Damon, newly promoted Kentarches of the 5th Kentarchia replied, “They survive by their wits and dexterity.”
“Exactly! I witnessed the most incredible feat this morning. A feat accomplished by a woman and a mother no less. She saved her child and in so doing, should have been run over by a wagon. Was she? No, because she accomplished an amazing feat of getting out of the way.”
Damon, smiling slapped Scarius on the back and said, “Just think of the possibilities my friend! Not only will we gain more warriors but we won’t even have to leave the fort to find a nice piece of arse!”
This revelation caused the group to chuckle and say many vulgar things about what they would do with such women. Athos did not join in on this. Instead, he had been looking at Sada’s face the entire time the matter was being discussed. At first, hearing that women would be allowed to fight alongside men, she stood taller. The slumped shoulders begot from years of servitude had disappeared. When the Kentarches began their talk of fornication within the walls of the fort, her cheeks turned a deep crimson as if the skin beneath was on fire.
Once the moment had passed, and what was being proposed sunk in, several of the Kentarches voiced their opinion against the idea. Constan couldn’t make sense of any of the statements as his men shouted simultaneously. He motioned with a single extended finger across his neck and bellowed, “Enough! I will bring this idea to the Governor at the earliest opportunity.”
The men fell silent and sat back down in their chairs. All but Athos had a stunned look on his face. Constan turned to Jirair and stated, “You will receive five lashes in front of the assembled Kentarchias of the 5th Parthica at dawn, on the ‘morrow. If ye fail to report, experience or no experience I will have ye executed.”
Jirair audibly gulped, “Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. Dismissed!
Constan watched his nine subordinates file out of the room and then turned to Saul and said, “And ye wonder why I drink so much?”
Saul grabbed a pitcher of wine, sat down beside Constan, poured them both a drink and then downed his in one long gulp. He made a satisfied noise as the last of the wine flowed down his throat and said, “Indeed, let us hope that you can destroy the damned before your men force you to drink yourself to death.”
Constan smiled, “No sense in slowing down then.” He held up his goblet as he finished his statement and then downed its contents in a single gulp.
Chapter 31
Morning, August 20th 636, Jerusalem Road North of Yarmouk, Palestinia Province, Byzantium
Ghosts
Following the engagement by the Sea of Galilee, Baltazar and his band spent the following day journeying without any additional encounters. As the sun broke the horizon in the east, they left the shores of the Sea of Galilee and headed south toward Yarmouk. There seemed to be a pall of silence over the land that morning. Each person was alone with their thoughts.
Baltazar’s mind filled with images of the battle of Yarmouk as they drew closer and closer to the sight of the ill-fated battlefield. Scenes of his friends dying one by one kept repeating themselves in his mind. He tried to push the thoughts away but lacked the willpower. One, in particular, tormented him the most, Ilias. He was smiling when the end came, at peace, What made him so happy to die? Baltazar asked silently to himself, It doesn’t make any sense.
Baltazar’s thoughts shifted from mourning his lost friends to fear, Would he face some of them again today? The answer to that question horrified him, while simultaneously sending shivers down his spine. The kind you get when it is said someone walks on your grave. One by one he replayed the scenes of his friends dying in his mind. Tormented by anguish, he asked himself, “Did I forget one? There were so many.”
Baltazar tried to turn his thoughts outward. He looked at the brown waters of the Jordan River as they slowly flowed southward. His eyes shifted to the hill on their right. It was on that same hill, but further south, that they made their final stand, before being rescued by the riders of the 8th Mesopotamian. The hill was covered with brown grass that had been scorched by the merciless August sun. No matter where he tried to focus his senses, the flowing waters of the Jordan, the road, the hill, or the palm trees along the side of the road with their fronds gently moving in the breeze, the images of his dying friends kept flashing through his thoughts.
Unable to deal with the emotional burden of his thoughts any longer he turned to the one outlet he could use to help ease the pain. He prayed, “God, please give me the strength today to lead these men onto the field of Yarmouk. Almighty God, please surrounded us with your hands and keep us safe from the darkness long enough to complete our mission. Please God, I couldn’t possibly face any of my friends again today.” He paused for several seconds letting that thought hang in the air and then added, “Also, if it’s not too much trouble can you also keep Liana safe?”
With his prayer complete, he felt the weight of his burdensome thoughts lift off of his shoulders. He smiled inwardly, God was with them. The anxiety he felt melted away, and he found the strength he needed to lead his men.
They began to encounter the occasional damned as they drew near to Yarmouk. As each of the damned attacked, they were easily able to dispatch it. A few miles out from the battlefield, a gentle breeze started blowing from the south. The smell that seemingly innocent breeze brought was beyond horrible. It hit the men like a wall, fetid and foul. Several of them, despite their recent experiences with the damned, vomited. The horses were also affected by the horrendous stench. The closer the group got to their destination the more skittish and anxious they became.
The moment that Baltazar had feared the most finally came. As they crested a gentle hill, they saw them, a score of damned wearing the armor of Skutatoi. Jaco turned to Baltazar and asked flippantly, “Anyone you know?”
Baltazar, seething inside at the question, shook his head while replying, “No, they look like imperial tagmata.”
Jaco grinned, “Just as well.” Turning to his men, he shouted, “At them, you sluggards!”
Jaco’s force of seven riders drew their bows and charged the damned. Baltazar turned and yelled at his men, “Form shield wall!”
Legion, seated in the back of the last wagon, heard the commotion. He hopped out of the wagon before it had a chance to come to a halt. Seeing the damned up ahead, he let loose a scream of primal rage that made everyone cringe. He followed up his scream by charging right past the shield wall straight at the damned.
Baltazar yelled at him, “Dammit Legion, stop!”
Legion ignored the order and continued charging. At the same time Jaco’s men, having felled several of the damned with their bows, rushed passed Legion seeking shelter behind the shield wall as the hungry creatures gave chase. As Legion reached the damned, he turned his old style rectangular Legionnaire shield sideways. The designs on the shield had faded over time, so it was impossible to determine from which legion it originally hailed.
Legion then put his shoulder up against the shield and simply charged right into them, knocking several to the ground. The damned flowed around him like a river, and he quickly found himself surrounded. The scream he had let forth had attracted far more than the original dozen or so adversaries.
As scores of arms reached for him, Legion grabbed the edge of his shield with both hands and began to swing it in a wide arc around himself. The edge of the shield smashed the head of one after another of the damned as they pushed forward to feast upon his ample flesh. It didn’t seem to matter that many of them wore helmets. Legion’s tremendous strength coupled with the durability of his shield, forged so long ago, crumpled the metal of the helmets. His berserker rage had the effect of mowing them down as fast as they filled the gaps of their fallen predecessors.
When the numbers overwhelmed even Legion’s ability to hold them back with his shield, he shifted to a classic fighting stance. Using his shield, he began blocking attacks and killing them with his gladius one by one. There were so many that the
y began to get in under his defenses. Slowly but surely blood began to flow from bite marks on his arms and legs as he fought on.
Baltazar couldn’t believe what he saw, “Oh for fuck’s sake, charge!”
Nasir yelled, “Halt! Remember Legion is immune, there is no sense in breaking up your shield wall and risking your lives for his sake. Maintain the shield wall and advance in good order.”
Baltazar’s men obeyed the halt command but then looked to Baltazar to confirm the second order. Baltazar turned red embarrassed at being overruled nodded and yelled, “You heard the man, maintain shield wall and advance!”
Maarika, standing on the wagon closest to the damned, began dropping them using her sling. She expertly flung her bullets over the heads of Baltazar’s men straight into the skulls of several of the damned as they tried to attack Legion from behind. The bullets easily penetrated their skulls, bringing their unholy existence to an end.
As Baltazar’s force reached Legion, Legion jabbed his gladius up to the hilt into the last damned’s skull killing it. Panting from his effort, he dropped his gladius and shield. He let out a mournful howl that reminded Baltazar of the howl of a lone wolf in the forests of his homeland. Legion then began smashing the bodies of the fallen damned with his bare hands. As he did so, the armor many of them wore, caused his hands to bleed from the blunt force trauma of smashing the chain mail links and steel plates with his unprotected skin.
Baltazar asked Nasir and Maarika, “That’s the second time he has broken down like that at the end of a fight. Is he beset by a demon?”
Nasir and Maarika shared a look, and then Maarika turned to Baltazar and explained, “He’s done this dozens of times. It’s the same cycle over and over, Legion spots the hungry ones, Legion charges into them overwhelmed by his rage, Legion gets bitten several times, doesn’t turn, and then beats them all to a bloody pulp. At the end, he always looks to the sky, howls, and then breaks down crying.”
“So he isn’t beset by demons?” Baltazar asked again.
“I don’t think so. I believe he may have suffered a tremendous loss at the hands of the hungry.” Maarika replied.
“Why do you call them the hungry? We’ve called them several things, the best that seems to fit is the damned.”
“We call them the hungry because that is what they are according to a legend of my people,” Maarika replied. Being very careful not to go into detail about the religious beliefs of her people in front of so many Christians she kept her answer vague.
“Does the legend say how to end this plague?” Baltazar asked.
“Aye, sort of at least. It says that when the people are deserving, a hero will rise and put an end to them.”
“Let us hope that hero arises soon,” Baltazar says. He turns away from Maarika and says to his men and the wagon drivers, “We’re not far from Yarmouk now. Remember our primary goal here is Kataphractoi armor. If we can fill our wagons with that, then we need not worry about anything else. Move out!”
The column fell back into the marching order they had been using since their battle by the Sea of Galilee. Jaco and his riders would fan out ahead trying to spot and report back any danger before it fell upon them. Baltazar and the guardsmen marched in formation at the head of the column. Nasir and Maarika kept to themselves and walked behind Baltazar’s group. Legion refused to go back to riding in the last wagon. Instead, sensing the presence of so many damned nearby, he chose to stay close to the pair. Finally, bringing up the rear, were the ten surviving wagons in single file.
They marched for two more hours. Engagements with small groups of the damned grew more and more frequent as they drew closer to their destination. The guardsmen gained in confidence and ability with each small victory. The smell of rotting flesh continued to grow worse. Then they began to hear a noise that none of them recognized. Faint at first, it grew louder and louder the closer to Yarmouk they got.
One of the guardsmen nervously said, “Sounds like a thousand demons all screaming at once.”
Baltazar thought he had heard this sound before and was trying to recollect when. Finally, he remembered back to when he was a boy in Armenia the place he heard the sound before. It was during the fall when the birds would migrate from the frozen wastes of Scythia. They would often land by the thousands in the hills above his village. Their collective voices sounded much like the noise that was coming from Yarmouk.
“Not demons, I think but birds. Thousands upon thousands of birds.” Baltazar said.
As the words left Baltazar’s mouth, they topped a small hill and looked down into a valley. The valley crawled with both life and death. The bones of the Syrian Thema littered the landscape rotting in the sun. The armor they wore glinting and reflecting the sunlight making it easy to pick them out amongst the tens of thousands of corpses that littered the landscape. Large piles of the slain dotted the terrain wherever the Thema had made a stand. In addition to the piles of dead bodies, the valley was covered in a shambling blanket of not so dead bodies.
Countless birds squawked and picked at the remains, making a feast of the fallen. The damned, attracted to the sound, attempted to grab and eat the birds that were eating their former comrades in arms. Amongst all of this was literal clouds of flies. Baltazar heard the sound of crying come from behind him. He turned and saw Maarika’s tear filled face.
Her eyes met his and she said, “So many fallen. . .”
Nasir put his arms around her and drew her into an embrace. Softly he said over and over, “It's alright.” Legion looked at Maarika with concern. This distraction prevented him from immediately noticing the damned.
“Many of my friends died here.” Baltazar stated with a tremor in his voice.
Baltazar halted the column and peered over the battlefield. The glare from the armor of the fallen Skutatoi made this task difficult. He placed his right hand on his brow above his eyes to try and dampen the glare. Despite all this he couldn’t spot evidence of fallen Kataphractoi. He looked at the countryside trying to remember where they were when the Kataphractoi had charged and rescued them from the teeming masses of the damned.
“I think there may be some Kataphractoi corpses on the other side of all this, he gestured at the battlefield in front of them. Jaco, there are just too many of the damned here. I would suggest your men get behind the shield wall as we advance.”
Jaco nodded, “Aye, lad. That seems prudent.”
Ripping a piece of cloth from his tunic, Baltazar walked up to Legion and attempted to wrap it around his eyes. The large man grabbed his arm and squeezed. Baltazar cried out from the crushing grip.
Maarika with tears running down her face noticed Baltazar’s predicament and interceded, “Legion, it’s alright. He was trying to prevent you from having more pain.” She reached down onto the ground and picked up the blindfold as she tied it around his eyes, “Shhhh, you’re safe with friends.” Legion let her finish putting the blindfold on him. She placed her hand into his large meaty left palm and led him forward.
The column slowly began to make its way across the battlefield. Baltazar’s men had the unenviable task of clearing the bodies from the road so that the wagons could proceed. As they worked their way forward, they dispatched several of the damned that were attracted to their living flesh.
As the men fought, Maarika sang a lullaby to Legion to cover up the sound of the fighting. This group of the damned were only seven in number, and most appeared to be former citizens of Palestinia Province. Only one of them wore the armor of a Skutatoi. As the last damned slid off of a guardsmen’s blade, Baltazar heard the sounds of Maarika’s voice singing. He turned toward the sound and saw Maarika, holding Legion’s hand, singing to him. For the first time since Baltazar had met the strange trio Legion smiled.
They continued to push forward slowly. The guardsmen were forced to take frequent breaks in the shadows of the wagons to recover from their efforts of clearing the bodies from the road. As the sun grew close to the western horizon, Baltazar
recognized where they were, “Halt.”
He looked left toward the Jordan River and then turned to his right and looked up the hill. The ground here was covered in Skutatoi corpses as far as the eye could see, “This is it.” Baltazar said remembering, “The 2nd Aleppo and 8th Mesopotamian were lined up to the left of the road next to the river. The 5th Parthica and the Imperial Tagmata lined up to the right of the road.”
He noticed two enormous piles of bodies to the left of the road, “Over there is where the 8th Mesopotamian and 2nd Aleppo fought and died. Their commanders let the bodies of the damned stack up in front of them without retreating. The damned used the piles as a launching pad to fling themselves into the rear ranks breaking up the formation.”
Jaco and the rest of his riders, all members of the 8th Mesopotamian, dismounted from their horses and turned toward the spot Baltazar had indicated, “Rest in peace, my friends. May your journey to God’s Kingdom be a speedy one.” Jaco finished up his prayer by making the sign of the cross.
His men joined him, and they said it in unison, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.” As they said the prayer, they placed the fingers of their right hand on their forehead, then over their heart, their right breast, and finally, they kissed their fingers.
“If I remember correctly,” Baltazar pointed at a spot about forty-five degrees to the right of the road. “The kataphractoi charged through the hordes and rescued us over there.” Turning and pointing as he traced their path with his finger, “They scooped us up and retreated that way.”
Nasir and Jaco walked over to Baltazar. Nasir whispered to Baltazar in a voice too faint for the guardsmen to hear, “There is no way we are going to be able to get the wagons over to where you indicated.”
Baltazar nodded in agreement, “Aye. We’re going to have to clear this area enough so that the wagons can turn around and face north.”
Byzantium Infected Box Set Page 45
