Lost Republic

by Paul B. Thompson

  Two of the men dropped their spears and grabbed Julie. She screamed. Leigh ran up on them and threw one man aside before a third clubbed him across the shoulders with the shaft of his spear. Leigh’s vision went red. He fell to his knees. Julie screamed again when she saw her brother fall.

  France and Hans ran toward the screams. By the time they arrived, they saw the American teenagers being manhandled by a large group of strange men dressed like medieval foot soldiers. Hans skidded to a stop when he saw their steel helmets and armor. France blundered into his back, cursing in French at his companion’s sudden stop.

  “Schauen Sie!” Hans gasped. “Look!”

  They did, but the strangers saw them, too. Several fanned out and started after France and Hans.

  “Get away!” Julie cried. “Get help!” Leigh seemed stunned. He was being carried by the arms by two of the soldiers.

  “She’s right,” said Hans. “We’d better tell the others—”

  “We can’t leave them,” France protested. “What will happen to them if we go?”

  Hans thought of several things, none of them good. The men were rough looking, with dirty faces and long, matted hair sticking out from under their helmets.

  Back to back, Hans and France backed away as the soldiers advanced.

  “Can you fight?” France muttered.

  “Fight? I’ve never been in a fight in my life,” Hans replied.

  France abandoned any idea of heroics and bolted, dragging Hans along by his shirt. He almost stumbled over his own feet in surprise when he heard one of the soldiers declare, “Après les avoir!” (“After them!”).

  French? His accent was terrible, but why were their attackers speaking French?

  Hans asked no questions but ran as fast as he could. They dodged the soldiers trying to hem them in and broke free. For a while, they kept ahead of their pursuers, but they never lost them. It occurred to France the men weren’t trying very hard to catch them—they were following them. And he and Hans were leading them right to the beach, where the rest of the Carleton survivors waited unaware of this strange new peril.

  What else could they do? The boys ran until their chests ached. Ahead, the trees thinned, and then disappeared. It was midafternoon, judging by the sun, and the passengers and crew were still squatting in the sand, passively waiting the return of the scouts.

  “Alarm!” Hans shouted as he cleared the trees. “Alarm! Look out!” France joined in yelling warnings.

  The Irish footballers and the American navy men were first to respond. They formed a ragged line between the children and old people. Carleton crewmen joined them, along with fit and ready passengers like Kiran Trevedi, Jenny Hopkins, and the Chen brothers.

  Out of the trees, the soldiers halted, deterred by the numbers they faced. They formed close ranks with spears shouldered and stood off some distance. Hans and France rejoined the Carleton people. They gasped out their story, how Leigh and Julie were captured, how the strange men chased them, and how France heard at least one of them give orders in crude French.

  “French?” said Chief Steward Bernardi. “Are we on the coast of French Canada?”

  “Insanity,” said Gilligan, the footballer. “Nobody in Canada runs around wearing bassinets and carrying spears!”

  Jenny thought bassinets were something you put a baby in, and the men didn’t look like fatherly types.

  “Maybe we should rush ’em,” said Clarke, the American petty officer. “There are only ten or so of them and more than a hundred of us!”

  “Go right ahead,” said Bernardi. “While they’re busy spearing you, the rest of us can get them, yes?”

  In the end, they just stood there, fifty yards apart, watching each other. Before long, another quartet of soldiers emerged from the woods with Leigh and Julie. Brother and sister stumbled along, hands tied behind their backs.

  Cries went up from some of the Carleton people. Eleanor worked her way forward and demanded they do something to help the Morrisons. They had spears at their backs. If the Carleton people charged, Leigh and Julie might be dead before they ran five steps.

  The standoff continued until a column of men appeared out of the east, marching along the high side of the beach. With them were three men on horseback. The riders wore more armor—polished steel plates on their arms and legs, closed visors on their helmets. Pennants fluttered from their lance tips. They looked like extras from a movie about Joan of Arc or the Crusades, only there were no cameras, no soundtrack, and no audience.

  The Carleton survivors backed away from the oncoming men, concentrating into a tight circle. The soldiers who caught the Morrisons and chased Hans and France joined their comrades, dragging their captives with them.

  Gilligan and his teammates flexed their hands into fists. Clarke and his Navy buddies muttered tactical advice to each other in jargon no one else understood. Bernardi hung his head. He was a service professional, not a fighter. His men were game, but the chief steward was horrified by the thought of bloodshed, and said so.

  The soldiers stopped as one forty yards away. One man on horseback continued forward until he was quite close. He raised his visor. He had a young face, clean shaven, with expressive black eyes.

  “N’ayez pas peur! Je suis chevalier Armand de Sagesse. Vous êtes maintenant prisonniers du roi d’Ys!”

  Everyone looked at France, or Emile, or any of the other French speakers in the Carleton group.

  “What did he say?” Bernardi asked.

  “He’s crazy. He makes no sense,” Emile said, shaking his head.

  “He says his name is Sir Armand de Sagesse,” France said. “We are prisoners of the king of Ys—whatever that is.”

  “It’s a lost city,” said Emile. “A medieval city lost under the sea hundreds of years ago!”

  Jenny said, “A real place?”

  “No. Just a legend.”

  “Well, the ‘legend’ has sixty armed men behind him,” Clarke said in a low voice. “So I’m not calling him a liar.”

  “Rendre pacifiquement! Vous ne serez pas lésés!”

  “He says, surrender peacefully, and we won’t be harmed,” Emile added.

  “They always say that,” Trevedi said. “But what do we do?”

  Bernardi pushed through the crowd and presented himself to the chevalier de Sagesse, who sat haughtily on his horse six feet away. Remembering he didn’t speak French, he waved France forward to translate for him. The footballers and Navy men protested. Bernardi had no right to speak for them.

  France joined the chief steward. Up close, something smelled terrible. It wasn’t the horse, who was a fine, clean animal. It was the noble knight. He smelled like he had never bathed in his life.

  “Tell him, I want guarantees for these people.” Bernardi rubbed his sweaty hands together. “Tell him, we are unarmed, and are only here because our ship wrecked offshore. Tell him we’re peaceful—”

  France repeated the chief steward’s message. The chevalier’s lip curled in disgust.

  “Dommage! J’avais hâte d’un bon combat!”

  So saying, he lashed out with his ironclad foot, kicking Bernardi in the chest. The chief sprawled in the sand. When France helped him up, blood was running from his nose.

  Gilligan, Clarke, and the others shouted at the knight’s brutal treatment of Bernardi. In reply he lowered his lance and shouted a command to his troops. The soldiers broke ranks and jogged forward, spears and shields ready.

  This is madness, France thought, holding up the stunned steward. I’m about to be killed by medieval soldiers in the middle of the twenty-first century!

  The heavily armed men found it slow going through the beach sand. They were only halfway to the Carleton party when an arrow flicked through the air, striking the chevalier de Sagesse on his breastplate. There was a bright flash, a loud crack, and the smell of o
zone. The chevalier dropped his lance, threw up his hands, and fell to the ground. His horse collapsed after him. Astonished, France and Bernardi staggered back to their friends.

  The soldiers stopped short when their commander fell. They shouted among themselves, eyeing the Carleton people with fear and anger. Many threw down their spears and drew swords. Screams rose from the passengers. It looked like a massacre in the making.

  More arrows hissed in the air, sprouting in the sand ahead of the furious soldiers. They hesitated, throwing their small round shields up over their heads before coming on. The next volley of arrows arrived. Some found their way past the shields. More bangs and intense flashes, like cameras going off, and several soldiers were left motionless on the sand.

  At last the unseen archers appeared out of the pinewoods. They wore small metal helmets, light metal breastplates, and short kilts instead of the heavy trousers the French-speaking soldiers wore. They dashed out of the trees, aiming and loosing arrows at their foes just a hundred yards away. The soldiers shouted in alarm. They obviously knew who their enemy was. Packing close together, they held their shields high to ward off arrows. Two more knights on horseback trotted up, waving their lances and bellowing orders.

  “What the hell?” Clarke said for most everyone. “What the hell?”

  Behind the two dozen or so archers came more men—foot soldiers in gray armor and big, pot-shaped helmets with flaring neck guards. They carried large rectangular shields trimmed in brass. Short swords gleamed in their hands.

  “Wahnsinn!” Hans Bachmann declared. “Insanity.” The newcomers looked for all the world like Roman legionnaires.

  Unarmed and helpless, the Carleton people shrank from both sides. The legionnaires deployed in close formation with their archers out front. The medieval French soldiers clustered together nervously. They had no bows, and they had seen the strangely powerful effect the arrows had.

  A mounted officer in a gilded helmet appeared among the Romans. He rode out front of his men, ignoring the cowering Carleton survivors.

  He boomed, “Abscede! Vos es in Res publica tractus!”

  “Don’t ask me—that’s not French!” Emile said to all inquiring eyes.

  Hans said, “It’s Latin, I think. He’s telling the French to go away.”

  “I could have told you that,” said Gilligan.

  One of the knights replied in an insolent tone. At that, the Romans advanced. Their archers showered the French with arrows. They stood up under the fire until a second knight was felled. With that, the last rider ordered his men away. He trotted off, peering nervously over his shoulder. His men paused long enough to pick up the bodies of the chevalier de Sagesse and the other knight and backed away in a tight mass, leaving several of their comrades sprawled on the beach.

  Like a many-legged machine, the legionnaires churned past the amazed Carleton castaways. At a stately pace, they chased the retreating medieval soldiers until they were out of sight. The officer and a squad of twenty men and twenty archers remained.

  He rode up quite close to the Carleton survivors. When he removed his helmet, they saw he was a rather rugged, handsome man of forty, clean-shaven, with short, curly gray hair.

  Clearing his throat, he said, “Vos es iam captus of Latium Res publica. Ego sum Titus Macrinus, tribus of XVII Legio. Vos mos pareo mihi, quod totus ero puteus.”

  Hans struggled to understand. One of the Irish team members, Shannon, knew some Latin, too. Together, they pieced together what the officer said.

  “We’re prisoners,” Hans said unsteadily.

  “Of the Latium Republic—whatever that is,” Shannon added.

  “His name is Titus Macrinus. We won’t be harmed if we do as he says.”

  “Damned if we will!” said one of the Navy men. “Bunch of geeks running around playing Roman! Who do they think they are?”

  Just then, two legionnaires dragged a fallen French soldier past by his heels. His face was dead white save for a bright red welt in the center of his forehead where the arrow struck. It didn’t penetrate his skull but killed him by touch alone.

  “I think they’ve made their point,” said Kiran Trevedi. “We’d better do as they say.”

  Everyone got up. Mrs. Ellis, whose lifter chair was not working, had to be carried. Mr. Chen and one of the Navy men carried her in their arms, fireman-style.

  They formed a long double line, flanked on either side by stern legionnaires. Titus Macrinus sat on his horse, watching the Carleton people file past with an appraising eye. Linh Prudhomme, like everyone, wondered why they were being held prisoner. As she passed the mounted officer, their eyes met.

  Who was he, this mature man in the garb of an ancient Roman tribune? An actor? Some kind of cultist, or a crazy survivalist? Linh had read about people who secluded themselves in some remote part of the world in order to live according to the deranged rules of a cult. She’d never heard of anyone choosing to live like Romans—or medieval Frenchmen, either.

  He had a cool, measured glance. She wanted to speak up, to say, “Stop this, people have gotten hurt. What kind of game are you playing?” But she didn’t. Looking into those exacting gray eyes, Linh realized something surprising and really terrifying.

  Titus Macrinus was not a cultist or an actor. He believed he was just as he appeared to be—an officer in the army of ancient Rome.

  Chapter 10

  Not far away, Julie Morrison was flat on the sand, keeping her head down. One of her captors shoved her there roughly, and then he ran to join his comrades when the other party of armed men turned up. Leigh was beside her, still loopy from the blow he’d received. Poor guy, first he got a black eye when the ship ran aground, then he got whacked with the biggest baseball bat Julie had ever seen. He was not having a good couple of days.

  There was a lot of noise, shouting and the clatter of metal, then the sound—and smell—of the armored men faded. Julie dared to lift her face from the sand. To her relief, the dirty soldiers were gone. Her joy was short-lived. Her companions from the wrecked ship were marching away, guarded by a bunch of guys in short skirts with more funny helmets on their heads.

  “Hey,” she said, shaking Leigh. “Hey, get up!” He just grunted.

  Julie grabbed handfuls of his shirt in both hands and hauled him to a sitting position.

  “Get up, quarterback! The team needs you!”

  “Give it a rest, will ya?” he groaned.

  “We’re leaving! You want to spend the rest of your life on this ugly beach? Get up!”

  “Leave me ’lone . . .”

  Julie shook Leigh as hard as she could. She was not very big or strong, but she was mad. Her big brother was not giving up.

  She kicked him as hard as she could, right in the butt. Julie was wearing nylon Snappers, trendy deck shoes, so the blow hurt her toes as much as it hurt Leigh.

  He yelled. Some of the Roman types heard him and pointed the pair out to Titus Macrinus. At his command, two archers trotted over, pointing drawn bows at them and jabbering in some language Julie didn’t understand.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, warding off the two bowmen with swats of her hands. “Don’t stick those things in my face!”

  Leigh’s head cleared enough to see the danger they were in. He staggered to his feet.

  “Don’t shoot!” he said. “We’ll come.” To his angry sister he hissed, “Shut up, dingy, before they put holes in us!”

  “Dingy” was a childish insult at their house. Julie slapped Leigh smartly across the face. The archers grinned and prodded them toward the others.

  They fell into line with Eleanor and Emile.

  “What is this, Mardi Gras?” asked Julie. Taking turns, Eleanor and Emile tried to explain the confrontation on the beach and how the “Romans” had driven off the “French.”

  “This is like one of those geeky Your/World games y
ou used to play five or six years ago,” Julie said. Wincing from his hurts, Leigh only nodded.

  They trudged through the pines closely watched by their captors. France studied them as they went. The soldiers were all mature men, ranging he guessed from their late twenties to their mid thirties. He recognized the centurion, who was sort of like a sergeant, by the fact the plume on his helmet ran crosswise, while Titus Macrinus’s crest ran front to back. France was pleased he remembered so much about Roman soldiers. It all came from watching that series on the BBC ten years ago.

  The soldiers wore breastplates, helmets, and metal plates on their shins. Their kilts came down halfway on their thighs, with strips of thick brown leather covering what looked like white cotton underneath. Each man carried a sword, knife, and shield. The archers wore less armor and were generally more lightly clothed. They didn’t speak among themselves. Only Titus and the centurion spoke when they gave their troops orders.

  Though the woods broke up the soldiers’ line, there was not enough cover for the Carleton party to break and run. There were too many children and elderly people to worry about. Any attempt to escape might result in a bloodbath.

  Before long they reached the same road France and Hans had found. Titus guided his horse to the side of the path and pointed east. The centurion snapped an order, and everyone filed off to the left.

  It was late afternoon. None of the Carleton people had eaten or had any water since first arriving in this crazy place. Kids began to whine they were hungry and thirsty. The complaints became general. The column of prisoners slowed and stopped.

  Titus rode up. What is this delay? Hans understood him to ask.

  “Nos es ieiunium,” he stammered, trying desperately to remember his vocabulary from Latin Level VII. “We are hungry. How did you say ‘thirsty’? Nos es . . . es . . .”

  “Siccus?” Shannon suggested.

  “Nos es siccus!” Hans declared.