“Arrows,” Bat said, lowering her rifle. “Thousands of them.”
“These guys are reinforcements,” Jimbo said. “And those arrows are for us.”
The third century of the Thirtieth, the Boars, was in shambles. The fourth century had stalled on the road as the column on the march before them dissembled into a rabble. Centurion Marcus Rupilius Pulcher was enraged.
His second optio and five others were dead, struck down by some invisible force. His men fled like women in a sudden rain shower. He strode among them, striking them with his staff. Gaius, his first optio, screamed himself hoarse to get them to retrieve their dropped gear and form back into ranks.
Adding to Pulcher’s rage was the delight on the faces of the auxiliaries, the Assyrian bowmen. The black scum were amused to see a mighty Roman column turned to craven wretches at the sight of a bit of blood.
More than a bit, as it turned out.
The downed men showed wounds much like the lead projectile of a slinger might make, a neat round hole punched through the flesh. But in addition to the puckered blue puncture was a matching wound far more catastrophic where the projectile made violent egress. An insult the size of a man’s fist betrayed the final destination of the pellet, gaping tears through which the white of bone gleamed. One of the men, the aquilifer named Albus, was missing half his head. The pellet entered just under his nose and sprayed the men closest with blood and brains.
The messenger had arrived by foot at their fortified castra three days before with orders from the prefect as relayed through Bachus of the Twenty-third. They were to send a force along the road into Judea to serve as an adjunct to a cohort of the Twenty-third encamped at a nameless village fifty mile markers to the south.
Their tribune decided a token force was all that was needed to meet the letter of the prefect’s request, and so sent two centuries and the auxiliary force of archers.
Pulcher dug with his fingers in the gravel beneath one man and found a misshapen lump of lead that was hot to the touch. It was like the pellets flung by slingers. But what man could send a simple ball of lead with such speed and force? And what was the sound of thunder that reached them from the slopes all around? It was unsettling indeed. He could understand but not forgive the cowardice of his men. There would be punishments. Not here. Not now. Later, when they reached the camp of the Twenty-third.
The centurion ordered the Assyrians to climb to the ledges above and give chase while he moved the centuries down the road in full kit.
In helm and armor, with scutums gripped before them, the Boars trudged south. The bodies of their slain were left for the foxes, wolves, and buzzards. If prayers were to be sent to Zeus or Mars or Mithra in their names, then those prayers would be muttered on the march. The hired boys cautiously led the mule train on in their dusty wake past the dead Romans already black with clouds of flies.
After two miles of fast marching, a pair of Assyrians slid down a rocky slope to report to Pulcher. They reached a place ahead where the ravine turned only to see a number of riders galloping south along the ledge.
“Was there sign of a machine of some sort?” Pulcher asked them.
“Machine?” One of them shrugged, nose wrinkled.
“A ballista!” Pulcher gritted his teeth. “Some devilish instrument of some kind!”
“No machine. Just men on horses,” the little bowman said in his gutter Latin.
“Did you see them?”
“Only horses’ asses and dust.”
“Were they Jew rebels?”
“Did not see. Bandits maybe.”
“What bandit has the balls to face a Roman army on the march?” Pulcher seethed.
The bowman thought of the Romans pissing themselves in fear and the six dead legionnaires lying in pools of their own blood. He said nothing.
Pulcher stood squinting into the glare off the roadway.
“You have orders, sir?” the bowman asked after a while.
“Go back to your own optio and tell him that he will divide your force into two units. You will move ahead of the infantry as a screen.”
“They are on horses. We cannot catch them,” the bowman said.
“If they stop, if they attempt to strike us again, you will engage,” Pulcher said, red-faced.
The bowman thought again of the thunder and the Romans struck down as though by the gods.
“Go!” Pulcher roared and sent the pair of Assyrians on their way with a kick.
The century, sweating under the weight of layers of leather armor, hefted their javelins and shields at the bark of the optio. They moved forward at a trot, eyes on the ledges above, searching for they knew not what.
27
Questions Beget Questions
Samuel left the hotel the following morning to purchase the list of items, or their nineteenth-century equivalent, at the local shops. His clothing was odd, but not so outrageous that it couldn’t be explained away by his being a foreigner. Caroline’s appearance would be scandalous, with her denim maternity jeans and shoes that allowed her ankles to be seen.
Caroline was exhausted from hunger, stress, and the lack of sleep the night before. She’d given birth just two days before, relative to her anyway, and this was not any kind of recommended course of recuperation. Reminding herself that her female ancestors probably dropped babies and went right back to work in the fields, as the cliché goes, did little to comfort her.
She dozed on and off as she nursed Stephen with what had to be the last of her milk. She thought about what Samuel revealed to her the night before as she faded in and out of a restless sleep.
Her first questions were about the means of direct travel they made between the present and the past without an intermittent stop at a tube chamber of any kind. He explained that there were set places
