Free Arthur Imperator by Paul Bannister Page B

louder with frustration. “You use that shield to fucking protect you!” one was shouting. “Fight like a boxer. Left foot forward, boot behind the base of the shield to steady it, right foot back, turned outwards to brace yourself. Stab, thrust hard, don’t slash with your fucking sword! You punch them in the face or in the nuts with your shield, then stab them over the top with the sword point! You thrust, you don’t slash, you’re not reaping fucking hay! Puncture the bastards!” 
    The recruits were learning the battle-winning value of the shield wall. Overlap the edges of your shield with those of your fellows, keep the shield down to protect your shins, stab over the top of it. The press of the ranks behind you kept you upright even while your comrades in the rear were firing missiles, heavy darts, javelins and the like overhead and into the enemy mob. Meanwhile, the enemy’s own forward pressure pushed their ranks up against our shields so we could jab into them. As they went down under the thrusts, our front line would move forward, stamping down with their studded boots, and marching over them, while the following second and third ranks would dispatch the wounded enemy as they lay crushed on the ground.
    I turned away, and strode over the training field to where more experienced soldiers were practising battle formations. I nodded approval at the centurion who was prodding and shouting at his men to move smoothly from column to line, from line to shieldwall-penetrating wedges, then to spread into a chequerboard pattern so the rear ranks could move up when needed.
    Our preferred technique was to approach the enemy in several columns, for manoeuvrability, and we usually advanced behind a screen of cavalry, light troops and the scouts. As we closed, we’d deploy into three wedged ranks, with each unit in a designated place and the whole forming up in a sort of chequered pattern to allow gaps through which the front ranks could retreat and the rear ranks advance. 
    The third, rear rank was always the veterans and they were usually only called upon if the battle got serious and the first two ranks of spearmen were tiring. We put the least experienced to the front to take the initial brunt while the second and third ranks dispatched volleys of spears and darts over their heads. Sometimes we’d use slingshot men who hurled lethal, egg-sized lumps of lead, sometimes, we’d send in cavalry, or we could even deploy some nasty artillery or archers, but the basic premise was to use the heavy shields, armour and training to move our men forward into lightly-protected enemies as a single grinding front.
    Sometimes, that front took on the shape of a sawtooth wedge designed to pierce an enemy line, but always the chequered pattern allowed us constantly to funnel fresh troops forward, and the steady pressure usually broke the enemy, who typically were good for one or two wild charges fuelled by mead or hallucinogenic mushrooms. Our front ranks would fight until they tired, then funnel back. Fresh troops would move up to take their place while they rested, and then the original frontline soldiers would recycle back in. The third ranks would be held back. Often the officers would order them to kneel, to restrain their eagerness until the moment was right to release them to the kill.
    Through all this, the enemy were usually fighting themselves to exhaustion, as they constantly faced fresh troops and unrelenting attacks. It was the way of the legions, had been for centuries, and it worked.
    My plan was to continue the old tactics, but to introduce heavy cavalry and horse-mounted archers. With a swift striking force that could sting from a safe distance, and cavalry whose big horses could crash through an enemy line as their riders stood upright on those new stirrups, we could win battles easier and more cheaply, and could counter the growing inclination of our enemies to armour themselves in the Roman way. And, there was