“Come on, you Pompeian dogs!” Lucius shouted. Then, with a war cry, he leapt from the bow just as it touched the mole, flying into the tightly packed enemy ranks. Not expecting an attack from their left, the pikemen could not turn their long and interlaced spears in time to meet the new danger. Lucius had left his shield on the galley in order to manage the jump, but he did not need it. He came down on two men with his gladius swinging, slicing into their necks before either knew what had killed him. Following their centurion’s lead, the men of the century also jumped from the galley into the fray, adding to the confusion that was quickly spreading through the enemy phalanx. Within moments, three score jabbing gladii were mercilessly cutting their way through the formation with a fiendish fury, stabbing one Alexandrian in the groin after another, subjecting the disoriented enemy to the machine-like meat grinder that every Roman legionary became in battle. Three inches in, pull out, stab again, move on. Blood flowed down bare legs. Entrails oozed between scaled armor plates. The song of the gladii sang, and the enemy died. Lucius’s cross-plumed helmet led them on, driving farther and farther into the tight phalanx. Some of Caesar’s troops, seeing the success of Lucius’s men, rushed forward to attack the phalanx’s front.
Terror then spread through the enemy ranks. Though they outnumbered the Romans nearly four to one, the ruthlessness of the simultaneous attacks on their flank and their front spurred them into a panic. Their cursing officers could not get control of them, and finally, they broke and ran for their ships, leaving behind a causeway covered with twitching bodies, abandoned sarissas, and broken shields.
Lucius caught his breath for a moment before arrows from the enemy fleet forced him to find an abandoned Alexandrian shield under which to take cover, prompting his surviving men to do the same. As he crouched behind the shield, he counted thirty-nine of his original century still standing. Add to that about a dozen more men that had come from Caesar’s cohorts. Every one of them was out of breath and covered in blood, from their own wounds and the wounds of those they had slain.
The attack of Lucius’s century had been successful. It had given the three beleaguered cohorts, farther down the mole, a small measure of breathing room. It had allowed Caesar to finally do the sensible thing and order a withdrawal. And he must have done just that because the cohorts were now falling back while a few troops remained behind to hold off the phalanx attacking from the south. The transports now came in close to the rocks. Legionaries cast away weapons, shields and armor to try to swim for them. There was little order once the troops hit the water. They swam for the nearest transport, regardless of the number of men already aboard it. Lucius saw one such ship, low in the water, its decks and rigging covered with a mass of soaked troops, capsize suddenly and sink, taking most of the men aboard down with it. But even that did little to dissuade the panicking soldiers from crowding aboard the other craft. In the hundreds of splashing arms and legs, Lucius lost sight of Caesar, but he assumed the general had made it to one of the vessels and was now pulling away from the mole.
Lucius knew that he had done all he could. The rear guard to the south was already being overwhelmed by the enemy phalanx there. It was now time for him to get his own men off.
Glancing over his shoulder, he fully expected to see his own transport waiting dutifully beside the mole, but it was not there. The galley had pulled away, and was now rowing back to the fleet. Lucius could see the ship’s master looking back at him over the stern rail, smiling sardonically and making an obscene gesture. The bastard must not have appreciated Lucius’s sword point against his throat.
Lucius looked north. The causeway was open, and there was a chance he and his men could make a run for Pharos Island. But before he could get the order out of his mouth, a new group of enemy vessels pushed up on the western side of the mole, unloading hundreds of fresh troops to block off the escape route. Lucius and his men were now trapped between two enemy formations closing from the north and the south. The Roman transports were now all pulling away from the shore. No one was coming to the assistance of the few legionaries left on the mole. They were being written off, as the rear guard had been.
Lucius cursed inwardly before shouting, “Testudo!”
The two score troops with him instantly formed a tightly packed shield-covered square. Lucius did not think that his men would be any less likely to fall victim to the giant flaming missiles coming from the fleet, except that the warships carrying the larger weapons had been down the mole opposite Caesar’s position and would now have to maneuver slightly to bring their ballistas to bear on Lucius’s troops. The oncoming enemy troops, however, did not appear to be planning to wait for that. They had the blood lust in their howls and cries, and they were coming on, faster and faster, each phalanx determined to be the one to finish off the remaining Romans.
Lucius peered between the breaks in the shields to find what he was looking for. And he found it almost immediately. To the north, the phalanx was fully organized and intact, a bristling row of spear points, from one edge of the mole to the other, advancing steadily. The enemy formation to the south, however, was a different story. Its front rank was irregular, still not having fully recovered after annihilating Caesar’s rear guard. In one spot, a large space, five men wide was open and not yet filled in by the rear ranks, who were carrying their pikes upright and not extended before them. Lucius knew this was his only chance – not of survival, but of making the enemy pay for every last Roman corpse.
“Listen to me, all of you!” Lucius shouted to his soldiers over the endless rain of arrows and stones striking the upturned shields. “When I give the word, break formation, hold your shields to the right, and follow hard on my heels! Understand? Kill every bastard in your path! Every one you see! Don’t stop killing! Show me you are true sons of Rome!”
The sweaty, blood-spattered faces in the shadows did not appear overly confident in his plan, but most of them nodded.
“Come on, you dogs!”
Lucius burst from the formation with a cry and leapt over an Alexandrian corpse.
The sight of the fierce, broad-shouldered centurion wearing such a menacing snarl beneath the cross-plumed helmet was enough to give the enemy pause. They stopped their advance, not from any orders from their officers, but because they could not comprehend the foolishness of such a move. But Lucius and his men did not give them much time to think about it. Holding their shields in their right hands, to fend off the missiles from the enemy ships, the legionaries charged in a wild fury that could only be described as berserk. A handful of them stopped to cast javelins at the phalanx, but this hesitation cost them their lives. They became the chosen targets of the enemy ships and were soon bristling with arrows from head to foot. The rest followed Lucius directly into the gap in the enemy, swinging shields, jabbing with swords, and attacking their foe with a savagery that the packed Alexandrians had not anticipated. With ranks packed six and seven men deep, the panicking pikemen in the closer ranks could not get away from the Roman attack, the pressure of the men behind them pushing them into the carnage. They died on Roman sword points, slicing deep gashes with lightning rapidity to their bellies, groins, and necks. Blood spurted from a dozen severed arteries, spraying upon shields and armor, and men began to fall.
Eventually, the Alexandrians recovered from the shock of the attack and began to close ranks around their attackers, forcing the Romans into a circle of defense, the edges of which were tipped with crimson gladii and piling bodies.