Masters of Rome by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2023-01-27T13:15:37+00:00

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If I thought for a moment that the opened gates meant the battle was all but won, I was horribly wrong. My legions edged through the broad main way under a hail of sling stones, spears and arrows from Maximian’s Gemina men posted all around the rooftops. I moved with Batius under testudo of Cornuti shields, creeping towards each building to let a handful of men slip from the shield-shell like passengers disembarking from a ship and slip inside the palaces and temples. Moments later, the screams of close combat sounded from up on the rooftop and Gemina bodies would plummet and splash like over-ripe cherries on the flagstones. At one juncture, we found ourselves at a crossroads, with four tall marble halls surrounding us, the archers atop each gleefully emptying their quivers down upon the perfect killing pit into which we had wandered. I saw the Italica men stranded in open space, ballistae on the rooftops spitting down upon them, ripping great troughs of red through their ranks, screams of the dying biting at me like crows.

‘With me!’ Batius yelled, waving sixteen Cornuti men with him into the ballistae-topped building, the clatter of their ascending bootsteps and yelling and smashing of iron sounding from the stairs.

Inspired by the big man as I had been since boyhood, I called to another group. ‘The archers,’ I barked, pointing up through cracks in the testudo to the century of bowmen stationed on the rooftop adjacent to the one Batius was tackling. We streaked across a stretch of open space, arrows whacking down around us and one clanging from my jewelled battle helm. The cool shade and the close echo of the building’s interior was like a slap to my senses. I swung my eyes to and fro to adjust to the dimness, and a Cornuti man was swift to shoulder me clear of a thrown spear. I saw the culprit – a Gemina legionary on the mezzanine. Without thinking, I plucked the thrown spear from the post it had smashed into and turned it upon the thrower, the lance sailing up there and taking the soldier in the breastbone. He doubled over the mezzanine with a gurgle and mouthful of blood and hung there like a wet garment. As we sped up the stairs towards the roof I glanced at the dead man – the dead Roman – and realised what a step I had taken… what a black step down a night-dark road.

But the chaos of the fray engulfed me again as we emerged onto the sun-bleached stone roof and confronted the archers. The bowmen loosed at us in panic but I was quick to raise my shield, peppered with arrows a trice later. Then the shield became a fist, breaking limbs smashing faces, my sword sweeping out at the archers. They wore mail, most of them, but they stood not a chance against my hardened regiment. It was with a savage triple-hack that I drove the officer among them from

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