Rome was defeated and left open to him. What was stopping him from marching his army to its gates now?
Nothing…yet, he was hesitant, despite his victory this day, there were still many uncertainties. He knew this enemy — Rome, was a hydra. He had severed its head so many times all ready — its body was far from dead, that he knew, even as he watched the endmost vestiges of survivors slaughtered — no quarter given. Rome would, however, rise again. This fact vexed him without end, even upon his great victory.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was silent, far to tranquil. Gaius hated silence. He needed activity: the sounds of a city or the steady breeze of a warm summer’s day, as farmers worked their fields — the sounds of their pickaxes breaking through the earth, curing up rocks, dirt, with the songs of birds overhead. Here in the nearly abandoned city of Canusium, it was eerily still, as if everyone knew a terrible storm was brewing over the hills. Only a handful of the town’s people stayed behind. A few stubborn farmers and store owners, or those that simply had nowhere else to go. Tens of thousands already fled to Rome, or the southern most cities. However, in truth, there wasn’t anywhere people could go, north, south, east or west. The enemies of Rome were everywhere, or so it seemed.
Standing up on top of the high stone wall that surrounded the town, Gaius looked out towards the east, towards Cannae. He and his men came to this place two days ago, on orders to make ready for any casualties who might come this way once the battle was won. He knew it was an excuse. There was no real reason to expect any Roman casualties to come this direction, not if the battle was indeed won, not when the main army’s camp had all the needs for those wounded. And if not the camp, then the city of Cannae would suffice.
Gaius wanted to be at Cannae more than anything. He had no real wish to be in a battle against Hannibal, not after surviving Trebia. Still, he wanted to be with the army. He wanted to be doing more than babysitting a small and unimportant settlement as this. It was his right as a soldier of the Republic to face his enemies head on, and not be sent away on the Eve of Rome’s finest victory, or its greatest defeat.
A part of him hated Antony for what he had done. Why he sent him away? It was unprofessional to put his feelings before his duty as an officer. The Wolves deserved to be at Cannae. They had fought, lost and suffered as much as any two legions since this war had begun. Still, however, something in Gaius’ old friend’s eyes told him a different story. It wasn’t as if Antony was afraid of battle. While he wasn’t nearly as seasoned or as trained as he, Antony was no coward, Gaius knew that. It seemed as if he had seen something, perhaps a vision of what was to come in his dreams; that something horrible was coming, and that he needed Gaius away from it; for Rome, for himself, for Julia.
He knew the reasoning, but failed to understand its meaning. Now going on two full days, there was no word from the army. The battle should have started by now. However, there had been no dispatch or wounded coming in from Cannae from the time he arrived at Canusium. If there was a victory, subsequently Rome would have sent word. Even if the battle was a defeat, still word would have arrived about what actions the men stationed here should take.
Even the worst imaginable defeat couldn’t have been that suffered.
Gaius could not take it anymore as he had spent the better part of the day pacing back and forth along the high walls, looking out over the rolling brown hills that surrounded the town, waiting, hoping for any sign from Cannae to reach them. He was done waiting. If he had to ride out to Cannae on his own, he would. However, before he deserted the army to seek his answers, Gaius figured he had better ask permission first, and see what came of it.
As he walked down the crowded streets towards the building that Valerius had chosen for his headquarters, the roads were mostly filled with bored and frustrated soldiers who had little to do, other than sit out in the hot sun and speculate among themselves why they were here, doing nothing.
They, like he, needed to know what was going on. Many were not happy about missing the battle, victory or defeat they just wanted to be where the action was. Some watched Gaius as he walked by them, he could tell that they wanted to ask him for any updates, if he knew anything, but most hesitated, seeing that he was obviously rushing towards the headquarters.
Truthfully, for the whole fourteen minutes that it took him to cross the town he was trying to think of a million and one excuses that he could make up so that Valerius would authorize him to take men to the battlefield. When he finally reached the building and stepped inside, into what had been the home of one of Canusium’s wealthier citizens, he saw Valerius in the back room, in what had been the dining hall. A dozen aides were with him, all going back and forth taking care of the various orders that Valerius was issuing out. He had scouts in the field, shift rotations for men behind the walls that needed taking care of, management of the food stocks, and over a thousand men who were bored with nothing to do but listen to each other’s fears and doubts about what was happening.
Valerius glanced up and saw Gaius standing in the doorway. To even his surprise, Gaius never got the chance to say anything — use one of his reasons for why he should take some men to Cannae. He had a good argument ready, but Valerius just looked back down at his maps and started speaking.
“I want you to take the first cavalry cohort to Cannae. Find out what the fuck is going out there, and report back to me once you have some answers. Is that understood?”
Gaius perked up, standing a bit taller as he was a loss for words. He didn't expect his old mentor to issue such an order.
“Yes, sir. At once.”
Gaius turned quickly and raced out of the manor and towards the army barracks that housed the men he would be taking with him to Cannae. It took him less than five minutes, and when he called forth the eighty men that he would be taking, they all eagerly leaped to their feet, grabbed their gear, and raced off with Gaius.
The distance between the city of Canusium and Cannae was covered by Gaius and his men fairly quickly. They had left Canusium in the morning, and now with less than an hour before night fall, he could see the surrounding hills of Cannae before him. And immediately, he knew something was wrong as he could see thousands of birds circling overhead, further towards the plains set between the city of Cannae, which was where Hannibal had based his army, and the Roman camp.
He kicked his horse, demanded that it run faster as he needed to get to the far side of the hill and see for himself what he already knew a battle took place. But who won? The knot in his stomach gave him early indications that it wasn’t his side.
It was very hot, and the smell of the dead and putrid flesh hit him hard as he rounded the bend, following a narrow paved road that was cut in between two daunting hills. And then, when the fields of Cannae came into view, Gaius’ mouth opened wide as, he and his men stopped abruptly in their tracks.
For miles, further than he could see with his naked eyes, laid the bodies of tens of thousands, all stretched out, and clumped together like stacks of logs, as if an entire forest had been cut down.
Banners, flags and standards of the various Roman cohorts, units and entire legions stuck out of the ground, between the fallen. Birds, thousands, more than Gaius had ever seen flew, landing between the dead, filling their bellies with putrid human flesh; even wild dogs had come down from the hills and walked among the Roman deceased as well. None fought one another, there were so many bodies that they could feast for months without worry of hunger.
Gaius and his men slowly trotted into the battlefield. Along the outer edges, they could see the severed heads of their countrymen stuck on pikes, a clear warning set by the barbarians that were under Hannibal’s command.
A number of Gaius’ soldiers, mostly his newest recruits, could not stand the sight or the smell as they dropped from their horses, and puked their guts out. A few men leaped down from their animals and helped those few that couldn’t bear to look at the carnage any longer, as more than a few of them were ope
nly crying now.
Gaius paid little attention as he continued forward, eventually leaping down from his horse as the animal could not go further through the thick carped of dead men.
He looked around him, barely sure of where he could go. There were so many bodies that he couldn’t avoid stepping on pieces of men, entrails and globs of blood that had pooled, soaking into the earth before drying under the baking sun.
He hated the faces of the dead. Most, nearly all had their eyes open, mouths wide as the look of share terror had filled their expressions, before they had died, slowly, painfully, clumped together with the men before them, beside them, and behind them. Many of the dead were naked. The Carthaginians and their allies would have picked the lifeless clean of anything useful: armor, weapons, coins, jewels, even body parts such as tattoos and heads to be displayed as trophies.
Gaius had a rough estimate where Antony would have been positioned. He needed to move forward and find him. He knew it was impossible to find one man among the countless thousands. It did not matter — he had to try.
He could see, as he worked his way deeper into the body laded ground a few hundred people also walking among the corpses. Most of them were women, and all were sobbing openly. Gaius knew that these women would have been the wives, mothers, sisters and other relatives who had followed the army. They would sift through the remains of the dead looking for a familiar face of a loved one, hoping that they could find them so that they might give them a proper burial. It was morbid and a tedious task, but these women would stay here for as long as they could — weeks, even months picking through the stacks of dead, trying as hard as they could to find those men they had loved; only now, most of the dead looked alike.
A number of other people were also among the dead. These people were mostly men, and were human scavengers. Their task wasn’t as mournful as the women whom he saw. They searched through the bodies looking for whatever they could take, at least what the Carthaginians had overlooked. It appalled Gaius; these people were the filth of the earth, but it wasn’t illegal either. They were common when any army of size marched to battle. They would stay miles behind the lines, just waiting to see who won the fight, and then, would move in and pick clean the dead of anything remotely valuable.
“I never thought I would live to see such a thing,” Maurus, who stood behind Gaius, said as he gazed across the battlefield.
“Send a rider back to Canusium and inform Valerius of what happened here. In addition, start breaking the men into teams of four. Have them search among the dead and try to find any survivors if they can,” Gaius spoke, but not looking back towards his young officer.
“How long do we look?” Maurus asked.
Gaius only glanced back at him. “For as long as we can.”
“And what about you? Where are you going?” Maurus asked, but Gaius did not answer as he started making his way deeper into the sea of broken and bloodied bodies.
A few minutes later as he glanced down at the various faces, most if not all staring up at him, eyes glazed over with death. He saw what looked like a large pile of hands, arms and fingers that had been collected into a dozen stacks, each nearly five feet high. For a moment, he wondered, as he looked at the gory scene, why the Carthaginians would have done this; what purpose it might have meant. Then, it dawned on him, as he looked closer, many of the appendages that had been cut off ring fingers. Each officer, tribune, legate, quaestors and senators, they all wore rings. There were hundreds of them, if not thousands in the army before the battle had started. Gaius realized that Hannibal had probably had each ring collected and cut off from its owners’ hands, dead or alive. The wealth alone would make any one man rich for the rest of his life.
After a few hours, long after the sun had gone down and night had filled the sky, Gaius finally gave up his search. He didn't find Antony, his body nor his head. He could see how the battle had gone as he stood, alone, on top of a sloping hill as his men continued with their work, lit by torchlight, as they worked their way in a grid pattern through the carnage below.
He had found survivors, a few dozen so far, and that he was thankful for. Valerius was sending a cohort of men and wagons, which would take all night to arrive, but at least these men wouldn’t die among their brothers. However, as he stared down at the flickering fires that guided his men’s morbid work, trying to find signs of life among the many dead, he broke, finally.
He failed; he failed to find Antony, his oldest and dearest friend. All he could think about at the moment was, how little time they had spent together, how much he wanted to say to him but never had the courage to say before.
He didn’t know what he was going to say to Julia, how he could possibly tell her that both her brother and father were dead, slaughtered nearly to the man, and by a weaker army no less.
He cried, not only for Antony, not just for Julia, or for his own father, or the men down below, and those that had died in the past year alone. No, he cried for them all, letting out years of built-up anger, sorrow and pain flow out of him.
From this day, on, Gaius, the boy who had dreamed great things once — believed in the superiority of his beloved Republic, was a different man any longer. He had grown up, forever changed by what he has seen, and lived through. Above all, he craved justice for what had happened to his people, and as the gods as his witness, he would see it served.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Senate was empty, save for one man who sat alone on one of the stone benches that ran around the two marble seats that represented the chairs of the consuls of Rome. It amazed Fabius Maximus how meaningless this place was; how utterly quiet it was. The bulk of the senators who would have typically spent the afternoon debating without end, were in the field. Only a few dozen remained behind, leaving much of the city’s affairs to him, as the elected People’s Tribune. He wished he was out there now, with the army, which he had received reports had discovered Hannibal at Cannae.
Now, he waited like the whole city for word of the victory that was certain to come. However, Fabius’ mind was lost; adrift upon a sea of doubt; left to govern a body that stood frozen with fear to the possibilities of just what if the two consuls and their unstoppable legions weren’t enough to crush Hannibal?
That question plagued Fabius from day one. He didn’t want his fears and frustrations to get the better of him, so he didn’t act on his thoughts and call to question the Republic's chances of survival if indeed, Hannibal was victorious.
His mind still drifted to the past. How many different ways this conflict could have been avoided if he had the chance to lead; he did not seek any grand title, of course, a rarity among his own countrymen, not to mention his family. However, he wondered what choices he could have made differently but the past could not be changed. It was the future that mattered now.
Fabius turned his head as he heard a far door open, followed by the soft footsteps of another man, a fellow senator by the name of Marcus Brutus Nero, walk towards him.
Fabius stood to his feet and watched the elder statesman as he slowly approached him with uncertainty in his stride.
Fabius could see the parchment in his right hand, which was held down low by his side as Nero’s eyes wavered, as he neared the tribune.
“Word from Cannae?” Fabius asked eagerly as Nero stopped just before him and raised his hand, holding it out for him to take.
“Read for yourself,” Nero spoke; his voice trembling.
Fabius took the note and read its words very carefully. There wasn’t a lot written on it, as it had been issued with haste, before being sent out.
The document was written by Valerius, Fabius observed, which read:
Senators of Rome, I regret to inform you that the armies led by Consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Macro Julius Varro has been destroyed, nearly to the man by the forces of Hannibal and his allies. I and fifteen hundred survivors who were sent from the battlefield before the campaign begun, are the only substantial forces left in I
taly. My men have found several hundred survivors, and we are currently on our way back to Rome, in hope of beating Hannibal, whom I assume will be marching on the city to lay siege. I urge the Senate to make preparations for the defense of the city if I do not arrive in time with my army.
Claudius Augustus Valerius, Legate of the Sixth Legion.
Fabius slumped, falling onto his seat as he dropped the document that Valerius had sent, onto the Senate floor.
“How could such a large force be defeated, and so quickly and utterly?” Fabius asked more to himself than to Nero, who stood before him, his head hung low.
“I…am gathering my family, and what belongings I can bring, and leaving the city within the next three hours. More of the senators and knights are joining me as well. I advise that you make preparations to do the same, Fabius,” Nero said with a heavy heart; his words filled with shame.
“What? What do you mean you are leaving the city? And who else?” Fabius asked shockingly.
“It does not matter who else, only that it is important that we leave, at once.”
“And abandoned Rome to the barbarians?”
“What else is there for us to do? What do you think Hannibal will do to us once he reaches the city? If we do not capitulate to him, he will pull down the city walls, and have all of our heads. He may do so just out of spit once we’ve surrendered to him.”
“Surrender!” Fabius bolted to his feet. “You read Valerius’ letter. He is coming even as we speak.”
“And who will arrive sooner do you think, Valerius and his fifteen hundred, or Hannibal and his forty thousand? What do you expect us to do, Fabius? Even if Valerius and his legion reach the city in time, it can’t be held with fifteen hundred men, and what city cohorts we have left.”
“I will not surrender or give this city to Hannibal, not without a fight.”
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