Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth

by M C Scott

  They did it smoothly, free of the sullen rigidity of the past. To my left, Tears kept his horn ready and Macer the Mournful matched him step for step with his shield held high protecting them both, so that I knew that Tears was safe with him, at least for this fight.

  To my right, Horgias looked past a screaming Taurus and caught my eye and grinned and lifted the standard higher just as the hard rain of spears pattered to silence. I had time to call ‘Drop shields! Forward!’ before the Hebrews were on us.

  I took a running step to stab at a black-headed, rot-mouthed Hebrew who was striking at Taurus. Taurus, in turn, killed the man who was striking at Horgias. I struck down a prodding spear with my shield and sent my gladius spiking up at the eyes of the one who had sent it. He jerked back. I left him and let the strike skid sideways into another face, barely seen, just eyes that flared white and black — and then red, and closed and falling.

  Another took his place, and then another and another and the part of me that was not simply fighting to stay alive was in awe of their ferocity, and not surprised any more that Lupus had held us back so long.

  I batted down a spear with my gladius, stepped into the gap it left and, as no neighbouring shield came to block my way, stabbed in high, overhand, into the bared neck of the man in front of me. He fell, drowning in his own blood. I kicked him down, crushed his skull under my foot – no thought now for the horror of that death – sensed a space on either side of me, and stepped forward again, forcing the gap, and felt the wind of a slingshot where I had been, and then another so close that it grazed my cheekbone, and – I ducked – another.

  Three, from the right, high. I looked up. ‘They’re flanking us. Slingers with lead shot high and right. Fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries wheel right! Form testudo! Forward!’

  The three named centuries were moving almost before Tears got the signals out, making the square, with the outer men holding their shields around us and those on the inside raising theirs to make the shell of the tortoise, advancing up the rise at the slingers, who stopped using me for target practice and instead tried to kill the men behind the shields.

  They failed.

  We killed a dozen at the front, and saw the rest break and run back to form a ragged line a hundred long strung between one rocky bluff and another with bare mountain behind.

  From somewhere in the block of men behind me, Taurus said, ‘We can take them.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head and my cross-wise plume multiplied the movement. ‘It’s a trap. See how they’re looking behind them? Someone else is waiting behind those rocks.’

  I watched a moment longer, studying the terrain and the scuffed earth beyond the bluffs, and then, more softly, said, ‘Tears, signal to Lupus. Ask for cavalry.’

  We had cavalry … by heaven, did we have cavalry.

  When the Hebrews had fallen into revolt, petty kings all over Judaea suddenly found they had a need to show their loyalty to Rome. We had two thousand light horse from Antiochus Epiphanes alone, and a thousand more from Agrippa, the deposed king of Judaea, whose rank cowardice in abandoning his city had started the whole messy war. All of them were led by Cadus, who bore his command as if born to it.

  Tears sounded a spray of notes that were not for our men. I couldn’t see Lupus – the lines were too crushed and close for that now – but soon his signaller called out the fast, tripping beat that summoned our cavalry to action.

  I heard the horses but did not see them, for just then the press of Hebrews in front was rallied by their commanders and for a few moments we were fighting for our lives, locked in the sweat-rimed embrace of battle, where each small fight mattered only to the men engaged in it, who had no sense of the greater whole.

  I parried, I hacked, I grunted, I dodged, I thrust my shield forward and killed the man in front of me with a stab to the groin and a second to the neck and found a moment’s respite when no one stepped in to take his place – and looked up to see if Cadus had cleared the open slopes above us.

  To our right and coming closer, I saw his pennant cleave the harsh blue sky: a red pennant with the crossed thunderbolts of the XIIth in the centre and below them his personal mark of the white horse.

  He had his men held in a solid line, sweeping across the fall of the slope. Spears flashed silver and red through the dust they made. Men fell before them and did not rise again after they had gone. The slope ran to mud-slurry with blood and urine and the soft parts of entrails that leaked out into the autumn dust. The churning wind brought us the iron-sweet scent of blood, and the sharper smells of death. That same wind carried a flicker of blue, a shade deeper than the sky, with—

  ‘Demalion!’

  Tears’ voice. A blade coming at my face. I threw my shield up, put my shoulder behind it, heaved forward, and felt face bones crack on the boss. I thrust my blade in on instinct and felt it skitter off armour, and then bite in skin and flesh. A man screamed and the pressure on my shield grew less. I looked around it, saw a helmet, falling, and kicked the flat of my foot at where the face must be … and all the time my head kept trying to turn to the side, to look up the slope at the flicker of blue I had seen that was not the sky.

  At the next chance, I looked back, and that was when I saw it – the blue tern against a white ground that had haunted my dreams since my days in Hyrcania.

  Shock held me still and only Tears’ fast action saved me. But then he saw what I had seen: that the peril was far greater than we had thought, for Cadus was fighting cataphracts. Here, eight miles north of Jerusalem. Cataphracts! Led by Monobasus of Adiabene. I threw back my head and yelled over the havoc.

  ‘Horgias! Monobasus is here! Adiabene has sided with the Hebrews!’

  The cry ran through the ranks like fire through straw. ‘Monobasus! Adiabene! He’s brought his heavy cavalry!’

  The news spread like floodwater and reached Lupus faster than if we had signalled it. As my cry died away, we heard the blare of his horn and, acting on each signal as puppets to a master’s pull, found ourselves faced about, with new centuries taking our place on the battle’s front, so that we might lock shields and advance against the new-old enemy, filling the gap in Cadus’ left flank, letting him move out and round, higher up the hill, to come down on them from above, which is what cavalry does best.

  The horn guided us uphill and right to a place Lupus must have scouted out beforehand, where we found ourselves formed into a wedge.

  Alexander used this formation in his battles, only his wedges were of cavalry. We were foot men, and I was at the apex, with five hundred men behind me, ready to widen any gap I could force with my shield and my body. This is one reason why centurions die more readily and in greater numbers than any other men on the battlefield: they lead the wedges.

  I felt a flash of terror so fast, so fierce, so overwhelming that it was indistinguishable from joy. My body thrilled to it and drank it in, even as I knew that death waited for me in a dozen paces.

  ‘Charge!’

  The horn blared it, but I had shouted before the notes came, so clear was our moment of chance. Sunlight flashed on weapons and armour all around, blinding me to everything but the flash of a blue banner in the centre of the cavalry block, and the black horse that bore it and the fox-faced rider to its left, leaner than I remembered, but swinging his sword with the same savage carelessness, laughing as we came at him.

  And then not laughing, as our javelins flew; we who had held them until the last, which was now. And not laughing as his horse stumbled, hit in the one place where it was vulnerable, on the loins, where no armour hung; we knew that, who had fought him before.

  And not laughing at all, but shouting for order, trying to hold his men in line, as we ploughed on through their lines, and I did not die but let the force of the men behind me push me on, crushing on to horseflesh and manflesh alike, breaking bones and toppling riders by the sheer force of the wedge.

  And then that force withered and we were left trying to reform a battle line
in the midst of an enemy whose own line was fractured beyond repair.

  By the gods’ will, I found myself still alive, and fighting opposite the blue-bannered king who led his men in battle.

  The air was drenched with horse-sweat, thick with blood and fear, and fury. I saw a black hide and stabbed at it, twisted and pulled free; I saw a flash of a pale unarmoured wrist, and stabbed for that, and felt the blade turned aside, and felt a hand grasp at my wrist, pulling me forward, and a gap where Tears was not with me. I saw a wall of horseflesh, rising, and iron within it, falling, and was spinning, trying to find my balance, when something more silver than iron was in the way, and I heard a horse’s feet hit solid bull’s hide and saw the blue tern banner of Adiabene fall at my feet, and the dead king beside it.

  And then Tears was there, sliding in to my side, and I was safe in the shelter of his shield, with Macer to his left and Horgias and Taurus on my right with the silver of our standard between them, blistering in the sun.

  Our shields made a new line and we took the long steps of a forward wall and heard-felt the smack of the bosses on armour.

  I heard the enemy try to rally, but without their commander they failed, and within ten paces they were backing their horses away from us, step by bloody step, and I had time to pause and look to my left and found Macer grinning at me – grinning! – holding a stolen Parthian shield with silver worked thick on the boss and edges. So he was the one who had saved me, not Tears or Horgias.

  ‘All right?’ He hefted the shield, as if pleased with its weight.

  I had flogged him five times with my own hand and tied him to the cartwheel for two nights as one of the worst thorns in my side. And he had saved my life in battle.

  ‘All right,’ I said, and smiled back.

  We came to a halt at the edge of the bluff. With the retreat of Monobasus’ cataphracts, the line of Hebrews facing us had fallen back and Lupus was not fool enough to send us after them. In the valley beyond us the Hebrews were retreating, as if their cavalry’s defeat had knocked the fight out of them.

  I signalled Tears to halt our men and we stopped where we stood while the slaves ran from the supply lines with water.

  My arms were shaking. My whole body, in fact, was shuddering like a horse at the end of a race. My shoulders felt bruised; my knuckles bled where I had smashed my shield boss too often and too hard. My bladder was full and my bowels loose, and I wanted more than anything to find the blue banner that had fallen near the place where Macer had saved my life.

  Horgias was there before me, standing over the still-warm body of the black horse. Its rider lay on his back, his eyes wide open. His armour was silvered, with gems on his gloves. His eyes were black. His face was fox-like, but a young fox. Horgias had kicked off his helmet. His hair shone sleek in the noonday sun – and it was red.

  I said, ‘Monobasus had black hair. Black going grey. It’s not him.’ I tilted the face back with my foot and we both looked down at a man younger than either of us.

  Horgias said nothing. I didn’t push him. Taurus stood nearby, watching with a new closeness.

  Tears came to join us. He had a ragged cut on his cheek just below one eye. He saw me looking and shook his head. ‘Later.’ He nodded over to Horgias. ‘He killed Monobasus. You took the horse, but Horgias took the rider.’

  ‘It isn’t Monobasus,’ Horgias said woodenly.

  ‘His son, then?’ Tears said.

  ‘Does he have sons?’ Taurus asked.

  ‘Bound to have,’ I said. ‘The way they are in Adiabene, he probably has half a village of sons sired on a dozen different women.’

  A slave passed with a crate of water skins. Grabbing one, I tipped my head back and tipped half the contents down my throat and over my face.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ Taurus said, ‘they’re going. We beat them.’

  I was halfway to agreeing with him when a scurry of wind caught my ear, and what I heard within it made me cough up the water. ‘No … listen.’ I held up my hand. ‘Someone’s still fighting.’

  I turned, seeking the uncertain breeze, and heard again the sounds it carried so very faintly down the long pass from its western end half a day’s march away, where three cohorts of the IVth held the rear guard.

  Tears said, ‘Is that smoke?’

  It was: a sudden black belch billowing to the sky. I swung round. ‘Tears, signal Lupus that the Fourth legion is under attack. Tell him we’re going to their aid.’

  Four notes, then three, then two, rising, and with them our standard swung back and forth towards the valley’s other end. And on that, we of the sixth cohort of the XIIth re-formed, grabbed what water we could and, taking a collective breath, threw ourselves into the open mouth of the Beth Horon pass, leaving our allies behind to keep the pass closed against rabid men who might regroup for a second attack.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE HEBREWS DIDN’T attack our front lines a second time, but many thousands of them had evidently used the original assault as a cover and, marching through supposedly impassable mountains to the far end of the pass, had laid waste to the three cohorts of the IVth who had not only been keeping our backs safe, but had been guarding the giant siege engines we had left behind.

  The guides had been right when they told us that a lightly armoured man could run the length of the pass in a morning. Still fired by the fury of battle, we of the sixth cohort pushed ourselves to our limits and, having left before noon, arrived at the far end in time to see the winter sun layer itself along the western horizon.

  We were too late, of course.

  The battle, such as it had been, was over. The IVth was destroyed, not a man left standing. Worse, the siege engines and artillery had been either stolen or – those pieces that were too big to remove – broken up and piled together and set alight in a fire of such monstrous proportions that nobody could approach closer than thirty paces of it without blistering their skin. Dead men’s armour melted on the bodies nearby, oozing like candle wax in the heat. Even as we watched, parts of our siege towers collapsed in on themselves with a crash and we had to spring back out of the way of the new, flatter flames.

  The Hebrews were long gone. Setting light to the fire had been their parting shot, and even that had been done by men with fast horses. Horgias found their prints or we wouldn’t have known of them at all, but there was no dust cloud to show where they had gone.

  I sent men off to track the enemy, hoping to find some stragglers, while the bulk of us stayed where we were, to put out the fire and assess the damage.

  In the first of these, we failed soundly. Hot as a furnace, it would have taken a lake full of water and ten units of Rome’s fire brigade with piston-pumps even to stand a chance of quenching the blaze and we had no more water than the skins we carried with us. Not wishing to waste it on the fire, we found a store wagon that had not been destroyed and took thirty shovels and used them to throw earth on to the blaze, but we might as well have spat at the sun.

  There was nothing to do but watch, and curse and count our losses.

  On that account, I sent Tears to number the dead men of the IVth while Taurus and his engineers set to work calculating how many of the siege engines fed the flames, and therefore how many had been stolen to be used against us.

  Taurus came back first. He was soot-stained, and there were blisters on the backs of his hands. His gaze was haggard, but not, now, with the shame of our legion but at the horror of what he was seeing: engineers can take the destruction of their equipment harder than they do the deaths around them.

  He saluted, a thing I had never seen him do unprompted. ‘Report, if you’re willing to hear it?’

  I found my face becoming smooth, as Lupus’ did, not to smile at his new enthusiasm. ‘I’m ready. Thank you.’

  He ticked them off on his fingers, working from memory, and it was as if he detailed the deaths of his sons.

  ‘Four out of five siege towers have been burned – the fifth, you’ll remember, w
e took with us through the pass. So they have no siege towers, which is a blessing. Of the forty-four catapults we left, thirty have gone, plus all their bolts. The remaining fourteen are burning. Of the seven ballistas, the six smallest have been taken and the carts that carried their shot have gone with them.’

  He paused to look at me, to see if I grieved as he did. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the havoc that an army inside a city could wreak on its besiegers with that kind of equipment. The catapults shot spears the length of a man, and caused devastation when loosed into crowded cities. I could only imagine the horror they might wreak on a massed assaulting army.

  The ballistas were no better. They shot graded stones from the size of a man’s head up to the size of a balled tent bag; one volley could kill a dozen men if they were closely grouped, and injure as many more so that they soaked up the medical resources and reduced the morale of the troops. Nothing makes men nervous like the sight of their fellows with their limbs crushed to matchwood.

  I opened my eyes. Taurus was watching me closely. ‘What of the Son of Zeus?’ I asked.

  Son of Zeus was the largest of the ballistas, a wall-breaking monster that shot stones that had the height of a man as their diameter.

  ‘They didn’t move it,’ Taurus said. ‘It was too big.’

  I smiled at that. ‘Well, at least we still have that. If we can get it through the pass, then—’ I caught sight of his face. ‘What?’

  ‘They broke the lever arm and cut the strings. It’ll take days to make it fit for use.’

  ‘We haven’t got days. We’ve got about one night before they get home and work out how to use the things they’ve taken.’ I bit my lip. ‘What of the battering ram?’