Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Slaughter those slingers!’ Tamur’s booming command sounded over the cacophony of battle. At once, the cataphractii gathered to charge back into the shallows, this time at the small pack of slingers.

  ‘Get them on the boats!’ Gallus cried out immediately. The funditores swiftly ceased their next volley and scrambled to the ropes dangling from the sides of the triremes. Many were too slow, cut down by the blades of the cataphractii. Fewer than half of the slingers made it up and onboard the vessels. The tide reddened with every heartbeat.

  Meanwhile, the clibanarii had reformed and built up into a charge once more. A pack of twelve of them thundered for Pavo and the handful of legionaries clustered with him. This time, two lances were trained upon him. He hefted his shield at the last, and the impact swept his spear from his hands and nearly jolted his arm from its socket. He staggered back, struggling to stay on his feet, crimson water splashing around his shins and a tide of silver riders washing past him on either side. Nearby he saw legionaries disappear under hooves, bodies punched back on the end of Persian lances, heads struck from shoulders with Savaran blades until the sea was opaque with blood. Another charge swept past nearby and he heard Zosimus cry out in pain. When he twisted to see what had happened, another charge hit them from the side. A trailing hoof dashed against his helm and he fell from the cluster, blinded momentarily.

  He shook the lights from his eyes and found himself prone on the sand, surrounded by the torn and broken bodies of Flavia Firma legionaries and Persian horsemen. A fervent war cry sounded from behind, and Pavo felt the sand shudder – hooves only feet away, coming for him. He scrambled round and to his feet to face the clibanarius racing for him, lance trained on his heart. Pavo yanked his shield round to deflect the blow, knowing only the iron shield boss would be able to absorb the momentum of the chained, two-handed spear. As soon as the lance tip skated off the boss, Pavo threw down his shield and grappled the chain, yanking it and pulling the lance from the rider’s grip. The clibanarius lost his balance and flailed to grapple the reins, but Pavo swung the stolen spear up to barge the man into the gory, churning sand and surf before despatching him with a sharp thrust to the throat. He leapt up onto the saddle but struggled to control the panicked mount. The stallion kicked, thrashed and bit at all nearby, Roman or Persian, one stray hoof dashing the helmet from an unsaddled Persian and the next smashing his skull and spraying his brains into the foaming waters.

  Pavo steadied the mount just enough to take in what had happened. All around him was a maelstrom of swiping blades, thrusting spears, spraying blood and surf, whinnying horses and screaming men. The Savaran masses were swarming all around the beleaguered pockets of legionary resistance. The remaining slingers on the decks of the triremes did all they could to support their comrades, but it was too little. Legionary bodies littered the sand and bobbed in the surf. In the shallows, he saw Gallus’ plume whipping around in the fray, blood rising in gouts from all who took him on. He saw Tamur up on the marram grass dunes, mounted, safely withdrawn from the battle and watching on with a macabre grin – as if this was another bout of blood games. Moments, he realised, was all they had. And further up the coast, the Persian fleet was now drawing in to the shore, no doubt to land thousands of fresh riders and spearmen.

  Pavo heeled the stallion around, ready to strike down another, ready to die, his dark locks plastered to his face with saltwater and blood. Then he glimpsed Sura in the fray, crimson-masked. His friend grimaced and hurled a plumbata. Pavo gawped as the dart soared straight for him. Sura was mouthing something. Down?

  Pavo ducked at the last, the dart hissing over his helm and punching into something only inches behind. He twisted to see a cataphractus, sword raised and ready to cut down at him, the plumbata wedged in the rider’s cheek, dark blood pumping from the wound.

  Sura barged through the melee, then shouldered the dead rider from the saddle and took his place. ‘Come with me!’ he beckoned hoarsely, then heeled his mount towards the fringes of the battle.

  Pavo followed suit, kicking his mount then parrying and ducking as the battle thinned and the din fell away. ‘Sura?’ He cried out as they broke free.

  Sura guided his mount to the south, then wheeled round up the beach, headed for the marram grass dunes behind those where Tamur, the pushtigban and the unused Savaran watched the battle. He flashed Pavo a grin. ‘Don’t worry, I have a plan . . . ’

  Crouching behind the grassy dunes, Pavo glanced up at the swishing tails of the twelve colossal war elephants. Terror swam in his guts. ‘Steal an elephant? That’s not a plan, Sura.’

  ‘We’re dead, all of us, unless we do something,’ Sura said, nodding to the bloodstained shoreline beyond the elephants where the Roman resistance was fading, fast.

  ‘If we take one step towards those things, they’ll spot us,’ Pavo hissed, pointing to Tamur and the cluster of pushtigban around him, then to the Persian archers perched in the howdah cabins atop the elephants’ backs. All had their backs turned, looking down upon the battle, but every so often one of the pushtigban would look over their shoulder, as if sensing something was wrong.

  ‘Then we find a distraction. How’s about those poor bastards?’ he pointed to the paighan, sitting or kneeling to the right of the war elephants, their shackled ankles raw and bloodied, their heads bowed. ‘If they’re given a chance of freedom, do you think they’d take it?’

  Pavo looked to the haggard peasant-soldiers. There were some two thousand men there, chained and weary. Men drawn from their farms and families to fight to the death or act as human blockades against Persia’s enemies. He thought of poor Khaled, forced to fight like this. He glanced at the elephants once more, then heard the tortured scream as a legionary on the shore was ripped asunder by a pair of clibanarii lances. ‘Aye, but we must be swift.’

  They flitted round behind the elephants and Tamur, ducking to stay concealed behind the grassy dunes until they came to the rear of the paighan mass. ‘We break the chains of the nearest, then we arm them,’ Pavo said, nodding to the nearby wagons loaded with spears. Two Median spearmen stood guard before these, backs turned on Pavo and Sura, both of them utterly transfixed on the battle. Sura nodded. They set down their shields and helms, carrying just their spathas and protected only by their scale vests. The pair stole round to the rear of the wagon, then crept around an edge each. Pavo lined up to grapple the Median nearest to him. He felt his heart thunder as if trying to give him away. At the last, he stepped on a piece of dry reed, which cracked. The Median swung round, but before he could bring his spear to bear, Pavo unleashed a fierce right hook. The man’s jaw cracked and Pavo had to stifle a cry as his knuckles did likewise. The Median crumpled. Alerted by the muted sound of scuffling, the second Median spun to gawp at Pavo in alarm, only for Sura to emerge behind him and smack the flat of his spatha over the man’s head. His eyes rolled and he too was grounded. Pavo and Sura grappled a handful of spears each, then crouched and flitted across the open ground to the rearmost paighan ranks.

  The nearest of them turned and saw the pair approaching. A jabbering broke out and more heads turned. Pavo’s flesh crept as he saw Tamur and the pushtigban turn away from the battle to the disturbance. ‘Down!’ he hissed, pulling Sura to the sand.

  ‘Shut your mouths, dogs, or we will march you into the water to drown,’ a Median spearman near the front of the paighan mass shouted. In an instant, they fell silent. Pavo saw Tamur scowl at the chained men for a moment longer, then look back to the battle.

  Nearest Pavo was a flat-nosed paighan wearing an off-white robe and a dark-brown felt cap. He gawped down at the prone Pavo. ‘Roman?’ he said in jagged Greek.

  ‘Aye, but not your enemy,’ Pavo replied in broken Parsi. ‘We come to free you.’ He held up his spatha and motioned towards the chains that bound him to the next malnourished wretch. The pair and those nearby looked to one another, doubtful.

  ‘And arm you,’ Sura added, lifting the pile of spears in his grasp.

>   At this, the flat-nosed man’s weary features bent into a smile. He held up his chains. Pavo lined up his spatha and hacked down. A thick iron clink accompanied it. Pavo ducked down and held his breath, waiting to see if the guards up front had heard. Nothing. Sura hacked at the chain on the other side of the man. Again, nothing. But the flat-nosed man, suddenly realising he was free, threw his arms in the air and made to cry out in joy. Pavo shot up a hand and clamped it over the man’s mouth.

  ‘Not a sound,’ he pressed a finger to his lips, ‘or we all die.’

  The flat-nosed man nodded, then turned a disapproving look on his comrades, wagging a finger at them as if they were to blame. One by one, Pavo and Sura freed the paighan, handing them spears until thirty or more were crouched, ready to act.

  ‘Free the others,’ Pavo said, handing spears to those furthest forward. ‘Now, does anyone here know how to ride those beasts?’ he nodded towards the war elephants.

  The flat-nosed man held his hands out wide with a grin, and a handful of others shuffled a little closer, nodding.

  ‘Come with us,’ Pavo beckoned them. They stole away from the rear of the paighan and back into the grassy dip in the dunes behind the elephants. Pavo eyed the nearest beast at the rear of the herd. An enormous bull. Its tusks were bronze-coated and serrated on the outside. A plate iron mask was fastened to its face. An iron scale apron, vast enough to cover a house, shrouded its body, masking many of the battle scars this animal had been subjected to. A mahout sat astride its neck holding a spiked cane ready, waiting on the order from Tamur to drive the creature into the battle. The crenelated howdah cabin on its back was packed with four archers, one at each edge, bows nocked and eager to enter the fray. A knotted rope dangled from one side of the cabin, the end swinging near the ground.

  Sura stroked the matted tufts of his beard as if studying some legal scroll. ‘We climb up, we gut the bastards in the cabin, then we . . . ’

  Just then, a cry went up from the Median spearmen guarding the paighan and a raucous chorus of reply sounded from the freed men. Pavo looked over his shoulder to see the majority of the paighan rushing their captors, spearing with a vigour that told of their hatred. At this, Tamur spun to the disturbance, nostrils flaring in outrage.

  ‘Insolent dogs! At them!’ he cried, waving his pushtigban and the war elephants towards the rebelling paighan. The ground shuddered under the great beasts’ footsteps.

  ‘Bollocks! That makes it a bit harder,’ Sura spat as the nearest elephant thundered past at the back of the herd, the knotted rope jangling.

  ‘There’s no time. No other choice. Come on!’ Pavo wrenched Sura up from the grassy dip, waving the flat-nosed man and the others with him. The ground jostled before him as he ran, from his own stride and the mighty footsteps of the elephants. The rope danced violently as the elephants picked up pace. He reached out and snatched at it, the tether lifting him from the ground with a jolt. He shinned up the rope, his palms burning on the fibres. Halfway up, he looked down to see that Sura and the flat-nosed man had grappled the rope too. They were crying out to him, but a ferocious trumpeting from the beast drowned out their words. He glanced up to see the source of their alarm – an archer leaning over the side of the cabin, winking behind his nocked bow. He pressed flat against the elephant’s midriff, feeling a whoosh of air as the arrow zipped past him and punched into the sand. The archer fumbled to nock his next arrow and Pavo hauled himself up the last few feet. As the archer stretched his bowstring, ready to loose, Pavo clutched the edge of the cabin with one hand and reached up with the other to bat the bow out of line, the arrow falling from the string. The archer’s cry to his comrades perched at the other edges of the cabin never left his throat, as Pavo grasped at the man’s windpipe then hauled him over the edge of the cabin. A dull crack of bones sounded as he landed on the ground headfirst.

  Pavo pulled himself into the cabin, immediately tearing his spatha from his scabbard. The other three archers were oblivious to the fate of their fourth colleague, too busy firing down upon the fleeing swarm of paighan. Pavo plunged his blade into the ribs of one and the other two spun at the guttural, gurgling roar the man emitted. The two gawped, then saw that Pavo wrenched desperately at his spatha blade, stuck fast in the dead archer’s ribs. The pair grinned, drawing long, curved blades from their belts. In the next heartbeat, Sura leapt into the cabin, bringing his spatha scything down on the nearest man’s forearm. With a crack of bone and a howl, the archer toppled to the floor of the howdah where Sura despatched him with a sharp downwards thrust to the heart. The flat-nosed paighan thumped into the cabin at this point, and the last Persian archer gawped at the three who glared back at him. Then he cast a quick glance over the edge and leapt with a shrill cry.

  At this, the mahout sitting astride the elephant’s neck glanced over his shoulder, first with an irritated frown, then, on seeing the three unexpected faces there, with bulging eyes. He called out in alarm to the riders on the elephants ahead, but none heard – for the nearest three creatures were also now crawling with paighan, fighting desperately to seize control of the howdah cabins.

  Pavo grappled the flat-nosed man by the shoulders. ‘We’ll deal with the mahout,’ he gestured to the man on the elephant’s neck, ‘but you must be ready to take the reins, yes?’

  The flat-nosed man shrugged, smiled and nodded as if such an act was trivial.

  Pavo nodded to Sura. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Never more so,’ Sura replied.

  Pavo crept forwards, out of the cabin, Sura following close behind. The elephant’s shoulders rolled as it charged, and there was little to grip onto bar its furrowed flesh. He slipped and grasped out, inches from falling to the ground and under the beast’s stride.

  ‘I can’t get any purchase!’ Sura cried behind him.

  The mahout, hoarse in his cries of alarm, twisted round again. This time his face drained of colour, seeing Pavo and Sura coming for him, albeit haphazardly. Immediately, he started thrashing at the top of the elephant’s skull with the iron hook-tipped cane. The beast trumpeted in fury, thrashing its head from side to side. Pavo felt the world shake as the beast thrashed, emitting a pained roar that seemed to shake him to his bones.

  ‘He’s trying to throw us off!’ Pavo cried, finding a modicum of purchase with one foot on the lip of the elephant’s iron plate mask.

  ‘Romans!’ A cry sounded from the cabin.

  Pavo and Sura twisted.

  ‘Wait,’ the flat-nosed man said, ‘don’t move, just wait!’

  Pavo frowned, then looked forward to see sweat leaping from the mahout as he lined up to thrash at the elephant’s skull once more. This blow gouged chunks of skin and bloodied flesh from the poor beast’s head, and this time it started to rear up. Pavo felt his grip weaken. His gut tightened as he readied to fall. The mahout twisted in his rope saddle, grinning. ‘Now, you will be cast to the ground!’ the man hissed.

  The words had no sooner left his lips than the elephant stopped rising, sunk back down, reached up with its trunk, snatched the mahout from his saddle and hurled him groundwards like a rock. The creature then rushed forward to trample the mahout. A chorus of grinding, bursting and popping sounded, then the man was little more than a crimson patch of gristle in the creature’s wake.

  Pavo panted, sharing a relieved glance with Sura. Shorn of its rider, the beast seemed to calm a little. The flat-nosed man scrambled past them, along the elephant’s neck to sit in the saddle. The beast tensed at first, but the man stroked around its wounds, speaking in soothing tones as he did so, then threw down the hooked stick as a gesture of goodwill. With a quick squeeze of his left thigh, he had the elephant turning at his behest. The three elephants ahead had been seized by the paighan likewise, while the Persian crew of the other beasts carried on ahead, fighting the paighan on the ground and unaware of the fate of these four colossal creatures.

  The flat-nosed man looked back over his shoulder, his face still etched with that easy smile. ‘And n
ow we go to battle, yes?’

  Pavo inched back into the howdah cabin, finally pulling his spatha clear of the archer corpse. Sura stood beside him. The pair looked to the filthy crimson stain on the shoreline. Thousands of corpses, Persian and Roman, now floated in the sea or lay draped on the sand, a carpet of dead surrounding the ferocious battle on the waterline. But so very few intercisa helms still stood amidst the storm of Persian steel.

  ‘Aye, to war,’ Pavo cried, ‘and make haste!’

  Gallus wondered if he had died back in Bishapur, if the constant battle and bloodshed since then was simply his place in Hades. Blinking barely cleared the hot blood from his eyes, and every breath brought with it a mouthful of crimson spray and that familiar metallic tang. He heard the rasping of his own breath, the hammering of his heart upon his ribs, and little else. The Persian warriors came at him like demons. Many of them had dismounted now to finish the last handfuls of Romans off. Pushtigban warriors had forced their way to the front, sensing imminent victory and eager for a share of the glory. Gallus struck the flat of his spatha across the neck of one of them. The warrior stumbled, winded. Gallus ripped the facemask away and thrust his blade into the man’s eye socket. With a gout of dark blood and chunky matter, the warrior fell to Gallus’ feet, piled there with so many others.

  Is that enough glory for you, whoreson?