But, even now, it was clear that Caesar was not intending to retreat.
As the enemy phalanxes approached from the north and south, a few of the less stalwart legionaries broke from the testudos, shedding their weapons and equipment and diving into the harbor. But after these few fled, the centurions quickly closed up the gaps and, by and large, the formations remained intact. The cohorts knew they would be in their element once close combat was joined, and they needed only to hunker beneath their interlocked shields until Caesar gave the order to attack. But the Alexandrians were not fools. They well knew the strength of the Romans, and they also knew the weaknesses. Instead of pressing in to squeeze the Roman cohorts like a vice, the Alexandrian phalanxes came to a halt just outside of javelin range. There they waited allowing the unremitting missiles from the fleet to continue their deadly work. Bit by bloody bit, the giant bolts tore gaps in Caesar’s ranks, skewering two or three men at a time, severing heads and legs, and turning the hot, shadowy spaces beneath the shields into intolerable shelters of butchery.
Lucius saw a score of half-naked warriors break from the Roman ranks, their long hair and beards streaming beneath conical iron helmets. Lucius knew these to be Caesar’s Gallic bodyguard. The Gauls broke, not toward the transports, but toward the enemy. The hopelessness of the situation had worked them into a mad frenzy, and now they chose to die like warriors instead of penned pigs. Lucius could hear their wild howls across the water, a howl he had heard on a dozen gray battlefields far from this place. Holding their long swords high, they charged the waiting phalanxes with a ferocity that made several of the Alexandrians run.
But the bulk of the packed enemy troops stood their ground. The handful of charging long swords was no match for the massed enemy. The charge of the Gauls melted away before the jabbing and thrusting sarissas until it was nothing more than a cluster of twitching bodies beneath blood-tipped pikes.
More Romans now ran, leaping from the rocks into the water by the dozen. Some managed to swim for the transports, but others sank out of sight under the weight of their armor. Like the seeds of a dandelion blowing in the wind, the testudos came apart. A few of the legionaries followed the Gauls’ example and attacked the phalanxes. A few held their ground around Caesar’s plumed helmet. But even the great general could not bring order to this chaos. The men around him were falling by the score. A complete disaster was in the making.
Lucius glanced at the other ships in the reserve fleet. The decks of every vessel were crowded with onlookers, but no attempt was afoot to reinforce their beleaguered general. They had Caesar’s express orders, not to attack unless so ordered by him. And that order had not yet come.
Lucius had had enough.
“Take us in!” he commanded the transport’s captain.
“But, we have orders, sir!”
In an instant, Lucius had produced his gladius and was pressing it to the reluctant man’s throat. “Closer to the mole! And hurry, damn you!”
Whips cracked, the drummer beat out a quick rhythm, the bireme slaves pulled on their oars, and the vessel thrusted toward the mole. Lucius directed the captain to drive at the cluster of surviving Romans as if they planned to help the pressed troops in escape. But at the last moment, he ordered a change of course. The transport veered to the right, and made all speed for the enemy line that was working its way down the mole from the north. The Alexandrian phalanx paid no attention to the single bireme that now headed directly for them. They were far too consumed with the prospect of capturing the great Caesar.
“Come on, you Pompeian dogs!” Lucius shouted. Then, with a war cry, he leapt from the bow just as it touched the mole, flying into the tightly packed enemy ranks. Not expecting an attack from their left, the pikemen could not turn their long and interlaced spears in time to meet the new danger. Lucius had left his shield on the galley in order to manage the jump, but he did not need it. He came down on two men with his gladius swinging, slicing into their necks before either knew what had killed him. Following their centurion’s lead, the men of the century also jumped from the galley into the fray, adding to the confusion that was quickly spreading through the enemy phalanx. Within moments, three score jabbing gladii were mercilessly cutting their way through the formation with a fiendish fury, stabbing one Alexandrian in the groin after another, subjecting the disoriented enemy to the machine-like meat grinder that every Roman legionary became in battle. Three inches in, pull out, stab again, move on. Blood flowed down bare legs. Entrails oozed between scaled armor plates. The song of the gladii sang, and the enemy died. Lucius’s cross-plumed helmet led them on, driving farther and farther into the tight phalanx. Some of Caesar’s troops, seeing the success of Lucius’s men, rushed forward to attack the phalanx’s front.
Terror then spread through the enemy ranks. Though they outnumbered the Romans nearly four to one, the ruthlessness of the simultaneous attacks on their flank and their front spurred them into a panic. Their cursing officers could not get control of them, and finally, they broke and ran for their ships, leaving behind a causeway covered with twitching bodies, abandoned sarissas, and broken shields.
Lucius caught his breath for a moment before arrows from the enemy fleet forced him to find an abandoned Alexandrian shield under which to take cover, prompting his surviving men to do the same. As he crouched behind the shield, he counted thirty-nine of his original century still standing. Add to that about a dozen more men that had come from Caesar’s cohorts. Every one of them was out of breath and covered in blood, from their own wounds and the wounds of those they had slain.
The attack of Lucius’s century had been successful. It had given the three beleaguered cohorts, farther down the mole, a small measure of breathing room. It had allowed Caesar to finally do the sensible thing and order a withdrawal. And he must have done just that because the cohorts were now falling back while a few troops remained behind to hold off the phalanx attacking from the south. The transports now came in close to the rocks. Legionaries cast away weapons, shields and armor to try to swim for them. There was little order once the troops hit the water. They swam for the nearest transport, regardless of the number of men already aboard it. Lucius saw one such ship, low in the water, its decks and rigging covered with a mass of soaked troops, capsize suddenly and sink, taking most of the men aboard down with it. But even that did little to dissuade the panicking soldiers from crowding aboard the other craft. In the hundreds of splashing arms and legs, Lucius lost sight of Caesar, but he assumed the general had made it to one of the vessels and was now pulling away from the mole.
Lucius knew that he had done all he could. The rear guard to the south was already being overwhelmed by the enemy phalanx there. It was now time for him to get his own men off.
Glancing over his shoulder, he fully expected to see his own transport waiting dutifully beside the mole, but it was not there. The galley had pulled away, and was now rowing back to the fleet. Lucius could see the ship’s master looking back at him over the stern rail, smiling sardonically and making an obscene gesture. The bastard must not have appreciated Lucius’s sword point against his throat.
Lucius looked north. The causeway was open, and there was a chance he and his men could make a run for Pharos Island. But before he could get the order out of his mouth, a new group of enemy vessels pushed up on the western side of the mole, unloading hundreds of fresh troops to block off the escape route. Lucius and his men were now trapped between two enemy formations closing from the north and the south. The Roman transports were now all pulling away from the shore. No one was coming to the assistance of the few legionaries left on the mole. They were being written off, as the rear guard had been.
Lucius cursed inwardly before shouting, “Testudo!”
The two score troops with him instantly formed a tightly packed shield-covered square. Lucius did not think that his men would be any less likely to fall victim to the giant flaming missiles coming from the fleet, except that the warships carrying the
larger weapons had been down the mole opposite Caesar’s position and would now have to maneuver slightly to bring their ballistas to bear on Lucius’s troops. The oncoming enemy troops, however, did not appear to be planning to wait for that. They had the blood lust in their howls and cries, and they were coming on, faster and faster, each phalanx determined to be the one to finish off the remaining Romans.
Lucius peered between the breaks in the shields to find what he was looking for. And he found it almost immediately. To the north, the phalanx was fully organized and intact, a bristling row of spear points, from one edge of the mole to the other, advancing steadily. The enemy formation to the south, however, was a different story. Its front rank was irregular, still not having fully recovered after annihilating Caesar’s rear guard. In one spot, a large space, five men wide was open and not yet filled in by the rear ranks, who were carrying their pikes upright and not extended before them. Lucius knew this was his only chance – not of survival, but of making the enemy pay for every last Roman corpse.
“Listen to me, all of you!” Lucius shouted to his soldiers over the endless rain of arrows and stones striking the upturned shields. “When I give the word, break formation, hold your shields to the right, and follow hard on my heels! Understand? Kill every bastard in your path! Every one you see! Don’t stop killing! Show me you are true sons of Rome!”
The sweaty, blood-spattered faces in the shadows did not appear overly confident in his plan, but most of them nodded.
“Come on, you dogs!”
Lucius burst from the formation with a cry and leapt over an Alexandrian corpse.
The sight of the fierce, broad-shouldered centurion wearing such a menacing snarl beneath the cross-plumed helmet was enough to give the enemy pause. They stopped their advance, not from any orders from their officers, but because they could not comprehend the foolishness of such a move. But Lucius and his men did not give them much time to think about it. Holding their shields in their right hands, to fend off the missiles from the enemy ships, the legionaries charged in a wild fury that could only be described as berserk. A handful of them stopped to cast javelins at the phalanx, but this hesitation cost them their lives. They became the chosen targets of the enemy ships and were soon bristling with arrows from head to foot. The rest followed Lucius directly into the gap in the enemy, swinging shields, jabbing with swords, and attacking their foe with a savagery that the packed Alexandrians had not anticipated. With ranks packed six and seven men deep, the panicking pikemen in the closer ranks could not get away from the Roman attack, the pressure of the men behind them pushing them into the carnage. They died on Roman sword points, slicing deep gashes with lightning rapidity to their bellies, groins, and necks. Blood spurted from a dozen severed arteries, spraying upon shields and armor, and men began to fall.
Eventually, the Alexandrians recovered from the shock of the attack and began to close ranks around their attackers, forcing the Romans into a circle of defense, the edges of which were tipped with crimson gladii and piling bodies.
Ducking the thrust of a pike aimed for his neck, Lucius spiked his sword down onto the Alexandrian’s exposed left foot, severing the toes and starting an effluence of blood. The man crumpled from the pain affording Lucius an opening to slice his sword half-way through the man’s neck. Two sword-wielding Alexandrians replaced the fallen pikeman. Lucius instantly shoved into one with his shield, throwing off their coordinated attack and allowing him to take them on in turn. Within moments, both were stumbling to the rear, holding their intestines inside their sliced open bellies.
But it did not fare as well for the other legionaries. In spite of Lucius’s continual shouts of encouragement, the pressing enemy ranks were too much for them. The man to Lucius’s left received a razor sharp spear point through his throat that tore out his wind pipe and left him a gurgling mess. Romans on the other side of the circle were falling, too. The enemy was not throwing javelins, for fear of hitting their own, nor were the enemy ships firing, for the same reason, but the pikemen, once organized began killing the Romans, systematically, one by one.
“We can’t remain here!” Lucius shouted to the dozen men still standing with him.
They all knew full well that nothing could survive in front of well-packed ranks of pikemen, but the instinct was to stay in the circle. Lucius had to break them out. He had to get them into the rear of the enemy again, where the pikes could not be turned so readily.
“Follow me, now!”
Lucius threw his shield back-handed at the rank of Alexandrians in front of him, sending the disc into the faces of two pikemen and forcing them to recoil. In that instant he separated their sarissas and drove between them, narrowly dodging another pike thrust at him from one of the rear ranks. The legionaries followed him, and soon they were killing again, slaying the enemy who were reluctant to drop their pikes, but who could not hang onto the fourteen-foot-long weapons and avoid getting stabbed by the slicing gladii. Lucius maimed and killed until his arm was red from hilt to shoulder. He counted only five of his men on their feet, including the signifer, jabbing and killing beside him. The wolf's head atop the signifer's helmet had been mangled so badly from the repeated jabs of the pikes that it no longer resembled a creature of this earth. One jab had left a long gash above the signifer's eyebrows. It had bled heavily, leaving a solid mask of red on his face broken only by his white eyes and gritted teeth. Lucius knew that he himself had been wounded several times. He could feel blood trickling down his leg, but the battle delirium was upon him, and he did not stop to think. He just kept killing.
He saw a bright white tunic in the crowd, several of them, and had the momentary sanity to consider that these were the same men he had encountered on Pharos. He stabbed one of these through the throat, and the white tunic turned crimson in a waterfall of blood. Eventually, the white tunics disappeared in the maelstrom of human suffering and slaughter. He quickly forgot about them and continued to kill. He killed and killed, knowing full well that it was only a matter of time before he and his men were overpowered by the sheer weight of the enemy numbers.
But, at that moment, when the sword was growing heavier in his hand, and his arms felt as though he could not raise them again, the press of Alexandrians suddenly stopped. An authoritative voice shouted from the enemy rear, and the pikes receded, backing out of reach but still enclosing the handful of Romans, whom did not resemble anything human at all, covered from head to foot in blood with Alexandrian corpses piled two and three deep around them. Lucius saw dozens of enemy faces glaring at him over the dripping spear points. They muttered curses at him, but did not advance. They held back.
“What are you waiting for, you sons of whores?” Lucius spat at them. “Come and finish the job!”
“All in good time, Centurion,” a voice said from the enemy ranks. It took Lucius several moments to pick out which of the faces staring back at him the voice belonged to. But he finally found the face in the crowd - the face that was wearing the same small, thin smile outlined by the same well-groomed beard he had seen before.
It was the dark-eyed Alexandrian officer, the same officer he had encountered on Pharos, once again resplendent in bronze breastplate and ornate headdress. He stood out from the others, and Lucius could only conclude that he was royalty of some kind. But the smug, curled-lipped smile half-prompted Lucius to hurl his sword at the bastard.
“You are beaten, Centurion,” the officer said evenly. It was an elegant voice with an articulation that could only have come from years of formal education. “Order your men to drop their swords.”
“Stand fast!” Lucius said to the five out of breath legionaries. “We will die with swords in our hands, and take a few more of these whore-spawn to Hades with us!”
“There is no reason for that, Centurion,” the officer said. “You will not be harmed in any way. You have my word.”
Beside Lucius, the tired signifer glanced at him with uncertainty, as did the others. They knew their stan
d could only last for so long. Eventually, they would be overcome. By surrendering they at least had a chance.
“Stand fast!” Lucius demanded as the five legionaries looked at one another, and then looked at him, and then let the swords fall from their hands.
“Sorry, Centurion,” the signifer said with a pained expression. “But he is right. We are beaten. Jupiter have mercy on us.”
“Stand fast, damn you!”
But the soldiers were already filing through an opening in the sarissas. Once through the front ranks, Lucius lost sight of them, and the spear points closed in once again. Lucius now stood alone, one man against hundreds. He could no longer see the dark-eyed officer, and he assumed the end would soon come. He saved his strength for the final onrush, finding solace only in the certainty that he would at least kill a few before his body was run through.
Then he heard voices raised on the other side of the enemy ranks, but he could not make out what was happening. A man screamed, and then another. He saw swords slice high in the air, and then all was silent once again. He did not know what had caused the commotion, but his suspicions were confirmed an instant later, when five bloody heads were lobbed over the ranks to land at his feet. The signifer’s blood-caked face looked back at him with a gnarled expression, frozen there from the moment the Alexandrian blade had cleaved his neck in two. The dead man's eyes seemed to carry a look of guilt and shame.
Rome: Sword of the Legion (Sword of the Legion Series) Page 3
