NationStates Jolt Archive

Four years it had been, four long years since the Ninth had last set foot on the Via Appia, and three they had spent in this barren landscape, this hellish grassy and forested region filled with nothing but beasts and the eyes of those that dwelled amongst the trees. As advantageous as seemed then that they had the protection of the camp on ..transportation to this land, it in fact proved to be a liability, for the tree dwellers had no hesistation to burn the logs and the walls of the invaders.

Pressed as the Legion was, Gaius Avitus, the highest ranking official present at the time of the event itself, referred to among the men now only in hushed whispers and curses, saw to it that the camp was dismantled and the remaining materials consumed for resupply purposes, for indeed, the men, the slaves and the merchants there were almost conducting efforts at disobedience in surprise at their new situation.

For lacking even the most basic knowledge of this area, indeed, barely containing their horror at what divine or unholy event transpired to bring them here, Quintus Quadratus, a respected former centurion quickly restored order, order even among the slaves, on the verge of rebelling against their masters at a sign of freedom.

The talk in the Legion, from centurion to lowliest Auxilia soldier was of this being a Britannia free of barbarians, free of the enemies of all that was right and Roman, that they had been charged with returning home and giving the good news to the citizens themselves.

Gaius and Quintus, now de facto leaders of the Ninth both knew that even though this was likely foolish muttering, it always helped to keep the men active and inspired, and as such, encouraged these whispers and gossip with cries pushing the men onto a supposed victory, onto the path to Rome. Even if the two knew such a path did not exist.

For all Gaius's senatorial leanings, Quintus knew the Legion faced a great deal of challenges if they were to even survive in the face of dwindling supplies and hostile tree dwellers, those of the pointed ears.

And thus a great march was ordered what they reckoned to be east, and for three years this has been the case, three years of losses due to attrition, withering morale and bare adaption to the life of the land.

With the number of true Romans dwindling, and with the faith of the men looking set to die in the face of hardship even such soldiers were never prepared to face, Gaius, for all his political aspirations, set about reorganising the Legion, for now while true soldiers numbers had dwindled, those of the slaves had greatly increased, indeed, Quintus took the opportunity to make a rough decision and freed the great majority of the slaves, conditional on their serving as Auxilia.

Serving two purposes, that of quietening the slaves dissent and bringing new recruits into the fold, this eventually proved to be the saviour of the Ninth itself, for the number of original soldiers that remained now served as the core of a new Ninth, a Ninth that would not only survive, but pacify their surrounds.

For it did not take a former centurion to note that having gone so long without a true battle save for the skirmishes with the tree dwellers, the men were on edge above and beyond all that had happened, they required blood, and so Gaius chose to give them such, hoping a crushing victory would restore the soldiers dwindling courage.

For all their combat inexperience in forests, it wasn't all that hard to locate sizeable settlements of the pointy eared ones, paid in blood though they did for their efforts.

Quintus himself spoke to the men and their families before the launch of the campaign, before the commencement of hostilities in earnest as Gaius preferred to call it, urging the men on to victory, promising them that they would all be hardened veterans and masters of many slaves, or die in the attempt, die in a foreign land for the glory of Rome!

Blood the Ninth saw flow on arrival, and blood once more flows free as the Legion marches on nearby villages of the feral ones, butchering hunter, warrior, mother and child all the same, burning them as they turn the forest to ash, the lonely stakes of broken palisade and charred skeletons of huts all that remains.

The men do indeed feel the desire for battle fill them once more, and an increasing string of victories is only met with angry shouts and arrow riddled Auxilia. Nevertheless, Quintus cannot shake the thought that for all the speed of their conquest, the Legion has not yet met the full number of the enemy, not yet seen the fury only those fighting for their homes and farms can muster. And so it is as they push further and further east that the scouts report stone ruins, decayed earthen walls and signs of old battlefields that Gaius agrees with Quintus's estimation and the Legion is ordered to harden their minds for a hard fight ahead, an order met with disbelief by the newly made Auxilia and half remembered curses from old wars from the veterans.

Merely two weeks into the campaign, and bare hours after one victory rolls into the next, that the Auxilia force at the very edge of the Legion's growing numbers reports sightings of more than skulls, indeed, decomposing and even still warm feral bodies among a village laid to ruin by something other than Roman hands.

The blood on the gladii of one of the centurions is barely dried from a previous skirmish before a low chanting is heard among the men, and a whistling through the cooling embers of their latest conquest alerts them only to an arrow sprouting through the neck of the man, his body barely hitting the blood soaked leafy ground before a great wailing announces the arrival of a vast army of feral ones, appearing as if from another world, out of the very air, from between the spaces, their faces twisted in a mask of deadly anger, and their weapons bringing nothing but sorrow as a message to the invaders in foreign armour.

Breaking and fleeing as though possessed the men of the Auxilia run for the safety of their fellows, and yet Quintus's own is a day away by foot, Gaius's even more so. A great slaughter is visited upon the former slaves, arrows falling from the sky bringing the vengeance of a people stung by soldiers of a power from a far distant time and land.

Survivors, mere hundreds in number manage to reach relative safety in the shattered ruins of a feral outpost showing the signs of having being wiped from nature's memory only weeks before the Ninth's bloody advance through this region. And so it is that the last remaining ranking officer among these frightened and wounded men buries his sword in the terror wracked frame of a soldier on the verge of fleeing once more as the battle hardened veterans on the Legion's opposite edge have barely recieved mention of an increase in casualties among the Auxilia.

This coward's corpse hits the ground with a terrible sound that seems to echo through the mind of every weary man there, bringing with it rememberance of a defeat long past, only serving to restore the spirit of these broken remains of a once bloodthirsty force. The moment barely passes before the officer barks an order, and the soldiers pick up their gladii, their pilum and their shields and take up position behind walls already fallen, as if second nature.

Feral elves aren't known for their discipline, and so it is that the same terrible wailing is heard just an hour later, what once seemed to be an army now turned to a barbarian horde charging over a field soon to be littered with their corpses, if the prayers given by the Ninth are answered here today...And so once more the war cries of Romans and freed slaves alike fill the air, matching the wailing of their foe with equal bloodlust and desire for vengeance!

What would Rome think of this Legion's actions now, if it could even be called that? Pride, thinks Gaius..And yet Quintus is more practical in his assessment of the situation. Rome has senators, had kings and emperors. What does this ragtag collection of Legionnaires have? An overly idealistic man whose senatorial ambitions will never be realized and a former centurion now in command of a bloated Legion, woefully ill equipped and near mutinous.
Having seemingly traded one barbarian threat for another, the men are losing the sense of civilization that held them together in the first few desperate months on their arrival..And yet it is Gaius, not Quintus, who proposes a solution...

*Several years later, at the edge of a hastily constructed port..*

Gaius stands amidst a furious whirlwind of activity, (theoretically) free labourers and not so free feral elves toiling to construct a small fleet of galleys, their life expectancy short, as even though a number of Inns had sprung up around this 'capital' of their mockery of a shadow of an Empire, their dead were still being buried in common graves..a mark in favour of the urgency inherent in this undertaking. Gaius may oversee this day, yet it is Quintus whipping the men into shape, convinced that his method will see targets met, not the navel-gazing of Gaius, absorbed in thought at the watery death he is likely condemning loyal soldiers to.
Gaius is no longer even middle-aged, yet his silvery beard is more a product of this new life than old age, the endless waters he is gazing upon an omen of a bleak future. And yet it is a future they must seize, a future they strive towards, for it means a new beginning..or so the official notices on every wall, wooden post and stone marker say. And so when all is said and done Rome's sons embark on a journey, the end they have little chance of reaching! The barbarians are more numerous than the Romans, the 'ships' are little more than riverboats and morale is sinking as fast as they are..yet the men and their families only have to look to the great symbols of Rome's might and Gaius's speeches to harden their hearts in the weeks and months to come.

It is somewhat more than a minor miracle that they have survived this far in a hostile land, yet just as supplies are sure to dwindle, so sure is Gaius that they will reach a more hospitable region. So sure, in fact, that he is willing to gamble the lives of his remaining loyal soldiers and the slaves, their families and all on a near impossible hope..