Conn Iggulden - The Death Of Kings

The enemy howled enough to fill the world and raced at the legionaries. The first meeting was a crash that numbed the sounds that came after. The heavy Roman shields were smashed upright into the charging line and the impact punched hundreds of slaves from their feet. Then the swords were plunging into bodies and blood spattered blindingly, until the whole of the first rank were covered in it, their arms and faces wet as the swords cut limbs and life from the men they faced.

With Brutus on Julius's right, Julius could work around his friend's shield, as Ciro stood in the protection of his own. Only the ingrained discipline held the ranks back from the front line, free to watch the carnage only feet from them. Stinging droplets of blood touched them as they saw the hastati storm forward through the slaves. Ciro smashed anything that stood against him with tireless strength. Julius and Brutus moved forward at the pace of the advance, sinking their swords into the bodies as they passed, making certain of the kills. By the time the rear ranks passed over the corpses, they would be little more than white bone and tattered flesh as every soldier blooded his sword on them.

The hastati were the spine of the army, men with ten years of solid experience. There was no fear in them, but after a while, Julius began to feel a slight change in the pace as the advance faltered. Even the hastati tired against such a host, and many in the ranks moved forward to fill gaps, stepping over the writhing bodies of men they knew and counted as friends. Renius walked with them, his shield strapped to his body with heavy buckles. He killed with single strokes, taking blows on the shield to allow him the counterstrike, over and over. It buckled and cracked under the repeated impacts, but held.

The cornicens blew a series of three notes over and over, and all along the vast line there was a shimmering as the maniples of Rome moved with a discipline unmatched in the world. The hastati brought their shields up to protect themselves and moved smoothly back through the ranks as the triarii moved forward. They were panting and tired but still filled with a savage pleasure, and they shouted encouragement to the twenty-year veterans who ran to make the new front line. These were the best in the line, and apart from Renius, Primigenia had only a handful, making up the numbers with Cato's fresh troops. The slaves threw themselves at the legions and Primigenia bore the worst toll of dead, the new recruits dying faster than the experienced men around them. Renius held the Primigenia line steady as they fought to move forward.

The advance surged again through the bodies of the slain. The only way was over the dead as neither side wavered or stepped back from the bloody gash that was the front rank. The triarii were the best of the legionaries, men at their fullest strength. Their family and friends were the legions they served and they were soon splashed as redly as the hastati before them.

Julius stood waiting in the fifth rank, with Primigenia straining to attack. Arms and swords shook in anticipation as they stood close enough to the cutting to have more and more of the blood droplets spatter over them like rain, running down their shining armor.

Some armies broke on the hastati, others when the triarii were brought in to crush the will of the enemy. The bodies they walked over and speared so casually numbered in the hundreds, perhaps thousands along the line, but they had only begun to cut away the outer layers of the army of Spartacus, and soon every man knew they would have to take their place. Once they saw it was inevitable, the nerves settled even in the weakest as they waited to reach the first rank.

“Primigenia-second spears!” Julius ordered, repeating the shout to his left and right. The ranks behind him launched without pause over the heads of their own men and the shafts landed unseen on the mass of the enemy. All along the line the action was repeated, and only distant screams told of the lives the points had taken.

Julius craned onto his toes to see what was happening on the flanks. Against so many, the cavalry had to prevent encirclement. As the line of Spartacus's army bowed before the Romans, a memory flashed into Julius's head of a distant schoolroom and a lesson of Alexander's wars. Huge as it was, the Roman army could be swallowed and destroyed unless the flanks remained strong.

Even as he started to look, he felt the change on his left. He saw the line buckle into Lepidus's legion and the enemy pour into the breach. It was too far away to see detail and as Julius paced forward with Brutus, he lost sight of it and swore.

“Brutus, can you see Lepidus? They're breaking through over there. Can you see if they're holding?”

Brutus stretched up on his toes to see. “The line is broken,” he said in horror. “Gods, I think they're turning!”

Julius almost stumbled into the man behind him as his pace shortened. He looked at the line four ranks ahead. The triarii were crushing the slaves there and didn't look like tiring. His thoughts were desperate and fear rushed into him. If he moved Primigenia left to support as he had promised Pompey, he left the triarii vulnerable. If their line was thinned or cut down, the reinforcements they would expect would be missing and the slaves would have two breaches to pour into, cutting the Roman line into islands of men that would shrink and vanish as they were killed.

As he hesitated, he saw the left flank was compacting as the breach widened and some of Lepidus's men turned away from the enemy, beginning to flee. It would spread like plague as those who ran fouled the ranks behind them and infected them with their cowardice. Julius made his choice.

“Primigenia! Saw left into the flank!” As before, he repeated the order twice and the front ranks heard him though they could not turn. They would know there was no one behind to bolster them and would fight all the harder in the time they were vulnerable.

Primigenia moved fast across the line of advance, a few stumbling into the soldiers who had not heard the order. It was a dangerous maneuver to try in the middle of a battle, but Julius knew he had to use his men to stiffen the legion of Lepidus before the whole left flank crumbled. He raced through the ranks with the others, leaping over corpses and continuing to shout orders to keep them in close and moving. At best he had seconds to prevent the rout.

Brutus arrived first, deliberately knocking a fleeing legionary over with his shield. Julius and Ciro took his sides and together they made the core, with Primigenia forming a wall of grim soldiers around them that the retreating Romans would have to cross to get away. Renius had vanished in the press, separated from them by hundreds of waiting soldiers.

“Level swords!” Julius roared, his face twisted into an animal mask of rage. “No soldier crosses this line alive! Show this Lepidus what we are !”

The spread of panicking men skidded to a halt as the ranks of Primigenia ranged before them, blocking the retreat. The light of panic went out of their eyes as they took in the swords held ready to cut them down. There was no question they would be used. The men of Primigenia understood as well as Julius that they would all die if Lepidus's legion ran from the slave flank. They would be overwhelmed.

In moments, something of order had returned to the disorganized rabble Lepidus's men had become. The centurions and optios used the flats of their swords and thick oak staffs to bully the soldiers back into formation. They were barely in time.

The slave army had sensed the weakness and they screamed orders, pushing hundreds into the gap to widen it. Julius was caught between moving forward through the ranks and having Primigenia seal the breach or holding his position in case Lepidus's men broke again. He knew the recovery was still weak, with the terrified soldiers barely controlling the fear of death that had broken them once. It would be easier the second time.