“Come on, boys, we got ’em!” the file-closer cried as he jumped onto the vehicle himself.
“Come on!” Vibulenus echoed as he followed the non-com. He was not really aware of the rest of the legion, much less trying to encourage the men behind him. His conscious mind was shouting to the instinct that was ruling his actions, unnecessary except that it was the only thing his intellectual portion could do at the moment.
The overturned vehicle was floored with rope matting stretched on a dovetailed wooden frame. While the mat supported and even cushioned the broad, bare feet of the warriors, it was woven too loosely to provide safe support for a booted Roman. Clodius Afer’s left foot plunged through an interstice which snared his knee like that of a hapless rabbit.
The file-closer cursed and stabbed at the matting, handicapped by his own shield. His point, bright already with warriors’ blood, glanced from the tough fibers of the mat and gouged his calf. He raised his sword again.
Vibulenus hopped to an angle of the frame so that his feet were splayed outward but had firm support. The quality of the woodwork would not have disgraced a senator’s bed. “Wait!” shouted the young tribune without realizing that he had just given the veteran non-com an order on the battlefield and that he instinctively expected to be obeyed. Clodius looked up in surprise — and he did not for the moment strike again at the ropes trapping him.
Hundreds of additional war cars had drawn up short of the wreckage of the first wave, delivering more warriors to the battlefield. The giant spearman came on in clots, four or five together as they jumped from their vehicles. They made no attempt to form a shield wall, nor did the mass of naked infantry advance from the position it had taken at dawn just below their encampment.
Individually, the warriors were as skilled and strong as they were deadly. A quartet of them, leaping from a car whose driver immediately lashed it toward the rear again, saw Vibulenus and the trapped file-closer. Raising their shields and their fifteen-foot spears, the warriors advanced at a lumbering trot.
The tribune shrugged his left arm from the straps and let his shield drop to the matting. The muscles of his belly drew up as his body tried to twist itself out of the way of the spears he imagined already criss-crossing his flesh. He gripped Clodius under the right armpit and dropped his sword also in order to lock the fingers of both hands.
“Pull!” Vibulenus shouted, though what the file-closer really needed to do was to push down with his shield and right foot while the young tribune himself pulled.
Vacula and two of the legionaries from his Fourth Century ran to meet the oncoming warriors. The centurion flung his heavy javelin so fiercely that the nearest of the enemy staggered back, his shoulder pinned to the shield through whose triple thickness of hide the javelin had penetrated.
One of Vacula’s men interposed his shield between a spear and the centurion momentarily, but another warrior took the legionary out of the fight with a thrust through the mail shirt and belly. The non-com was still off balance from his throw and more intent on drawing his sword than on swinging his shield into a posture of defense. One long spear tore through the apron of bronze-studded leather meant to protect the centurion’s thighs. While Vacula thrashed like an eel on a fisherman’s trident, another warrior thrust through the bridge of his nose.
The surviving legionary slipped aside, his javelin poised as a threat to keep the warriors away from him now that they had finished with his fellows.
Clodius Afer’s leg came free. Almost as part of the same motion, he vaulted down from the vehicle to stand between Vibulenus and the warriors advancing with bloody spears. “Watch it, sir!” called the file-closer. “Watch it!”
The tribune picked up his shield by the center strap, acting in too much haste to thread his forearm properly through the loop and then grip the real handhold at the rim.
One of the warriors stabbed at Clodius, but the veteran responded by shifting a handsbreadth to block the point with the thick, keel-like boss of his shield.