Gods and Legions

by Michael Curtis Ford

  'My lord!' Sallustius called out. 'Sapor is attacking the front as well!'

  Julian stopped short and wheeled his own horse, his grimy face twisted in rage.

  'By the gods!' he shouted. 'Sallustius, you lead, return to the front! We are still under a truce with the Persians — Sapor will pay for his treachery!'

  Leaping forward, he raced back up the track, against the tide of running men who at Sallustius' frantic shouts hastened to step aside to avoid the sharp hooves of the Emperor's horse.

  We cleared the rear guard, crossing the gap that had opened between the army's two ends and joining the weary units of troops trotting resignedly to the front. Just then, we were startled by yet more trumpeting, this time maddened and frantic, from what sounded like dozens of instruments, not behind us or ahead, but directly to the side. An enormous cloud of dust surged down the high ridge from the Persian troops on our left flank. Straining to see through the dense haze I could make out the gleam of glittering armor and weapons, the helmets and spear tips seeming to advance at an impossible height relative to the ground. The horrifying trumpeting continued, pressing ever louder, and the troops beside us froze in awe and horror at the sight — a brigade of the King's armored war elephants, bearing down on us at a speed unmatched by any beast or machine on earth.

  At the dreadful sound of the trumpeting elephants, the Roman horses reared, rolling their eyes in terror, and even Julian's well-trained mount almost threw him in the dust. The elephants' awful appearance, their gaping jaws and horrendous smell, struck fear in man and animal, and as the line of beasts approached, the earth physically trembled under the terrible weight of their stumplike feet. They thundered straight toward the center of our panicking column as the drivers perched precariously on the base of the beasts' necks, peering down at us with evil grins, their white teeth gleaming through the blackness of their faces.

  The beasts plowed into our line, enraged at the screams of our terrified troops. The men scattered, fleeing for their lives, while the elephants reared in their midst, bellowing and trumpeting, stomping again and again on the bodies of those they had trampled until they were nothing more than dark smears in the sooty earth. Roman limbs and torsos hung limp and dripping from the tusks, emboldening the animals further in their blood rage. The archers in the towers above rained arrows down upon our men, felling them where they stood to create lines of writhing wounded whom the elephants hastened to stamp upon and crush, or to scoop up in their tusks and tear apart with their jaws. When our Gauls finally managed to scramble out of range of the flashing ivory, the elephant drivers deftly maneuvered their beasts away from the scene of slaughter and formed up in a rank to prepare for another charge at our massed and terrified troops. Behind them, marching implacably down the ridge in tight formation, came an enormous body of Persian infantry, raising their ululating battle cry, preparing to rush in and finish off the destruction begun by the elephants as soon as the terrible beasts had completed their work.

  As the elephants withdrew and began re-forming, Julian plunged into the thick of his troops, his energy restored, eyes glinting with an almost terrifying intensity behind the visor of his battle helmet. The man was everywhere, wheeling and careening his horse like one possessed, shouting encouragement, arranging his troops into a tight battle formation, bellowing instructions for defeating the monsters when they next attacked. The Gauls stared, but swallowed their fear and their impulse to flee into the desert, obeying him with the military precision he had instilled in them over years of campaigning. Shields were raised, bronze-tipped pikes lowered into position, and as the thick black dust settled on our heads we turned to face the elephants' renewed onslaught.

  It came immediately. Led by the huge bull, its red mouth gaping and lips flapping, the beasts charged again into our column, twenty or more of them, shoulder to shoulder in ranks of four. One carried a Roman soldier, impaled through the belly on the beast's chest spike during the previous charge, the man's legs and head flailing helplessly with the animal's swaying strides, his lifeless eyes staring forward at his comrades like a bloodied figurehead on the prow of a ship. Onward they charged, trumpeting, the ground trembling, and as they approached the men fell silent and tensed.

  'Stay your weapons!' shouted Julian, his lips twisted into a kind of mad grin or a grimace, eyeing the onrushing brutes, blinders forcing their stare straight into the thick of the Roman legion. 'Stay!' he repeated, his voice rising, and the terrible, rancid stench of the animals filled our nostrils, mixing with the reek of the blood and excrement covering our feet and the ground around us, 'Stay!.. Until I say…

  'NOW!'

  As the elephants thundered furiously into our midst, the ranks of men suddenly parted in the middle like a split sheet of parchment, the two halves of the cohorts leaping frantically to the sides, leaving nothing but empty ground in the middle as the enraged elephants raced through the passage left between the men and skidded to a confused stop.

  Instantly our troops let out a roar, drowning out the trumpeting of the angry beasts, which wrenched their heads in bewilderment from side to side as they sought to peer around their blinders and make out the source of the sound.

  'Pikes!' screamed Julian, though his order was superfluous, overwhelmed by the bellowing of the furious troops. A hundred, five hundred heavy-shanked spears flew through the air simultaneously at point-blank range, penetrating the elephants' thick hides with a slicing sound, burying themselves deep in flanks and ribs. The beasts reared, thrashing front legs and trunks in fear and agony, as the archers in the towers on top ceased to fire and struggled to hold on to their ominously rocking platforms.

  Emboldened at their success, the men rushed in closer to the enraged animals, encircling each elephant on all sides, cutting off the beasts' contact with one another. Soldiers who had kept or recovered their pikes dove in toward the elephants' stamping and circling feet from behind, poking and slashing at the backs of their legs and arses, further maddening the animals, which shook and stamped in a desperate effort to dissuade their tormentors. The tower on the enraged bull tilted precariously off its back, leaning almost horizontally to the side as the Persians inside clung to the support posts with their hands, and then the girth strap broke, sending the entire contraption tumbling to the ground, where it crumpled into a confused jumble of leather, lumber, and broken limbs. Twenty Gauls surged forward to finish off the hapless archers, but scrambled back as the bull did the job for them, wreaking revenge for the years of training and torment his masters had put him through as he leaped upon the broken structure and stomped and slashed at the screaming survivors until they were silent.

  A cheer rose from the Roman troops as the first of the beasts dropped bawling and trumpeting to the ground, the tendons at the back of its knees severed. The drivers had lost control of their terrified mounts now, and all around were thrusting their great iron spikes into the necks of the doomed beasts. One by one the monsters dropped, to the shrill shouts of triumph of the Gauls, who now swarmed over them even before they fell. One ill-trained driver thrust frantically again and again into the leathery hide of his animal's neck, each time pounding the spike in deeply with his mallet in an unsuccessful effort to find the fatal spot. Another elephant slammed into it with a terrible scream, and then a third, creating a wall, a writhing mountain of bloody flesh, legs kicking and trunks flailing. The Romans flung spears and shot arrows into the heaving mound, and one of the animals, thrashing blindly about with its trunk, seized a dead driver from off the neck of another and placing the man's torso between its great rubbery lips, proceeded to tear off his limbs one by one in its own terrible death throes.

  Seeing that the elephant charge had been repelled, the body of Persian infantry, who had now approached to the very edge of our lines, stopped suddenly in a confused jumble, their officers unsure whether to follow through with the attack or retreat to safety on the ridge top. Julian did not hesitate. Turning the attention of his troops away from the dying eleph
ants to the greater danger they faced from the Persians at their backs, he quickly organized a charge. The Roman troops howled for revenge for their downed comrades, their shields and weapons smeared with elephant and Persian blood. They leaped at the enemy, slashing and hacking, blood spraying the filthy dust which was now scattered with severed limbs, and no longer were there distinct lines of battle, for the two sides had become thoroughly confused with each other, the one seeking only to preserve their lives, the other seeking the enemy's complete annihilation. A black cloud rose into the thick and sweltering air, obliterating any view of the heights above, obscuring the direction of retreat, preventing the Persians from identifying the route to safety except by the feel of their feet as they sought to run uphill toward the ridge top.

  Sallustius had long since been diverted to another part of the field, and even Julian's crack escort of Gallic guards had been scattered. They raced frantically through the dust, seeking sight of their Emperor, shouting to him to break free of the dangerous surge of Persians around him. Only I had somehow managed to stay close at hand, and even while wheeling my horse through the swirling dust, slashing at the mass of enemy rushing in from all sides, my eyes never left him.

  Julian ignored caution, charging heedlessly into the midst of the battle, urging his men on. Terrified Persians surged around him and his horse, seemingly unaware that the sovereign of the Roman Empire was rearing and hacking with his sword in their very midst. A huge Mede, overcoming his comrades' panic, leaped at the Emperor's horse, wrapping his arms around the animal's neck in an effort to drag him and his rider down into the dust. Julian plunged his long blade up to the hilt just under the man's collarbone, and then drew it backward, streaming death, half the broken sword remaining still in the man's lung. The Mede stared for a moment in surprise, and then belching crimson, dropped from the struggling horse's neck to the ground beneath its sharp hooves.

  He was replaced a moment later by another snarling attacker, who leaped from the fray to seize the Emperor's leg while hacking at his shield with a sword, seeking a gap through which to drive the blade home. Julian smashed again and again at the Persian's face with the hilt of his own broken sword until, with skull bones shattered to the brains, the man released his grip and dropped to the black mire beneath. Julian lifted his broken sword in triumph, bellowing incoherently, and his horse wheeled over the Persian's body, stamping and mutilating the man's torso with its sharpened hooves. Never had I seen the Emperor so taken with violence, so maddened with killing. So absorbed was he, so engrossed in this wanton display of brutality, that he had lost all sense of the battle and danger surrounding him.

  Suddenly, I saw a hand raised from among the mob, a finger pointing at Julian as he cut and slashed his way through the enemy, and a moment later a thin, reedy spear, a javelin used for throwing at the enemy from the middle distance, emerged from among the sea of bronze helmets, aimed carefully and flung directly toward the Emperor. I lunged on my horse, urging it forward and nearly trampling the soldiers in front of me, all the while watching the missile. It coursed through the air for the short distance, its tail wobbling slightly at first until it found its momentum and truth of aim, and then sheared into Julian's side, unprotected by the breastplate he had neglected to don before racing to oversee the battle. Like a bird shot from the sky by a boy's arrow, he toppled from the horse out of my sight, disappearing beneath the feet of the fleeing Persians and Roman pursuers, his horse continuing on its way, riderless, as if unaware of its loss. I leaped off my own mount and pushed frantically through the milling throng to where I had seen him fall. Mercifully, after a moment's search on the ground, I found him.

  To my astonishment, he had not been trampled by the panicked hooves around him, nor even injured by the fall itself. Writhing in the dust, however, he clutched at the spear. Its point had scarcely penetrated his body, as it had become firmly embedded in his bottom-most rib. As I knelt beside him, the commotion around us quickly subsided and the Persians' retreat turned into a general rout. The Roman troops had now raced past us and were pursuing the enemy up the ridge, hacking at the Persians' backs and legs just as they had the elephants.

  Three guards thundered up on their horses, their faces ashen even through the grime, staring down at the groaning and writhing Emperor on the ground.

  'Physician! How is he hurt?'

  I pried Julian's hands off the spearhead. The light weapon, thrown from close in, had struck him a glancing blow that had pierced so shallowly that the sharp cutting edges and double barbs of the head were still outside his body. Had the hook-like barbs penetrated it would have been terrible work to remove the spearhead without tearing the flesh and vital organs; yet even so, they had made deep slashes in the Emperor's fingers and palms where he had grasped the head in an effort to pull it out of his rib. The shaft, too, had broken off at the iron socket upon impact, as it was designed, to prevent the enemy from picking it up and launching it back.

  'I will attend to him,' I said, in a voice that was far calmer than I felt. 'Don't hover over me with your horses — you'll trample us if they take fright. Form up in a line toward the ridge and prevent any Persian strays from returning and overrunning us. We'll carry him to camp in a moment.'

  The guards nodded, relieved to receive concrete orders, and wheeling their mounts they galloped several hundred feet toward the ridge, shouting for their fellows to join them in forming a barricade. They sat their skittish horses in the slowly subsiding dust cloud, watching the battle move away from them and listening to the cheers of the Roman victors, who continued to slash at the backs of the retreating enemy.

  I bent back down to Julian, who by this time had fallen into a swoon from the pain. Quickly I removed his helmet, the metal of which was almost too hot to touch, and a trickle of sweat poured out the basin. I then turned to the spearhead embedded in his rib. Muttering silent thanks that he was unconscious, and resting my left hand carefully on his rib cage, I grasped the shaft with my right and gave a hard, quick jerk.

  Despite my effort to pull straight back, the surprising weight of the long iron tip and socket created some torque, and I heard an audible snap from the already weakened rib as the weapon popped out. Julian twitched, his right arm flailing blindly and his mouth contorting into a grimace, even in his swoon. The piercing bled freely, though no more than would be expected from such a wound, and the blood showed a bright, clear red, a good sign.

  I held the point of the spearhead up before my face, viewing its symmetrical, deadly outline against the pale sky. For a long moment I stared at the tip, at its beautifully cast smoothness and blackness, the carefully balanced barbs, the razor sharpness of its point and edge undulled by its recent impact with hard bone, its effectiveness unimpeded, its deadly potential yet unfulfilled…

  I glanced down at my unconscious patient, face streaked with sweat and dust, expression contorted with pain, and I hesitated. Great evil was afoot in the world. Vows had been taken, oaths had been sworn, and these could not be discarded lightly. It is not often that a common man, a humble physician, has a chance to affect the very course of history, and I prayed to God for courage to be worthy of the opportunity. I glanced up at the guards, making sure they had secured the area and were remaining on vigilant watch against any possible recurrence of the Persian attack.

  I then bent to complete my work.

  II

  But I have moved far ahead of myself, Brother, for truly this is the very end of my story, not the beginning, and I shall have to return to it again in due course. My only excuse is that it was this momentous event that first prompted me to consider recording my thoughts on the matter. The chronological beginning is the only proper place for a narrative to start, for thus commence even the Scriptures themselves — In principio… — and though far be it from me to compare this hurried journal to our sacred texts, certainly one is not ill-advised to seek to emulate them. Let us therefore start this effort again, not at the conclusion of our story this time, but
at its foundations, its very roots — in the beginning.

  It was in Athens that our paths first crossed, as well you know, for you were there too, having been sent by Father to pursue your philosophical studies at the Academy. I, by a happy coincidence of timing, had at the same time been referred to the city's learned physicians by the Emperor Constantius, Julian's elder cousin, in recognition of my studies at Alexandria and my promising future as the Emperor's court physician.

  We roomed together, you and I, in modest yet adequate lodgings hard by the malodorous fish market, though there were few moments that we actually spent with each other. You were engrossed in your learned discussions, sitting on the roof of our apartment disputing obscure points of theology till dawn, fasting every other week. I, on the other hand, was immersed in the physicality and sordidness of medicine, trolling the streets for subjects of study or up to my elbows in the putrid abdominal contents of a recent plague victim in the autopsy hall. I had no time or inclination for the ephemeral, spiritual realm you inhabited, while you, on the other hand, had no desire to delve into the filth and the ecstasy of my worldly existence.

  We met Julian at the same time, through the same small circle of mutual acquaintances. He and his guardian Mardonius rented rooms not two streets away from ours, and he often frequented the same taverns, eating houses, and public baths as did we. From almost the very moment Julian and I clasped each other's shoulders in greeting, we recognized a link, a connection that extended beyond the normal levels of shifting friendships and alliances. We saw in each other an honesty and sincerity, a desire for truth and knowledge, a disdain for frivolity; in short, a purity, if you will, unlike that prevailing among our general circle of acquaintances. It seems strange now for me to look back on those days, but I can scarcely remember a time when I did not know Julian, though I was well into my adulthood when I first met him.