Cato 02 - The Eagles Conquest by Simon Scarrow

advance.’
    ‘What?’ Vitellius stared at him in disbelief, and shook his head, desperately trying to think of a way to talk the legate out of the crazy decision. ‘But, sir. The eagle - what if it’s lost?’
    ‘It won’t be, once the men see it right at the front. Then they’ll fight to the last drop of blood to follow it to victory, or die in its defence.’ ‘But it’d be safer where it is, sir,’ Vitellius countered.
    ‘Look here, Tribune,’ Geta said sternly. ‘That’s an eagle up on the standard, not a bloody chicken. It’s supposed to inspire men to valour, not to save their skins. I’ve had just about enough of your whining. You’re supposed to be a hero. I thought you’d saved the Second Legion’s bacon! Now I wonder… But you’re with us right now, and I need every man I can get hold of. So shut your mouth and draw your bloody sword.’
    The steel in the legate’s tone was chilling. Without another word Vitellius drew his weapon and fell in behind the colour party. Geta led them at a trot over to where the First Cohort was battling to secure a foothold on the palisade. The wounded and dead carpeted the slope of the earthworks. As the colour party pressed through the throng towards the palisade, the British warriors hacked and slashed at them, their war cries deafening. At last the Ninth’s eagle rose above the crush and the legionaries returned the British cries with a great roar of their own.
    ‘Up the Hispania!’
    The Romans fell upon their enemy with renewed energy and aggression and the flashing blades of the Roman short swords stabbed forward with deadly efficiency as all along the palisade the battle cry was taken up.
    ‘Up the Hispania!’
    Vitellius kept his silence as with gritted teeth he pressed on with the colour party up the slope. Suddenly he found himself hard up against the palisade - a line of rough-hewn posts driven into the ground. Overhead loomed a yelling British warrior, black against the brilliant blue of the sky, axe raised for the kill. Instinctively Vitellius thrust his sword at the man’s face and ducked behind the rim of his shield. There was a sharp scream of agony an instant before the axe cracked into the reinforced trim along the top of the shield. Vitellius’ legs buckled for a moment and then he was up again. A huge centurion was at his side, great arms wrapped round a wooden stake which he was wrestling free of the soil.
    ‘Pull the palisade down!’ the centurion bellowed, grabbing hold of the next stake. ‘Pull it down!’
    Other men followed suit and soon a number of small gaps had been wrenched in the palisade, and the Ninth began to force their way through to the flattened earth rampart beyond. To Vitellius’ left the eagle rose, and Britons swarmed towards it, drawn on by a savage desire to seize the legion’s standard and crush the resolve of their enemy. The fighting round the eagle was conducted with a terrible intensity that Vitellius could not have imagined possible from human beings. He turned away from the ghastly scene and urged the legionaries round him to press on through the palisade, jabbing his sword in the direction of the Britons.
    ‘On, lads! On! Kill them! Kill them all!’
    Hardly a man spared him a glance as they charged through. Only when he was sure that there were enough Romans on the rampart to form a living barrier between himself and the enemy did Vitellius climb through the ruined palisade and onto the rampart. From this height he had a quick chance to survey the immediate battlefield. On both sides the fighting line stretched out along the curved fortifications. Behind the Ninth Legion the First Cohort of the Fourteenth was emerging from the river and would shortly add its weight to the assault. Even now it might not be needed. Geta’s desperate attempt to force the defences was succeeding, and more and more Romans were packing the rampart and pushing the Britons back, down the reverse slope and into their camp.