The Songs of Slaves (65 page)

The two forces pounded together, the Romans holding their shields high and thrusting frantically with their swords from below. The Gothic shield wall ground their shields against their old foes, stabbing between gaps and slashing overhand. They used hand axes to try to drag down the Roman shields, creating openings for their brethren to thrust spears or swords through.

Connor jabbed his spear past the front rank towards a legionary’s neck. The man in the second rank blocked with his shield. Connor instantly whipped the spear to his right, slicing into the face of the man next to the first. Without his shield, Connor closed with the
legionary in front of him in the shield wall. He pressed his body against the Romans shield and thrust his spear once more into the Roman ranks before letting it go. What spear work there had been was done, Connor knew as he rolled away from the thrust of the legionary’s broad-bladed sword. He unsheathed his
pugio
as he pushed hard in and down on his adversary’s
scutum
. The Roman’s eyes went wide as Connor stabbed him in the side of the neck. Closing in even tighter, Connor pushed the dying soldier to his side, slamming him into the legionary at his right flank. He whipped
Archangel
off of his back and started hacking downward around the opening he was creating in the Roman line, trying to cause as much damage as he could before they could close their ranks up again. Valia fought beside him, using his own shield to cover them both. A sword blade glanced off the warlord’s helmet. Valia roared and turned to face his new adversary, but Tuldin cut the legionary’s leg out from under him. Connor, Valia, and Tuldin began to wedge their way into the line, thrusting, shoving, and swinging in frenzy – not caring if they killed their opponents but only trying to break the enemy’s cohesion. Visigoth warriors followed them into the fray. What had been
one slain soldier was growing into an epicenter of chaos. If they could wedge their way in further they could make the maelstrom grow to envelope the enemy line. They could turn the battle into a melee – and that was a fight the Visigoths could win.

Connor waded deeper, becoming ever more exposed, trusting his mail and his fortune to protect him. Realizing that every attack opened him up more, he chose his strikes wisely. He used the enemy’s shields against them, using his size and weight to bash into them or swing their wielders down. The screams were deafening. The air was heavy with the reek of death. The road stones had grown slippery with blood.

The Romans were fighting doggedly. They were so well-drilled that they knew how to fill voids and weather a
ttacks without thinking
. If they knew that they were doomed it was only making them fight harder. But as the violence carried on the results of famine began to show themselves, and in the shoving match of the shield wall the size of the Visigoths was beginning to come into play. Goths were being cut down at every turn, showing themselves vulnerable to the simple, direct, team tactics of the Romans. But in their minds
the Goths had already won. This was their vengeance, their destiny. They had already suffered so long for this. It was no longer the battle but the victory. Though more of their brethren fell in agony and death every moment they had no thought of turning back. They pressed forward, smashing with their greater weight and slashing with their long swords. Experienced in battle after battle, the Visigoths were less afraid. War was what they believed they were born for.

Connor parried a sword cut with
Archangel
and then stabbed forward with his
pugio
, but his enemy fell before he could even make contact. All at once the shield wall had broken. Screams of battle and screams of death united as one as the rear of the Roman column was being compressed forward. Men on both sides were being pushed everywhere. Con
nor realized what was happening
–
the others had come. The breach of the
Porta Salaria
had held, and now wave after wave of Goths were pouring into the city. The Roman legion was engulfed by the barbarians. Connor turned to see the general’s white horse, now
riderless
, pushing and kicking its way through the melee. It broke free and began to gallop, up the blood-bathed marble steps and over the porch of the Diocletian Baths, and then
through the streets away from the fires, towards the heart of the city.

“
A rider came on a pale horse, and his name was Death
,” Connor remembered.

Connor turned back towards where the battle line had been seconds before, but he saw the Romans pushed back, set upon by Goths. The Romans were still fighting valiantly, trying to make small bands to better defend themselves now that the fight had gone to three hundred sixty degrees. But there seemed to be three or four Goths to every Roman now, and the odds were getting worse for the legionaries by the moment. Connor searched for Valia and Tuldin. He glimpsed the blood-stained wolf skin mantle ahead of him. Valia was cutting his way through Romans now, cleaving and screaming as if possessed by all the spirits of the ancestors the Romans had killed.

Connor moved towards his friends, readying his sword and dagger as he waded back into the fray. Then he stopped. In his distraction the
furor
had left him. Connor did not worry, for the battle calm was never far away from him it now seemed; but for some reason he felt that he could not move forward. He was watching
the legion being torn to pieces. His place was at Valia’s side. Again he tried to move forward, but could not seem to enter back into reality. The Romans were falling – the steps of the Diocletian Baths were littered with their corpses as the battle had spread there. A group of Visigoths, who did not seem to have taken part in the battle at all, were trying to force the ornately carved doors that led to the wealth inside. Very near Connor’s feet a Visigoth crawled, holding his entrails from falling completely out. Connor was surrounded by the blood-drenched fallen, standing in a spot of ground bereft of the living. He looked down to his bloodied blades, his bloodied hands, and splattered mail. He turned around, back towards the
Porta Salaria
where the fires burned. The Palace of Sallust seemed to be catching fire, though Connor did not know how marble could burn. The people of Rome, looking like the piteous shades of the lost, were fleeing the black column of warriors that streamed in. It was the tide of judgment.

A distinct scream finally cut through Connor’s confusion. He turned towards the steps of one of the houses on the far side of the
agora
. Connor saw a woman and two older girls there – perhaps a mother
and her two daughters
–
surrounded by five or six Goths.

Connor stepped over the bodies of the slain. He pushed past Visigoth men who were running through the street, already looting. He could hear terrified shrieks coming from upstairs windows, and the pounding of make-shift battering rams. The fools were not even waiting to secure the city. Thousands of them were intent on thieving, violation, and destruction even now.

He reached the group of men even as the apparent leader – a middle-aged man with flaxen hair – stripped the veil from the woman’s head. The woman was pleading as her daughters cowered. Her cheeks were sunken with hunger and her face ashen with despair, but Connor could see that she had once been beautiful and proud. Her garments, already partially torn by her captors, were of silk. Connor could not focus on her words, but her tone cut through to his heart. The six men only laughed. They pinned her down beside her two daughters, who screamed and cried as they shut their eyes against the world.

Connor strode towards
the leader, who had carelessly laid his sword and shield on the ground as he fumbled with the knot of his breaches. Two of the men saw Connor’s bloody mail and stopped.

“Let them go,” Connor growled.

“Fuck off,” the man said as he turned his head indignantly towards the one who would dare throw orders at him. He saw Connor’s face and battle array and then stiffened.

“Alaric said to take money and valuables,” Connor attempted. “He said to not harm those who did not resist.”

“Alaric isn’t here,” the man said. “You want one? Go get your own. No one is going to tell us what not to do.”

Connor looked into the woman’s pleading dark eyes for a moment. He took another step forward. The flaxen-haired man reached for his sword. Without a word, Connor put the crook of his right arm around the man’s jaw and pulled his head back. He stared into the Visigoth’s blue eyes as he cut his throat. Blood pulsed over the woman’s dress as the other men cried out. One
drew his sword, but
Archangel
was faster. The second attacker doubled over, and then fell face-first into the street. The other four jumped to their feet, releasing their victims. They were armed, and could try to rush Connor, but the sight of this killer in blood and firelight was more than any of them dared to face. They fled into the riotous streets, flinging curses at him.

“Stand up,” Connor ordered. Dumbstruck, the woman complied. She tried to raise her daughters who wept on the ground.

“Thank you,” the woman ventured, not sure whether Connor was her savior or some new threat. She opened her mouth to say more.

“Where is the nearest church?” Connor cut her off. The woman pointed.

“Come,” he said, turning his back and walking in the direction away from the battle that seemed all but over. “You must take sanctuary there. The King has ordered that anyone who does will not be harmed. Take us there.”

The woman led her daughters. Connor walked beside them, watchful as a hound, his weapons drawn.
The streets of Rome were in tumult. Romans were running as best as they could,
trying
to find someplace that was still safe. The Goths were in the city in vast numbers now and Connor saw larger and larger groups breaking in to the public buildings and marketplaces and carrying away whatever or whoever they wanted. For the moment it seemed that some of the less grand houses were being spared – but Connor knew that this was an illusion. As time would pass the invaders would become more and more thorough in their search for plunder. They would strip this place bare if Alaric let them stay. The King’s orders had shown more
clementia
than the Romans could have expected, but even these orders could not fully restrain tens of thousands of violent men whose passions and greed were inflamed. 

Connor leveled his weapons as men approached. That was enough to deter them – though Connor could feel evil eyes on him, allured by the beauty and vulnerability of the three he protected. Why was evil drawn to good? Why were the animal instincts of men bent on destroying what the human yearnings had elevated? Was it not enough to take money and possessions for themselves – did they have to
destroy
what they could not keep
? Connor felt that at any moment he could be challenged. As he pushed his way through the masses with the girls close beside him he knew that he could be rushed and torn asunder with almost no warning. He did not care – he had no more thought of living beyond this night. He would die fighting for any little thing. He was on no one’s side anymore.

But the Visigoths would not risk a fight with such a vision of the god of death when there was so much that lay unprotected for the taking. Soon Connor could see the dome of the church ahead.

The houses were bigger here. Many of the doors were already broken open. Screams came from within the dark structures. More and more of the Visigoths could be seen weighted down with sacks. Their weapons were sheathed or even set aside as they stripped the hou
se
s of their finery. Some
stood sentinel over piles of goods that their kinsmen were looting. The gates of the villa-style houses were closed and locked, but this was little deterrent now. Connor could see
bucellarii
nervously holding their posts within their low walls. Outside of a grand townhouse a slave stood
guard, an antique gladius in his hand, a look of proud defiance on his wrinkled face. Connor could smell the odor of smoke in the air. All sight of the Roman legionaries was gone. Civilians – slaves, plebes, equestrians, and senatorial class alike – lie dead in the streets. Connor could hear the distant sounds of fighting, and caught glimpses of armed Roman men running towards the commotion. The famous street gangs of Rome were mustering, defending their ancestral territories where their army had failed. Connor smirked bitterly, the blood drying on his face cracking – he almost wished them well, but they would find the Visigoths ready. 

Finally they reached the church. It was not the massive basilica that many of the emperors had built, but it was big enough and th
e stone work
looked solid. There was no gate or outer wall, but Connor noticed that the Goths were keeping their distance around it. They were leaving it alone not just because Alaric had ordered it so, but out of respect, and probably out of guilt. Who among the Christian Visigoths would want to involve God in what they were now doing? Connor pushed his three charges up the steps, following close
behind them, his eyes scanning the mob for any last moment assault.

Connor banged on the door with the pommel of his sword. He did not particularly expect an answer – with such havoc in the streets who would even notice a knock? He backed up on the tiled porch and shouted towards one of the thin, high windows.