Unable to restrain himself any longer, Marcus waded into the fray. At first, he stuck to the rear lines of the advancing infantryment. Few Sicambrii warriors were able to make it around the imposing display of the Roman shield wall, but Marcus was intent on stopping those few who did reach him. It wasn't long before Marcus had his first chance to engage one of the enemy warriors in combat - a particularly persistent giant of a man who had ran around the entire circumference of the Roman defense, hoping to attack the soldiers from behind. Nearly two full feet taller than most of the Roman soldiers, and weighing easily two and a half times Marcus' own weight, the juggernaut looked unstoppable as he charged directly at Marcus. Looks, Marcus knew all too well, were deceiving, and it was a simple matter for him to slip under the barbarian's axe blow - for all his size and strength, the warrior was slow and not terribly agile. Ducking under the wide arc of the barbarian axe, Marcus stepped to his right before thrusting his sword into the warrior's side. The blade of his short sword pierced cleanly through the barbarian's leather armour and slid between his ribs like a knife through warm butter. The blade's exit was not nearly as clean as its entry, however; rather than simply pulling the blade out in the same direction it had entered, Marcus stepped forward, applying all his weight to the hilt of his weapon. The force of Marcus' movement was enough to twist the blade inside the Sicambrii's stomach, forcing the tip of the sword out of his belly. The rest of the blade soon followed, cutting through the rest of the warrior's armour with the same deadly smoothness with which it had began. The eviscerated warrior looked helplessly down at his internal organs, which were rapidly escaping his body by way of the massive and gaping wound Marcus had bestowed upon him. The only sound which escaped his lips was a startled gasp, followed by a pained gurgle before the giant man fell to the ground, writhing in his death throes.
There was no time to stop and celebrate the victory; one enemy warrior was felled by his blade, but thousands more still crashed against the shields of Marcus' soldiers. Already, the effects of exhaustion could be noticed in some of the soldiers; an arm would begin to waver, and then a shield would lower, and in that split second where the exhausted soldier lowered the shield, a Sicambrii axe inevitably found its way to the unfortunate soldier's skull. For every soldier who fell, another stepped up from the line behind him to take his place, maintaining the first semicircular line of defense against the Sicambrii. As Marcus watched the nonstop exchange of blows between soldiers, he felt rather than saw a pair of Sicambrii warriors approaching him from behind. He whirled, lashing out with his sword at the first warrior; his blade bounced harmlessly off the warrior's axe. Marcus scarcely had time to register the fact that his blow had been parried before he was forced to leap to the ground to avoid an attack aimed at his head. From the ground, Marcus stabbed at the ankles of the closest of the two warriors; his blade cut through skin and tendons, knocking the warrior to the ground with a scream of agony. Leaping to his feet, Marcus swung his sword upward, in much the same sort of arc as a pugilist's uppercut. The blow landed exactly as he hoped it would, the first three inches of the blade cleaving upward into the second Sicambrii warrior's skull. As the steel blade tore through the man's face, Marcus leapt off his feet to avoid a halfhearted blow from the warrior whose ankles he had severed. Dropping to his knees, Marcus plunged his sword downward into the hapless warrior's throat, bringing the Sicambrii man's struggle for life to a final end.
As he rose to his feet once more, Marcus noted with glee that his forces seemed on the verge of triumph. The Sicambrii force had been reduced in numbers from nearly ten thousand to a scant few hundred in less than an hour, and the Roman casualties were almost certainly less than five hundred men.
"Press onward," he cried to his men, "and drive them back to the wilderness from whence they came!"
The Sicambrii army seemed oblivious to the elation of Marcus and his soldiers. While the Roman army pressed forward, cutting down more and more Sicambrii warriors as they did, only a single figure could be seen retreating from the battlefield - an easily recognizable figure on horseback.
"Vestatian," Marcus hissed under his breath. "This ends here and now."
Waving down a nearby cavalry soldier, Marcus virtually shoved the soldier from the horse he rode and leapt atop the beast himself. Digging his heels into the horse's flank, Marcus chased off after Vestatian as quickly as the horse would allow him, slowing down only enough to hack downward at errant Sicambrii warriors as he passed by.
It didn't take long to catch up with Vestatian; Marcus reached the leader of the Sicambrii just as they crested a hill not far from the battlefield. Shouting to be heard over the din of the neaerby battle, Marcus demanded Vestatian's attention.
"You! Traitor," he cried out. "Stop and face final justice!"
"Justice? That's odd," Vestatian said, stopping at the top of the hill to face Marcus. A grin spread across his face which was so cold-blooded that Marcus felt as if his very blood froze in his veins. "I was about to say the same thing to you."
"You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you are in a position to do me harm," Marcus said with a heartless laugh as his horse scrambled for purchase, slowly climbing to the top of the hill where Vestatian's horse stood.
"You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I am not in that sort of position," Vestatian said. The simple calm which enveloped his enemy worried Marcus, but he thought nothing of it as the horse climbed the final few feet. Marcus knew that most enemies, when they were about to be cut down, were suddenly overtaken by a sense of fearlessness and overconfidence. This was nothing out of the ordinary, given the situation.
Marcus' breath caught in his chest as his horse finally crested the hill. There, laid out in the plains below the hilltop, lay something Marcus would have thought impossible only seconds before: a second Sicambrii army, this one even larger than the first, slowly marching in the direction of Cologne. They were still nearly a mile away, but they were close enough that Marcus could estimate that their numbers were greater than ten thousand.
"By all the Gods above," Marcus whispered. His entire body was, for the first time in many, many years, seized by fear.
"The Gods have nothing to do with this," Vestatian said. "At least, not the Gods to whom you refer. No, this army is a blessing from the New Gods - Gods you cannot hope to understand, and whose power outmatches the pathetic Olympians in ways that can scarcely be imagined. I gave you the opportunity to surrender, to bow before the might of your new masters. You refused, and now you will suffer the consequences of your arrogance. Protected by the magic of our shamans and guided by the supreme will of our Gods, I will lead our invincible army to victory; once we have crushed this pathetic militia you have gathered, we will move through the province, gathering even more strength, bringing even more tribes to our side, and then the entire Empire shall fall to our might. In its place, we shall forge a New Empire - one where I reign supreme, on par with those mighty Olympians of old, second in power only to the True Gods."
"You are wrong," Marcus said, finally recovering from the terror which had taken over his body. "This force, no matter how powerful, will not be victorious today. And even if what you prophesize was to come to pass, it would not be exactly as you envision it: this army, and this New Empire, will not be lead by you. Nothing will be lead by a dead man."
"Strike me down if you will," Vestatian said haughtily. "Your weapons are useless. Iron and wood can do nothing to this body, for I am protected by forces beyond your comprehension."
"Just because you say it," Marcus said, lashing out viciously with his sword; the weapon found its intended target without difficulty, slicing through Vestatian's neck almost effortlessly. Vestatian's head was severed cleanly from his shoulders; the still-bleeding skull dropped to the ground, followed shortly after by the rest of Vestatian's body. "That does not make it true.
"Mars," Marcus whispered under his breath, "Jupiter, Pluto, Artemis - all of you, Gods of Olympus, hear my p
rayers now. I have done all in my power; my men will fight these barbarians, and they will fight bravely, but they cannot possibly hope to triumph against such an overwhelming force. I require your aid now, more than ever."
A brilliant flash of light temporarily blinded Marcus; as the white haze faded and his eyesight cleared, Marcus looked around frantically, trying to assess what had happened. To his shock, he found that the din of battle and sounds of approaching soldiers had fallen completely silent; at first, Marcus believed that he had fallen deaf, but this notion was soon disproven. A mere glance down at the battlefield and soldiers below him and on both sides of the hill revealed something Marcus had never before seen: time seemed to have completely stopped. Even from the distance which separated him from his men, Marcus could see that every man on the battlefield was frozen and utterly still. Even the breeze had stopped; indeed, the only sign of life that Marcus could spot anywhere was himself.
"You waver in your convictions," a voice said, coming from the very clouds above Marcus' head. The voice was deeper and more resonating than any voice a human could ever be capable of producing. Rather than the typical rumblings which came from a human voicebox, the voice coming from the clouds sounded, appropriately enough, like thunder. "Do you believe yourself unworthy of the task for which you have been selected?"
"No," Marcus cried out, "I do not. But neither am I capable of defending against an enemy force numbering so many with so few, and so poorly trained, soldiers."
"Then perhaps you are not the warrior we thought you were."
"Who in Hades are you?"
"Not in Hades," the voice replied. A beam of light shone down from the clouds above, convalescing and taking form in front of Marcus. The shimmering light gradually took the shape of a powerful hulk of an older man dressed in the most elegant clothing Marcus had ever seen - a wardrobe of such quality that even Emperor Trajan would have looked like a street urchin in comparison. "No, I most certainly do not hail from Hades. You know who I am, Marcus."
"Jupiter," Marcus whispered reverentially. He bowed his head, averting his gaze from the most powerful of all Gods in Olympus.
"Yes," Jupiter said, nonplussed at Marcus' reaction. "Now, Marcus, do you intend to sit there with your head down all day, or do you intend to fight your enemy?"
"I will fight, of course," Marcus said. "But tell me - how can I hope to achieve victory? We have performed far better on the field of battle already than I had any right to hope we would, and we barely managed to defeat a smaller force than the one which marches on the opposite side of this hill. There is no tactic, no maneuver, nothing that I can imagine which would allow us to survive. Even retreating to the city would be of no use - the horde here has numbers sufficient to simply overrun our city's defenses and find us inside the walls."
"Then do not fight inside the city walls," Jupiter said.
"Please," Marcus pleaded. "Do not be so cryptic, my Lord. Without proper guidance, I fear we will fail here...and Lord Mars has told me what the consequences of our failure would be. I cannot - I will not allow that fate to befall our Empire."
"I didn't think you would," Jupiter said. "Marcus, you asked your soldiers if they were willing to fight and to die defending their homes, their family, and their Empire against the Sicambrii, and they said yes. Does the same hold true for you?"
"Yes, my Lord. I will fight unto the death, if that is what is required of me."
"Then fight as if this force advancing upon your city is but a fraction of its true size. Strike at them with the heart and soul of a Roman warrior - destroy them with all your might. You were once told that we would not have selected you for this quest if we did not believe that you were capable of a decisive triumph. That has not changed, Marcus. Just fight; whatever happens after that, happens."
"Yes," Marcus said. The wisdom of the words his God spoke rang true in his ears. "Thank you, my Lord. We shall do precisely that - with every ounce of strength in our bodies, we will fight the damnable heathens, and we will triumph."
Jupiter smiled kindly, then vanished in a flash of light. Immediately, the silence which surrounded Marcus was replaced by the chaotic din of battle once again.
"To the death," Marcus muttered grimly, turning his horse to charge back to the battlefield.
Chapter XIX
Marcus' heart thudded in his chest as his horse thundered toward the battlefield outside the city of Cologne. The Roman soldiers on the battlefield below him were jubilant, already beginning to celebrate as they chased down and slaughtered the last of the Sicambrii warriors that they could see. In their minds, the battle was theirs - but Marcus knew better.
"Fools," he muttered under his breath. As he closed the gap between himself and his soldiers, he screamed orders at them. "Fall back to the walls! Reload the siege engines!"
"What is going on? The battle is ours," Domitian said, grabbing hold of the reigns of Marcus' horse as it came to a stop in front of him.
"The battle has hardly begun," Marcus said. "On the other side of that hill march more than ten thousand Sicambrii warriors headed for this position. We have defeated their initial force, this is true; I have also finally killed that traitor Julianus Vestatian. However, none of that changes the fact that we will soon be overrun by a force which we can hardly hope to resist."
"What can we hope to do against a force that large? We suffered serious losses in this battle," Domitian said, obviously disheartened at the prospect that the battle was not yet over. "We cannot survive an onslaught such as the one that you describe."
"We will do the only thing we can," Marcus said grimly. "We will fight. If we die, then we die - but we shall die in battle, and we shall take as many of the Sicambrii with us as we can."
"Of course," Domitian said with a nod. He turned and faced the crowd of soldiers. "To the city walls! Reload the siege weapons, and if you don't do it quickly, by the Divine Lords of Olympus, you'll be the ones in the catapults! Now move!"
The soldiers scattered, eagerly obeying the commands of their commanders, though they obviously did not understand why. It took very little time for the men to retreat to the walls of the city, taking cover behind the hastily erected wooden barriers. As they had been commanded, the soldiers began to reload the siege weapons, loading jars of oil into the catapults and onagers, and massive wooden bolts into the ballistae. The rest of the soldiers stood behind the wooden barriers, looking around uneasily. Their confusion was quickly replaced by fear as the first Sicambrii warriors could be seen atop the distant hill on the opposite side of the battlefield.
"How long," Domitian asked, "until they are in range of the oil?"
"At least half an hour," Marcus said. "Provided they continue at their current pace. Enough time to prepare."
"Prepare how?"
"We have plenty of jars of oil in reserve, correct?"
"Yes," Domitian said, quickly scanning a sheet of parchment which he pulled from the leather pouch at his side. "We should still have fifty more jars, even after these currently loaded volleys are accounted for."
"Good. Order several groups of soldiers to take the jars and set them on the battlefield, spaced evenly, ten feet apart around our position. Make sure that they are a good distance from us, but close enough that they can get them out there before the Sicambrii arrive."
"General," Domitian said, obviously confused at Marcus' odd command, "what good will it do for us to hand our enemy weapons?"
"More good than you might imagine," Marcus said with a wicked grin. "When the Sicambrii close in on the position of the jars of oil - when their main forces are at the line laid out by the jars - we will unleash volley after volley of flaming arrows upon their heads."
"The arrows will light the oil aflame," Domitian said slowly.
"More than that," Marcus said. "Provided the jars are still sealed, the pressure caused by the oil should create an explosion, spreading the flaming oil out over their troops and the battlefield. Those of the Sicambrii who survive th
e first volleys of oil, the flaming arrows, the standard arrows, and the exploding jars of oil will still have to fight amidst the flames. It may not be enough to guarantee a victory for us, but it will certainly be a good start."
"I understand," Domitian said. He rushed off to the gathered groups of soldiers to carry out Marcus' orders.
Time seemed to slow down as the soldiers set up the jars of oil as they were instructed. The march of the Sicambrii warriors toward the Roman position was inexorably slow but unceasing; Marcus had felt some concern that their trap would not have time to be fully set before the barbarians were in position, but his fears were allayed when the last group of soldiers set up their jars of oil and rushed back to their fortified positions.
"Release the first volleys of flaming oil," Marcus said as the Sicambrii finally drew into firing range. "Make sure that none of the shots hit the jars we have set up. We only have enough oil to do this once, and we cannot afford to err."
"Release the oil! Fire into the midst of their ranks," Domitian cried out, "and burn them to a crisp!"
The volley of flaming oil was impressive; the massive jars tumbled through the air, trailing their signature trails of thick black smoke behind them. The Sicambrii hardly even seemed to notice the massive missiles tumbling down into their ranks; the jars shattered and spilled their fiery contents onto the nearby warriors. Although each jar of oil hit its target with deadly precision, the volley hardly seemed to have an effect on the swirling mass of men and weapons which continued to advance toward the city walls.
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