The Romans crashed and lunged into the slashing Germans. With the smell of their comrades’ blood still in their nostrils, the Romans fought with staggering ferocity. Screams of agony made the mind reel. So quickly did the Germans fall that the legionaries stood atop the corpses to reach the enemy, the short Italians fighting on stepstools carved from the dead.
Hundreds of fresh Germans rushed from the mist, but they, too, went down before the Roman swordsmen. Centurions roared commands and the line began advancing over the pavement of German bodies.
The Roman ranks stayed tight as their swords pierced the chaotic Suebi line. Soon the mass of carcasses was so dense the Romans had to stop to pull them aside before they could advance.
The distant rumble of hoofbeats reached Rufio’s ears above the tumult.
And now it comes.
Horsemen ruptured the wall of fog and were upon the Romans at once. German riders poured out of the mist by the slope, too, and raced up the hill at an angle and down and around the Roman line. In minutes hundreds of Suebi cavalry had surrounded the entire front rank.
Gallic swords in the hands of the horsemen slashed down into the Romans’ backs. The Germans on foot took heart and counterattacked in the front with startling vigor. In moments the legionaries were sealed off, crushed without mercy between the hammer and the anvil.
Some of the Roman cavalry on the left rushed to their aid, but they soon disappeared within the German horde, as though overwhelmed by a toxic sea.
Rufio turned to Sabinus, but he was already signaling. The horns blew and the three cohorts from the first clash charged the barbarian horsemen.
Blinded by their own frenzy, the German horsemen ignored the Romans who now stood behind them. But the legionaries surged with the confidence of bloodied troops and with the rage of men who had lost their brothers. They hit the Suebi hard.
Rufio slashed at the leg of a horseman about to spear a Roman. The German howled and turned to see his knee dangling from his thigh by a few of strings of muscle.
Rufio ran his sword into the belly of the horse and the animal crumpled. The German jabbed at him with his spear, but Rufio knocked it aside like a twig and thrust the blade of Hetorix straight into the German’s mouth.
The fog had completely enveloped them now. The Romans kept their line straight by feel and by hearing and by training.
“Eyes front!” Rufio shouted to the soldiers before him. “We’ll take the horsemen!”
The men of the Fifth Cohort attacked the Suebi warriors with renewed energy.
Rufio spun toward hoofbeats to his right. A horse’s head pierced the fog and he split its skull with a single blow. He leaped aside as the animal fell. A cursing German clambered to his feet and lunged with a long sword. It skidded off the boss of his shield. Rufio slammed the shield into him and sank his sword into the German’s bowels.
Horrible cries from the horses came to Rufio through the fog. His chest heaving, he paused for a moment to catch his breath. Now the barbarians were learning what professional soldiers always knew—horses are superb at seizing ground but almost useless at holding it. They skitter and bolt and lose their nerve, like children in a storm.
“Arrianus!” Rufio shouted to his left.
“Here!” he answered from the depths of the fog.
Rufio heard his grunt of exertion and the scream of a horse before it crashed to the ground.
The Roman line moved forward, climbing over fallen horses and slain men. The panicked animals were racing about, even those with riders now beyond control. The legionaries slashed at their legs and punctured their stomachs, and the dying beasts tumbled to the earth. Unhorsed and stunned, the Suebi became easy prey for the Roman blades.
As quickly as it began, the torrent receded. The cavalry charge had spent itself. The odor of wet horses and their reeking entrails clogged the air. The second rank hacked its way through the last survivors and soon bumped into the three cohorts in front of them.
The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Cohorts had absorbed a pitiless beating, and many of the legionaries leaned on their shields in exhaustion.
Rufio strained to see through the fog. The Germans were gone for now, staggered by the failure of the encirclement and by the counterattack from the front rank. But they had not gone far. Rufio could hear them moving about in the mist, perhaps only a hundred feet away.
Taking advantage of the lull, he ran down the line and instructed the centurions in the front to pull back their centuries. The second rank would relieve them. Despite their weariness and wounds, the first rank managed the operation almost as smoothly as if it were a drill.
Metellus appeared beside Rufio. He had discarded his small signifer’s shield and carried a big legionary one.
“Where’s the standard?” Rufio asked in surprise.
“With Sabinus. Visual signaling is useless now. I’ll fight by you.”
Rufio smiled and gripped his right forearm. “Have you seen Valerius?”
“He’s a wall of iron at the back. A couple of German horsemen got through to the rear and were about to trample one of the new boys. Valerius charged them both and cut them down like they were dead wood. Horses and all.”
“By the gods! The civic crown for him.”
“What now?” Metellus tried to peer through the fog.
“One more big push, I think. They need a success. I know the Germans. They’ll lose heart soon if they cannot get a small taste of victory. Their next attack will be everything they have.”
“Cavalry?”
“I don’t know. We’ve killed so many, but there could be more. We might not be able to withstand another horse assault like the last.”
“But we have reserves.”
“Sabinus would never commit them in this fog where he cannot see. The risk is too great. He has to hold them back.” Rufio took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s up to us.”
The Suebi were getting noisier. The clatter of equipment told Rufio they were preparing their assault.
“We won’t charge into the fog,” he said. “We’ll wait for them to come. Pass the word down the ranks and along the files.”
Rufio turned to the soldier behind him and told him the same. Then he sheathed his sword and leaned his shield against his left leg and rested for a moment. He rubbed his aching wrists and forearms. They had endured much over the years and he was feeling it now.
The Suebi were almost ready. The rising pitch of their voices was enough to tell him.
He thumbed his ring and then hefted his shield and pulled out his sword.
“Comrades!” he shouted loudly enough to be heard throughout the Second Cohort. “Our loyalty is to the spirit of Rome and our cause is the will of Caesar. For them we face the barbarians. For the safety of all we love we’ll hurl these savages through Avernus’s foul mouth and deep into the abyss of Acheron.”
Like a rising swell, a roar began among the troops until it crashed through the fog like a torrent.
And then the Suebi charged.
Never had the men of Augustus fought as the Twenty-fifth Legion fought that day. Calling on some mysterious inner reserves, they battled the Germans to a standstill and began pushing them back.
But the barbarians seemed willing to sacrifice an entire race simply to tire the Romans. Hundreds of Germans died in minutes, but still they came.
Rufio surged ahead, stabbing and chopping and battering them to death, and yet more rushed forward out of the fog. He knew that soon his men would be unable to lift their shields or wield their swords. Confronting him now was the most terrible irony of his fighting career. The Romans’ skill at killing—the endless, bottomless killing—was about to bring on their exhausted collapse.
And then he heard the last sound he wanted to hear. Hoofbeats.
He looked at Metellus
Spattered with German blood and surrounded by bodies, the signifer leaned on his shield and struggled for breath. “Where are they?”
Rufio wa
s not even sure which direction he was facing in the dense fog.
“The right flank!” he yelled as the invisible horses thundered toward them. He would be the first to face them. One more time he looked at Metellus, so Roman eyes would be the last eyes he would see on this earth. Suddenly in his mind he saw his sister sitting in her garden in Rome and the adoring face of Flavia smiling at him in the firelight.
And then the horses were upon him.
Adiatorix burst out of the wall of fog, his sword slashing down into the Suebi before him. Screams of pain and panic shattered the air as the Sequani horsemen crashed into the flank of the German line. Heads split and limbs flew. Pieces of German hit Rufio’s helmet as Adiatorix and his warriors flailed into their hereditary enemies.
The Romans cheered their gallant allies and reached within themselves for a strength they did not know they had. They tore into the barbarians.
Down the Suebi went like wheat. And then they lost their nerve. Chopped to pieces in front and not realizing in the fog how few Sequani there were on their flank, they broke and ran. That was their downfall.
The Romans and Sequani pursued, attacking their unprotected backs and feeding the soil of Gaul with dead beyond number.
When the Romans were too tired to kill any more, Rufio called a halt.
“Dress ranks!” he shouted.
The other five centurions and the optios helped to get the troops in order.
The men of the Second Cohort seemed to be in some eerie netherworld. The fog was thin enough for the legionaries to see each other, but far too thick for them to see beyond it.
“Where are we?” Valerius said as he hurried up to the front rank. “I cannot get my bearings.”
Rufio looked around. Ahead he could hear the Germans falling over each other in their headlong dash to safety. From off to his left came the sounds of fighting. Yet the faint noise seemed to drift in all the way from the edge of the world. How could everyone be so far away?
“Chief!” Rufio yelled.
Adiatorix rode up.
“Can you sense where the line is?” he asked, so confident was he in the intuitive powers of the Celts.
For a moment Adiatorix seemed to commune with the very forces of nature.
“Northwest,” he said at last and pointed in the direction of the distant fighting.
But how could that be? “Let me borrow your horse.”
Adiatorix jumped down and handed him the reins.
Rufio rode along the front of the cohort and instructed everyone to be quiet. Then he passed into the deepest fog.
After the chaos and carnage, the silent invisibility soothed him. He moved slowly toward the far-off clanging.
Soon he heard shouts and screams. Without warning, the mist parted and he stared in disbelief.
The Third and Fourth Cohorts were at least a quarter mile away to the left and fighting for their lives. In its savage counterattack, Rufio’s cohort had surged far beyond the battle line and now stood behind the Germans.
It seemed as if the entire Suebi nation had launched itself in one final assault against the legion. The Roman line was bending but still it held. Yet it would not hold much longer.
Rufio’s hands trembled. But it was not in fear but in anticipation. A soldier could live a hundred lifetimes and never see this moment. The entire battle turned on this, and with it the fate of Gaul. The fate of the Celts, of the northern approaches to Italy, perhaps of the empire itself for a thousand years—all turned on the decision of an unknown centurion in the fog of Gaul.
Without orders or permission, in the fraction of an instant, he decided. He raced back to his men.
He gathered the other centurions and described what he had seen. And then he stunned them.
“We’ll pivot the whole cohort. In silence. The goddess has given us this chance. We must take it now. It won’t come again.”
Rufio looked into each of his officers. In their eyes shone a full awareness of the enormity of what they were about to attempt. The entire right wing of the legion would swivel toward the rear of the Suebi like a closing jaw. A jaw with teeth of Celtic steel.
“The poets will sing forever of this day,” the centurion said to the entire cohort. “And you’ll speak of it with awe. Thirty years from now your eyes will grow moist and you’ll say I marched with valor. I marched with Rufio.”
Even some of the hardened veterans coughed back the emotion in their throats.
Rufio pressed his ring to his lips. “May Victoria keep you safe. And remember, I am with you always.”
He handed the reins to Adiatorix.
“Do you have a carnyx, chief?”
“We do.”
“I want you to carry it. Blow it on my command.”
“I will.”
“Line up your horsemen on my right. We’ll approach at a quick walk until my signal. Wait for it. And when we close the mouth, don’t close it all the way. You know why.”
Wise to war and to the terrors of man, Adiatorix nodded.
“I’ll always remember this,” the chieftain said. “Always remember you. Never before have I served under another.”
“Come, my friend. We’ll march together into history.”
He raised his hand and waited for perfect order. Then he slashed downward and the line began to move. As straight as the spoke of a wheel it swung around, pivoting to the left. The three ranks swept through the fog as quietly as possible. The rattling of their equipment would soon be smothered by the clatter of the battle line.
They pierced the mist and gazed upon their beleaguered comrades. Probus still held the line, but the Suebi were threatening to overwhelm it. Yet the monstrous swarm of barbarians was disordered and inchoate. It was as if Barovistus, desperate now for victory, was rolling against the legion a writhing colossus of muscle and bone.
Rufio stared at the horde that hungered not just for the slaughter of his brothers but for the destruction of everything he cherished on earth. His eyes were slits in a mask of iron.
“Now,” he said softly.
Adiatorix blew the Celtic horn and the Second Cohort leaped onto the back of its prey.
Down upon the German mass sprang the men of Rufio. All weariness gone, they thrust and slashed into the Germans’ unprotected spine.
Probus’s front line cheered and found new strength as the trap began closing on the Suebi.
Assaulted from all sides, the barbarians squandered what little formation they had. Almost instantly they became a churning morass of panic stricken men, abandoning the attack and scrambling to escape.
The jaw of the wolf was closing. Yet off to the right an opening presented itself. The tip of the mouth had not yet shut. Toward this gap at the end of the line the Suebi poured.
There waited the First Century and the avenging Celts.
Rufio and Adiatorix let them pass and expose their defenseless backs. Then the Romans and the Sequani chopped them to the earth. Never had Rufio killed with no compunction as many men as he did this day in the mud of Gaul. His hands bled from the friction of his weapons as he pierced and slashed without mercy.
What began as a panic spiraled into a rout, and the dreams of Barovistus died without honor among the entrails of his men.
53 WITHOUT SUBSTANCE, HONOR AND VALOR ARE MORE WORTHLESS THAN SEAWEED.
Horace
______
A hundred feet outside the camp gateway, an exquisite white and black mosaic of Minerva, hauled all the way from Italy, supported the chair of Sabinus. Stuck in the ground around the tile platform were the standards from all the centuries and cohorts and the eagle of the Twenty-fifth Legion.
Sabinus, in full armor, took his place in the chair. Crus stood to his right. The six surviving senior centurions stood behind their commander. Sabinus had wanted Rufio to take a position to his left, but he had declined any such distinction and stood with the others. Diocles took a place behind the centurions. The late afternoon sun had finally broken through and now form
ed a golden corona behind them.
Sabinus had polished his bronze breastplate, but the tunics and mail of the centurions were still splattered with mud and with the blood of their enemies.
An older German and two unarmed warriors rode up at a trot.
“Dismount,” Sabinus commanded in Celtic.
They did as ordered.
“Never approach the Legate of Augustus on horseback.”
They stood before him in silence.
“I am Marcus Aemilius Sabinus. You may speak.”
“I am Orgestes of the Suebi. We would like to remove our wounded from the mud and carry them back to our own lands.”
“You may. And clear the field of your dead. I won’t have these Sequani smelling rotting German for the next six months.”
“May we take our weapons?”
“One spear for each man. No steel.”
“Our horses?”
“No Gaul would want those sad creatures. Take them. But”—he raised a finger—“first get fifty men and kill all the crippled horses on the field. I won’t have them suffer.”
Anger burned in Orgestes’ eyes, but he said nothing.
“Speak, chief.”
“What of our suffering?”
“What of it? You’ve created your own pain.”
The two young warriors clenched their hands.
“Keep these men under control,” Sabinus said. “Or they’ll die at your feet.”
“May I have your word that my people may withdraw without hindrance?”
“You may have nothing but my dwindling patience. There are those at Rome who’ll say I should have put all of you to the sword. Annihilated you as a race so you never threaten us or our allies again. But that’s not my role. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“One thing more. A question. If I suspect you’re lying, I’ll kill every wounded man on this field.”
Orgestes searched his eyes. “I don’t believe you’re the kind of man who would do that.” He hesitated. “But I’ll speak the truth.”
“Barovistus—was he killed?”
“You want the body of our leader?”
“I want an answer.”
LEGION Page 31
