by C J Brown
The galea that sat on the table, with the plume made of fine horse hair and dyed bright red, was to accompany him on this trip. Placing it over his bald head, he let the solid copper helmet slide down his round head, giving him the protection it deserved while bestowing upon him the power of his standing.
With his pteruges in place and his greaves snugly fitted, Uther Pendragon walked out his front door to meet his horse and the rider who was approaching. With a swift leap, he mounted Bucharia, his steed, and adjusted the seat of his saddle, biding his time for the rider who approached. When he did arrive, the two men nodded. A polite greeting was exchanged in silence between two men who had immense respect for one another.
The older of the two, Uther saw the younger as someone who embodied the honor now missing from the typical Roman. The younger one saw a wise teacher in the elder.
“Keep her safe,” he whispered, so as to not allow his words to fall on his wife’s ears.
“I will, my lord.”
A nod followed, indicating approval.
“What news from Arthur?”
“He complains about the cold that is descending from the Alps, but the job on the fortress proceeds apace.”
Uther nodded, knowing full well that his son did not like the climate, but all the more reason, if that be the case, Uther thought, that he needed to remain where he was.
Uther was a clever tactician. He raised armies and placed them where they were needed. The first one was a deterrent to the Gallic armies in the northwest. The second was a deterrent to the Germanic tribes in the northeast. These two garrisons were the reason behind the peace that had descended onto Rome and made the emperor fat.
In Verona, two legions would eventually fortify the Limes Germanicus—the border between the Roman Empire in the south of Germania and the tribes in the north. When it was all done, Arthur was to command both legions on his father’s behalf.
The current legion that Arthur commanded, Gemina Maxima, when supplemented, would be a companion legion of Gemina Minima. Ten thousand strong, they would be a formidable force in the northeast and keep any aspirations of the barbarian tribes in check. Uther had designed the defensive mechanisms to require the might of two legions. He did so specifically to overcome the consequences of the erroneous decisions that Emperor Lucius was making when he pulled soldiers back from the frontier to augment the barricades around the city and the Imperial Palace.
4
Preparing for Battle
The city at the foot of the hills, impervious to the intruders atop, was one steeped in history. Sitting on the front lines of the Western Roman Empire, it was the backbone of the strategic outpost, designed not just to protect, but to be a launching platform for aspirations in the far east. It rose from the mud to support the forward garrison and grew to prominence during the heyday of the empire.
On the ridge, Adolphus evaluated his plan in silence. His heart was set on a plan, but something tugged at him.
“Will they yield, my lord?” Bassich, the six-foot lieutenant asked.
“I hope they don’t. The men need a victory on the eve of our greatest battle yet. And the best victory comes from a full-hearted battle, not from the opponent’s surrender,” Adolphus answered.
“Indeed. The men have been looking forward to this battle but there isn’t a lot to plunder here.”
“Send word to the captains. We strike the city at dawn,” Adolphus commanded.
“Yes, my lord,” Bassich replied as he bowed. Pulling on the reins, the lieutenant peeled his horse from where it stood and rode off to do his General’s bidding. To take his place by the General’s side, another lieutenant, Hinkin of Gaul, strode up to the line on his horse.
“My lord,” Hinkin began, “we are ready upon your command.”
“Are we certain,” Adolphus asked, “that the garrison beyond is not a problem?”
“According to our spies, the men have grown fat, the garrison is being worked on, and even now they are asleep. No fire and no activity. Our spies who rode by the wall heard only the sounds of slumber,” Hinkin answered.
“Very well. How far distant to the walls of the garrison?”
“Five leagues to the northern wall, my lord,” the man from Gaul with a good gauge of the land, responded.
“That puts them out of range of the trebuchets,” Adolphus advised, realizing that it was positioned there for that reason.
“Yes my lord, the trebuchets behind the ridge will hit the town precisely where we want them to, but they will not be able to come anywhere near the garrison.”
“We shall not waste our time with them. Focus on the town. It will be over by noon.”
The men had already begun constructing the catapults and the siege engines. It would be ready by daybreak. Adolphus, still sitting atop his steed, trotted off the ridge, heading back behind it to inspect the men and the equipment. Much of the equipment, now drenched in rain, was covered in mud and blood. The men were tired, he realized. A day’s delay in the attack would be a better option.
Adolphus looked back as if to seek direction from the omens of the valley but the ridge had shielded his view and he could not see the fortress any longer. Even if they were a skeletal crew, he thought, they would still send scouts, and those scouts may stumble upon this camp. The element of surprise would be lost if they waited one more day.
“No,” he said resolutely. “We attack at dawn,” he whispered to himself.
Dawn arrived in due course and the forward army of prisoners suited up. With fear on their faces and pain in their hearts, they bowed to their gods and asked for mercy and good fortune to not be slayed by the blades of the enemy.
***
The commander of the expendable army, a Hun, mounted his horse with ferocity, yelling at the top of his lungs. Commanding his captains, positioned at ten-pace intervals all along the left and right of him, he directed them to begin the attack.
The commander and his captains led from the rear, pushing the expendables down the ridge. Chasing them for the express purpose of gaining momentum and barreling down into the town below, he was merciless in his endeavor. Anyone who fell on the rocky slopes was trampled over while the rest were pushed harder until they reached the bottom of the hill and began their charge on the fields and the town. Farmers and citizens watched the thundering expendables in horror.
Watching the scene unfold, Adolphus sat still on his horse high on the ridge. Six flagmen accompanied him. His opening gambit was proceeding as planned, he thought, as he turned to look at the town below. Still, there was no defense being mounted by the town or the men from the garrison beyond. A smile came over his face.
Behind the ridge, ten thousand men waited for the command to attack. Their commander sat mounted on his steed, looking to the ridge where Adolphus and the six flagmen sat perched. The commander was battle-hardened, towering above six feet tall, with a red beard down to his belly, braided in two, side by side. His red hair, indicative of his ancestry, was long and tied into a Suebian knot. The troops called him Krampus, the personification of evil. He wore no armor. Only iron greaves protected his legs.
To shield against the cold, he wrapped himself with bison fur. Even in the harshest of winters and in the most bitter of battles, that was all he wore. To show for his lack of armor, he had a dented skull and a crooked arm—fused in place when a broken bone set without being straightened. He had numerous gashes across his back, injuries that healed then became injured again until they looked like fish scales.
Krampus took to killing men like fish to water. His first kill was at the age of nine, though some say, he had killed his father when he turned seven. Even Adolphus never warmed up to him, but he knew Krampus to be the best means to keep the expendables in check and to provide the example needed to kill whatever lay in front of him.
Adolphus turned to his flagmen and signaled his intenti
ons. Instantly, the flags went up to communicate those intentions to the rest of the forces. This time it was to ready the fireballs, loaded and locked in the trebuchets. Seeing from his perch that the fires had been lit and all the balls of the first line were ready, he issued the next command. This was quickly translated and the appropriate flags quickly rose for all to see. With this command, the arms were released, sending balls of fiery tar high into the air. They had been calibrated to strike just beyond the town.
5
Lookout Ridge
“General, the first group of men are ready. We will mobilize on your command,” Vipsanius, the Captain of Arthur’s army, announced. They had assembled behind the walls of the fort in record time.
“Move Delphi Company through the northern forest, take the pass to reach behind the ridge, and wait till I arrive on the other side,” Arthur instructed his man.
“Behind the ridge, my lord?” The Captain furrowed his brows, perplexed that they were not about to attack the invaders head-on.
“Yes, Captain Delphi Company is to go by foot. No horses. And do so in absolute silence. The forest is still dark and you will not be seen. Let the fires in the garrison extinguish naturally. Do not relight them or douse them. Understand?”
“Yes, my lord.” The captain obeyed. He suddenly came to realize Arthur’s intentions.
“You lead Delphi Company on that objective. Leave Romulus Company in the basement of the garrison. I will lead Remus Company through the southern forest and around the other side. We will flank them,” Arthur confirmed.
Upon receiving his detailed instructions, Captain Vipsanius nodded, saluted his general, and hurried away to make it so. Within the hour, ahead of schedule and prior to the arrival of the first sliver of light, both companies vacated the garrison, invisible to the spies on the ridge.
Arthur and his company of men had a greater distance to cover but had horses to make up the time. Two thousand well-trained legionaries, a little fat in the belly perhaps, but as effective as can be, moved with resolve toward the western pass.
This section of the range stretched from northeast to southwest mountain range that sloped down toward Verona. The forests on either side and the town of Verona in the clearing were as picturesque as any hamlet south of the Alps.
The southern pass Arthur and his company were headed for was not a commonly known passage through the range. Most foreigners rose to the top of the ridge and descended down the leeward side, just as Adolphus had done. The pass was a clandestine path the legions used to move in and out of the plains. It was tricky enough for untrained horses that even if the northerners knew about it, they chose not to take the path. It usually whittled down the number of horses they had and slowed them down a great deal.
For Arthur and his men, they knew the pass like the back of their hand, giving them a tremendous advantage. As they passed the forest, within sight of the pass, they witnessed fireballs streak across the sky destined for the town.
They couldn’t reach the garrison, so why aim there? Arthur thought, as he navigated his horse and rode it hard. Soon he realized that the invaders were building a line of fire to cut the men from the garrison off from coming to the aid of the town.
There was no time to waste and he had to think on his feet. The battle with an enemy that relied on brute force could only be won with strategy, he decided.
As the foot soldiers under Vipsanius raced amidst the dense and dark forest of the northern Italian landscape, Arthur’s cavalry and archers moved swiftly, weaving between the trees until they arrived at the pass. Without hesitation, they began their ascent up the sharp edges of the pass and the uneven gradient of the slope. The darkness would have been a problem if it were not for the practice they had in navigating the spot. The path was a mere three cubits wide and spelled certain doom for the uninitiated.
The further he galloped, the more his eyes acclimated to the darkness increasing his odds for success. The harder he rode, the more adept he became with the path and his horse. The two now moved as one—a centaur with the mind of a man and the speed of a horse. As he made his way around the bends and avoided the potholes, he found himself at his destination—the forest southwest of the open field that the Huns had staked out. Here, he stopped. If his calculations were right, Vipsanius should have arrived on the northeast side of the clearing directly opposite Arthur, with the Huns, unwittingly, in between.
The clearing in the center housed the camps and, ahead of them, the men in attack formation, ready to crest the ridge and follow the expendables. Arthur looked carefully. Until now he hadn’t laid eyes on any of them. But now, as the sun began to spread a shimmer of light, he could recognize the banners.
“Huns,” he said, exasperated at the revelation. This is too far south for them to have ventured. Of all the tribes in Germania, the Huns were the most feared. But fear was not what crossed his mind at this point. It was revulsion. He now had a good idea of what the men would do to the townspeople. The desire to save the people remained at the top of his mind. But Arthur knew that by doing so it would cripple the entire endeavor. The Hun army was vicious. In a battle of equal number, the Romans would lose five men for every barbarian they lost.
Arthur had no choice. To win this battle, the townsfolk would have to be bait for now. That would be better for Rome. As he pondered the calculus of war and politics, the rear guard of the troop arrived to brief him on the status of the company.
“We only lost twenty-five men and horses in the pass.”
“Understood.”
“Who are these men, General?” he asked.
“Huns,” Arthur replied in disgust.
“This far south?”
“It would seem.”
“The town, my lord. Are we going to do anything about the town?”
Arthur shook his head. He had already had this conversation with himself and the answer was going to be no different.
“But my lord,” the captain insisted. “We have a duty to protect them.”
“What’s your name and rank, soldier?”
“Linus Marcellus, captain of the Eighth Cohort.”
“Captain Linus, you will hold your tongue or I will relieve you of it. You have sat fat at the garrison for so long that you do not know your place.”
“My lord, I am merely pointing out the moral choices here.”
“Moral choices? Are you a soldier or a philosopher? In the field of battle, at this stage, there are no moral choices. Here, there are only choices of life and death and I will be judged not by the sanctity of my choices or how moral they may be but by the numbers who live and die today and to protect Rome.”
“Forgive me, my lord. What would you have me do?’
“We proceed as planned.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Arthur surveyed the scene. There were at least ten thousand men encamped in the valley, not in battle mode. Just before the ridge, getting ready to cross over and join the attack were another ten thousand men. He could see Adolphus high on the ridge with his six flagmen.
Calling his lieutenant, he instructed him on what needed to happen next. There was a slight change in plans, but not by much.
“As soon as I give you the sign, alert Vipsanius and begin the attack. These men are not expecting an attack and those men will not be able to turn back once they accelerate down the hill.”
“Understood, my lord.
Arthur evaluated his next move and plotted his course to his objective. The commander in the center had begun to prepare to launch the wave of men behind the expendables. There was a point in the operation that he knew would present the best opportunity. He knew what he had to do.
Arthur repositioned his horse and pointed it at Adolphus, then began galloping up the hill under the cover of the trees. No one except his men, now hidden by the tree line, could see him. His gallop was swift, his resol
ve, steel.
As he approached, Adolphus had given the order for the second wave to follow the expendables. In the same moment, Arthur had galloped clear of the forest cover and was now in the open. As the last man of the Hun army made it over the ridge and began accelerating down the slopes, Arthur charged Adolphus.
Arthur, clad in his battle armor, from helmet to greaves, with his red cloak flying in his wake, presented a fearsome turn of events. Young, and in his prime, he was not just a sharp general but an able swordsman and an expert at hand to hand combat.
Perched on the lookout point on the ridge, Adolphus had not expected to be ambushed by a charging Roman. There was no sign the flagmen could conjure to tell the armies below that Adolphus himself was in peril. The bulk of the Hun forces now faced their backs to him and were already fully vested in the charge on the town below. Even if they could hear the horn to retreat—which they couldn’t—momentum was against them.
Adolphus had not seen the Roman charging until his own horse neighed and became distracted by Arthur’s approach. Much to Adolphus’s surprise, he saw a Roman in full battle uniform riding hard toward him, not ten paces. Before he could react, Arthur was upon him. His flagmen were frozen in place by what they were witnessing. But Arthur had not given them time to consider their options. He leaped from his saddle with Boadicea galloping at full speed and was already landing on Adolphus before the six flagmen could move to prevent the situation.
The only eyes that were looking at the melee on the ridge were the men behind the treeline under Vipsanius’ command. Silently, they cheered for their general, as they witnessed his ferocious charge upon the enemy. Leaping from his lightning-fast steed, he took to the air and, for a brief moment, his red cape and shining armor catching the light of the newborn sun, Arthur looked like a god in flight. They could almost see the look of fear descend on Adolphus’s face as Arthur slammed into him and the two men tumbled to the ground.