Vibulenus brushed the trunk with his left shoulder and wished he had not. His shield rim and the fabric of his tunic sleeve glistened with a thick fluid scraped from the bark. It felt slimy where it soaked through to his skin.
“Ready!” called the file closer, facing the men to his left.
Simultaneously, the centurion of the Fourth Century roared toward the mass of his own unit, “Century —”
The nearest war cars had rolled across the center of the shallow valley and were now climbing toward the legion. The draft animals looked distinctly unlike oxen now that the tribune had a closer view. They had four gnarly horns apiece, one pair in the usual place atop the head and the other on the nose. Vibulenus had not heard of anything like them, even among monstrous births catalogued with omens.
There were so many of the cars that they were jostling for position as they neared the legion. The unyoked draft animals fouled their opposite numbers in neighboring teams, and one vehicle upset because its driver did not have enough room to maneuver around a tree.
“Charge!” shouted Clodius Afer, a fraction of a second before Vacula shrieked the same command in a carrying falsetto. Both non-coms and their fellows from the opposite flanks of each century in the line began to run toward the chariots only two hundred feet away.
For a moment, the centurions and file-closers were alone, a ragged scattering ahead of the legion like froth whipped from the tops of waves. Then the whole legion broke into a run as the right arms of the two leading ranks cocked back, preparing to hurl the lighter of the pair of javelins each legionary carried.
Gaius Vibulenus began to run also and tried to draw his sword for want of a javelin to throw. He had to catch up with the centurions because he was an officer and if he could do nothing else, he could set an example . . . but it wasn’t that simple, except in the part of his mind which refused to think and which was in control now.
Because he was young and fit, for all his relative inexperience with the weight of his armor, Vibulenus was beside Clodius Afer again when the file-closer’s arm shot forward and sent his javelin off in a high arc toward the enemy. Clodius’ heavy shield swung back around the pivot of his firmly-planted left foot, balancing the heave of the missile.
The advancing line stuttered as each man lost a step when he launched his javelin. The tribune, who had finally gripped his flopping sword sheath with his left hand so that he could draw the weapon with his right, found himself once again in front of the remainder of the legion.
The war cars were drawing up, apparently according to plan rather than in reaction to the legion’s advance. Drivers swung their teams to one side or the other in a scene of utter confusion, but with fewer real collisions than the dense array had suggested would result. The enemy were, after all, practiced at their method of warfare even if they made no attempt at discipline in the Roman sense. The warriors were springing from the vehicles even as drivers sawed back on their reins as if to lift the teams’ forehooves off the ground.
Some fifteen hundred javelins rained down onto them in a space of less than two seconds.
“Rome!” cried Gaius Vibulenus, while the legionaries behind him were shouting that and a thousand other things as they ran toward the foe.
The warriors’ shields were big, even by comparison with the bodies they had to cover, and they were solid enough that even hard-flung javelins penetrated only to the barbs of their heads. The teams had been in confusion before the missiles gouged many animals into rearing agony. Now they were in chaos. Several teams raced off in whatever direction they were pointing, spilling their drivers and occasionally dragging an overturned car like a device for field-levelling.
Most of the warriors were unharmed, though a few had been caught as they jumped from their vehicles and now sprawled or staggered. Their chest armor, even when studded with metal, did not turn or stop the missiles the way the heavy shields had done. The weight of the javelins stuck in the shield facings, half a dozen in some cases, was an awkward additional burden. Many of the warriors were trying to tug the javelins clear when the second flight, from the third and fourth ranks of the legion, hit them.