Capernaum 1

Battle

One of my current WIPs. I may not keep this name. Cloak and Stola can be seen as a prequel, but it isn’t necessary to read that first.

3 Roman legion soldiers from the waist up

They had the high ground. It was a small rise in the valley. The lord of this area had objected to the legion provisioning itself in his fields and had made the mistake of calling for reinforcements from his neighbors. Their centurion was getting tired of the pushback from the locals. Apparently, so was their legate, because they were finally going to be allowed to fight back.

Procerus, their decanus, looked down on the mob waiting for them on the plain below. He shook his head. “No arrows, no spears, no armor, no horses. This is going to be a slaughter. Remember your drills. Shield, bash, sword, stab, slash, step, step, halt.”

Their line of eight men was in the last rank, the tenth, of their century. They made a rectangle, nearly square, every rank protected by their heavy shields. The first rank had their spears ready to throw on command. The ranks behind had their short swords out. Once the enemy reached their formation, they would be too close for spears.

Illeus was two men down from Procerus, Fortis on his right, on the end. He and Fortis were the two replacements for the contubernium who hadn’t seen battle yet. “There are so many of them,” said Fortis.

“We have a century backing us up,” said Procerus, “but we don’t need them. As long as you stay together and remember your drills. And switch ranks on the centurion’s whistle. We have to keep the front fresh and rotate the injured to the back.”

Illeus and Fortis both swallowed. The injured. They were in the last rank, but that meant they’d be the first to be switched to front after the battle started.

“Just pay attention to the area right in front of you, me, and the centurion’s whistle.”

A howl came up from below them, in a language none of them understood. But shouting was not the Roman way. Stand still, quiet, in formation, like a boulder, like a force of nature.

Now the enemy were stomping and rattling weapons. They stood quiet.

Now the enemy were running up the hill. “Steady,” said Procerus. “Brace.”

And the shock wave hit. And in the last rank, they stood firm. Illeus kept his eyes on his own area. And step. The first rank was moving forward and the entire century moved with it. And step. Sword at the ready. And step. And there was the whistle. Last rank to front. Stepping over bodies. And now they were using their shields and swords.

Shield, bash, sword, stab, slash, step, step, halt. Illeus didn’t even think as his sword pulled back out of a body, bloody. Step. Step. Halt. The line was still unbroken, together. Half an hour later, the centurion whistled the halt. There was no one left to fight. And they hadn’t needed their backup at all.

Illeus looked at the bodies around him. “Pay attention!” said Procerus. “They’re not all dead. You don’t want to lose a limb after we’ve already won because you were careless.” Procerus slashed the throat of a man on the ground. The blood spurted, showing that he had indeed still been alive.

Some of them went to the back to get their wounds taken care of, but there weren’t a lot of wounds. Their opponents didn’t have anything that could get through their shields or armor, so the only injuries came from a section of the formation that had faltered for a moment when someone stumbled on a body. And no one from their contubernium had been part of that.

So Procerus directed them in making sure the fallen enemy was really dead, and they searched the bodies for anything worth taking as they went.

“Leave the clothes. Too bulky. We’ll separate that out and distribute it later. Just small things you can put in your bag for now.”

Fortis slashed a throat and looked at a body. “Not much here but the clothes. Most of them just had clubs and bronze knives. Procerus was right. This was a slaughter.”

Other men were stripping the corpses and piling up clothes behind them, as they headed toward some huts ahead of them.

“Four men in, four men watching outside,” said Procerus. “Any men you kill, women and children bring over there.” He pointed to a makeshift corral some men had set up next to the pile of clothes. “Food or drink, over there,” and he pointed to a wagon. “Anything else you want to keep from the hut is fine, but no fighting over it, or I’ll take it and give it to the centurion to figure out.”

It took only a couple of hours to go through all the buildings, mainly because the men couldn’t believe there was so little there. There weren’t any men in the huts, but they did end up killing some teenagers, including a girl, that had fought.

The only thing there was plenty of was grain and other provisions. No coin, no metalwork, just clothes to sell to the traders and about twenty slaves, less than half grown women.

The slave traders looked over the naked human loot, whose clothes had already been added to the pile, and chose three teenage girls, two teenage boys and five grown women. What remained were three old women, three children under five, and four pre-teens, two girls and two boys.

“What’s going to happen to them?” asked Illeus.

“They’re dead,” said Procerus. “Trash. We kill ‘em fast or slow.”

“Why kill them at all?”

Procerus snorted. “That means slow. We’re going to burn this place down. So what do you think their chances are here naked, no shelter, no food? No different from exposing a newborn, except it takes a little longer to die.”

Fortis cringed. “What is it?” asked Illeus.

“My sister died that way. After a battle. After the soldiers took their loot.”