Valerius jumped from his horse. In an instant he had selected twenty men from the third rank, and without being told they formed three ranks. At a trot they disappeared with the optio around the right flank of the hill.
On seeing the Romans, the Gauls drew fresh life and threw themselves anew at the Germans.
“No!” Rufio shouted in exasperation.
“What’s wrong?” Diocles asked and jumped from his horse.
“They have to disengage. Metellus!”
The signifer dismounted and hurried over, the little girl still gripping his hand.
“We don’t have a trumpet, do we?”
“No.”
Rufio shook his head in anger. “The next time I go into the field without a trumpet, kick me in the ass."
Valerius and his twenty men had encircled the back of the hill and now appeared at the summit.
“We can’t wait,” Rufio said. He dropped to one knee before the little girl. “I need you to help me, pretty one,” he said gently. “Will you do that for me?” He held open his arms.
She looked up at Metellus as she still held his hand.
“It’s all right,” he said with a smile. “He’s the man we always trust. Go with him.”
She smiled and extended her arms toward Rufio.
He carried her to within about a hundred and fifty feet of the battle line and set her down and knelt beside her.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Kalinda.”
He smiled and brushed one of her freckled cheeks with his thumb.
She flinched at the rough skin of his hand but then reached up and squeezed his fingers. Her blue eyes gazed at him with an innocent trust that touched him where no sword could ever reach.
“I want you to face those men out there now, and I want you to scream as loud as you can. I want it to start at your pretty little toes and go all the way up through your body and out your mouth. Will you do that for me? I want to help your uncle get away from those bad men.”
She nodded and turned and let out a shriek heard as far as the Tiber. On and on it went, a piercing little girl scream that could have shattered tempered steel.
Stunned, the Gauls pulled back and turned, fearful of some new threat to their families.
“Disengage!” Rufio shouted, waving them aside. “Break off!”
He waved his men forward.
The Sequani woman rode up on his horse and he lifted Kalinda to the saddle.
“Take her from the field. Now.”
She wheeled and galloped off with her daughter toward the village.
The three ranks of soldiers stopped before him. The veterans stuck the pointed butts of their pila into the ground next to them and the new men did the same.
At the foot of the hill, the Sequani had drawn away and split in half, allowing a clear field for the Romans.
Rufio turned to his men. The veterans were taut and expectant, the recruits terrified. The expressions of the new men were those of children suddenly thrust into the world of adults. Several were shaking so much their mail loricas sounded like the distant rustling of leaves in the wind.
Rufio stepped before them, the first rank of veterans at his back.
“Hear me. These good men will carry you through this day.” He gestured to the rank behind him and to the other rank of veterans to the rear. “And remember this—I am with you always.”
Like the outstretched shield of Mars, Rufio’s voice covered them with its strength and drew them within its protective shade. Several dusty mouths suddenly found saliva. Twenty pairs of eyes began to relax as they gazed at this man, serene in the belief in his own utter invincibility.
The Germans seemed confused. Several warriors clustered around a figure in the center. Wooden spears were their principal arms, and a few carried Gallic swords and wicker shields.
Atop the hill, the twenty soldiers hefted one of their two pila and brought them to shoulder height.
The Germans still had not seen them.
“Metellus!” Rufio shouted.
Metellus raised the silver boar so all on the hill could see it. He kept his eyes on his centurion.
Rufio slashed downward with the edge of his hand.
Metellus lowered the boar in a sweeping arc.
A communal grunt of exertion rolled from the hilltop, and an iron rain crashed into the Germans.
Men screamed in pain and rage. Skulls split and spines shattered. Warriors still standing turned in all directions, but the Gauls flanked them, and the Romans held the field before them.
“First rank, pila up,” Rufio ordered.
Each soldier in the front rank jerked a spear out of the ground and brought it to shoulder height.
“Now!”
The second volley sheared into the Suebi. Their unprotected breasts sucked in the Celtic steel. Stout fighters crumpled like collapsed cocoons as howls and groans fouled the air.
“Metellus!”
The signifer raised the boar.
Rufio cut the air, the boar came down, and the second volley from the hilltop tore into the desperate men.
Three-quarters of the Suebi were already dead. Wounded warriors, some with spears still buried in their torsos, dragged themselves across the ground with the futility of pierced insects.
“Surrender or die!” Rufio shouted in Celtic. He gestured to his first rank and each man brought up his second pilum.
The German in the center strode forward and shouted some Suebian curse and threw his sword onto the ground in front of him.
“I want them alive,” Rufio said to Metellus. “Keep the Gauls away.”
Metellus signaled to Valerius and his men, and in a tight rank they descended the hill behind the Germans. The soldiers still held their pila at the ready.
Rufio confronted the leader as Metellus split the century in two, each half ordered to hold the angry Sequani at bay with their shields.
Valerius and his soldiers surrounded the surviving Germans.
“I am Racovir,” the leader said to Rufio in Celtic. “War chief of the Suebi.”
Barely able to suppress his rage, Rufio stared into the eyes of the barbarian.
“You’re an arrogant fool.” He looked to Valerius. “Back to the village.”
“Rufio,” Diocles said, speaking for the first time since the battle had begun. “What about the wounded?” He pointed to the Germans still groaning on the ground.
“Leave them to the Gauls.” He gestured to Metellus, and the signifer pulled the soldiers away.
Rufio turned his back and the Sequani descended on the bleeding Germans and began hacking them to death.
Amidst screams heard only in the alleys of Hell, Rufio walked calmly away and led his men back to the village.
“Stake them out,” Rufio ordered when they reached an open space in the midst of the smoldering huts. “Take your young ones away,” he said to the mothers, and they hurried off with their children.
Several of the soldiers gathered slivers of wood and scraps of leather. While some of the Sequani warriors held back raging women, twenty-two German survivors were laid out on their backs on the ground. Soldiers drove the sticks into the earth and lashed each German’s wrists to them with the leather thongs. They lay sprawled and defenseless.
Except for Racovir.
Rufio dragged a table and some stools from one of the huts and set them up in the clearing. He pointed to one of the stools. Racovir sat.
The war leader glared at the Roman with the sneer of one who had toppled a city, rather than a third-rate tactician who had just burned children to death in a mindless folly.
Valerius was carrying Racovir’s long sword, and Rufio took it and laid its blade down across some glowing embers.
“Metellus, set up a sentry line and patrol the edge of the village. I want no surprises.” He turned to his men. “Three ranks and stand at ease.”
They rested their shields on the ground but never took their eyes off Rufio.
<
br /> The centurion sat opposite the German. He pulled off his helmet and set it aside and stuck his dagger into the wooden plank between them. Valerius and Diocles stood and watched near one end of the table.
“You’re a liar,” Rufio said to Racovir. “A war chief? No. A sub-chief of some kind. Nursed on a boy’s fantasies of glory and blood.”
Like a bolt from Jupiter, the back of Rufio’s left hand raked across Racovir’s face. His ring laid open the cheek to the bone.
“There,” Rufio said. “Now you have your blood.”
Racovir stared back with watery eyes. “You’re a brave man with soldiers at your elbow,” he said in Celtic.
Rufio knew that questioning the Suebi was the easiest of tasks. The Germans lived for boasting.
“Why?” the centurion asked.
“To test the strength of your stunted limbs.” Blood dripped from his cheek onto the table between them.
“What else?”
“To see if you’d fight for these dogs.”
“Of course we would. You should know that. They’re our allies.”
“That word has no meaning in Suebian. The Sequani are nothing.”
“They beat you to a standstill.”
“We were beaten by Romans. Someday we’ll have our reckoning with the Sequani.”
“You’ll see Hell before you’ll see that day. Who is your chief?”
“Barovistus.”
“Why isn’t he here?
“Other battles.”
Rufio didn’t like the sound of that. “Where?”
“A place of his choosing. Now what will you do with us? Loose these Sequani dogs and let them devour us?”
“What would you do?”
Racovir said nothing.
“Let me guess. You’d tear us apart and hang our heads on oak trees as gifts to your forest gods.”
“And what a gift yours would make, Silver Hair.”
“But I won’t do that.”
Contempt for Roman mercy stained Racovir’s smile. “I know that. And I should thank you, too. For this.” He pointed to his cheek. “Now I have my scar.”
“Oh no. For a scar, the wound must have time to heal.”
The sneer poured like wax from Racovir’s face as Rufio plucked the dagger from the table and thrust the blade through his left eye socket. He twisted it brutally and blood from the German’s brain shot onto his hand. Then he wrenched it loose and Racovir’s head hit the table with a bang.
Rufio vaguely heard a gagging sound come from Diocles off to his right. The centurion reached across and cut a strip from the back of the corpse’s tunic and turned to face the helpless Germans.
They gaped at him in terror.
He bent down and wrapped the cloth around the hilt of Racovir’s hot sword and took it from the embers. He approached the Suebi pinned to the earth. The blade glowed an angry red.
“Never cross the river again. If you do, you won’t return.”
He slashed down at the first captive, severing his left hand with one swift blow.
The stump flailed wildly and squirted Rufio with pulsing blood. He slammed a foot down onto the forearm and pressed the hot blade against the stump and sealed the wound. The man was wailing as Rufio cut the thong on his other wrist.
Down the line Rufio went, slashing and searing and freeing. The sizzle and stink of burning German filled the air. The Suebi began urinating themselves at the shrieks of their comrades and at the Roman’s approach. Twenty-one hands he left on Gallic soil. The final warrior was a blonde boy of no more than eighteen who shook as though with palsy. He reeked with the stench of animal terror and his own waste matter as the blood-spattered Roman stood above him.
Down the blade came, first on the left thong, then on the right.
“Go home whole,” Rufio said. “Hug your mother and pray you never see me again.”
27 IS IT THE GODS WHO PUT THIS FIRE IN OUR MINDS, OR IS IT THAT EACH MAN’S RELENTLESS LONGING BECOMES A GOD TO HIM?
Virgil
_______
The orange sun was dropping behind the horizon when the century entered the fort. The guards seemed especially alert. Rufio sensed distant thunder.
He dismissed his men to their barracks and the baths and rode to the Praetorium.
With his blue tunic and lorica still crusted with blood, he startled the guards at the entrance to Sabinus’s residence. One hurried to the commander’s office while Rufio waited in a small anteroom lined with benches and lit by a single lamp hanging from a bronze stand in the corner.
He heard running feet and turned to see Sabinus rush in, followed by Probus and several other centurions.
“By the gods!” Sabinus said.
The commander had the look of a man who had just been saved from drowning. He gripped Rufio by both arms.
“We thought you’d been killed.”
“We’re all fine. Diocles, too.”
Probus smiled. “I told the commander the steel hasn’t been forged that could cut you low.”
“Who’s this?” Sabinus touched a bloodstain on Rufio’s tunic.
“Racovir of the Suebi. Why did you think we’d been killed?”
“Carbo is dead. Come.”
Sabinus dismissed the other centurions and went with Rufio into his office.
A young Sequani warrior was sitting on a bench and being tended by one of the camp doctors. A bloody linen bandage encircled his neck, and the doctor was applying some frankincense to a gash across his forehead.
Rufio noticed a red leather eye patch on Sabinus’s desk.
The brazier in a far corner cut the chill of the early evening, and numerous lamps on the tables and hanging from stands suffused the room with a golden glow.
Rufio breathed deeply. It was good to be home.
“Can you tell us your tale again?” Sabinus asked.
The young man looked up at Sabinus and then at Rufio. “Yes.”
“That’s enough of that,” Sabinus said, waving the doctor off. “I’ll send him to the hospital when I finish here.”
The doctor hurried away.
Rufio pulled up a stool and sat across from the young fighter.
“Tell me, lad.”
The boy was no more than twenty and clearly scarred now by something more than wounds.
“They’re all dead.”
“All?”
“Our cavalry ala and your three centuries.”
Rufio looked at Sabinus and back at the young fighter. “Tell me.”
His eyes filled with tears and his lower lip quivered.
“You’re safe now,” Rufio said and laid a hand on one of his shoulders.
The boy cleared his throat. “The Suebi attacked a village near our fort. We could see the smoke. Your centuries were on their way back here but turned around and joined us. We tried to save the village but they slaughtered everyone.”
“What about the soldiers?” Rufio asked.
“Overrun. Carbo sent out scouts but it didn’t matter. There must have been two thousand Suebi. Many horsemen. They turned our flanks. We were encircled and beaten into the earth. The Romans fought like I’ve never seen men fight before, but they were doomed.”
A slave entered with a tray of nuts and three cups of heated wine.
The Sequani’s hand trembled so much he spilled the wine down his chin.
“I was wounded and pretended to be dead. I saw the end. Carbo was among the last to die. He’d taken a spear through the side and was down on one knee. The Suebian chief came up to him and laughed. He threw aside his sword and picked up a tree limb. He broke Carbo’s legs first so he couldn’t rise. Then he crushed his chest. Not enough to kill him outright. Carbo cursed him as he broke his ribs.” Tears filled his eyes. “He died slowly. Died cursing him. I think he strangled on his own blood.”
“Any other survivors?”
“I alone,” he said and bent over and began sobbing.
Sabinus stepped behind him and placed his hands on the bo
y’s shoulders. “You’ll be made a citizen of Rome for your valor, and you’ll return to your family.”
Rufio stood up and wandered to the window that opened onto the courtyard. He stared into the deepening night.
“Carbo,” he said with reverence. “We won’t see such a man again.”
“Such a man stands before me,” Sabinus said.
Rufio turned and looked at him.
“Bathe and eat and rest,” Sabinus ordered. “Return in two hours. It’s time to go to war.”
The scraping and purging of the baths could cleanse only the skin. None of the dark stains of battle could be so easily scoured away. Rufio knew this cruel truth better than any man did. Yet he felt refreshed as he walked through the darkness to the barracks of his century. He wore the off-white tunic he favored in the evening, and he hungered for the comfort of his rooms.
Neko, of course, had not doubted his return. He regarded the killing of Rufio as simply an impossibility. A selection of dried fruits and cheeses had been laid out, and within minutes of Rufio’s arrival an hour earlier a cup of heated wine had been in his hand.
He had told Neko to go to bed after the meal, so he was surprised to hear his voice carrying through the darkness. He was arguing with a woman, and they were as angry as a couple of alley dogs biting each other’s flanks.
Rufio turned the corner of the barracks and saw the last person on earth he expected to see.
Flavia stood before Neko. He was tying to get her to leave, but he might as well have cursed the stars. Her furious face shone like white-hot metal in the moonlight.
“What’s this?” Rufio asked.
A sharp intake of breath was the only sound she made when she saw him.
“Master, this woman won’t leave.”
Some of his soldiers had come out of the barracks to investigate the commotion.
“Why are you here?” Rufio asked.
“To see you.”
Rufio hoped that envious Venus was sleeping, for even in the pale light of night Flavia shamed the heavens.
“Back to your dreams,” Rufio said to his men. He smiled at Neko. “I should call you Cerberus, you guard my gate so well.”
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