The Lion's Brood by Duffield Osborne (best reads of all time TXT) 📕

but weakened maniples back into their weltering mass; in the rear, the attack was less continuous, for Hasdrubal's horsemen were exhausted with slaying, and he hurled them in alternate squadrons, now on this point, now on that, wherever the Roman line showed relics of strength or firmness. So the front worked back, driven by sheer weight in the direction where the pressure was least.

Paullus still sat, with drooping head, faint with fatigue and loss of blood, while Decius, Sergius, and Lentulus stood by him, helplessly awaiting the end. A rush of fugitives swept by and almost overwhelmed the wounded man; but Decius passed his arm around him, and the press slackened.

"It is time for you to mount and ride, Cneius Lentulus;" and the consul raised his head again, while the old-time spirit of command flashed in his eyes. "You shall be my envoy to the fathers. Bid them fortify and garrison the city; go—"

A new rush broke in upon his words,—a rush, in which the whole front was borne back a spear's length beyond them. Sergius was thrown down, but some one raised him, dazed and stunned, and seemed to bear him along. A moment, and he found himself standing once more upon his feet. Cneius Lentulus and his horse were gone; Paullus and Marcus Decius were left alone far beyond—no, not alone. He saw the tunics of the Iberians, now all as purple as their borders, thronging around; he saw his general and his comrade give their throats to the sharp, slender swords; and then he saw, far ahead, amid the Carthaginian syntagmata, a swarthy, smiling face with crisp, curling beard; he saw the brown-bronze corselet rich with gold, the meteor helmet with ostrich plumes floating between its horns, the snowy mantle bordered with Tyrian purple; and he saw the white head of the horse whose feet needed now no dye of art to stain them vermilion. All the fury of battle, all the madness of revenge overwhelmed him in an instant; despair was gone, thoughts of past and future were swept away by the surge of one overmastering idea: he must reach that man and kill him. He looked around at the scattered, reeling maniples. A standard bearer was lying at his feet, striving with his remnant of strength to wrench the silver eagle from its staff, that he might hide it under his cloak; but the death rattle came too quickly. Sergius picked up the standard.

"Come," he said, "there is the enemy." And then, without a glance to note whether his appeal was regarded, he rushed blindly forward.

It was a discipline inspired by tradition rather than taught by drills and punishments that came to the Roman recruit, and now it played its part. These peasants, these artisans whose eyes had seen naught save unaccustomed horrors through all the day, turned at once to answer the summons of the eagle. Sergius heard the feeble shout of battle that rose behind him, heard the scattered clanging of sword and shield, and when he struck the long pikes of the first square, it was with the force of half a dozen broken maniples welded into a solid mass.

Still the sarissas held firm. Perhaps two lines went down, but the pila rained their slant courses from the rear; the feeble rush was stopped, and the legionaries struggled helplessly upon the spears. Sergius saw nothing but the dark, bearded face among the squares—scarcely nearer than before. Had he not read in a little book written by one, Xenophon, a Greek, and purchased, at great cost, at the shop of Milo, the bookseller in the Argiletum, how Oriental armies won or lost by the life or death of their leaders? He would kill Hannibal! Would to the gods that Paullus had fallen in the Cinctus Gabinus! Paullus, too much of an infidel to think of such old-time immolation; but there was yet one last appeal.

Seizing the tough staff of the standard almost at the end, he whirled it around his head and let it go at full swing; the silver eagle flashed in the light of the setting sun, as it described great arcs, and plunged down amid the hostile ranks; a hoarse cry went up: the very deity of the legion was amid its foes! no Roman so untried as not to hear its call. The short swords hacked and stabbed among the spears; the first square swayed and rocked, shivered into fragments, and, hurled back upon the second, bore it, too, down in the mingled rush of pursuers and pursued. On every side of the dwindling band of assailants, front, flanks, and rear, the pikes dipped and plunged, the Gallic swords hissed through the air, the Spaniards ravened and stabbed; but, to the Romans, flanks and rear were nothing: it was the front, the Libyans, the lost eagle.

And now, at last, it was won; the advance had been checked by the closer welding of the syntagmata, half his men were down; but Sergius, still unhurt, had stooped and raised the standard, kissing its crimson beak and wings. Then he looked up.

Half the space between himself and the bearded horseman had vanished, and the latter was no longer talking carelessly with those about. His steady gaze was fixed upon the young Roman, as if studying the exact measure of strength that remained to him. There was nothing else for it. Again the great staff described great circles through the air, and again the crimson eagle soared and stooped, and the white stallion reared and snorted, as it struck the earth before him; again the shattered fragment of an army hurled itself, wounded and weary and bleeding, among the ever thickening spears; yes, and forced its way a quarter, half the remaining distance, until Sergius, whose eyes had never for a moment forsaken those of the Carthaginian, saw them grow troubled, saw the black, bushy brows draw together. Then his enemy turned and spoke a few hurried words to an attendant, gesticulating freely, until the man whirled his horse about and drove back through the throng. When Sergius looked into the face of the general again, it wore a disdainful smile—the smile of a Zeus that watches the sons of Aloeus pile mountain on mountain in the vain effort to storm Olympus. Again Hannibal was careless and unconcerned; again he laughed and joked gayly with his attendants; his soldier's eye had set the limit of Rome's last paroxysm, and it fell short of the spot where he sat—not by much, but enough. All that remained was for the arrows of Apollo to do their work, and now he had set these to the string.

Wearily and yet more wearily the wolves bit and tore their way; then they came staggering to a stand, three spear lengths from the lost eagle, and then the pressure behind seemed to slacken, and the serried spears in front bore them slowly backward.

All was over. Sergius' eyes, dim and bloodshot, wandered, at last, from the contemptuous smile that had held them, and rested upon the score of men, for the most part wounded, that remained about him. For an instant the spears and swords ceased their work, and the dense mass of lowering faces that surrounded the last of the legions rolled back. Lanes appeared between the syntagmata; a chorus of wild cries swelled up—swept nearer, and the furious riders of the desert came galloping through every interspace. To them had been granted, for a mark of honour, the ending of the battle. It was only a single rush, a brandishing and plunging of javelins retained in grasp, a little more blood spattered upon the horses' necks and bellies. No legionary was standing when the tempest had gone by, and there, among his men, with face turned from the red earth to the reddening sky, lay Lucius Sergius Fidenas, in slumber fitting for a Roman patrician when the black day of Cannae was done.

PART II.
CHAPTER I. THE QUEEN OF THE WAYS.

There was much bustle and confusion throughout the little inn at Sinuessa. August was just closing, and the midday summer sun beat down too fiercely to permit of comfortable travel save toward morning or night. The inn-keeper had hurried out and stood in the roadway, bowing and wreathing his face with smiles of welcome, while, behind him, were grouped his servants, each bearing some implement of his or her calling—a muster well calculated to impress the wayfarer with the assurance of comfort and good cheer.

The occasion of all this demonstration was a party that had halted, apparently for refreshment and the customary traveller's siesta; a rheda or four-wheeled travelling carriage, closely covered and drawn by three powerful horses yoked abreast. Two armed outriders, one apparently a freedman and the other a slave, made up the company, the former of whom, a stout, elderly man with gray hair and beard, had reined in his horse before the obsequious host, while the other remained by the carriage wheel, as if to aid the driver in guarding the rheda's occupants from intrusion.

The innkeeper, short and fat, was breathing hard from the haste in which he had sallied out, but his words came volubly:—

"Let the gentlemen alight and enter—or, if they be ladies, so much the better. They shall make trial of the best inn along the whole length of the Queen of Ways. Such couches as they have never seen, save, doubtless, in their magnificent homes, fit for the gods to lie upon!—such dishes!—such cooking! guinea-hens fed and fattened under my own eye, mullet fresh from the water with all greens of the season, and such wine as only the Massic Mount can grow—"

Here, however, he paused to take breath, and the freedman succeeded in interrupting the flow of words.

"By the gods! will you be silent?" he said. "Perhaps we shall try your fare, if you do not take up the whole day in telling us about it. First, however, it is necessary for us to learn certain things. How many miles is it to Capua?"

The innkeeper's face took on a grieved look in place of the beaming smile of a moment since, but he answered promptly and humbly:—

"The matter of twenty-five miles, my master."

"At what hour do they close the gates?"

The innkeeper glanced back at the group of domestics with a frightened expression.

"That is a military question," he said. "How can I answer it in these times? It is dangerous to talk about such things."

"Not dangerous for you," insisted the other, rather scornfully. "Since you Campanians have become pulse-eaters, not the wildest Numidian would dare disturb you. The cruel one is very tender of you all—now; but wait till Rome shall fall, then you will know what his tenderness is worth—when you are all busy grinding corn for Carthage—"

"By all the gods! speak lower—if you must say such words," whispered the innkeeper, white with terror. "If one of my servants should betray me! Like enough the gate is closed at all times. It is said that Hannibal enters the town to-night."

"Hannibal in Capua to-night!" came a voice from the rheda—a woman's voice, softly and delicately modulated, yet deep and rich in its tones. At the same moment the curtains were drawn aside, and she looked out, beckoning imperiously to the would-be host. "Come near, my good man, I wish to speak with you more closely."

The innkeeper stood as one dazed, with open mouth and bulging eyes. He had looked upon great and beautiful ladies before, for many such travelled by the Appian Way, but the beauty and the nobility of this face seemed to him more than mortal. With all the grace, all the freshness, all the radiant charm of the girl Marcia, were now joined the calm and deep-eyed crown of womanhood. The perfect lines that could so perfectly respond to playful or tender emotions were still unmarred, and yet sorrow that had left no other trace had endowed them with new possibilities of devotion and high resolve.

"Come," repeated Marcia, and the little inn-keeper trotted up to the rheda and stood watching her with an expression of canine wonder and subservience in his big, dull eyes.

"Did I not hear you say that Hannibal was to be in Capua to-night? Have these false Campanians indeed carried out the treachery rumoured of them?"

The man had forgotten all his fears of a few moments since, nor did the slur upon his race rouse aught of indignation. Held fast under the spell of the dark eyes before him, he made haste to answer:—

"The rumour, madam, that a traveller left with me some hours since is that Marius Blossius, praetor