But the battle wasn’t won, and it was only a matter of time before the Fifth cohort was annihilated, because Benignus had betrayed them. The two reserve cohorts hadn’t moved from their position and the gap the Fifth cohort had opened was quickly closing.
If they didn’t retreat they would be slaughtered.
XLVIII
Valerius would remember the remainder of the battle the way a man remembers a night march in a lightning storm; as a series of disjointed, flashlit images that had no connection with his own reality, in a world where time meant nothing.
Stumbling on someone else’s legs through a fog of confusion and death with Serpentius at one elbow and Juva, still clutching the Twenty-first Rapax’s eagle, at the other. Hacking another human being into bloody ruin until the Spaniard screamed meaningless words into his face and dragged him to safety through the swiftly closing gap moments before an avalanche of fresh Vitellian troops fell on what was left of the Fifth. Juva on one knee presenting a disbelieving Benignus with the eagle that would bring the legate and his legion eternal fame and glory, and in the same instant winning immediate promotion to centurion and the Gold Crown of Valour that would make him a Hero of Rome. A terrible empty feeling as Benignus, with tears on his cheeks, explained that an order had come from Paulinus forbidding him to use his reserves. Standing with Serpentius in the shield line as wave after wave of attacks broke themselves against it until men were so exhausted they could barely lift their swords and the attackers were impeded by heaped piles of their own dead. The oddly detached sense of disbelief as old Marcus threw his surviving gladiators into a break in the line before being swept away to oblivion amid a tide race of flashing swords. The legate lying on the crushed grass with the last of his lifeblood leaking in dying spurts from the sword wound in his neck – ‘Save them, Valerius. Do not let the name Benignus be for ever linked with the loss of an eagle and the loss of a legion’ – and the noble head falling to one side. A desperate rearguard action as the First Adiutrix attempted to extricate itself from a battle already lost and the roars of triumph at the left of the line as Valens threw in his Batavian cavalry.
And a sudden moment of terrible clarity.
Claudius Victor had prayed to the old gods that his one-armed quarry was not already dead, and his prayers had been answered. Fifth Alaudae and First Italica had already won their battles among the trees and on the road when two full cavalry wings smashed into the left flank of the First Adiutrix. In a single moment, the Othonian line collapsed like a mud dam in a thunderstorm. This was what horse soldiers had been born for as three thousand surviving foot soldiers fled in terror, their backs inviting the spear points that punched their way through armour into living flesh with the weight of horse and man behind them. Helmets and skulls crushed as the heavy spatha swords hammered down and faces cleaved in two by a perfectly timed back-cut. Chaos and confusion everywhere, apart from the centre where one man had managed to hold two centuries in square and was attempting to screen the legion’s eagle as the aquilifer carried it to safety.
A man with a missing right hand.
‘Form on me,’ Victor screamed, and the auxiliary wing’s decurions took up the cry. Within moments he had four troops of cavalry at his back. Four troops. Less than a hundred and fifty men. Not enough, but the defeated legionaries were already close to breaking point so he would make it enough. ‘Sound the charge.’ The signaller at his right shoulder echoed the command on the lituus, the curved trumpet he carried. His eyes never leaving the man who had killed his brother, Claudius Victor lashed his tired mount into motion and urged his Batavians forward.
As the battle ebbed and surged around the little square of shields, Valerius watched the compact mass of cavalry surge across the battlefield, running down friend and foe alike. All around him was blood and pain and death as men, or small groups of men, fought their individual battles for survival. With the help of Serpentius and Juva he had somehow gathered the remnants of two centuries around the eagles and the walking wounded. Those too hurt to move received the mercy of a quick end from their comrades. Better that than be left on the battlefield to die by inches, or be tortured for sport by some looter or camp follower. With danger on every side, they backed slowly away through the fighting across the gore-stained earth, stepping on the corpses of friend and enemy, slipping and slithering through the obscene detritus of the human form. Valerius didn’t know where they were going, only that he had promised Benignus he would save his eagle and he would die trying to fulfil that oath. As they edged their way east, more fleeing legionaries sought the disciplined sanctuary of the square, staggering up on spent legs and trying to claw their way into the interior. ‘You’ll get in when you deserve it, you bastards,’ Valerius roared at them, ordering them to form a new outer rank. Yet if the men of the First Adiutrix were exhausted, the enemy was equally so, and that was what kept the eagles safe. They were content to butcher the small knots of legionaries who stood and fought, or take a hack at a fleeing man. But they shied away from Valerius’s square to find easier prey. Still, Valerius knew Fortuna couldn’t protect them for ever. If they were to stay alive, they had to fight their way to safety, wherever safety was. In the distance he heard the strident call of a trumpet and he felt a surge of hope. Somewhere, someone was trying to rally the shattered remnants of the army of Otho. Yet that hope was immediately tempered with doubt, because the horsemen he had seen had only one object in mind and that was the eagle of the First Adiutrix. He blinked to clear vision that was still blurred from his earlier knock on the head and a shudder ran through him as he recognized his enemy. The cavalrymen bearing down on the square wore wolfskin cloaks and at their head rode a tall figure whose features were engraved in ice on his heart.