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.

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.