Centurion Felix waited impatiently as his men caught their
breath and sucked greedily at their canteens. The advance Century he had sent
out ahead was now standing just below the crest of the slope, staying out of
sight because once atop it they would be within plain sight of Caesar's camp,
a little more than a mile away. Despite his impatience Felix forced himself to
wait, making sure that he could see that the force he was commanding was
sufficiently recovered before they closed the remaining distance to the
general's camp. None of the other Centurions commanding this hodgepodge
assortment of Cohorts from two different Legions left their spots to come talk
to Felix, another sign that this was an unusual development. Felix welcomed the
solitude, consumed as he was with all sorts of conflicting thoughts and
emotions and in fact didn't blame them for avoiding him like he had the
plague. Like his Primus Pilus Flaminius, Felix felt in his bones that this was
the right thing to do, but just like his commander, he was aware that if it
wasn't his career was irreparably harmed. It was true he would be protected
somewhat by following the orders of his superior, but not only had he not hesitated he had also eagerly accepted Flaminius' judgment that Felix was the most senior
of the Centurions in command of these twelve Cohorts and that, he knew, wasn't
the case. Therefore, at the very least he would be guilty of overstepping his
authority, but that was more of a nagging consideration than a real fear.
Instead, his mind was almost totally consumed with what would be taking place
immediately after he and his men crested the slope. He was sure that he would
be able to get a better idea of what was happening in Caesar's camp but that
was only half the problem. As certain as he was that this was the right thing
to do he also felt in his bones that no matter how desperate Caesar's
situation might be, the real key to the battle lay to the north, where the 10th
and 12th could even at that moment be in their death throes and needing help
desperately. Finally, he spat on the ground in a signal, to himself at least,
that the time for thinking and recovering was over.

"All right! Let's go! Caesar's waiting on us!"
Felix shouted, not using his cornicen as
he would normally do, not wanting the deep, bass sound of the horn that carried
for long distances to possibly alert the enemy.

He doubted they were within earshot, but they had come too
far and didn't need any kind of surprises now. His command was relayed down the
column and within a matter of a few dozen heartbeats, Felix saw the Centurion
of the rearmost Century wave his hand to let him know that all was ready.
Giving the command to his own Century, Felix resumed the march at the normal
pace, but after just a moment he immediately increased the pace back to the
quick trot. Thankfully he and the men had recovered their breath, because the
grade of the slope was steeper than it looked and very quickly Felix could
feel the burning in his thighs as they pumped, moving him and the relief force
up the slope. Keeping his eye affixed on the advance guard, he saw them
disappear, and he knew that the next few moments would tell him what he needed
to know. If one of the advance party came sprinting back in his direction, even
before they told him he would understand that it meant there was a problem in
Caesar's camp. The absolutely worst possibility would be that Caesar's camp was
already overrun and the Wa had spilled out onto the road, blocking Felix and
his men from helping either Caesar or the 10th. Every stride took him closer to
the top, but still he didn't see any sign from the advance party and even with
the exertion, his heart was beating faster from the anticipation. Then he was
at the top of the hill and he managed to take an extra gulp of air in relief
at the sight of the leading Century, still trotting forward. As soon as the
feeling of relief came, he shoved it aside as he looked over the heads and
slightly to the left of the advance party at Caesar's camp, and as much as he
thought he had prepared his mind for any possibility it still took a moment
for the sight before him to register in its import. Not only was there a pall
of dust hanging above the camp, all the way almost to where he knew the forum
was located, but there were black tendrils of smoke drifting up into the still
air. Knowing that Caesar would never intentionally order anything inside the
camp burned, Felix understood that this could only come from the enemy firing
the flammable objects inside the walls. Whether it was intentional or
accidental didn't concern Felix; what did was the knowledge that between the
presence and location of the dust and the smoke, the walls of Caesar's camp
were breached, and Caesar had in all likelihood been forced to retreat to the
forum. In short, Caesar's camp was about to fall.

  Artaxades was having trouble with his vision, not only
because of the sweat streaming freely down into his eyes but also because his
lungs were unable to pull in air quickly enough. Not helping matters, it was becoming more
difficult to control where his eyes focused, as they seemed now to have a mind
of their own and if he didn't know better he would swear that he was looking
in two different directions, making it impossible for his brain to interpret
what it was receiving from his eyes. The pain in his side, the
cause for him remaining undiscovered by forcing him to stop before reaching the
top of the ridge, was back in full force now that he had moved farther south
along the slope. By his estimate he had gone perhaps another mile before he had turned back up and
finished his climb to the top. When he did so he had glanced back to his right, but thankfully
nobody was visible, friend or enemy, and at least now he was running along the
better surface of the road. Blessed with unnaturally long legs, Artaxades'
stride was still smooth and even, despite the intense strain he was under. His
breathing would have been audible a hundred paces away, and it was the only sound
roaring in the Parthian's ears now as he pushed his body harder than he ever
had before. Never in a race had he run this fast, he was sure, and the fleeting
thought crossed his mind that it was a shame that this wasn't in the Legion
games, because he surely would have left his competitors so far behind that men
would talk about it around the fires for years to come, the day that Artaxades
had flown faster than Hermes himself. That thought seemed to give him strength and while part of him rebelled at it, his stride lengthened even further, his
legs moving so fluidly and swiftly that the balls of his feet barely touched
the ground. It was as if he in fact possessed the winged shoes of Hermes and
just the feeling of freedom, of flight and speed made the pain bearable, the
ache in his side feeling like something was about to burst in him, his lungs
close to exploding, and yet it didn't matter. Artaxades, in that moment, was
sure that he was touched by the gods, blessed by them as they saw how he was
pouring every bit of energy and heart into his mission to save his friends from
certain disaster. Racing down the road, as Artaxades squinted through the pain
and sweat, his vision was too blurry for him to make out much more than vague
shapes and colors, so when he rounded a slight curve that put him in sight of
Caesar's camp, it didn't register as anything more than a darker shape against
the sky. And even if his eyes had been clear, his mind was so absorbed with
keeping his body moving at the same speed he had been maintaining that it was
incapable of any higher thought like deciphering what the straight lines of
that dark shape meant. But somewhere deep in his mind, a small voice whispered
to Artaxades that, since there were no straight lines in nature, this meant
something important and even as his feet continued in a blur of motion,
drawing him ever closer to the finish, he puzzled over what it meant. He
covered another stadia before the answer popped into his head, seemingly out of
nowhere. It was Caesar's camp, the finish line! He was almost there!
Immediately following that thought was the recollection that there was a reason
he had been sent on this mission, yet it wouldn't come to him. Instead, the
pain was almost overwhelming, from his feet, to his thighs, to his chest, every
part of him throbbing with an agony that he had never experienced. Yet, he
still didn't slow down, which was a feat in itself, and even through the pain
he could see that he was within the last few stadia. That meant he had to remember the message he was
supposed to give whoever he first came into contact with once he got to the
camp.

 

"One........two........one............two..........."

At roughly the same time, the same thing that was taking
place in Caesar's camp was being done in the northern camp, but it was Pullus
who was moving behind the slowly retreating men, doing the same things Caesar
was doing, in much the same way. Unlike Caesar, Pullus didn't hesitate to wade
into a fight when he saw that one of his men was having trouble disentangling
from the Wa as they moved backward. Even as fatigued as Pullus was, he still
wielded his blade with a lethal economy, striking quickly and with a brutal
force that brought death to even more Wa. Pullus had no idea how many of the
enemy he'd slain; it was well over a hundred, but he could look over the heads
of the front rank and see that the barbarians were still several rows deep.
There seemed to be no end to them and despite killing them in the thousands,
they showed no sign of despair or fatigue. Still they came on in wave after
human wave, but what Pullus had seen over the course of this fight was the only
thing that gave him a sliver of hope. While the Wa who wielded the swords did
so with a skill that Pullus had never encountered in an enemy before, they
numbered perhaps a quarter of the total of the assaulting force. The rest,
carrying the spears with the teardrop-shaped blades, varied greatly in skill
levels but the majority of them were not much better than the native levies of
any of the lands that Pullus and the army had marched through and conquered.
The only real question, and one on which any chance of survival this day hinged
upon was how many of those sword-wielding Wa were still left. As he moved to
another spot, his eyes scanned the leading ranks of the Wa, trying to determine
the ratio of barbarians with swords and those with spears, but the mental
energy needed for such complex operations had long since been spent. He saw
that it seemed to be that every other one of the Wa who were furiously pressing
against the shields of his front ranks were carrying swords, using them to
thrust, stab or otherwise hack their way past the thin wooden wall to get at
the men behind them. One small blessing was that at this point, men had shouted
themselves hoarse, so the level of noise was significantly lower than it had
been a watch, or even a third of a watch before. That didn't mean that there
wasn't still an unholy racket assaulting his ears, but compared to earlier it was
blessedly quieter. Finally giving up trying to determine the proportions of the
barbarians who were waving swords about, Pullus instead focused on the things
he could control. Moving again, he half-trotted, half-stumbled behind the
woefully thin line of Legionaries, only stopping when he found the man he was
looking for, his best friend Scribonius. Just like Pullus, his arm was bound
tightly, but in his case it was the left arm and he had lost sufficient
feeling in his hand so that he couldn't even grasp a vitus, let alone a shield. Also like Pullus, his face was drawn and
spattered with blood and grime, a sign of the desperate fighting that had been
raging for most of the day.

"Did you hear about Balbus?" Pullus winced as he blurted
out the question, but truthfully he had neither the energy nor the ability to
bring up the death of their friend in a more diplomatic fashion. 

Scribonius'
face became even more drawn, his mouth turning down in a frown that Pullus knew
from long experience was his friend's sign of real grief.

"Yes, I heard," he finally said, not looking Pullus in the
eye as he talked. "Stupid bastard."

Despite himself, Pullus let out a short, barking laugh.

"He was that," he admitted. "But I never
thought......."

"Neither did I," Scribonius cut him off. "Just like I
didn't think we could ever be beaten."

His mouth twisted into a bitter grimace at this last, and although
Pullus understood and essentially agreed with his friend, he still felt
compelled to put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"We're not done yet," Pullus said with as much conviction
as he could muster. "We don't know what's happening everywhere else, so
for all we know Caesar's on his way with help. We just have to hold out a little
longer."

Now it was Scribonius' turn to laugh, but this one held no humor.

"I really hope you're right, and the gods are listening Titus.
But I think we may have come to the end of our string here."

"I don't believe that," Pullus shot back and to his real
surprise, the moment he said it he realized that while a part of him
understood the gravity of the situation they were in, there was clearly another
part of him that still held out hope. 

In that moment Pullus chose to listen to
the hopeful part of his being and he grabbed Scribonius by the shoulder,
squeezing so hard it made his friend wince.

"I think we can get out of this," he insisted.
"We just have to hold on a little longer. Make these bastards pay for
every foot of ground they take from us. Once we get back to the forum, we're
going into an orbis, and we're going
to hold long enough for help to come. We will hold, do you understand me? We will hold!"

When all was said and done, Sextus Scribonius believed his Primus
Pilus and friend mainly because he wanted to believe, but at that moment what
mattered was that he did and looking his friend in the eye, he gave a curt,
brief nod.

"We'll do just that Titus. You have my word on it."

Pullus didn't respond, just gave his friend another squeeze of the
shoulder before he moved away, searching for the rest of his Centurions to
impart the same message, and the same resolve in them, that there was hope and
that the 10th would not fail this day. 

All posts by R.W. Peake on blog.rwpeake.com are copyrighted by the author, 2012.