Gladius Winter Read online

  Gladius Winter SONS OF IBERIA

  BOOK III

  J. Glenn Bauer

  Copyright © 2018 J. Glenn Bauer

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Characters

  Historical note

  Author’s note

  Also by J. Glenn Bauer

  About the author

  Prologue

  The sharp scent of piss cut through the stink of sweat-soaked padding, raw fleece, greased leather, and iron. It emanated somewhere close by in the rank behind Tituru and he wondered if he should empty his bladder as well. They were still pacing forward in a loose formation, so he could do so if he wished. He glanced about and seeing the steely expressions on every face around him, decided against it. He was grateful for the distraction, but it was past now and his mind once more took in the ranks of legionaries ahead of him.

  He could view them clearly from his position in the front rank. The mere thought of being first into the coming slaughter caused his stomach to roil. He gripped his spear tighter still, taking comfort in the thick shaft and heavy spearhead as long as a man’s forearm. He glanced down at his chain armored chest shining bright with not a flake of rust. He hawked and spat just as trumpets sounded from the enemy positions. There was another sound as well. He turned his head to the right where a cloud of dust rose above a mass of horsemen in the distance. The rumble was the beat of a thousand hooves. From closer came the blare of Ilerget warhorns and the full-throated roar of those warriors whipping up their battle-fervor.

  His senses tilted when a deep drumbeat sounded from the Libyan rear. Orders were bellowed and his brothers in arms were closing formation, pressing shoulder to shoulder and stretching their stride. Tituru felt the comforting press of a shield in his back as his tent mate closed up behind him.

  The enemy was milling around ahead of them, juggling throwing spears and spinning slings. The din of thousands of armored men tramping towards each other was deafening and yet the beat of the Libyan war drums rose above it all. The skirmishers launched their spears and loosed shot from their slings, causing him to grit his teeth while sending invocations to the gods of his people and even to Ba’al and Tanit of the Carthaginians.

  A grizzled veteran was shouting something unintelligible down the line.

  “Lift your shield!” A fellow warrior’s voice filled his ear.

  He grinned stupidly over his shoulder. “Thanks!”

  The first missiles struck and a spear shaft thumped violently into his tent mate’s cheek where it buried itself.

  Tituru snapped his head to the front as much to avoid the sight of that defiled face as to guard his own.

  The Libyan ranks shuddered to a halt and the warrior on his right jerked him roughly back half a pace.

  “Remember all you were taught, pup! You have had plenty of training, but today it is the real thing with blood and more spilling soon enough.”

  Blinking rapidly, he began to turn his head to thank the man.

  “Don’t look at me! Watch the enemy! Never take your eyes off them. Raise that bloody shield up nice and high and get a tight grip on your spear. Anything that walks in front of you, stab the shite out of it!”

  He remembered the same phrases from his training and nodded as much to clear his head as to show understanding.

  “Good! Their skirmishers are done. Quick as a pup like you between the thighs of a virgin, eh!” The warrior laughed throatily, but he could only wonder at what he meant because he’d yet to lay with a woman, not that he would ever admit that.

  “Ah, here come their real fighters. Their legionaries.” There was an unquestionable note of admiration in the warrior’s tone.

  Tituru found his voice. “You have fought them?”

  “Shit no boy, but we all know these Romans are hard bastards. They’re going to get a nasty surprise today though aren’t they pup?”

  “They are?”

  “Gods above! You’re supposed to agree!”

  “Sorry, I’ve…”

  A thunderous clash cut him off. It came from their left and Tituru’s eyes danced in that direction. The Iberian warriors there had charged headlong into the oncoming legionaries. Nothing could be seen other than the backs of men trying to push their way forward to have at the Romans. His estimation of the Iberians went up at their obvious lack of fear.

  “Idiots.” The warrior on his side muttered. “They’re going to be spitted like hares.”

  He smelled piss and felt the warmth radiate outward from his crotch.

  “Pissed yourself hey? Never mind, most of us have in some battle or other.” The warrior snorted knowingly and Tituru wanted badly to scream at him to shut his toothless mouth. He did not. He clenched his fists and wished the day over.

  “Oh, they are going to hurl their pig-stickers. Too far off to do any good.”

  Tituru watched the legionaries’ bodies twist as they unleashed their spears, sending them high into the blue where they floated before plunging earthwards.

  He would have been glad to tell the warrior at his side that for once he was wrong except the old warrior was thrashing on the ground with his shield pinned to his gut. Tituru saw the head protruding from the man’s lower back. He quickly looked back at the enemy lines when the screaming warrior reached a blood-soaked hand up to him in an agonized appeal.

  “Kill me! By the gods, the pain!”

  A spear end slammed into the warrior’s skull with an audible crack of splintered bones. The cries ended, but the body still kicked. Licking tears from his lips, he wondered when last he had cried.

  The legionaries were twenty paces away when they roared and charged. Tituru felt more than piss slide down his inner thighs and he wept harder. His sturdy physic and the press of a shield at his back held him upright in the face of the first mighty impact. His spearhead took off a legionary’s cheek and ear and it was this man who crashed into Tituru.

  The legionary shrieked at him, yellowed teeth and bleeding gums visible, his tongue bitten through, spraying blood over Tituru. The missing half of the fellow’s face hung from the chain armor on his shoulder, a bloody mess of red and yellow.

  “I’m sorry!” Tituru screamed at the man. “Forgive me, forgive me!”

  A cold blow to his stomach shut his mouth. He glanced down and saw bloodied iron sliding out of his side. His eyes widened as more and more of the gladius reversed into sight. He looked up into the parody of a smile on the legionary’s face.

  “I said I was sorry.” He blinked. The Roman was gone, but another stood in his place and again the sensation of heat and cold racked his gut. Vivid new colors splashed over his sandals. His guts were slipping faster and faster through the wide slash above his hip. How much could there be inside him? He wondered.

  His head lolled to one side, and came face to face with a dead man beside him, the corpse held upright, crushed between the shields of enemy and tent mates.

  “You are killed too,” Tituru mumbled to the bloodied corpse.

  A distant war cry rang with unus
ual clarity in Tituru’s ears. “Caros the Claw! Bastetani! Bastetani!”

  It was too bright now to see, and he was more comfortable than he had been since autumn had come. No more cold winter winds, no more aching tooth, no more…

  Chapter 1

  Carrion birds lifted off stark rock cliffs in the north, matching their ascent with that of the morning sun. Caros stared at them, his dark eyes unblinking. Today the birds would feast well, competing with wolves, dogs and the other scavengers that feed off the bounty of a deserted battlefield.

  It was not the largest battlefield he had witnessed. The slaughter on the Tagus was double and double again in size to this one. Even so, the butchered Volcae warriors numbered well over two thousand and Hannibal’s losses were in the high hundreds. Close to three thousand men and women dead. Their bodies were already burning on pyres whose oily smoke drifted sluggishly across the river and settled over the valley through which the Rhône flowed.

  Caros hawked and spat. His mouth tasted foul from old wine and the stink of burned dead.

  He turned to the folding leather bucket hung on a tent post and plunged his head into the cool water. Rubbing his face vigorously, he let the water cascade down his chest, matting dark hair and pooling in puckered scars.

  Shaking his head, his long sun-bleached hair whipped pearls of water across the small clearing his tent occupied. Tying his hair back with a cord of plaited horsehide, he breathed in deeply, willing away the dull ache above his right eye that greeted him each new morning.

  He planned to leave before the sun rose much higher and his troop of Masulians were already preparing their morning meal. First, he would bid farewell to the great Carthaginian general, Hannibal Barca who would ask him to reconsider. The two warriors held each other in high esteem, earned since the battle on the Tagus and grown with the siege of Sagunt and again in the last day with the defeat of the Volcae.

  Elements of the vast Carthaginian army were already winding east, towards the distant hills that presaged the high mountains of the Alps.

  A troop of whooping young warriors clattered past Caros as he rode towards Hannibal’s well-secured headquarters. Their enthusiasm untempered by the arduous trek from Iberia or even the previous day’s bloodshed.

  More sedate older warriors were stamping out cook fires, cinching their armor tighter and packing belongings in readiness for the next stage of the army’s journey.

  Caros spotted the Libyan warriors that guarded the headquarters. Their tunics white and armor brightly burnished as befitted their station.

  They had noticed Caros and a tall warrior stepped forward, his spear held across his chest. Dark eyes assessed Caros from beneath a prominent forehead. Caros held the man’s gaze and rode steadily forward.

  The man’s broad lips parted a fraction then split into a wide smile. “Caros of the Bastetani! Good health. You are here to see the General?”

  “Good to see you well, Rudam of the Libu.” Caros smiled. “I am.”

  The Libyan nodded and hefted his spear into the crook of his left arm. “The General has been awake since before the sun stirred. His personal guard will let you in when he is ready to see you.” Rudam stepped aside and nodded to his troop who stepped off the path.

  Caros dipped his chin in thanks and rode to the horse line beside Hannibal’s pavilion where his horse was taken in hand by a grubby horse boy.

  At the entrance to the pavilion, a pair of Carthaginian soldiers in gleaming armor and crested helms nodded warmly in greeting. One ducked through the tent flap briefly and back out again, holding the flap open in invitation.

  Within, men that ran the army, commanders and their subordinates, spoke and laughed loudly in the center of the room. About them, servants folded and packed away campaign furniture, blankets and carpets. The group turned as one to Caros as the leading Barca stepped from among them, hand out and smiling.

  Caros smiled in return and gripped the man’s muscled forearm. “Tanit’s blessings upon you, General.”

  “Caros of the Bastetani, may Tanit nurture you always. Food? Drink?”

  “Thank you, I have just breakfasted.”

  “Ah good. You have decided? From the expression in your eye, it is not the decision I was hoping for?”

  Caros released Hannibal Barca’s arm. “I will return to my home. There is much I owe my people, and that is where I am needed.”

  Hannibal frowned and glanced at his commanders before looking back at Caros, his disappointment evident in his tight smile. “You would leave me to subdue Rome and her legionaries with just these desert dwellers?”

  The commanders from more than a half dozen different peoples, clicked their tongues and grunted good humored obscenities at Hannibal’s back.

  Caros smiled at the camaraderie, a mark of the man that stood before him. There were few men that could meld a disparate conglomeration of warriors into a fighting force as unified as the Carthaginian army.

  “I am sure you will cope, General. They have a habit of somehow wresting victory from defeat.”

  “To be certain, and I just stand around being ignored. Your Bastetani charm is without end.” Hannibal’s smile came and went. He guided Caros to a quiet corner. “Thank you for the message. It is not unexpected.”

  Caros had sent the General news that the Roman General Calvus was sending a fleet to raid Carthaginian shipping along the Iberian coast. It had come from the bloodied lips of a captured Roman after hours of flesh cutting.

  Caros blinked away the images. “It was nothing.”

  Hannibal nodded. “I have correspondence for Hasdrubal. Hanno too. You will deliver it?”

  “Of course, General.”

  “Thank you. Our scouts report Roman cavalry ranging north from Massalia. It will be dangerous to go near that Greek-spawned city.”

  Caros smiled mirthlessly. “I expect there will be danger on the northern trails as well. Plenty vengeful Volcae scattered about.” Caressing the hilt of his falcata, he continued, “The warriors riding back with me are capable.”

  Hannibal grimaced. “Hasdrubal and Hanno must receive these orders Caros. Hasdrubal is to follow my path to Rome as early as he can in the next spring. They are to bring me as many warriors as they can levy and train. Additional provisions too.” He leaned close to Caros. “I fear the Romans are not convinced I will be successful in crossing the Alps nor that the Boii, Cenomani or Insubres Gauls will fight with me against them.”

  “That will work to your favor then, will it not?” Caros asked in puzzlement.

  Hannibal sighed, “It will, but in the meantime Rome may send her legionaries to Iberia.”

  Caros saw at once the dilemma Hannibal faced. Much of the territory in the north of the country was newly pacified by Hannibal. He had left Hanno and Hasdrubal to cement the allegiance of these tribes. The arrival of Roman forces may well cause them to rebel against Barca rule.

  Hannibal continued, “If that happens, Hasdrubal and Hanno must remain to not only secure Carthaginian holdings, but also to destroy the Romans. They cannot allow any Romans to survive or the tribes will see that as a weakness. Hasdrubal will need to defeat the Romans utterly to demonstrate our strength. To do this, they must act as one, Caros.” Hannibal clasped Caros tightly by the elbow. “They must unify their forces and fight as one against the Romans if they invade. I have included this instruction in my orders and it is why you must deliver them.” He released Caros and patted his arm.

  Rarely had Caros seen Hannibal this forceful. It was as though he expected the worst. “You have my word, I will deliver your orders, General.”

  The horsemen stretched in single file over the face of the low hill. Their shadows rippled across the dun-colored vegetation and white-flecked granite rocks that flanked their path. A large enough force, numbering nearly half-a-hundred and bristling with spear and sword, they would strike fear into any villages they passed.

  Caros glared up at the afternoon sun, one eye screwed shut, body swaying rhythmicall
y with the stride of his mount. “So why did you not go on with Hannibal’s hordes to sack Rome?” He directed his question over his shoulder to the warrior that rode there, keeping pace.

  “Do not like the cold that much and Hannibal is traveling into the teeth of winter up in those mountains.”

  Surprised, Caros glanced back. “You are from the north. Surely you are used to snow and ice?”

  The wild-looking Gaul smiled through his grease-stained beard and mustache. “Easy to dismiss it while we ride through this furnace. Not so much fun when every time you want to take a piss you fear your cock will freeze to your hand.” He shrugged a shoulder at the surrounding countryside. It was a rugged land of gray and brown hills. Heat waves rippled off the crest of the slope above them and the dry air rasped thirstily around their faces.

  Caros reined in and the Gaul sidled his mount up beside Caros’ and exchanged a glance with him. Behind them, the other riders slowed to a halt.

  In the distance, twin columns of smoke rose into the shale-blue sky. Not the first they had seen since leaving the Carthaginian army in the east three days earlier

  “Third in as many days. These Romans are busy little otters.” The Gaul commented drily.

  A piercing whistle from the ridge above them drew their eyes.

  The signal came from a Masulian outrider flanking the body of riders. The warrior saw them looking and made a gesture that indicated something had caught his eye beyond the ridge.

  “Could be he spotted more Romans.” Maleric guessed.

  Caros grunted and edged his horse off the thin trail and up the hill. He hoped not. The band of warriors with him were not up for battling Romans. Most of them carried wounds from the previous month’s engagements with tribes that had fought the Carthaginian army as it moved north out of Iberia. A mixture of Masulians from the dry lands around Carthage in Africa and Oretani warriors from south of New Carthage in Iberia.

  Since leaving Hannibal’s army and crossing east over the Rhône, they had constantly been forced to avoid Roman cavalry. The Romans had hoped to intercept Hannibal at the Rhône and had missed him by mere days. Since then they had been venting their displeasure on the villagers in the region that they suspected of siding with the Barca. That any settlement or village which opposed an army of fifty thousand would have been overrun was not their concern. In the last year, Caros had seen how the tribes of old that lived in these lands suffered, caught as they were between two empires which were like forces of nature to these people.