The two men snapped to attention and the bolder among them replied, “Tribune, the enemy concentrates its strength in the center, bringing everything to bear, believing they can break through.”
Rufinius was pleased. It was as he’d hoped. “Are the cohorts holding?”
“So far, primor. The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth will surprise them.”
Rufinius saluted them and the men returned it. The Tenth’s own signifer trumpeted for the legionaries to reform their lines, which the men raced to obey, their bloodlust high. And within moments the rested troops marched once more into the fray to take over the fight, while exhausted elements of the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Cohorts began to fall back.
The dust cloud had only thickened with the two armies fighting toe to toe.
Rufinius beckoned Magnus to him. “Cornicen, sound ‘general advance at the walk.’”
“Primor, general advance at the walk.”
The notes rang out above the eerie noises of men fighting and dying, the battle itself hidden inside the pall. Other cornicens picked up the order and conveyed it across the lines of the remaining cohorts, strung out across several miles. If the men already engaged in the fighting heard these orders above the din of battle, the tribune reasoned, it would only embolden them to press on.
“Execute,” said Rufinius when he could see standards nearby raised high.
On hearing the signal, the cohorts advanced. As they marched forward in perfect step, Rufinius watched them with his teeth grinding and his own right hand flexing, longing to feel the weight of a gladius. The entire legion was committed and the outcome was now whatever it would be. Further up on the rise, the tribune could see General Saikan and his officers and guards watching the plain below, but there was nothing to see, save for boiling dust being raised ever higher and the fresh forces being brought to bear.
Though he knew it was unwise, Rufinius could not help himself. He drew his gladius from its scabbard, wheeled his mount around and charged headlong into the dust toward the cries of men.
Open-mouthed and unable to stop him, Appias, Dentianus, Libo, and Carbo watched the tribune dive into the boiling cloud, a battle cry on his lips.
“Merda!” Carbo spat, and then turned his horse and raced after him.
*
Dazed, Appias ran and stumbled over a pile of corpses, his own battle cry caught somewhere in his dust-clogged throat. Libo helped him up and, drawing his gladius, yelled at Appias to do the same.
Dark figures loomed ahead in the murk, their mouths wide open, their shouts drowning out their fear of slaughter. And then the clash of metal on metal rang all around them, the swords of thousands of men whirling in a frenzy of steel, blood, and death.
Rufinius was nowhere to be seen.
Enemy soldiers were suddenly in the camp prefect’s face. The foreigner charging him was cut down by a legionary before Appias could raise his gladius, the Han’s sword arm lopped off at the shoulder. Another enemy soldier was killed by a pilum that pierced him through his open mouth, while yet another enemy soldier close by had the blade of a gladius buried in his throat. And all around the ground and the air was red with blood shooting, streaming, and pulsing from chopped limbs and bodies and opened necks.
Pushing against the enemy with a scutum, Appias advanced into the melee with another legionary who was hacking, stabbing and beating at the enemy with a blind fury.
“Appias! Appias!” It was Dentianus, shouting at him, slapping him across the face. “Where’s Rufinius!”
Appias shook his head, dazed. A man in black tunic with black hair and black eyes and a mouth open with rage raced at him with his sword tip forward, coming for him. Appias parried the thrust easily with the gladius, as he had been schooled, and the man simply ran onto the camp prefect’s blade and collapsed quietly to his knees, surprise on his face. Appias, now arisen from his trance, the battle loud in his ears, wiped the sweat and blood from his face, put his foot on the man’s chest and pulled the sword, sucking, clear of him.
Around him men were cleaving at each other, legionaries with unfamiliar faces chopping into the enemy like men beating back flames, the gore flicking from their sword blades as they hacked and stabbed, stepping over bodies and parts of bodies and stabbing some more, the insides of men and the gallons of blood a ghastly red blanket spread thick and sticky across the ground.
Appias stepped into a line of advancing legionaries, filling a gap where a man had fallen, and thrust forward his sword again and again and felt the blade pierce flesh and break bone and ring violently in his hand when clashed against metal.
Forward they walked over the fallen enemy, the strength in their own arms never wavering. And then the enemy seemed to turn as one and run, the soldiers dropping their swords with not the stomach to even look back over their shoulders at the Romans pursuing them with fierce intent.
The dust cloud began to thin around Appias as he raced forward and suddenly he found himself charging into sweet clear air. What he saw was that the legion had broken the Han, who hurried in a panic toward fires among their own wagons that burned and smoked. But their escape was cut off by Han foot archers and mounted archers who were themselves fleeing toward them. The two halves of the same army ran into each other and, as they did so, the advancing Roman First Cohort enveloped them along with the Second, Third and Fourth.
Arrows began to rain down on the confused enemy – fired by the Xiongnu horse archers supporting the cohorts – every arrow finding a target among the glut of terrified Han.
The First charged forward, the swinging blade in Petronius’s hand cutting through human flesh, the wall of men cleaved by his gladius falling like stalks of scythed wheat.
With nowhere to go, the last remnants of the enemy pressed ever closer together. Appias found himself in the forefront with other legionaries, swinging and stabbing at the faces of beaten, unarmed men, walking over their broken corpses, smashing his gladius down onto heads, shoulders, and thighs with a fierce bloodlust. Slashing, hacking, thrusting …
XXXIII
Only the mad drew comfort from a battlefield, Rufinius thought. He walked among the dead, accompanied by Cornicen Magnus and staff tribunes, looking for the few Romans that had fallen. Teams of legionaries picked through the carnage. Some finished off the fallen enemy, ending their moans and cries for water. Others hunted for treasure, removing rings and such, with the aid of a sword strike if necessary. The legion’s armorers were also roving among the dead with their wagons, picking up swords, arrows, scuta, bent pila, and other weapons.
Meanwhile, birds by the hundreds circled overhead while flies in the millions feasted, already at death’s table.
“Cornicen, I want the men formed up in cohorts,” Rufinius said wearily, the tiredness that always follows combat beginning to settle on his limbs.
“Primor. Where do you wish them to assemble?”
Rufinius spied Petronius, covered all in red and black from other men’s blood, cleaning his gladius on a corpse’s tunic. He gestured at the man with his sword. “To the left of the First.”
Magnus walked a distance away before signaling the instructions of the tribune who himself looked as if he had swum in a bath of blood and offal. The sounds that flew crisply from the cornu had a galvanizing effect on the legionaries scattered around the battlefield and gathered hundreds deep around water camels brought by industrious quartermasters. Immediately the cohorts reformed, the men running to their lines on hearing the cornu blasts.
Rufinius looked around, searching for faces he recognized. Eventually he spied Appias who, almost unrecognizable with the mask of dried butchery on his face, stood and stared with dull eyes at the carnage laid out on the plain around him.
Rufinius ran to the man and searched him for wounds and found a sword chop in the leg and another in his arm. One deep; one shallow, a mere graze, but all easily sewn up.
“Appias.” He gave the man a shake. “Appias!”
The camp prefect and his
torian turned to look at him, unblinking.
“Your first battle!”
As if in reply, a tear welled from an eye and ran a track through the dried blood caked on the historian’s face.
The tribune put an arm around his shoulder. “This is history, Appias. And the sword writes it. Of all people, you should know that.” At Appias’s feet was a mound of fallen Han infantry, long, broken poles lying around them topped with steel blades that were part dagger and part axe. “Is all this mess your doing?”
Appias gazed at the mound momentarily and then wandered away without acknowledgement, a bloody gladius still hanging from his hand. Rufinius watched him walk into the embrace of Libo and Carbo, who waved back at the tribune before leading their comrade away.
Rufinius had seen it often before: legionaries dazed and overwhelmed by the sights and smells and the action of battle. Appias would climb out of it.
The tribune’s attention retuned to the fallen. Curious, he leaned over the man on top of the mound claimed by Appias to take a closer look at a remarkably clean face. Looking for wounds he found a deep slice delivered to the inner thigh where thick blood vessels gathered, one of the main target areas for a gladius – a death stroke. Back to the face. It was curiously flat, thought Rufinius, with a flat nose and eyes that were no more than narrow slits, though they were fully open in death. The man’s hair was thick, black and straight and gathered in an elaborate pattern of plaits, the ends of which had been bundled in a tight elaborate knot and tied on the top of his head. He wore pants as well as a tunic that hung below his knees and, over it all, a padded jacket sewn with square platelets of bronze to lend protection to the chest and shoulders. A red scarf tied around his neck was partly pulled up over his mouth to keep out their common enemy – dust.
Never had Rufinius seen men such as these. All had the same color eyes and the same color hair.
Picking his way further along, the tribune came upon ten dead legionaries, unusual for this battle where the lives of few Romans had been claimed. Heavy shortened arrows, some of which appeared to have gone clean through shields, whether covered with steel fish scales or not, had struck all of them down. Lying among the Romans he saw a couple of the Han felled by legionary pila. Beside one of these men lay an unusual weapon. Rufinius moved the corpse of the Han partly concealing it and saw a bow fixed horizontally across a long tapered wood box. Lifting up the weapon, he could see that the bow was short and thick and made of horn, wood and sinew, strung with a thick gut string pulled tight along the box and held in place there by a grooved tooth, part of a bronze mechanism. He lifted a lever joining the tooth and the weapon jolted viciously in his hand, launching a short bolt that went clean through the body of a dead Han lying close by. It was similar to the Roman scorpio, beloved of legionary artillerymen. What damage could whole centuries do armed with a small mobile weapon such as this?
“Alexandricus!” It was General Saikan, siting on his horse with a spare mount for the tribune. He did not seem at all pleased.
Rufinius held up the weapon and walked toward him. “What is the name for this device?”
Saikan ran his eyes over the tribune looking for evidence of wounds. Rufinius was covered in the blood and gore of battle, the whites of his eyes and teeth brilliant against it. “You are no longer one of your legionaries. You are their leader. I had hoped you would not risk yourself like the commonest among them.”
Rufinius knew this was coming. “Great generals lead from the front.”
“Dead generals lead from the front.” Saikan looked skyward and shook his head in frustration, as if in a separate conversation with the gods. He could only hope that the Roman’s attitude would mature with experience. “You have been lucky this day. The next you may not be. I beseech you again – learn another style of leadership!”
Rufinius gazed up at the man. There was nothing more to say on the matter so instead he raised the unfamiliar weapon by his side to remind the general that his question was as yet unanswered.
Saikan sighed and adjusted himself in the saddle. “In your hands is the weapon known as the nu, the one I told you about. I have heard others call it a crossbow. For us, this is a coward’s weapon.”
Rufinius nodded. Coward’s weapon or not, it was nonetheless capable of ruthless extermination, for which there was little defense at close quarters. He dropped it to the ground and leaped up on the horse.
“Let us savor our prize,” the general suggested. “Victory is ours, Tribune – who knows what tomorrow may bring.”
The two men rode across the plain of death, the birds stepping confidently onto empty faces and pecking furiously, ignoring the living. “The Han were ill trained,” Rufinius said.
“And perhaps they were ill led. Or perhaps it was your superior tactics that won the day. Perhaps all three.”
Rufinius glanced at the general.
“Using the dust …” Saikan nodded, the corner of his lips raised, hinting at his wry pleasure.
“It worked for the Parthians.”
“The legion is a most terrible and formidable weapon. My Chanyu will indeed be pleased.”
Rufinius acknowledged the compliment with a nod.
“I watched as your First Cohort broke through their weakened right flank and caused great panic, followed by general collapse. The Han ran so fast from the whirling swords of your men that even my horse archers struggled to keep ahead of their flight. To heighten the Han’s sense of utter defeat, I sent my turshuuluud to their caravan with orders to set fire to several lesser wagons. The Han thought they were being attacked from behind by a much larger force and withdrew their archers and many crossbowmen. These had not been brought into the battle for, in the heavy dust cloud, they feared striking their own men. My own archers hit them hard as they retreated and they turned and fled, back into the dust from which they had just come, into the butchery of the advancing First. I commend you again on these tactics.”
Rufinius rode along in silence.
“Your legionaries … In truth I have never seen infantry of their caliber.”
“They revel in battle.”
“There are few fatalities among my men,” Saikan continued. “And yours?”
“The numbers are low. A little more than twenty-five, plus the wounded.” From upon the horse, the tribune could now see the panic that the cohorts had wrought on the Han lying dead on the plain. The sight was in equal measure both thrilling and horrific.
Behind this field, the wagons of the Han caravan were drawn up in large defensive squares. Opposite the squares, the legion waited, formed up in cohorts, ready for further orders. Rufinius and Saikan cantered to the head of the First Cohort where Appias stood with Dentianus, Libo, Carbo, Cornicen Magnus, and several staff tribunes.
Xiongnu horsemen rode around one of the larger wagon squares, displaying their exuberance at the victory, taunting the Han cowering within. And from another square came a party of Xiongnu, galloping toward General Saikan and the tribune. As they drew nearer, Rufinius could see that they accompanied two members of the Han army whose fine armor, clean dress, and formal bearing marked them as officers.
“General Saikan,” said one of the Xiongnu horsemen as the party came to a dusty stop. “I present you with the defeated commanders.”
The Han officers rode with their hands tied behind their backs, and on their faces was the unhappiness of beaten men. Saikan attempted to converse with the prisoners, switching to a language that Rufinius could not comprehend, but it was clear that the prisoners would not cooperate.
One of Saikan’s horsemen slapped the rumps of the mares bearing these two men and the animals launched into a gallop. When it seemed that they would simply ride away into the expanse of the desert, the Xiongnu horseman pulled an arrow, notched it to his bowstring and let it fly. A second arrow followed and, moments later, first one and then the other Han officer slipped from his mount. Rufinius had no doubt they were dead.
“Come, Alexandricus,” said
Saikan. “Let us bring the wealth of an empire within the oasis ramparts.”
Rufinius ignored the general’s request. Instead, he turned and said, “Cornicen Magnus. Hostiles to the front. Advance.”
“Primor, hostiles to the front. Advance.” Magnus brought the cornu to his lips and blew the order and down the lines, signifers responded holding their standards to the sky.
“Execute!” Rufinius said.
“Primor,” Magnus replied.
Throughout the legion, on hearing the order trumpeted, tesserariae and optiones barked at the lines as 5,000 or more men advanced on the Han caravan, the uniform beat of 10,000 feet stamping the ground like the hammers of a great machine.
“What is happening?” Saikan asked.
Rufinius ignored him.
“Tribune!” Saikan shouted over the movements of the Romans. The general brought his horse around to face the tribune. “What are you doing?”
The legion advanced with inexorable menace toward the caravan’s defensive squares.
“Stop this!” the general snapped. He issued an order himself and his own guard drew arrows and notched them to bowstrings and drew them tight, aiming at Rufinius’s head and heart.
But the tribune was calm. “No matter what you do to me, General, the legionaries will continue to march. They will sack the caravan and burn it to the ground and then, because you have killed me, their leader, they will turn on you. Some of my legionaries will end this day with their gods and they will go willingly. But all your men will die, for they have exhausted their arrows and are now defenseless.”
“Why are you doing this?” cried Saikan.
“You will have no caravan and no slave army and no Xiongnu horse archers. It is possible you will survive only to return to your King alone and empty-handed. But more likely is that you will die on this day, following my own death as the hag Mena predicted.”
The general could see how it would end as clearly as Rufinius portrayed.
“I ask you again,” Saikan implored. “Why?”
Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) Page 32