Dragons and Romans

by William David Ellis

  Once again, she was jerked back into the spirit realm…

  Her head spun, and it took her a moment to realize where she was. Then her eyes riveted on the battle.

  The demon dragon was cloaked in flame, dripping great beads of fire that wilted everything they touched. It crouched behind the flame like a burning shield, then screaming in fury, it rushed toward her, talons cutting the sky, reaching out to shred her.

  She fell back as death rushed toward her. She screamed and shut her eyes. The dragon shrieked, and she popped her eyes back open.

  A massive golden paw reached out and hammered the talon grabbing for her. She turned her head to see and was awed by the sight of a giant lion that rose on its hind legs and tore at the dragon. The dragon struck back at the Lion, but its talons clashed against muscles of iron and broke off as they hit it. The dragon flamed against the Lion, but the flames didn’t faze it. As a matter of fact, the Lion’s mane looked like it was made of flame and blazed with the glory of the sun.

  As Miriam stood, shocked by the battle that exploded before her, she heard Elijah’s voice behind her shouting, “The dragon has come forth, but the Lion of Judah has met him!”

  Miriam watched in amazement. The Lion was not invulnerable. It bled, but the dragon was broken and seemed to know it. It screeched and railed at the Lion’s fierce attack but could not stem the terrible blows that ripped away at it. Finally, the dragon went down and with one mighty sweep of his bloody paw, the Lion crushed its head.

  As soon as the dark reptile died, a wind blew over it, swirling through its body, blowing it away like an ice cube in a sandstorm. Miriam watched as the body of the huge spirit beast dissipated in the wind. Then it was gone. She turned to look back at the Lion, and it was also gone.

  “Where did it go? I wanted to…” to what? Meet it? How do you meet a lion? She laughed at herself. “But I did want to meet it. To thank it. It was more than a lion, wasn’t it?” she looked to Elijah for the answer.

  “More a Lion than the dragon was a beast.”

  Miriam frowned, confused.

  At her look, he continued. “He just took the form that was best suited to for the work at hand.”

  “But the dragon wounded him too. I saw the blood.”

  “He does that,” Elijah said.

  Miriam frowned, seeing she would get no more from Elijah. “What now?”

  “Now we watch Regulus do what he is good at. The war is won, but the battle is not over, and some may fall that don’t have to.”

  “Did that admiral move his fleet?” Miriam looked anxious. “Shouldn’t he have been bombing the Carthaginians by now?”

  “That is being attended to as we speak. And I think it is time for you to ...” and before the next word or heartbeat, Miriam was back inside the Roman bunker in her quarters.

  Chapter Forty

  Porcius unrolled the small copper tube the messenger gave to him and laboriously read the note. His commander looked over his shoulder and grimaced. Porcius sighed, looked at his young centurion and said, “No rest for the wicked or the weary, and since I’m one and you’re the other, we are on the sharp end of this pike, sir.” Porcius thought about what he had just read.

  The general’s orders were to flank the Carthaginians, go down to the beach, find the signal tower, and wave the fleet in. That procedure was a secondary method of contacting them, in case the semaphore went down, which apparently it had. The orders were to tell the fleet to bombard the fort, right in the middle of it.

  Porcius swore, “By Mars’ bloody balls, Regulus must be desperate! He will destroy himself and what is left of the army if the fleet fires those Greek bombs into the fort.” Then Porcius paused, his eyes narrowed, and a look of understanding came to him. “Damn, the fort is probably already overrun, and the old fox is on the outside letting those bastards pour into it. I bet that’s it. Brilliant move!” Then he added under his breath, “I hope.”

  “General Regulus is a Roman hero, Optio Porcius,” his young centurion said. “If this is his last stand, he will fight to the end and take his enemy with him. It will be a glorious death.”

  Porcius looked at the younger man and scoffed, “Tell me that when you have a Carthaginian sword sticking in your gut,” and then added, “sir.” Porcius frustrated at the sacrifice he realized Regulus was making, stepped outside the bounds of miliatry protocal and reprimanded his young commander, “Death is death, and what it really means is you failed. And if you are a general, then you failed horribly and are the reason a thousand mothers’ sons will die with you. It is only glorious when some pompous academy instructors or recruiter wants to motivate his men. Centurion, there is a reason legionnaires who have seen combat don’t talk about it. It’s the same reason most of them are drunks or beat their heads bloody against the walls of their barracks. Death is not glorious. It is wretched... sir.”

  The centurion looked at him, deflated. He nodded quickly, and then quietly asked, “So what do you suggest we do next?”

  “Well sir, do we have any horses around here? The quicker we get to the beach, the less apt we are to meet with the Carthaginians, and the quicker we can signal the navy.”

  In less time than he expected, Porcius and the men under his and the centurion’s command found some horses abandoned by their previous riders. They mounted and rode hard northwest. The neck of the Carthaginian peninsula was only five kilometers wide. Hopefully, it would not take long to get to the beach. The problem was they had to ride around the battle, then around the Carthaginian flanks and up the beach to signal the fleet. Finally, in what seemed like forever, but was really only a few minutes, the troops under Porcius made it to the beach, their horses floundering and covered in frothy sweat. A couple stumbled along the way, but Porcius could not stop to help them, so they lay where they fell with their soldiers.

  As they broke onto the beach, Porcius saw that the Carthaginians had not been flanked at all but had foreseen the possibility of this strategy and prepared a quickly built log and rubble wall all the way to the water’s edge. Behind it stood at least a cohort of one hundred soldiers barring their way. Porcius’ troops numbered thirty, facing an entrenched enemy behind barricades. Porcius knew how to defeat cavalry not particularly how to be cavalry, and if he had been defending this piece of beach, the hastily built log wall that stretched from sea to sloping hill would be exactly how he would have done it. He continued to look the Carthaginian defenses over, and then stopped, stared at a section of the wall, and smirked.

  The defensive barricade sloped up into the hills that led onto the plain where the main battle was raging. At that juncture, right where the hill joined the sandy berm, was a low spot in the quickly thrown-together defenses. His cavalry could breach that wall easily, break through, and then, while some engaged the Carthaginians, others could race for the overlook where the Romans erected the short tower that the fleet would be watching for a signal. There was supposed to be a ship close to the shore specifically tasked with watching for that signal and then signaling the rest of the fleet.

  Porcius briefed his commander, gave the orders to his mounted troops, and signaled the attack. The Romans raced toward the weak point in the wall, and the first horses to reach it simply jumped over it and were in among the scattered defenders. Others, not so physically equipped to jump, just crashed through and broke the frail defensive wall. Then the melee began. As soon as enough of Porcius’ troops were through and engaged with the enemy to hold off any attempts to follow him, Porcius and two designated soldiers broke for the signal tower at a hard gallop.

  Porcius knew the beast he was riding was almost finished. He leaned down and whispered into its ear, “You can do this; you must do this, come on!” The horse responded with new life and a burst of speed.

  Two miles down the beach, Porcius saw the tower on a small hillock. Two Carthaginian soldiers guarded it, one had a trumpet that he immediately blew when he saw Porcius racing down on him. Porcius slammed his horse into the sold
iers and saw that his teammates had done the same. The Carthaginians went down and didn’t get back up, but Porcius didn’t stop as he raced to the top of the fifty-foot tower. Breathing hard, he burst onto the platform at its height. Gasping for breath, he looked out to sea, expecting to see the Roman ship designated to watch the tower. He looked, looked again, and then swallowed hard. There was no ship in sight, no ship to see his signal, and no fleet to receive it.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Sostratus was used up. He had begun the terrible day in the outpost with Optio Oenus, then the trumpets sounded, and then the swarm of people burst out like an angry hive of bees. He fought all day in the famous testudo formation of the legion. He was bruised, cut in several places, covered with the gore of the soldiers he stepped on and in, as the testudo he served backed up foot by foot. At first, he tried to apologize as he stepped on his friends, but there were just too many of them.

  He quit apologizing and just kept stepping back. The ranks would alternate, moving slowly forward then back for a moment’s respite. But the surging continued on and on, and his friends kept falling and dying. He was exhausted. His testudo formation whittled from sixty-five men to twenty-eight, then joined with other formations as their testudoes bled away as well.

  Sostratus kept moving, kept jabbing, kept striking, kept flinching as his blows struck human flesh that screamed and spasmed under his blade. Then suddenly it stopped. The mass before him melted away. Only screaming, squirming bodies lay before him, like a cut field of bloody wheat a hundred acres wide. He blinked as his optio screamed at the line to kneel, pause, and rest. He kept his shield in front of him, its base on the ground. He could hear the panting of his comrades. The heavy wheezing of exhausted men. He knew they could not rest there long, or they would not be able to stand up and move forward. He was also extremely thirsty. No one talked, and several groaned. Then he heard the trumpet calling for a move toward the fort. So, at his optio’s command, he stood, reversed his position, and began to march. He was a cog in a machine and grateful for it. For if he had time to reflect as an individual, he would have died beneath his fear. Now he only acted on command without thinking, without feeling or moving, and it kept him alive. After a few moments, the screams grew louder, and he knew they had moved back into the mainstream of the battle that had briefly surged over them.

  As bits and pieces of individual centuria and cohorts blended, the genius of Roman organization revealed itself. The pieces fit. Sostratus found himself again on the front line facing the yelling mass of Carthaginians. At the beginning of the battle, he faced his enemy in the half dark of early morning. Throughout the day he hacked and jabbed and moved back and forth in the testudos he served. Now, he actually had a moment to look at who faced him. They were not soldiers. There were, of course, a few Carthaginian soldiers in the mix, but those who now faced Sostratus were basically Carthaginian civilians, who had been forced into the fray.

  They didn’t know how to hold a shield or sword. They were too old, or in many cases, too young. He had been killing them all, and every time one fell, another was forced up into his place. The terror on their faces was plain, but like Sostratus, they had no choice. Sostratus could see the hesitation on the face of the young man who faced him now. Basically, just a tall boy. For a moment, the concentration was so intense, the noise of battle ceased, blocked out by the extreme intimacy of the moment. Sostratus woke abruptly from the blood trance and realized he was facing a child. Actually, he saw all those in front of him were women or children or old men. They were being pushed toward him, hundreds of them. He could kill them or.... if he could simply get them to surrender and pass quickly through the Roman lines and escape into the countryside, it would make a huge difference.

  Sostratus had been chosen for outpost duty for several reasons. The main reason was he could speak Punic. Before he could think it through, he shouted at the people surging and screaming before him, “Surrender or die!”

  He stopped as did his whole unit. His optio heard Sostratus and immediately saw the value of capturing hundreds and moving them back away from the battle. So, he echoed the command.

  The boy standing before Sostratus cried out, “I surrender! I surrender!” and threw down his sword. The person next to him did the same and knelt before the Romans. In a few minutes, several thousand Carthaginians knelt before the tattered remains of Sostratus’ cohort. The bloody Carthaginian tide was turning.

  ****

  Regulus sent his messengers running, their orders short and to the point. Fall back into the fort. Move the majority of the legion to hold the rear gates, and after everyone who can get in is inside the fort, slowly give way, allowing the Carthaginians to flood in. Move slowly to the back gates, retreat through them, and then bar them, effectively pinning the enemy in the fort. Regulus had prearranged for a worst-case scenario to be unleashed from the fleet if it looked like the legion was defeated and the fort taken. The fleet was to fire on the fort and destroy the enemy. The Romans holding the fort would die as well, but they would anyway, and in this worst-case scenario, they would take their enemies with them. The only difference between Regulus’ current plan and the previous worst-case ending was the greater portion of the Roman army would pass through the fort, not stopping to be destroyed with the Carthaginians caught there.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Oenus heard the question one of his battered troopers shouted and turned to look. Five Roman soldiers lay in a heap, apparently trying to protect something. Oenus had his men gently remove the fallen soldiers and was surprised to see, at the bottom of their broken huddle, the semaphore, the device used to signal the fleet from this very hill. Regulus used it to send orders to Admiral Menodorus. But what good is it going to do now?

  Then Oenus slapped himself. “Oh, by Mars! Prop that thing up, boys, and light it. We have a fleet to signal.” Oenus had just remembered Command Omega, Regulus’ pre-arranged signal to the fleet to bomb the fort if it was overrun. The hope was that if the Romans could pack the enemy in the fort, then destroy it, the battle could be won in a last ditch suicidal effort.

  The men quickly lit the lantern and draped the red signal flags across the cylinder that made up the semaphore. Typically, it was to be filled with water. Only now in this situation, under the Omega Command, no water was required. A lantern draped in bright red flags was attached to a tripod that could be extended twenty feet. The men quickly eased the semaphore in place, then lashed it down against the possibility of a heavy wind.

  Oenus looked out across the hazy sea; visibility was limited. He thought he could see the signal ship assigned to watch for the semaphore, but even with the seeing device he held, he could not be sure. The sea was not cooperating.

  ****

  Admiral Menodorus paced frantically across the bow of his flagship. Ever since he awakened from his fevered dream, he had been restless. He knew his orders were to keep the Carthaginian fleet locked up in their grand harbor. He had beaten them back in a series of battles a year before and waited for them to come out every day since. But they held back, preferring to sit and wait like a lioness inviting its prey into its den for supper. But that dream! It had to be a dream. A drunken, feverish dream. But he had to admit, and the admission cost him, it was the most vivid dream he’d ever had. And the message simple. Move the fleet into position and bombard the Carthaginian army formations. He stopped pacing, took a deep breath and thought, It doesn’t take the whole fleet to watch those beggars sitting on their arses in port. I can move the largest ballistae pieces into position and not strategically affect the blockade. Yes! That is exactly what I will do.

  “Captain!” he bellowed, “give the order to advance the fleet toward shore.”

  The sea was choppy, but it was always something, and the majority of the time that something was averse to his purposes, so he worked with it, around it, or worst-case scenario, he waited on it. This time he couldn’t wait, so choppy or not, he headed to shore as quickly as his large tubs
could wallow their fat hides into position. It was going to pay Hades a price to light those Greek bombs up in the choppy seas. He might even lose some ships as they tried to lob them over onto the Carthaginians. Loading fire-bearing weapons was extremely dangerous in calm seas, reckless in these. But that is why they called it war.

  ****

  Porcius couldn’t believe his eyes. Granted, visibility was limited, and the seas were choppy, but not a ship in sight? Where in the shards of Hades had they gone? He was fuming and cursing in frustration, not having a clue what to do next, when his winded centurion caught up to him at the top of the tower and called for the optical device the Romans had stolen from the Carthaginians. He slowly examined the horizon, intensely studying the grey line between sky and sea, and yelled out, “There they are, optio, right there!” He pointed northwest. “They are moving this way and bobbing like one of your flaming hogs in a stew pot but churning this way. So whatever signal we have to put up, we need to get it up now!

  ****

  Han Xing had amazing situational awareness. When he looked at a map, or when he heard the trumpets signaling orders—even when he heard battle cries, or saw the smoke, each separate signal coordinated in his head with a hundred other conscious and unconscious ones to give him an extremely accurate sense of the battle going on around him. His ability had developed in the flames of a hundred engagements across six thousand miles and three uniquely individual cultures. He called it a gift. And right now, that gift screamed at him to get Regulus and Miriam and the staff out of the bunker and through the back gate.