by R. W. Peake
Calling to Scribonius, Vibius and the rest of the men in my rank for help, we head for the group of men. There are three of them, all warriors, one older man and two about my age or a little older. The older man has a long sword, the other two spears, and all three have thought to pick up their shields. I wait for a moment for my own comrades to catch up, then form a single line, shield to shield, with me in my usual spot on the far right. This means I do not have the protection of a shield to my right, but my placement here is no accident; I am not boasting when I say that I am far and away the best man with a sword out of my rank, or my Century and Cohort for that matter. So it is with confidence that I walk side by side with my comrades towards the waiting men. By this point, some of the wagons have been set alight, and despite it now being sunup, the forest in this part of the world is so thick that the light from the flaming wagons is still strong and lurid, making shadows dance and adding to the atmosphere of menace and destruction. The men await us, their faces set and determined and I can see over their shoulders that there are at least a dozen other people, huddled together, their arms around each other as they call out to their men in their tongue. I have no doubt they are exhorting their warriors to protect them, but their men do not answer, each of them completely concentrating on us. Stopping a few paces away, for a strange moment, nothing happens. All around us there is chaos, mayhem, blood and destruction, yet we are locked in our own little world, almost like we are encased in some sort of bubble. Despite the noises of the slaughter taking place, I can somehow hear my breathing, each side seemingly waiting for some signal. Our eyes are locked on each other; I am staring at the older man with the sword, while he does the same, probably drawn to me because of my size. Then, surprising even myself I am moving forward and I can hear a roar, realizing that it is coming from my lips as I lead with my shield. Moving quickly for a big man, this is both a blessing and a curse, because it catches not only my foe but my friends off balance, so it takes an instant for my comrades to realize that the fight has begun. The older man also hesitates, but that at least was my goal; moving first, striking the first blow in battle cannot be overestimated in its importance, and he has barely enough time to bring his own shield up as I smash into him, relying on my size and strength to push him off balance. However, he somehow stands his ground but thankfully before either of the younger warriors can react and turn on me, my comrades are on them. Outnumbering them more than two to one, I nonetheless call to my friends to leave the older man to me; in those days, I was always anxious to prove myself as the best. For a moment, we stand shield boss to shield boss, glaring at each other over the rim of our shields, he trying to strike me with an overhand blow, using his long sword, as I come underneath with my shorter Spanish sword. Because of the length of his sword, he is trying to end me with a slash, but we Romans have long since learned that the point always beats the edge. I hear his blade whistle past my ear as I move my head to the side, wincing as it strikes a glancing blow off of my shoulder. My mail, which is reinforced in that area, absorbs the blow, so that a few links break but otherwise I am unharmed. Meanwhile, the point of my own sword flickers upward from beneath my shield and I feel the point strike into the flesh of his thigh. We are close enough that I hear the hiss of pain escape his lips, eyes narrowing in agony and hatred, but he does not yield an inch. I realize he is fighting for his family, that this gives him the courage of the doomed, so rather than try to continue pressing him, I suddenly step backward, hoping to draw him off balance. He is too experienced to fall for that, instead choosing to recover himself. Meanwhile, his two comrades, who I assume to be his sons, are still desperately standing back to back, surrounded by my friends, who are alternating in their attacks on the pair. No matter what is happening with them I cannot pay any attention to their battle, and I renew my attack, not wanting to give the older warrior any respite. His left leg is now soaked in blood, and he is clearly favoring it, but is still refusing to yield an inch as I thrust my shield out, using the boss in an attempt to smash his nose flat. We are to use the shield in a manner that makes it as much an offensive weapon as a defensive one, so that my move takes him by surprise, but he manages to bring his own shield up to meet my attack, and I smile grimly, because that is exactly the reaction for which I am hoping. Bending my knees while maintaining the pressure of my shield against his, I whip my blade around parallel to the ground, in a wide sweeping arc so that the edge is now traveling back toward me, except that his left knee is between me and the blade. This is one of our most effective attacks, known as the third position, and is the only time where we favor the edge over the point. It is also why we do go to the trouble to sharpen both edges of our swords. Normally, it is enough to cut the two tendons at the base of the hamstring, but as I said, I am a very strong man and my blade is very sharp, so I can feel the shock travel up my arm as the blade cuts through his leg all the way to his kneecap. My blade continues through so that I sever his leg completely, and I can feel the spray of blood splash on my arm as he lets out a shriek of unbearable agony, collapsing immediately to the ground. The sight of their father defeated stuns both of the other warriors so completely that they suddenly drop their shields to just stand there defenseless as my comrades cut them down. Standing over my foe as he stares up at me, his face a picture of despair and agony, one hand clutching the stump of his ruined leg, I can read in his face the knowledge that he has failed to protect his family. All I feel is a savage exultation that I have bested another man, giving him a smile that holds nothing but cruelty as I plunge my sword into his throat.
All around us, similar scenes are being played out as the Legions of Rome go about their business of slaughter. With the three warriors dispatched, I turn to face the remaining group of people. There are four women, one older with iron gray hair and a seamed face, probably the woman of the man that I dispatched, and from the way she is gazing down at the bodies of the two young men, their mother. She stands protectively in front of the rest of her family, arms outstretched despite the fact she has no weapon. Even as I move toward her, before I can get to her another of my comrades, Spurius Didius, steps close enough to run his sword into her stomach before twisting the blade savagely, disemboweling her in one practiced motion. His move is met with disgust and contempt by the rest of us; we may be under orders to kill everyone, orders that we would readily obey, but that did not mean that we had to make defenseless people suffer needlessly. However, that is in his character; he is the cruelest among us, and renowned for some of the actions he has taken, mostly against defenseless or helpless people. The woman lets out a blood-curdling scream as she collapses to the ground, her intestines slowly oozing out to lie in a glistening pool next to her.
“You stupid bastard, you punctured her bowels. Now we have to smell her shit,” Vellusius, another member of our tent section complains, but Didius just grins. The sight of the matriarch of this group savagely cut down finally spurs the others to action, and they turn to run away, scattering in every direction.
“See what you made them do?” I hear Scribonius shout as each of us start off in pursuit of one of the fleeing Germans.
Without thinking, I choose one of the other women, a younger one who I had noticed snatching up a bundle lying near the fire. She was wrapped in a cloak, but quickly shrugged it off since it slowed her down, and I can see she has fiery red hair that streams behind her as she runs, still clutching the bundle. I chase after her, and despite being much faster, she is damnably quick, changing direction whenever she senses that I am within reach, so that in moments I am not only out of breath, I am getting very angry. The pursuit continues in this manner for some time, with her darting around and through the small knots of Romans and Germans who are still trying to put up a fight. By this time, others like her have realized that it is pointless to fight, and begin their own headlong flight, each of them seeming to choose a different direction in which to escape. Wagons are ablaze, the air growing hot and close from the flames, making my l
ungs burn even more. The girl is making me look the fool, and I can just imagine that the others are getting a great laugh from the sight of my large frame chasing this slight girl about like a dog chasing a chicken. She is now heading for the river bordering one side of the camp, along with what now appears to be several hundred other Usipetes and Tencteri. Some of them are much closer and much slower than this girl, meaning I could easily stop chasing her to concentrate on an easier target, but I refuse to be drawn off. Finally she starts to tire, her sudden changes in direction becoming less frequent, until I have now closed with her so that I can reach out and give her a shove that sends her sprawling. The bundle she has been carrying goes flying from her hands to land a few feet away from her, but before I can pin her down to finish her, she scrambles up, leaving me to curse bitterly, as much as I can with my lungs on fire. Gasping for air, I am prepared to resume the pursuit, but for reasons I cannot understand at first, instead of trying to get away, she runs straight to the bundle, picking it up.
“That’s a foolish thing to do, girl,” I gasp. “No amount of money or whatever you have in there is worth dying for.”
I know she cannot understand me, so instead she just stands there looking at me, with an expression on her face that I need no translator to interpret for me. My heart is pounding, and I realize that it is not just from the exertion; she is really very beautiful, her cheeks flushed from our chase, her red hair spread around her face like fire. I feel a stirring in my loins that I do not expect, and I take a step toward her, our eyes locked together. Just as I am about to reach her, she says something in her tongue, then thrusts the bundle out in front of her. That is when I see a pair of the deepest blue eyes I have ever seen, staring at me from within the bundle. A round face, with a wisp of the same color red hair on its head, the babe does not seem frightened at all, just stares at me with an intense curiosity. I feel like I have been dashed with a bucket of cold water, my member going limp immediately from the shame of what I was about to do, followed immediately by the return of the anger. Anger at this woman for trying to use her child as a shield to spare her life, counting on whatever it is in the human heart that wants to protect a helpless infant; anger at being put in this position in the first place, knowing that my orders are very clear and very strict. Most of all, I am angry at myself for this feeling that is in me, a sense of shame at what I am about to do that I interpret as weakness. Looking over the head of the babe into the mother’s eyes, I can see in that instant she knows that there is no mercy to be had. Not from me. Not from Caesar. And not from Rome. For I am a Legionary of Rome, and I do as I am commanded. At least, that is what I tell myself as I plunge my sword, through the baby and into her mother.
That is when I always wake up, soaked in sweat with a pounding heart, despite it being almost forty years since that day that we destroyed the Usipetes and Tencteri tribes as we were conquering Gaul, while marching with Caesar.
Chapter 1- Who Is Titus Pullus?
These are the words of Titus Pullus, formerly Legionary, Optio, Pilus Prior and Primus Pilus of the 10th Legion, now known as 10th Gemina, Primus Pilus of the 6th Ferrata, and Camp Prefect, as dictated to his faithful former slave, scribe and friend Diocles.
This is being written in my sixty-first year, three years after my retirement as Camp Prefect, in the tenth year of the reign of Augustus, and 489 years after the founding of the Roman Republic. I have more than 40 military decorations, including three gold torqs, three set of phalarae, two coronae civica, three coronae murales, and a corona vallaris. I have more than 20 battle scars on my body, all of them in the front, and my back is clean, never having been flogged in my 42 years in the Legions, nor turning my back to the enemy. Although my record is not as great as the revered Dentatus, I am well known in the Legions, and I have given the bulk of my life and blood to Rome.
My goal is straightforward; with these words I plan on recording all of the momentous events that I participated in as a member of Rome’s Legions, during a period that changed the very foundations of Rome itself.
When I was young, Rome was ruled by the Senatus et Populus Que Romanum, the Senate and People of Rome. Every year two Consuls were elected from the Senate to run Rome for that year; now, only one man rules, the members of the Senate are his pets, and Rome has never been stronger or mightier than it is right now. The letters SPQR are now famous throughout all of the world, known and unknown.
Although it is no longer in my nature to express excessive pride that some have called hubris in the same way as I did in my youth, it is with some justification that I lay claim to playing a small role in expanding Rome’s fortunes. However, I do so in the name of my fellow Legionaries, those still living and those long or recently dead. For it was with our strong right arms and our sharp blades that such titanic changes were made possible, our legs that carried us as the agent of change to be used by a great man, a man who saw what needed to be done in order to ensure the future prosperity of the city and country he loved more than life itself. His work was unfinished when he was struck down, and it is the very same man known now as Augustus, whom under a different name, that of his adopted father, picked up the ivory baton of imperium and carried it forward to complete what the great man started.
If, dear reader, you are looking for elegant and witty prose, know this now; I am a simple soldier, and have a simple soldier’s story to tell. Despite being literate and possessing a fair hand for simple letters and documents, I have no training or experience in these matters. This is why I am dictating this account to my former slave, scribe and friend Diocles, who is trying his best to keep up with me as I talk. My purpose is to offer an account of these great events, and a viewpoint of the great men of our day, as I saw them and lived through them. I make no claim to be intimates of all of the First Men of Rome, yet I can say that most of them of whom I speak in this account knew me by name. I saw them at their finest, and some I saw at their lowest point, but most importantly I saw them as they appeared to the eyes of their Legions.
Also in this account, I will endeavor to recall conversations and events as exactly as possible, and I must beg the reader’s forgiveness because of the coarseness and crudity of some of the conversations, because they are the words of soldiers and are not the manner of speech one would normally use in polite company. However, I have made a vow to Jupiter Optimus Maximus that I will recount as faithfully as I can all that transpired in those days. One might ask, how is it possible that I will be able to remember conversations that occurred thirty or forty years earlier? First, I have been blessed with the type of memory that seems to retain more than others, and second, even as events were transpiring, I had an idea that they were noteworthy. Perhaps I even had it in the back of my mind that I would one day want to record the events of the day, although I had no idea how I could accomplish this. When I enlisted in the Legions, I was barely literate, able to write my name, and to read very simple instructions and the like, meaning the idea of writing this down would have been nonsense. However I somehow always knew that one day I would be in the position where I either had the ability myself, or I would be able to use someone to create this record. In fact, that was the great, burning ambition of my life, to elevate not only myself but those who follow bearing my name into the equestrian class, an ambition that has been fulfilled.
Now, as I look back on my life, I know that I am nearer to the end than to the beginning, and despite being in good health, only the gods know how much longer I will live. Therefore, I have decided to start this last mission of mine, and will devote almost all of my time to it. In truth, I have nothing much else to do; I am a wealthy man, and while I hold office here in Arelate it is mainly a ceremonial post, leaving me free to come and go as I please, just as long as I am present to march at the head of the procession on festival days. Truth be told, I am bored. I know that I no longer have the strength of body to continue in the Legions, but my spirit is still as if I were a 16 year old lad, on the lookout for adventur
e and a way to improve my station in life. Such is the cruel humor of the gods; ability may wane, but desire never does.
And I am lonely; I miss my comrades, I miss the Legions and the life of the Legions. I will find myself staring at my armor, my helmet, shield and sword, and thinking, if only I could stop time. But I can’t, so there is no use in dwelling on it. Perhaps that is why those few comrades of mine who managed to survive as long as I have drink as much as they do. In particular, I miss my friends Vibius and Scribonius, but Vibius is dead more than ten years now, and while Scribonius is alive, he is far, far away and with his nose buried in a book, I am sure. Thinking of Vibius in particular only makes me more melancholy, both for his death and for all that transpired between us. When all is said and done, I am a warrior without a war to march to, and I fear that this fact alone, not any sickness of the body or just plain old age will finally send me to the afterlife.