Vibulenus was running downhill, though the slope was no more than an inch in twelve. When a Roman javelin sailed over his shoulder, missing the back of his neck by no more than the blade’s width, his bloodthirsty joy and feeling of invulnerability washed away in a douche of fear. The young tribune tried to stop. His hobnails skidded out from under him, and the long spear the warrior thrust at him gouged a fleck of bronze from Vibulenus’ helmet instead of plunging in through his mouth and out the base of his skull.
The spearpoint’s ragged edge was the result of forging at too low a temperature rather than deliberate serration, but the difference to Vibulenus would have been less than academic had the blade sawn a hand’s-breadth slot through his face. As it was, the tribune’s shin hurt more where his shield banged it than his head did from what would have been a deadly thrust.
The warrior who was trying to kill him had two feathery plumes that were part of his head rather than clothing as Vibulenus had assumed from a distance. He was lifting his spear again to finish the job with a second overarm thrust.
In panic that froze the events around him down to gelid detail but did not make them more soluble, Vibulenus swatted at the spear as he would have tried to bat away a spider which was leaping toward his eyes. The sword he held forgotten in his right hand clashed against the warrior’s weapon. The iron spearhead shattered, victim of the best blade of Bilbao steel which Vibulenus’ father could find for his boy to carry to war.
Something drained from the tribune at the shock — fear or weakness or concern for anything save doing the best job that could be done with the business Fate had handed him. He started to get to his feet.
Clodius Afer thrust his remaining javelin into the center of the warrior’s chest until a foot of the point and metal shaft stood out through the back of the fellow’s ribs.
“Eat that, pig-fucker!” screamed the file-closer as he released the javelin shaft and tried to draw the sword sheathed on his right side. Vibulenus jumped forward, his shield in front of his body as much by chance as skill, and blocked away the spear with which another warrior was stabbing for Clodius’ life.
Close up, the warriors were half again as tall as the five-foot-eight-inch tribune, and their blue feather plumes waved a foot or so still higher. They gave off a smell like something chitinous and dead.
Vibulenus cut at the warrior whose spear he had just brushed aside. It was his first conscious attempt to use his sword, and he was clumsily ineffective: the blade chopped into the framing which supported the multiple layers of hide, scarcely making the heavy shield quiver. As the warrior tried to recover his spear, Clodius ducked under the shaft and hacked at the fellow’s leading ankle with the skill of a butcher jointing a rabbit.
The warriors had howled as they came on, but when they were wounded they did not scream with pain. This one twisted silently, trying to brace himself with his spear and the shield whose lower rim he had slammed against the ground an instant too late to protect himself.
You’re either lucky or you’re not. You know that you are lucky from the fact that it’s the other guy sneezing blood and bits of lung tissue onto the spear in his chest.
“He’s got it!” Vibulenus shouted, as if he were a spectator at the arena instead of a participant in a full-scale battle. He was premature as well, because the warrior did manage to hold himself upright. The tribune tried a finishing blow at the feathered skull and only notched the shield rim again. Then Clodius put nine inches of steel in under the warrior’s right arm and jumped back in time to keep from being struck by the toppling shield.
There were no warriors still standing within a spear-length of the Roman line. A pair of the enemy tried to scramble into action past an overturned war car. A dozen thrown javelins cut them down like wheat before the scythe.