Caesar Triumphant- Chapter 8 (Cont.)
Titus Pullus had seen the same thing as Caesar, and had
much the same reaction. Standing next to him was Balbus, his Pilus Posterior,
and casting a sideways glance, Pullus could clearly see that his friend was
just as troubled.
"The
Legion stores are going to be drained dry of shields by the time we're
through," Balbus said, his tone calm despite the scene before him. Both
these men were vastly experienced in the art of leading men, and knew that the
rankers hung on every word uttered by their Centurions and Optios, no matter
how hard they tried to look like they weren't listening, as those around the
pair were doing now. It was essential that the Centurions sound unconcerned,
especially at moments like this, Pullus reflected, happy that Balbus was as
aware as he was that his tone would do much to keep the men as calm as
possible.
"You're
right Balbus, but you know what? I'm not going to let the army cheat my boys
just because these Wa bastards are going to poke some holes in their shields.
I'll pay for every ruined shield out of my own purse!"
Just as he had hoped, the men within earshot let out a
happy shout, the upcoming threat and the fact that it was likely a good number
of them wouldn't live through the day temporarily forgotten as they rejoiced at
the idea that the rankers would get one over on the army. It never failed to
amuse Pullus that the entity known as "the army" was universally loathed
by the men, and any chance at foiling what they considered the army's
never-ending plot to rob them of their hard-earned pay at every turn was a
cause for celebration. The Legion, on the other hand? Well, these men would
fight and die for the Legion, as they would fight and die for the friends
immediately to their left and right, never stopping to think that it was the
amalgam of Legions, filled with men just like them, with the exact same
viewpoint, that comprised the hated "army". The other thing Pullus
knew was that the word of his largesse would fly down the length of the rampart
from where he was standing, as the men passed the word to those comrades who
wanted to know what the cheering was about. In fact, even as he and Balbus
stood there he could hear the ripple of shouts making their way down the
rampart, where it abruptly stopped when the last man of the 10th turned to pass
the word to see that it was in fact a man from the 12th standing next to him.
Although not quite as loud, Pullus could hear the groans from the 12th as they
heard of the bounty their comrades in the 10th had been given, cursing the luck
that came from being in the wrong Legion. Out of the corner of his eye, Pullus
saw Balbus' scarred face grimace in what he knew was his version of a grin,
made sinister looking by the severed nerves that made his lip permanently
droop.
"Balbinus
isn't going to thank you for that," he laughed. "Now he's going to
have to match you or his men will curse his name every day from here on."
Pullus
grinned back at Balbus, giving a shrug. "Not really my problem, is it? And
he can always refuse. He is a cheap bastard; he still owes me 50 sesterces from
our last dice game. Although," the Primus Pilus finished with a laugh,
"I don't know why I care. It's not like I can spend it anywhere."
"It's
the principle," Balbus immediately replied, without thinking, and cursed
himself as he saw Pullus wince. "Sorry," Balbus said awkwardly,
"I didn't mean....."
Pullus
waved him off. "I know. Don't worry about it. Well," he abruptly
changed the subject, "let's check to make sure every man has his siege
spear ready." Without waiting for a reply, Pullus turned toward his own
Century, bawling out, "You cunni
better have those siege spears ready! I want to see nothing but points sticking
out over the wall!"
Balbus,
before he turned to his own men, stared at the back of his retreating friend.
"When are you going to learn to keep your mouth shut?" he asked, only
of himself, since the men around him within earshot wouldn't dare respond. Not
if they didn't want to suffer a fate that scared them more than the sight of
the Wa marching up the slope.
What Balbus had said and had disrupted the moment brought
Titus Pullus back to the scene of another battle, one from years before this
campaign started, on a dusty plain outside of a town called Pharsalus. It was
there that Titus Pullus and his longest, best friend Vibius Domitius, had found
themselves on the opposite side, a moment that had severed for all time a
friendship that had started when they were 10 years old. In the immediate
aftermath of the battle, when Caesar had called on his exhausted men to
accompany him in his pursuit of Pompey, who had escaped the battle with barely
a Century's worth of men, the 10th, Caesar's favorite and most loyal to that
moment, had refused. It had been a huge shock to Caesar, and it was only less
of a shock to Pullus, who was the Secundus Pilus Prior, commander of the Second
Cohort, because he had a few moment's warning just before it happened. Vibius
had been his Optio then, and in the heat of the moment, as he and Vibius stood
there face to face, Pullus had come perilously close to drawing his sword and
striking down his best friend. Ironically, that act had done Pullus' career an
enormous amount of good, despite the personal pain it caused him, as Caesar saw
it happen as well. Knowing in that moment that Pullus' loyalty to his general
was unflinching, and recognizing that the rankers of the 10th were less likely
to forgive the giant Centurion, Caesar had appointed him as the de facto Primus Pilus of the two Cohorts
of the 6th Legion, which had been on the field in the ranks of Pompey just a
watch before. In the resulting rout, these two Cohorts, the 7th and 10th, had
been stranded on the wrong side of the river as the rest of the Legion made
their escape, "joining" Caesar's forces somewhat involuntarily, being
given the choice of that or death by Marcus Antonius, who was the commander of
that portion of the field. However, these two Cohorts of the 6th had served
Caesar steadfastly and well, no matter how their service started, accompanying
him to Alexandria, and being the part of Caesar's force that had soundly
defeated the dreaded Pontic chariots at Zela, the battle that prompted the
"I came, I saw, I conquered" dispatch from Caesar that was in many
ways more famous than the battle itself. By the time Caesar, and Pullus had
returned, a year after Pharsalus, matters had settled to the point that Pullus
had been appointed the official Primus Pilus of the 10th Legion, while Vibius
continued to serve out his enlistment as the Optio of what became Scribonius'
Century and Cohort. Neither man spoke to the other after that, and when the
original men of the 10th saw their enlistment expire, Vibius chose not to re-enlist,
instead going home to finally marry his childhood sweetheart, who had once
jilted him to marry another man during the Gallic campaign, and who had since
had the good grace to die and leave her a widow. It was only through
Scribonius, who had managed to maintain his friendship with both men, that
Titus learned that the son Juno had borne Vibius was named Titus, just as
Titus' dead son had been named Vibius, back when they had been friends and sure
that nothing would ever sever that bond. As Pullus went through the motions of
doing a last-minute inspection of the men, his mind was elsewhere, thinking
about all that he had lost in his life, balanced against all that he had
gained. The words that Balbus had uttered surprised Pullus because of how much
they still hurt him to hear. "It's the principle" had been one of
Vibius' favorite phrases when he had found himself in an intractable position.
One time it had been over what was essentially a spoonful of vinegar that he
became convinced Vellusius had filched from his flask, until Scribonius had
found the small hole near the bottom that allowed the remaining fluid to leak
out. Even faced with such evidence, while Vibius had grudgingly apologized to
Vellusius, he had insisted that "it was the principle" about which he
was arguing, and in that principle he maintained that he was vindicated in his
condemnation of Vellusius. It was the kind of incident that was infuriating to
all involved in the moment; indeed, Pullus had seen Legionaries kill each other
for similar reasons over the years, but years later provided some of the
loudest, longest laughs around the fire at night. And here, on this hill in Wa,
with thousands of armed men marching to try and end not just Pullus' life but
the existence of the 10th and the army in general, this was what occupied
Pullus' mind.
Pullus' mind might have been elsewhere, but his body was
very much standing on the rampart of the northernmost camp, and the sheer size
and bulk of his presence heartened his men more than even Pullus realized. The
post of Primus Pilus was almost always filled with only the most exemplary of
Centurions, but even among the Primi Pili, Titus Pullus was a legend. He had
long since shown that there was more to his prowess in battle than his size and
strength; from the age of 12, an outsize 12 it was true, he and Vibius had
begun training for the Legions, at the hands of a veteran of Sertorius' Spanish
Legions who was Titus' brother-in-law. And from that first day, it was very
rare that Pullus didn't spend at least a third of a watch every day working on
his skills with the sword. He had learned in his first campaign, when he had
been lulled into a sense of invincibility by the constant praise of his Pilus
Prior, the famous Gaius Crastinus, his weapons instructor Aulus Vinicius, and
most of his comrades, that as talented as he may have been, he could be bested.
From that first close call, to this day, he never took his skills for granted,
and his subsequent exploits had built, one upon another, until his men held him
in an awe that was just slightly below Caesar, who they were convinced was a
god. If Caesar was god, they were sure that their Primus Pilus was a demigod,
and just having him standing there, next to them, waiting for what was to come,
gave them enormous comfort, and instilled in them a belief that despite the
odds, they would be victorious once again.
Only dimly aware of this, Pullus continued walking among
the men, putting a hand on the shoulder on one, while sharing a joke with
another about some past exploit or error, but still his mind ranged back over
the years of his life. He supposed that this was understandable, because
although he didn't have the same feeling in his bones that Caesar was
experiencing, he was aware that this would in all likelihood be the toughest
battle he and the 10th had ever faced, and that made the chances very good that
he wouldn't live to see another day. After all, he reasoned, everyone's string
plays out, and I've had more luck than anyone other than Caesar. Even as this
thought, the last of his reverie to run through his mind, there was a shouted
warning that the Wa had halted their progress. Turning to face them, Pullus was
just in time to see a rippling movement in the rear ranks as the massed
archers, with impressive precision considering their large numbers, tilted
their bows upwards while pulling their other arm backwards, drawing the string
up to each man's cheeks, where it was held there for an instant before a short,
sharp blast of some sort of horn sounded.
"Shields
up!" Pullus' roar mingled with that of the other Centurions and Optios,
but he continued, in the same bellowing volume, "Remember boys! I'm paying
for the shields!"
Any cheers that came from the men was wiped out by the
sudden hollow clatter of arrows striking the wood of shields, punctuated by a
number of clanging rings as some missiles hit metal bosses, and even worse,
shouts and cries of men who were struck down. Over the din, Pullus heard the cornu blow the command that told the
ballistae, all of which had been positioned off of the rampart, about 40 paces
from the walls where their arcing fire would clear the men on the ramparts, to
open fire. They would be essentially firing blind, but with their ammunition of
rocks, precision wasn't as important as with the scorpions. Those weapons were
arrayed on the walls, and no order had been given to them at this point,
although the leading Wa were well within range. Still, this was part of
Caesar's plan for each of the forts, to maximize their casualties, because he
had a real fear that they would run out of bolts well before they ran out of
Wa, so every shot had to count. To protect them from the Wa arrow fire,
fascines, large wicker baskets filled with dirt had been placed side by side,
with just enough of an opening for each scorpion to have an arc of fire of
perhaps 10 degrees, but there were enough of them so their fields of fire
interlocked, leaving no spot where the Wa would be safe. While Pullus
understood and accepted Caesar's reasoning, it was still hard for him to crouch
in place without hearing the distinctive twanging report from Caesar's favorite
weapon. But he at least had the comfort of the crashing sound as the arm of the
ballistae hit the crossbar, stopping it abruptly while sending the contents of
its basket into the ranks of the Wa. Unfortunately, the hail of arrows was too
thick to risk peeking out to see what kind of damage was being done. Just as
had happened on the beach, and to a lesser extent when their makeshift camp had
been attacked when the 10th had been out on patrol, the rain of arrows was
practically nonstop, the air so thick with feathered missiles that it indeed
appeared possible that they would blot out the sun. Within the span of perhaps
100 heartbeats, the barrage was so intense that as Pullus did look to each
side, still holding the shield he had drawn from stores in front and slightly
above his body, he saw that there wasn't a man who didn't already have at least
3 or 4 arrows protruding from their shield, while the ground all around was
studded with shafts, some of them still quivering from impact. Realizing that
if this continued every man's shield would be useless, Pullus made a quick
decision.
"I
need a section of volunteers from each Century to stay with me on the rampart
to keep an eye on these cunni! The
rest of you I want down off the rampart out of range to save your shields! Pass
the word!" Pullus bellowed this order first to his right, then repeated to
his left, counting on his Centurions and Optios to immediately divine his
purpose and react accordingly. To his relief, there was only a slight delay as
Centurions either asked, or in some cases, ordered certain men to stay behind,
and those who didn't, or weren't as the case may have been, began backing down
the slope of the rampart, their shields still up. Inevitably, some men were
still struck down, although it was a blessed few, although the shields suffered
more damage.
"Plautus you bastard, I've had
you on report for a month now but I've been too busy, so you're one of the
volunteers," was how it was expressed by Marcus Glaxus, the Primus
Princeps Prior, or commander of the Third Century of the First Cohort to a
veteran of Gaul, one of the few remaining. Although ostensibly true, it was
also because Glaxus knew that of all the men in his Century, Plautus was one of
the toughest, and wasn't likely to crack under what was shaping up to be the
most intense barrage they had ever endured.
All posts by R.W. Peake on blog.rwpeake.com are copyrighted by the author, 2012.
