don’t care what they like. They’re legionaries and they’ll obey orders. The first man who gets ahead of me will find my sword up his arse.’
‘Aye.’ The old gladiator grinned. ‘That should do it. I’ll let them know.’
A hundred and fifty paces. ‘First three ranks at the trot.’ Three and a half thousand men moved instantly from the walk to the steady-paced jog that could carry them for miles. Across the divide, the sight of the unit banners and standards wavering as their bearers increased pace confirmed that the Rapax’s legate had issued the same orders.
‘Hold your spacing, you bastards,’ Marcus growled.