by R. W. Peake
Batius and his men saw the collision when they were still more than five hundred paces away from being able to do anything about it; matters were made worse because, as he took in the scene, the Primus Pilus recognized that these elephants were an entirely different proposition than those they had faced at Thapsus. Even from a distance, he could see that, while these animals were smaller than the ones that had been a part of Scipio’s force, they were still a much more formidable proposition than the African variety. The only armor that those at Thapsus wore was a leather blanket, and their tusks were exposed and not bolstered by anything to make them more lethal.
More problematically was the presence of the three men perched in the wooden box who made approaching the animals even more dangerous. It was for this reason that Batius suddenly called a halt, although his men assumed it was to allow their comrades in the Sixth Century to catch up to distribute the heavier, longer siege spears, which Batius did nothing to dispel. It didn’t take him long to determine one simple but unpalatable fact; even with the spears, these armored elephants posed too much of a challenge for his boys. None of this was discernible in his demeanor, his lined, battered features looking as if they had been carved from stone as he watched impassively at the sight of the 6th being scattered like so many leaves before a strong wind. If his men had known that, for the first time, Aulus Batius was truly frightened, it was likely that any chance at victory would have evaporated like a drop of water on a hot stove, but he had long since perfected the skill of never letting his inner thoughts show. Nevertheless, he experienced a despair that was completely foreign to him, and it was that feeling that caused him to look away from the carnage. When, in the privacy of his quarters, Batius thought about it later, while he wasn’t a normally religious man, the fact that he happened to look to his left, towards the quadratum instead of the right where Hirtius’ cavalry was galloping in a seemingly aimless circle, he attributed to the gods, in particular to Mithras, who he had become an adherent of during his time in Parthia. At first, he was just staring vacantly at the mass of mules and wagons who, infected by the terror of their fellow creatures farther up the column, were exhibiting the first signs of the same panic, but his eye was caught by what, in reality, was nothing more than a red splotch of paint on the side of one of the wagons. Even then, the meaning didn’t come to him immediately, but then, after perhaps a couple of heartbeats, he felt the stirring of realization, not only what that red blotch of paint meant in a practical sense, but what it represented.
“Naphtha,” he said this aloud, but not loudly enough to be heard by his Aquilifer, but then he repeated it. “Naphtha! That’s it!” Before the standard bearer could react, Batius was running, moving with a speed that was impressive for a man his age, but as he did, he was bellowing, “First through Fifth Sections, on me! Drop your shields and javelins! Hurry up, you slow bastards!”
They didn’t hesitate, even if they had no idea why they were doing so, and they trailed after Batius, who didn’t break his stride even when he was just a couple paces from the front ranks of the Eighth Cohort of the 6th, who at that moment were still facing east, waiting for orders as they helplessly watched their comrades in the higher Cohorts being brutally punished.
Instead, he bellowed, “Make way, boys! Make way! Let us through!”
“You heard him! Move!” The Octus Pilus Prior had seen Batius coming, and while he had no idea why, he anticipated that his men would need to make way.
However, instead of trying to scramble out of the way, every man of the First of the Eighth simple pivoted, turning sideways and thereby opening up the space between the files so that Batius’ men didn’t even need to slow down as they went sprinting through the ranks. Batius had to weave through the mass of section mules who normally occupied the space immediately adjacent to the marching column, which was more difficult than normal because several of them were beginning to hop about as they tried to jerk the lead line attached to their bridle out of the grasp of the slave who was responsible for it. Batius ignored this, and he reached the back of the wagon a couple of paces ahead of the faster men. The driver, seeing not just a Centurion, but one wearing the white crest of Primus Pilus running directly for his wagon as if Cerberus was on his heels, panicked and leapt down to the ground on the opposite side, fleeing just as Batius arrived.
“Stop! Come back, you stupid cunnus!” Batius half-shouted, half-gasped, but the driver paid no heed, running as quickly as Batius had, but heading for the opposite side of the formation. “I might need you to drive the wagon, idiot,” Batius didn’t bother yelling this; besides, he was already moving to the back of the wagon.
The vehicles of the baggage train were composed of three basic types; the standard Roman heavy wagon that was essentially a wooden box on wheels, a wagon of the same dimensions but with a tarpaulin covering, and finally, the two-wheeled carts that they had adopted as their own after encountering them in Parthia. This was a wagon of the first variety, and Batius undid the latch to swing one of the wooden doors open, both to confirm the contents and as preparatory for what came next. Arranged in neat rows were small wooden boxes, stacked one atop the other, but in between each layer were what Batius knew were simply flat sheets of fire-hardened clay, of the same variety that was used for amphorae, placed that way because they weren’t flammable, the first visual clue that whatever was contained within the wagon was volatile. His men caught up with him, one of them helping Batius swing open the second door.
“Right,” Batius began, pointing up at the top row of boxes. “Tubero, you and Dentulus get up there and start handing those boxes down.” Neither man hesitated, leaping up onto the narrow lip at the back of the wagon, while Batius warned, unnecessarily, “And be careful! That cac is tricky stuff!”
Neither man needed to be reminded; they had seen the effects of what one of these small, innocuous-looking jars could do when it came into contact with flame, so it was with an almost exaggerated care that they began handing down the boxes, none of which had tops, leaving the content clearly visible. Each jar, the mouth covered with leather that was secured with cord around the neck, had a length of rag of about six inches in length hanging from it, and was nestled in straw. Boxes only contained one jar, so as the two men handed them down, Batius took a quick count of the contents.
“I don’t know if one wagon is going to be enough.”
It was a sign of his worry that he said this loudly enough for the other men to hear, none of whom, it should be said, looked particularly happy to be holding a box.
“Primus Pilus,” one of the rankers spoke up now, knowing as he did he ran the risk of being rebuked for offering unsolicited advice, “do you really think we’ll need one for each of those fucking elephants? I think that once we turn two or three of them into torches, the others will want nothing to do with it.”
Batius instantly realized the man was right, and he nodded as he said, “Good point. So,” he thought for a moment, “twenty of them should do just…”
He didn’t finish because this was the moment when the second force of elephants barged into the 8th, evidenced by the screaming of men, horses, and elephants from a completely different direction. Alarmed, at first, Batius darted from behind the wagon to look northwestward, the direction from which this new sound originated, but he couldn’t see because of the mass of wagons and animals. Running to the front, he leapt up onto the footboard of the wagon, and while his view was still partially obscured, he saw enough.
Dropping to the ground, he didn’t say or do anything for a moment, his mind racing, then he decided, “All right, we’ve got twenty of these things, there’s another thirty in the wagon. Tubero, you and your section, along with the Fifth, take twenty of these as well. But,” he pointed in the opposite direction from which they had come, “you’re going to take them to the Sixth. Tell Pilus Prior Macula that I leave it up to him the best way to use them for those beasts on his side.”
Then, without waiting for acknowledgemen
t, Batius gestured to the men who were already carrying a box to follow him. The one difference was that this time, they didn’t run; none of the men would have even if they had been ordered to, not wanting to trip and go crashing to the ground. Such was the fear and respect for this substance, it had become an article of faith among the rankers, and a fair number of officers, that for reasons they couldn’t understand, let alone explain, naphtha could ignite on its own, without any kind of spark or flame being applied to it. The idea of being knocked sprawling by one of the mules, most of whom were now twisting, hopping, and in every other way doing their best to shake their handlers’ grasp on the only thing that kept them under control was sufficient to make them walk, quickly, back towards their comrades. It helped their cause that Batius didn’t bother glancing behind him, since he was running, but he didn’t realize how far ahead of his men he had gotten until he got back to where the first five of his Cohorts were standing, when he turned to give orders to distribute the naphtha and there was nobody there to direct. Never known for his patience, Batius was on the verge of rushing back and thrashing the men with his vitus, but when he saw one of them forced to dodge aside as a pack mule suddenly managed to jerk free and wheel around to go galloping in a northerly direction, he understood why they weren’t right behind him. Once they were there, he distributed the jars, giving four to each Pilus Prior.
“Give them to the men with the best aim,” he warned each of them. “Because this is going to be messy no matter how well it goes.”
As every man who witnessed what was about to happen would later be able to attest, that was an understatement, but not one of those men ever faulted Aulus Batius and the boys of the 5th Alaudae, all of them unanimously agreeing that they saved the day.
Abhiraka had climbed down from Darpashata, both because the animal was getting restless and his ass had grown numb. He had watched the beginning of the plan to stop the Romans unfold, although it was difficult to see any real details from almost two miles away at first. Then, as he had been ordered, Ushabad began giving ground, and before a third of a Roman watch had passed, the rearmost ranks of the phalanx were about a mile from Abhiraka when the trap sprang shut. Men had been making their way back in Abhiraka’s direction, where the Bargosan camp was located, some limping, others holding an arm or clutching some part of their body, and always covered with blood, but at first, it had been a trickle of casualties. Then, starting with the flurry of javelins from both flanks, followed by the force of swordsmen bursting from out of the forest on either side, Abhiraka shook his fist in delight as he sat watching. While it was still too far away to make out much detail, because of his higher vantage point, the king could see how the initial attack had caught the Romans by surprise, as the neatly ordered lines quickly degraded because of the appearance of this new threat to their flanks. He was slightly disappointed at how quickly the Romans reacted; he saw that the men in the second row who, by his judgment, were about a hundred paces behind the men currently engaged, managed to swing around so they were facing their new attackers, before his own swordsmen managed to penetrate into the space in between. In fact, while he had no way or reason to know that the interval between the Roman first and second line wasn’t random, he saw that when the Romans in the group nearest to the dense parts of the forest wheeled around, moving quickly but without any sign they were panicking, so that when they were parallel to the edge of the forest, the men of the left file were now no more than five or six paces from the rearmost rank of the Romans still fighting his phalanx troops. It, he thought with a growing sense of unease, is like a cork in a bottle; there was now no way for enough of his swordsmen to get in the rear of the first line, and he watched helplessly as the bolder of those men who had rushed headlong into the Roman rear were trapped and quickly cut down. His attention had been so focused on this that he didn’t notice that the group immediately next to the one that had essentially swung like a shutting door was moving as well, so that he wasn’t even certain how there was now a long line of Romans placed perpendicular to their comrades battling the phalanx. He had been paying attention to what was going on to his left, but it didn’t take long for him to turn his attention to the opposite side, where he saw that the Romans had done essentially the same thing.
“They move too quickly,” he muttered to himself, but while he wasn’t pleased, he wasn’t worried; his elephants were going to be what decided this battle.
Even when he had been astride Darpashata earlier, it was impossible for him to see where the rest of the Roman army was waiting for their comrades to subdue his phalanx troops with any hope of making out details, but he felt certain that he would know when his twin columns of elephants emerged from the forest to smash into the enemy waiting just beyond the opposite edge of the forest. He decided that it was about the right time, so he strode back over to Darpashata, making the “tut-tut” sound that signaled the animal to kneel down on its front legs, which Abhiraka used as a step, leaping astride the animal, using the “hup-hup” sound that caused it to stand back up. Returned to his perch, Abhiraka swore softly at the sight of the Roman lines remaining in essentially the same spot as when he had dismounted, signaling that his ambush force hadn’t performed up to his expectations. The sounds of the fighting were audible, but not to a point where he could distinguish much, although every so often, he would hear a low bass note from sort of horn. Seeing that the trickle of wounded had steadily increased, and now seemed equally composed of the original men of the phalanx and his corps of swordsmen and javelineers, Abhiraka felt a cold sweat form that made a shivering trail down his spine, the first tendrils of real doubt beginning to wrap themselves around his consciousness. He shook his head as if it would physically drive the thoughts away, and he reminded himself that the elephants were the key to victory. It was a few heartbeats after that his eye was drawn, not to the nearest battle but to the far end, where the Romans were little more than a single dark line, individuals and even units of men indistinguishable, so it was more the movement of a slightly larger mass of…something that had suddenly appeared from behind the obscuring edge of the thick forest to his left that had captured his attention. Abhiraka instantly knew what it was, and he let out a huge bellow of triumph.
“There!” He pointed, shouting to his bodyguards, the wounded who were now lying behind him, and anyone who was within earshot. “There are my beauties! Now we watch these dogs run! We are going to destroy them!”
This was greeted by a chorus of triumphant bellows; his bodyguards, half of whom were mounted on elephants and the other half on horses that had been raised from birth in the presence of the animals, shoving their weapons into the air, each of them competing to be heard by their king. Abhiraka’s smile broadened, to the point it felt like it would split his face as he watched the mass that had appeared from his left move across his line of vision, until what he was now certain were his elephants were directly to his front. He imagined the chaos, the sounds of men screaming in terror and pain, relying on the memories of other battles against other enemies in which he had personally led his beloved animals into the lines of his foes, reveling in the destruction they caused. As much as he cherished the animals in general, and Darpashata in particular, he had too much experience with the beasts to know that, even if it wasn’t by an enemy, he would inevitably lose some of his elephants. Much like men, each of them had a different temperament and personality, and there were always a few who were lost to the battle lust that turned them into a weapon that was more dangerous to their own than the enemy. This was why every handler, including the king himself, wore a large bronze spike hanging from a stout leather thong around their neck, and a hammer in a special harness attached to the belt around their waist. When an elephant lost control of its senses and refused to obey commands, every handler was trained to yank the spike from their neck, place it at the precise point right behind the bony protuberance at the back of their massive heads, and strike the spike with the hammer. If done correctly, the
animal would instantly collapse, their spine severed right at the base of the skull; this, Abhiraka knew from grim experience, was easier said than done, especially when the beast was throwing its head around as it used its massive tusks and trunk to spear or smash anything in its path. More than once, he had watched the handler miss the mark, which made matters worse, further enraging an already inflamed animal that weighed six tons, and it had never ended well, for the handler, the animal, or those unfortunate men who were too close to escape. He had been forced to do this once himself, on Darpashata’s predecessor, but the animal had been old, and Abhiraka took responsibility because he should have known better than to take the old bull to one final battle.
These were the thoughts running through his head as, still smiling, he watched as there was more movement, this time from his right, and just by the size and shape, he was certain that it was the second force of elephants. I will have to speak to Gajadhar and find out why he was tardy, but this was an idle thought that ran through his mind; the original plan called for Gajadhar and the other commander, named Sophanes, to hit the Romans from both sides at the same time, but the more he thought about it, the more Abhiraka began to think that it was a stroke of good fortune that Gajadhar had been late. Undoubtedly, the Romans on the western side of their large formation, which his scouts had described, accurately, as a large hollow square that protected their baggage train contained within, would be aware that there were fifty elephants on the opposite side. While it was a bit much to assume that they would be so concerned about Sophanes’ force that they wouldn’t notice that Gajadhar was bringing his animals from the east, Abhiraka was an experienced warrior, and certainly he had seen stranger things happen. He had just decided that this was, indeed, a good thing and not bad when, back over to the left side of the larger Roman formation, his eye was attracted to something, although it wasn’t movement, exactly. At first, he thought that, for some reason, the sun’s rays had caught the reflection of a particularly large piece of metal, undoubtedly polished bronze given the goldish hue, except it was a lighter shade, and it didn’t go away, suggesting that whatever had caught the light hadn’t moved. Before he could solve this and begin to decipher what it could be, there was another, almost identical flash, separated from the first one by less than the width of a little finger when he put up a hand to try to measure the distance. This was when he first experienced a deep sense of unease, and when the first example of what he now realized was some sort of flame began moving, rapidly, but heading to his left, away from the middle of the Roman formation, he let out a gasp.