Rome: Sword of the Legion (Sword of the Legion Series)

by R. Cameron Cooke

  Also by R. Cameron Cooke

  Sword of the Legion Series

  ROME: FURY OF THE LEGION (Gaul, 57 B.C.)

  ROME: TEMPEST OF THE LEGION (Adriatic Sea, 49-48 B.C.)

  Jack Tremain WWII Submarine Series

  PRIDE RUNS DEEP

  SINK THE SHIGURE

  Other Titles

  DIVE BENEATH THE SUN

  RISE TO VICTORY

  THE CONSTANTINE COVENANT (as Aiden Crisp)

  ROME

  SWORD OF THE LEGION

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by R. Cameron Cooke

  ISBN-13: 978-1512126778

  ROME:

  SWORD OF THE LEGION

  By

  R. Cameron Cooke

  “Woe to the conquered.”

  - Brennus

  I

  The wind moaned over the sand.

  It was an endless wind that scratched the powder from the tops of the dunes to feed the red cloud churning across the desert floor. The roiling wind searched for something to catch it, something that it could make dance or knock down. The wind howled, lifting the malleable earth from one spot to another in its desperate quest, but its piercing breath found nothing, only endless plains and more burning sand. Not a tree, nor a scrap of desert shrub, not even a blade of grass could be sought out in this accursed land.

  The wind fought with the sun for mastery of this plain, but together they protected it from all trespassers, greeting the unwelcome with sand-choking thirst and death. For countless millennia, they had guarded these lands, burying the kingdoms of frail men who dared try to usurp them. Bleached bones and buried ruins stood stark still as their trophies – forewarnings to those who might try again.

  At last, the wind discovered the newest of these interlopers.

  Three camels lay in the midst of the maelstrom, seemingly impervious to the violent sands shifting all around them. Their bulky frames, with legs tucked under, were arranged in a small triangle. Stretched tightly and drawn between the massive beasts, a canvas sheet buffeted as if the next gust would carry it away. Beneath the sheet, three men huddled against the hides of their prostrate mounts. Each man covered his face with the slack of his headdress, for even the air inside the shelter was thick with fine dust. The wind outside had the persistence of a living thing.

  “This is what you call a small outing, Roman?” one man uttered before quickly returning the cloth to his wind-burned face.

  “I made no promises,” the deep voice of the largest of the three answered. The mail shirt worn beneath the desert cloak was visible at the neckline, along with the massive dimensions of the chest beneath it.

  “No promises?” the other said hotly. He had the tan face of an Egyptian, but his features were rounder and softer than the Roman’s. He had the manicured hands of one who spent little time performing manual labor. “Promises are all we have heard from you for nine days. Nothing but promises! You have taken us farther and farther into this infernal desert, and have delivered nothing!”

  “Calm yourself, Ganymedes.” This was the third man who spoke now. He sat calmly against the hide of his mount, with elbows on his knees. He too had tan skin, but of a different shade. He could belong to any of several races. “I infinitely prefer the wind to your endless rambling.”

  “Watch your tongue, Demetrius,” Ganymedes snapped. “We may be far from the queen’s court, but that does not mean you can relax your respect for my position.”

  “My apologies, Your Excellency,” Demetrius replied without much enthusiasm. “I merely meant to say that I believe the centurion knows what he is doing.”

  “How can you say that after nine days with no sign of water – nay, no sign of life? This Roman talks of nothing but that which is out of reach. Always tomorrow, or over the next rise, or just up ahead. When will it come? Perhaps the sun has gotten to your head, Demetrius! You forget that this Roman would be better off if he left us in the desert to die!”

  “Of course, that is not true. You well know he is bound to us by an oath. And he will never see a single denarii of the reward you have promised him if he does not take us to what we seek. Now, will you calm yourself?”

  Centurion Lucius Domitius peered at his companions through the narrow slit in his turban. They were looking back at him, as if to find something in his eyes to confirm Demetrius’s statement. But he did not give them the satisfaction. No, it would be better if they were left guessing. The farther they journeyed into the desert, the more he had the advantage.

  Many hours passed before the storm subsided and the fine dust began to once again settle back to the shifting dunes. With few words exchanged between them, Lucius and his companions loaded their camels to continue on their journey. Lucius noticed Demetrius removing a long wooden pole from a bundle of similar poles attached to the back of his mount. Demetrius then firmly planted the pole atop the nearest high dune, where the affixed flag instantly caught the wind and whipped around wildly.

  “Have I not told you that is a useless endeavor?” Lucius said. “You have done that every day now for ten days. Those markers will not help us on our return. They are gone in the next gust of wind.”

  “You will forgive me, Roman, if I don’t entirely trust your sense of direction.”

  Demetrius appeared nonchalant over the whole affair, but Lucius knew that he was holding something back. Unlike the other two, Lucius did not lend a voice to his own suspicions.

  Demetrius approached him and asked in an almost indifferent manner, “I was right, wasn’t I, Centurion? You are leading us there. I would be sorely distressed if I learned that your story about the priest was not completely truthful.” He rested one hand on the hilt of his sword. Demetrius was not a small man, and, like Lucius, he was a warrior by trade. Still, Lucius laughed out loud at the gesture.

  “You have never tried me, Demetrius. You know little about me. But perhaps someday we will dance the dance of death together, eh? I am ready to accommodate you at anytime.”

  Demetrius smiled guardedly. “I know enough about you to know that I would not prefer that. I would prefer we remained comrades in this endeavor. But you would do well not to discount my abilities, either!”

  “Must I die of thirst while the two of you posture,” the paunchy Ganymedes called from his mount. “That Roman promised me an oasis. It is up ahead, or he is a liar! Oh, and don’t bother threatening me, Roman. I am already beyond caring. Give me drink, or give me your gladius that I may throw myself upon it. Let us go!”

  As they rode, Demetrius kept a wary eye on the Roman. He reached down and patted the unstrung bow strapped to his saddle, happy that it was there in the event that he had to use it. It had been a wise precaution, especially since he had good reason to believe that the centurion was his superior at sword play.

  Riding up ahead, Lucius knew that the Egyptian’s eyes were on him, as they had been from the moment the three men had started on this journey, and he considered what an unlikely turn of events had resulted in him crossing a desert he had never seen before, guiding two men whom he did not trust, nor they him.

  They rode hour upon hour, their mounts leaving fresh tracks in the virgin sand while the sun baked them without mercy. The sky was devoid of even a single cloud to give them a moment’s reprieve. The heat and the endless repetitive gait of the long-legged desert beasts set Lucius’s thoughts adrift. Had it been only two weeks, or had it bee
n years, since he was in Alexandria at the head of his century? Had it been only two weeks since he led them into battle? It seemed unbelievable, but it was not a mere trick of his sun-scorched mind. Yes, he had been there, in Alexandria, embroiled in another of Caesar’s perilous battles, fighting against a people with whom he had no quarrel other than their defiance of the blessed consul’s wishes. Now, his century were all slain, and he was far from Caesar and his Roman comrades. The ornate palaces and temples of Alexandria were hundreds of leagues from the accursed sands now stirred by his camel’s hooves.

  His mind drifted back and began to play the events over again in his head.

  II

  Alexandria – the city of enlightenment, of the great library, of the great philosophers, of countless religious cults, where East met West, where merchants of a thousand kingdoms lighted, beckoned like a siren by the towering lighthouse, where goods and knowledge held equal value – this renowned place had become Caesar’s next battlefield.

  The situation in Alexandria had been precarious, almost complete lunacy, one might conclude. Fresh from defeating the forces of Pompey the Great in the heart of the Greek lands, the consul Julius Caesar had arrived in Egypt with two understrength legions, the Sixth and the Twenty-Eighth. The men were all Pompeian troops, defeated in battle and now sworn in loyalty to Caesar – all except for a few dozen centurions, like Lucius, pilfered from Caesar’s own legions and assigned to lead their former enemies.

  From the start, Caesar found himself in a hazardous position. Upon arriving in Egypt, he was immediately caught up in the inner turmoil between the squabbling heirs of the deceased pharaoh. Through the enchantment of the Egyptian princess Cleopatra, Caesar declared for her, and committed both himself and his men to her cause. This, of course, incensed Cleopatra’s rivals – her siblings – and the Romans immediately fell under siege by the more numerous Alexandrian army.

  Lucius had only seen the fabled princess once or twice during the siege, and she had not particularly struck him as anything to bare his sword for. She was short, hook-nosed, with curves a bit too abrupt for his liking. She must have had a devilry in her tongue, however, because she had thoroughly conquered the great Caesar. The famed general was now devoted to putting her on the throne, seemingly ignorant of the odds against him – odds that made some of his blunders in Gaul look like country picnics.

  In spite of the fact that Caesar and Cleopatra controlled the vast harbor palace and the great lighthouse out on Pharos Island, they were at a distinct disadvantage. Pharos Island connected to the city by a three quarters of a mile-long, earthen mole, and this was in the hands of the Alexandrians. The mole bisected Alexandria’s vast natural harbor into two distinct harbors – an eastern harbor, where the Roman ships were moored, and a western harbor, where the Alexandrian ships stood at anchor. The mole – or Heptastadion, as it was called by the locals – was an impressive feat of engineering even by Roman standards. One of the palace slaves had told Lucius that it was constructed more than three hundred years ago by the great Alexander himself. Not only did it serve as a causeway between Alexandria and the island, but it also allowed passage of ships between the two harbors by way of two channels carved out of the mole. One channel was at the extreme north end, near the island, and the other was at the extreme south end, near the city. Each channel was surmounted by a bridge that arched over the narrow strip of navigable water. These cuts were all well and good during peaceful times, when Alexandria’s harbor was teeming with merchant shipping. But, at the present, they were a bane to Caesar. With the Alexandrians in command of the mole and the island, and the rest of the city, they could attack the Roman ships at will, threatening Caesar’s only means of resupply – or of escape, should the need arise.

  Caesar had but two depleted legions, a little more than three thousand spears. Cleopatra’s siblings had at least five times that. Over the course of several weeks, Roman legionaries had defended the walls of the palace from more than one attack. Lucius had been among them at the head of his century, withstanding a rain of missiles that never seemed to cease and continually countering an imaginative enemy that connived at every means to penetrate the palace defenses. Through every ladder bourn attack, every rush of the battering rams, even a few sorties outside the walls to demolish the enemy’s engines of war, the legions had fought as if they defended the Palatine Hill. But Caesar was never one to remain on the defensive. Though the enemy outnumbered him, he decided to attack. Caesar had concluded that the mole was crucial to his success, and he had resolved to take it.

  The ten cohorts of the Sixth Legion were chosen for the assault, Lucius’s among them. Leaving the Twenty-Eighth, a scant few palace guards, and the convalescents to defend the palace, the cohorts boarded their ships in the dead of the night. Biremes and triremes manned by Rhodian sailors that Caesar had brought with him from the Greek isles pushed across and out of the dark bay unnoticed by enemy eyes. There were few senior officers in the undermanned legion, and Centurion Lucius Domitius found himself the senior man aboard his own ship carrying two centuries.

  “Why are we leaving the harbor?” the signifer of Lucius’s century asked as they both stood by the rail watching the lights of Alexandria glide silently by. “Caesar lied, didn’t he? We aren’t attacking, we’re fleeing the city. Leaving our comrades behind to the mercy of those Egyptian curs!”

  Lucius despised his signifer, and would normally have told him to shut his mouth and concentrate on things he understood, like carrying the century’s standard, but there were too many others who had heard the comment for him to remain silent.

  “I don’t know how your precious General Pompey behaved,” Lucius said, his voice thick with scorn, “but in my years under Caesar, I’ve never known him to go back on his word.”

  Of course, that was not true. The signifer did not seem to like that answer, either, but Lucius did not care. He did not think much of his signifer, nor of the rest of the men under him. They were all former Pompeian soldiers who had either deserted or been defeated while fighting for Pompey in Greece. With Pompey dead, Caesar – always the politician, always scheming for a leg-up – had adopted them as his own. They were on probation, and their only hope of survival, if they ever made it back to Rome, was to endear themselves to Caesar through unquestioning devotion.

  Were it left to Lucius, they would have all been put to death. Now he found himself in command of a century of them, very much against his wishes. In fact, he very nearly had refused to join the expedition. After Pharsalus, his old legion, and many others had headed back to Rome instead of accompanying their general. Only the prospect of riches to be had in Egypt and Syria had goaded Lucius into the foolish decision to volunteer to be an officer in the Sixth. The appointment was only temporary, he kept telling himself.

  True to Caesar’s word, the ten cohorts attacked in the morning. The fleet of transports had been taken outside of the bay, not to retreat, but to land on the seaward side of Pharos. This took the small Alexandrian garrison there completely by surprise. The legionaries quickly pushed the stunned defenders back into the small town that occupied the island. The Alexandrian defenders tried to make a stand, some of them taking to the roof tops to throw javelins down at the onrushing Romans, but they could not achieve any kind of organized resistance. They were hacked to pieces, driven from house to bloody house, leaving the formerly quiet seaside village a place of carnage and death. The few that did organize managed to form into rough phalanxes, and these were thrown across several of the narrower streets, hoping to turn them into bottlenecks where the Romans’ numerical superiority would be nullified. But even this did not stop the maddened legionaries, who formed and pressed in with their massive shields. They allowed the jabbing pikes of the phalanxes to penetrate the shield wall and then wrenched the fourteen-foot lances from their owner’s hands, all the while hurling pila over the front ranks to decimate the enemy’s rear. Those pikes that were not torn loose were knocked aside by the short gladii until
the Romans were suddenly upon them and among them. One phalanx panicked after another. Each one that fell opened up an avenue for another to be taken from behind. By the time the morning sun peeked over the horizon, Caesar had the town, and the rest of the Alexandrians had surrendered.

  Lucius had been at the heart of the combat, spurring his ill-trained century into the breaches and then reforming them to attack the next line of pikemen.

  The Alexandrians were of poor caliber, and even the Pompeian legionaries had no trouble in making short work of them, all except for one unusually difficult contingent of Alexandrian regulars defending a strip of beach on the harbor side of the island. This unit had stood its ground after repeated assaults. They were led by a tall, magnificent looking officer wearing a jeweled Egyptian headdress and a glimmering bronze breastplate. The decorative paint around his eyes and the well-manicured beard gave him a dazzling appearance that distracted even Lucius in the heat of battle. His men were not like the other Alexandrians defending the village. They looked more like a royal guard, wearing immaculate bright, white tunics and headdresses and carrying large round shields polished to reflect the sun like mirrors. Under the direction of the dark-eyed officer, the troop of swordsmen had fought off every Roman attack, skillfully hiding behind their shields whenever the Romans threw javelins and then emerging with swishing blades whenever the Romans drew in close. And they had been well-trained in swordplay, beating off every century thrown at them.

  At last, Lucius’s century was chosen to confront the stalwart defenders. Lucius was just forming his men for the attack when an ornate galley pulled up to the shore, and the well-dressed soldiers beat an orderly retreat to the waiting vessel. They did so smartly, under the cover of their shields, not losing a single man, the dark-eyed officer the last to step aboard. Lucius and his men pursued, but were driven under cover by a dozen archers perched on the ship’s stern deck.