Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones

by Vox Day

  He didn’t carry a pilum himself, but he withdrew a verutum from its slot inside his concave shield and raised it high. He glanced across to see that the men had their pila up over their shoulders, then he shouted as he threw his little javelin at the enemy, knowing it was unlikely to do more than bounce off a legionary’s helmet or shield.

  But the seventy-some pila that followed it were another matter entirely, and he could see the front ranks of the enemy century stagger and gaps opened up in the black-faceted face of the shield wall as wounded men fell back and others, their shields encumbered by as many as four pila in one case, were forced to cast them to the ground.

  Now was the moment to charge. A scant distance now separated the two lines, and Bauto drew his sword. He had just raised it and turned to the left in order to tell the signifer to sound the charge when something struck him in the side, under his right arm. It didn’t hurt, but he grunted as the force of the impact caused him to twist and stumble. A heavy weight on his right side somehow interfered with his balance, and he fell to the cold, hard ground, still wet from the half-melted frost.

  “Sir? Sir!”

  He saw Phobus’s face leaning in toward his own and saw the man’s mouth moving, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of what the optio was saying. The charge, Bauto tried to tell his subordinate. Order the charge! You have to tell the men to charge now! But the optio didn’t seem to understand him. He had turned his face away from Bauto and was shouting something toward the men behind them.

  Then something seemed to pull Phobus, and the Third, and the very battlefield itself away from Bauto, like a curtain being rapidly raised at the theater. Bauto struggled, reaching out, trying to grab his optio and make sure Phobus understood what the men needed to do. But Bauto couldn’t reach him, and as the sounds of battle, all the clashing of metal and the shouting of men, subsided into darkness, the centurion was still trying to comprehend why the optio hadn’t heard him

  Paccius Vintius raised his fist in triumph when he saw the centurion abruptly whirl about and fall. It was glorious to see that Vintius had felled the man with his pilum. Indeed, it was still sticking out of his side as he lay on the ground.

  “Did you see that?” he asked Orfitus, standing three paces to his left. “Did you see that? I got the centurion!”

  “Sure you did,” Orfitus replied laconically. “Yeah, and I think I got bloody Magnus with mine. Better get your sword out, though. Here they come!”

  It was an intimidating sight. The enemy legion looked considerably more dangerous now that they were only a few armslengths away than they had when they were struggling up the frost-slicked slope earlier in the morning.

  For the first time since he’d kissed the eagle, Vintius wondered if he’d made the right decision in joining the legion. He hadn’t minded the training last summer. It had been hard and repetitive, but it had also been easier and more interesting than working in the fields had ever been. And the pay was good too, so good that he’d had to work on developing new vices just to spend it all. He’d also learned, much to his delight, that women liked soldiers, so much so that sometimes you didn’t even have to pay for it. That had never happened to him back on the farm.

  On the other hand, on the farm, no one had ever come running toward him with a sword in his hand and a look of raw hatred on his scarred face.

  The worst that had ever happened there was the time Pacuvio, the butcher’s son, had knocked him down for trying to talk Pacuvio’s sister into showing him her fica. It was the great regret of his life that he had never succeeded in laying eyes upon that wonder. Sometimes, when he lay with one of the camp whores, especially one with long black hair, he closed his eyes and pretended it was her.

  Whang! The heavy clash of a sword against his shield brought him brutally back to the battlefield.

  He was startled to see that the rebel legionary was practically an old man, with deep lines carved into his face by nothing worse than age. He wasn’t a feeble old man, though, as another crashing blow upon his shield half-deadened his arm.

  Vintius was confused for a moment, wondering why the rebel wasn’t thrusting his sword as they’d all been trained, until he realized that the rebel wasn’t attempting to stab him, but was instead trying to beat his shield aside. He tried a thrust of his own, but it was too slow and cautious, and his opponent blocked it easily with his own sword before hammering Vintius’s shield again, half-knocking it aside.

  Vintius stabbed at the man’s angry brown eyes and was rewarded with a flinch. It was a small victory, but it gave him confidence that he could survive this fight, that he could survive the battle.

  Then the man ducked behind his shield and ran right at Vintius, smashing violently into him, shield to shield. The force of the blow sent Vintius reeling backward, where he was caught by the legionary waiting to take his place should he fall. His opponent couldn’t follow up his advantage, however, as a man in the third rank jabbed his pilum out and struck the rebel squarely on the shield, pushing him back and giving Vintius time to get his balance again.

  Truly frightened now, Vintius shouted as he ran at his opponent and bashed at the other’s shield. He could see irritation in the man’s eyes and he stabbed at them, forcing the other to jerk his head sideways to avoid the jab. But the movement caused the man to shift his shield to the right, just enough to expose his left side.

  Vintius saw the opening. With a third thrust he managed to stab the man’s hip just under the mail that covered his torso. It wasn’t a deep cut, but he could feel that it went to the bone, and he heard the main cry out in pain. When he pulled back his sword for another thrust, its tip was red with blood.

  But before he could follow up the attack with another one, his opponent had fallen back within the ranks of the enemy lines and was replaced by another man, this one younger but equally hard-eyed and at least a head taller.

  “Got lucky, did you, puppy?” his new opponent spat contemptuously at him, blocking his first thrust without even taking his eyes away from Vintius’s face. He was a big man, and his neck was thick and muscular like a bear’s. He blocked the second and third thrust just as easily, not even making an attempt to strike back. Then a fourth, followed by a fifth. “That’s it, puppy! Get it all out!”

  Vintius was panting now, and despite the hours at the training block, his shoulders and forearms were starting to burn. Holding up his shield was an increasing struggle, and the point of his sword was now dropping toward the ground. Fear swelled inside him as his new opponent bared his teeth in a confident smile, as he realized that the man was about to move to the attack.

  Where was the horn? Wasn’t it time for the first rotation yet? Desperate to buy himself time, he summoned what felt like his last reserves of strength and leaped at the big rebel, bringing his sword down in a powerful arc to smash the man’s shield aside.

  Only it wasn’t there. Instead, pain exploded in his chest as the man’s sword punched through the meticulously polished scales of his armor, which protected him about as well as an insect’s carapace from a man’s iron-shod boot.

  Vintius dropped his shield and tried to pull back, but the weight of his body held him suspended on the killing steel that ran through his body. He shrieked and tried to cry for help from Orfitus, but little more than blood came out of his mouth. Then, the ground was rushing up at him as the sword abruptly vanished from his chest, leaving only the terrible pain behind.

  “Didn’t nobody ever tell you not to lead with your rear, puppy?” he heard an amused voice call from the sky. It sounded very far away.

  He lay motionless on the ground, his lifesblood leaking into the sodden earth also watered by his tears. Why didn’t I stay on the farm? he wondered as the pain in his chest gradually faded. It wasn’t such a bad life, in the end. His last thought was the bitter regret that he’d never even dared to try kissing Pacuvio’s sister.

  Manlius pulled out his sword from the stricken boy’s torso and laughed at his dying opponent. A sim
ple sidestep, and the lad had all but impaled himself on Manlius’s sword. He didn’t bother to finish the boy off. He had killed enough men and orcs over the years to know a mortal wound when he felt one. Instead, he looked left and right, seeing if he could sneak in a strike to help one of his line mates before he took on his next opponent.

  These brats from Legio XVII were greener than an apple in spring, and he could see that two or three more had already fallen to the more experienced swords of the Third. No wonder Magnus had simply flung them forward despite their inferior ground and without care for their lack of numbers. This was like killing kittens.

  But even kittens had claws. The centurion—that was just bad luck. He hoped Musius Bauto wasn’t too badly hurt. Manlius hadn’t actually seen Bauto go down, but since it was the voice of Phobus, the optio, bawling out orders and encouragement now, it appeared that the word the centurion had been wounded by an arrow was legitimate.

  No opportunities presented themselves, so Manlius took note of the young legionary who came forward to fill the gap in the line left by his idiot predecessor. Manlius doubted he’d be so fortunate as to find his second opponent as readily accommodating as the first, but he again he waited patiently, letting the other man uselessly expend his energy by banging on Manlius’s shield to no avail.

  It was almost too easy. He watched as the other’s shield dropped lower by a finger or two with each exchange, and he kept an eye on the sword that came back lower with each futile thrust and jab. Soon enough, the opening for which he’d been waiting appeared. He stepped into a half-hearted thrust and blocked it aggressively with his shield then slashed at the other’s eyes over the man’s lowered shield. His opponent had no choice but to reel backward and to his left to avoid the flashing blade, leaving him off-balance and vulnerable to Manlius’s next move.

  Manlius putg his shoulder behind his shield and smashed his full weight into the reeling man, who went down onto his left side as his sword went flying out of reach. Manlius continued charging forward until he was crouching over the prone man, but he held his shield up high to block both the thrusting pilum and the downward stroke of a sword from the ranks behind his fallen foe.

  Even as he blocked their attempts to defend their companion, he was stabbing downward, once, twice, three times. Once, his sword met armor and slid off it into the ground, but the other two attempts met with flesh that gave way before it. Without looking to see how badly he’d wounded the man, he leaped back into the lines before the legionaries on his left and right could cut him off from the rest of the Third.

  Manlius was breathing hard, but he wasn’t the least bit tired. He felt more alive than ever as he saw four pairs of hands reach out from the ranks behind to drag his wounded foe off toward the rear, leaving a nice, wide trail of blood behind him. Six-to-one that man would die before the end of the day, Manlius thought, satisfied. With that much blood, at least one of his blows must have struck something vital. Two up, two down. He could do this all day. All bloody day!

  He stared with no little amusement at his third opponent, who still had his pilum and appeared to be intent upon using it instead of his sword, poking it out in a manner that betrayed his panic. Manlius could see the fear in the young man’s green eyes, and he laughed out loud, which seemed to further frighten the boy.

  “Didn’t anyone teach you anything?” he marveled, shaking his head, as the head of the spear licked out at him and back again like a large, black snake’s tongue.

  The boy dropped his shield and jabbed the pilum toward him again.

  Tiring of the game, Manlius grabbed the spear by the shank and jerked it past his left side. As he expected, the terrified youth instinctively clung to his weapon and was pulled forward by it, thus allowing Manlius to drive his sword right into his face, above his helmet’s cheekpad and through his left eye, killing him instantly. He had to push the dead man off his blade with his foot, which he did before picking up his shield again stepping back into the line.

  Three up, three down. Manlius was beginning to think that actual kittens might put up more of a fight than this piss-poor excuse for an Amorran legion.

  He flicked his blade at the next man to step forward, sprinkling his face with the blood of his predecessor.

  “Do you renounce the devil and all his works, little one?” Manlius mocked his next victim. “Best do so now, since you’ll be seeing him soon enough!”

  Then an unseen fist smashed into his throat. Manlius stumbled backward, his eyes bulging in disbelief. He hadn’t even seen his opponent move! What had happened?

  He tried to bring up his shield, but his strength was suddenly sapped by some mysterious force, and he couldn’t even seem to move.

  What was going on? A fiery hand gripped his throat, burning him even as it mercilessly choked him. He tried to call out to his fellows, but only blood came out of his mouth. His mind screamed the furious curses that his voice could not. He took one last defiant step toward the enemy, then toppled over onto his face.

  “Now there was a throw!” Parthender complimented Orodes as they saw the big legionary, his larynx crushed by the perfectly placed stone, crash to the ground like a felled tree. “The damned fool never knew what hit him.”

  “Rest in peace.” Orodes lifted a hand in blessing the man he’d just slain. Then he shook a finger at his friend. “Don’t mock the dead. One day, we too will be in their number. And we may hope that he is not damned, but rather is now at peace in the bosom of the Inviolate. It is not for us to judge.”

  Parthender sighed as he began slowly whirling his sling behind him. “Can’t you, for once, just be happy killing somebody who needed killing?”

  “Never.” Orodes shook his head and withdrew another lead bullet from his pouch. He ran his thumb over the sigil carved in the side, as was his habit. “We diminish ourselves, even as we exalt those we kill.”

  There was a soft snap as Parthender released his bullet, which disappeared into the mass of the enemy legion without any noticable effect. “Then I suppose you’re pretty damned diminished by now, Orodes! For someone who says he regrets killing, you’re rather good at it.”

  “God would not give us gifts He did not intend for us to use,” Orodes observed, scanning the slope below for a likely target. “If we are to praise Him in all things, how shall I not praise Him even as I slay the children of His Creation? In any event, we should be grateful. Think of how our forefathers would envy us!”

  “That one, there, the signifer. He’s a ways off—think you can hit him?”

  Orodes put a hand over his eyes against the sun, peered in the direction Parthender was pointing, and continued as if he had not been interrupted. “Our ancestors fought the empire with great bravery and died. And here we find ourselves, after eight generations under the imperial heel, eight generations filled with countless prayers for deliverance, watching Amorrans kill one another and being paid well to kill more of them ourselves. Are we not blessed?”

  “I’ve never been able to tell if you’re a philosopher or a lunatic.” Parthender followed the path of the shot as it flew toward the Amorran holding the third century’s banner.

  “You can, however, tell that that one is fortunate,” Orodes said, chuckling, as the banner wavered below, its bearer lurching to one side after having been struck, more or less harmlessly, on the side of the helmet. “God has spared him for now, so who am I to object?”

  Parthender didn’t reply. His head exploded in an obscene splatter of red mist as a rock significantly larger than the pellets they’d been hurling at the legionaries below sent his headless body flopping to the ground, then crushed Orodes right arm, shoulder, and hip as it bounced.

  As rapidly as it had come, the boulder departed, continuing on its bloody path through the crowd of Balerans behind them.

  Stunned by the awesome violence of the unexpected assault, Orodes lay on his back, staring up at the lightly clouded sky in mute astonishment. It took him a few moments to realize what had happene
d, and when he did, he began to laugh at the foolish arrogance of Man, of which he knew he was the first and foremost example.

  He raised his head long enough to see the red ruin of his friend lying nearby, then he looked down at his own mangled body. Poor Parthender. At least it had been quick for him. Orodes felt he would not have minded missing out on the pain that now threatened to transform him from a rational being into a mindless, screaming animal. But at least death would come soon, judging by the quantity of blood that was seeping out onto the ground.

  More importantly, soon he would finally have all the answers that had so long eluded him. Forgive me, Inviolate Lord, he begged, for I have sinned against You, and to You I commend my tattered, blackened, prideful, blood-stained soul, in the name of Your Most Holy and Immaculate Son.

  I praise you in all things, Lord, even this, my final hour. Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace.

  The Baleran died, still staring open-eyed at the sky, with the edges of his mouth turned up in a faintly ironic smile.

  Clodius Secundus winced as Fuscus, his optio, put his hands on his hips and shook his head in disgust. The stone his crew had just loosed went bouncing wildly among a group of slingers, a full ten degrees away from where he’d told them to throw it.

  “Sordes, Secundus,” Fuscus said. “What in the stinking sulfurous smoke of Satan’s fartbiscuit was that? You do know what ‘cavalry’ means, right? You know, the plummy arses who sits on the little horsies? The bastards that’s riding this way now?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Then throw the damn rocks at them!” Fuscus screamed at him. “Magnus don’t care about no pebble throwers. We got to thin out that horse before they run over our bleeding flank!”

  The optio pointed, and Secundus could see that the loyalist horse had engaged their own cavalry and was steadily driving it back. In addition to having the advantage of the slope, they outnumbered the legion’s horse by a significant margin, although the veteran knights of Legio VII seemed to be successfully executing a fighting retreat. Even if they weren’t losing many riders as they withdrew from the battle, they were on the verge of leaving their infantry completely exposed to the enemy cavalry.