by R. W. Peake
“We need to send word to Tiberius,” Porcinus decided. “This has the smell of something a lot bigger than we thought.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned to make his way back forward, knowing who the best man for the job he needed done was, and not liking it a bit.
Publius Paperius was one of the most popular men, not just in his Century, the Fifth, but in the entire Cohort. He was irrepressibly cheerful, always willing to help one of his comrades, and never shirked his duties, no matter how onerous. He was also dangerously close to being an imbecile, yet he was so likable that even in the normally harsh, mocking world of the Legions, rather than make him the butt of the kind of cruel jokes men liked to play on simpler comrades, they were extremely protective of him. But Paperius had a talent that Porcinus needed, and he needed it desperately now; he was able to disappear. Although it wasn’t quite literally true, Paperius’ ability to move stealthily, without detection, had made him a legend, not just in the Cohort, but in the entire 8th Legion. This was the Gregarius that Porcinus sought out, even as he knew that Corvinus would argue about it, and it was hard to blame him. His father had warned him on many occasions, as Porcinus climbed through the ranks, of the peril of becoming attached to rankers, but it was a lesson that Porcinus had been forced to learn the hard way some time before. Unfortunately, it was a lesson Corvinus still had to learn, yet Porcinus hoped that this wouldn’t be the occasion when his subordinate and friend learned the harsh reality, that every man was expendable, particularly when it came to the welfare of the entire Cohort. Despite the fact that Porcinus didn’t need to, he still sought out Corvinus first, finding his friend conferring with his Optio, Sulpicius. Seeing Porcinus approach, Corvinus sketched a quick salute while sending Sulpicius on his way with a quiet word. As the two men talked, it would have been hard to imagine that, no more than twenty paces in any direction, there were men still fighting and dying. One small blessing was that the battle had reached its ebb, when the initial energy created by the fear, rage, and pent-up hostility of the combatants had first come exploding out of each of them, meaning that men were now more judicious in their attacks, while the defenders wasted no more energy than they were forced to. Often it was the case where, at this point in the fight, men did little more than pant like dogs in the hottest part of a summer day and curse the enemy across from them. Although it was less frenetic, Porcinus also knew that this was the most dangerous part of the battle. All it would take was a lapse by one of his men, and whether it was caused by inattentiveness or fatigue made no difference, one careless man could very quickly trigger a complete collapse.
“I need Paperius,” Porcinus told Corvinus. “I need a runner to go to Tiberius.”
Porcinus had half-hoped that Corvinus would simply agree, but he wasn’t surprised when his friend stiffened.
“Why Paperius?” Corvinus asked, but this was neither the time nor the place to indulge his friend.
“You know very well why,” Porcinus snapped. “He’s the only one who we can count on slipping past these bastards.”
“But they’ve got archers,” Corvinus argued, pointing in the direction of the Sixth Century. “He’ll look like a porcupine if you try and send him back that way!”
“I’m not sending him back up the ravine,” Porcinus replied with a patience he didn’t feel. “He’s going to have to climb the slope and get past these cunni first.”
“No,” Corvinus replied immediately, the absolute worst thing he could have said under the circumstances.
“That wasn’t a request, Hastatus Prior,” Porcinus didn’t raise his voice above what he needed to in order to be heard over the fighting. “That’s an order.”
Corvinus refused to be cowed, although he snapped, “Yes, sir. I understand, and will obey.” Turning on his heel, he muttered, “And whatever happens to him is on your head.”
Porcinus chose to ignore the comment, but he recognized that he had allowed Corvinus to become too close a friend, to the point where he forgot, even if it was temporary, that Porcinus was his superior. That, he reflected as he saw Paperius, a grin on his face despite the desperate circumstance and, making his way towards Porcinus, was something he would have to correct sooner rather than later. Especially with Barbatus in command. Paperius reached them, and there was nothing sloppy or forced in his salute.
Corvinus told Paperius, “The Pilus Prior needs you, Paperius. Go with him.”
Porcinus again ignored the tone Corvinus used for these words, choosing to clap Paperius on the shoulder, saying only, “Come with me, Paperius. You’re going to save the Cohort.”
The sudden attack by the Sixth Century, as Porcinus had hoped, caught the Varciani by surprise. With no blast of the cornu to alert them, the only signal given was a shout by Porcinus, as he and Verrens, along with a handpicked group of twenty men pulled from the Fifth and the Sixth, went rushing forward. They headed directly for the knot of warriors standing in front of the landfall, and as he had hoped, caught them completely by surprise. Best of all, the assault happened so quickly that the archers higher up on the slope only had a handful of heartbeats to move their aim from the mass of Romans down in the ravine to this new threat that detached itself from the main body. Fortunately for Porcinus and the others, there was time to launch no more than a dozen arrows before the Romans were hopelessly entangled with their own comrades, and only one of those struck a fleshy target. That man was lucky and unlucky at the same time; the wound wasn’t fatal, but it would cause him a great deal of embarrassment, provided he survived, as he went hobbling back to the larger group of Romans, the shaft of an arrow protruding from his left buttock. He was welcomed back to the safety of the testudo with laughs, although they were the kind of laughs tinged with hysteria that sometimes happened in combat. Meanwhile, Porcinus and Verrens had already struck down a number of barbarians who had tried to stand their ground. Porcinus, by virtue of his longer legs, was the first to go smashing into the Varciani, except this time he was careful to account for the slippery footing. Nevertheless, he still felt his left foot sliding as he delivered his first, underhand thrust, with the shield hard against his shoulder, thereby robbing him of some of the power. It was still enough to seriously wound the barbarian warrior and put him out of the fight and, at this point, Porcinus was less concerned with killing as many of the enemy as he could, as he was in achieving enough of a surprise that it alarmed the Varciani in the area and drew their attention in his direction. It did exactly that, drawing some of the men who were in the rear ranks of the warriors, pressing in on the flanks along each slope to this part of the fight. Porcinus had no intention of staying separated from the main group, yet he and his group of men stayed away from the rest of the Cohort long enough to inflict a good number of casualties and to achieve his main purpose. From the perspective of the rebels, it seemed as if this had been an attempt at least to examine the pile of rock and mud more closely, if not to try and scale it. In reality, it was neither; although Porcinus never looked directly to where Paperius was using the distraction to scramble up the slope before slipping into the heavy underbrush, he had seen the man signal when he reached the far side of the landfall, then turn and begin his run to Tiberius and the First. Only then did Porcinus give the command, and as quickly as they had struck, all but two of the men Porcinus had started with began a fighting withdrawal, formed into a rough circle. One of the two was the unfortunate with the wound in his nether regions, but they were also leaving a man behind, dead. The only satisfaction that his comrades could take was the fact that there were well more than twenty Varciani bodies scattered around the Roman corpse. Some of them showed signs of life, dragging themselves off to get help, or to die alone in the mud, like an animal. In the span of perhaps two hundred heartbeats, Porcinus, Verrens, and the rest were reunited with the rest of the Cohort.
“Now, we just need to hold on until Tiberius and the First show up,” Porcinus said to Verrens.
“We will,” Verrens assured h
im.
“I know you will,” Porcinus replied, even as he was already moving back in the direction of his own Century.
Because of the clouds, it was impossible for Porcinus to estimate with any accuracy, but he guessed that perhaps a third of a watch had passed since the attack had begun. Making his way back to his Century, he stopped to get a report on casualties from each Centurion, and the news was disheartening. At least ten men were out of action in every Century; the Fourth was the worst off, with fifteen down, although there didn’t seem to be any real threat of collapse anywhere along his lines. But while his Legionaries were holding firm, he could see they were getting fatigued. More troubling was that from what he could tell, even with as many Varciani as they had slain or wounded, there seemed to be as many warriors pushing against his men as when the attack first started. Porcinus could only assume that these men had been hiding in the hills as well, and had continued streaming down from wherever they were concealed. Well, he thought grimly, Tiberius wanted to find these bastards; now we have. He wondered briefly if Volusenus had been able to send a runner earlier than he had, but he doubted it. Besides that, from what he recalled of the map, the draw they were following to the east went deeper into the mountains before it turned back to the north, making it highly unlikely a messenger would reach the other Cohorts. The Third, the Fifth, the and Sixth were deployed about two miles to the east, while the Seventh, the Eighth, and the Ninth were about that distance, even farther east, and both of them were under the same orders to push to the north. If possible, once they penetrated into this rough country, they were to follow similar draws and ravines towards the west if they found them, in an attempt to drive the enemy into the center, where they would be surrounded. The fact that it was, at the very least, Porcinus’ and Volusenus’ Cohorts that were surrounded wasn’t lost on Porcinus, but he refused to think about it at the moment, since it didn’t help with the situation they were currently in. His fear wasn’t as much that the Varciani would defeat his men as his boys would finally just wear out. By the time he returned to his Century, Ovidius had already put the Century through five rotations, which he reported to Porcinus. The most rotations that Porcinus could ever remember going through was close to twenty, but he had been a Gregarius in Parthia, and it was one thing when you were a ranker and all you had to do was to shut off your mind and remember your training. When you were responsible for almost five hundred other souls, it was another matter entirely, and it was just one more worry for the Quartus Pilus Prior as he wondered how many more his boys had in them.
Publius Paperius had no idea why he was so good at moving undetected through any kind of terrain, but it was a great source of pride to him. While he didn’t spend much time thinking about it, he supposed it came from his early days, when it was just him, his sister, and mother. His father had either died or run off; over the years, Paperius heard so many different versions about the fate of the elder Paperius that he had long since given up ever knowing the truth. But that had meant that Paperius was the sole support for his family at the age of eight, and he was very proud of the fact that he had managed to do so. How he did it was another story, and was one he preferred not to think about. Still, he imagined that learning to move about the narrow streets and alleys of the Subura, sneaking into the insulae to steal whatever he could lay his hands on, had at least given him this skill that was so valuable now. Despite the danger of detection, Paperius moved swiftly, using every fallen log, clump of bushes, or mass of deadfall to give him cover from detection. He would dart from one form of cover to the other, while his eyes and, most importantly, his ears did their work. Only twice was he forced to go to ground, once when a small group of Varciani warriors came trotting across the slope, coming from the west, and Paperius assumed that these men were hurrying to join their comrades. The second time was when a pair of mounted barbarians, who Paperius decided had to be scouts assigned to look for the very kind of thing that he was doing, had paused for a moment just a matter of twenty paces up the slope from where he was squatting in the middle of what to the scouts looked like an impenetrable tangle of brambles and dead wood. Even with the danger, Paperius couldn’t stop himself from grinning as he thought what their reaction would be if they were informed that the very thing they were looking for was happening right under their noses, almost literally. Having long since learned the danger of actually trying to watch the pair, knowing that animals of every type could sense when there were eyes on them, instead Paperius listened and was rewarded by the sounds of a man relieving himself, while the other man continued with a running commentary that had first alerted Paperius to their approach. The commentary never stopped, and as soon as the other man was finished with his business, the pair continued moving down the slope at an angle in the general direction of where the Fourth and Second Cohorts were fighting for their collective lives. Once he deemed it safe, Paperius resumed his journey, but only after checking his belt to make sure that the tablet Porcinus had handed him was still snug and secure. It was true Paperius wasn’t very bright; however, he was smart enough to know that his friends were in desperate trouble, and they were all counting on him, so he resumed his quick pace. The easiest thing for him to do would have been to head west, parallel and above the ravine where his Cohort and the Second had branched off, until he came to the intersection with the main one where presumably Tiberius was still heading north. However, he somehow understood that while it would ensure that he wouldn’t get lost, it would also take a great deal more time than he was willing to spare, so he moved at an angle, heading roughly northwest. His one fear in doing so was that he might come upon the other ravine at a point ahead of Tiberius and his men, which would require him to either wait for them to come to him, or force him to head south, back in their direction. As it turned out, he didn’t have to worry; he had just finished picking his way around a mass of fallen trees and a bunch of boulders that looked to him as if some giant had just tossed a handful of sticks and pebbles on the ground, when he saw where the trees of the forest suddenly dropped away, and beyond the farthest edge was an open area. Despite the fact that the sun wasn’t shining because of the heavy cloud cover, it was nonetheless brighter, telling Paperius that he, in all likelihood, had run into the ravine that Tiberius and the First were following. In a matter of just a moment, he discovered he was right, and to his delight, he saw the churned mass of muddy ground that looked like a black ribbon, heading to the north, the telltale sign of a large body of men. Clapping his hands in delight, Paperius was genuinely happy, sure that he would get his message to someone higher ranking and smarter than he was, and they would come to help his friends. Sliding down the slope, he quickly determined that this ravine was quite a bit wider than the one his Cohort was in, so instead of having to struggle over ground that had been chopped and churned by the feet of the First Cohort and the hooves of all the cavalry and officers, he ran closer to the slope he had just descended and was able to make good progress. He hadn’t gone more than a stadia when, coming out of a gradual bend in the ravine as the watercourse that had formed it turned west, he saw that his vision had been blocked. Not more than three hundred paces ahead were the six riders that composed the rearguard of Tiberius’ force. He opened his mouth to shout, then realized with some chagrin that he was too far away, so he broke into a full run, only slowing down when he was certain he could be heard. Immediately after he began shouting, the riders wheeled their mounts, and with no discernible hesitation, kicked their horses to come galloping towards Paperius. It was only then that Paperius realized that he had forgotten the daily watchword. Fortunately, none of the cavalrymen thought he was a Varciani disguised as a Legionary, wearing a dead man’s uniform. After a brief conversation, the ranking man held his hand down and pulled Paperius up behind him, then turned and began at the fast trot to take his cargo to the officers. Paperius normally didn’t like horses; this time, he didn’t mind the ride and, in fact, he quite enjoyed it when they caught up with the boys of
the First Cohort, starting with the Sixth Century, most of the men knowing him at least by sight, and he waved at them as he passed. He had done it; he had delivered the message, and Publius Paperius couldn’t have been happier than at that moment.
“Do you think we should try to close the gap between us and Volusenus?”
Porcinus wasn’t sure who was the most surprised; himself for asking the question or Urso for being the man he asked. It was due to the fact that, during this fight at least, Porcinus had put away his antipathy and suspicion of his Pilus Posterior, acknowledging to himself that he was, in fact, an extremely experienced Centurion. And at this moment, Porcinus needed Urso because he wasn’t sure what to do. It was as if there were two separate battles going on, except now they were separated by more than three hundred paces. This was the result of two events; the first being that both Cohorts did essentially the same thing in closing the gaps between them to form one larger unit. Unfortunately, what Porcinus could now see was that he and Volusenus had gone in opposite directions in collapsing their Cohorts. Although Porcinus had taken the First to link up to the Second, and then the Third, it appeared very much as if Volusenus had, in essence, ordered his Centurions to come to him, meaning that now the two Cohorts and their respective problems were compounded by the extra distance between them. Once he recovered from his clear surprise, Urso considered the question with what looked to Porcinus like a great deal of care. Before he answered, he stood on a shield, looking to the east in the direction of the Second Cohort, once again oblivious to the fact that there were men trying to kill each other twenty paces in two directions, and that he was making himself a tempting target. However, for the reasons Porcinus assumed was to keep his men pinned down and not going for help, none of the archers that were just two hundred paces away, down by the Sixth Cohort, had made their way to this part of the fight. At least, he thought, not yet, although there was also the hope that was growing stronger that the Varciani archers were either conserving or, better yet, had run out of arrows. Urso used Porcinus’ shoulder to steady himself as he stretched up on his toes, still staring across the little more than a quarter mile of ground between the two Cohorts.
