"We shall smite them hip and thigh," the Son of God declared. And the Rock believed every word he said.
Horns blared, calling the army out of column and into line of battle. Marcus was glad to get off the road-which was no more than a dirt track anyhow-and get ready to fight. "Now we'll settle these ragheads once and for all," he said.
"You bet your butt," Lucius said. "They think they can stand up to us, they've got another think coming."
"Silence in the ranks!" Quintus yelled. The company commander was a stickler for doing things by the book. He added, "If you've got to talk about it, you're probably no stinking good when you really do it."
That stung. Marcus hurried forward, clutching his weapon. He'd show Quintus! That Quintus hoped to make him think that way never entered his mind.
Little by little, as the army spread over an ever wider front and less of its dust obscured Marcus' vision, he got a look at the enemy. He had to peer through the dust the locals kicked up. What he saw signally failed to impress him. They didn't keep good order, and not many of them looked to have much in the way of body armor. Even helmets were few and far between.
Lucius had hit the nail on the head. If these raggedy fools thought they could beat the best in the world, they needed to think again.
But evidently they did think so. There were a lot of them. Maybe that made them confident. They started yelling something-Marcus had no idea what. He hadn't picked up any of the local language, and didn't want to. It sounded more like choking than talking, as far as he was concerned.
"They're shouting about how great their god is," Quintus said. "Talk is cheap, boys. I don't have to tell you that. Any minute now, we're going to show them just how cheap talk is. Keep your eyes open, help your buddies, and don't do anything dumb."
Marcus found himself nodding. He'd been in skirmishes in Germany, but nothing major. This wouldn't be a skirmish. This was the real thing. He glanced over at Lucius and at the other men with whom he shared a tent, shared the march, shared food. Quintus knew what he was talking about. Marcus couldn't imagine letting his friends down. Better to die than to do that. If you died, nobody would turn his back on you afterward.
Horns squalled again. "Are we ready?" Quintus asked-an unnecessary question if ever there was one. The company commander waved. "Then let's go!" With a cheer of their own, his men-and the rest of the army-advanced.
"The Lord is one! The Lord is one! The Lord is one!" the hillmen shouted as they swarmed toward the soldiers from the West. The rebel chieftain watched from a hillside. His right hand held a sword. The calluses there weren't all from the hilt; some had come from carpentry before he went into rebellion.
"Here they come," the Rock said as the enemy moved forward.
"Yes." The chieftain left it at that.
"They have good order," the Rock said. "Our own men-well, they're fierce enough and more than fierce enough, but they fight with passion, not with skill. That's a wave we have rolling toward them, not a line."
"I shall fear no evil, for the Lord is with me. How should one chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them" — the rebel leader smiled at his comrade- "and the Lord had shut them up? Cursed be the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his weapon, and whose heart departs from the Lord." He pointed toward the foe. "They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The foe is my washpot. Over them I cast my shoe."
Nodding, the Rock watched the fight unfold. His countrymen swarmed to the attack. The enemy moved more deliberately. And then, all at once, the air was full of missiles. They all flew at the same time; a single man might almost have cast every one of them. And when they struck home, the rebels wavered. Some went down, shrieking. Others threw up their shields to save their gore. But the shields did them less good than they might have. The long, thin iron shanks of the javelins bent when they hit, fouling the shields and leaving them next to useless.
When another volley of missiles flew from the enemy, more hillmen fell. Now they could not raise those fouled shields. The foe's artillery began to punish them as well. Great darts pinned one man to another. Flying stone balls smashed heads from bodies without even slowing.
A new cry rise up from the hillmen, not ecstasy for their god but a sort of pained astonishment. They had taken a town from the soldiers of the West. They'd harassed them in skirmishes. They had confidence they could beat the invaders when and where and as they chose. They had confidence-but the Westerners had weapons and doctrine and a relentless, driving precision that let them use both to best advantage.
After the volley of missiles, the enemy soldiers drew their personal weapons. The horns rang out again. The men of the West hurled themselves forward, not breaking ranks. Their big semicylindrical shields and body armor protected them from the rebels' swords and spears. And they used those shields not only as wards but as weapons in their own right, knocking down the hillmen and leaving them dreadfully vulnerable to a thrust in the belly or the chest or the throat.
The battle was decided before the hillmen realized as much. Instead of breaking off and saving what they could for a new fight on a different day, they kept pressing ahead into the killing zone-and the Western soldiers obligingly, methodically, killed and killed and killed.
"We are undone!" the Rock cried, no less astonishment and no less pain in his voice than in those of the men ahead of them, who were running up against something they did not understand and that taught understanding only through death. The Westerners' weapons were superior, but not overwhelmingly so. But marry superior weapons to superior doctrine… Here, the term had a meaning altogether untheological. And the weapons and the doctrine were married, and the hillmen burned.
In agony, the Son of God looked up to the heavens and raised his hands in reproach. "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!" he cried-My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
As if to give him an answer of sorts, or at least to complete the rout and destruction of those he led, mobile forces thundered against both the rebels' flanks. After that, not even the most fanatical survivors could imagine anything but disaster had overtaken them. They turned and tried to flee.
But they had waited too long. By now, the Westerners all but surrounded them. Cavalrymen slashed them with swords. Archers stung them. The artillery still smashed men at long range. And the foot sloggers, the men who took ground away and held it, chopped them to pieces like a butcher chopping meat to stuff in a sausage skin.
Here and there, single men and small bands did manage to break free of the enemy. They ran. They threw away weapons and helmets and shields to run the faster. A couple of them saw the Rock and the Son of God on the hillside. "Flee!" they cried. "Flee from the wrath to come!"
"We should," the Rock said, setting an urgent hand on the rebel chieftain's arm. "If they catch us…" He shuddered. "If they catch us, they have no reason to love us."
"They shall deliver us up to be afflicted, and kill us," the Son of God agreed sadly. "We shall be hated among all nations for my name's sake."
"Even if I die with you, I will not deny you," the Rock said stoutly.
"Do you think I cannot now pray to my Father, and he will give me more than twelve legions of angels right away?" the chieftain asked.
"I see legions," the Rock said. "They belong to the Westerners, and they will take us if we do not flee." The enemy mobile forces had drawn very near. Even the fearsome enemy foot soldiers approached. The Rock shuddered. "They are liable to take us even if we do flee."