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Scroll XXXI
Two days before the kalends of August 653 ab urbe condita
Bugles sounded to wake us far earlier than usual, but not a man among us groaned. We understood what would come this day. The fate of civilization was about to be decided, and the fog that hovered above the earth seemed to tell us the gods were just as aware of this as we were.
“Centurion,” I said with a salute as I approached the Seventh Legion tents.
“Tribune Sertorius.” He returned the salute and accepted a handshake once I offered it.
“How are the men, Herennius?”
“They’re ready, Tribune. They understand what’s about to happen.” He adjusted the straps of his belt and ensured his sheath was tight.
“And you?” I asked, waiting for him to make eye contact.
“Just another day in the legion, sir.”
I smiled. “Just another day.”
We didn’t bother to deconstruct the camp. Either we would be victorious and would soon return here to celebrate and burn our dead, or the barbarians would have another obstacle before destroying what remained. There was quite an eerie feeling as we poured through the gates.
“Tribune, stay with me in the battle. But remain behind me. It will damage morale if you fall,” Herennius said as he marched his cohort through the gate, myself at his side.
“Don’t you worry about me, Centurion. I’ll guard your flank and you guard mine,” I said.
I adjusted the straps of my helmet. It no longer chaffed me. It seemed to have worn grooves into my face and now fit naturally. I stretched my toes in the leather sandals on my feet. Where there had once been raw blisters, there were now calluses as thick and hard as a soldier’s shield. My mind traveled back to the first time I’d held a sword, the wooden one we used in the Fourth Legion as I learned how to hold it properly. I recalled stumbling up the ladder at the Battle of Burdigala, and the first man I killed. I could almost hear the shouts of my contubernium beside me as we cried out Mar’s name under Maximus’s rhythmic chant. I saw the Tectosages fall and the Ambrones drowning in the river as our men triumphed over them. I recalled King Teutobod kneeling in defeat before Marius, and the general’s booming voice crying out, “Rome!” I remembered Marcellus’s sad, dead eyes and the beautiful letter he’d written to his wife. I thought of Centurion Scrofa and his last words to me that I was “Rome’s last hope.”
I hoped he was right. I said a silent prayer that all of this had prepared me for the battle ahead. But there was no time for doubting now. It either had or hadn’t. Either Rome would be victorious and stand alone and supreme above all the earth, or the Republic we had built would crumble. We would know at first light.
We were silent as we marched to the Raudine Plain, a pale-blue light creeping over the Alpine hills in the distance behind us. Even the centurions weren’t barking orders at their men. Centurion Herennius didn’t so much as look over his shoulder, trusting that his men were doing as they had been taught.
The signal was given for us to halt. The fog covered the field of battle, and we strained to see the enemy. They were still in the distance, pouring out of a passage in the hills. They moved as one massive, uncontrollable enemy of Rome.
A few of the men behind me threw up what little was in their bellies.
“That’s right, men, water the earth—for soon it shall be ours again,” I said to a handful nervous chuckles. A friend of mine once said the same thing before the battle in which he died. But in the months that followed, he was proven correct. We defeated the Teutones not sixty miles from where he and ninety thousand Romans were killed.
A few officers sped past the front of our line, ensuring everything was as it ought to be. I took their silence to mean that it was. The battle was at hand.
As the Cimbri hordes materialized in the fog, a voice cried out, “Make some noise, men! Let them hear you!”
The order was passed down the line to every legionary.
We roared as loudly as we could, looking into the faces of those next to us to encourage them to do the same.
“Stomp your feet, let them hear you!” the shout came again. We followed the command and took the initiative to brandish our swords and beat them against our shields as well.
The Cimbri began to posture in the same way in the distance, but I could hear little of it over the war cries of our own men. After years of Romans marching in silence, and after seeing Catulus’s men flee from them with tails tucked between their legs, this must have been quite a sight for the northern invaders.
“It’s time to end this! It’s time to punish them for their crimes!” a commanding voice cried out from the rear.
“Steady, men,” Centurion Herennius shouted above the chanting. He had joined in but wanted to ensure that his men didn’t get carried away. “Remember your training. Fight for the man beside you, stand fast behind your shield and stab over it. Do not look away. Do not retreat. Do not break the line.”
The yellow flags dropped and bugles sounded.
“Advance!” Herennius shouted along with the other first spears before blowing his whistle, his voice hoarse in the way only a centurion’s can become.
“Here it is,” I said to myself beneath my breath.
I could feel it. The men wanted to run into battle. But we kept the given pace. Toe to heel, toe to heel. Slow and steady. The Cimbri, still a ways out, were charging as fast as two hundred thousand men chained to one another can run.
We remained silent until they were nearly upon us.
“Jupiter!” a voice cried out.
“Optimus!” every Roman replied.
“Jupiter!” the voice came again. It was then that I realized it was our general himself.
“Maximus!”
“Jupiter!”
“Optimus!”
The Cimbri charged through the fog, appearing everywhere around us.
“Pila!” the first spears cried. Herennius turned and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me down with him and covering us both with his shield as the first ranks hoisted their pila and launched them at the surging Cimbri. Hundreds of them crashed into the ground, each screaming and scratching at the shaft in their rib cage, but they were dragged along with the others regardless. “Second rank!”
The first rank ducked and the second let their volley fly.
So many fell that I believe our men paused to see if our enemies would falter. They did not.
A rumble sounded out from the Cimbri side that overcame their chants and cries. My mind didn’t perceive it at first, but my heart did. It was a sound I knew well. Charging through the fog, the Cimbri cavalry raced toward us, passing by their infantry to cheers of exultation.
“Shields up!” Herennius’s words had barely escaped his lips when the horsemen crashed into our line.
The cavalry lunged over the shield walls, crashing atop men in the second and third ranks. The first were sent to their backs with a kick of the hooves to their shields. Gladii shinned in the morning sun as they stabbed at the horses and horsemen atop them. The horses’ cries were deafening as they collapsed, kicking and stirring all the while.
I steadied myself behind my shield as a horseman aimed right at us. I leaned back and braced myself, but Herennius stabbed up into the beast’s belly, sending it from its path to the damp soil beneath us.
He turned to me, face drenched in the blood, and nodded.
“Thank you,” I said as I repositioned myself.
“Steady! Hold the line, hold the line!” Herennius cried out.
Some of the cavalry wheeled about and darted away as quick as Zephyr. Whether it was the rider or the beast that decided to do so, I do not know. Others charged harder still, crashing into our line and creating wide gaps.
Before we could reform the Cimbri infantry had arrived. The northern invaders towered over us.
“Shields high, men!” Herennius shouted, leading by example from the front of the formation.
Axe
s, clubs, and broadswords crashed down against Roman shields. I brought my own up, and tried to push forward to the front, but was equally distracted by the severed leg of a man beside me. He was screaming, staring wide eyed at the carnage of his own body as spurts of red blood shot out from the exposed white bone of his femur. Mules on either side were trampling over him until, to my relief, men in the later ranks pulled the man to safety. Just as I was at the height of my distraction, a man in the first rank fell under the slice of an axe to the exposed flesh of his neck. He fell backward like a pine tree cut at its base, his neck dangling on the few remaining ligaments as he did so.
I didn’t consider it, just stepped over him to fill the gap.
The Red who had killed him stepped back and hoisted his axe, which was still dripping with the blood of my countrymen.
It crashed into my shield. Splintering the wood, the tip of the axe had pushed through and was inches from my face. But it was wedged. He tried to free it, but he was too slow. I lunged forward with my gladius as an extension of my arm. I slid it into his belly and dug deeper and deeper.
He gurgled blood and screamed like a wounded animal until he toppled back. He dangled from the chains tying him to the men beside him until he was cut loose. In the meantime, I stabbed my sword into the dirt and freed the axe from my shield. Then I pulled back and sent it twirling at the next enemy in line, catching him in the sternum. He made little noise at all, except the sound of his breath being driven from his body, as he spun and fell into the arms of his men.
“Tribune! Get back in line!” Herennius was shouting, bearing his shield against the flurry of attacks of a young Cimbri butcher.
I ignored him.
“Tribune!” Herennius shouted, severing the warrior’s arm and kicking him in the chest back into the line of his brethren.
His personal enemy now stalled, he reached across to push me back with his shield. I shoved it away with my own.
I was a soldier too. A tribune, sure, but a soldier first. This was my battle. My fight.
Exasperated, he stepped back in line and blocked another attack from the next man in front of him.
A burly Cimbri with a beard down to his chest, whom I still believe I’d met in their camp, barreled toward me with a lung of the club. The shield absorbed the brunt of it, but the force nearly sent me to my knees. As he recoiled from the block, I stepped forward and bashed my shield into his face. His nose cracked and blood began to flow immediately. As he tried to blink his vision back, I took a stab at his thigh, slicing the flesh, blood spraying out before I returned to position. He writhed on the earth and was trampled by his brethren.
Herennius blew his whistle, and the first rank stepped to the side, and then back, allowing the second rank to take its place. I would have liked to stay there, but habit got the best of me, and I moved along with the rest of the men in the first rank.
We tried to collect our breaths as the men at the front attacked with fresh vigor. The man to my right was standing quite still, in line with the rest of us, but the labor of his breathing caught my attention. Turning to him, I saw that he still bore his shield in position before him, but his sword arm was now severed at the elbow. Blood bubbled out from the wound and poured down the back of his arm to his side. He analyzed it, utterly perplexed.
“Get this man out of my formation!” I shouted, pushing the injured mule back through the ranks. His eyes were glossy and confused as the men behind us carried him away.
The second rank was fighting hard but didn’t find the Cimbri as exhausted as they’d expected. We seemed to be at a standstill. We could advance no further, and neither could the enemy.
But then I heard that dreaded hum. Before my mind could place it, rocks smashed into our lines. Catapults.
Men on both sides of the divide, Cimbri and Roman alike, were smashed beneath it. Bodies were flattened like stale bread; legs were torn apart at the knee.
Havoc reigned. The centuries on either side of us, who had been hit by the catapults harder, began to falter. The line was broken. Centurions blew their whistles and optiones tried to beat their men back into place, but panic was spreading like a fire.
“Stand fast, men!” Herennius stabbed an assailant and pushed him back into the waves of advancing Cimbri.
The thunder of horse hooves rang out again as I saw the remainder of the cavalry swinging around in the distance and careening toward our right flank. They were being cut down in vast numbers, but still they poured into us like water on rock.
A catapult’s rock struck our century, taking out an entire rank of men.
“My leg!” one cried.
“Oh, oh, kill me!” another shouted.
But we couldn’t even turn to assist them.
The Cimbri cavalry broke through the ranks of a century a few paces down from us as the Red infantry continued to surge forward. The chains at their hips had begun to snap, and some of them pushed through our line swinging violently in all directions. Holes widened in our ranks as the bodies piled up and legionaries withdrew in fear.
The blurry visions flashing before my eye reminded me of Arausio.
“Don’t retreat! Push them back!” I shouted when I found the breath, and hurried to fill the closest opening.
One of the Cimbri warriors had his back to me, and I sunk my blade into his spine.
Casting him aside, I shouted, “Jupiter!”
“Optimus!” a few of the men replied.
“Jupiter!” I cried again, more forcefully, as I held my shield fast before another assailant.
“Maximus!” more of them returned the call as my sword sliced through the exposed flesh of a Cimbri kneecap.
Then all eyes began to swivel to the right.
“Eyes front, men!” Herennius shouted, perceptive enough that he didn’t even need to turn around.
But even I couldn’t help but steal a glance.
In the distance was a head of cavalry, a wedge formation, with a Roman standard held high.
The legionaries let out a roar that forced the Cimbri to turn as well.
Lucius was at the helm of the cavalry charge, Sulla’s flank following behind him. His sword was lifted to the heavens and his snarled face as angry as Hades.
“Lucius!” I shouted in exultation, although he couldn’t hear me, as the cavalry crashed into the Cimbri infantry.
“Steady yourselves, men,” Centurion Herennius cried out again when he had the chance to do so. “And, Tribune, get back into line!” His voice reminded me of old Scrofa’s, and this time I complied.
I struggled to catch my breath, suddenly burning from the rising sun and drenched in perspiration beneath my lorica.
I blinked sweat from my eye and focused my gaze on the enemy still before us. Those who weren’t already smeared with blood were drenched in sweat of their own, and their eyes were squinted. The sun was blazing behind us.
“Push them back!” I shouted, lifting my sword above the century. “Send them to Hades!”
“They’re faltering!” cried some of the mules.
“Advance!” Herennius relayed the call, hoisting his shield in front of him and driving with the rest of the men into the Cimbri ranks. The butchered enemy were nearly piled up to our knees as we crossed over them.
The cries of the wounded still rose out through the morning air, but the desperate gasps for air were just as apparent from our living enemy.
“Harder, men, drive them back!” I cried, my voice becoming hoarse like the centurion’s.
I could see the heads of our men turning to the right as Lucius and our cavalry were hitting the Cimbri flank around with Sulla’s forces.
The Cimbri were turning to run, but couldn’t. Crippled by their own linked hips, they stumbled over one another. The bravest among them turned to kill the cowardly before turning back to meet their fate at the tip of Roman steel.
“They’re faltering, men!” a shout rang out.
“Advance!” Herennius yelled again and then de
ferred to his whistle.
As some distance appeared between us and our enemy, I realized the fog had dissipated, only to be replaced by the burning light of the Italian sun. We charged forward, shoulder to shoulder, slicing through and stomping over all the Reds who were too slow to get away.
“Advance! Advance! Advance!” The cries came from behind our forces, and I still believe it was Marius himself. “Double-time!”
We ran, on what reserves of energy I do not know, right into the Alpine passes our enemy had so recently descended from.
I spotted the “walls” I had once dwelled within, the wooden logs driven out to impale us as we approached. But we separated and pushed right through them.
Within, the Cimbri were falling into the arms of their women, who, in fury and disgust, slew them with daggers of their own.
“For Rome!” the men shouted.
“Wipe the bastards from the earth!” Shouts came from all side. The frenzy was let loose.
I saw mothers throwing their children under stampeding horses before cutting their own throats, and old men shouting out in fury until they were consumed by steel.
“Burn it down!”
We ignored all that was around us. If you think this impossible, I can ensure you that in the frenzy of battle you notice nothing but the enemy before you and the task at hand. Only later do you realize what you witnessed.
From the center of the Cimbri camp rode up a few hundred more Red warriors atop the finest steads they could muster.
I spotted King Boiorix, tall and noble atop the stallion I had helped him train, impossible to miss, at the front of them. They rode directly for the Seventh at the center of the Roman line.
“Death! Death!” they shouted in their native tongue.
“Steady, Legionaries!” Herennius shouted, his voice cracking under the pressure.
Absent pila, we had nothing to repel them with, so we blockaded behind our shields and allowed them to vault over and into us with one last furious attempt at revenge.
The barbarian king was thrust from his horse into the Roman formation. The mules around him had likely never seen the king before, but they knew who he was. They hesitated for a long while before stabbing him.
The Noise of War Page 28