Gladius Winter

by J Glenn Bauer

  A foot planted on his shoulder, pressed down and then was gone again as a warrior leaped over him. Beaugissa! She landed lightly between Caros and the second Roman. Her spear flashed and was batted aside by his gladius. The Roman rolled away, his bronze cuirass, rattling on the rocks and fallen blades.

  Caros found his feet and looked for his falcata. Beaugissa was driving hard at the Roman, her spear striking again and again, while she hurled her war cry from her throat.

  Caros spotted his blade, grabbed it up and spun to join Beaugissa. The Roman snatched at her spear shaft, found instead the back end of the blade and snarled as his palm split wide. Nevertheless, he managed to grip the shaft and push the spear back at Beaugissa who was trying to pull it through his hand. She stumbled into Caros and in the blink of an eye, the Roman was on his feet, coming at them. He jerked the spear aside with his left hand and stabbed his gladius at Beaugissa’s eyes.

  Caros threw her aside and nearly took the point of the blade in his throat. He swept his own blade up and felt it bite, taking the Roman in the flesh under his extended right arm. Skin and flesh melted away from the blade and tendons and bone parted.

  The Roman’s eyes bulged, his sword clattered to the street and he fell back, blood pulsing in angry streams from the death wound. Caros watched the Roman trip and stagger backwards, his arm clutched to his chest, trying to stem the blood flow.

  “Caros, we must flee.” Beaugissa was at his side, her chest heaving, hair matted and strung across her face.

  He saw Romans in tight groups pursuing fleeing Bastetani. Men trapped on rooftops, cut down one by one or jumping for their lives. A fire or many, burned for smoke was filling the street.

  He took her hand, “This way.” Turning into a street so narrow they could only just run beside one another. Rounding a corner, they both stumbled over a child. A boy of ten summers, clutching his opened gut, tears wet on his cheeks. He pointed at the splintered doorway of his family home.

  “They are killing my mama.” His chest shuddered and blood followed the words from his mouth. His eyes were fixed on Caros who swallowed, the sounds from beyond that doorway now reaching through the ringing in his head.

  He gritted his teeth and jumped through the door into the interior lit by a meagre light that brightened the splayed white forms trembling in mute agony under the thrusts of legionaries. Caros took in the killers cutting away the eyelids of the woman and girls, opening their nostrils with those blades and hacking away their ears. All as their fellows tore into their bleeding bodies with their own.

  Bile thickened with fury, Caros began to kill. His blade swung mercilessly, taking wrists and ankles, dropping men to crawl on the blood blackened stone.

  Beside him, Beaugissa wept and used her blade to end the lives of the mother and her two young daughters, too broken to know their minds, their bodies cut and torn beyond mending.

  In heartbeats the third and last legionary was dying beside his fellows. Their limbs flailed madly, but with no feet or hands still attached they merely sprayed blood about. Their screams were hideous and Caros backed out into the street where Beaugissa was knelt, retching bile beside the now lifeless boy.

  “They will encircle the town soon. We must not stop again.” His voice sounded like a strangers and his skin burned. His eyes would never unsee what those men had done nor what his blade had done in return.

  They ran. At times they ran with warriors and townspeople. They fought back to back to escape dead ends where Roman shields blocked streets. They jumped bodies, tripped over limbs and staggered between sheets of flame.

  The south gate was open, the dead piled thick before it and still more warriors fought their way to it. The Romans came from both sides in waves, trying to prevent escape. Caros and Beaugissa fought with strangers down a last street. At their heels, a wall of Romans tramping relentlessly forward. Two warriors, father and son, too injured to flee further, took up discarded shields and stopped in the center of the street.

  “Tell them we died here. I am Nam. My son is Rual, son of Nam. We are Bastetani!”

  The older warrior called to his people as they fled the Romans. Warriors grunted and nodded. One man turned back and passed the son a heavier spear.

  “It knows the taste of Roman blood.” He spat. “We will sing of you and your father.”

  Caros nodded to the pair. “Truly spoken. Nam and Raul, son of Nam. We will sing of your honor.”

  Beyond the father and son, closer to the gate, Caros spied Maleric towering like a bear over the crowd. Limping at his side was Neugen.

  He pointed. “They live still, Beaugissa.”

  She was beyond words, managing just a weak nod. They hurried down the street to rejoin their companions while behind them the last of the Bastetani warriors in Cissa fought. Iron rang and flesh tore. Nam and Raul. Sons of Iberia, held back the Romans for the heartbeats their fellow warriors needed to clear the gates at last and flee Cissa.

  Epilogue

  Cissa burned behind them. The fires casting an orange glow on the bellies of low clouds that had filled the sky. Adrift and hunted, the Bastetani and other surviving warriors mingled with those townspeople who had been fortunate enough to flee in time. Together, they trudged in a long slow moving column with torches of pitch and oil spluttering in the cold wind blowing from the north.

  Caros had his arm under Neugen’s shoulder helping him up a steep hill. Behind him, Maleric limped, cursing and grumbling at every step. Beaugissa walked alongside Rappo, who had waited for them beyond the walls of Cissa. The Masulian’s faithful pony followed, its muzzle close to Rappo’s neck, as exhausted as every person in that stream of survivors.

  At the top of the hill Caros lowered Neugen to a rock before surveying the darkness ahead. Nightfall had been a blessing, saving them from the mounting attacks by the mounted auxiliaries who had harassed them into the hills. Now they would have to find shelter and wait out the night. Too many of their number were injured and unable to walk the steep rocky slopes in the pitch darkness.

  “We should shelter here for the rest of the night.” He turned to the others as they slumped to their knees, shivering.

  “I will find a place out of this wind.” Rappo stepped away into the dark.

  Torches winked and guttered in the wind all the way up the north face of the hill, marking the route of the survivors.

  “Caros?” Neugen rose from the rock with a hiss of pain. A Roman had managed to drive his blade into the flesh above his knee, leaving a deep and painful injury. “Caros, there are fires out there.”

  Cursing, the companions surged forward to squint into the dark.

  “I see them!” Beaugissa called.

  “They are hidden by trees, but not far off.” Neugen said.

  “Romans?” Maleric flexed his sword arm.

  “Runeovex spare us. I hope not.” Caros glanced back at the column. Exhausted warriors were gathering, waiting for word from him. “I will find Rappo and we will go and see.” His muscles were cramped and his head still rang, but the others were just as battered, if not more so.

  Beaugissa lifted her spear. “I will come.”

  Caros nodded, wrapped his bloodied cloak tighter, and set off into the dark with Beaugissa ranging beside him.

  Rappo called from the darkness to their left. “Is that you Caros?” His voice husky with fear.

  “Peace, it is me. We see a camp across the hill.” Caros reassured Rappo.

  “Ah! I see it. Shall I come?”

  “Have you found a place for our own camp?”

  “I have.”

  “Guide the rest to it then. Beaugissa and I will be back before morning.”

  The camp Neugen had spied was larger than it had seemed. Descending into the deepest dark of the narrow valley, working their way through dense bush and tripping constantly over rocks and thorns, Caros and Beaugissa slowly made their way towards the nearest fires.

  The wind whistled through the boughs of the tall trees that grew
on this side of the valley and branches creaked and popped above them.

  “I do not hear any voices. Can they be asleep?” Beaugissa worried as they crept forward on their hands and knees, staying in the darkest shadows.

  “The wind is blowing away their sounds.” Caros reasoned. “That means they will hear us far easier than we’ll hear them.”

  “They will smell us first.” Beaugissa moaned.

  Caros agreed silently. They smelled of dried blood and gore, sweat and urine.

  Creeping closer, Caros saw further beyond the trees. A vast encampment stretched into the night. Fires, tents, warriors and women.

  “These are no Romans.” Caros whispered, his heart surging.

  “Who then?”

  At a nearby fire, a bare chested warrior rose and stared in their direction. Caros saw the cut and color of his braccae and smiled.

  “Turdetani!” He gave Beaugissa a wan smile. “Hasdrubal has arrived.”

  Hasdrubal was as travel-weary and sweat stained as the rest of his warriors. He rose to his full height as Caros stepped forward from the Turdetani warriors that had brought him to their commander’s fire.

  “Caros?” The Carthaginian commander was brother to Hannibal Barca, but his features differed markedly with a narrow face, long jaw and wide set eyes. “You have my thanks for bringing back Hannibal’s messages.” His gaze flitted to Beaugissa and then back to Caros. “From your faces, you either bring news I would rather not hear or have been drinking soured wine.” He waved away the Turdetani warriors and then called for a servant to bring food and drink. “Sit at my fire and tell me.”

  Caros sank to his haunches and held his hands towards the wind-driven flames dancing in the circle of stones.

  “Thank you. My companion here is Beaugissa of the Vascon and today earned the right to be called Beaugissa the Spear Heart.”

  Having spent most his adult life among the Iberians, Hasdrubal understood the significance of their war names and so he dipped his head in respect to Beaugissa.

  “Spear Heart. A powerful name.” He looked again at Caros, taking in the bloodied and ripped tunic, the newly scored marks on armor and the tremor of muscles twisted with exhaustion. “Earned this name today?” A muscle knotted in his cheek and his voice roughened. “Hanno? He went to war without me and my force? Just this day?”

  Caros braced himself. Hasdrubal’s anger could be as a thing born wild in burning African deserts.

  “This day. North of Cissa. Hanno ordered the war drums to sound and turned his blades on the Romans and their allies.”

  Hasdrubal clenched his fists and nodded. “I was told the Romans numbered twenty thousand legionaries while Hanno fielded ten thousand men?”

  “Less. He is fallen as is his greatest ally and worst advisor, Indibilis of the Ilerget.”

  Hasdrubal’s breathing became ragged. “He had the Libyans commanded by Farnnut! He had M’hatmu of the Masulians! Seasoned warriors both. They would have told him to wait.” Hasdrubal exploded upright again and Beaugissa was not alone in falling back. Caros alone sat unmoving.

  “He also had Hannibal’s message commanding him to keep the lands north of the Ebro free from the Romans and the people here pacified.” Caros spoke tiredly. “The warriors loyal to the Barcas saw only that he would not fight while their settlements burned and the Romans walked unopposed. It was difficult… nay, impossible for him to wait longer.” Caros spoke for Hanno, reasoning that there was no honor in doing anything other now that the man’s shade was in all likelihood free from his body.

  As suddenly as he had exploded, Hasdrubal stilled, his eyes fastened on Caros. “What council did you give him? Did you also wish to fight? Do not forget, I know you Caros the Claw.”

  Caros nodded. “It made no difference what I told him. You took too long to arrive. A day earlier and we could have stood our ground and beaten the Romans.”

  At his back, Hasdrubal’s warriors growled and cursed him. Carthaginian princes and guards watching in silence stiffened and then hissed. Hasdrubal himself, stood open mouthed at the accusation.

  Caros pressed his hands together over the fire, his skin sucking in the warmth, his bruised knuckles throbbing. He shrugged. “The Bastetani came north to fight for the Barcas. The Andosinni came south. The Vascon came east. Even the lowliest of the Sedetani gathered. Yet you were not here.” Beaugissa muttered sharply, but his ears were filled with ringing and screaming and cursing.

  “You sit in my camp at my fire and…”

  Caros rose and felt the teeth of at least three spears press into his back. Two more were leveled at his throat. He lifted his chin, offering himself. “Your precious supplies are gone!” Spittle flew from Caros’ lips. “The way north to reinforce Hannibal is blocked! The warriors that would have brought Rome to its knees are bled dry in a valley half a day’s walk from here!” Blood snaked down his neck, merging with the filth already soaked into his tunic. “I am Bastetani! Did you think I would not learn that you had given half our lands to the kin of every Turdetani princess who opened her legs to you?”

  In the echo of his words, the only sound was the crackle of the dying campfire.

  Heartbeats ran on for as long as an old man takes to empty his water. Hasdrubal’s hooded eyes blinked slowly at long last.

  “One word from me and the priests of Ba’al will have two offerings for our god.”

  Beaugissa stood. “You would not leave this hill alive. Not a man, woman or priest.” Her voice cut across every other murmur, silencing all. “Sacrifice Caros the Claw? To a foreign god? The only warrior who fought the Romans, shed their blood and walked his warriors from Hanno’s defeat?” She shook her head. “You would lose the only warrior in Iberia who knows how to kill Romans and in doing so, gain more enemies than you can count.”

  Hasdrubal clenched his fist over the hilt of his jeweled sword pommel and lurched forward a step, his face mottled in rage. Beaugissa faced him fearlessly while Caros ignored the spears pressed hard into him and curled his hand around his sword hilt. The moment teetered on a blade’s edge, threatening to end in blood.

  From the dark soared a new sound, high pitched for a heartbeat before dropping to a deep bass. It echoed like a mighty shade across the hills, carried on the northerly wind. It was answered by another and then another.

  The Turdetani warriors growled and gripped their spears tight, turning to face the night.

  A Carthaginian with a curled beard and ringed fingers, swallowed hard. “Ba’al comes! He seeks his due!”

  “That is no god! That is the sound of Bastetani warhorns.” Hasdrubal cursed, but his rage was fading. “Remove your spears.” He waved a hand to his spearmen who stepped back and slowly ground their weapons.

  Caros wiped his throat and peered at the fresh blood on his palm before turning it to Hasdrubal.

  “This is Barca gratitude?”

  “No, it is not!” Hasdrubal snapped. Then he began to grin slowly through his curled beard. “You have a talent for building my rage Caros the Claw, but now is not the time for that.” He unbuckled his belt and dropped it along with his sword to the ground at his feet. His tunic bellowed in the cold breeze. “We must turn this defeat and stop Rome. Do you agree?”

  Caros lowered his palm and wiped the blood across his already begrimed armor. “It is what I have been doing since my return from the Rhône.”

  “Good! Then let us forget what was said here in anger and do as Hannibal ordered. Raise an army, drive out the Romans and join my brother in burning Rome to the ground!” He raised his arms and smiled widely. Carthaginians and Iberians grinned and nodded in the firelight.

  Caros smiled coldly. “Return the stolen Bastetani lands to my people and we will fight with you.” He delivered the words while the warhorns grew closer.

  Hasdrubal studied him through narrowed eyes for a heartbeat before dipping his chin. “It is agreed. Now will you fight with us?”

  Caros turned away and began to walk in to the dark, B
eaugissa a stride behind him. He came to a halt and turned back to Hasdrubal.

  “I will fight any who try to take our land, Hasdrubal Barca. For now, my warriors and I will return to our people and our lands to give thanks to Endovex, god of all gods.”

  Bastetani warriors rode and walked in a long snaking line along the floor of the valley below them. Carts provided by Hasdrubal carried wounded men and women, dry food and fodder. Behind them lay the haze of smoke from the cooking fires of Hasdrubal’s warriors and beyond this a column of black smoke marked the death of Cissa.

  “Will you continue the fight, Caros the Claw?” Beaugissa sat astride her mount, beside Caros who watched the procession below over the head of his horse. With the gift of carts from Hasdrubal, the horses were no longer needed to carry the injured.

  Caros, smoothed the coat of the mount’s neck and turned to Beaugissa. She sat her horse comfortably, having learned well. Her shining black hair was brushed and tied back with linen of blue-dyed flax, revealing her face to the morning light. To Caros’ gaze. He studied the curve of her lips, the dip in her cheek that led to her dark flashing eyes.

  “The Romans will not stay north of the Ebro. I do not know how Hasdrubal can counter them and on top of this, Hannibal’s fate is unknown.” He nodded slowly, eyes searching out the column of smoke that marked the pyre Cissa had become. “I do know that as long as Rome threatens, I will fight them.”

  “Caros the Claw, killer of legionaries. Son of Iberia. I expected no less.” Her voice swelled with a note of pride in it.

  Caros cocked an eyebrow at her and shook his head with a soft laugh. He looked past Beaugissa to where Maleric and Neugen sat their own mounts watching Rappo demonstrate how to ride without reins. The two warriors cheered when Rappo leapt to his feet on his mount’s back, one hand gripping her rough mane, the other waving a trio of throwing spears. He brought his gaze back to Beaugissa. “What of your plans? Will you bring Vascon warriors to fight alongside my Bastetani? Will you fight at my side again Spear Heart?”