Marius' Mules XI

by S. J. A. Turney

  His cohorts simply waded into the First, those with spears using them expertly, jabbing them into any gap between shields they could find, certain of a wound delivered in the press of men. Screams echoed along the line, and the swordsmen capitalised on those small gaps created by the victims of the spears. In any other fight, the front man, when he fell, would be replaced with a man from the second line shuffling forward s . It was an old and serviceable system. But not w hen this was the flank and those men behind were as often as not facing another direction and trying to feed the front line against the Tenth. Their formations and careful lines began to disintegrate immediately, for no square block of men can feed a shield wall to both front and left simultaneously without confusion reigning and gaps inevitably opening up.

  Fronto grinned and, with a brief prayer to Fortuna, threw himself into the nearest gap.

  He could feel the atmosphere in the First Legion even as he pushed his way in among them. They were broken. Their morale had drained away and every man there knew the day was lost . They only fought on through a strange combination of ingrained professionalism and the discipline of their centurions, who were still driving them on, continually exhorting them to battle.

  Fronto let go of his need to command and control and threw all his concentration and spirit into the blade in his right hand, proving once more that age need be no barrier to a soldier if he kept up his physique and training. That being said, once or twice he felt his knee going in the press and was forced to pause and recover, men from his cohorts clustering around him unbidden, keeping him from the worst of danger s in the press. Then, mere moments later he was up and fighting again, his sword parrying with bone-quivering metallic grating noises, stabbing into flesh and iron and painted wood.

  He felt swords tear at his tunic, ding and scrape off his cuirass, felt a worrying lance of pain as a shallow cut opened up on his thigh, then another on his left arm. He noted with interest in passing that Pompey’s legions, as well as their identifying shield designs, had dyed their scarves a purple blue – the eastern dye indikon , no doubt brought by the Syrian legions. A blue scarf for them indicated an ally.

  It turned out to be a lucky realisation, for twenty heartbeats later he shoved a gurgling, dying legionary out of the way and raised his blade to strike the next, realising only at the last moment that the man wore no such blue scarf. As the soldier turned towards him, also raising his sword and realising that Fronto wore no blue, the legate grinned, recognising the shield design of Caesar’s Equestris Legion .

  In the press of men, he had met the Tenth pushing forward s .

  The man grin n ed back and then shov ed off in another direction. Fronto hacked and stabbed once more, being careful to make sure his target was blue-scarved before delivering the blow.

  * * *

  Salvius Cursor knelt and whimpered. His head felt as though someone had parked a cart on it. How long he had blacked out, he had no idea, but he knew instinctively that he had done so. He reached up and ran his left hand over the surface of his helmet , half expecting to find a squishy bit where his own brain was exposed. What he did find was a dent, and it was no small ding, but a sizeable crease. Gingerly, he probed it and almost passed out again at the intense pain that washed through his head at his fingers’ pressure.

  Carefully he reached up and untied the leather thong beneath his chin that held the cheek flaps together. With dreadful slowness, he began to lift the helmet from his head. He winced as he felt his hair being pulled taught at the dent, where blood had matted into it and some had caught in the metal. He tugged lightly and felt the hair tear as the helmet came free. Turning it over, he looked at the dent in the bowl and his eyes bulged. How he had survived such a blow he would never know. The dent had to be a full thumb-width deep. He could see the contour of a slightly curved blade in the impression it had left in the bronze. Turning it over and looking inside, he quickly wished he hadn’t. The bronze had slammed inward s through the felt liner which had probably been the thing that had saved his life. But despite that, the once grey liner was now a purple-brown-black mixture of blood, sweat and hair. He let the helmet fall away. It had been a fine and expensive purchase some years ago, but he would never wear it again. Even if he had that dent hammered out, the bowl would forever have a weak spot there. Reaching up, he very gently touched that spot on his head and was instantly sick the moment his finger entered the wound. The bronze had presumably cracked his skull. He wondered if what he had touched was brain. When he looked at his hand it was covered in blood. Would it have been grey if it was brain?

  Slowly, he rose, then collapsed again. While he was down there the second time, gathering sufficient strength to stand, his questing fingers found his sword and he gripped it gratefully.

  The reality of his situation sank in and he peered about himself. Every figure he saw was a legionary of the Tenth, and they were all pushing in the same direction. So, he was in no further danger, but farther and farther removed from the action. More carefully this time he staggered to his feet. His legs felt wobbly. Not as wobbly as his vision or his head, but still wobbly.

  His vision was slowly clearing, and thinking becoming less baffling and woolly. He needed medical at tention, of course, but he was not going to seek it. He was not done here yet. Eyes narrowing at unfamiliar calls across the battlefield, he tucked his sword into his belt for a moment, reached down and removed his scarf and then tied it carefully about his head as some sort of cap. It would hardly protect him from a blow, of course, but he reasoned that the wound had been protected until he removed the helmet, and the last thing he wanted was random flying muck getting into his brain through the wound. At least the scarf might keep it clean, if you were kind enough to label the gore-streaked scarf clean itself, of course.

  He pulled his sword back out of the belt and took a deep breath. He had something to finish yet and nothing short of death would stop him. Snarling what were supposed to be obscenities but probably came out as mumbled rubbish past his swollen tongue and baffled mind, he pushed into the crowd, hauling his own legionaries out of the way in an effort to reach the front of the fighting once more.

  ‘Out. Way. Move.’

  Legionaries ducked aside at the sight of the gore-encrusted , wild-eyed, crazed- looking tribune, and he was surprised how easy it was to move forward s when people were startled at the mere sight of you.

  A soldier in front of him suddenly turned out to be an enemy. He’d forgotten about the scarves in his state and he only knew of it when the legionary tried to kill him. He parried somewhat inexpertly, realising only now that his strength had drained away, presumably through the hole in his head. He felt surprisingly feeble. His counter blow, a jab to the belly with his gladius, went horribly wrong. It seemed he didn’t quite have the strength for the blow, and the point of his sword dropped. He narrowly missed skewering the man’s knee and instead of stabbi ng him neatly and efficiently with steel, he fell against him and then liberally coated him in a fresh wave of vomit.

  Shit, this was no good. How was he going to kill if he could barely lift his sword.

  Another figure swam into his wavering view as the vomit-covered legionary was helpfully dispatched by one of the Tenth beside him. The tribune frowned at the figure, trying to determine in the muck and press whether the officer was wearing a blue scarf.

  ‘Salvius? Salvius Cursor?’

  He frowned, then squinted at the figure. ‘Fronto?’

  ‘Gods, man, what happened to you?’

  In answer Salvius reached up and pointed at the scarf, which he was fairly sure was already soaked with the blood leaking from his head.

  ‘Jove, that must be bad. You need to get to a medicus.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Salvius, your life is on the line.’

  ‘No.’

  Fronto straightened in front of him, and Salvius tried to do so too, which resulted in yet another wave of nausea . H e vomited onto Fronto’s boots.

  ‘T
ribune,’ the legate snapped in a surprisingly authoritative tone, ‘get to a bloody m edicus before you cough out your own brains.’

  ‘No. Can’t.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  Salvius ground his teeth, not savouring the taste in his mouth. ‘I can’t Fronto. Pompey. He’s here. He has to die.’

  Fronto gave him a look that was so oddly sympathetic that Salvius couldn’t quite understand and wobbled a little more until a legionary helped him. ‘What?’

  Fronto’s brow furrowed. ‘Pompey’s gone.’

  ‘ What? ’

  ‘Threw down his general’s cloak and fled the moment his left flank collapsed.’

  ‘No.’

  Gone? No, this was the chance. The last battle. The opportunity to actually meet the man f ace to face and stick a sword in him. ‘Where?’

  ‘Back to the camp, no doubt,’ Fronto said carefully.

  ‘To camp,’ Salvius nodded, instantly regretting it. ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘In good time,’ Fronto said, then gestured to two of the soldiers. ‘Get the tribune to the medical section and tell them to take care of him. And if the tribune argues, you have my permission to poke him in that dent on the top of his head. That should stop him fighting you.’

  Salvius stared. ‘No.’

  ‘Get well, Salvius,’ Fronto replied, and suddenly Salvius was being helped back out of the press by the two men with an odd mix of courtesy and forcefulness.

  * * *

  Fronto watched Salvius being helped away and shook his head in disbelief. The tribune was a lunatic. He half expected, when this was over and they got to Pompey’s camp, to find Salvius already there, his brains slopping out all over the place and Pompey’s head in his hand. Oddly the image did not entirely displease him.

  He turned his attention back to the fight that still surged, but he became aware a moment later of another change in the general atmosphere of the legion around him. The disheartened fear had turned into something new: despair.

  Their leaders had fled, the wing collapsed and now Caesar’s legions were in among the ranks of their men and killing with impunity. His ears caught the sound of a strong voice exhorting men to kill and fight on, and his searching gaze picked out a tableau not far through the thinning press. A centurion with a crest of blue feathers was shoving at men and pushing them back towards the enemy. His men were in a full panic and were trying to push past him, but the centurion and his optio nearby were stopping them fleeing with powerful tones and words of undefeated strength, and turning them, sending them back into the fray. Fronto gave a grim little smile. It was clearly a small island of command and vigour in a sea of despair.

  That ship of hope had to be sunk.

  Ignoring everything else, Fronto set his sights on the man and pushed forward s . The fight surged around him like the sea, lapping and splashing, crashing and flowing, men bellowing victoriously and men crying in agony and horror, the stink of blood and faeces almost unbearable. Fronto shut himself off from it . He had smelled those appalling stenches a hundred times over the years. It never became better or more acceptable, but it did become easier to ignore it and rise above.

  It did not take long – perhaps only five steps – before he lost sight of the heroic Pompeian centurion, but every now and then as he strained to look over the heads of struggling me he could see the tips of those blue feathers and knew he was heading the right way. A man lunged at Fronto unexpectedly and out of the blue, and it was only then that he realised he was not alone. Half a dozen of the men from the Tenth had spotted their legate in the press and flocked to support him, and he still had two of the men from the cohorts he had led into the battle , too . Between them, those e ight men were doing an admirable job of keeping the danger out of the way and allowing Fronto to move with purpose. The man who had lunged was parried, then mercilessly run through and pushed away into the throng.

  Other men tried, leaping forward s to tackle this determined Caesarian off icer, and each one was caught by a veteran of Fronto’s , parried, turned, killed with an almost mechanical efficiency, and still they were with him. He spotted the centurion again now, not just the feathers but the man in his entirety. The Pompeian officer looked faintly familiar and Fronto realised bitterly that he’d probably fought alongside the man for years without ever knowing his name when the First had served Caesar in Gaul.

  The centurion bellowed at a cowering legionary and as the man made to push past him, grasped him by the hooks of his chain shirt, lifting him clear of the floor, turning him and throwing him back toward s the fighting. Another man, panic overriding his sense and his discipline, made to stick the centurion with his knife in an attempt to get past. The knife punched into the chain shirt, catching on the harness of medals the officer wore, and failed to penetrate the armour. The centurion, lip curling in distaste, delivered his would-be killer a vicious blow with his vine staff, and then threw him away. He was an impressive specimen, even among centurions, and the entire breed were as hardy as Titans.

  Damn it but he hated the ide a of having to kill such a heroic and powerful legionary officer. Men like him were too valuable to throw away. But unfortunately, as the Roman army had learned to their cost more than once, centurions also made valuable targets. Their deaths robbed the ir entire century of both discipline and courage.

  Two men who rather unpleasantly simultaneously killed one another fell out of the way and Fronto’s path to the officer was clear. The centurion caught sight of the officer stomping towards him, no blue scarf in evi dence, nodded his understanding and drew his gladius, swa pping his vine staff to his off- hand.

  Fronto would be at a disadvantage with just a knife, so as he closed on the man, he reached up and unpinned the cloak he wore – a russet- coloured utilitarian wool garment. Under normal circumstances he would have hated to use a good cloak as a parrying weapon, but the shredded nature of the garment, cut by several blows in the battle already, hardly made it worth saving. He wound it round his wrist.

  ‘Deal with the optio ,’ he said to his men, then broke into a run.

  His first blow at the centurion was knocked aside easily with the ancient, hardened vine stick , but Fronto had hardly expected it to succeed. This man would , by the very nature of his rank, let alone the impressive array of medals on his chest, be an expert and a veteran. He threw out the arm wrapped in the cloak on an assumption and was rewarded with a jarring thump as the centurion’s sword thudded into it. Fronto swore. Another blow like that might just break his arm.

  He had danced past the centurion with the blow and turned now to find that the man had also spun to face him once more.

  ‘Go back to your tent, sir,’ the centurion said. ‘I don’t like killing officers.’

  ‘Me neither ,’ Fronto said quietly. ‘But times are hard.’

  The centurion moved without warning, and fast as a striking snake. His sword swept up to the left, then down across Fronto in a diagonal sweep, then back in an impressive slash before he pulled it back and jabbed hard for the groin.

  Fronto’s blade caught the first blow and somehow managed to be back in the way of the second. The third only failed because he had twisted out of the way. He responded with a stab that the centurion turned, but with a little difficulty. Another flurry of blows came, a stab, a slash, a low jab. Fronto smiled quietly to himself. The man was fast, and he was damn strong , but he was also horribly predictable. They were all moves taught by any training centurion. He had watched Velius hammer these sequences into stunned legionaries every other day for years, especially in that camp at Cremona over the winter before they all marched into Gaul.

  He parried and danced out of the way again, this time feeling the ache in his knee as he planted a foot badly. He waited. He did not attempt another strike. This fight was going to be won with the brain , not the hand. He watched. The centurion’s sword came up high. Fronto closed his eyes for a long blink, picturing Velius all those years ago and praying to Fortuna he
was right.

  He opened his eyes to see the blade descending and took a step right, dropping his cloak-wrapped arm to a low position on his left, readying his blade , point-downwards.

  His memory paid off. The centurion’s descending blow missed entirely. It became a slash, sweeping up and was caught at a comfortable angle on the thick cloak, bounced away and was knocked out of danger by the blade. Fronto grinned.

  ‘Hades, you’re quick. But you know what’s better than quick?’

  ‘What?’ growled the centurion.

  ‘Unpredictable,’ Fronto said as he let go. While he had been speaking, he had been surreptitiously unwinding the cloak from his hand. The centurion had been intent on his eyes and mouth and had not noticed the subtle move . The cloak flew out, billowing as it did , and engulfed the centurion’s head and torso.

  Fronto knew what would come next. The centurion, enraged, cast aside his vine stick and reached up to remove the cloak, simultaneously jabbing out with his blade as he stepped forward s . But Fronto knew the move, and knew what was coming. The man’s blade met only empty air as Fronto stepped lightly past the centurion and then, with little in the way of panache , reached up with the sword as the cloak came free and cut the man’s throat.

  The centurion’s eyes bulged and he turned in shock, bubbles of crimson forming at neck and mouth.

  ‘Sorry,’ Fronto said. ‘Low trick, but this is war and it’s all about the winning, not about the how.’

  He kicked the centurion behind the knee, sending him to the ground, and then delivered a mercy blow, putting the man out of his agony. He felt his own knee wobble and was almost on the floor with him for a moment . He rose to see his men mobbing the optio, who was clearly out of it. The soldiers of the First were already running. Fronto turned with a frown of satisfaction as the field around them began to empty, enemy legionaries finally running.