by R. W. Peake
Regardless, before the boy could recover, another of his comrades, this one a bit older but clearly not wiser, came from what Pullus assumed was the spot in the line one file left of his original attacker, shouting something that Pullus couldn’t understand as he ran at the Roman. This swordsman also didn’t go to the attack with his sword raised above his head, instead holding it slightly behind him at waist level in what Pullus would have called the kind of first position a tiro would use. Leading with this shield, this Bargosan actually slightly surprised Pullus because, rather than sliding to a stop, the swordsman aimed directly for Pullus’ shield with his own, slamming it into the larger Roman version. Why the Bargosan did this, Pullus had no idea, nor would he ever have the chance to learn; the move might have worked on another Roman, since this Bargosan was larger and heavier than the average man in the Legions, but not with Titus Pullus, his arm barely moving from the impact. For a brief instant, they stood shield to shield like this, as the Bargosan seemed determined to try and prove his strength, before Pullus, more bored than anything, decided to end the impasse by taking a sudden step backward. The result was the Bargosan stumbling forward, although he proved to be more agile than Pullus anticipated by making his own hopping step backward, recovering so quickly that Pullus had no chance to follow up offensively. This irritated Pullus, and he quickly closed the distance, which seemed to panic the Bargosan, who, instead of following his own training, made a wild, flailing swing of his sword, and in doing so managed to catch Pullus by surprise, thereby sealing his own fate. It was only the tip of the man’s blade that scored the blow on Pullus’ left upper arm just below where his chainmail protected his shoulder, but it elicited a bellow of pain that instantly turned into rage. Any impulse that Pullus might have felt that was actually stirred by the first youth vanished with the deep cut that, while too familiar with the sensation, still felt as if someone had dragged a burning brand across the spot, and he snarled unintelligibly as he counterattacked.
Using his shield as an extension of his own arm, Titus Pullus was one of the only men, not just in Rome’s Legions, but in any military force who could move something so heavy as if he was holding just his vitus, so when he swung it across his body, aiming the metal edge at his opponent’s shield to slap it aside, the effect was dramatic. Jerked to his left by the impetus created by this blow from the giant Roman, the swordsman desperately tried to bring his shield back in front of his body, at least understanding this was the proper action to take, but just as if it was nothing bigger than a stick, Pullus pulled his own shield back into position while shooting his sword forward, the counteracting forces serving to increase the power of his hard second position thrust. And, just that quickly, the Bargosan was dead, staying on his feet for a heartbeat as his hands fell to his sides, shield and sword falling to the ground, followed an instant later by the man dropping to his knees as he clasped both hands around the base of his throat in the same kind of vain attempt to staunch the spurting blood that the man with the severed arm had tried. The Bargosan was actually in the process of toppling forward to land face first on the rampart, when the original Bargosan youth, who Pullus realized with some chagrin he had completely forgotten about, came charging at him one more time. This time, there was an added element to the roar emitted by the youngster, and while Pullus couldn’t understand the words, he had heard that tone, one of anguished rage that told him the man he had just slain meant something to this boy; maybe, Pullus thought, that’s his older brother. He had taken pity on this youth before, but now the boy was racing at him with even more abandon and fervor than the first time, and yet like so many inexperienced men, in losing his head, he had forgotten his training, which meant that Pullus could easily take his life with a simple sidestep maneuver, followed by a quick thrust as the Bargosan went careening past him.
When Barhinder made the downward slash with his sword, he knew that he had never struck as hard as he did in that instant; his first indication of what was coming was when he saw, with utter dismay, how the giant’s upraised arm didn’t move, so he had a fraction’s warning of the power he was about to receive. He didn’t have enough experience to know that, with a speed he wouldn’t have believed was possible for such a huge being, when the giant thrust his sword directly into Barhinder’s shield he was being spared, that this creature was swatting him away as a tiger would bat a fly buzzing around its face. At the bottom of his vision, he saw the point of the giant’s sword punching through the layers of leather and wood a good six inches, but it vanished so quickly that he thought it might have been his imagination. That the sight wasn’t in his mind became obvious when he felt his feet leaving the dirt as he shot backward from the force of the blow; how he managed to land on his feet more than two paces away from his original spot, he had no idea, but the momentum created by the thrust nevertheless caused him to continue taking several stumbling steps backwards. Somehow, he managed to maintain his presence of mind to keep hold of his shield and sword, but it was the barely glimpsed edge of the rampart in the corner of his vision that was rapidly approaching as he staggered backward that earned the most attention, and for a sickening instant he was certain that he would go careening off, joining the smoldering corpse of the man who had been immolated what seemed like days before. This was clearly what prompted Agathocles to do as he had done, essentially imitating Barhinder’s impetuous rush, who sensed more than actually saw the figure of his friend dashing across his front from his left.
“For Bharuch!”
Barhinder recognized Agathocles’ voice, but he was still too absorbed in trying to stop his backwards progress to even shout a warning now that he had tasted the strength of this enemy. As he came to a stop, feeling his right heel slide out over the edge, Barhinder watched helplessly as Agathocles slammed his shield into that held by the giant. It was a maneuver Barhinder had seen Agathocles use before with a fair amount of success; his friend was taller and several pounds heavier than his comrades, but he wasn’t surprised when this had no visible effect on the giant. If anything, he seemed more amused than angry, then Barhinder saw the giant finally respond, though not in the manner in which Agathocles expected, taking a quick step backward instead of shoving him away. However, while Agathocles did take a stumbling step forward, he reacted instantly, somehow managing to reverse his momentum with a hop backward, which seemed to irritate the giant, who immediately took a step with his longer legs to close the distance between the pair back up. Then, Barhinder clearly saw Agathocles panic, and while Barhinder would never know if this was the cause of what was about to happen, he could only watch with horror at the results. Somehow, one of Agathocles’ wild swings struck the giant above his shield, on his upper arm, eliciting a bellow of rage and pain that Barhinder didn’t need translated; even knowing this, what happened next occurred so quickly, he wasn’t even sure what he had seen. It began when the giant swung his shield, which to Barhinder’s eye looked almost twice as large as their own and was even larger than those carried by the men of the phalanx, but the giant did it with such rapidity and an ease that he had never witnessed before, causing a sharp cracking sound when it collided with Agathocles’ shield. Swinging across his body as he did, when his shield struck Agathocles’, it was with so much force that it jerked his friend’s entire body around…just as the giant’s sword was thrusting into the same space. From Barhinder’s perspective, it was as if Agathocles had hurled himself onto the point of the giant’s blade, and he was instantly reminded of what he had witnessed shortly before, when he saw this demon for the first time in his life. Because of his own position, Barhinder couldn’t see Agathocles’ face, but while it wasn’t with as much gore, he saw the point of the giant’s blade thrust through his friend’s upper back with enough force that it punctured the bronze scales for perhaps an eyeblink before disappearing, while Agathocles dropped to his knees, his shield and sword dropping from his fingers as he raised his hands to clutch his throat. And, for the first time, Barhinder knew rage—
real, visceral rage—so that this time when he went dashing forward to face this demon, it came as no surprise to him that he was doing so.
The giant had given barely a glance to Agathocles, although Barhinder saw his mouth working as if he was saying something, but he couldn’t have heard it over the noise and the sound of his own voice, let alone understand the words. Alerted, either by the movement or the shout, the giant pivoted slightly on one foot to face Barhinder squarely, as time seemed to suddenly slow for the youth, but all thoughts of how he should approach his enemy using his training vanished from his mind as if it had never been there. All he saw was the face of this giant, who to his eyes appeared to be viewing him rushing forward with disdainful amusement, the kind of look that Bhadran had given him when he asked a question, fueling his anger and hatred, and blinding him to any possibility he might have had to defeat his enemy, however slim. In the fraction of an eyeblink before Barhinder began swinging his blade in an awkward, shoulder-high horizontal stroke that, because of the height discrepancy would have hit the giant just above his elbow if the blow landed, the giant suddenly just…vanished from where he had been standing in front of Barhinder. Then, out of nowhere, the youth caught just a flash of something moving towards his face, felt a blow to it that created an explosion of light…then nothing.
Chapter Seven
Caesar stood in the prow of his flagship, watching the dark forms of the ships carrying the rest of his Legions to their assigned tasks. Spread across the slightly more than seven stadia’s width of the river, despite the appearance, the arrangement of the ships was anything but random. Because they had the farthest to go to, the ships carrying the 28th, who would be assaulting the eastern wall upstream, were all on the opposite side of the river, while the 3rd, who would be landing on the wharves of the city on the southern side was next to them, and the 7th was nearest to the cityside riverbank because they would be assaulting the western wall, Caesar deciding to use the latter despite the casualties they had sustained at Pattala. Pullus and his 10th had already begun their assault, leaving from the bend in the river earlier, while the 25th and 30th went next, landing on the downstream side of the canal before making the short march over to where they were to form up to act both as a reserve if needed, and in the event that there was another Bargosan force somewhere to the north, the possibility of its existence being the only reasonable explanation for the disappearance of Pollio and Hirtius. As Caesar stood, wearing his armor and paludamentum as was his custom, his mind went over the plan, and he realized that he should have outfitted some of the ships carrying Spurius and his 3rd Legion in the same manner as those that carried Pullus, since they would be the only other vessels who would be within artillery range of the southern wall. When he had performed his examination of the city, he had instantly seen that, while the walls were low enough to be scaled, they were far too thick for the kind of assault he had planned, knowing that a protracted siege like those that had taken the twin cities of Ctesiphon and Seleucia, then Susa, was untenable. Part of that was because of the climate in this part of the world; while he never let on to the fact, Caesar was as heartily sick of the incessant rains and all the discomforts that came with it as every other man in his army. The odor of wet wool, mold, and mildew was bad enough, but it was how, even when the sun was shining, nothing ever seemed to dry out that was by far the worst aspect. When he first felt the humidity, he thought it would be like Alexandria, which was the most humid spot he had ever been in, but he quickly learned that this land was even worse. From questioning the few natives with whom he’d been able to communicate, through the Parthian Achaemenes, he learned that this was not only not unusual, but that it got worse as they continued south. The only positive was that, according to the locals, the winters here were not only mild, they were actually comparatively dry; what Caesar and his army would learn, to his chagrin, the word “comparative” was the operative one. At this moment, watching his part of the army sweeping against the current on their way to Bargosa, the only certainty he held was that his men wouldn’t stand for the rigors of a protracted siege, particularly of the style that Caesar favored, with all the engineering that came with it. Contrary to what Pullus, and most of the other Primi Pili thought, he was acutely aware of the discontent in his Legions, which was why he had promised them the riches of Bargosa as an appeasement. But, while he never uttered it aloud, he was as apprehensive about whether this would be enough to pacify the men once he revealed that they wouldn’t be returning to Parthia, let alone Rome, at least for the foreseeable future, exactly as some of his Centurions had assumed. As far as when they would have the chance to see their homes again, if they had known that Caesar was as much in the dark about when that would be as they were, the challenge of keeping them under control would have been insurmountable, even for Caesar. The truth was that, at this moment, the only thing Caesar could say with any certainty was that he had determined that reaching the Ganges, thereby accomplishing the thing that Alexander tried to do but couldn’t, still wouldn’t be enough; there was too much world left to see and to conquer.
Shaking his head in an attempt to dispel this line of thought, Caesar returned his attention to the moment at hand. They had reached the point where the walls of Bargosa were now distinguishable from the night sky, but Caesar’s eye was drawn to the north side by what he thought was a glimmer of light. When he looked that way, however, there was nothing there; he was just beginning to think it was a figment of his imagination when it happened again, what from this distance looked like a spark created by the popping of a burning log, arcing through the air from his left to right. At first, it didn’t seem that anything would come of it, but as his ship continued plowing upstream and drawing closer, along with the fact that several more of these arcing sparks that Caesar realized were the blazing hurdles were launched, there was finally a steady, sullen glow. With this growing light, Caesar could make out the outline of the dirt wall, and if he strained his eyes, he could dimly make out figures moving about on the rampart. Whether or not these were Bargosan defenders or Pullus and his Equestrians had already mounted the wall using the specially modified ladders was impossible to tell, but before he could spend more time trying to determine what was going on there, the sound of a horn drifted across the water, from the general direction of the western wall, which was nearest. He instantly knew it wasn’t a Roman horn, so the attack had been discovered by the Bargosans.
“I suppose it was a bit optimistic to think that we would be able to land six Legions around their city without them noticing,” he commented dryly, saying it loudly enough for the men around him, a combination of Tribunes, his main secretary Apollodorus, and as always, Gundomir and Teispes.
And, as he had hoped, the men chuckled at this sign of Caesar’s aplomb during moments such as this. Anything I can do, he thought as his eyes never left the walls of Bargosa, every little bit to keep morale up helps.
Gaius Porcinus crouched on the deck of his ship, waiting for the signal from his Centurion to move to his assigned spot to begin using the modified ladder to scale the dirt wall. Because he was on the opposite side of the ship, his shield hadn’t been punctured by any of the javelins being hurled down onto the heads of the defenders, although he had experienced a couple of near misses, with one of the missiles embedded in the deck of the ship right next to him. It had landed between him and his close comrade Vulso, causing the older man to give his version of a laugh, which Porcinus always thought sounded more like a hen proclaiming it had laid an egg than anything else. Regardless of this near miss, the only discomfort caused by the hail of javelins for Porcinus and his comrades in the rearmost sections was on their ears, from the clatter caused when one of them hit something solid, from the shouted curses, and worst of all, cries of pain when one of them struck flesh. Fortunately, there weren’t as many of those as Porcinus would have thought given how thick and fast the javelins were coming; in fact, up to this moment, things had been going extremely well for the Sec
ond Cohort. It helped that they weren’t leading the way like his uncle, and by the time his bireme reached its spot, the bow of the ship less than the height of a man away from the stern of the ship carrying the Fifth and Sixth Centuries of the First Cohort, the assault had begun in earnest. The scorpions were being loosed as quickly as their crew could reload and crank back the torsion arms, their distinctive twanging crack adding to the noise, and because of his vantage point behind them, Porcinus saw how devastating the weapons were, even when men dropped down out of sight behind what he correctly assumed was a wooden parapet. Fairly quickly, the quality of the sounds changed from the nearer but somehow less substantial noise of short javelins hurled by men into the sound made by a scorpion bolt punching through the six inches of wood, which in turn enabled Porcinus and his comrades to anticipate that their moment was coming.
And, as he expected, he heard Scribonius shout, “Ladders out!”
Porcinus watched as the men assigned to the task thrust the heavier than normal ladders out and up from the side of the ship, which like Pullus’ and every other vessel, had been shoved hard against the bank with the help of the men using poles from the outer ship. While Porcinus and his comrades waited, the men handling the ladder that he would be ascending did their part as intended, extending the ladder out and up at an angle that roughly mirrored the angle of the embankment, but about a foot above the dirt before dropping it, letting the weight drive the spikes into the ground, while the hooked end was dropped into place on the side. This didn’t happen with the ladder next to the one he would be using, and the shouted curses of their Optio caused Porcinus to look over to see that, somehow, they had dropped the ladder before it was in position and were now struggling to lift it back up. This was obviously proving to be more difficult than expected, but it also seemed as if this was the only section having problems, because Scribonius, alerted to the trouble, moved quickly towards the stern to check on the others.
