The lenses revealed, in a monochromatic pixelated display, the figures of men stumbling, crawling, and running from the fort and surrounding camp. Many more lay still on the ground, most of them in various states of dismemberment. This unit was all over, routed and running back to their Roman mamas. The horses followed the stream of men out through the gate made in the earthworks. Those that were left in any case. Among the men below lay three of their mounts. One was still alive despite having no rear legs below the haunch. She was whinnying in panic and trying to rise. Jimbo placed a shot through her head, and she dropped to the dirt and remained still.
“Hate to see that,” he said and jacked a new round. Bat swung her view down the slope to find Lee and Chaz. Over the open sights, she saw two figures moving down the field of scree toward the fort. She locked on them through the scope. They were already on the move before Boats emerged from the tent. The plan was for the two Rangers to move in close for a recon while she and the Pima provided overwatch. That had gone to hell when the shotgun blasts started cracking off within the camp. Now they were humping toward the SEAL’s twenty as fast as they could manage over the rough ground.
“I’m going down to back them up,” Bat said and swung her rifle onto her shoulder.
“I’m staying here to make sure these bastards keep running,” Jimbo said.
She started down the steeply angled slope to join her boyfriend for the endgame.
Bat caught up with the Rangers as they picked their way through the crop of sharpened stakes that lined the trench at the foot of the earthworks. Together they worked up the slope of packed soil to find the wooden planks of the ramparts empty of soldiers.
Through their NODs, they pierced the spreading black smoke for signs of resistance. The repeated booms from Jimbo’s rifle reached them from above. The Pima was picking off targets of opportunity to urge any Romans remaining to flee as fast as their sandals could carry them.
They quickly crossed the camp with guns up. Lee came across a man stumbling through the smoke. The man was no soldier and wore no weapon. He wore a finely trimmed beard and appeared soft. He dropped to his knees and held hands before him in mute surrender. His nails and fingertips were stained black.
Lee put a round through his head and moved on. “That was cold, bro,” Chaz said.
“Dude had ink on his hands. That means he was literate. You want to be in the history books?” Lee asked.
The Rangers found the SEAL lying unconscious against the far wall. There were bodies all around him. Some were blasted to meat, cut down by the blizzard of shrapnel. Others lay drilled through with a single wound to head or center mass. These were victims of Jimbo’s unerring eye. Bat helped them turn Boats over. He groaned, and his eyes fluttered.
“Did we win?” he croaked.
“We kicked their ass, sailor.” Chaz smiled.
“Hardly a fair fight,” Bat said.
“If you wind up in a fair fight, then your plan failed,” Lee said.
“There was a plan?” Boats muttered before passing out again.
“Good news first,” Lee asked the group.
Bat and Chaz worked on stabilizing Boats. Jimbo had come down from overwatch to join the others in the camp.
“The fort is ours. The captives are still in place. The enemy is severely hurting and on the run,” Jimbo said.
“Bad news,” Lee said.
“Our transport is scattered to hell and gone. A shitload of our ordnance went up in that fire. The enemy could regroup, and we know there’s a relief force out there that could show up any minute,” Chaz summarized.
“So, we’re all on the same shitty page then,” Lee said.
“And we have a man down, non-ambulatory with severe wounds in need of more and better treatment than we can provide here,” Bat said.
“I can hack,” Boats said feebly.
“The way I see it is we move on the quarry,” Lee said. “If we don’t use this momentum we have, then we’ll have to do this all over again when the reinforcements come down the road. And we’re running low on ammo, no horses, and a man down.”
“I said I can hack.” The SEAL sounded pissed now. “Sure you can, Boats,” Chaz said as he stabbed the man’s leg with a morphine dose followed by a cocktail of antibiotics and vitamin K. “We’ll just roll your naked ass out there and you can do your wild thing.”
“Fuck you,” Boats murmured before surrendering to his weakened state and the painkillers.
“We come at the quarry from above or head-on or both?” Jimbo asked.
“I say we take a cue from what Boats did earlier.” Bat smiled.
The men in the quarry camp, slaves and keepers alike, were in fear.
They were already at work cutting and hauling stone from the walls of the cleft in the earth made by decades of labor. All work ceased as the ground shivered under their feet, and the roar of thunder reached them. They dropped to the ground in expectation of further tremors that might drop the high walls above down upon their heads.
Yasak ben Zakai was chief among the masters here and the only one who remained standing. If his god meant to take him today then so it would be. He squinted up into the sky for a sign that this might be his time and saw only early morning
