The Lion\'s Brood
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Duffield Osborne >> The Lion\'s Brood
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While the men talked together, Sergius sought the praefect of the new
detachment, a Hostilian of the family of Mancinus, whom he recalled among
the young hot-heads that formed the party of the master-of-the-horse, and
declaimed against the policy of Fabius as cowardly and base. He found
him in the best possible humour, laughing and making coarse jests amid a
circle of decurions and optios--as rude a Roman as marched with the
standards, yet able, when occasion demanded, to play the man of fashion
who had spent a year at Athens. The latter mood fell upon him when he
descried Sergius. He came forward to meet him.
"Health to you, my Lucius!" he cried, "Surely the gods have held you in
especial favour this day. I am told you have cut up a few squadrons of
this African offal."
"With your timely aid," replied Sergius, bowing.
"I but made the hares double to your coursing," said Hostilius,
carelessly; "and they tell me you have won both the spolia opima and a
civic crown. That is a great deal for one day--and under a peaceful
dictator."
Sergius flushed.
"I shall not claim them," he said. "Doubtless, Decius would have both
slain the fellow and saved himself had I not come up--"
"No modesty! no modesty!" cried Hostilius, gayly. "I assure you it is
even less Greek than Roman in these days. Lo! now, I myself will claim
both for you at Rome, if only to show that I do not grudge you your share
of the carrion. Perhaps such honours will not prejudice you in a certain
house on the Palatine," he added, slyly. "But come! you and I shall join
our forces and raid together. We have sent two hundred to Acheron since
we left the camp, and birds have been singing on our left all the
morning."
"Where is the dictator now?" asked Sergius.
"In his tent, of course," replied the other, scornfully. "And no one
cares where that may be."
"And you?"
"Oh! he was persuaded at last to risk a scouting party, and, at the
request of the brave Minucius, he gave the command to me with strict
injunctions to use only my eyes. Well, I have used them so sharply that
my hands, too, have been full," and Hostilius laughed. "There are some
five hundred of the cross-food that have evaded me thus far. We shall
catch them now, though, and, together, it will be easy for us to prevail."
Sergius was silent. To make a dash from the heights in defence of allies
dying in his sight, was one thing; to deliberately join this
insubordinate in turning a reconnaissance into a raid, was another and
much more serious matter.
The praefect noted his hesitation, and a slight frown chased the smile
from his lips.
"Or perhaps you prefer to obey the old woman's orders," he added, "and
keep your couch warm. Well, our men and horses are fed by this time, and
I am off. If you are a Roman, I greet you to ride with me; if you fear
robbers or the axe that smote Titus Manlius, why, I will bid you farewell
and ride alone."
"Where do you set your course?" queried Sergius, with a vague hope of at
least seeming to combine inclination with duty.
"Toward the enemy," replied the other, shortly. "Does not the direction
please you?" and he turned to his horse.
Sergius' brow clouded. His blood was hot with the conflict just
finished. Youth, courage--all combined to turn him from obedience; but
obedience bade fair to conquer, when Marcia's laugh rang in his ears, and
he could hear her gravely complimenting his prudence and discoursing on
the rare value of docility in a husband. Besides, what did it all
matter? Had he not said that he sought death? and, surely, the way it
came soonest was the best.
Placing his hand upon his horse's withers, he vaulted upon its back,
before the animal had time to kneel, and a moment later was beside
Hostilius.
"By Hercules!" exclaimed the latter; "I am glad you are here. Even in
these days of strange things, I would have found it difficult to imagine
that a Sergian could be a coward."
"And now," cried Sergius, "you will only have to imagine him a fool. So
be it, and let the cost of his life pay for his folly."
"Jupiter avert the omen!" exclaimed Hostilius, shuddering, and then,
turning to his trumpeter, he bade him give the signal for the march.
It was a desolate country--the fair plains of Campania through which they
rode. Here and there a cluster of blackened ruins, here and there things
that were once men, fruit trees cut down, vines uprooted, corn-fields
reaped with the sword; while far away upon the horizon smoky columns
curled up to show that the work of devastation still went on.
"May Mavers curse him--curse him forever!" cried Hostilius, grinding his
teeth in rage at each new manifestation of the enemy's handiwork. "Could
the most disastrous battle be worse than this?"
Sergius was silent. In a way his feelings went out to meet those of his
companion; but the dictator had trusted him, and he had disobeyed, and,
for all his disobedience, his soldier's instinct told him that the
dictator was right.
Hostilius eyed him sharply and suspiciously, as if trying to divine his
thoughts.
"If you regret--" he began.
Suddenly a decurion of the allies dashed up beside them.
"Look!" he cried, pointing toward the east. "There is carrion for the
wolves."
Both leaders turned at the words.
Far out across the plain was what seemed at first sight like a clump of
dark foliage, save that it moved and changed shape too much.
"Numidians!" exclaimed the decurion, following his finger with his
speech, while the veins in Hostilius' forehead began to swell and grow
dark.
"The signal! Let it be given," he cried to his officer, and, turning, he
dug his knees into his horse's sides and galloped toward the distant
quarry. A moment later the cavalry wheeled at the trumpet call, and, in
some disorder but full of eagerness, began the pursuit of their leader.
As for Sergius, he, too, gave order and rein, though more deliberately,
and his troop followed the cavalry of the allies in somewhat better
array. By his side galloped Decius with an expression hard to analyze
upon his weather-beaten face.
Sergius glanced at the old soldier from time to time with a look of
inquiry and concern. At last he ventured to question his grim mentor.
"Is it well or ill, Marcus?"
"Ill for you that command, well for me who obey," growled the other, and
Sergius flushed and was silent.
"Shall we catch them?" he asked, a few moments later, for the clump of
Numidians, who had sat motionless upon their horses until the Romans
covered half the intervening distance, had now wheeled for flight.
"If they be too strong for us, we shall catch them," replied Decius. "It
is as they will."
And now it became apparent that the marauders were far inferior in
numbers to the assailants, and that they recognized the fact; for flight
and pursuit began in earnest. Horses were urged to higher speed. At one
moment the Numidians seemed to be holding their distance; at another, the
Romans gained slightly but unmistakably. All order of detachments and
turmae was soon lost; Romans and allies, officers and men, were mingled
together in a straggling mass, with naught but the eagerness of the
riders and the speed of their animals to marshal them. Only Decius
continued to pound along, with his horse's nose at his tribune's elbow.
The thunder of many hundred hoofs rolled across the plain.
"By Hercules! we shall do it!" cried Sergius, in whom ardour of the chase
had put to flight all sentiments of regret or doubt. "Do you not see we
are gaining?"
"They ride silently yet," said Decius. "It is but knee-speed with them.
Wait till they cry out to their horses, and we shall see."
Suddenly, as if to supplement the words, a single shrill cry, half
whistle, half scream, rose up ahead. Had they been closer, they might
have noted the pricking ears of the desert steeds; but this much they
saw:--one horse and rider darting out of the press, like arrow from bow,
and scurrying away over the plain as if their former gait had been but a
hand-gallop.
An instant of misgiving came to some few of the Romans, who were not
blind to everything but the excitement of the moment, but they, like the
rest, only plied knee and thong the harder, and the episode of the single
rider was forgotten by all save Marcus Decius and Sergius.
"It is a trap, master," said the former, with an inquiring glance at his
leader.
Sergius bowed his head, and his face was troubled, as he replied:--
"I know it, my Marcus, but we cannot turn back now. I have accepted the
feast: therefore I must recline until my host gives the signal to rise.
I pray you pardon me."
By a quick movement Decius urged his horse a stride ahead of the
tribune's, that he might the better hide his emotion; at the same time
growling:--
"I pardon you?--and for the chance of a blow at the scum? I thank you
many times."
And now, from the plain ahead rose a low range of rolling hills over
which a light cloud seemed to hover. Was it the ascent that wearied the
horses of the Numidians? Surely the space between pursuers and pursued
was lessening rapidly, and Hostilius leaned far forward, shaking his
spear and calling upon his men for a renewed effort.
"Now! now!" he cried. "See! they are spent! Up with them ere they top
the hill!"
But the Numidians gained the sought-for ridge, if only by a few
spear-lengths' lead, and the cloud, now close ahead, hung so dense that
there were those who thought it the smoke of another farm. Decius' eyes
seemed set in a dazed stare. There was too much red in that cloud, and
yet it was not the red of fire, and it was too light and too thin for
smoke. He knew it; he had known it all along, but what did it matter?
The last Numidian had disappeared down the opposite slope--no! surely
they had turned again, and in a longer line--a thicker one; and the light
javelins and naked black bodies had become long, stout spears and
glittering corselets, while at their head rode a slender man with forked
beard, and his black eyes seemed to burn in his head like coals. So,
with one barbaric roar, the whole array poured down over the allied
cavalry, and these were like the dust of the trampled field.
VII.
PUNISHMENT.
Sergius hardly knew what was happening. He was conscious that the
stride of his horse had been checked by a dense mass of plunging
animals in front--a mass that grew more dense and more tangled with
every instant. Those behind were still endeavouring to press forward,
and those in front were hurled back upon them or were striving
frantically to break through the rearmost squadrons and escape; while,
shrill above the clash of arms and the shouts and screams, rose a name
that Sergius found himself listening to with a sort of curious interest.
"Maharbal! Maharbal!" came the cry, nearer and nearer.
At the first moment of the check, Marcus Decius had pushed the sturdy
horse that he rode well to the fore. He saw Hostilius riding back,
waving one arm and crying out incoherent words: his spear was gone, and
the head of a Spaniard's lance had been thrust through his shoulder and
broken off, so that a third of the shaft hung from the wound.
Then what had happened and the hopelessness of it all became apparent.
Like the veriest fools they had ridden into the snare, and Maharbal,
the Carthaginian, with at least two thousand Spanish and African
horsemen, was thundering on their front and flanks: their front--but in
a moment, their rear; for now those who had not been ridden down at the
first onset or become inextricably entangled with their fellows broke
away over the plain, carrying their officers with them in a mad frenzy
of flight; while other Numidians--fresh riders on fresh steeds--urged
the pursuit and smote down the hindermost.
Decius found himself riding in the middle of the press. His face was
as imperturbable as ever, though he glanced over his shoulder from time
to time as if to note how much nearer death had come. Sergius galloped
close behind him, careless and abstracted, his rein lying loose on his
charger's steaming neck. Then, of a sudden, a resolve seemed to come
to him. Straightening himself, he urged the weary horse forward
through the fugitives till he drew up even with Hostilius, who, still
frantic with panic, was now swaying in his saddle from the pain and
loss of blood.
Sergius leaned over and laid his hand upon the other's arm, and
Hostilius started as if he had touched a serpent. Then he became
calmer, and a troubled look was in the eyes that sought the tribune's
face.
"Yes, I know," he said at last, speaking hurriedly and in odd, strained
accents. "I led you into it, and now I am flying."
"Let us turn back," said Sergius, mildly. "I do not reproach you, but
let us turn back. Surely it is better than the rods and axe."
Hostilius shuddered, and, at that moment, Decius, who had overtaken
them, broke in with:--
"By Hercules! there is no fear of those. They cut us down in flight.
The choice is, shall we have it in the face or between the shoulders."
"By the gods of Rome, then!" shouted the praefect, suddenly reining up,
while Sergius and Decius swung their horses in short circles.
There was no trumpet to give the signal, and the little cavalry banner
had gone down long ago; but such was the force of Roman training that
nearly all of Sergius' men and half of the allies turned in mid-panic
with their leaders. To make head, much less to form was impossible,
for the foremost of the enemy were well mingled with the rearmost
fugitives. As Decius had said, it was only a choice of deaths: the one
swift and honourable, the other more lingering, but none the less
inevitable.
Almost in a moment it was over. Between two and three hundred of the
united detachments had fallen already, and the hundred or so that now
sought to face about, went down in a crushed and bleeding mass under
the thousands of hoofs that overwhelmed them. Such was the weight and
impetus of the pursuing force that there was no time even to strike,
and most of the victims fell unwounded by spear or javelin. Sergius
was vaguely conscious that he had seen the praefect cloven through the
head by the short, swordlike Numidian knife, his own horse seemed to
collapse under him, and that was the end.
Then he knew that it was dark and cold and that there was a howling in
the air, as of beasts of prey, and the shadow of a man fell across him,
for the moon was in the heavens, and the man was cursing by all the
gods of the Capitol.
Gradually consciousness returned, and he recalled, incident by
incident, the happenings of the past day. He had been lying still,
thus far, without further wish than to look up at the stars and think
and listen to what he now knew was the distant howling of wolves and
the nearer curses of Marcus Decius. At last he stirred slightly, and
the decurion turned and looked down.
"Do you live, master?"
"Yes, truly," replied Sergius; "unless you chance to be a shade."
Then he struggled to his feet, and the two gazed silently at each other
and around them. All about, in the moonlight, lay the bodies of horses
and men, the latter glittering in their white tunics, save here and
there an officer whose helmet and breastplate had seemed to mark out
his corpse for stripping and nameless desecrations. Sergius'
head-piece was gone, but he glanced at his own corselet and then at
Decius.
"We were buried together under a heap of dead," said the latter, in
answer to the unasked query. "They made haste in their spoiling; and,
when they had gone, I drew myself free and found you: the wolves are
feasting well to-night; can you walk?"
Sergius moved stiffly a few steps. He felt bruised from head to foot,
and one arm hung useless from a dislocated shoulder, but he found no
wound. Decius had not escaped so lightly. Besides the gash he had
received earlier in the day, he had been cut again across the forehead,
but his prodigious strength seemed to have inexhaustible resources to
draw upon.
"Come," he said. "We must go southward as quickly as possible.
Sergius still walked slowly about, glancing at one corpse after
another, until the decurion, at last divining his thought, broke in
roughly:--
"Come! The wolves must provide him sepulchre as they will do for
better men. What would he have? The she-wolf suckled the twins. Let
Hostilius pay the debt by feeding the she-wolf's cubs. By Hercules!
other sepulchre for him means need of one for ourselves."
So speaking, he at last drew Sergius away, and they began their weary
tramp across the field.
"If I could have seen but one pulse-eater among the slain," said the
tribune, after they had gone some distance in silence.
"I know of one that should be dead," remarked Decius, grimly, "if a
spear through his midriff be enough for him. Truly the ancient shafts
are useless in close fight, save for a single thrust. I, for one,
welcome the Greek equipment--and the sooner the better."
Suddenly Sergius stopped and laid his hand upon his comrade's arm.
"Look!" he said.
A long, low rampart seemed to rise up from the plain two hundred yards
ahead.
"Their camp," said the decurion, after a short pause, "and deserted.
Let us go forward cautiously; perhaps we shall find food."
Step by step they crept up, walking faster and more erect as they drew
nearer and as the evidence that life was not there became more apparent.
"They have left it only to-night," said Decius, clambering up the mound
of earth and sniffing the air. "Had it been a day old, we should have
smelt it long ago, though the wind blows from us."
Then, as they descended and traversed the silent lanes, a puzzled
expression came to his face, and he halted from time to time.
Sergius eyed him inquiringly.
"Do you not smell fresh blood?" said the veteran, at last. "I remember
when we marched with Lucius Aemilius, after the Gauls had beaten the
praetor's army at Clusium. There were ten thousand men just slain, and
the air was salt like the sea--by Jupiter! What is this?"
Resuming their advance, they had come upon a space of open ground near
the centre of the camp, doubtless the spot reserved for a market; but
what meat was it that cumbered the shambles, without buyer or seller?
Piled in ghastly heaps, or covering the ground two and three deep, lay
a fresh-reaped harvest of corpses, stripped, distorted, gleaming in the
moonlight. Could it be that the camp had been taken? But these were
no African dead, nor yet was this a Roman camp. There was a set
deliberation, too, about the slaughter, that told no tale of battle.
Suddenly Decius cried out and, stooping down, raised the hands of one
of the victims--hands upon which the shackles still hung.
"Slaves," murmured Sergius; "but why--"
"Say, rather, prisoners," said the centurion, grimly.
Sergius struck his thigh. It was all clear to him now.
"May the plague fall upon him! may he go to a thousand crosses! Do you
not see? He is _escaping_. He has made for the passes and slain his
prisoners, that they may not hamper his march. Who knows but that by
now he is on the road to Rome? Gods! This was Hostilius' duty and
mine, and we wasted our time and our men on a few score of miserable
Numidians. Come, my Marcus, come: there are no such things as wounds
or weariness or caution. We must reach the dictator at once, and may
the gods grant that it be not too late!"
Marcus Decius had been gazing gloomily at the young man, as the words
burst from his lips.
"Where shall we go, and how?" he said, with a despairing gesture.
"On our feet," cried Sergius. "Did I not say that weariness and wounds
were not? It is for the life of the Republic: I to the camp near
Casilinum; you to Tarracina. They will march by the Appian or by the
Latin Way, if they strike for Rome. If not, the plan may not be fatal."
Decius yielded to the decision of his companion, and, with hasty
fingers, they unlaced each other's corselets and hurried out of the
camp, each to run his race with what strength remained. The last clasp
of hands had been given and received, when, far away on the hills east
and northeast, the quick eye of Sergius caught the gleam of a rapidly
moving torch: then another and another and another seemed to flame out
in the night, like stars when the moon has failed, until the whole
range of heights blazed with fires that flashed and danced and crossed
and recrossed each other in mad confusion, as if all the thronging
bacchanals of Greece had assembled for one frenzied orgy.
Dazed and confounded by the spectacle, as grand as it was weird and
unexplainable, they stood spell-bound, powerless each to take the first
stride. Decius, the older man, the veteran, turned to his companion,
yielding that unconscious homage to birth and rank and education, that
comes in the presence of unknown perils. No experience of war could
help him here, and his mind leaped at once to the supernatural for an
explanation. As for the tribune, such thoughts, at least, had not
occurred to him. Greek scepticism had already gained too strong a hold
upon young Romans of rank, to let them regard the theology of the State
other than as a machinery devised by wise men to control an ignorant
rabble. Besides, his mind had taken another direction from the
discovery of the slaughter of the prisoners, and, humanlike, it ran on
in its channel, right or wrong.
Decius was trembling violently.
"Truly, master, the gods of Carthage are loose to-night," said he.
There was even a little of contempt in the glance with which Sergius
noted the abject terror of the sturdy veteran. Utterly at a loss to
explain the apparitions, he never doubted for a moment but that they
were the product of some human wile.
"Come," he said shortly. "The gods of Carthage have favoured us in
lighting the way. First of all, we shall go together and learn the
truth." Without waiting for a reply, he set off, at an easy, loping
gait, in the direction of the strange fires. Decius followed, as he
would have followed through the portals of Avernus.
The distance to the heights was not great,--four or five miles at the
utmost,--but half an hour had passed, and still the spectacle, wilder
and more brilliant than ever, remained unexplained. For a stretch of
miles, the hills above, beyond, and below were all ablaze with rushing
flames that seemed guided by no sentient agency; then, suddenly, a
single torch glanced out from a small grove of trees a short distance
ahead and darted diagonally across their path. Decius stopped for an
instant, with trembling knees; but Sergius bounded forward to intercept
the torch-bearer, and the veteran followed from sheer shame.
Up, down to the ground, up again, and then around in frantic waving
circles swept the flame: a mad bellowing rolled through the night,
until the tribune himself almost checked his stride in awe-struck
wonder. The next instant the torch, if torch it was, seemed to
flounder to the earth, from which it rose again and came driving
directly toward him, explained at last,--an ox with a great bundle of
blazing fagots fastened between its horns, blinded, frantic with pain
and terror.
Sergius sprang aside, as the beast dashed by; but Decius, roused once
more to the possibility of independent thought and action, stepped
toward it and, as it passed, plunged his sword between its heaving ribs.
"What now, my master?" he said, flushing with shame at his fears of the
last hour--perhaps the bravest hour of his life. "Does the lying
Carthaginian seek to terrify Quintus Fabius, the dictator, as he
terrified Marcus Decius, the decurion?"
"Yes, truly," replied Sergius, gloomily; "and he will succeed even
better. No general, and, least of all, ours, would lead out his army
in the night against such a spectacle. Come, it is necessary that we
should reach the camp," and, turning once again, they fell to running
in a more southern direction, where a dim glow in the sky seemed to
tell of the watchfires of an army.
At first no sound broke the stillness of the night, save the laboured
breathing of the weary runners and the strokes of their leathern
cothurni upon the hard ground; but soon other noises came to mingle
with these and, at last, to drown them: the lowing of thousands of
cattle, now scattered far and wide over the plain and hillsides, and
then the distant clash of arms and the cries of combatants.
Day began to dawn, just as the fugitives came in sight of the Roman
camp with the army drawn up behind its ramparts, waiting for they knew
not what. Here and there upon the heights they could see small bodies
of legionaries who defended themselves against light troops of the
enemy, until overwhelmed by the Spanish infantry that scaled the hills
and cut them to pieces; while to every prayer that the dictator should
march out to their support, he returned one grim answer.
"They deserted their posts in the passes. Rome needs not such
soldiers."
So, company by company, the guards of the defiles, terrified or lured
away to the ridges by the ruse of the cattle and the blazing fagots,
fell ingloriously before their comrades' eyes, as being men not worth
the effort to succour. The rear-guard of the invaders had already made
its way through the pass, while the Carthaginian van was well on into
the valley of the Volturnus. Now, too, the African light troops
disappeared, and, at last, the white tunics of the Spaniards, gay with
their purple borders, glittered for a moment on the hilltops, and then,
their work of death completed, sank away behind the ridges to fall back
and join their comrades in a march of new destruction through a new
country.
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