|
|
|
"Male facere qui vult numquam non causam invenit.”
A person who wants to do evil always finds their reason to.
Publilius Syrus; 379 Pro Ortus, Before the Rise. (42 BC)
There were crows in the dusty air of a cold afternoon. Among tall pines of old, the forest’s arms had been open to the weary traveler, giving a soft gentle shade from the summer’s afternoon rays. One could sleep in the needles all day, thinking of nothing as the branches sang softly to the wind. The northern wild had always been seen as something of a mystery to newcomers here, but to her people, the Great of Germania were a symbol of their connection to the land. They lived here, said by others, like barbarians among the trees. Not taming the wild to their will, living as nomads in the earth, moving their cities from here to there; they had lived here within the heart of the forest since the days of their forefathers. They had known nothing more than the solace she had to give them.
However, today the trees gave no comfort. They groaned in the summer afternoon, shuddering with anticipation from an oncoming storm that hung on the wind like a dire wolf hunting a flock in the dead of night. The crows screamed from above, their eyes gazed down eagerly at a blood stained forest. The sound of beating drums, screaming and cries of pain echoed through the trees and off the mountains that lingered in the distance.
The men here had no reason to fight. They had wanted nothing but to be left alone and continue to go about their own way of life; Isolationism, outsiders, barbarians to the ‘civil’ world, who was wrapping itself in a masterminded Empire and crippling themselves to its sole rule. Progressively the outside world continued to bend to the will of the empire. Here in the forest time stood still. Germania’s people, here in the north, were more interested in stead fast traditions, the thriving of their families and crops.
The people to the south had other plans for the world. Years ago when the Empire was doomed to fall, it was said the Gods themselves had other plans for her people. They rescued the Empire after the death of a man by the name of Constantine, and brought forth the savior, Guido Agrippa, who claimed himself to be of the line of Romulus, the Founder. In that time, the politician was able to save a corrupted government if not for nothing more but the sake of her people. The Empire lived on, flourishing into a second Golden Age. But the corrupted minds of her people were passed down through the generations and once more the Empire was turning to turmoil. Someone once said that history was bound to repeat itself. Who, though, would care to heed the warnings of events that occurred sixteen hundred years ago? Once again, history became mythology; tales that were told at the bedside of their children. Nothing more.
But the growing Empire to the south was once again in need of greater resources for the starving wants of its people. Lumber, minerals, wool, slaves; these things could be obtained surely through from across the sea and into the many regions of their empire, but why travel the world when it was simpler to rob that of a neighbor? Britannia, Gaul, Hispania, Illyrium, Alexandria: they all had been saddled like horses and brought to work for the Greatest of Causes. Something that brought together a great wealth and gave it to all her people. But greed itself was demanding, and Germania refused to be so blind. Trials and tribulations, the lot of them. Perhaps they had a mindset similar to the Moors of the vast deserts far south of the Mare Internum, but Germania wanted nothing of the Empire. Their Gods were evil, and if not the Gods themselves, then the evil itself was in the minds of their people.
But when one nation does not bow to the self righteous sovereignty of another through treaties and proclamations, the pen too often gave way to the sword. Rome, unfortunately, was the perfect example of this. Instead of peace through words, they now came for enslavement and Germanian boarders were once more stormed by invaders from the south.
Hungry arrows flew from bows only to be flitted away against large rectangular shields. They braced against each other forming a curved barrier like the shell of a turtle. Like pelting water against stone, they splintered and frayed making little effect on the ranks. From the trees, the barbarians slipped from the thick branches, keeping their assault. The enemy had caught them by surprise, but at least if they could manage to keep the intruders at bay perhaps they could draw more time for their families to escape. One of the bowers watched from above as a sniper, poised as his fellow men fought to their last breath among the trees. He stopped, spotting something glittering among the ranks of the enemy, moving closer with the beat drums.
A large golden eagle hung over the heads of its soldiers garbed in red, yellow and gold. Its wings widespread, as its men looked upwards toward the golden splendor as a heighten raise of pride emitted from the icon. A man riding a white stallion drew his sword out of an enemy as blood sprayed across his red uniform. The red plume on his helmet showed his rank of honor; A Centurion of the Roman Empire.
"Hostium est in Nemus! PARO INCENDIA UT SILVA!" the Centurion ordered, before pointing towards the branches above. His men let out a bellowing cry, before more arrows answered their first volley. Their shields were raised once more, acting as a successful barrier, their ‘Tortuga’, the turtle, protecting them effortlessly with their outer shell. When they fell away, a flurry of flaming arrows where shot up into the high pines. Many were aimed towards the archers who had moved to snipping positions within the thick needles, but for the ones that missed human flesh, the arrows hit bark, and exploded into fire, ash, and hot oil. The exploding missiles danced along the branches. The barbarians screamed out in terror, as the fire spread quickly along the dry brush. Pine needles enveloped in thick smoke that quickly spun throughout the branches. The snipers could no longer hold their positioning in these conditions.
"Zurückziehen!" came another order, this time from the opposite force, who strung another arrow upon his bow; knocking it quickly he tried to fire the steel arrow head into the heart of the Centurion. The man perched under the golden eagle was too far and out of the rain of chaos. The commander knew well enough about the tides of war to let your men handle the fighting while you could easily sit safely from a distance and call out orders to them all the same. He was not a man that would fight alongside them, but even if they managed to claim this land, it would belong to the Centurion’s name alone, not the hundred subordinates who were winning the fight.
Still, the Germanian let out a seething sigh. Follow his own order of retreat he slung his bow quickly over his shoulder and dropped to the earth. His men started to look up to the trees for more orders as a Roman Equestrian spotted him fall freely from the trees. Spear in hand, the horsemen started his charge, letting out some heathen curse, before the Germanian turned. Bow in hand he fired away a missile into the horseman who was charging towards him. The arrow sunk into the beast's heart. The stallion let out a scream and before its front legs gave away and flipped its rider. Stepping out of the way, the man heard the sound of branches breaking under the fallen weight. He scowled scornfully at the fallen rider. Wither it was the horses or its rider's neck that had broken in the fall, he didn't want to wait around to find out.
"Zufahren die stadt!” he called out to his fellow warriors, continuing in ordering the retreat. He fired another arrow into the enemy’s fray, before pointing them on towards the northern bank of the river, where their families were evacuating to. “Wir wirst verlieren sie übers strom!"
Behind his own line, a wicked smile came across the Centurion's face. Fighting these men had been all too easy. And now the barbarians had been forced into a pathetic retreat. His white stallion reared back, feeling the rider’s excitement. Letting out a laugh as his horse settled again, he wielded his sword above his head before sounding the charge:
"Pro Nex! Pro Bellum! PRO ROMA!"
~~~~~
Water curled up the side of his legs. Trudging through the western bank of the Rhine, the Germanian Lieutenant stopped looking back to the fires that were spreading in the distance on the other side of the river. The Rhine faced the Western half of the boarder to Gaul, Rome’s gateway territory to all of Europa. From there the Roman armies could easily transport themselves freely along the western coast of the continent. They had owned that land as long as anyone in Germania could remember. It had always been terrorized it would be the perfect place to strike, verses taking a legion of men through the Alpine Mountains to the south. With whispers of war on the wing, the Lieutenant and his men had been sent here to watch the boarder and send word to the capital, if need be. Their men had waited three months for the oncoming attack, but when they had seemed to let their guard down, red and gold banners where moving throughout the forest.
The soldier shifted his weight again in the current before trudging forwards once more, carrying one of the wounded over his shoulder. He heard a groan pass the lips of the man as he floated alongside him. He had a thick shaft of a tipped arrow pierced through his left shoulder. From the look of it, the missile had missed his heart, by mere inches. He would live, hopefully. Who knew what sort of arrow had pierced the sniper’s skin.
“Hold on, my brother,” the Lieutenant continued, as he continued to the others who were regrouping on the banks.
“Thank you.. Lt. Valkier…” the injured soldier wheeze, the cold water washing his own blood off his clothes in a tiny stream.
Lieutenant; That was a title that, as a boy, Valkier never wished for. He never dreamed of becoming some grand war hero, who could kill other innocent men following the orders of their superiors. He would have rather settled down with his wife and new born child then to have been pulled away into the fray of war. However, one cannot simply ignore the summons on a King, especially when the enemy was so close to his own door step.
The Romans were great on many accounts. With the whole of the Empire to back their funds, Roman Engineers for years had mastered some of the deadliest machines he would have never imagined in his wildest of dreams. Arrows that could pierce plated steel mail, ballistae and large war machines that could launch flying machines into the air where archers could be guided along like a child’s kite and rapidly fire arrows down upon you like a pelting rain; there seemed no end to their creative cruelty, though Valkier had never seen such machines before in his life. The only thing he had going for him was that he knew the layout of the western land, and that he fought both well with the sword and a bow. Being a tracker within the Great Forests was his job though. He thought himself unable to lead men, but when he had been introduced to his commanding officer within the capital, his knowledge of the land was preferably his greatest strength. With their strength in machinery and sheer numbers, the Romans, for years, were forbidden to step foot in their lands. The Germanians had always pushed them back through ambush, setting traps within the trees; the Romans knew nothing of these wild lands and the people used the wild to their advantage. Perhaps that was the reason why his people had been labeled as a Barbarian Race.
Either that or their refusal to discard their pants and be garbed in the Roman Toga.
Pulling the other to a makeshift tent, he called one of his close friends over that was shifting back and forth helping the wounded. His lightly tanned skin and jet black hair set him apart from the others. He came from the far East, to a land that the Roman Empire called Asia. They had their own name for the country, but when it was pronounced, Valkier had mistakenly mispronounced it so many times that he had insisted in saving his home land the injustice and call it that of what the Romans did.
“How is he?” he asked quickly, spotting the arrow shaft sticking out of his shoulder.
“It looks like it missed his heart, Jian,” Valkier explained looking to the arrow shaft, moving a hand as if he were about to remove it, “He’ll live, soon as long as we can just-”
“No don’t!” the Asian said quickly, smacking his hand away. Valkier looked to him questionably, before he continued, reaching for a knife at his belt. “Trust not the Greeks, even when they bear gifts.”
The wounded soldier who was looking up at them through pained squinted eyes let out a curt laugh. “Sorry, Engineer, but I fail to see how this is a gift.” Valkier shook his head before having the man lay down on his side, and fitted the palm of his hand into the other man’s mouth. If the arrow didn’t kill him, accidently biting his own tongue and bleeding to death during the arrows removal very well could.
Jian worked swiftly and cleanly as he could permit himself. The man surely was no doctor, but an engineer that his people had rescued from slavery, and hired to study Roman weaponry. Out on the field, he served Germania to collect pieces of fallen equipment, study it, find it’s weaknesses (if they had any), and if it was possibly, create plans of the machinery so they could build it themselves. It was underhanded work in Jian’s eyes, stealing the plans of another master mechanic’s work and replicating it, but he could not deny the pay nor his debt to the country for the cost of his freedom.
Cutting the flesh away free of the arrow head, he carefully lifted the missile to his eyes and inspected it. Valkier removed his tunic, before pressing it down into the open wound. The man let out a seething groan to the pain, but at least the arrow was out. Jian though seemed more interest in his new found prize that he had plucked from the wound. His tongue clicked in interest. “Nitroglycerin,” he whispered in a bit of amazement. “I think I now know how they were setting the trees on fire.”
“Nitro-what?” Valkier asked, half paying attention before scanning about looking for a free surgeon.
“Glycerin. The Moors found a way to refine the chemical to become an incendiary. It’s said that when the man discovered it by accident, his house was blown through the North Eastern wall of Babylon. Poor folk lost an arm in the explosion.”
Valkier held back a chuckle. Jian was not one to talk, for he had lost three fingers on his left hand from dealing with foreign explosives.
Jian explained that when the tip of the arrow head broke upon impact, the clear vial inside of the shaft would break, therefore igniting the chemical. He pointed the shape of the arrow to the Lieutenant as well. The edges of the arrow head reminded him of snake fangs. Thin long threads edges the line of the arrow head, making it impossible to pull out. The fangs would have acted as hooks, and separated the head from the shaft, breaking the shaft. Valkier felt his stomach turn when he realized they all could have been sitting in the middle of a fire ball.
 AquilisNoctis · Tue Jan 26, 2010 @ 05:23am · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
