Dragons and Romans

by William David Ellis

  ****

  Asdrubal heard the unexpected sound of the Roman bombs going off and saw his troops move into the trap. He didn’t see many come out. When the flames in the room died back, he walked among the charred remains of his soldiers and the few Romans that had been killed. He raised an eyebrow at the smoke-stained face of a surviving soldier who handed him the fragments of a pot bomb. He didn’t utter a word, but inwardly he was seething. He expected a few causalities, but he was disturbed to find the few belonged to the Romans and the many to his soldiers.

  Asdrubal sneered as he noticed the smoldering body of Yoroah hopelessly attempting to shield the blackened body of wife. Whether the purpose of the Romans had been to rescue Yoroah’s wife or sabotage the child sacrifice, they had failed on both accounts. As a matter of fact, because of that failure, he would push the agenda forward. The sooner it happened, the better. The burning of Carthage’s infants would still coincide with the full moon, and while hours didn’t matter to the moon, it might to the Romans, so he called for the children.

  Chapter Eight

  Regulus walked out of his tent, acknowledged the posted guard, and looked at the massive walls of Carthage that withstood the might of his army. The sun had set a couple of hours ago, and the full moon lit the sky. He watched as a small cloud swiftly moved across its face. The wind was blowing briskly tonight, and it sent a shiver down his spine. The desert baked him in the day and froze him at night, and tonight it was hard at work earning its miserable reputation.

  Han Xing’s combat group had not reported back yet, and although they were still in the window of time allotted for the mission, his commander instinct told him something was wrong. So, he paced and worried and stared at the huge outer walls that lay before him. Carthage was hemmed in, but her navy still managed to break the Roman blockade on occasion and supply the city, so the siege could go on indefinitely. He could grow old camped outside this wicked place!

  Regulus was pursuing that thought when he heard coming from behind those grim walls a solitary drum beat. He listened for a few moments and heard the eerie wail of a Carthaginian trumpet. It was a call to death, echoed by wails, and agonizing cries of grief, that went on and on through the night. His soldiers also heard them. Regulus watched while across the camp, the sentry fires of his men grew brighter as more wood was placed on them. Lamps began light throughout the camp. His men were up, listening to the death cries of the only good people in Carthage as the priest of Baal slaughtered and burned the innocents of the city.

  ****

  In the tunnel under Carthage

  Han Xing had told Decemus he could expect no help, but the wise general had had already arranged for rescue. It would just be without Decemus’ knowledge, and therefore without any Carthaginian priest finding out about it if Decemus or one of his soldiers were captured.

  So, a second team of specially trained soldiers were sent in the dark tunnels an hour after Decemus’ team left. They followed with dogs, trained to keep from barking—small terriers who knew the scent of Decemus’ team and could be trusted to follow their trail even through the damp of the tunnels.

  ****

  Decemus wheezed as he staggered through the dark tunnel. The strain of shouldering the weight of another soldier who could barely stand, combined with his own wounds, quickly sapped his strength. The fear of a Carthaginian team following them down the tunnels added brutal motivation to his steps, but even that could not last forever. Every few minutes he would pant for air and call a halt for his maimed entourage. As they leaned against each other and the damp, moldy walls of the tunnels, they strained listening for the sounds of soldiers that were probably chasing them, and for the rescue team they prayed was coming for them.

  Decemus knew the Chinese general could not risk having the sewers of Carthage flooded, and other Romans trapped in the deluge. But Decemus also knew Han Xing was very concerned for his troop’s welfare and would move heaven and earth, and a lot of Roman butts, to ensure Decemus’ team had the best chance of survival. So Decemus suspected that even though Han Xing had told him he could not risk a backup unit, he would.

  As they leaned against the wall in the dim light of their last flickering torch, Decemus noticed the young woman and her child that his team had rescued. The baby was wrapped in a sling close to her bloody chest, while both her arms wrapped around a soldier who struggled to stay conscious. Decemus looked at her and asked, “Do you speak the Roman language?”

  She stared back at him, blinked, and then her eyes focused, and she answered, “Some. I understand more than I speak.”

  “Thank you for what you are doing. He wouldn’t have made it this far without you,” Decemus said motioning toward the man leaning on Miriam.

  She looked at Decemus. “And, I and my child would be burning embers if you had not rescued us.”

  He nodded, and then his attention was drawn to the last torch struggling to stay lit. It flickered. Suddenly, they were immersed in thick darkness.

  The collective groans of the wounded men seemed to amplify in the dark. Decemus heard the young woman shuffle and then saw a spark, then another, and then the extremely faint light of a small candle. It moved toward him, and he realized she was handing it to him. He gently took it from her. “We have to keep moving,” he ordered. With one foot in front of the other, the team limped forward.

  An agonizing hour later, Decemus was done. The burden of both the arrow still embedded in his thigh and the weight of the semi-conscious man he shouldered had taken their toll. He didn’t stop as much as he just collapsed. The soldier he carried was like dead weight. The other member of their team had tried to help as much as he could, but his arm was broken and splintered with flechettes that had embedded in his right side. Every time he touched someone or tried to help hold them up, they rubbed against an open wound or broken bone, causing him to scream. Miriam’s candle had managed to survive thus far, but even it threatened to abandon them at any moment.

  Finally, Decemus and then Miriam slid down the damp wall of the Carthaginian tunnel. Only the rasping sound of breathing and weary attempts to stifle moans broke the gloom. Decemus had no idea how long they lay there. Then he heard the young woman, “Did you hear that?” She whispered loud enough to echo. He strained his ears, then realized he would hear better with an ear to the dark wall. Moments later he heard it. The sound of water rapidly splashing, drawing nearer. In his clouded state, he cringed, thinking the Carthaginians were coming. Then he realized the sounds were coming from the tunnel in front of them, not behind them. A sigh of relief broke from him, and then he heard the excited whimper of one of the Roman terriers. Seconds later, he felt the dog jump on his chest and start licking his face.

  The two contuberniums Han Xing had sent found Decemus and Miriam and the rest of the wounded survivors literally crawling down the filthy sewers they had used to access the Carthaginian sacrificial hall. They gathered them up and hauled them directly to the field hospital.

  Chapter Nine

  As the night wore on and the moon rose to its zenith, the screams from the city continued—cries of agony mixed with rage. A portion of the night sky over Carthage lit up from the large bonfire. Regulus stood watching it from the hills adjacent to the city, which gave him an overlook, but not any clear detail. The bonfire appeared to be in the heart of the city, but it also appeared to be contained, not spreading, just seething, if such a thing could be applied to a fire. Regulus thought it could.

  He had a hard time at first, logically accepting that what he witnessed and listened to in that awful night could call forth anything, but his heart knew things hidden from his mind. A warrior, especially one who experienced the terror of battle and had been deployed in enemy territory over a long period, tended to develop an instinct that prepared and warned him. Tonight, Regulus’ instincts shouted at him, as he sensed something unnatural—a tangible darkness, substantive like a dark blanket, a spiritual fog. The moon still shone brightly, but Regulus also noticed i
t gradually turned red. He struggled with the idea of ordering the army to withdraw a few hundred yards but could give no reason for it, so he listened to his head and not his heart and wished a hundred times in the days to come that he had not.

  As Regulus watched, he felt the wind change, and this time it was not chilly, not at all. In the middle of the night, it suddenly became warm, like the wind from a campfire blown across your face when you got too close. It also picked up strength, the tents of his army, began to whip, along with dust and small dirt devils. He heard a cry among his men, shouts of soldiers, running for the dismal cover of their wind-whipped tents. The cries were frightened and mixed with calls to the Roman gods.

  And then he saw it. A whirlwind had formed on top of the walls of Carthage. In the reddish glow of the moon, he could see the windy swirl had lightning and fire flashing in its middle, silhouetting a dark figure forming in streaks of flame circling it.

  Speechless, his mouth stood open, unable to speak or cry out like his men, fascinated by the remarkable sight. It only lasted a few minutes.

  Regulus realized something was breaking out, stepping through a door, coming for him. A struggle was beginning. Something had entered the world through the bloody burning door the high priest’s sacrifice had opened. A dark champion had been called forth and was about to surge over him, unseen, and unidentified, but without a doubt arrayed against him.

  Regulus was not a stranger to fear, at least natural fear. This, on the other hand, was alien, not draped in the dark evils of humanity. This force was cowled in something else, something evil, angry, and otherly. Regulus gripped his fists and shook his head. He could not give way to this. If it killed him, that was one thing, but for it to beat him before he ever faced it was another, and he was not about to let that happen. He had to stand. He might do it trembling violently, but he would do it, nonetheless. Grabbing his courage and forcing it back in his heart, he called for the cornum, the Roman trumpet.

  He yelled at the junior officer always close by. Trying to head off the panic rising in his men, he ordered the trumpeter to sound a tactical retreat.

  As the blast reverberated across his army, every soldier ran to his place, grabbed his shield, and formed ranks. Some soldiers marched to the rear as others formed up to protect the retreat. Regulus focused his shield bearers on the howling winds centered on the city walls. He also signaled for his catapults to be ready. Within ten minutes, the army began to step back from the wall, shielded by the ballistae that waited, grimly focused. Regulus sensed the retreat was too slow. As efficient and quick as they were, it was not enough. The flaming tornado pulsed alive, growing rapidly. Regulus watched his army slipping away into the night like a dark tide. But they moved too slow. He grit his teeth. From where he stood, he could see the flames coalescing, joining together. The spectacle could not be real. He must be having a nightmare or slipping into madness. But there he stood watching what he would not have believed had he not seen it, and probably would not believe in later years if he survived it.

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  A few minutes earlier at the sacrificial altar in Carthage

  Asdrubal was drunk with the power of the forces he was releasing and with the opium he had consumed to numb him for the ritual. He had presided over the sacrifice of infants before, but never this many for this long. He had prepared himself earlier for the slaughter by entering into the abyss of darkness, deeper than for previous events. The devils, who acted as his guides, provided him access and assisted his descent, but the darkness was not deep enough to hide him from the cries of the innocents and the anguish of their parents. In the past, he had been able to hide beneath its filthy covers, to remove his soul from the foulness and guilt of what his religion demanded. But this time the flood was overwhelming, and afterward, the usual ascent into humanity was not available to him. He just kept sinking and sinking until the cries he heard were not the cries of the children, but his own. He did not know the deeper magic and hidden secrets as well as he thought.

  Asdrubal, like others of his kind who worshipped the darkness and its princes, did not know that when you release something from the pit, something or someone else has to take its place. The souls of the innocents could not enter that pit; they immediately ascended into a light that neither Asdrubal nor the lords of the abyss could look upon, which narrowed the available options. As he fell screaming and jerking, his voice broken by the power of his screams, chained by the very blood he had sacrificed, something else arose. It took his flesh, his place, his power. Its goal was the manipulation and control of the serpent that the original Asdrubal’s sacrifice was conjuring. The ascending demon was a puppet master, and it would hold the strings of the dark serpent that would perch upon the walls of Carthage.

  The new Asdrubal shivered, took a breath and smiled. He watched the flames continue to devour, and the line of parents carrying their children for the last time, move slowly toward the brazen ovens of the altar—some crying, others mute in shock, traumatized by the ritual they were condemned to. He laughed, rose from his throne, and at the amazement of all his attendants and lesser priests, walked into the flames. He threw his head back into the night and cried out in a tongue dead before Atlantis sunk beneath the waves.

  “Come forth!” As he did so, the sky began to swirl and flames danced in circles of flickering light, high over the crowds’ heads. Lightning flashed, and high on the walls of Carthage a dragon broke out of the darkness and stepped into the whirlwind. The people who were already either intoxicated with the dark energy that had been released or broken and weeping, choking back grief that chained them to their guilt and powerlessness, were shocked into silence. They listened but could not grasp what they heard, as the dragon’s deafening crocodile-like roar slammed against the Roman army that surrounded their city. They heard the Roman soldiers’ pathetic screams of terror as they bent like reeds against a thunderstorm. Many of the Carthaginians, those dominated by the dark flood that had been released, joined their high priest in mocking laughter. Others, those that grieved their dead children, shivered in cold fear.

  ****

  The darkness blinked, and a thought appeared, dimly aware, and reptilian. Hunger, anger, and anguish crowded the beast’s mind clinging to oblivion, rebelling at being ripped out of it into the harsh light of life. His claws raked the air as he struggled for breath, taking in the first air he had breathed in 30 million years. At first, his breath stung, cutting his lungs. He roared, and the earth trembled. No lion’s roar, no elephant’s trumpet, this wild scream of rage, mixed with the pain of birth and salted with a growing hunger, struck fear into every living thing that heard it. Ten miles away, birds awoke, panthers screamed and ran into the night, wolves howled and scampered in fear. The only things that rose up and moved their heads instinctively reaching for their master were the serpents. The creature’s screech, like broken, bitter cymbals, many times louder than an eagle’s cry, thundered from the walls of Carthage. Its giant serpent eyes glared across the sloping hills before it as its nostrils twitched, exhaling smoke from the cauldrons of a fiery belly. It sniffed and inhaled fear, and sweat, and meat. Its belly rumbled hungrily as prey lay before it. The dragon shook himself, bristling his scales as he preened his giant wings, birthing flames that ripped him from his ancient sleep, dropped like water from a quivering dog. He peered through the night, focusing malicious, slanted eyes on the dim glare of a thousand Roman campfires huddled in the moonlight.

  ****

  Regulus saw the creature rise and knew at once that a legend—a beast from the stories his grandfather told him and his brothers around the dying embers of his family hearth—had come to life, summoned by the lives of the innocents of Carthage. The priest of Carthage had summoned a dragon, a serpent drawn from the mythology of a thousand tribes and civilizations, so terrible that its memory survived the ages.

  He also knew it as a weapon aimed at his army. At first, he stood paralyzed and terrified of the demon that screamed defiantly before
him. Then, like a diver rising from a frozen river into the air, he gasped, shook himself and began to give orders. Regulus, the soul of his army, the strength and will of his men, had come to himself, and then he came to them. He ordered his trumpeter to signal the catapults, to fire as soon as the monster was in range.

  The ballistae Regulus’ troops aimed at the beast were made of wooden frames held together with iron plates and nails. The main stand had a slider on the top, into which were loaded steel-capped arrows or stone shot. Attached to this, at the back, was a pair of winches. The winches twisted the taut springs, storing the energy to fire the projectiles. The ballista was a highly accurate weapon (there were many accounts of single soldiers being picked off by ballista operators), and if its operator could be convinced to compromise its accuracy for range, it could reach out and touch at a very long distance. The practical range varied on the size of the ballista and the velocity of the wind. Two hundred yards was average, and five hundred yards possible.