Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  Down by the river one of the Sabine cavalry detachments was making for the flaming bridge at speed, hoping they could cross before the fire grew too hot to withstand. Flaming, half-sunken bundles of wood wallowed in the water, caught by the closely set piers of the bridge and the lower tie-beams; the upstream side of the bridge was blazing. The downstream side hadn't taken yet, though the wind was gradually getting up and flames lurched across unpredictably, blocking the passage though not burning the deck of the bridge.

  The leading horse reared suddenly a few yards from the bridge, wheeling round, nearly throwing its rider. He pulled its head to the side, so that it turned in a circle, till it stuck its head down and started bucking. Its squeals unsettled the other horses; not one would go further. Some stood, terrified into immobility; others danced sideways. One threw its rider, turned, and galloped off, swerving to avoid two of the hindmost horses; it missed the first, but hit the second broadside, carrying them both to the ground. Most of the men were dismounting now; there might be no hope of saving the horses, but they could save themselves.

  Some drove their horses off with a slap from the flat of their swords, or a well aimed handful of loose stones. Perhaps they were counting on being able to retrieve the horses later, once the Romans had gone. Others must have rated the certainty of loss less intolerable than the possibility of Roman gain, and drew their blades across their horses' throats, soaking the ground with blood. The infantry had to scramble to the bridge across the lumpen corpses; loose horses ran to and fro, spooking at new arrivals and swerving round, only to find another source of fright.

  The first arrivals were already half way over the bridge when a gust of wind carried a blast of heat across it. One man's hair blazed out, a sudden corona; he leapt into the river, screaming, a scream cut short as his armour dragged his down. Another made it to the other side, but as he reached it he realised his clothing was on fire, and threw himself to the earth, rolling over and over trying to stifle the blaze. More and more men were pushing on to the bridge now in panic; some didn't make it, but were pushed out at the sides, into the river where some sank, others floated. Those who fell on the downstream side were lucky; the others, falling among the burning bundles of sodden wood, found their way blocked. Some tried to clamber on to the kindling bundles; they screamed as their hands burned, and the sticky pitch adhered to whatever they touched - their clothes, bodies, faces. Those who dived underwater to swim beneath the fire bundles might have made it, if the river hadn't been so full of debris already. Bodies were already bumping against the bridge, the force of the water piling them up with the kindling wood in a horrible parody of the funeral pyre.

  Still Faustus' men watched. All they saw was the plume of smoke, and the aimless scurrying of man and beast on the plain below; and the fact that hardly any of the Sabines had reached the sanctuary of the opposite bank.

  Then in a moment things changed. In from the right swept an arrow-head of cavalry, slanting down the hillside toward the river. Where it met groups of the Sabine stragglers, it seemed to swallow them up, moving on unstoppably, clearing the plain behind it of all movement. Ahead of them the Sabines scattered and ran. And on the left, where till now the land had lain open, a dark, slow-moving line of infantry had appeared; Faustus' own left wing, having flanked the Sabine retreat, were coming in for the kill.

  This was the moment Faustus had been waiting for. Now, and only now, he could give the order to move; now that every way of escape was cut off, now that the Sabines were penned in between ridge and river, and being driven back into his path, it was time to move. Time to march downhill, driving the Sabines into the Anio and out of the way of Rome's manifest destiny.

  That was the way Faustus saw the battle. Egerius saw it differently. To him, it was the man who slithered desperately trying to balance on the blood-slick riverbank before the crumbling edge gave way underneath him. It was the blazing body that fell from the bridge, and continued flaming as the river swept it downstream. It was a horse staggering on three legs, not realising that the fourth was broken, the bone sticking through the flesh. It was a man's face terrified and pleading before Egerius' sword fell and carved its flesh away from the bone.

  Some of the Sabines had tried to swim the river. The smart ones had left their armour behind; some of them made it. The river wasn't that wide, though it was fast; some were swept along, in to the flotsam of bodies and burning timber that the bridge had dammed. Most of those who tried to swim in their armour sank at once; a lucky few managed to strip the heavy plate from their bodies before they went under.

  Most pitifully, one man stood on the brink, looking now at the water, now at the Roman soldiers approaching, frozen with terror. Twice he stiffened his body as if to jump, and the third time seemed to be summoning up his courage when a spear found its mark in his guts. The force of the blow did for him what he'd been unable to do himself, pitching him into the river.

  Just as Egerius called a halt, by the end of the now smouldering bridge, the charred piers finally gave way against the press of bodies and timbers that had piled up behind. The swift water tumbled the corpses, so that their arms and legs lashed out as if they were alive. Days later, Egerius saw the bloated body of one Sabine thrown up on a beach of the Tiber Island, the stomach distended as if by famine, and blackened as if by fire, and thought back to those pallid arms writhing in the flood; they darkened his dreams for months afterwards.