Diocles stood in awe at what he had just seen. The German horsemen were retreating now to the safety of their army. Numbed by the ferocity of the Roman defense, they regathered a short distance off.
Even at this range, Diocles could hear the new Suebi widows howling in grief for their men lying in the mud a few hundred feet from them.
The Romans also reassembled. The first group of three cohorts had faced the cavalry with a formation six men deep, but now they regrouped into only three ranks, each cohort about three hundred and fifty feet across—such was the confidence of the centurions that these men in shallow ranks and open files could prevail against whatever the Suebi hurled at them. To Diocles, who could see all the thousands of Germans at a glance, this confidence seemed rash to the point of recklessness. Yet he had learned enough from Rufio to comprehend his reasoning. A six rank formation was a waste of men, since those in the rear could not engage the enemy. The line had to be just deep enough to withstand the impact of the Suebi, but thin and flexible enough to maneuver and to ensure that the maximum number of soldiers was savaging the enemy at every moment. It was a task as maddening as that of Sisyphus.
Diocles threw off his cloak. He was already soaked to the skin, and the wet wool just made him colder.
The happy men he expected to see as he walked along the line of Scorpion shooters were not there. Looks of concern, and even alarm, darkened the soldiers’ expressions. They were checking the tension on the torsion ropes of the catapults. Clearly they did not like what they saw. The cords of sinew had softened in the rain.
“The Suebi cavalry won’t make that mistake again,” Diocles heard Adiatorix say.
He looked to the right to see the Sequani chieftain studying the German multitude to the east.
“They won’t attack separately anymore,” Adiatorix went on. “Foot fighters and horsemen will strike together. They’ll use their mass to try to club the Romans to death. Crush them with their weight.”
Yes. The rock of Sisyphus.
49 WARS, THE HORROR OF MOTHERS.
Horace
______
The warriors in the German left wing, opposite the Roman right, peered through the rain at the hilltop. Fearful now of the Scorpions, they hesitated. Their cavalry had withdrawn from the front line, and now only men on foot faced each other across the battleground.
Rufio’s mouth felt like road dust, as it always did at this moment. His heart pounded and the hammering seemed to race all the way to his skull and thump inside his helmet. His tongue spread the last few drops of saliva across his lips.
The Roman horns shrieked. Rufio and the other centurions yelled, their men roared with them, and then the legion charged.
The once-mute soldiers howled with the throats of maddened beasts as they raced across the battlefield. Stunned, the Suebi recoiled. Like the surface of a lake hit by a wind, the barbarian line seemed to ripple backward. German leaders shouted encouragement and then faced the Romans and charged without their men. Shamed by their leaders, the Suebi in the front line found their courage and launched themselves at the Italian madmen.
Holding their shields above their heads, they dashed toward the charging Romans.
A volley of Scorpion bolts shot down from the hill. They had no effect. The few that reached the Suebi skidded harmlessly off the raised shields. The cords on the catapults were so soaked their powers of torsion were almost gone. The lethal engines had become useless toys.
Just before the collision, the Suebi slowed, evidently expecting their opponents to do likewise so as not to lose their balance. The Romans did not.
Rufio hit the man opposite him with terrific force. He heard the German’s breastbone crack under the impact of the shield boss. The barbarian fell backward and Rufio was suddenly standing on both of his thighs. Into the unprotected stomach sank the Spanish sword. The German exhaled with a deep hiss, and Rufio leaped beyond him.
A beardless Suebi faced him. Armed with spear and wicker shield, he yelled the Suebian war cry and closed on the smaller Roman.
The German spearpoint sought his eyes, but with a flick of his wrist Rufio cut it like a celery stalk. Suddenly weaponless, the young warrior pulled his shield before his face and upper body. Rufio thrust his sword into the German’s left thigh. The leg buckled, and Rufio slammed his wooden shield outward against the wicker one. It flew from the German’s grasp and Rufio sank his swordpoint into the naked throat.
Rufio looked to his left. Arrianus was battling a huge German. The young soldier blocked a tremendous overhand sword slash that split the bronze rim of his shield. He lunged at the German but lost his footing in the mud. Down on his face he went, his shield beneath him. The German grinned at the little Italian at his feet. A downed man was a dead man.
“Son of a whore!” Rufio shouted in the few words he knew in Suebian.
Startled, the barbarian turned to this new threat.
Rufio slashed sideways as though wielding a sickle and took off the top of his head with a single cut. The German crashed to the ground like a chopped oak.
Rufio helped Arrianus to his feet. He paused for breath and looked down the line. The Romans held. But holding would not be enough.
“Rufio!” Metellus shouted from his signaling position in the second rank.
The centurion spun to the right. Straight over his fallen comrades a German charged, gripping a Roman sword and shield.
The sight of the stolen Roman weapons—perhaps Carbo’s own—roused Rufio’s darkest self. He charged the German through the driving rain.
The Suebi was at least a half-foot taller, but Rufio hit him like a stag. The German stumbled and Rufio’s shield boss crashed into the other shield. A cut from the left Rufio easily blocked, and then the centurion thrust to the right. The blade sliced across the German’s ribs and he screamed in rage. He raised his weapon for an overhand slash and Rufio sank his sword into the German’s armpit. A groan more like a wail of sorrow than of pain echoed from some dark abyss.
Rufio sprang forward and brought his left foot down onto the German’s right one and again hit him with his shield. Even with the shouting and clanging all around them, it was a thunderous blow. The German toppled backward like a collapsing column. Pinning his foot, Rufio could hear his anklebones shatter and snap as he fell. Rufio kicked aside the shield and loomed over him. And now the world became silent. The battle had vanished. From the panic in the German’s eyes, it seemed like he was begging, but Rufio could hear no sound. He ignored the gape of terror and slashed down into the center of the face. The German’s head split like cheese. Again and again Rufio chopped the skull into fragments, into crumbs, into nothing.
50 VIRTUE IS A THOUSAND SHIELDS.
Roman saying
______
Sabinus streaked across the battleground. The space between the first and the second ranks of cohorts was his domain. From here on horseback he could take in the entire battle line and move easily across the field. Encouraging here, directing there, he seemed to be everywhere at once.
Rufio’s right wing was solid as steel but had made no advance. Probus’s cohort in the middle had taken terrible punishment, the huge German wedge threatening to break through. The line had sagged, but the men had rallied and straightened out their ranks. Yet they were still enduring a savage hammering. The German reinforcements seemed endless.
Sabinus rode toward the northern end of the battlefield to get a closer look at the crucial left wing. Even in the heavy rain he could make out the big figure of Macer slamming and thrusting into the Germans before him.
Sabinus caught up with Titinius and they rode together to the edge of the field to check on the flooded trench.
The sight was horrific. Dead Germans clogged the water and floated on the surface like a school of poisoned fish. Many were riddled with pila. Those that had escaped the spears and had reached the inner edge had been struck down as they had tried to claw their way out. Dozens had had their heads crushed by Roman shie
lds. Others had been hacked into chunks of carrion.
“Are you all right?” Titinius asked.
Sabinus wiped away the heavy saliva that preceded vomit.
“I’m fine. Well done.” He turned and rode back to check again on the middle of the line.
The stamina of the legionaries surpassed that of the Suebi, but the warriors on both sides were tiring. Ten minutes of heavy fighting pushed even the fittest men to their limits of endurance.
As though by tacit agreement, both sides began to ease up. The Germans pulled back, and the outnumbered Romans were too few to pursue. The centurions shouted commands and the legionaries dressed ranks and took a breath.
“What happened to their horsemen?” Diocles asked Adiatorix as they both gazed across the plain below.
“I was wrong. They lost too many to the catapults in the first rush and decided to hold back. Now that the Scorpions aren’t working, we’ll see them again.”
Diocles studied the battlefield. The Suebi line had withdrawn about two hundred feet to the east, but several thousand eager warriors from the ugly mass beyond were moving forward to join it.
The reordering of the Roman line was far different. Horns blared and the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Cohorts from the second rank marched forward between the gaps in the first rank and replaced the exhausted front line. The cohorts of Rufio and Probus and Macer pulled back, the uninjured men helping the wounded and carrying the dead. Diocles could see Sabinus and Crus riding about and directing everything within their line of sight.
“Why doesn’t the tired rank move all the way to the rear?” Adiatorix asked.
“Sabinus is keeping the last three cohorts fresh in case he needs them. They’re called reserves. The Suebi don’t understand reserves.”
“Neither did the Sequani when we fought the Romans.”
“That’s why you’re speaking Latin now.”
Sequani women drove carts out from the village and passed through the gaps between the last three cohorts. They pulled up to the second rank to pick up the crippled and the dead to carry them back to camp.
“At least the rain is letting up.” Diocles knew he was grasping at any help from Fortuna he could find.
“Look.”
Adiatorix pointed to a mist gathering over the stream northeast of the battlefield.
“Jupiter’s death!” Diocles shouted. “Is there no mercy? These are honorable men. Must they be abandoned?”
“Don’t speak against your gods.”
“I’ll speak against anything! Our men need to be able to see where the Suebi throw their weight. If the fog drifts over the killing ground, it’ll be no different than if our soldiers were fighting with their eyes gouged out.”
“Look there! Something is wrong.”
One of the tribunes was galloping toward Sabinus and Crus. He pulled up, spoke for a moment, and then the three of them raced off toward the Fourth Cohort at the northern edge of the field.
51 THIS VAST EMPIRE OF THEIRS HAS COME TO THEM AS THE PRIZE OF VALOR AND NOT AS THE GIFT OF FORTUNE.
Josephus
______
Sixteen men from the Second Cohort had been killed and fifty-two wounded seriously enough to be evacuated. One hundred and fourteen suffered smaller injuries they endured now in silence. Rufio’s own century had lost one veteran and two recruits to German spears and blades. Each loss, fatal or otherwise, was a sword slash to Rufio’s soul. Yet he bore it with a face of iron.
After the kindhearted Sequani women had carted away his wounded, he and the other centurions of the Second Century walked along the line of their resting soldiers. Smiling and heartening them, the centurions seemed to be different beings from the same demons who beat their men with sticks when training.
Valerius and Metellus helped, too. They gripped other soldiers’ arms in solidarity and offered water from their own flasks to those who had used up all of theirs.
Rufio watched and he knew there was nowhere else on earth where a man could so cherish other men as in a legion. As in this legion—where he so profoundly loved these two remarkable young soldiers.
“Not a scratch on you!” roared a familiar voice. “Still the favored of the gods.”
Rufio turned to see Probus coming toward him. His old friend sported a gash under his left eye from a German spearpoint, and a bloody strip of linen bound a sword cut on his right forearm.
“What’s the tally for the Third Cohort?” Rufio asked.
“Eighty-seven killed and a hundred and thirty-four of the wounded taken from the field.”
“All right. I’ll ask Sabinus to detach three centuries from the Sixth Cohort to give you more muscle. When you hit the Suebi again, you’ll need it.”
“What do you think?” Probus gestured toward the Germans.
“Tougher than most.”
“The man of many words. What about our chances today?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I mean what do you really think?”
“I think I won’t let a little red-haired girl stand by and watch her mother raped in front of her.”
“Did you look out there?” Probus pointed east again.
Rufio turned and squinted through the light rain at the advancing fog.
“The gods are testing us,” Probus said.
“I’m tired of being tested,” he snapped.
An approaching horse distracted them.
“Macer is down!” Titinius shouted as he rode up.
“Valerius! Take command.”
Rufio and Probus raced north across the field.
Macer was lying in the mud before the Fourth Cohort. Crus was kneeling behind him and cradling his head in his lap. Sabinus was beside him and had placed one of his own red cloaks over the chest of the fallen soldier.
Rufio and Probus ran up and Sabinus moved back, deferring to the unique bond among centurions.
Rufio dropped to his knees beside Macer.
“Not good,” Macer whispered.
His breathing gurgled as if a stream ran through his chest. The flesh of his face was as white as cotton.
Rufio pulled up the cloak. Macer’s mail lorica was clotted with blood. A spearpoint had been thrust against his right breast, and by a fluke a few of the mail rings had snapped. The point had gone in deeply.
“How goes the battle?” Macer managed to ask.
“Well,” Rufio lied. “One more blow and we’ll have them.”
“Perhaps Fortuna did save me for this day.”
“There’s no doubt. It was the will of powers greater than you or I.”
Macer extended his right hand, and Rufio took it in his.
“Rufio,” he gasped as he pulled his comrade’s arm.
Rufio leaned closer and brought his left ear to Macer’s lips.
“I’m afraid.”
“Fear not, my friend,” Rufio whispered. “All centurions live with Mars in paradise.” He gripped Macer more tightly. “Wait for me there.”
Macer smiled weakly and died holding Rufio’s hand.
Rufio touched his ring of Victoria to Macer’s pale forehead and then stood, his face as hard as the boss of a shield.
“We’ve rested enough. It’s time to make the mud of Gaul stink with German dead.”
52 MAN’S FIRST HAPPINESS IS TO KNOW HOW TO DIE.
Lucan
______
Fog had enveloped the entire Suebi army except for the thousand or so warriors directly confronting the Romans across the battlefield.
“Perhaps the gods have blessed us and taken them from our midst,” Sabinus said with an ironic smile.
“Easy victory is no blessing,” Rufio answered.
The commander and his centurion stood between the first and second ranks of cohorts and gazed at the gray-white shroud concealing those who hungered to destroy them. The Suebi visible outside the fog bank milled around a few hundred feet from the Romans and began hefting their weapons and shouting curses.
�
�They’re trying to get themselves excited again,” Rufio said. “To smother their fear with bluster.”
“It’s odd, but I’ve never thought of the Germans needing to deal with their fear.”
“All men need to deal with their fear.”
The Romans in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Cohorts already had their shields up and their swords in their hands, while the Second, Third, and Fourth rested.
“The horses this time?” Sabinus asked.
“Yes.”
“Both flanks?”
“No. Their mounts aren’t sound enough or trained to leap the trench. Barovistus knows that. He’ll hurl all of them at our right wing. Pressing our shoulder to the hill will help us, but that’s all. Help isn’t deliverance. And it certainly isn’t victory.”
“Did you see him out there?”
“Oh yes. I want to see him again.”
Clusters of Suebi made mock charges across the battlefield and then withdrew, apparently attempting to goad the Romans into breaking formation.
The legionaries stared back in silence and kept their line as straight as a spear shaft. They waited for their commander.
Sabinus mounted his horse to get the view and the mobility he needed. He gestured to the cornicens behind him, and they raised their horns to their lips. He took a deep breath, then swept his hand downward.
The horns shrieked and the frontline Romans yelled and charged.
Again caught off guard, the Germans flinched but then checked themselves and threw their mass at the attacking Romans.
The clash was deafening, as if every metalsmith on earth had seized his tools and gone mad.
LEGION Page 30
