by Ellis Knox
Marcus must have seen him struggling, for he continued as if nothing was wrong.
“It looks like level ground. We can put the river on our flank and use the cavalry to cover the other.”
They were only a few words, but they were enough to bring a fragment of memory out of a distant past.
“First formation, Marcus. But reverse the order. I want the First Cohort on the open flank.”
Marcus said, “Yes, sir,” with a snap to his voice. He gave a nod of approval so slight only Julian saw it. Avitus stood nearby, his mouth open. Julian gave him a “I don’t know where that came from” smile.
The others appeared not to notice. Inglena spoke.
“And my people?”
Julian, who had begun to think better of himself, faltered again.
“Civilians to the rear,” Ennius said promptly. Julian wondered if both men were covering for him. Inglena shot so angry a look at the Captain, it was nearly audible.
“We are Thervings,” she said, “not civilians.”
“Some of you are warriors,” Julian said quickly, “but others are not. Would you pit children against ghobellensi?”
“Of course not,” she said.
“Then send your people to that village. They won’t be any safer there, but they won’t be under my feet.”
“And my warriors?”
“In reserve.”
She began to protest but he cut her off.
“I’m sorry, Princess, but I don’t know what you rixeni do, and you don’t know how we fight. We can’t risk getting in each other’s way.”
“You want us to stand and watch?” She was outraged.
“You don’t know how we fight. But reserve means you’ll be called upon when needed.”
“But we know the goblins,” she said forcefully. She wasn’t going to give up easily. “We have fought them. You have not.”
“We are Romans,” he said, “We have fought a hundred different enemies. This,” he gestured northward, “is merely one more.”
Neither statement was quite true. At least some of the XII had fought the creatures, though there were those in the Legion who had yet to fight anyone at all.
“General, we lose the hour,” Ennius said quietly. Julian nodded.
“Princess, put your people behind our lines, near the river. You will have a chance to fight, I promise, but it must be at my command.”
He did not wait for a reply.
“Give the order, First Tribune,” he said.
Marcus spoke in low tones to the signifer. Ennius kicked his horse into a quick trot, and within moments the entire Legion was in motion. Inglena gave Julian an angry look and also rode away. For the moment, Julian and Avitus were alone. Avitus looked up from his despised donkey.
“You remembered a bit of your education,” he said dryly.
“I surprised myself. I was sure I had forgotten all that old man had taught me.”
Avitus smiled.
“What?”
Avitus did not reply. Instead, he looked upriver, where a mass swirled toward them, dark as floodwater.
“We have to fight them, I suppose,” he said.
“I suppose,” Julian said, giving a stage-worthy sigh.
“Let me stay by you, master. I couldn’t bear to be anywhere else. I’d only make a nuisance of myself.”
“Don’t threaten, little bird. I’m likely to be rather busy.”
“Your mother would insist.”
“Most especially don’t threaten me with Mother. We are a very long way from the palace on the Second Hill.”
“Hmph,” Avitus said. “But we are in service of the First Hill.”
“Right now, we’re in service of the XII, and therefore of me. Rome must watch after herself.”
The thump of hooves made him turn to see Ennius approaching with his troopers, accompanied by Inglena and five of her warriors. Behind them, the Legion marched, standards bobbing. Julian leaned over to Avitus.
“Stay with me, Avi. We stick together from now on.”
A look of relief came and went on the Scythian’s face. “Try not to get killed, then. I don’t care to be chewed up by … what do you call them?”
“Goblins.”
“Yes. Them.”
The Legion passed through the defile between the crowding hills, and onto the wide valley of the Siret. The hamlet to the south was a brown clump of huts on stilts, their rough walls drawn up like skirts. When the weather got warm, the floods would come, and maybe the frail platforms would hold, and maybe they would not. Julian wondered at the kind of people who chose to live here, to be swept away, only to build again. He glanced northward. A different flood was coming now, and the hamlet’s only defense was the Legion. He glanced at Ennius, whose smile looked more brave than sincere.
The Legion uncoiled onto the stony ground. The cohorts re-arranged themselves, and the Fourth went ahead until it reached the river, followed by the Third, Second and First in a line. Within just a few minutes, the Legion had created a chessboard consisting of four units in the front with gaps between, three behind them, and a third line of three behind those. It was a standard Roman formation designed for maximum flexibility. Ennius positioned the cavalry on the flank, the lead horses at a level with the Fourth Cohort. Julian took a position between them. With him were Avitus, the Standard-Bearer Ursinus, and the trumpeters.
Inglena brought her people to the river, behind the Third. They had given Julian black looks as they rode by, but they passed silently and took up their position. She had detailed twenty or so horsemen to lead the civilians back toward the hamlet, about a mile to the south.
Her eyes swept the rolling landscape. There was Bedrich, who could set a goblin on fire, but could manage only one at a time. Ferus, straight ahead, could guide an arrow or spear unerringly to its target, but again only one at a time. Two Therving archers stood bravely at his side. Off to the right stood Pekar, who could control the wind, but he was agonizingly slow, and could never predict its strength. Mila, Tibor, Bojik, and the others, all were limited in one way or another. In the hills and forests, against isolated bands, her rixen were deadly. She had mastered the art of concealment, of setting traps, and her people had an instinct for attacking at just the right moment. But this standing about in the wide open, this was like dousing the night’s campfire with wolves around.
Julian watched as the goblins advanced. They were close enough that he could hear their feet and see individuals within the mass. They moved in no sort of order. They bounded forward in groups of three or four, darting ahead or even to the side, only to be swallowed again by the swarm. The creatures made no attempt to flank or maneuver, but advanced in a chaotic roil of leaping shapes coming straight at the Legion. A swarm, Julian thought, was exactly the right word.
They were a thousand yards away when the Roman horns began to sound—bright shrills in quick succession, followed by a long, metallic thunder as the soldiers set shield and lance, and the archers brought forth their arrows. The lines drew tighter and straighter. On his other side, horses stamped and neighed.
Five hundred yards. A sharp voice came from the Second Wing as a trooper brought his mount back under hand. A Thervingian rider came up, breathless—Princess Inglena sent him, Honored Sir, to carry your message to attack. He wasn’t much more than a child, and he eagerly awaited the word. Julian remembered to thank him before putting him aside. The Legion’s Standard-Bearer gave him a bleak look.
“Patience, Ursinus Desidenius,” Julian said. “Rome will teach these rabid dogs a lesson today.” He forced a smile he did not feel, and Ursinus returned it in kind. The words weren’t very good, Julian reflected. He was glad he didn’t have to make a battle speech.
At two hundred yards, a new sound began. Julian knew it at once, though he had never heard it. The Romans began a low note, deep in the belly. A crash of spears on shields and the first line advanced. The second line added their voices and the low note pitched upward as they also
advanced. The third line joined and the whole Legion moved forward. The horns joined in, low and loud. Drums matched the deliberate tramp of feet. A chill ran through him. This never-heard sound of the Roman war chant stirred him, as if his blood remembered it. For a moment the chant connected him to the legions of Septimius Severus, of Marcus Aurelius and Tiberius and Augustus, of Caesar and Marius and Scipio, in an unbroken line, a bolt of lightning from the past. Bandylegs danced and he snapped back to the present. He fought back the urge to charge, steadied himself, and steadied his horse.
“Don’t they shout or anything?” Avitus asked.
Only then did he notice the silence from the other side. A steady rumble rolled forward from the swarming creatures as their heavy feet hammered the earth. Accompanying the rumble was a clattering sound, like hail on cobblestones, which he took as the clicking of their talons. But they uttered no cries. They advanced as silent as insects.
The war chant rose steadily in pitch and volume. The drums increased in tempo as the first cohorts broke into their charge, lances ready. The creatures closed to fifty yards, then twenty. The bull was about to attack the bees.
Then, some of the creatures at the front leaped. They jumped as high as a man’s head, covering twenty feet in a single jump. Some went even higher and farther. The move caught the soldiers unprepared. They had no time to raise shield or lance. Goblins crashed into the line feet first, the heavy talons stabbing into heads and gouging shoulders. Screams tore the air.
More goblins leaped. Some hit a man, wounding or killing him, then bounced forward deeper into the ranks, crashing to the ground and taking soldiers with them. Meanwhile, the bulk of the swarm stayed on the ground. These charged directly into the Roman lines, heedless of the lances and paying a price for it. They slashed with their forelegs and bit with their long mouths, but the Romans were on familiar ground there. Shield and armor protected, while lance and sword bit back.
The Roman charge soon staggered to a stop. The goblins leaped seemingly at random. Some jumped from so far back, they were landing on their own kind. The goblin attack was mindless, and inexorable.
Goblins were leaping deep into the ranks of the Third and Fourth Cohorts, creating confusion and panic. Gaps began to appear in the lines. The rear lines closed ranks. A few of them were already in the fighting.
Julian felt helpless, but also strangely detached. He was watching flesh rend, bones break, men die. He knew what they were feeling—he was only two days from it himself. At the same time, the attackers were so grotesquely alien, he could not make the scene before him mean anything. It was too unlike anything he knew.
The First and Second were doing better, especially the Second. The Fourth behind them was as yet untouched. He tried to see why these Cohorts were faring better. He made his eyes not see men fall, not see the blood fly, but to see the Cohort as a whole, as a single being with its own defense and counter-thrust. He thought he could see something, a clue.
“General, please, send for the rixen. We can fight!”
The interruption banished the moment. He glanced at the young man on the long-haired pony.
“Not yet,” Julian said. “I can’t put your sorcerers among my troops, and you can’t get onto the field alone.”
“We’ll cut a path for them,” Ennius said.
Everyone looked to Julian. He glanced around, but all choices were his alone now. He felt something shift inside him. Sounds became muffled; motion seemed suspended. Everything turned crystalline.
“Captain,” Julian said into the stillness, “take both wings and escort our allies into the fight. Once they are delivered, pull back to your position. I still want my cavalry in reserve.”
Ennius looked at him steadily.
“Yes sir, General,” he said, and was already turning his horse. The crisp acknowledgment felt exactly right. He turned to the Therving.
“Go,” he said. “Tell the Princess to come at once. Tell her she must go with the cavalry until the Captain turns her loose. Repeat that.”
The messenger did so. Julian sent him off, and the world returned, with its sounds and smells and sensations. He looked across the battlefield. Near the river, the front lines were in shambles. The Fourth was supporting, but that flank was turning into a slaughterhouse. At the right flank, the Second and First maintained their line, but were taking losses steadily. The Legion might win this fight, but the cost was already high.
“This is madness,” Avitus said.
It wasn’t the right word. Julian nearly said, “No, this is war,” but that was so trite he swallowed it. This was necessary, unavoidable, terrible, frightening, catastrophic. Words fell all around, but none hit the target, so he said nothing at all.
He watched as the Thervings came thundering by, about a hundred of them. They looked absurd. Some were armed, some were not. None wore armor. Some were riding double. They looked so ordinary, like peasants on a wolf hunt. He half-expected to see a flail or a smith’s hammer.
They are all going to die, he thought. Aloud he said, “I hope they do some good.”
Ennius scooped them up smoothly, strung them into a column, and set out. It was done quickly, in a minute or so, but Julian only wondered how many soldiers died in that minute.
The sense of abstraction was still on him. The dying of men was a detail in the greater story, and he hated the feeling. What he saw was two contending forces, one scarlet, one brown; discipline versus chaos. Where they met was a vortex of motion too complex to follow, but viewed broadly they surged one way and the other, two curtains billowing in an uncertain wind. He thought he was seeing a pattern, but it was dim, at the edge of understanding. He studied the field, concentrating, searching for a secret he felt sure was hidden there.
He concentrated so hard, he almost missed what the rixen did.
Inglena knew at once she should not have listened to the others. They all urged an attack. Her gut told her they were wrong, but how could she say that? They would think her a coward. Worse, they would think her under the sway of the Romans. So she said yes and hoped for no. When the word came, she swallowed hard and put on her warrior’s face.
The Roman cavalry was incredibly brave. They had faced the monsters once and now had to face them again, had to drive into them. Their horses shied and even bolted, but their riders were steady in the face of the slashing chaos. Fortunately, the goblins were more focused on the foot soldiers, and the cavalry was attacked only incidentally. They delivered her well into the left flank of the goblins, then fought their way free. She hoped they did not pay too high a price.
Then the work began.
Her white sword rose and fell like a reaper’s scythe. The rixen disappeared into the morass, and only gradually could their effect be seen. They pierced the side of the swarm like a thorn, Inglena riding on one flank. The goblins recoiled for a moment, then responded. This led to death among the sorcerers, but it relieved some of the pressure on the Legion. The cavalry returned to their positions, bloodied but intact. The Roman horns sounded again, and once again the Legion pressed the attack.
Inglena soon found herself fighting nearly isolated, but this did not concern her. She and her rixen were accustomed to working in small groups or even alone. Fighting goblins required flexibility. On her right, the young man Benis was throwing small whirlwinds, sending goblins tumbling, sometimes with enough force to kill them.
To her left, though, she saw something that made her cry out. Kalene was a young sorcerer—too young to be out here, Inglena thought suddenly. But it was already too late. Kalene lay on the ground, broken, motionless. A man strode toward the girl. Goblins raced all around him, but they did not approach, going around him as if avoiding a boulder. His right hand was glowing. He held it up as if holding a torch, but it was the hand itself that was the color of hot embers. The man moved at a deliberate pace, seemingly indifferent to the danger all around him.
Zeleny. He was the girl’s father. Without even thinking about it, Inglena move
d away. A goblin leaped at her and she killed it in a single stroke.
Zeleny stopped and knelt. The man lifted Kalene and cradled her in his left arm. He held her for a single long moment. Then his back arched and he drove his glowing fist into the ground. It did more than just strike, it drove into the earth, up to the elbow.
A roar blasted the air, and the ground began to shake. Inglena’s horse screamed and bucked. Men cried out and many were cast down. Where the goblins swarmed, gouts of dirt and stone shot skyward, hurling bodies in every direction. The ground tilted one way then the other, then fell. Chasms opened and hundreds of goblins vanished. Waves ran across the river like frightened animals.
The roar continued, then culminated in a thunderclap that made her ears ring. Silence fell the next instant.
The earthquake had barely touched the Legion. Many had been knocked down, but now were scrambling back to their feet. The goblin swarm was all but gone. In its place was a huge patch of ground torn up, as if a herd of giant bison had pawed through it. The chasms had snapped shut, crushing bodies. Here and there, an arm or a leg or a torso stuck out like hideous gravestones in a mad necropolis. Across the battlefield, no more than a hundred goblins survived, and these were mostly stunned. They wandered, disoriented, no longer fighting unless directly attacked.
Inglena killed the one goblin that was near her, then looked around. Some of her people had survived. Some were dead, surely. She knew Zeleny could make the earth tremble, but never did he have this kind of power.
The Roman cavalry pursued, riding gingerly through the churned up field, but they hunted down the few goblins who survived. As the horns sounded and the cohorts re-formed, she rode quickly from one to another of her people, gathering them to herself. The aftermath of battle was settling on her quickly and she had to force herself to stay and do the grim arithmetic.
For his part, Julian was likewise stunned until a sudden thought made him cry out and look all around.
“Avitus!”
“Here, master,” came the reply, “terrified, but unhurt.”