by Chuck Dixon
“No one could save Elvis,” Bat said, shaking her head sadly.
Down in the camp, Jimbo had lashed some tent cloth to a pair of poles to make a stretcher for Boats.
The wound on the SEAL’s leg was turning ugly. It was swelling around where the shaft pierced the flesh. The skin already felt warm. The arrow needed to be pulled, and the puncture wound cleaned end to end. Only there was no way to know if that might tear a vessel, leaving Boats to bleed out. The shaft pierced him at an angle, where it could have struck any number of major vessels, including his femoral artery. They just weren’t equipped for that kind of eventuality, and the nearest surgery was a couple of millennia away. All he could do was stabilize Boats with antibiotics and try to keep the big guy from going into a fever. They’d all had dozens of prophylactic injections for whatever bugs they might run across. There was no way of knowing what brand of filth that arrow carried in with it. The sailor was a tough son of a bitch and could last a few days more. It would get sketchy after that.
Carrying the SEAL was a whole different set of problems. It was a four-man job, minimum. While Jimbo had all the respect in the world for the former IDF wonder woman on the team, she just didn’t have the size to keep up over the long haul under a load like that. Boats was well over two hundred pounds, and they had a rough days-long slog back to the coast with fifty pounds of gear each over hard country. It wouldn’t work even if Dwayne was along and they had four Rangers on the job. They needed guns walking point and drag. They couldn’t just be humping Boats like it was a marathon event through a city park.
Jimbo looked around him at the slaves they had freed. Instead of putting distance between them and their captors, they were hanging around like it was a tailgate party. Two guys were fighting over a crock of wine while others cheered them on. The rest were either sitting idly on the ground or walking around listlessly. They all had lice. Their skin crawled with the critters. Some of the men were wasted physically, painfully malnourished, and covered in sores. They looked like they’d never walk another step. There were plenty of others who still looked healthy enough, and even a few who had some muscle on them. They were all little guys, but they all looked as tough as old timber.
There were younger and healthier ones here, too. They had to be the recent captives from Nazareth. Among them was the man they came to save. Jimbo searched their faces, not sure of what he was looking for. He had gone to a Catholic elementary school on the reservation. The nuns had told him all about Jesus, but none of them knew what he looked like. And no one here looked like the bearded rock star in his catechism books.
He walked up to a few seated on the ground chewing mouthfuls from a loaf of bread they were sharing.
“How about a hand, dude?” Jimbo said and kicked at the foot of the biggest one.
The man looked up at him sullenly and went back to chewing.
“We freed your ass, bro. How about doing a little work as a thank you?” Jimbo said and kicked the man’s foot again.
The man spat a wad of bread at Jimbo. The Pima reached down, grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair, and yanked him upright. Jimbo planted a fist square in the man’s face, sending him flying to lie unmoving in the dust.
“Up off your asses!” Jimbo roared.
The group understood the timeless language of aggression. They stood up as one and let Jimbo shove them into a line for an informal inspection. He picked the six stoutest examples, guys with good feet and sturdy calves and all their fingers. Years of quarry work had taken its share of digits off a lot of these guys. He pushed them from the line toward the stretcher. He gestured for them to pick the man up. Most looked at him blinking. One of them, a guy with a wild thatch of dirty blond hair and skin burnt bronze, seemed to get it and was speaking rapidly to the others. The guy was covered in layers of work muscle and reminded Jimbo of a California surfer who’d been left in the dryer too long.
The rest got the idea from the surfer and lifted Boats off the ground as a team. Jimbo waved them to gently lower the SEAL. He dug in a pouch for the hard candies he always carried out of habit after Afghanistan. He unwrapped one and popped it into his mouth, then handed a few to his stretcher team. They sniffed them, then put them in their own mouths to chew the candies with the cellophane still on. Grins all around as the sweet fruit flavor melted in their teeth.
The surfer grinned broadly. His front teeth, uppers and lowers, were gone. He met Jimbo’s eyes and tapped his chest with his fingertips. The dude was wearing a legionnaire skirt and sword girdle he’d looted off a Roman corpse. A gladius in a scabbard hung from the belt. Jimbo noticed the scars on his forearms. They were old and showed as pink lines against his mahogany skin. This guy had seen action as a soldier.
“Bris,” the surfer said. Or maybe it was “Brus.”
“Bruce?” Jimbo pointed, and the man hesitated before nodding with enthusiasm.
“Jim,” the Pima said, touching his own chest.
“Zim,” Bruce said, brows knitted.
“Close enough.” Jimbo nodded and held out a hand.
Bruce looked at it quizzically. Jimbo took the surfer’s right wrist and drew it forward to take the hand in his own. Bruce smiled and laughed and pumped the Indian’s hand with enthusiasm.
Happy as kids, the rest all hung around while Jimbo trimmed the cloth on the poles to allow for additional handholds in the center of the stretcher. Then he had them lift again. Bruce took the job as team leader and directed the others to lift in unison with a series of cadenced commands. They bore the load well.
Now they had a stretcher team. The Rangers and Bat would have hands and eyes free to cover the withdraw. These guys looked like they’d be able to keep up. He tossed them some more candies. They smiled and nodded. They had a deal.
“I thought we freed those motherfuckers,” Chaz said, walking up.
“I’m not making them do anything, bro,” Jimbo said. “They’re doing it for the candy. It’s the free market at work.”
“Still don’t seem right.” Chaz shook his head at the men squatting on the ground, sucking on lemon balls and butterscotches and grinning like kids. Some of their backs were thick with old scar tissue from where they’d been whipped. Their ankles and wrists showed signs of manacles worn for extended periods.
“You want to carry that big bastard all the way to the Med?” Jimbo nodded at the still form of the SEAL on the makeshift carrier.
“Hell, no,” Chaz said. “But you better have a shitload of candy on you.”
They turned at Lee running down off the earthworks toward them. Bat trotted behind. Lee held the Legion banner in his fist as he ran.
“Dust cloud to the north,” Lee called as he reached them.
“That column we bushwhacked?” Jimbo asked.
“Has to be,” Lee said. “They strapped their balls back on, and chances are they’ll put whatever’s left of the Twenty-third back together when they get here and then be right in our asses.”
Bat waved her arms and shouted to the men in Hebrew. She warned them that there was an army marching on them. Most ignored her or looked at her dully. Others were stirred by her dire predictions that the approaching Romans would be looking to blame someone for the devastation of their camp. These men pointed at all the dead legionnaires lying about them and echoed Bat’s alarm to the others.
There was a babel of languages as the word was translated among them. The group was up on their feet, even the ones who appeared to be at death’s door, and began moving away from the camp at the base of the escarpment at best speed.
Jimbo made a lifting gesture with his hands and his team of candy-loving former slaves raised Boats from the ground and awaited further instructions. Lee nodded approval and laid the banner on the bier alongside the SEAL.
“I’ll take drag for now,” Chaz said and waved them on.
Lee trotted ahead to take point. Jimbo waved his stretcher team forward, and the tiny column moved roughly west into the cloud of dust raised by the fl
eeing slaves. A couple of dozen other slaves followed after the stretcher team. Chaz noted that a number of them carried spears or swords picked off of the dead.
We have ourselves an army, Chaz thought. Until the candy runs out.
Chaz climbed a corner of the earthworks and watched the haze riding into the sky off the road to the north. It was coming straight as an arrow for them. The pyres of burning tents were still sending up a thick column of dense smoke and the centuries bearing the boar banner would be unerringly drawn toward it like hounds to the scent of the fox.
He gave some time for the rest of the team to gain some lead on him. Chaz spent the time sending up a prayer for the Father to watch over His son.
“We done all we could,” he said, squinting up into the noon sky.
Then he turned to follow his brothers across Galilee.
38
The Tally
The ground was covered in a blanket of black-winged vultures by the time the third and fourth centuries of the Boars reached the ruined fort. The kites circled in the sky above and descended through the mist of smoke to feed upon the carcasses that lay scattered singly and in heaps all about the ruined camp.
Enraged, centurion Marcus Pulcher strode into the camp swinging his staff and shouting. The carrion eaters were sent hopping from their meals and finally to flight as other soldiers joined in shouting and waving arms.
The camp was an abattoir. Everywhere lay soldiers in various stages of dismemberment. Some were burnt all over and folded into the fetal position peculiar to those who die engulfed by fire. Others were eviscerated or quartered as if by some unimaginably powerful beast. The sand was soaked with violet pools of blood, covered over with clouds of black flies and crawling insects. The smell of cooking flesh rising from the inferno of the command tent was vomit-inducing. Pulcher covered his mouth with the corner of his cloak and swallowed back bile.
All here were dead. That was something outside the experience of the centurion. Every battle resulted in approximately the same ratio of the dead to the wounded. But here there were no injured. Whoever created this slaughter saw to it that none survived. Gaius, his first optio, reported a rough count of over one hundred bodies.
“That is less than half of the company posted here,” the centurion said.
“The rest were either taken prisoner or fled,” Gaius said.
“Any enemy dead?”
“Not one, sir.”
“Isn’t that unusual, Gaius?” Pulcher said. “A battle this furious and the only corpses that remain are of Romans?”
Gaius offered no opinion.
“Sound the call. If any of our own have fled, they will hear it,” the centurion said, turning. “And bring to me any who return.”
The cornicen of the third was ordered forward. The man removed the circular horn from its protective leather cover and climbed to a spot atop the earthworks to sound four flat blasts. Any legionnaire within hearing would answer the gathering call and return to the fort. And, indeed, the survivors of the Twenty-third straggled in from the surrounding desert all around. They entered with heads hung low and without meeting the eyes of their brother legionnaires. The highest-ranking, an optio of the second of the sixth, was brought to Pulcher who waited in the shade of his command tent which had been constructed upwind a distance from the ruined camp.
The optio, a Lucani named Critus, told a tale that beggared belief. He related how the Assyrian archers came to the camp with a Celt prisoner who was revealed to be some manner of demon who called down upon their heads the fires of hell. Within moments this demon consigned their centurion and his staff to a storm of fire. He brought down the men of the Twenty-third with but a gesture from his empty hand. It was if this Celt had the power of death.
Pulcher might have counted the man mad if it were not for his own experiences on the road only two days prior. That and the condition of the dead visible everywhere he looked. What sort of weapon ripped a man to bloody shreds?
“And you broke, man? The Horses turned from stallions to geldings before this one man?” Pulcher sneered.
“Yes,” Critus said and lowered his head in shame. He was an athletically-built young man, too young to have made his position without the influence of a wealthy family.
“I should have you decimated,” Pulcher said, his lip curled in disgust.
“Yes, centurion,” Critus said, looking up now with a cold fire in his eye. “It is what we deserve, and I—”
“But this Celt has already accomplished that and more!” Pulcher roared, rising from his chair.
“Honored centurion, I request that I be made an example of!” Critus said with defiance.
“I will have no useless displays of sacrifice,” Pulcher said in a softer voice now. “You will bear this dishonor on your back as you pursue this Celt.”
“Sir?”
“My men have force-marched for two days to reach here. They are exhausted. Your centuries, on the other hand, have only suffered from the exercise of running out of sight of your attacker.” Pulcher shot a dark glance around the tent to make certain that none of his officers responded to this unintended jest. He was not seeking to lighten the mood.
“I will—” Critus began.
“You will do only as I say. You will gather two score of your stoutest men. Tough bastards, you hear me? You will need runners, marathon runners if possible, do you understand me? Take only what you need. Weapons and water, but no armor. Track down this mystery Celt and all who are with him.”
Critus nodded.
“You find and follow the trail left by these rebels you will leave signs. Once my men have fed and rested, we will seek you out in force and engage this enemy. I don’t care if they are devils or if they are men, I will have their heads. Do you understand and obey?”
“To the last of my blood,” Critus said between clenched teeth.
“Then go. Leave strips of cloth as you run. We will follow with the combined force of four centuries.”
Critus thumped his chest with his right fist and departed the tent.
“Further orders, sir?” Gaius asked. Pulcher turned to regard them with a baleful eye. The second optio and the aquilifer snapped to attention.
“Have the men of the Twenty-third set to bury their dead. Our men are to stand down until the sun reaches the third quarter. We will then set out to pursue the Lucani optio and his heroes in search of these creatures who plague us.” The centurion sat down in his chair, overcome by a deeper weariness than he had ever known.
“We will seek ribbons of cloth, sir? Like a children’s game?” Gaius grinned.
“From our recent experience, we know we will more likely follow a trail of the dead to our quarry,” Pulcher said and held out a cup for his second optio to freshen with wine.
39
Under the Gaze of God
The Prussian guns started again before dawn. The shells flew from the mouths of the cannons to drop across the rooftops of the city like the tread of an angry giant. Mostly they spent themselves punching hollows in the cobbles of empty streets or shattering trees in the bands of fallow gardens that ran down the centers of the more fashionable boulevards. A few plummeted through rooftops and smashed through floorboards to find victims hidden deep in the hearts of houses. A two-hundred-pound bomb from a mortar detonated in the basement in Les Halles reduced a family of eight, including five children, their servants, and a visiting friend to vapor. The house remained standing by some miracle. The only visible damage was a hole drilled from top to bottom in its structure and cellar walls encrusted with an inches-thick layer of papier peint of clotted tissue, bone, and clothing.
In the house of Mme. Villeneuve, all was quiet but for the intrusion of the manmade thunderclaps coming through the bricks and plaster. Sometimes the quakes from the shelling seemed to be closing in on the house like a fist, only to recede into the distance bringing its deadly rain upon some other helpless souls.
The madame grieved as though her son had
died in the mad assault of the day before. She mourned for the loss of his youthful spirit, which she knew would be crushed by the sights he witnessed the day before.
Jeannot’s hand would heal, with only a scar and a story to recall its source. His real wound would be invisible, the dual shame of being a murderer and a coward. The young man was motivated by the peculiar brand of patriotism that only the French knew. It drove him to join the others in the forlorn and mad attack.
The horrors of reality sent his brashness flying, and he ran and hid and then killed, not in defense of his homeland, but only to save his own life. He struck at the enemy, not as a blow against those who had the gall to invade his beloved land, but in a frenzied, animal desire to survive.
His mother knew him as any loving mother knows her only son. He had a sensitive soul, unlike his father, who never saw beauty or humor or wonder in anything. It was this same spirit that pulled him along with the rising tide of his fellows on their romantic crusade to lift the ring of fire from the city. The same frail spirit that wilted before the world of carnage he entered.
Time.
Time would bring him from his brooding funk, and she would be there to see him through it. Oh, her boy would make it through, of that she was sure. He would no longer be the passionate, garrulous youth he had been. Those days were gone. That boy was gone. He would now be like so many other Frenchmen from so many other struggles, fatalistic, cynical, and bitter. But he was alive, and that was all she cared about. She would see him through these days unless a German bomb erased them all in the next instant.
She sat at the dining room table playing piquet with Caroline Rivard. It was Claude who suggested that they not play at the card table in the drawing room as that room faced the street and was vulnerable to debris thrown by the shells falling without. The formal dining room was at the stout heart of the house, protected by the surrounding rooms.
