Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome

by Edward Crichton

  And no one had mentioned that we would have to fight a major battle along the way.

  We had been marching without incident through conquered Roman territory in Gaul when we had been attacked earlier this morning. Had Jacob or Vincent been here, they could have easily explained what was happening and why. I didn’t know if there had been a battle in the original timeline that would have offered insight into why we had been attacked today, or if the current political situation had simply led insurgents in this part of the world to take up arms against Rome. It seemed odd that we would be attacked in a portion of the world that had been, until this morning, thought of as peaceful, but with all the minor rebellions and skirmishes that had broken out throughout the Empire, it didn’t seem extraordinarily unusual.

  At least the legions had been prepared, even if I had not.

  Marching through a wide clearing at the base of a valley with a dense forests on both slopes, we had been ambushed by wild-eyed and frenzied men who wore cheap-looking armor and wielded axes the size of my legs. The Romans, swift to respond, had shifted their position into battle lines that could defend us from either side, creating a narrow band of open space through the center of their once densely packed column.

  That was about the extent of my technical knowledge on what had happened, but I’d tried to keep up as I passively participated in the initial part of the battle by staying out of the way.

  It all seemed a blur, as hours upon hours of fighting had left the valley soaked in a river of blood, but we’d long ago abandoned the location for higher ground and a more defensible fighting position – or so I’d been told later by James, who I had been with since our push up the eastern slope of the valley. The hill on our left had a lower slope than the one on the right, and the trees were less densely packed, so once the original confusion of the ambush had been overcome, Galba and his other generals had organized their men into a formation that pushed through the enemy while simultaneously staying engaged with those attacking from the other side.

  A marvel of communication and professionalism, it was remarkable the way the officers had communicated through messengers running up and down the battle line, which stretched for nearly two miles. Even more impressive was the way everyone had done exactly as they’d been ordered, exactly when they were supposed to. Like an organic machine, each cog acted in perfect, systematic coordination to the design of some greater power that had complete control over every facet of the battle

  I’d been amazed as the Roman army had cut its way up the hill, slicing through hordes of attackers, pushing them aside like they were little more than toy soldiers being wiped away by a child playing make believe. Their strategy hadn’t been to kill enemy soldiers, but to simply push them aside so that we could relocate to better ground, and I remember running through the midst of the chaos, leading my panicking horse by her reins, as soldiers all around me shouted and grunted and did everything they could to keep the enemy combatants at bay with their shields.

  Our struggle to take the hill had left us surrounded for what had seemed like half the day, but in reality had only been about an hour. I’d only been near the thick of the fighting at its onset, but as soon as the command was given, the legions created a kind of triangle to drive through the enemy. Victory had seemed impossible when we were completely surrounded, but then, like an air bubble escaping the depths of its watery surroundings, our force had burst through the tail end of the enemy and had spread to the left and to the right in yet another series of well-choreographed maneuvers that allowed those legionnaires engaged with the enemy to remain in the battle, while the others had slipped around the back to extend the ends of our formation.

  Jacob had often lectured that the strength of a Roman legion rested in its ability to outmaneuver the enemy, but I hadn’t really understood what that had meant until I’d seen it today.

  I’d barely comprehended how the Romans could have moved so precisely, but it was hard to deny my own eyes. In what seemed like only heartbeats, our forces had taken the high ground and regrouped in a way that had recreated the original long line of legionnaires, but now with all of them facing down the hill, trapping every single enemy combatant in front of them. Casualties had been sustained during the maneuver, far too many to justify the action in my mind at the time, but as our forces had pushed the enemy back down the hill over the course of the next few hours, I’d come to understand that sometimes there was a cost to victory.

  It had been incredible to see the battle firsthand, to witness how exciting and visceral it was, but I also observed the unbearable and often ignored aftermath: the body count.

  It was astronomical.

  Both sides had lost thousands of men, if I had to guess, but the death toll had been grossly one-sided, at least once the Romans had taken the high ground and begun their counterattack. During the push up the hill, the loss ratio between Romans and barbarians had been perhaps one to one – I really had no way of confirming – but as they fought their way down the hill, the ratio increased precipitously. For every legionnaires I saw on the ground, there were a dozen enemy casualties. What was more, while many of the legionnaires that had fallen were only wounded, every single one of the enemy was already dead.

  And I knew why.

  I’d watched as the wounded had been executed by Romans that trailed the front line, like buzzards sweeping for a meal. It was a sickening sight, just another thing I hadn’t been prepared for, but in the context of war, it made a grizzly kind of sense.

  The rest of my friends were off on their own, fighting at random points along the battle line, while Helena and Alex had situated themselves atop the hill to fire sniper rounds at the enemy. I hadn’t questioned any of it, knowing they were all doing what they could to ensure our end goal was still attainable, but with little military training at my disposal, I had no way of helping. There was nothing I could do to affect the tide of battle besides stay out of the way. I had no way to influence its final outcome, and I’d felt helpless. I found myself doing nothing but sitting in the rear with all the other non-combatants, watching the legionnaires march down the hill, and listening to Alex and Helena’s slow and meticulous stream of rifle shots. I had been dismayed when those around me had joked and took bets concerning the outcome of the fighting.

  That was when James, the one person out of us all who could often find other ways to contribute to a battle besides killing people, had found me. He’d noticed my utter shock over the events of the day, and had gently asked if I would be willing to help him tend to the wounded. I had about as much training in the medical field as I had in the military one, but I’d been touched by his confidence that I could help. It had taken me a few moments before I’d finally taken his proffered hand and allowed him to help me up. He’d patted my shoulder and nodded his thanks, but had then taken off to aid those in need without another word. Once I’d caught up, I’d asked him whether he was worried about our friends being hurt and him being unable to help, but he’d answered simply by saying that this was something they were all used to, and that if someone was hurt, they’d notify him over the radio.

  Until that happened, he would care for the Romans.

  Luckily, such a call never came, and he and I had spent the rest of the battle tending to those James determined could be saved. We’d spent four hours treating the wounded, moving from one fallen body to another, helping those who could be saved and abandoning those who were too far gone. It had been another heart wrenching experience, one I hadn’t handled very well at first either. I’d pleaded with James to help the first man we’d come across, a legionnaire whose arm had been severed above the elbow and had a deep gash across his chest. But James had only taken five seconds to look at the man before wordlessly moving on to the next. I’d reached out and grabbed his arm, demanding that he help the man.

  But he hadn’t.

  He hadn’t even explained his reasoning to me. He’d simply pulled away and pushed on, but I stayed with the wounded man,
not knowing what to do, holding his remaining hand as I’d recited empty encouragements that he would be all right. The man hadn’t seemed to hear any of it. He was drowning in his own blood, but in his last moments he’d looked up at me and smiled.

  I’d held his eyes as well as I could and had barely understood him as he spoke his dying words, “A fine sight… look upon in… death…”

  And then he’d died, only fifteen seconds after Wang had abandoned him.

  His eyes had had remained open, and when I’d moved to close them, it truly hit me just how completely alien war and death was to those who had never experienced it before, because his eyes simply would not close. Even though he’d only been dead for seconds, his eye lids remained stubbornly open. Likewise, as I’d tried to remove my hand from his grip, I’d struggled with that action as well. The man was stiff and unrelenting, and I had had to jerk myself backward to escape, landing in puddle of mud mixed with blood.

  I’d felt like crying, but with the realization of how horrid war actually was came determination. I was no longer upset at James for so heartlessly leaving him to die, because I finally understood that there was no place for heart on a battlefield. There was no place for a soul when so many unique, irreplaceable individuals were murdered without remorse. And emotions were best left locked away against moments when they could cripple you with indecisiveness. All that was left was to do what was necessary, save those who could be saved, stay alive, and… kill those who had to be killed.

  In a way, I’d come to understand all of Jacob’s pain and suffering over the years as I’d stared at the corpse of the man who had been alive just seconds before, and I’d also come to appreciate the cold, almost inhuman devotion that had infected Helena. There was no place for sentimentality or humanity when the only other choice was death or destruction.

  The choice was simple, and I’d learned it wasn’t much of a choice at all.

  I’d left the man then and found James only a few steps away, tending to another victim who had a nasty gash in this thigh. I’d taken stock of the situation, noticing that he was an understandably uncooperative patient as James dug around in his leg with a pair of forceps, and the only thing I could think to do was sit on the man’s chest and use my hands to hold his unwounded leg down so Wang could focus on the other.

  A doctor would have scoffed at my unorthodox treatment plan, but James had nodded at my arrival, not taking his eyes off his work. The man writhed in pain underneath me, so I wasn’t even upset when he’d reached up and grabbed my butt. I’d glanced over my shoulder and seen that he wasn’t even looking at me as he’d tried to fight through the pain, and I’d done nothing to remove his hands, realizing that he’d simply needed something to hang on to.

  When James finished, he’d offered the man a pain killer – a local medicinal treatment that he’d apparently manufactured years ago during his time in Greece – and the man had slowly settled down. Gently lifting myself from his chest, I’d turned to look down at him as James had taken off for another patient. I’d held his head and waited for him to look at me, but when he did, he’d jerked away from me, but in surprise, not pain

  “You’ll be fine,” I’d told him, with a smile.

  He’d stared at me and nodded. “Thank you… goddess.”

  Word had spread over a month ago that I shared a name with a Roman goddess, and these naïve Romans hadn’t been able to comprehend that I wasn’t also some kind of goddess. Even though the mistaken association had probably stemmed from some chauvinistic or misogynistic origin, I was glad that my mere presence had offered this man some comfort. If seeing a female face as they dealt with the aftermath of war and injury made them feel better, I would look at every single one of them if I could.

  And I’d looked at hundreds more as the hours had ticked by, James and I treating countless patients but abandoning far more. I had no way of knowing if the battle was over. I had been operating in a daze, drawing strength from James’ tireless endeavor to save all those he could, although he wasn’t so focused on his patients that he couldn’t see how exhausted I was right now.

  And I was.

  Never had I felt so fatigued before. I was about ready to collapse, from both the physical and emotional emptiness growing inside me and the horrors I’d seen. James was in the midst of sewing up an abdominal wound on his latest patient as I prepared a locally crafted bandage, when he finally looked up and met my eye for the first time since he’d abandoned that first legionnaire, speaking his first words to me as well.

  “You should head up the hill, Diana,” he said kindly, not a hint of patronization in his voice. “I’m almost out of supplies, and can’t do much more until I find my baggage cart… wherever the bloody hell that is.”

  I glanced up from the bandage I was carefully cutting to ensure none of it was wasted. “I’m all right, James. I can still help.”

  He looked at my hands after he tied off the last stich, and pointed at them. I looked down again and noticed that I was snipping at nothing but air with my scissors over and over again. I no longer even held the bandage that I’d successfully cut a minute ago.

  I dropped the scissors, and lifted my hands to rub my eyes.

  Wang reached over the unconscious patient’s body and placed a hand gently against my neck. “You were aces, Artie,” he said appreciatively. “More than anyone could have expected. You earned a sleep. I’ll be along shortly.”

  I lowered my hands, caught off guard by the gratitude and thanks I heard in his voice, as though he really had needed me here all along. I nodded slowly and found myself leaning over the wounded man’s body to give my friend a hug. I pulled away a few seconds later and stood.

  Turning to leave, I noticed James hold out a hand to stop me. “Hey, wait,” he said, and I looked at him slowly, seeing him turn away almost in embarrassment. After a moment, with the injured man unconscious beneath him, he finally met my eye, an odd smile on his face. “You’re more like your brother than I thought… before all this, anyway. Just as determined and maybe even more selfless. I guess I forgot about who he was before we found ourselves in Britain. I’m… sorry for that.”

  Too tired to even nod, I tried to smile at him, accepting his apology, understanding immediately that he was ready to help us find Jacob again. Knowing he was willing to help, I felt immeasurably better, although as soon as I turned to wander up the hill, I remembered just how tired I was and stumbled like a drunken fool, swerving and weaving almost uncontrollably as I started my ascent. The emptiness I felt at what had just transpired was beginning to overwhelm me in a way I hadn’t expected, the adrenaline and excitement from earlier wearing off quickly. Now that quiet had mostly returned to the countryside, and the cries of battle were far away, I found myself trying to understand what had just happened. Here I was walking through a cemetery of fallen bodies without graves, and was at a loss to understand how they’d come to be there, no longer really remembering what had just occurred, too tired to look back on the day and find the answers to questions I didn’t really want answered anyway.

  Instead of thinking, I simply wandered up the hill, wounded legionnaires and ones too tired to fight pacing me up toward where I knew a make shift camp must have been created – knowing the Romans as well as I did by now. I also heard the intermittent booms of a sniper rifle still being employed off to my right and still a ways up the hill, and found myself veering off in that direction. Another shot rang out, and I knew I was heading in the right direction, only I wasn’t sure how long it would take before I stumbled on the source.

  Another shot rang out, much louder this time, and I continued on. No other shots were heard as I covered another hundred meters without much direction, but then I wearily found myself approaching a pair of bodies lying on the ground, rifles pointing nearly in my direction as I approached. One was female, the other male, and in my near delirious state I thought for a second that Jacob and Helena had been reunited to ply their deadly trade together again, as they ha
d so often done over the years.

  As I drew closer, my weakened mind blearily identified the man to be the kindly Alex Cuyler instead of my insane brother. He still held his rifle in a grip that suggested he was ready to fire it, but upon closer inspection, I saw that he was asleep, his cheek resting comfortably on the back end of his rifle. Helena, however, still had her right eye buried in her scope, her mouth tight and determined, and I knew she was still searching for targets.

  I didn’t try to interrupt her at first, knowing she wouldn’t want to be disturbed as she so resolutely dealt with her grief. I half expected her to be maliciously firing round after round at possible targets, taking great pleasure in the deaths of those who had no idea what had hit them.

  Fortunately, that was not the case.

  She fired again, the deafening boom snapping me from my thoughts, and I couldn’t help but think that even though she seemed in control of her actions, she was still taking some pleasure from all this. I didn’t want to think such things, but I couldn’t help it, and the thought that Helena was slowly destroying her humanity nearly brought me to tears.

  A few tears slipped out as I stood above the woman I’d wanted so much to call a sister, but wasn’t sure if I could anymore. Whether because of her own damning dark path or my own newfound understanding of the world I had been forced into, I wasn’t sure if there could ever be anything sisterly between us again.

  Helena must have noticed something was different about the world around her, and I saw her shut eye open and swivel around to take in her surroundings. She saw me immediately and lifted her head, and I could see the frustration in her face because I’d disturbed her. Even through my mild sobs, it was obvious that she found me to be an irritation, and I was ready for her to lift her rifle and shoot me dead or leap at me with a knife and put me out of my misery.