The Noise of War
The Sertorius Scroll Book II
Vincent B. Davis II
Thirteenth Press, LLC
Copyright © 2019 by Vincent B. Davis II
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Scott Pratt and his family
Contents
Introduction
Join the Legion!
I. Espionage
1. Scroll I
2. Scroll II
3. Scroll III
4. Scroll IV
5. Scroll V
6. Scroll VI
7. Scroll VII
8. Scroll VIII
9. Scroll IX
10. Scroll X
11. Scroll XI
12. Scroll XII
13. Scroll XIII
14. Scroll XIV
15. Scroll XV
16. Scroll XVI
17. Scroll XVII
18. Scroll XVIII
19. Scroll XIX
II. War
20. Scroll XX
21. Scroll XXI
22. Scroll XXII
23. Scroll XXIII
24. Scroll XXIV
25. Scroll XXV
26. Scroll XXVI
27. Scroll XXVII
28. Scroll XXVIII
29. Scroll XXIX
30. Scroll XXX
31. Scroll XXXI
32. Scroll XXXII
Epilogue
Untitled
Acknowledgments
This story is based on a
real man and real events
After any battle, a soldier must check himself to see what he’s lost and what remains. Has he sustained any injuries? Does he have any major hemorrhages? Lost any fingers? Any toes?
After Arausio, we who survived were forced to do the same with our very souls.
Had we lost our sense of humor? Our love for one another?
What possibly could have survived the great loss of Arausio, where ninety thousand Romans were slaughtered. The bodies of my brothers covered the earth for miles. The treetops of the aged pines shook with the ascension of their ghosts.
I apologize, reader, for not writing in so long. It has been almost a year since I wrote the final chapter of my last scroll, detailing my first years in the Colors. It was much more difficult to relive than I had previously anticipated. In that one day, when our numbers marched against the vicious and boundless forces of the Cimbri and Teutone armies, I lost my only sibling and all of the men I had served with. They were butchered like animals. And for whatever reason, the gods spared me that day. I have been searching for the reason ever since.
Some wounds simply remain. I once knew a soldier who injured his ankle on his very first campaign, and eighteen years of service later, the nasty bugger still gave him trouble. And I can tell you from experience, the wounds of the soul last just as long. Perhaps longer. The memory of Arausio stayed with me, and with those few others who survived.
After finishing my first set of scrolls, I decided I would have to quit writing them altogether. Writing and recollecting the men I served with who died that day—my brother, Titus, men like Ax, Flamen, Terence, Pilate—it was too much for me to bear.
But after speaking with those closest to me, I have decided to continue on. I am still at war with Rome, the only nation I have ever loved, and cannot guarantee that I will live long enough to finish this tale, unless the gods see fit to spare me. Regardless, this memoir might be the last contribution I can make to Rome, and therefore I will press on.
When I first went to Rome, I was a naive young boy. Unschooled in all the ways of the world, I was unprepared for what awaited me in both political life and in the military. My father endowed me with principles, with character, and I hope with some modicum of courage, but these attributes were less suited for a life in politics and warfare than I had hoped. After Arausio, I was many things, but naive was not one of them. I had learned about war. I had learned about life, and death, and the terrible things that men can do to one another. I had no desire to relive the experiences by taking up my gladius again, but Fortuna (and Consul Gaius Marius, for that matter) had other plans for me.
My service to Rome was not completed, and perhaps still isn’t. So I will continue my story, picking up where I last left off—hiding like animals in a Gallic village, trying to find survivors among the dead, and trying to discover what remained of ourselves.
Before continuing, be sure to JOIN THE LEGION! You’ll receive a high-res map, a family tree, and other companion materials for your reading! On top of that, you’ll receive Vincent’s spinoff, Son of Mars, for free!
I
Espionage
1
Scroll I
Ides of August 650 ab urbe condita
I lost an eye at Arausio. Had the thing ripped out by a slinger’s rock. This wound, and the others I had sustained, were mended by Arrea, the girl I had found and fallen in love with during the campaign months prior. After hiding, resting, and recovering for nearly four months, I began to construct a makeshift camp outside the Gallic village Arelate, and waited for other soldiers to join us.
A few poor souls came in slowly at first, most of them having woken up underneath the bloated corpses of their friends on the fields of Arausio, or washing up like I had along the Rhône riverbank. They were all as broken, physical and emotionally, as I was. Lucius was the one exception: strong, focused, and relentlessly positive. Perhaps his cruel fated upbringing, losing both his parents in his childhood, had prepared him in some way for how truly painful the world could be.
I couldn’t accept what I had seen, what had happened. There was a structure to the world, I believed. Some system for how things worked, or should work. Now that I had lived through the single most devastating loss in Roman history, or perhaps all of human history, I could not reconcile the experience with the moral codes I had been taught: my conceptualizations, my beliefs about human nature and the notions of cosmic justice through which I understood everything that had happened in my life, up until then.
The world had become petrifying. It refused to be understood and articulated by a mere boy like myself.
Lucius refused to let me wallow, however. I was still recovering from my wounds and attempting to adjust to the difficulties of balance and vision with one of my eyes now gone, Lucius helped me build our makeshift camp outside Arelate. We started by gathering logs from the Gallic woodline and began with a small perimeter defense. It couldn’t have protected us from a band of children with a handful of rocks, but it was something. It kept us, in Lucius’s mind at least, in the world of soldiers. We weren’t yet prepared to live any other life, for that was even more terrifying.
It took us a long time to finish putting up the camp. I think Arrea and Lucius conspired to delay the process, afraid of what I’d be like when there was nothing left to preoccupy myself with. When the three of us wedged the final log in the earth, Lucius had already devised another plan.
“Good work, boys,” Arrea said, smiling at the two of us.
“Thank you, sincerely.” I leaned over a squeezed her now callused hands.
“Quintus,” Lucius said, and I already knew something was troubling him, “there have to be more survivors. Don’t you think?”
I shook my head. “They would have come by now.”
“Perhaps they believe they’re the only ones still alive, just like we did for a long time. Maybe they don’t know how to find us.”
I looked to Arrea to determine whether or not she
was in agreement as well, and the blush of her cheeks told me it was probable.
“What would you propose we do?”
“The battlefield is about thirty miles north. We can ride out and see if anyone is still there.”
“No. I’m not strong enough to return to that place.” I turned and wiped my splintered hands off on the Gallic tunic I had purchased a few weeks prior.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit. You survived the battle, surely you could return if it meant saving more of your men,” Arrea said, placing her hand on my forearm. She was encouraging, but I could tell by the shimmer in her eyes that she understood my resistance.
“And where will we get the horses?” I asked.
“I talked to a villager in Arelate. He said he’d be willing to let us take two horses, and guide us there himself,” said Lucius.
“I see you’ve already made up your mind.” I licked the sweat from my lips and blocked the sun from my eye to see my friend’s face.
“I’ll not go without you.”
“And what about you?” I turned to Arrea.
“You know I don’t mind working with you, my dove, but I could use some rest anyhow.” She stepped closer to me.
“Alright.” I nodded, realizing that I didn’t have enough excuses to combat both of them. “We can leave at first light.”
Lucius instantly sighed with relief. I hadn’t noticed the lines of worry that had begun to etch themselves on his once youthful face. I was afraid his concern for me might begin to turn his blond hair gray, but I didn’t know how to articulate myself properly…how I could tell him that I wasn’t fine, but that I was. The strain my condition placed on Arrea and Lucius shamed me, and the shame made my condition worse.
“Excellent. I’ll alert our guide immediately. You two get some rest.” He patted Arrea and myself on the arm.
I stood still as my friend hurried off toward the village, already panicking as images of the battlefield flashed before my eye.
“Quintus?” Arrea said, craning into view. “Let’s lie down.”
I allowed her to lead me to our little tent, the one we had held each other in for months now.
“Do you need help?” She leaned forward to balance me as I took the weight off my leg and struggled to the ground.
“I’m fine. Some things a man needs to do himself.”
Once I was on my backside, Arrea nestled up next to me and placed her head on my chest. My heartbeat slowed as I smelled her hair.
Somehow I sensed that her eyes were still open.
“Do you want to make love? It’s been months,” Arrea asked softly.
“I don’t think you’d enjoy that much. I’m covered in sweat and smell like a barbarian.”
“Well to you Romans, I am a barbarian, so I don’t think it would be a problem.” She craned her head up at me and smiled.
“I think I’ll just hold you, dove,” I said, forcing myself to smile back. Hold you while I still can, I thought but didn’t say it. I knew there would be a time soon when I couldn’t. And perhaps never would again if my brother’s fate awaited me upon my return to the legion.
The sky was still black when Lucius stirred me from my sleep. Once again, I was drenched in sweat from the night. The first few times I’d feared in embarrassment that I had pissed myself, but no…it was only the nightmares.
“The guide is ready. He’s got three horses up near the road.”
“Just give me a moment to change my tunic.” I crawled out of bed and tried to rub the sleep from my eye. I had grown up drinking a glass of honey-water and reading something before I began my day, but life in the Colors had broken me of that habit.
I pulled the damp tunic off and threw on one of the only other two that I owned. In the morning starlight I made out Arrea’s sleeping face. Braced up against her arm, her cheek scrunched and lips pursed, nothing had ever been so beautiful. There was something about sleep too, that made her hair even more lovely than when she combed it. If there was anything that still gave me hope, it was looking at her.
“Lead the way, amicus.” I gestured to Lucius.
We walked from the camp and onto the road, following the sound of horse grunts to the guide.
“I almost thought you weren’t coming,” the burly guide said with a scowl, his eyes barely visible beneath a dark hood.
“It takes me a little while to get around these days.” I gestured to my bad eye.
“I get around just fine.” He raised his left arm, which ended at a nub, the skin stretched tight and tucked into a deep scar. That put me in my place, and I remained silent as I struggled to climb his horse.
It was a massive beast bred for working the fields rather than riding, but I always enjoyed that type. Burly, tough, and headstrong, but fiercely loyal if you trained them right.
“You alright?” Lucius said as I swung my leg over the big horse’s back.
“I’m fine, comrade. Stop worrying so much.” I shook my head and he struggled to get onto his horse as well. He didn’t have any injuries, but there has never been a less graceful horsemen than my friend Lucius, although it wasn’t for lack of trying.
The guide led us through the darkness until the sun rose, just in time to keep my hands from growing numb from the cold. Fortunately the guide spoke little Latin, and didn’t seem willing to speak in Gallic much either. We rode mostly in silence, which suited me fine, for I was struggling to fight the urge to spin my horse about and gallop back to Arelate.
Before I had truly decided to stay the course, we had arrived. It wasn’t the first or last time I’ve been lost in my thoughts, as I’m sure my rambling has already revealed to you.
The guide slowed our gallop to a trot, and then to a full halt, as the bodies came into view.
“You can hitch them up here.” The guide pointed to a few posts at the edge of a wood line.
After we hitched the horses, Lucius became the guide and led the way.
It’s difficult to describe what it feels like when you’re so surrounded by the dead that it’s all you can take in. I felt like I had woken up in Hades with the souls of many generations withering all around me.
The battle had taken place in October. And now the months between us and them had begun to decay, but the worst of it had been stalled by the heavy snowfall of winter. Most of the snow had melted, but the bodies of my brothers were still cold, their skin tight as leather across the bone, their open, frightened eyes yellow and milky.
I thought of how many coins it would take to lay over their eyes if we wished to send them on their way to the ferryman. It would have taken more than all the coffers of Rome. I reached up to cover my nose from the smell.
I made the mistake of scanning the face of a dead man at my feet. His throat was severed, the ground beneath him still stained black with his lifeblood. Even with his partially decayed cheeks, I felt like I could picture him alive. I had never met him before his death, I don’t believe, but I still felt like I knew him. I could imagine him telling jokes over chow, or complaining about being stuck with guard shift or latrine duty.
“We’re here to search for the living, not the dead, amicus,” Lucius said, before continuing to shout for any survivors who may have returned to the battlefield.
I couldn’t look away, though. I knelt beside the man and reached down to close his eyes. Unlike the recently deceased, the skin was fixed in place, and wouldn’t move. He would perpetually stare off in fear, always seeing his killer before him.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” I said, first to the man beside me and then to the valley of dead Romans before us, still wearing the armor they had once spit-shined and so proudly worn. Arrows were scattered across the battlefield, some wedged into the dirt and others in the cadavers of my comrades.
“Here.” The guide approached and threw a bag of coins at me.
“What’s this?”
“It’s what the boy paid me.” He nodded toward Lucius. “I fought a lot of battles”—his
gray beard bobbed as his lips quivered before continuing—“but seen nothing like this.” He removed his hood and cupped his hands in respect.
I hesitated to remove the denarii until he gestured for me to go ahead. My hands trembled as I spread the coin out over the open, dead eyes of the a few Romans beneath me. It wasn’t much, in comparison to the carnage around me, but it was better than nothing.
“I don’t see anyone alive here,” Lucius said before noticing what I was doing. “There are too many, Quintus.”
I stood and wiped the dampness from the tip of my nose.
“I know. But hopefully one man sent well into the afterlife can secure passage for the rest of our brethren.” I gestured to the men on all sides. “I wish we could bury or burn them, but I know we can’t.”
Lucius approached, stepping over piles of corpses in the process.
“When we win…when we punish those bastards for this, perhaps Marius will send all of us back to lay our brothers to rest.” Lucius placed a hand on my shoulder and stared into my eye. “Come on. Nothing stirring for miles. We might as well head back to camp.” It was true, the battlefield was completely silent. Even the vultures had scurried off when we arrived. Perhaps we frightened them, or they were satiated. I didn’t assume they suddenly developed a respect for the dead.
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