S. Turney - Sons of Taranis

Above, the heavens opened with a boom, and torrents of water battered the fighters on both sides. Bowstrings would be unusable in a few heartbeats’ time, when they had been stretched beyond drawing. The fires might even be extinguished. It was a small blessing now in the grand scheme, but a truly unpleasant one for the men locked in mortal combat with the enemy.

A sword came out of nowhere and slammed into his forehead. He heard the projecting brow of his helmet give and split with a metallic crack, felt the lip of the helm bite into the flesh of his forehead, felt the sharp, hot pain as the blade’s edge struck skin.

* * * * *

Marcus Antonius turned to Caesar, his expression pained and impatient. ‘The spring is about to fall back into their hands, and we’ll have lost four cohorts of men there alone, forgetting the rest of this insane assault. It’s perhaps half an hour past the point where we should have sounded the general order to fall back. We’ve lost.’

Caesar turned a sly smile on his friend.

‘Have you so little faith in me?’

Antonius narrowed his eyes angrily. ‘If you have some ridiculous plan then put it into action while we still have an army.’

‘It is all a matter of timing, Marcus.’

‘Don’t be so bloody infuriating, Gaius. One day you’ll keep your plans too close to your chest and one of your fits will take you off to Elysium without the rest of us knowing what to do!’ The general’s sharp glance did nothing to shut him up. ‘Yes I know about your episodes . Atia told me all about it. She worries about you. But that’s not the issue now. Fuck the timing, Gaius. Legionaries are dying by the century out there.’

‘Then I think you will be pleased by that sound.’

Antonius frowned and cocked an ear. Over the hiss of the falling rain – warm rain, even the downpour wouldn’t make the sticky heat any more bearable – he could hear rumbling. Not the first peal of thunder he’d heard while he watched the legions falling like reaped wheat on the slopes of Uxellodunon. They should have ridden out the siege, even if it took a year.

‘Thunder. Very helpful. Their archers will be less trouble. And I can see some of the fires going out. It’s not going to help. You’ve committed the legions to their death for what? To buy time?’

‘Precisely,’ Caesar smiled. ‘And the moment is upon us.

‘Thunder is…’

‘Not thunder, Marcus.’

Antonius blinked and his gaze rose to the spring along with Caesar’s pointing finger.

‘Sacred Venus, mother of man, what in Hades is that?’

* * * * *

Atenos blinked. His world was a red blanket. Reaching up in automatic panic, he balled his fists and rubbed his eyes, squeezing the sheet of blood from them. Again and again he blinked. His hand went up to his forehead. His helmet was gone and someone had thoughtfully tied a wrapping around his wounded head, but the blood was free-flowing and that wrapping was now crimson and saturated. Beneath the wrapping he could feel a lump the size of a hen’s egg.

He deflated. In the press of men, he’d been certain that that was his death blow. He’d been waiting for one for over a year now. The centurionate had a ridiculously high mortality rate and though he continually claimed invulnerability on account of his Gallic bones, there was a saying among Caesar’s legions since Alesia. Lead the Tenth to glory, but put a coin in your mouth first . Priscus, former primus pilus of the Tenth, had fallen at Alesia. Carbo, latest in that role, had fallen in the disastrous retreat at Gergovia. How long until the latest incumbent fell? He was sure the other centurions in the Tenth were running a lottery on when it would happen, though he’d never caught them at it yet. But it seemed that the spring at Uxellodunon would not be his time. He had a thundering headache and had seemingly lost quite a lot of blood, but he was able to think and move. He was, to all intents and purposes, intact.

He sighed as another rivulet of blood blinded his left eye. Unseen hands suddenly loosened the wrapping and the blood came again. Then there was the feel of something slimy being slapped on the wound. Honey. Dear goddess Minerva let it be honey and not one of the dung-based poultices used by some hopeless medics. He felt some relief as a fresh dressing was tied in place, and a damp sponge – not a shit-sponge, please – wiped away the blood from his face.

A concerned, young face appeared in front of him.

‘What is your name, centurion?’

‘Atenos, primus pilus of the…’

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Four, if you count the thumb as a finger.’

‘You’re fine,’ the capsarius pronounced. ‘Took a bit of a knock there, centurion. You might want to stay seated for a while until your brain stops rattling around in your skull.’

Atenos wanted to berate the young medic for any implication that he had a small, wizened brain, but as he turned sharply, he felt suddenly very sick and had to concede that perhaps the man had a point.’

‘How’s it going?’ he asked, wincing.

The medic shrugged. ‘Into Hades by the moment. ‘Scuse me, but my talents are required.’

Atenos nodded at him, and the man was gone.

He took a moment to look around himself. Whoever had pulled him out of the fighting line had not only got him back to safety and a capsarius, he had thoughtfully kept him in the vicinity of the fight. He sat with his back to the earth mound, the creaking, smouldering tower looming above him, the ropes maintaining its stability passing above him, anchored there at the other side of the spring.

He was next to the spring.

Finally he registered the fact that it was raining very heavily. The angle of the rain was such that the tower was keeping it from him and he sat in its lea, a small, dry island in a land of downpour. The surface of the spring’s pool seethed. Last time he had seen it, it gurgled with small ripples as the flow poured from the rock, and the excess flowed out over a lip into a channel that distributed it into the earth down towards the woods, where it became one of the numerous tiny streams that fed the river below. Now, however, the surface of the water churned and stippled as a million raindrops pounded it.

Somewhere across the mountainside, he could hear the general order to fall back being called.

At last the general had seen sense.

But could he not have done so without such dreadful loss of life?

He glanced back down at the surface of the water. Above him the sky clashed with the sound of Vulcan’s hammer striking. The storm was in full flow and would not be abating any time soon. He sighed and tipped his head rather painfully back – his neck had apparently taken a jolt from the blow. The rain battered his face and he was rather grateful for the experience.

At least he wasn’t dead.

Now, the Tenth and Fifth were sounding their recall. All around him the men were moving. He could hear them even if he couldn’t see them, preparing to abandon the hard-won ground and retreat down to the camps. Presumably someone would come and help him down. He wasn’t at all sure he could stand unaided without throwing up.

Another rumble of thunder.

And another.

His brow furrowed in concentration, and that hurt more than he could possibly have imagined. The previous peals of thunder had been perhaps a count of twenty apart. Those last two had been so close together there was hardly time to count at all.

Another rumble.

What in the name of divine Taranis was going on?

His eyes widened in disbelief and alarm as the ground gave a shudder and suddenly all the water drained from the spring as though someone had removed a plug at the bottom. Despite his pain and discomfort he leaned forward, peering into the depths. Amid the dark rock, the slimy green weed and the coins thrown in as offerings, Atenos could see a number of wide fissures that had opened in the rock.