by Mike Rogers
Rumors spread throughout the entire region like the plague.
Anaxis appeared on the newly built Agora and announced his departure with the six thousand men of Epirus was only temporarily. He would return in two weeks’ time, well ahead of the end of the rainy season. The army was to stay in its position, behind the fortifications of Epirus, and await his return. Until that time, command of the army fell onto Deopus. I was to be in charge of the rations and general running of the city.
Indeed, two weeks later as promised, Anaxis returned. He simply rode his horse alone into town, stopped in front of the small building we had taken residence in and came barging through the door.
“Paullus is coming!” he shouted.
The gathered generals and captains of the diverse army stared at him as if Ares himself had stood in front of them and was threatening to smite them down. A silence fell over the company and all waited eagerly for what Anaxis had to say.
Instead he simply walked on to his room and dropped his heavy travelling bag on the bed.
I coughed and said, “My lord?”
Anaxis turned around, smiled at me and said, “Our scouts have picked up the Roman legions. They'll be here in a week. Don't worry, Trimidites, we still have time. How well are we when it comes to provisions?”
As a matter of coincidence I had checked on the supplies that morning and knew the numbers out of my head.
“We are good for two months if it should come to a siege. The standard period for most sieges, my lord.”
Anaxis nodded and slapped me on the shoulder.
“I doubt we'll ever get to a siege, but it is good to see you haven't neglected your duties while I was away. Now then, let’s go check the walls, shall we?”
And so Anaxis and I walked onto the main wall, the only one that faced the entrance to the valley and thus the one most likely to be attacked by the Romans.
The generals, like lapdogs, followed us everywhere, eager to hear details.
“How many soldiers bring Paullus?” I asked.
Anaxis looked across the valley and said quietly, “Six legions.”
The officers that tailed us sucked in some air. Six legions meant thirty-six thousand hardened Roman Veterans, a force not to be underestimated. It seemed Paullus had gathered every Roman legion stationed in Greece.
“And twenty thousand auxiliaries,” Anaxis added under his breath.
This caused an uprising amongst the generals, for it meant natives—Greeks—had joined ranks with the Roman general. Too many among us such a thing seemed impossible. The prospect of having to fight other Greeks made some generals furious, and already I could feel discontent rising. Morale had received a serious blow even before battle begun.
But Anaxis would not have been Anaxis if he had not the means to inspire his men.
He simply looked at the officers and said, “Do not worry about their numbers. We have the advantage in every single way. We hold the fortification and the high ground; we have a fair amount of supplies while their supply line is precarious. We have the most men and cavalry. And other than that, I have another surprise for Paullus and his band of thieves.”
Naturally the generals insisted on being told what this surprise was, but Anaxis held off the boat and removed the officers hard-handed from our little house.
The week that followed was a period filled with sleepless nights and the coming and going of couriers. Anaxis had dispatched two thousand horsemen to encircle the Roman army and to harass their supply line. That number of horses meant no harassing to the Romans, but a downright interruption to their daily train of supplies. Counting on the Romans to foresee this event our estimates before the Roman bellies would begin to feel hunger were three weeks. Four at most if they managed to bribe some of the local inhabitants into selling them food, which we seriously doubted would happen due to what Paullus had just done to the entire region. To my surprise Anaxis had couriers riding out to local grain merchants and farmers to sell the Romans all the food the cold-hearted bastards needed. The generals and I were, to put it mildly, shocked by this decision. Until Anaxis ordered one of the Scythian tribal leaders to be sent out to the local grain merchants to arrange the Roman food supplies. No one asked questions anymore about the strange decision, for it was widely known to the Greeks that the Scythians were masters in the art of poisoning.
A week later six diseased and poisoned Roman legions entered the valley of Epirus, where they immediately received a glimpse of their future. In the days before the arrival of the Romans, Anaxis had set the men to work on the road that led to the city. The heads of the Roman soldiers that fell the year before had all been impaled aside the road. And thus the Romans passed with their legions on a road sided by six thousand skulls. To the Romans it was a clear disrespect for the dead, to Anaxis it was a mere statement of fact. Any Roman entering the valley was a dead Roman.
Our generals nearly fell of the walls laughing as they watched the sick Roman soldiers attempt to form a battle line in front of the city. Half the Roman legion could barely hold their spear and shield, and the other half sat down on the ground with diarrhea.
But Anaxis did not smile. On the contrary, he was preparing the city's defense with frantic determination and spirit.
Even before the Romans managed to set up camp Anaxis ordered the men to start firing pots with Greek fire from inside the city. To this end the men had built six ballista, devastating catapults with awesome reach and easy to use.
Immediately following this was a rain of arrows that dented off the Roman steel shields, creating the sound of hail on a tin roof. Here and there arrows crept through gaps in the defenses and struck down legionnaires, causing the gaps to widen further as other now exposed soldiers were struck. This had merely been the opening scene and already the Romans were suffering serious casualties. Anaxis ordered the rain of fire to last for another full hour and at the end the Romans had retreated a full three hundred paces, the distance our arrows could travel.
The generals laughed at the Romans for their cowardice, and our men thought they had already won the day. But the day was not even half through as Anaxis put on his helmet, grabbed his shield and announced to the officers to prepare for war.
They were meeting the Romans face to face.
The order had hit the men like lightning. The officers' mouths fell open, some turned pale and some even lifted an eyebrow and wondered out loud if their leader had gone insane.
I, too, was baffled and whispered in Anaxis' ear, “Are you mad? It is you who told us in the first place we cannot defeat the Romans on the open field and thus we had to erect walls. This tactic is working, why defy the Gods and meet the Roman war machine in the open?”
Anaxis turned to me and from underneath his helmet stared two dark eyes at me.
“Question me in front of the men again, and it will be for the last time. I can stand some criticism from them,” and he pointed at the generals, “but not from you. You should know better.”
At the time I was truly petrified at the response and my brain shut down. It is only now, many years later that I understood why Anaxis ordered the charge. The Romans were ill and had received a serious blow in their morale that day, and to wait any longer would be folly. And of course Anaxis had two other surprises ready for the Romans…
My master marched down to the gates, where our entire cavalry had assembled. They were to be the first to leave the city and redeploy on the flanks of the infantry. Anaxis mounted onto a horse and took the long steel spear that I held out for him. Anaxis had spent a considerable amount of money that winter on fabricating long spears for the cavalry, but to what ends none knew. They were not made out of iron and wood, but forged in one solid piece of steel. Heavy as they were, they were also something new, something no one had seen before. What in Ares' name was he planning?
And then, with a loud sound, the reinforced gates swung open and our thirty thousand horses followed the man with the red cape. His bronze helmet with the
red horse hairs was a distinctive mark for any man to follow and so our army did.
Anaxis stopped about two hundred paces from the Romans and quietly stared at them.
Behind him, the cavalry rode perfectly synchronized to the left flank of the Roman army. Our generals wondered why Anaxis would want cavalry only on their right side and not on the left side, but assumed he would compensate by placing the strongest infantry on the Roman's right flank to compensate for the lack of cavalry.
Yes, as the thousands of infantry marched out of the city and the strongest units were deployed on the center, our generals cursed out loud. Some of them even went as far as to ride up to Anaxis to discuss the deployment, but Anaxis quickly solved the problem by striking down one of them and sending him back to his men. This was a dangerous move to make in front of the entire army and the Romans. It showed we were divided and thus weak. When the entire army had finally been deployed Anaxis simply stood there, waiting on his horse, watching the Romans.
After a few minutes, the Roman leader, Paullus, became impatient, and sent out one of his generals. The general, whose name I never learned, approached Anaxis with raised hands to indicate he wanted to have a meeting under truce. Anaxis repeated the gesture, and let the man approach.
The general rode his horse to a few feet before us and saluted.
“Ave, Spartan! I am the emissary of consul Lucius Aemilius Paullus. My master wishes to know what you are waiting for.”
Anaxis quietly handed the spear back to me and turned to the Roman general again.
“I am waiting for Rome to surrender.”
The Roman general first stared at Anaxis with disbelief but quickly stared laughing. The man turned around and shouted my master's words back to his own army, in Latin. He had been speaking flawless Greek to us. The Roman army erupted in laughter, and Paullus himself hung over the neck of his horse laughing.
The general turned back to us, barely in time to see my master's Falcata slicing through his neck. The general's dead body fell of the horse, and Anaxis put away his sword. None of the Romans laughed this time. He demanded his spear back and as I gave it I noticed the determination in his eyes and suddenly it hit me: he knew he would win. The Romans had already lost; they just didn't know it yet.
Anaxis used the spear to impale the Roman head and waved it around like a banner, much to the horror of Paullus and his staff.
And then the first surprise of the day happened.
From outside the valley appeared a Roman legion, carrying the standard of the Roman senate itself. Blasts of trumpets announced their arrival and the confusion was complete amongst both sides. Where did this additional legion come from?
None knew for certain, but our generals were not content with the way things were evolving. Slowly, but certainly, the additional Roman legion marched towards Paullus' legions to join them. Paullus sent another one of his generals to the Senatorial legion with his gratitude for their timely aid and with a request to deploy them on their right flank, where they could crush the weak Greek left flank. To end their deployment, the Romans ordered the Greek auxiliaries to close in on the back of the legions, where they could oversee the entire battlefield and move to points of crisis.
And Anaxis smiled…
Chapter 7
I, myself, was seated on a horse like my master and waited patiently behind him.
Without turning around he asked, “Did you bring your horn?”
I said, yes, and this time he turned around.
“I am going to give you an order and no matter what happens after that, stay close to me! Understood?”
I nodded and fear started to creep onto me. What was he planning? What could be so dangerous that I had to stay close to him?
And then he looked deep into my eyes and ordered me to blow my horn thrice. I lifted the bronze trumpet and blew it as hard as I could, sending clear signals throughout the entire valley.
What happened next could only be described by most men as madness, but to Anaxis and our army it was brilliance.
No sooner as the signal faded and I let the horn detach from my lips, the Roman Senatorial legion turned to its side and launched an all-out assault on their neighboring Roman forces.
Spears opened gaps in the Roman line, immediately filled by slashing swords and kicking sandals. It was only then that I understood why Anaxis had ordered the Roman armor and weaponry to be kept and why the six thousand men of Epirus had marched out two weeks earlier. Anaxis had transformed the men into a false legion, a Trojan horse. To Paullus and his diseased and starving men the arrival of a fresh legion must have seemed like a gift from the gods, and so the fool accepted it with open arms.
From the rear of the legions, the twenty thousand Greek auxiliaries let out a deafening war cry and stormed forward into the Roman legions, slicing through the surprised legionnaires as a knife through butter. The chaos was complete and the Roman defense line crumbled.
And then Anaxis raised his lance with the Roman general's head still firmly impaled and charged forward into the Romans, followed by our thirty thousand cavalry.
I pressed my thighs deep into my horse's side and wrestled to stay on it as the furious animal rammed into the solid body of enemy men. In front of me Anaxis had already dropped his spear after skillfully running half a dozen soldiers through and pulled out his Falcata. Every time the blade flashed a cord of destiny snapped.
Behind us the thousands of lancers charged into the split Romans, smashing through the legions and leaving a trail of dead men.
And as the earth shook under the horses, I could hear a distinct sound rise above the turmoil of war. A sound so deafening and petrifying it could not be ignored, not by man nor by Gods.
The sound of seventy thousand Hoplites marching to wreck the Romans was deafening and to a mere mortal as myself it could mean but one thing: the God of war smiled upon us!
Boxed in from all ends, there could be only one outcome to the Romans: annihilation.
The Greek auxiliaries pushed on them from the rear, the false Senatorial legion from their right, our cavalry from their left and our Hoplites from the front. They had nowhere to go and panic spread throughout the entire army. Officers in the front ordered the men to move to the rear, officers in the rear ordered men to move to the front. Discipline went down the drain. Officers started slashing through their own men in order to escape the Greeks, men killed their officers because they could not make up their minds or for passing on suicidal orders. Madness ensued. Roman stared fighting Roman and Greeks finished the job.
But despite the lost battle and the ensuing madness, Consul Paullus had not lost his wit. He ordered his cavalry to form a protective circle and push to the rear in order to break through.
They did not even get five feet far.
Anaxis had known Paullus would run at the first opportunity and bravely directed the entire cavalry into the consul's bodyguard. But the bodyguard was tougher than anyone had expected and actually made our men stop for a few minutes, barely enough for the consul to escape the chaos.
At the end of the day as Anaxis handed his blood-drenched blade, dulled on Roman heads, to me for cleaning and sharpening I was ordered to count the number of dead Romans. Instead, I merely counted the number of surviving Romans and came to a daunting figure.
Zero…
As I stood there, knee-high in bodies, blood and entrails, I marveled at the feature we had accomplished that day. The Romans had been defeated and how. Six entire legions, or thirty-six thousand men, wiped from the face of the Earth as if Zeus himself had squashed them like a troublesome bug.
As Anaxis walked back to the city of Epirus to wash the blood of himself men dropped to their knees and kissed his bloody feet. I watched generals who had cursed him for his secrecy and strange tactical decisions now roll through the dust. The leaders of the Greek auxiliary forces came to congratulate him on a ruse well played, but demanded their money under the same breath. I wondered how long ago Anaxis had
set up this plan, but in the end it did not matter. The Spartan had won the day.
The Spartan had defeated and humiliated Rome.
The Spartan, but not Sparta…
Because Sparta had not sent troops or money to aid us in our goal. They had merely sided with the Romans as they had done in the past decades. Sparta was but a shell of itself. The old Sparta, so everyone knew, would not have hesitated to grasp this chance for greatness. But this Sparta, the new Roman version, was a dead beast, rotting and poisoning the atmosphere.
Every time one of his men slapped him on the shoulder and addressed Anaxis as "The Spartan," he died a little inside, knowing his own home had not opposed the Romans.
The men did not care for such politics on that day and went to the age old task of plundering. There was so much to gather and steal that the task took an entire week. Anaxis, being the general and leader of the army, had the right to take whatever had belonged to Paullus. But being the Spartan he was, he let me handle it and told me to sell the items worth anything in benefit for the treasury.
“The army needs food,” he said, “and it will not come falling from Mount Olympus.”
And so I searched through the cart and found many wondrous things there. Jewels, rare wines, weapons and tons of money. All were put to use of the army, naturally…Except the wine.
That was kept for a toast amongst the generals on their deserved victory.
But what of Paullus?
