“Will we join them?” I shouted in tune.
“Will we honor them?” Aulus said.
“Is today not as good a day to die as any?”
Even the greenest amongst them stood taller. Nothing was shaking now save our shields as we drummed.
“Some of us will not live to see the sun rise,” Lucius said.
“But we will live on in glory!” I shouted.
“On the green fields of Elysium, with the heroes of old,” Aulus roared.
“And if we fall this day,” Lucius said, donning his helm and picking up his shield. “at least we’re going to send these bastards to Tartarus with us!”
“Let them hear you!” I bellowed as the men grew frenzied.
“To war!” Lucius cried, leading the charge.
Lucius Hirtuleius
Corinth’s southern wall had never been repaired after Rome burned the city, so we didn’t need siege equipment. No battering rams, ladders, or towers. Just shield and steel.
Six men abreast could enter at a time, so I called for the legion to form a column as we marched quick-time to the city.
Commanding officer or not, I was no general. I was no coward either, so I placed myself within the first century to enter, my shield locked with theirs. The Insteius twins followed suit in the centuries behind me.
This was my chance. The one I’d been waiting for all my life.
And yet, my heartbeat was still, my mind clear. Perhaps this is what Sertorius was always talking about with that stoicism philosophy he so loved. Live or die, I would go down in history as a Roman. A Roman. I felt my grandfather’s pride shining down on me despite the sky darkening.
We reached the opening in the walls, slowing down so we could stay in formation as each rank took turns stepping over the rubble.
I braced for the arrows and the javelins barrage. Nothing came.
“Wake them up!” I shouted as our men echoed a war cry like hungry wolves. Between the outbursts I listened for the enemy but heard nothing.
When we reached an open courtyard, we stopped the march. Still no foes were upon us.
“Shields down,” I ordered. I lifted my head and gazed around. There was nothing but burnt ruins. Blackened trees with neither leaves nor branches. Temples with columns toppled to bits and dust.
If we were assaulted by the most powerful army in Greece, I might have kept my composure. But with no enemy at all, I began to panic. I’d be remembered as a fool now, and nothing more.
“Andromache!” I hollered, and the men assisted by sending the call back.
She rushed through the line, and I broke formation to meet her.
“Roman,” she said, the strands of her hair darkened by sweat.
“Where are they? Your scouts said they would be drunk and celebrating Bacchus,” I said. I could hardly be angry with someone who had the face of a goddess, but panic and rage were setting in.
“They must have run. Word must have reached them of our plans.”
“Not possible,” I said. “My legion moved faster than Zephyr’s wind.”
The Insteius twins joined us.
“The scouts must have been telling the truth. Look,” Spurius said, “barrels of ale and wine, fires still smoldering.”
I huffed and rubbed at my eyes. I was twice dishonored: first for believing the word of a Greek, and second for encouraging the men to embrace their deaths when no enemy awaited us. I was like them recently enough. I knew the jokes that’d be made at my expense. I continued to rub at my eyes until bright spots developed beneath my lids. What was I to do? Send out trackers and scouts? Perhaps dogs could sniff them out, but we had none. No, we’d need horses too, and left those in the Spartan stables.
The whistle of an arrow sounded.
I looked up and found it through the center of my bicep, the head clean through. For whatever reason I looked at Andromache and burst into hysterical laughter.
All was still for a moment. No one moved, no sound rang out but my laughter.
When a second arrow flew and cracked into my shield, I returned to reality. “Back to formation!” I bellowed as I ran to the ranks and the hole they opened up for me.
Arrows, javelins and slingers rocks came from the shadows all around us.
“Testudo!” I shouted and the centurions echoed me.
Through the small gaps in our shield wall, I searched for the enemy. On top of ruined temples, crouched in the hundred-year overgrown shrubbery.
A young legionary in front of me cried out when a javelin splintered through his shield and wedged into his cheekbone. He collapsed as the men struggled to fill the gap he created.
“Orders, tribune?” the first spear centurion asked.
My mind was blank. I spilled over all my training and the battles I’d fought in, searching for some gem of wisdom Marius might have left me. Before I could answer the earth shook beneath us. A blood curdling war cry sounded as a horde of heavily armed spearmen charged us.
“Brace, brace, brace!” I shouted. They crashed into us, the first ranks stumbling and rolled up like a carpet as the long spears slithered through the shield wall like snakes.
“Attack,” I bellowed, barely audible through the screams and war cries.
The centuries behind us rushed to our aid, along with the Spartan guard with Andromache at their helm.
Missiles continued to pelt us from all sides. It felt a little bit like the storm at sea, tossed about by the will of angry gods, defenseless.
I pushed my way to the front rank. My panic had dissipated but my torrent of rage sustained. I wanted to whet my blade. The moment I reached the battle line a spear struck my shield. It fell easily from my hand as I realized I was unable to grip from the arrow in my arm. The spear jabbed at me again, and with all the strength left in my injured arm I grabbed hold of it and severed it in the middle with my sword. I grabbed on to the broken end and pulled the hoplite warrior to me. He struggled back but was pushed forward by his bloodthirsty brethren. My blade punctured his jugular and blood and phlegm sprayed over me.
I started the tally in my head. I would need to remember the exact number of deaths so I could make the proper sacrifice after the battle. And I knew this was the first of many.
But I realized the men beside me were wavering. Beams of light poured through their shields where arrows and javelins pierced them. As we learned on the Field of Mars, we pushed back against the attackers, marching forward one step at a time. Our progress was impeded though by the number of Roman bodies piling at our feet.
Even as I lurched forward with a stab at my next foe I prayed. Mars guide our blades. Neptune ride out on your four-horse chariot. Jupiter strike them down with lightening and flame.
The second rank pulled us back and took our place.
A brief reprieve, I looked over at Andromache. Her warriors were faring well, their long spears matching that of the rebels. Blood was splattered over the silken skin of her face and neck, and I prayed it wasn’t hers.
I strained to find the twins. I feared for them. The only warfare they’d seen was chasing down a few stragglers after the attack on Athens. If something happened to them, I would never forgive myself and Sertorius wouldn’t forgive me either. I couldn’t see them.
“Protect the tribunes!” I cried out. Several legionaries hunkered closer to me. “Not me, fools!” I pushed them away and snapped the arrow in my arm. I ground my teeth and pulled both sides clear. What began as a dull ache was now searing like a burn, engulfing the left side of my body.
Before I could whine any further a spear wedged through the belly and out the back of the legionary in front of me. He cried out, fell, and again I was on the front line.
A round studded shield bashed into my chest, driving the wind from my lungs. The spear was next. I had no choice but to sidestep and charge the warrior, breaking rank like an undisciplined recruit. But it was that or die, and I wasn’t ready to visit my ancestors in Elysium just yet.
The rebel snar
led at me with bloodstained teeth. I slammed my head into his nose and then cracked him over the head with the hilt of my gladius. Straining for room, I wedged my gladius into the exposed flesh under his arm.
“Rally to the tribune! Protect the tribune!” the first-spear centurion cried out as the men pushed harder to reach my side.
The enemy moved forward to meet us. They fought like beasts, clearly veterans of innumerable campaigns. But their numbers were waning, and for a brief moment I thought the day was ours. Before I could celebrate, I heard the most dreadful thing to ever fill my ears: the screams of charging horses.
“Turn, turn!” I cried to our back ranks. Too late. The horsemen shattered our back wall, some pouncing over and crashing down on top of our legionaries with the bloodcurdling sound of crunching bone. Panicked, our men lowered their shields. The arrow volleys increased and screams soon followed them.
All was lost.
Swords clattered to the earth as legionaries ran.
“Stand fast, stand fast!” The centurion’s cry echoed in my helm, but a haze was overcoming me.
To die in battle, a dream I’d always held dear. But while leading our men into a crushing defeat? My ancestors were ashamed. My heart cried out for my friend. Sertorius would have known what to do.
The horses screamed out and flailed as Andromache’s warriors rushed to our aid, their spears lancing the beasts and sending their riders through the air.
Honor and legacy be damned. A disgrace or not, I didn’t want to die with any more blood on my hands.
“Retreat!” I shouted. “Retreat!”
Scroll XXIII
Quintus Sertorius
I began with Anthea.
“Take care of your old husband. I’m afraid he’d be lost without you,” I said.
She smiled and shaded her eyes from the sunlight on the terrace. “I always do. I’m afraid he’d be lost without you, though. You best visit when this campaign of yours is over.”
“I’ll do that.” I kissed either of her cheeks.
“How are your ribs?” she said.
I shrugged. “All better now. Only notice it when I run or lift something heavy,” I said. “But for whatever reason my arm is throbbing.” I grabbed my left bicep.
“Let me take a look.” She took my arm and turned it over.
“I see nothing. Maybe the pain is being transferred from your side? A healer once told me that happens.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe I fell while I was drinking with your husband.”
I smiled and she did too, the same sadness in her eyes that were in mine. I took the stairs back into the home. I needed to say goodbye to the girls as well.
They were in the courtyard, seated across from one another. They were playing a game of marbles with some walnuts they’d scrounged from the kitchen. Kirrha was trying to teach her the rules, and Anaiah only stared blankly.
“Girls, I am leaving,” I said. “Battle calls.”
Anaiah remained seated but young Kirrha sprang to her feet and wrapped her fragile arms around my waist. She’d grown so much since we pulled her from the depths of the sea.
My chest tightened. Proof of perhaps the only two good things I’d done in my life were there before me. If Charon was preparing for my voyage across the River Styx, at least these girls were safe. And if the gods had in fact cursed us for our rescue of Kirrha, then gods be damned.
“I don’t want you to go, Quintus,” she said with her cheek smushed up against my breastplate.
I smiled. “I will return before you’ve realized I’m gone.”
She pulled away and looked at me. “But you said sometimes soldiers don’t return.”
I pinched her cheek. “But this time I believe I will.” I knelt beside Anaiah and waited until she cast her sad eyes in my direction. “I’ll bring you both a flower from Plataea. They say the soil there is rich and the fauna is beautiful,” I said, leaving out that the reason for this was the number of bodies that had decomposed there after a great battle three hundred years before.
“I want a yellow one.” Kirrha smiled and clapped her hands.
“And what color for you?” I asked Anaiah.
She paused for so long I thought she might ignore me. “You don’t have to bring me a flower.”
“I’d like too.” I smiled but she kept her gaze averted.
“Red then,” she said, barely audible.
“Done. I’ll return safely with the two most beautiful flowers in Greece, for the two most beautiful girls in Greece.” I kissed Anaiah’s head and consented to another of Kirrha’s hugs before I turned to leave.
“Quintus,” Kirrha hurried after me. She whispered, “I don’t like her. She’s strange and she doesn’t wash.”
My shoulders sagged. I exhaled. “You must be kind to her, Kirrha.”
“But she is not kind. She doesn’t even speak!” she said. “She sleeps on the ground instead of a bed and doesn’t eat her dinner.”
I knelt and placed my two hands on her tiny shoulders. “Consider that she isn’t kind because no one has ever been kind to her.”
She squinted for a moment but then nodded. “I’ve never thought of it like that.”
I stood. “She’s been in the dark for a very long time. And you can be a light.”
She perched up on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek. I departed quickly so she couldn’t see the tears in my eye.
Niarchos was next. I found him in his workshop, his hands caked in clay as he kneaded it into fine form. “Is it time already?” he asked.
“It is,” I said. “We’re departing at the seventh hour.”
He sucked air though his teeth and nodded. “And where are you going exactly?”
“The enemy is at Plataea, or so we’ve heard. We aren’t wasting any time.”
He tried and failed to dry his hands on a stained rag. “Could you not wait till the legion in the south returns?”
I pursed my lips. “My commander is not a patient man.”
He stepped around his potters’ lathe and threw his burly arms around my neck.
“As long as you make it back,” he said. “You’ve become like a brother to me… or a son… or nephew… A fine friend.”
I could tell he was unused to displays of affection for other men, so I took it to heart. I slapped his back roughly to keep his confidence.
“Don’t grow soft on me, old boy,” I said with a grin. “I’ll be back to eat your food and drink your wine. No question.” We laughed until we remembered what was about to happen. Then I left.
Apollonius was the last member of the household I needed to address. I searched most of the house until I found him in his own quarters, on his knees with his hands folded.
He was whispering something in a strange tongue I didn’t understand. I stood in the doorway watching him for some time. I considered leaving. Maybe that would be easier? But before I made a decision, he patted the bed beside him. I took a knee at his side and mimicked his posture. “Shall I pray to your god or mine?” I said. He ignored me and continued his prayer. When he paused, I asked, “What are you saying?”
He smiled. “Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”
“You pray this for me?”
He continued, “You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.”
“I fear many things.”
“A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near.”
To avoid melancholy, I attempted at humor. “If I kill ten thousand men, then I would surely deserve a crown.”
“You will only observe with your eyes, and see the punishment of the wicked.” He spoke with such serenity, the words spilling out over his lips like honeyed wine. Then he smiled. “Or ey
e in your case.”
I wrapped my arm around his shoulder. “You know what you must do if I fall in battle.”
“You speak of death far too much for a man so young,” he said.
“Romans are born dwelling on how to die.”
“Why should this battle be different than any other?”
“We’re at a disadvantage. We’ve been complacent and weak, our enemy active and strong. An army of warriors materialized out of darkness, and we don’t have time to muster more legions.”
“You speak almost as if you seek defeat.”
I exhaled. “It’s easier that way. Now tell me you know what to do.”
“I will send the letter, Quintus.” He looked at me with a level of frustration that was usually foreign to him. “I prithee don’t make me.”
I squeezed his neck. “If you stay here in Greece, you should call on my family. They’ll be safer with you than in Rome, I fear. Take care of them.”
“I do not like how you’re talking.”
“Just tell me you’ve listened.”
He huffed then nodded. “I hear you.”
“Good.” I kissed his head. “That gives me peace beyond measure, like you talk about in those prayers.” I stood and adjusted the sword on my hip. I stopped at the doorway and turned back to him. “If I die, do you think your God would let you visit me in Elysium?”
He nodded, smiled, and blinked a tear from his eye. “I do.”
“Good,” I said. “Good.”
He returned to prayer and I returned to camp. The men were forming up for departure.
One way or another, I would be leaving Greece soon. By ship or by sword, either way I was going to annihilate my enemy first. And nothing—not even the fury of the gods—would stop me.
Forty miles lie between us and Plataea. Forty miles between stillness and chaos, between safety and bloodshed.
We departed first thing that morning, before the sun rose. With Greece’s hills, crags, and valleys, it was a difficult land to traverse, so the legions were drawn up into tight formation. The five thousand men stretched back and extended forward as far as the eye could see.
Whom Gods Destroy: A Novel of Ancient Rome (The Sertorius Scrolls Book 4) Page 21
