The square the men had formed was several men deep. The men on the inside of the square had passed their shields forward, and the men in the front rank laid those shields down on the ground on the four sides of the formation, so that each front ranker would retain his own shield in his hand, while having one or more shields at his feet. When the creatures drew near, their steps on to the grounded shields would be clumsy and slow, as all their movements were clumsy and slow. They almost always stumbled, and the front rankers would strike great blows at them as they struggled to rise.
“Like the river…” Radamyntos replied. “Like the river!”[99] He then shouted out to his comrades once again. “You lot aren’t as stupid as you look! You actually can learn a trick once in a while!”
After a brief interval, the creatures were all dispatched. In daylight, they were much less intimidating than they had been in the dark of night. They were not much of a threat at all, as long as a sufficient force was brought against them. If they could not greatly outnumber their victims, they were easily overborne. I had great concern for what they could still do to unarmed peasants and tenants at scattered farms, and what they might do if loosed within a city, but I had very little fear for my men.
I did not note the figures of Rufus or his wife among the many lemures destroyed by the square, though I kept an eye for them. If they had been taken by the curse like the unlucky Pacilus or Florus, they had not, it seemed, remained to try to force their way back into their home. Two large white Molossians, however, danced up and down the lane, barking at the Iazyges and sniffing at the dead. These I took to be the dogs Rufus had told me about, arriving back at home too late to be useful. The shepherds the dogs had served were probably stalking the fields as corpse-puppets somewhere even now, if they were not among the hapless creatures now lying hacked to pieces in the grass and among the wagon-ruts.
The square broke up and the troopers resumed their advance to the villa. When they drew close I began to pick out individual faces. The detachment was led by Inarmazos, whom I recognized quite easily. I had known him even longer than I had known Radamyntos. He was a strong, stout fellow with a face covered in scars – just the sort of man to have around on such a morning.
“What news, Inarmazos?” I hailed him.
“Dux,” he saluted me, a little sloppily. Fatigue from a night that no doubt matched ours was apparent in his ragged motions. “We…amazed…you alive.” Despite his long ser-vice, his camp-Latin was much more broken than that of Radamyntos. Sometimes the toughest ones never quite tame their own tongues. “You not come back, and the groaning ones come to camp instead…”
I could easily imagine what they had thought. “How is the camp?”
“Good, good,” he nodded. “The enemy…stupid. Not mass at gate, but walk up to…pit and palisade…stand there, get killed.” He shrugged. “If killed right word.”
“What new deployments have been made?”
“The camp followers were brought inside the palisade. Our turma and supporting light cavalry were ordered to search the road for you, through this position.” Inarmazos was more fluent when discussing specific operations, and his speech could slide into ruts in the road. “All patrols were withdrawn and market parties cancelled.”
The actions taken by Decimus Valerius while in temporary command were commendable. Consolidation of forces was the appropriate response to an unknown and novel threat in the absence of the overall commander. The force put at risk to search for me was acceptably small. I would like to officially note the excellent performance of the tribune Decimus Valerius under these trying circumstances.[100]
“Where are the light cavalry you spoke of?” I inquired.
“Scouting the road ahead. With orders to observe, but not to engage unless necessary. They should return very soon.”
This was to our advantage. While we awaited the return of the scouts I considered how best to proceed.
EIGHT
The scouts arrived back at the villa, coming d0wn the track in a rush of brown leaves thrown up by their mounts. To our great felicity they brought with them my own horse and that of Radamyntos, which they had recovered during the night.
Their report was what I expected: the dead were on the road, in decreasing numbers as one proceeded to the east. They attacked anyone who they came across, and were not put off by displays of force. They moved slowly, and had no chance of catching up to a horse, or even a running man – but this did not discourage them from pursuing both. All of this, of course, they related in a jumble of allusions to nameless phantoms of the deserts and mountains of their homeland[101]; it took me some pains to distinguish genuine reports of what they had seen from the echoes of the cradle-stories of the Mauri[102] that had no doubt filled their ears all through the night.
I gave the scouts new orders, and put them into service as messengers. I commanded them to ride with all possible speed along the road to bring news to the forces I had ordered back to Lutetia. They were in my name to order those forces to double back and return in two columns, one along the roadway and one through the mixed forest and open country to the north. They were in this way to cover as much terrain as possible on the north bank of the river, sweeping up and putting down the lemures as they came, taking care that none should escape to threaten the more populous lands to the east and northeast. Although I had no passports to give them, I ordered the scouts to seize all that they might need, on my authority, from the mansiones and mutationes[103] they passed along the way, and to compel the soldiery there to join them. They also were to drive before them any travelers they found, as well as any they might find at the inns, along with any prostitutes or rogues who were there; any who refused to flee the advance of the lemures they were to slay, taking care to separate their heads from their bodies before leaving them behind. Any defiant wayfarers they left in their wake would feed the growth of the army of the dead, just as fat peasant granaries would have fed an advancing army of the living; that left us with no choice but to slay those who would not leave, exactly as one would burn the granaries to deny them to the enemy.
These were difficult orders for auxiliary troops, and I knew I asking a great deal of these men. For a provincial, entering an official station with no passport and with a story only a madman or a witch would concoct was a frightening prospect. I was sure most of them would rather stay here among the terror of the dead instead. I dispatched them nonetheless; the task of pacification before me here required all the forces that could be gathered.
The Iazyges I had bring up and water their animals. Once remounted, they were to ac-company me back to the camp. I insisted that a horse be found for the German, as well; even though he was as little accustomed to riding as any slave might be, he made his way with us as best he could.
We laughed among ourselves on the road, as men will when they ride away from some skirmish they have lately survived. Under the bronze sunlight the black woods from which the first monsters had sprung upon us were now dappled in the red and gold color common to the season in this district of Gaul. Cleaved and broken bodies still littered the road near where the unlucky Florus had been taken, but other than that grotesque tableau there was little evidence of the night’s horrors to be seen. Even the poor huts of the tenants of Rufus were scarcely disturbed, although the tenants were notably now absent.
The good cheer of the morning darkened somewhat as we approached the hill of crosses by the thirteenth milestone. Even the rays of the run itself sickened and became pallid as the bulk of the hill reared up before us. Despite my haste to return to camp, I wanted to examine the bodies we had left to rot on their crosses, to see if any knowledge could be gleaned from them. The Iazyges – wise men – had avoided the hill as they passed it during the night, and could provide not provide me with any report.
The hillside should have been as grim and still as a tomb on the roadside[104] in winter, but it instead writhed like a mound of carrion covered in maggots. The crucified dead had awakened alon
g with the buried dead and the newly slain. They struggled to be free of the ropes and spikes that bound them to the pali. Their broken legs twisted in impossible directions beneath them against the wood. Since they were not restricted in their movements by the pains that living men would have suffered on the cross, one or two of them had even managed to pull a hand free; one had freed his arm by leaving his hand behind with the spike. Their moans rang over our heads like the song of a flock of monstrous birds.
The old man had not been spared by his own curse. His corpse danced on the cross, jerked about by the strings held by the lemures, like all the rest. I suspected that the old man’s corpse might be a focus of the god’s power, and that even though the morning had not banished the curse, disposing of the old man once more might do so. I ordered Inarmazos to see to him. The position of the old man on the cross made this awkward, and Inarmazos did not strike true all at once; but after a few false strikes of the contus into the old man’s side and chest Inarmazos was able to strike him cleanly through the windpipe, and with a twist of the spear was able to lift the old man’s head off his neck. He strode along the hillside holding the head aloft like a bloody standard or eagle. I smiled sadly, thinking of Pacilus – who certainly would have quoted Euripides for us at such a sight.[105]
We watched and waited expectantly for some moments. I do not know what we expected to see, but we did not see it. There was no flash of lightning, no unearthly cries as lemures were driven from the bodies of their hapless victims, no jeweled smoke as the god returned to the heavens. There was simply nothing. The destruction of the old man had no effect on the others; the dead on their crosses continued to struggle and moan. Whatever the old man had unleashed was greater than him, and survived him. Another small hope left me, and we descended the hill once more and returned to the road.
NINE
The camp was a square that had been laid out on gently sloping land south of the road. The space here between the road and the river was so narrow that the camp very nearly filled it. Originally it had been built for a much larger force that included the units the scouts were now trying to recall. So many gaps had been opened in the line of tribune tents along the via principalis[106] and in the blocks of conturbernia[107] tents in the sections given over to the centuries when I had divided our forces that on my departure the morning before the camp had looked like the pate of a balding man. But balding man or not, I longed for a sight of it that morning the way one would long for the beautiful face of a lover.
We made our way all the way to the tenth milestone without challenge or disturbance. The Iazyges and the scouts had cleared the road of the dead quite effectively as they had searched for me through the night. I knew the features of the local country well now, having spent some days in the vicinity. When we passed through a narrow neck of open land between two folds of wood that came close to the road, I knew that once we cleared the trees the camp would be visible on the left. My heart rose as we covered the last few stadia. But even we rode through the gap and as the tree line withdrew towards the river on our left, I could tell that something was wrong.
Based on the report I had received from Inarmazos, I knew that the lemures had attacked the camp during the night – but he had described the attacks as coming piecemeal, with the monsters attacking the palisade one or two at a time. I expected to see the dead in the open area around the camp, and even anticipated that we might be forced to fight some small number of them as we made our way to the gate. But as the camp first came into view, my immediate impression was of far too much movement outside the palisade, concentrated much too heavily near the porta praetoria.[108] At this distance my eyes strained to pick out individual figures, and to determine the overall tactical situation.
Radamyntos and Inarmazos, being younger men, were somewhat sharper-sighted than me. They could already see what was happening, and what they saw shocked them into action; without orders, they heeled their horses forward sharply, dashing toward the gate. The remaining troopers could not resist the impulse to join the charge of the decurions and were swept forward as well. I was ignored when I shouted for them to stop.[109] With no other alternative, I spurred my horse to follow them.
As we drew closer I could see the gate more clearly. The lemures there were thick as the fallen leaves upon the road. I quickly counted tens[110], and estimated at least two hundred of the corpse-puppets outside the gate. Even more alarmingly, the gate was open, and there was a struggle inside the camp. A few of the dead looked to be the original rebels, who could be identified by the mud of their brief burial that still marked them. A larger number, seemingly folk of the countryside, were marred by the wounds wrought by an attack of the creatures – terrible bites to the face, limbs or extremities gnawed and torn away. And some of the dead – too many, enough to make my blood run cold – bore the arms and armor of my own men.
The Iazyges charged into the rear of the creatures in front of the gate like a giant steel hammer striking an anvil made of limp flesh. The monsters closest to them crumpled into a mass of tangled and broken limbs. The horses trampled many; others were skewered like sausages on the long Sarmatian spears.
But the power of the charge was quickly blunted.
One of the most powerful weapons brought to bear by cavalry is the fear it strikes into the heart of the enemy; and here was a foe without the wit to feel fear. A force of living men caught in the rear by such a charge would have instantly broken and fled; the force we faced would not break, but had to be utterly destroyed. And the charge of the Iazyges was ill suited to such a task. Spear strikes did not deliver the type of wound needed to destroy one of the monsters. Trampling might crush an arm or break a leg or the back – but the gnawing horrors then merely crawled, and continued to attack. The horses, steady enough during the charge, began to panic as the crushed and shattered monsters writhed like maggots under their hooves. I saw one horse stumble and spill its rider; the lemures pulled down another and swarmed over him as he screamed to his fellows for aid. Even armored as they were, with no momentum the troopers were vulnerable; the longer they floundered in a disordered melee, the worse their predicament would become.
I slid from my horse roughly, almost losing my footing in my haste to dismount. The German appeared beside me; he had enough sense to know that he was no cavalry-man, and had made his approach to the gate on foot. “We’ve got to pull them out!” I shouted, as much to myself as to him.
Waving my sword in the air, I cried out, “A line! A line!” again and again, in a voice pitched high to be heard above the clamor of the fight. I ran to and fro amid those Iazyges who had been near the back of the turmae and were still unengaged, pushing and urging them back. One or two heeded me and dismounted; others saw their example, and joined them. Slowly a short line took shape. The German danced around the outskirts of the mass of fighters like a forum clown, leaping into the air and clapping his hands over his head; whenever he got the attention of one of our men through this device, he frantically pointed to me and to the line. And in this way, bit by bit, we pulled the troopers out, and got them into a sword line.
As more and more troopers extracted themselves and joined the line, those who remained behind found themselves more and more outnumbered by the creatures. Those who had led the charge were naturally left worst off of all. I cursed as I saw Inarmazos pulled down. He disappeared beneath a pile of bodies, slashing with his sword the whole time. He rose once, but was borne down again quickly. Radamyntos was more fortunate. He was fighting his way back to the line on foot, when I saw him reverse direction and push his way out of the melee on the other edge, just to the north of the gate; he had no doubt seen that he could reach safety more easily on that side than he could by trying to retreat the way he came.
The struggle went on for some time, but more profitably once some order had been made. Our comrades fought their way out the gate, and the monsters were caught between our line and their advance like olives between the basin and the grinding-st
ones.[111] The hardest to put down were those legionaries who had fallen and joined with the cursed dead. Many of them still wore helmets and armor that provided good protection against attacks directed at the head and neck. I notched the sword of Rufus against the neck plate of a bloodless infantryman; the shock of it nearly broke my wrist. My next strike caught metal as well, and the blade broke near the shoulders. Deprived of a weapon, I withdrew behind the line, and watched the remainder of the fight. I cannot say that I commanded, for the destruction of the rest of the corpse-puppets was mere butchery that required only encouragement and not direction.
When the men from the camp reached our line I saw that Decimus Valerius had led them out in person. I hailed him, and praised him for his courage. He had a fire burning in his eyes that did not fade even now that the fight was won. As I walked with him back to the gate, he related how the camp, so secure the night before when the scouts had been dispatched, had erupted into chaos less than an hour ago with the sudden appearance of large numbers of the creatures inside the gate. Not knowing that the bites of the monsters imparted cursed and fatal wounds, Valerius had brought many lightly wounded men inside the palisade, and the story of Pacilus had played itself out scores of times over. I could not blame him for this; the fate of Pacilus had caught me not only unawares but half asleep.
TEN
The vermin had all been cleared away from the gate, but small knots of them still lingered, moaning and snarling, here and there in the cleared space between the camp and the road. With Decimus Valerius and a handful of men I moved to the east of the gate, to oversee the reduction of the enemy that remained. The German tagged along, and none of the legionaries attempted to prevent it; his battlefield promotion, as it were, from slave to client was obvious enough for them to readily see. Radamyntos had headed in this direction when he had fought his way out of the horde, as well, and I wanted to see how my companion of the long night and morning had fared.
De Bello Lemures, Or The Roman War Against the Zombies of Armorica Page 5
