by Vox Day
He blinked. As if in answer to his cry, his vision suddenly went awry. Strange colors filled it as the entire sky seemed to warp and swell above him. Half-expecting to be struck down by lightning for his near-blasphemous diatribe, he wondered if perhaps he was already dead, smitten by the fist of a vengeful Divine. But no, he looked at his hands. They were cracked and calloused as always. He glanced up at the southern ridge and saw, to his amazement, a strange purple glow was emanating from the woods. There was something in the middle of it, and when it moved, he realized that it was an arm. An arm that belonged to one of their wizards, he realized, as a fireball resulted from the motion.
Close to the eerie glow, perhaps twenty paces, he noticed a pair of arrows flying out from the trees. They seemed to come from nowhere; he wondered if perhaps Brutus was right and the elf mage was cloaking the archers with a spell of invisibility. Were such things possible? Quintus fell to his knees in sudden and grateful awe. “Oh, Lord Almighty, thank You, thank You, oh mighty God!” If only they had their artillery with them, he realized, they could strike back. And the elven mage was out of range for pilum, but slings, now, that was another matter.
“Velites, to me!” he roared in a voice that carried over the shouts and cries of the wounded. Five Caslani emerged reluctantly from the makeshift shelter of their dead horses and sprinted toward him. “Do you see that tree, there, with the crooked branch? Count ten trees to the right and give me five volleys. I don’t care if you don’t see anything. Just give me five unless I tell you to stop!”
“Sir,” they saluted despite their obvious bewilderment and began to load stone pellets into their slings while still crouching as close to the ground as possible. “What’s the use,” grumbled one of them in his rough Ippolese accent.
“Because I can see through the bastard’s spells,” Quintus snarled. “Now give me those volleys or I’ll strangle you with your own bloody sling!” The recalcitrant man’s eyes narrowed, and although his companions betrayed similar skepticism in varying degrees, all five obediently began whirling the thin leather straps over their heads. “There we go!” Quintus cried as he heard the snap of leather and saw the wizard’s glowing arm suddenly disappear, shattered, he hoped, by one of the small missiles. The purple glow remained.
“That’s it, that’s it,” he shouted. “That’s it, don’t stop!” The Caslani, inspired by his enthusiasm, stood taller and slung their deadly slings with the fury born of a release from helplessness. Quintus could not see if any stones struck home, but after the third volley, the purple glow abruptly disappeared, and a roar, half-frightened and half-angry, went up from the nearby soldiers behind him as ten archers appeared out of nowhere on the ridge above them. A flurry of spears were launched, uselessly, at now-visible enemy, but a dozen more Caslani rose up and joined the first group of slingers in driving the archers back into the woods before a hail of stones.
Quintus looked back over his shoulder and saw that the archers on the northern ridge were now visible too, although only he could see the two unearthly-colored glows in among them, one red and one green. This time, he was able pick out one mage clearly as the elf lifted his hand, pointed, and caused another lethal fireball to explode within the Amorran ranks. But Quintus quickly indicated both locations to the slingers, and by the fifth volley, the wizards were gone, presumably in retreat, leaving more archers visible to the naked eye.
He was surprised at how few there seemed to be; from the number of dead and wounded lying about he would have guessed three times as many.
He could still hear shouts and explosions to the east and west, and it occurred to him that without the terrible magic fire to drive them back, this cohort could easily take the ridge, then sweep through the woods clearing the heights. Off to his right, he saw the southern slope even had a small gully that would offer them a modicum of protection from the archers as they climbed. He smiled, and, for the first time since the battle began, drew his sword. “Take heart, men of Æmor, take heart,” he cried to those nearby. “The wizards are gone! Their spell is broken! Follow me or die!”
Once again, he raised the horn, but it was the charge he sounded. The Caslanis cheered and sent up another storm of stones, one of which caught an unlucky archer squarely in the forehead. The unconscious elf collapsed and tumbled from the ridge to the savage roars of the angry soldiers. Before Quintus could even begin to make his way toward the slope, the elf had been dispatched and two dozen men were swarming up the gully.
The archers on the northern side began directing their volleys into the backs of the climbers, but the Amorrans were well-armored, and the Caslani below were quick to turn about and drive back the elves with a series of furious volleys. Five or six men fell, stricken, but the raging iron tide rose inexorably up the slope, heedless of the elven arrows.
The shouting above him and ring of metal on metal spurred Quintus on, but by the time he reached the top, the only elves that remained were dead ones. Most had run away, but nine lay in their strange blue blood. Two of the nine were unarmed, mages, by the look of their robes, and the soldiers gave those bodies a wide berth. It was said that devils came to claim those who wielded unclean powers when they died, and even the most hard-bitten legionary in the cohort was leery of such things.
The men cheered at the sight of him standing in their midst, horn in hand. But then they fell silent, and he realized they were waiting for orders. His orders. But this time the thought did not daunt him. This time he knew what had to be done.
That first lot, he immediately sent west with orders to clear the heights and find Flavius Mamercus, if possible. As more of the cohort clambered over the top, he directed the next group to the east, then sent more to the west. Every twenty men, he changed directions. He counted more than three hundred forty; the Third had been bled, to be sure, but it hadn’t lost quite as many as he feared. But when he saw the first Caslani begin to reach the heights—they’d stayed behind to cover the infantry’s ascent—Quintus stopped them.
“Stay below!” he shouted at the slingers still climbing. It looked as if only twenty or so of the cohort’s forty lightly armored missileers had survived, including three of those first five, but they would suffice. “Stay in the pass, all of you from him on, go west and tell the Fourth they can escape this way.”
“And the rest of us?” asked the slinger standing beside him. Quintus recognized him as the first man to join him earlier. No coward, this one. Quintus grinned at him and brandished the horn.
“We’ll climb back down and run east to spread the word, friend. As far as we can. Are you with me?”
The slinger grinned and thumped his chest. His face was bloody, his armor was nothing but the indifferent protection of leather, and he didn’t even wear a sword. But he was game, even so. “To hell or to Elebrion, sir!”
• • •
The baths were an almost unbelievable luxury following more than nine months in the field. When he closed his eyes and sipped at his glass of chilled wine, he could easily almost imagine that he too had died on the rocky field of slaughter and was now in paradise.
The retreat had been nightmarish, as the elves kept up their barrage of arrows and balefire from the southern ridge until the last soldier was extricated from the deathtrap. Flavius Mamercus survived the rockslide intended to seal them to their fate—as the primus pilus correctly guessed, the canny elves had used their cursed sorcery to unleash avalanches fore and aft—only to take his death wound from an arrow that found its way to his unarmoured armpit.
“I knew you were a soldier, boy!” he coughed up blood as Quintus kneeled next to him. Reaching out, he placed the wooden rod of command in the younger man’s hand. “Knew it from the start. You saved the legion. Now you must get them home.”
“But what about the Tenth and Twelfth?” he’d asked the dying legate.
“Not your concern, just get the lads home. Æmor may have need of them once word of this disaster gets out.”
Flavius Mamercus died
that night in the rude encampment the survivors constructed a half-day’s march from the pass. But it was an orderly retreat, not a rout, and that evening, Brutus, the tough old primus pilus who’d somehow survived his wound, presented Quintus with a crown woven of grass before the assembled legion. Of the 5,240 men of the Seventh who’d marched from their winter quarters last spring, they counted 4,195 survivors; almost a quarter were wounded. The eighth, ninth, and tenth cohorts had taken the worst of it, but by the grace of Immaculatus, the fifth, sixth, and seventh were mostly unscathed.
A month later, Quintus handed the Seventh’s rod over to a hard-faced general at the bridge that marked the city limits, who glared at him as if he were personally responsible for the Amorran defeat. Quintus only smiled to himself; no doubt the man’s demeanor would be rather different had he known about the grass crown. Eager to get back to Æmor and break the news to his father, Quintus had taken his leave of the men and ridden ahead of the marching legion, but as always, bad news had flown on crow’s wings.
The ultimate fate of the other two legions was still unknown, but common wisdom, always optimistic in Æmor, currently held it that General Varus had escaped the elven trap on the other side, and, in his fury, chased King Everbright across the border. As to that, Quintus was not so sure, but he held his tongue. Nor had he told anyone except the primus pilus, Marius, and his fellow tribunes about his miraculous ability to see the elven mages that had saved them all.
The clamor of the great city was startling after months in the wilderness, even months spent in the close vicinity of twenty thousand men. The women, in particular, drove him nearly to distraction with their flowery perfumes that somehow managed to penetrate the stink of his long-unwashed body. As he rode past the Archalean baths, he suddenly decided that he couldn’t possibly go to his father looking—and more to the point, smelling—like a peasant who hadn’t bathed since the new year.
The attendants were taken aback by his jangling armor, but they showed no hesitation to take his coin, and one of the slave boys even offered to clean and polish it for him. Quintus had gratefully accepted the service, and even more gratefully accepted the flagon of chilled wine offered to him. The hot water was better than a woman, he thought with satisfaction. Lying back against the side of the pool, he placed his head in one of the rests and closed his eyes. He lay there, gently rocking with the water’s movement, at peace with the world.
Or so he thought. He was more than a little startled when his arms were seized roughly by two strong pairs of hands and he was dragged violently from the pool. His wine glass shattered on the ceramic tile and the dark wine poured into the water like blood as he was left sprawled naked on the cold tile. He rolled over and gasped as he saw that the men standing behind those accosting him bore the bound axes of Amorran authority. But what could the lictors want with him?
“Quintus Tullius, you are summoned, by order of the Urban Praetor.” The head lictor was a tall man, and his cold grey eyes were hard. “Put your toga on, sir. My orders are to bring you to the Praetor at once!”
“Am I under arrest?”
“My orders are to bring you to Gaius Aufinius.”
“Why?”
“My orders are to bring you to Gaius Aufinius.”
Clearly, the lictor was not inclined to be forthcoming. So be it. Quintus couldn’t put on his toga; he didn’t have one. But the wide-eyed slaveboy brought him his armor, still uncleaned, and, with some distaste, Quintus slid his stinking tunic over his head, followed by his armor. He did not attempt to strap and buckle it, though, for the lictors had the authority to unbind those axes and behead him if they so chose, and Quintus had no intention of providing them with an excuse. There must be some mistake! Varus had surely returned. But was the news for good or ill?
The lictors, impassive, gave nothing away, but Quintus soon knew the truth from the long faces and unfriendly glances of the senators they passed even as the lictors marched him up the steps of the Rostrum. Whatever fate had befallen the two legions was not good.
“Quintus Tullius, son of Virius Tullius.” The praetor called out his name in a deep, sonorous voice, and it echoed ominously across the open square. Not many people were about at the moment, but those few who were turned their heads. “Tribune of the Seventh Legion, in service to the late Legatus Flavius Mamercus.”
“Yes, Gaius Aufinius,” Quintus answered, his voice breaking a little. His uncertainty as to whether he was under arrest or not was making him nervous. He could feel the sweat beginning to form under his arms already, and cleared his throat. “That is me.”
The praetor nodded acknowledgment, barely glancing at him before turning to the group of twelve or so men standing together to Quintus’s left. Quintus had not noticed them at first, but as soon as he saw them he realized he was in serious trouble. Some of Æmor’s leading popolares were in the midst of that group, and to a man, they were allies of Lucius Varus, whose head, Quintus assumed, was very likely adorning a lance belonging to King Caerwyn Everbright.
“Who lays the charges?”
“I do,” answered a tall man with a red beard and a purple stripe on his toga. He was a curator, and worse, a Lucian, the cousin of Varus.
“Then speak, Lucius Ahenobarbus.”
“I accuse Quintus Tullius of treachery! I accuse Quintus Tullius of cowardice in the face of the enemy! I accuse Quintus Tullius of fleeing the battlefield!” The man’s voice was a loud one, a deep professional speaker’s bass that projected throughout the square and beyond, and curious onlookers began to enter the square. “I accuse Quintus Tullius of sorcery, of complicity in the murder of his legate, Flavius Mamercus, and in the betrayal of the legions of Æmor!”
Quintus blinked, struck dumb by the outlandish monstrosity of the accusations against him. Had there been treachery? It was possible. They had surely stuck their necks in the noose at the pass. But what could it possibly have to do with him? He was no commander. He was only a lowly tribune!
“How say you, Quintus Tullius?” The praetor sounded almost bored and did not even bother to look at Quintus.
“Innocent! I am innocent!” he shouted. He stared wildly about the crowd gathering beneath him. “I have done no wrong!”
“Then you have nothing to fear,” said the praetor, but in such an off-handed, unconcerned manner that Quintus suddenly felt almost as frightened as he had at Ardus Wald.
“I am no traitor,” he shouted. “Not a month ago, I was given the grass crown by the centurion Brutus, first spear of the Seventh!”
“Liar!” The cry rose from the group of men behind his accuser and they quickly drowned out his protests. Neither the praetor nor the lictors saw fit to quiet them until one of the lictors moved behind Quintus and placed an exposed tip of his sharp axe at the base of Quintus’s neck. “You will not speak unless spoken to, Quintus Tullius, or I shall behead you right here. This is not about you, so just play along and we’ll see that you don’t come to any harm.”
Silenced by the threat of the sharp metal, Quintus was forced to stand and listen to the lies concocted by the popolares. He was to be a scapegoat, he realized as he listened to the so-called witnesses tell vicious fictions about how he had met secretly with the elf king, how he had arranged for his legion to enter the pass last, and how before the ambush had triggered, he had climbed to the safety of hills. The accusations were submitted by affadavits signed by eyewitnesses from all three legions, forged, beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Their purpose, he realized as his fear mounted with every lie, each grander than the last, was to salvage the reputation of the late Lucius Varus. His allies might mourn his loss, but even more they must fear the repercussions of his failure. But why him? He was merely a tribune, and he could produce hundreds of witnesses to attest to his innocence!
Because Flavius Mamercus was dead, he realized, as his blood ran cold. The accusations grew ever more absurd, and despite his fear, Quintus almost began to get bored. At this rate, they’d be accusing
him of fathering himself by raping his mother before nightfall. The theory, garbled as it was, appeared to be that Quintus practiced sorcery in secret and hoped that the evil elves would install him as a puppet Amorran sorcerer-king. It was wildly ridiculous, but when the long list of lies finally came to an end, the praetor had only two questions for him.
“Is it true, Quintus Tullius, that you are a sorcerer?”
“No!”
“Is it true, Quintus Tullius, that you can see auras of magic?”
Immaculatus, they knew! But how?
The praetor still refused to look at him, and Quintus realized that the man was avoiding his eyes because enough of a conscience remained to him that he dared not meet the gaze of one he was about to murder. Quintus’s first instinct was to deny the charge, but he knew that they must have a witness in hand … yes, there, waiting in anticipation behind a fruitseller’s stand was Nicander, one of the tribunes from the Seventh. He must have been one of Varus’s spies, curse it, and if Quintus perjured himself now, his word would be worthless to defend himself against the other charges.
He took a deep breath and looked down at the crowd. “Yes, but—”
The crowd, larger now, audibly gasped. A buzzing of voices broke out just as the axe blade jabbed deeper into his skin and the voice in his ear snarled for silence. Alarmed, he complied, and that mistake sealed his doom, for no one could hear his explanations after the crowd erupted a moment later. It was responding to the praetor loudly banging the heel of his staff against the marble in indication of a verdict.
“Condemned out of his own mouth! I pronounce you guilty, Quintus Tullius, of sorcery, treachery, and blasphemy! You shall be gagged, bound, and thrown from the Rock of Tarvas! May the Immaculate One have mercy on your soul.”
