by R. W. Peake
“Master,” he asked quietly, “have you seen this boy before?”
Pullus’ eyes never left the boy’s who, now that he had managed to conquer his fear of Pullus, was returning the Roman’s stare with a blazing hatred and anger that actually made Pullus smile, recognizing the look, and not only understanding it, appreciating it.
“You could say that,” Pullus answered. “I think I killed his friend, or maybe his brother. And he came at me.” Only then did he glance over at Diocles, giving what might have been an embarrassed shrug. “So I hit him.”
“Yes,” Diocles answered dryly, “I can see that much.” He paused, then asked curiously, “Why didn’t you kill him?”
This was actually what Pullus had been asking himself from the instant he recognized the Bargosan, but once more, he could only offer a shrug and answer, “I have no idea.”
“Maybe the gods have plans for the both of you,” Diocles suggested, although he wasn’t being serious, taking the opportunity to needle his master on a topic that they had spent countless watches arguing.
“Oh, go piss on your boots,” Pullus grumbled as he turned and walked back to the ladder. He dropped down it, but before he descended out of sight, he called out to Diocles. When the Greek looked at him, Pullus said quietly, “Once you’ve bandaged him, put him with the other prisoners. But,” he hesitated briefly, then added, “keep an eye on him.” Diocles tried to hide his surprise, and he naturally assured Pullus he would do that very thing. It was only after he dropped out of sight and out of earshot, Pullus muttered, “Maybe the gods do have plans, but I’m fucked if I know what they are.”
After Pullus left, Diocles finished the process of bandaging the Bargosan’s head, neatly tearing the end so he could tie it in place, then he asked in Greek, but very slowly, “What…is…your…name,” then pointing to himself, said, “I am Diocles.”
He saw the look of understanding, and the youth answered, “Barhinder.”
Nodding, Diocles said, “Well, Barhinder, I’m not sure, but I think my master might have saved your life.”
By the time Pollio, Hirtius, and their commands arrived to reunite with the 15th and the 11th, it was midday of the day after their initial battle, the king and his companions now long gone. There would have been confusion once the long-lost portion of Pollio’s army reunited with Caesar and his Legions, even if matters with the men inside the walls hadn’t been so unsettled. And, despite Caesar’s best efforts to keep the two halves separated until he could handle the mutiny, it was almost inevitable that before the sun went down that day, the Legions under Pollio learned of the situation inside the walls of the city they still thought of as Bargosa. Fortunately, at least for Pollio and his officers, news of the uprising didn’t reach the ears of his Legions until after camp had been made, just a bit more than a half-mile north of the canal. This proved to be a temporary blessing, as the men of Pollio’s army were subjected to the stench of a particularly grisly battle, thanks to the prevailing southern wind, although for one of the few times the afternoon rains that had actually been absent the previous two days were welcomed by the men because it helped dampen the smell for a short period of time. Inside the city, things began to settle down, not because of any cooling of the mutineers’ ardor as it pertained to their grievances, but men were succumbing to the combination of alcohol and fatigue. It was a bizarre scene that would last with Pullus and most of the Centurions for many years, because in some ways, it looked like a battle had taken place where it was the Romans who were defeated, because the streets were crowded with not only the inert forms of the civilian dead, but the Roman victors, all of them sprawled out seemingly where they had fallen. This was true enough, but it was the snoring, farting, and the occasional sound of a semi-conscious man retching that betrayed the fact that these men had fallen into a drunken stupor, exhausted as much by the rapine and frenzied debauchery as the fight that took place. Once it became clear that, for the most part, the danger to them was in temporary abeyance, those Bargosans who had managed to either evade the depredations by the Roman invaders or survived with bumps, bruises, and cuts that weren’t serious enough to debilitate, began creeping back out into the open. Gathering in small groups, at first they only spoke in whispers, terrified at the thought of rousing these demons who didn’t seem to care that the spot they had chosen to rest was right next to the corpse of one of the inhabitants. People who ventured out in search of loved ones were forced to stifle their screams of grief whenever they found the body, or bodies, of the family members or friends for whom they were looking, although once it became obvious that the Romans were dead to the world, the grief became less circumspect. By mid-afternoon, the only men still standing among Caesar’s Legions inside the walls were the Centurions, Optios, Signiferi, and those few rankers who had remained loyal to their general. However, like their rebelling comrades a watch earlier, they were all weaving about and staggering in a manner almost identical to the mutineers, except that the cause for them was fatigue.
“We’re going to have to get some fucking sleep, and soon,” Pullus told his officers, but all he got in answer were some weary nods or grunts of agreement.
They were now gathered inside the enclosure; the citizens who had tried to remain within the confines had fled to the farthest edges of the huge space, but they were quickly driven out and forced back out into the city to allow Pullus to bring his men within the walls. Even doing that had been a chore, the men moving mulishly slow, although there had been no open refusals, at least that had been reported to Pullus. The one task that was met with no resistance was transporting the wounded into the city to join with those who had fallen during the fighting inside the walls, with men even volunteering to help carry their stricken comrades to a more comfortable spot. Caesar had somehow prevailed on Hyppolita to order the slaves and servants who lived in a two-story annex to the palace out of their quarters and connected to the palace by a covered walkway, which was turned into a makeshift hospital. By nightfall, the 10th’s Centurions, and the Optios, Corniceni and Tesseraurii who all shared one tent were essentially encamped within the enclosure, the only area off-limits being the palace itself, and the portion of the royal stables where the elephants were housed. The rankers, however, had been allowed to choose their own lodgings, not by virtue of any orders to that effect, either by Pullus or by Caesar, but in the recognition that even if they gave the order to make a camp and erect tents, it would in all probability not be followed. The most that Pullus was able to accomplish was prevailing upon the mutineers of his Legion to agree to choose those buildings that were nearest to the enclosure, and while they acquiesced, it was grudging. In the case of the elephants’ enclosure, it wasn’t because of any order Caesar gave that the men stayed away; simply put, the Romans who had been forced to fight these animals wanted as little to do with them as possible. The only excitement had been when, on Pullus’ orders, shortly before dawn, Nasica had taken some men from his Cohort in that direction; the tall structure that housed the elephants abutted the western wall of the enclosure and extended east for more than a furlong. Attached to it was another building, similar in size to the servants’ quarters next to the palace, and as Nasica and his men had discovered, the surviving Bargosans who had served in Abhiraka’s elephant corps had fled there and barricaded themselves inside. A stalemate ensued, mainly because Nasica acted wisely in this case, despite Pullus’ reservations about the man, mainly because Nasica wasn’t confident that enough of his men would follow him in an assault on the building. Instead, he chose to surround it, and this marked the closest any Roman got to the elephants, four of them the escapees from the trap Pullus had set, along with the elephant that the vanished Abhiraka had ridden, with Bolon and Nahapana as his crew that had been abandoned somewhere near the northern wall. They had either been returned to the enclosure or, in the case of the elephant Abhiraka had ridden, returned on their own, even as the trapped elephants were being slaughtered, but more out of habit than for
any other reason, each of them had returned to their individual stall, similar to that a horse would occupy, but naturally much larger and taller. All that remained inside the city of what was once a seemingly unconquerable force of two hundred war animals were these five, the fifteen that had been in musth, five females who were nursing calves, and ten animals who had been wounded outside the walls and were considered unfit for Abhiraka’s attempt to break out. Aside from these beasts, Darpashata, with Ranjeet aboard him, was leading the survivors of the two attacks outside the walls, somewhere to the east of the city, but the Romans would quickly discover the presence of dozens of elephants spread throughout the city, the difference being these animals were bred to work and not wage war.
Calm was gradually restored, although it was mainly from sheer exhaustion on the part of everyone involved, with some exceptions. Most importantly, Caesar was still alert and working feverishly to do what he could to improve his precarious situation, starting with sending orders to the fleet to finally find a semi-permanent anchor. However, it was his order to the double row of biremes to remove themselves from the canal that he believed, or hoped at least, would enable him to contain the infection of disobedience that had consumed three of his Legions and impacted the fourth in the 10th. The planks that had been laid between the outer row of ships to enable the men carried by those ships to join in the assault were still in place, along with the modified ladders, which had proven to be more effective than anyone, even Volusenus, thought possible. What worried Caesar was that, sometime in the night, some of his navarchae, taking an initiative that he normally would approve of, had extended planks from the left side of their outer ships to the opposite bank, creating a precarious bridge. Initially, Caesar had been thankful, because it was over this bridge that Caesar learned of the attack by Ranjeet’s force, and that Flaminius and Torquatus had successfully repelled it thanks to the warning by Decurion Silva. Not only was it good news that the two Legions had been in position to repulse an attack, learning that Pollio’s portion of the army, while badly damaged, hadn’t been destroyed sent a wave of relief through Caesar that he made no attempt to hide when he finally learned of it. That, however, had been earlier; now, it was imperative to Caesar that the two halves of the army have as little contact with each other as possible, in order to contain the mutiny to those already in revolt. It was an understandable decision; however, if Caesar had bothered to consult with the Primi Pili in his part of the army, they would have stressed in no uncertain terms that this was just as likely to exacerbate matters as to help ameliorate them. In a slightly different way, Caesar was exhibiting the same flaw that put him in such peril of assassination; his inability to look at situations through another Roman’s eyes was the one thing about Caesar that Pullus, and many of the others who followed him, worried about the most. In battle, Caesar was remarkable for his ability to think like his opponent, which made his actions with his fellow Romans even more of a mystery to those who took notice. In the case of his attempt to isolate the Legions inside the city by ordering the ships to vacate the canal and the single barge to be towed out into the river, it failed miserably, and quickly. There was a slight delay; it wasn’t until after the sun went down on the first full day after the battle that Pollio arrived at the palace, forced to take a more laborious route because of Caesar’s orders by commandeering one of the ships that had been forced to beach itself on the riverbank on the eastern side of the canal and arriving at the southern wharfs, which were already packed with the ships of the fleet, with repairs to the damaged ships and docks already underway. The Legate’s progress to the spot Caesar had selected for his praetorium was further delayed because the mutineers were rousing themselves and, while they were no longer drunk, they were suffering from a ferocious collective hangover and in a correspondingly surly mood. To Pollio’s dismay, and with a certain amount of fear, it became clear that the only way those Centurions and Optios who weren’t involved with the mutiny were tolerated by the men was if they simply didn’t interfere in any way with the men of their Centuries. Perhaps the only positive was that the streets had been cleared of the corpses, since the process of decay was hastened by the high temperature and humidity. To where the dead had disappeared only became apparent when Pollio’s mount suddenly shied as they approached what appeared to be a large barn or stable, just an instant before the stench hit his own nostrils, and he caught a glimpse through a partially opened door of what he estimated might number more than a hundred bodies, in a pile several feet high. If that had been the only example, it might have been easy to dismiss, but by the time Pollio traveled the more than a mile to the southern gate of the enclosure because of the route, he had passed a half-dozen such sights, and he realized that this was the only extent to which the mutineers had gone to remove the corpses.
His mood had already been downcast when he entered the opened southern gates; by the time he reached Caesar, he looked as grim as Caesar had ever seen him, which ironically was an appropriate match to Caesar’s own. In another surprise, Pollio’s gaze was drawn away from the palace, which was certainly an admirable-looking structure to a man with a taste for architecture, by the sight that normally wouldn’t have drawn a second glance. However, a Roman praetorium tent, erected in the middle of what was the large open area on the eastern side of the palace, seemed decidedly out of place; that there were Centurions clustered around, all of them still wearing their armor and helmets, made it seem even stranger, not to mention the smaller but still spacious tents of the Primus Pilus, Pili Priores, Centurions, and Optios. It wasn’t hard to spot Titus Pullus, and even before he was close enough to recognize faces, he was certain that the short, stocky Primus Pilus next to him would be Spurius. Where Mus and Carfulenus were at this moment he had no way of knowing, but he did feel it wise to stop and talk to these two before meeting with Caesar, and he dismounted a few feet away. Pollio saw they were engaged in some sort of serious discussion, but they broke off readily enough when they saw the Legate approaching, offering him a salute, which he promptly returned.
“It’s good to see you, sir,” Pullus said, with a level of emotion that underscored the concern that he and the men of Caesar’s army had shared at the disappearance of Pollio’s men.
“It’s good to be seen,” Pollio answered honestly, prompting a couple of chuckles from the two men. He understood he owed these men an explanation, but he decided that the current situation took precedence; neither did he feel right about just ignoring the subject, so he said, “I’m sure that you have a lot of questions about where we’ve been, and under different circumstances, I would love to tell you, but…”
Before he got any further, Pullus lifted a hand, assuring Pollio, “We completely understand, sir.” He hesitated, then asked, “How did you get into the city? I mean,” he hurried on, “which gate did you enter through?”
“The southern,” Pollio answered, and the pair exchanged a glance, while Spurius commented, “So you know a little bit of our situation, then.”
“If by situation, you mean none of the Centurions seem to have any control over their men, then yes,” Pollio answered, but while he hadn’t meant it in an insulting manner, he heard his own words, so before either man could respond, he held both hands up. “Please, Centurions, forgive me. I heard how it sounded as I said it, and I don’t mean to imply that the fault is with the officers of the Legions.” Sighing, he couldn’t look either of them in the eye as he acknowledged, “No, I know that what’s going on has been building for some time, and I know that you and the other Primi Pili have been trying to warn Caesar that this was coming.” He was pleased to see that they both accepted his words, which were sincere, but now that their general’s name had been mentioned, Pollio asked, “What about Caesar? How is he taking this?”
The two again exchanged a glance, but Spurius gave Pullus a nod, which prompted the large Primus Pilus to answer honestly, “Not well. Although,” for reasons Pollio didn’t immediately understand, Pullus added with a
grin, “I think part of his problem doesn’t have anything to do with the army and everything to do with Hyppolita.”
“Hyppolita?” Pollio repeated the name, frowning as he tried to recall the name, but he shook his head and asked, “Who is Hyppolita?”