Caput XV
***CXXXIII***
"They will meet tomorrow." Malcolm, Son of Athena looked up to the great statue of his mother. Annabeth preferred the Parthenos with its gold and plaster. Malcolm knelt before Phidias' great bronze work, the Athena Promachos. Her nearly thirty feet of height watched over him and the rest of the city. "After victory, her push to the gold mines of Illyricum." Malcolm did not like to admit that he was growing to be more supportive of his sister's plans to drive the Romans from Achaea and even Macedon. The gold mines of Illyricum would be necessary for such a move. He looked back upon his mother's face. "Was this what you demanded of us? Or have we departed from your path?"
***CXXXIV***
The preparations began before dawn. Soldiers woke and began to prepare food and provide for their horses. Small unit commanders checked with their soldiers to ensure their readiness. Weapons were sharpened on whetstones. Armor was repaired in smithies operated by immunes. Archers checked and waxed their bows and strings. Scuta were inspected and cavalrymen checked their tack. Near the various shrines erected throughout the camp, huddles of them gathered about to pray for victory and protection. The names of Bellona, Nerio, and Mars rose with smoke of cooking fires. Silent and still atop the great black stallion, Praefectus Achaea Publius Ventidius Bassus Perseanus watched their movements.
In mere hours he would order them toward their deaths. On the opposite end of the plain, Athena's Heir would do the same. The two of them would make decisions and the rank and file would die for them. His prayers that morning were not requests for wisdom, protection, or even victory, but for the gods' easing of his men's passage to the afterlife. Only a fool asks to keep men alive, it's a fucking war, they will die. Many of them will die, my primary responsibility is to ensure they don't do it in vain. Secondary is keeping as many of them alive as possible.
Percy put his heels to the horse's flank and at a canter departed for the woods to the camp's northeast. There, fires flickered under the trunks and canopy. He made his way to the largest of the fires, situated near a collection of seven tents. As he dismounted, a young alaris took his reins and seven prefects saluted in greeting. These seven men led the alae milliaria. They were all of the equestrian class and together led his five thousand and forty alares. Most alares sat in the saddle before they could walk, coming from tribes with longstanding equine history; they were the elite of Rome's cavalry. Just two alae of Percy's preference, Germanic fighters, were available. As such, those two units joined with two Gallic and three Iberian alae to form what Percy believed to be the lynchpin of his force.
"Gentlemen, are your orders clear?" The senior of the commanders spoke for them all.
"Aye, Praefectus. The men know their orders and will execute them." The three Iberian units would deploy to his left flank, while the Gauls and Germans would be to his right. The three hundred equites per legion would have to hold the cavalry demands of the main line. Percy realized few enough legions still had equites but he was pleased his did. He spoke to the men for a few more moments before returning to his horse.
"I am counting on you bastards, don't fuck me." The senior prefect, a veteran of many years who had served beside Percy in Illyricum years before smiled.
"We've got some right fucking bastards, sir. You will have what you need."
"The right fucking bastards always do." Blackjack departed the treeline and Percy again entered camp, where legates, tribunes, and prefects were issuing orders that the centurions and decurions translated into bellowed commands. For three days he had studied the terrain of the battlefield. He knew where his army would establish itself. He needed only to ensure his men entered the field first and that the Greeks were forced to adapt to him. He passed the tent of the new commander of the Second, Legatus Legionis Potitus Valerius Messalla and the Tribunus Iaticlavius Aulus Plautius raised a hand in greeting.
Blackjack wove his way through the maze of soldiers until he found himself before two white tents marked with the banners of Legio XXI. As his feet hit the ground, he was greeted by a boy in his birth father's armor. He was just sixteen, but his stepfather insisted he travel east as a tribunus iaticlavius. The boy was neither twenty, the prescribed age, nor a friend of Perseus; what he was, was Caesar's stepson. Blood son of Livia Drusilla, Caesar's wife, and her first husband Tiberius Claudius Nero, Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus already had the mind of soldier, even if he lacked the age. Soon his legate, Legatus Legionis Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, joined him. The man senatorial class possessed the right to protest his position here. By both age and social standing, he was Praefectus Achaea Perseus' superior, and, he was too old for this position, but the emergent threat and the new legion demanded a commander and Caesar had asked personally. But he also understood three key things. One, the praefectus was a better soldier than he and he doubted anyone within the army possessed more experience than the Greek. Two, he had been selected to personally mentor, serve beside, and protect Caesar's adopted son. Three, and most important despite his uncle's failure to recognize it, Caesar was Rome, one did not question Caesar without questioning Rome, and one does not question your home.
"Legate," Percy greeted.
"Praefectus," both men saluted Percy, despite the differences in their social class.
"I wish I could give you the right flank. You have made the Twenty-First into the pride of this army."
"You honor me," Lepidus responded. He had spent enough time around the Greek to know he did not play the game of politics. If he stated something, it was so, not because he wanted something from you. Perseus suddenly extended an arm toward the older man.
"And you have done so to me since this began and we were placed in this situation, I know tradition and custom were ignored and I am most grateful in your ability to react as you have." Lepidus gave the younger man a smile.
"Remember that when we walk down the streets of Athens." Percy returned the smile.
"Always."
***CXXXV***
The army was moving now. Twenty-five thousand Greeks opposing fifteen thousand Roman legionaries. Annabeth knew the Roman tactics, she knew Romans, she knew how to win. She had defeated Legio II while outnumbered. She had shattered Legio X outside of Megara with fewer than two hundred casualties and less than fifty deaths. Two of the legions facing her would already be afraid to face her again, she had yet to recognize the third.
The three legions were not arrayed in a way that Annabeth had expected. Instead of utilizing their ability to spread the line, the line was compact and bent into a shallow U, with the arms angled away from her forces. The Roman cavalry covered the flanks. She saw their general at the center of the formation. He held a small number of cavalry at his position. Behind him what looked like three cohorts waited, that was his reserve she assumed. From her position, she could see the three legion banners. Two of them were legions she had already defeated, Legios II and X. The third, the one holding the center, she did not recognize. The legion enumerated XXI she had never heard of, but if it held the center that was a sign of its quality, which was clearly lesser than Legio II, which held the Roman right.
There they are, she thought as several hundred Roman horsemen appeared to each flank. They appeared to be equites only, none of the more elite auxilia cavalry. With a motion of her arm, she ordered her own cavalry forward. Why isn't the bastard advancing? She asked herself. Despite the legion's reputation for speed and flexibility, it sits still.
***CXXXVI***
Percy watched as with a wave of the Greek general's arm; the Greek battle line began to advance. Aimed directly at the juncture between his Second and Twenty-First legions were the red lambdas of Sparta. Archery duels had started even as cavalry skirmished on the flanks of the formation. Neither of those were the basis of his attention. No, his eyes darted between the front ranks of his legions, now behind their shields as arrows fell amongst them and the far mountain, where the Greek camp sat. His eyes came back to the front ranks, where now just twenty yards separated the two forces. The Spartans continued toward the seam between the Second and Twenty-First.
A single command echoed throughout the line. "Iacite pila." Across the line, the twelve cohorts canted their right shoulders and released their weapons. Each pilum arced through the air and death rained upon the approaching Greeks. Shields and humans were pierced by the javelins before gravity took over and the wooden shafts bent the iron tips and rendered shield useless and flesh torn.
"Dimitte ignum." He ordered as the front ranks of the Greek line closed within ten yards of his lines and began their ascent of the slight rise sudden gouts of black smoke appeared along the line and the fire was released. For these logs, covered in pitch, then dried vines, and pitch again had two uses. Secondary were the great rents in the battle line caused by the rolling log and its flaming cargo. Primary was the smoke itself.
***CXXXVII***
Annabeth could not see what caused the fire, nor could she see her forces as the dark smoke obscured everything. Two sounds though reached her ears. There first were the blood curdling screams as flesh turned black and flames consumed life. Seconds later, the second sound was nearly as chilling, the roar as fifteen thousand Roman legionaries advanced into the close range killing at which they excelled.
I still outnumber them, Annabeth told herself. On the flanks her cavalry appeared to have limited success in driving away the equites, chasing them from the field. "Begin moving the reserves to the left flank. Prepare to overwhelm them on their right!" A messenger sprinted away in response. After several minutes, delay she watched the reserves begin to shift to the right flank.
"Gods!" Annabeth spun in her saddle. She followed the eyes of her adjutant. Mirroring the rising smoke in the battlefield below, smoke filled the sky from the direction of her camp.
***CXXXVIII***
Seven pairs of eyes had spent the hours since dawn on the horizon. Now, they saw pillars of smoke rise in the distance. Each, regardless of their current position, heeled their horses in a return to the waiting alares. Between the two forces, four alae on the right and three on the right, sat the Greek camp. The Children of Hephaestus and their mortal assistants had been tasked to protect the camp. They were not prepared for thousands of Gauls, Germans, and Iberians that suddenly appeared from the wooded valleys at a full gallop.
Fewer than five hundred supporting personnel, smiths, engineers, medics, led by Leandros lifted weapons to oppose the massed cavalry. Some were too old for the battle, others too young; but when riding a galloping horse anyone with a weapon was an enemy. The horsemen, Rome's spoil from the conquest of those with great traditions of horsemanship, distinguished not as they fell upon the unprepared foe. Sword and spear painted the Epirus dirt red while torches and braziers sent towering columns of smoke in a macabre sacrifice to their own gods of war.
Just as quickly as the flood of foreign troops swept into the Greek camp, they washed across it and vanished into the wooded valleys again. In their wake, four hundred and ten Greeks lay dead, Leandros among them, his body splayed across his forge as flames consumed the structure around him. That structure was not alone, as a series of conflagrations ate at nearly every tent or temporary building that once housed the Greek forces. If anything, the Greeks that returned would be shocked that more looting had not occurred. But with their blood lust merely tempered by the raid, the Gauls, Germans, and Iberians turned their mounts toward another target.
***CXXXIX***
The boundary between two opposing armies broke two planes. On one hand, it divided the forward edge of one people from that of another. On the other hand, it represented the one place on earth where the boundaries of the living and the dead. For as life ended, heroes were born. For every centurion that died, there was an optio that took his place or a legend was born. The pulsing blood in someone's veins did not guarantee their life, for merely living was no life but an existence. Therefore here, on a plain in Epirus, Perseus once again looked upon both sides of multiple planes. For here, he saw Rome and an enemy, even as life and death played out their dance of finality.
Eighteen of the thirty cohorts available to him were committed to the front line. The nine forming the third row were already bloodied, having rotated out of the fight. Soon he would be forced to send them forth again. On his right, the equites had run away, as they had been ordered. The enemy cavalry had chased them, just as Brutus cavalry had chased the retreating legions at Philippi. The reserve of three hundred cavalry had already been committed on the left, where Legio X's equites had been severely bloodied. Yet they had done their duty and drawn away the undisciplined Greek cavalry as well. Paulus Aemiliius Lepidus lay on a stretcher beside him, refusing to leave the battlefield despite the arrow protruding from his left shoulder.
Horns sounded from the enemy rear, for half a moment Percy's heart sank. Then behind the horns came the guttural below of the Germanic barritus. While their war cries did not elicit the same primal fear in their enemies, the Iberians and Gauls joined the vocalized aggression as their steeds bore them across the field. The Gauls and Germanic warriors upon the Roman left encountered no resistance as the over two thousand horsemen fell upon the exposed rear of the Greek line. The phalanxes were oriented toward the Romans and the cavalry pierced their ranks with bloody efficiency. On the right, the Iberians encountered the massing reserves, but similar to their hoplite brethren, they were not oriented to the greatest threat and the "barbarians" of the North made them pay for it.
***CXL***
Annabeth watched as her right flank crumbled under the weight of the newly appeared Roman horse. A scout had told her of devastation that befell her camp, it seemed those horsemen were not content to fuck her over just once. The swords and spears to the outside of the Spartans had received the brunt of the attack, though the Lacedaemonians were not unbloodied as small detachments witnessed the tightly packed targets facing the wrong direction.
She had been forced close to the line by the cavalry's appearance. Now, up close, she smelt the odor of battle. The iron of blood and the scent of freshly churned loam mixed with the smell of piss and shit. The hours of resulted in an already growing sickeningly sweet aroma of death. From her horse, she cast an eye across the field, there it seemed the Roman commander moved himself for the first time.
Annabeth cursed her inability to focus on anything but the present. Where was her ability to predict what the Roman would do? Fucked by Roman cavalry it seems. How to counter? How to counter? Her reserves had blunted the cavalry attack to their rear and paid for it. But in doing so they had saved her left flank.
"Ma'am, they move." Her gaze shifted to the twelve cohorts of Romans now moving.
***CXLI***
"Cohortes omnes deinceps. Mecum prima." Orders went out from him. The nine cohorts resting in reserve moved forward to reinforce the line, the three in full reserve formed behind their commander. These three were the three first cohorts of the legions. All at double strength, their combined might brought an additional two thousand, eight hundred and eighty unwearied fighters into the battle.
He knew he should not be leading this, but he could also no longer watch his men die without his involvement. The Spartans were holding, even as the entire Greek right flank was threatened with encirclement. He watched as a tall soldier seemingly held off a dozen of his men. He recognized the red glow surrounding their form and could not bring himself to watch more men die against a child of the war god.
"Cuneum formate!" Behind their commander, the men formed a large wedge. I seal them off, Percy thought. Isolate and destroy.
***CXLII***
Annabeth watched as the massive wedge of men moved toward the Spartans. Their phalanx had suffered under the cavalry assault but held under Clarisse's leadership. Now they were threatened again. This time, however, it appeared that that the Roman commander led his forces forward. If they succeeded the right flank of her army would be shorn away. If they're shorn away, I can't get them back.
***CXLIII***
Percy sprinted at the fore of the broad wedge that sped forward. The infantry in front of them, their centurions ever watchful, opened a path as the lead members of the First Cohort of Legio XXI hurled their pila. The light spears opened gaps in the rows of spearmen carrying the red lambda. Behind them the First Cohort of the Tenth prepared their gladii. Before their compatriots could fill the holes, Percy's sword was among them.
He carried the shield of a fallen member of the Twenty-First legion. In his right hand was the Sword of Brutus. Under his feet were the dead, the dying, and the those he had ordered turned to ash. Within seconds of contact, blood stained the blade and at once, he felt his place. The shield swung out and threw a Spartiate back several steps. The warrior attempted to reset himself. Instead, he looked down, open mouthed as the iron of Percy's sword carved through the bronze of his cuirass and his internal organs fell about him. Two more men fell to his blade before he found his path to the warrior hemmed in a red glow. Another man rushed toward him. Percy used the shield to bash him to the ground, before he smashed the rim of the shield through the man's face and released it, drawing the Sword of Vercingetorix in his left hand. Only now, with multiple blades in his hands, did the true minuet of death begin.
The blade in his left hand shattered a spear haft, while the Germanic blade in his right thrust through the owner's chest. The blood of two more covered him before he found himself before the warrior he believed blessed by the war god, in this case, Ares. They thrust out with their spear and a jolt of energy shot through him as he twisted to dodge, and the spear grazed his armor. They whipped the spear about and caught the haft on both of his swords. They recovered and thrust again. Percy dropped to his knee as the spear passed by him and he swung with the left-hand sword, feeling satisfaction as he felt the blade bite deeply into the flesh of the warrior's knee.
The scream that rent the air was not that of a man, and only now did Percy realize that his opponent was a woman. Instead of falling to the ground, the spear again thrust toward him. Percy spun to his right. The spear passed over his cocked right arm. With a cry, Percy brought his left forearm down over spear's haft. The wood between his arms did not hold and shards of the shaft bit deeply into him as the wood shattered. He ignored the pain and moved forward, the swords whistling as they sang the song of death to the children of Sparta. The warrior drew a sword and swung the kopis with a heavy over hand blow, their shield swinging out for a rimmed strike. He raised his arm and caught the blow on his upper and lower arm. He felt the bones bend and crack, but they did not break under his vambraces. He did not notice the blade crease his cuirass. The force of it threw him back a step, but he countered by sliding opposite handed of his blades across the back of the shield. He saw the bright red blood run along the blade's length and knew the cut was true.
***CXLIV***
From her perch on the hill, Annabeth watched as the former reserve bit into the essentially the shoulder of her force. She had placed her Spartans there in an attempt to shear off the Roman left from the center. Instead, they had become the crux of the Roman's counterattack. She cursed the aggressiveness Mark of Philippi had instilled in his soldiers; due to it they chased those fucking equites to gods only knew where. Which it appeared had been the plan.
To her right she could see two of three cohorts in and amongst the Spartans. The Spartans excelled at fighting, regardless of the weapon. But in their predisposition to battle, they had drawn closer in an attempt to engage their enemy, one who excelled at close battle. As they did, a seam began to open between them and the Achaeans on their left. The Achaeans attempted to shift and in doing so began to open their ranks. Only now did the third reserve cohort begin to move. She spun to a messenger.
"Get the Spartans fucking out there!" To the right of the Spartans, five and a half thousand soldiers of Greece began their day confident in their general's leadership. She could not count how many remained now, but she knew how many it would be by the end of the day. Even from here it was obvious the Spartan phalanx was shattered, even if the Spartans were not. The gap created by the Roman commander's counterattack opened a pathway for rear rank soldiers to move to the flank of those outside the scions of Sparta. Already they were being sequestered from all allies and the soldiers of the Tenth remembered what happened on the Megaris. They had been cut off and nearly surrounded once, thousands of their brothers killed, Nemesis has come.
***CXLV***
His steps carried him over too many of his bastards' bloody and broken upon the ground. Again, and again his swords struck. Blood coated his arms and torso. He could feel it running down his face and blinked it away from his eyes. Percy roared as he brought the one-time sword of Rome's enemy down upon the trapezius of another. The blade cut deep, crushing the clavicle before coming to rest upon the top of the sternum. He purposely ground the blade against the bone as he withdrew it. As agony flooded his victim's face, Publius Ventidius Bassus Perseanus thrust Brutus' sword under his jaw and watched in satisfaction as it escaped through the top of his cranium.
He turned to see the warrior he knew to be a woman and twice wounded staring at him. He withdrew the sword and turned toward her as on his right the First Cohort of the Second forged ahead to attempt to isolate the Spartans. Behind him he heard the roars and screams of hunter and trapped as Legio X executed the will of Nemesis. Before him, however, it appeared that the remaining Spartans began to withdraw. He called out and soon the great black stallion was at his side, barreling over his enemies in the process.
***CXLVI***
She had ordered the Spartans to retreat. As the first of their number passed her, she could see the anger and discontent in their eyes. She preferred it to the accusatory ones of her aides as they watched the right flank. On the left flank, a rough stalemate existed as the enemy's cavalry charged and withdrew. Slowly though, the Second Legion's cohorts began to expand the frontage to their right. As they did so, they began to exceed her force's ability to expand with them.
Her eyes turned back to her right, where the remnants of eleven lochoi, battalions of five hundred, faced the vengeance of a once broken legion. Even near the center, the soldiers of the unknown legion and the three cohorts of the violent counterattack now pressed on the flanks of the Achaeans. The cowards, or maybe the intelligent, she reasoned already streamed back toward her second command area. She looked about as the death only mounted. Her forces had inflicted heavy casualties early, but without a camp behind them and the enemy's cavalry forming again…
"Sound the retreat." Shocked faces turned to her. "Sound the retreat."
The horns and signals cast out their message as riders galloped off. The Spartan remainder set a formation about her. Her army began to move, at first orderly, but then increasingly chaotically. All except the right flank, there the soldiers looked up to their commander and then back to the rank upon rank of legionnaires closing upon them. She watched the auxiliary cavalry break off their attack on the flank as cohorts of infantry replaced them. Soon that cavalry formed up, just as the Roman cavalry on her left. We're next, she thought. Suddenly came the cries and horns of her returning cavalry.
***CXLVII***
Fucking bastards, Percy thought as his chance to ride down the enemy was dashed. Legio XXI and their brethren in the Second were disorganized as the enemy infantry disengaged. Instinctively they formed squares and did not maneuver. Only his cavalry was capable of reacting and he let them go. The remnants of the equites of all units appeared to his rear, but they were not strong enough to chase down the enemy retreat now covered by a reorganized Achaean front. Only now did his attention return to the Tenth. He heeled Blackjack toward them.
"Ordinem servate!" he shouted, and the trumpeters echoed his call. As the Greek perimeter condensed, no Roman moved forward. Slowly he made his way to shouting distance of the Greeks. "Parádosi. Den chreiázetai na petháneis ótan se chtypoún."
In response to his demand to surrender and assertion that they were beaten, a Greek soldier bolder than the rest stepped forward. "Síkose ton kólo sou." Percy could not help but laugh before repeating the response.
"Shove it up my ass, eh? Enough have died today. Surrender and perhaps we will all see peace." From within the center of the Greek, formation two arrows launched into the sky. The first struck the great horse in the left shoulder and he reared violently. The motion most likely saved the Praefectus Achaea, as it lifted him skyward and as such the arrow bit deeply into the left of his abdomen instead of his heart. No orders were given, but only one would have been followed anyway. As the assembled members of the Tenth watched the missiles strike their commander, a great cry went up. Their shields locked together, and their gladii again became the pathways to Charon's boat.
***CXLVIII***
"Fucking monster," Annabeth whispered as the noose of iron tightened around her men. Legio XXI approached her position and soon she must depart. But, from her position she had watched the Roman commander rear his horse and order his men forward. Not one of those five and a half thousand men would return from this battle. His tactics may have led to their isolation and his orders to their slaughter, but they were her soldiers. Eleven lochoi, one commanded by another of her siblings, gone. She watched, her breath tightening in her throat as the perimeter of resistance slowly fell. The Twenty-First was within five hundred yards, and she turned to see the wounded Clarisse approaching her. She utilized a broken spear as a crutch and blood ran from the bandage on her arm.
"We need to go." By this point, it appeared two lines of her soldiers were merely fighting back-to-back. The approaching legionaries were within two hundred yards now.
"I will watch their end."
"Then you are more foolish than I thought. Our cavalry could not keep them away and now their horsemen return. We leave or this ends in a single battle." Annabeth's eyes could not leave her surrounded force, but, as Troy once had, they ceased to exist. She sat upon a horse, frozen, staring at the spot where cohorts of Roman infantry now stood. Where once her soldiers had stood. For now, in the epicenter of that place, sat a man on a tall, black horse. And his men celebrated him.
***CXLIX***
"My dear, why have you returned?" Chiron looked down upon Zoe. "You were to lead the people to the ships and leave."
"I fear I have become embroiled in this conflict." The dark-haired girl, far too reminiscent of the Persians most Greeks had never seen, but still inherently feared, appeared worried for perhaps the first time in the many years Chiron had known here. Chiron's face darkened. He could see from their position on the mountainside that the Romans were just hours away. The fifty or so fighters that refused to retreat would stand little chance against the force fanning out on the plains under Mt Pelion.
"My dear, that has never been your desired outcome nor your mistress's preference." Zoe turned slowly to four of her hunters. Like the rest, they were clad in deer hide garments of a near silver color. Their ages appeared equal to the majority of the nearly seventy maidens of Artemis that followed Zoe Nightshade throughout the world. The difference resided within their eyes. Where most displayed a serenity born of their mistress, these four shown wrath.
"From left to right, Myrinne survived the fall of Corinth to Mummius, Helen survived Carthage, Diraeh was in Alexandria, Averna escaped from a slaver taking her to Rome from a village raided by Agrippa's cavalry in Gaul." She took a breath. "They took it upon themselves to begin a campaign of ambushes against the Romans. They claim to have killed fifty thus far."
"What have the Romans done in response?"
"They've burned every farm or village since their last camp. They're destroying everything."