The Lion's Brood

by Duffield Osborne

  VII.

  PUNISHMENT.

  Sergius hardly knew what was happening. He was conscious that thestride of his horse had been checked by a dense mass of plunginganimals in front--a mass that grew more dense and more tangled withevery instant. Those behind were still endeavouring to press forward,and those in front were hurled back upon them or were strivingfrantically to break through the rearmost squadrons and escape; while,shrill above the clash of arms and the shouts and screams, rose a namethat Sergius found himself listening to with a sort of curious interest.

  "Maharbal! Maharbal!" came the cry, nearer and nearer.

  At the first moment of the check, Marcus Decius had pushed the sturdyhorse that he rode well to the fore. He saw Hostilius riding back,waving one arm and crying out incoherent words: his spear was gone, andthe head of a Spaniard's lance had been thrust through his shoulder andbroken off, so that a third of the shaft hung from the wound.

  Then what had happened and the hopelessness of it all became apparent.Like the veriest fools they had ridden into the snare, and Maharbal,the Carthaginian, with at least two thousand Spanish and Africanhorsemen, was thundering on their front and flanks: their front--but ina moment, their rear; for now those who had not been ridden down at thefirst onset or become inextricably entangled with their fellows brokeaway over the plain, carrying their officers with them in a mad frenzyof flight; while other Numidians--fresh riders on fresh steeds--urgedthe pursuit and smote down the hindermost.

  Decius found himself riding in the middle of the press. His face wasas imperturbable as ever, though he glanced over his shoulder from timeto time as if to note how much nearer death had come. Sergius gallopedclose behind him, careless and abstracted, his rein lying loose on hischarger's steaming neck. Then, of a sudden, a resolve seemed to cometo him. Straightening himself, he urged the weary horse forwardthrough the fugitives till he drew up even with Hostilius, who, stillfrantic with panic, was now swaying in his saddle from the pain andloss of blood.

  Sergius leaned over and laid his hand upon the other's arm, andHostilius started as if he had touched a serpent. Then he becamecalmer, and a troubled look was in the eyes that sought the tribune'sface.

  "Yes, I know," he said at last, speaking hurriedly and in odd, strainedaccents. "I led you into it, and now I am flying."

  "Let us turn back," said Sergius, mildly. "I do not reproach you, butlet us turn back. Surely it is better than the rods and axe."

  Hostilius shuddered, and, at that moment, Decius, who had overtakenthem, broke in with:--

  "By Hercules! there is no fear of those. They cut us down in flight.The choice is, shall we have it in the face or between the shoulders."

  "By the gods of Rome, then!" shouted the praefect, suddenly reining up,while Sergius and Decius swung their horses in short circles.

  There was no trumpet to give the signal, and the little cavalry bannerhad gone down long ago; but such was the force of Roman training thatnearly all of Sergius' men and half of the allies turned in mid-panicwith their leaders. To make head, much less to form was impossible,for the foremost of the enemy were well mingled with the rearmostfugitives. As Decius had said, it was only a choice of deaths: the oneswift and honourable, the other more lingering, but none the lessinevitable.

  Almost in a moment it was over. Between two and three hundred of theunited detachments had fallen already, and the hundred or so that nowsought to face about, went down in a crushed and bleeding mass underthe thousands of hoofs that overwhelmed them. Such was the weight andimpetus of the pursuing force that there was no time even to strike,and most of the victims fell unwounded by spear or javelin. Sergiuswas vaguely conscious that he had seen the praefect cloven through thehead by the short, swordlike Numidian knife, his own horse seemed tocollapse under him, and that was the end.

  Then he knew that it was dark and cold and that there was a howling inthe air, as of beasts of prey, and the shadow of a man fell across him,for the moon was in the heavens, and the man was cursing by all thegods of the Capitol.

  Gradually consciousness returned, and he recalled, incident byincident, the happenings of the past day. He had been lying still,thus far, without further wish than to look up at the stars and thinkand listen to what he now knew was the distant howling of wolves andthe nearer curses of Marcus Decius. At last he stirred slightly, andthe decurion turned and looked down.

  "Do you live, master?"

  "Yes, truly," replied Sergius; "unless you chance to be a shade."

  Then he struggled to his feet, and the two gazed silently at each otherand around them. All about, in the moonlight, lay the bodies of horsesand men, the latter glittering in their white tunics, save here andthere an officer whose helmet and breastplate had seemed to mark outhis corpse for stripping and nameless desecrations. Sergius'head-piece was gone, but he glanced at his own corselet and then atDecius.

  "We were buried together under a heap of dead," said the latter, inanswer to the unasked query. "They made haste in their spoiling; and,when they had gone, I drew myself free and found you: the wolves arefeasting well to-night; can you walk?"

  Sergius moved stiffly a few steps. He felt bruised from head to foot,and one arm hung useless from a dislocated shoulder, but he found nowound. Decius had not escaped so lightly. Besides the gash he hadreceived earlier in the day, he had been cut again across the forehead,but his prodigious strength seemed to have inexhaustible resources todraw upon.

  "Come," he said. "We must go southward as quickly as possible.Sergius still walked slowly about, glancing at one corpse afteranother, until the decurion, at last divining his thought, broke inroughly:--

  "Come! The wolves must provide him sepulchre as they will do forbetter men. What would he have? The she-wolf suckled the twins. LetHostilius pay the debt by feeding the she-wolf's cubs. By Hercules!other sepulchre for him means need of one for ourselves."

  So speaking, he at last drew Sergius away, and they began their wearytramp across the field.

  "If I could have seen but one pulse-eater among the slain," said thetribune, after they had gone some distance in silence.

  "I know of one that should be dead," remarked Decius, grimly, "if aspear through his midriff be enough for him. Truly the ancient shaftsare useless in close fight, save for a single thrust. I, for one,welcome the Greek equipment--and the sooner the better."

  Suddenly Sergius stopped and laid his hand upon his comrade's arm.

  "Look!" he said.

  A long, low rampart seemed to rise up from the plain two hundred yardsahead.

  "Their camp," said the decurion, after a short pause, "and deserted.Let us go forward cautiously; perhaps we shall find food."

  Step by step they crept up, walking faster and more erect as they drewnearer and as the evidence that life was not there became more apparent.

  "They have left it only to-night," said Decius, clambering up the moundof earth and sniffing the air. "Had it been a day old, we should havesmelt it long ago, though the wind blows from us."

  Then, as they descended and traversed the silent lanes, a puzzledexpression came to his face, and he halted from time to time.

  Sergius eyed him inquiringly.

  "Do you not smell fresh blood?" said the veteran, at last. "I rememberwhen we marched with Lucius Aemilius, after the Gauls had beaten thepraetor's army at Clusium. There were ten thousand men just slain, andthe air was salt like the sea--by Jupiter! What is this?"

  Resuming their advance, they had come upon a space of open ground nearthe centre of the camp, doubtless the spot reserved for a market; butwhat meat was it that cumbered the shambles, without buyer or seller?Piled in ghastly heaps, or covering the ground two and three deep, laya fresh-reaped harvest of corpses, stripped, distorted, gleaming in themoonlight. Could it be that the camp had been taken? But these wereno African dead, nor yet was this a Roman camp. There was a setdeliberation, too, about the slaughter, that told no tale of battle.

  Suddenly Decius
cried out and, stooping down, raised the hands of oneof the victims--hands upon which the shackles still hung.

  "Slaves," murmured Sergius; "but why--"

  "Say, rather, prisoners," said the centurion, grimly.

  Sergius struck his thigh. It was all clear to him now.

  "May the plague fall upon him! may he go to a thousand crosses! Do younot see? He is _escaping_. He has made for the passes and slain hisprisoners, that they may not hamper his march. Who knows but that bynow he is on the road to Rome? Gods! This was Hostilius' duty andmine, and we wasted our time and our men on a few score of miserableNumidians. Come, my Marcus, come: there are no such things as woundsor weariness or caution. We must reach the dictator at once, and maythe gods grant that it be not too late!"

  Marcus Decius had been gazing gloomily at the young man, as the wordsburst from his lips.

  "Where shall we go, and how?" he said, with a despairing gesture.

  "On our feet," cried Sergius. "Did I not say that weariness and woundswere not? It is for the life of the Republic: I to the camp nearCasilinum; you to Tarracina. They will march by the Appian or by theLatin Way, if they strike for Rome. If not, the plan may not be fatal."

  Decius yielded to the decision of his companion, and, with hastyfingers, they unlaced each other's corselets and hurried out of thecamp, each to run his race with what strength remained. The last claspof hands had been given and received, when, far away on the hills eastand northeast, the quick eye of Sergius caught the gleam of a rapidlymoving torch: then another and another and another seemed to flame outin the night, like stars when the moon has failed, until the wholerange of heights blazed with fires that flashed and danced and crossedand recrossed each other in mad confusion, as if all the throngingbacchanals of Greece had assembled for one frenzied orgy.

  Dazed and confounded by the spectacle, as grand as it was weird andunexplainable, they stood spell-bound, powerless each to take the firststride. Decius, the older man, the veteran, turned to his companion,yielding that unconscious homage to birth and rank and education, thatcomes in the presence of unknown perils. No experience of war couldhelp him here, and his mind leaped at once to the supernatural for anexplanation. As for the tribune, such thoughts, at least, had notoccurred to him. Greek scepticism had already gained too strong a holdupon young Romans of rank, to let them regard the theology of the Stateother than as a machinery devised by wise men to control an ignorantrabble. Besides, his mind had taken another direction from thediscovery of the slaughter of the prisoners, and, humanlike, it ran onin its channel, right or wrong.

  Decius was trembling violently.

  "Truly, master, the gods of Carthage are loose to-night," said he.

  There was even a little of contempt in the glance with which Sergiusnoted the abject terror of the sturdy veteran. Utterly at a loss toexplain the apparitions, he never doubted for a moment but that theywere the product of some human wile.

  "Come," he said shortly. "The gods of Carthage have favoured us inlighting the way. First of all, we shall go together and learn thetruth." Without waiting for a reply, he set off, at an easy, lopinggait, in the direction of the strange fires. Decius followed, as hewould have followed through the portals of Avernus.

  The distance to the heights was not great,--four or five miles at theutmost,--but half an hour had passed, and still the spectacle, wilderand more brilliant than ever, remained unexplained. For a stretch ofmiles, the hills above, beyond, and below were all ablaze with rushingflames that seemed guided by no sentient agency; then, suddenly, asingle torch glanced out from a small grove of trees a short distanceahead and darted diagonally across their path. Decius stopped for aninstant, with trembling knees; but Sergius bounded forward to interceptthe torch-bearer, and the veteran followed from sheer shame.

  Up, down to the ground, up again, and then around in frantic wavingcircles swept the flame: a mad bellowing rolled through the night,until the tribune himself almost checked his stride in awe-struckwonder. The next instant the torch, if torch it was, seemed toflounder to the earth, from which it rose again and came drivingdirectly toward him, explained at last,--an ox with a great bundle ofblazing fagots fastened between its horns, blinded, frantic with painand terror.

  Sergius sprang aside, as the beast dashed by; but Decius, roused oncemore to the possibility of independent thought and action, steppedtoward it and, as it passed, plunged his sword between its heaving ribs.

  "What now, my master?" he said, flushing with shame at his fears of thelast hour--perhaps the bravest hour of his life. "Does the lyingCarthaginian seek to terrify Quintus Fabius, the dictator, as heterrified Marcus Decius, the decurion?"

  "Yes, truly," replied Sergius, gloomily; "and he will succeed evenbetter. No general, and, least of all, ours, would lead out his armyin the night against such a spectacle. Come, it is necessary that weshould reach the camp," and, turning once again, they fell to runningin a more southern direction, where a dim glow in the sky seemed totell of the watchfires of an army.

  At first no sound broke the stillness of the night, save the labouredbreathing of the weary runners and the strokes of their leatherncothurni upon the hard ground; but soon other noises came to minglewith these and, at last, to drown them: the lowing of thousands ofcattle, now scattered far and wide over the plain and hillsides, andthen the distant clash of arms and the cries of combatants.

  Day began to dawn, just as the fugitives came in sight of the Romancamp with the army drawn up behind its ramparts, waiting for they knewnot what. Here and there upon the heights they could see small bodiesof legionaries who defended themselves against light troops of theenemy, until overwhelmed by the Spanish infantry that scaled the hillsand cut them to pieces; while to every prayer that the dictator shouldmarch out to their support, he returned one grim answer.

  "They deserted their posts in the passes. Rome needs not suchsoldiers."

  So, company by company, the guards of the defiles, terrified or luredaway to the ridges by the ruse of the cattle and the blazing fagots,fell ingloriously before their comrades' eyes, as being men not worththe effort to succour. The rear-guard of the invaders had already madeits way through the pass, while the Carthaginian van was well on intothe valley of the Volturnus. Now, too, the African light troopsdisappeared, and, at last, the white tunics of the Spaniards, gay withtheir purple borders, glittered for a moment on the hilltops, and then,their work of death completed, sank away behind the ridges to fall backand join their comrades in a march of new destruction through a newcountry.