“Blood to our blood,” Herzer repeated, cold chills running through his veins.
“… Steel to our steel…”
“Steel to our steel.”
“In blood we live…”
“In blood we live…”
“In blood we shall die…”
“In blood we shall die…”
“Blood Lords…”
“Blood Lords…”
“LOUDER!”
“BLOOD LORDS!”
“LOUDER!”
“BLOOD LORDS!”
“Move back down the Hill and get chow. After that fall in and we’ll see if any of you young idiots can figure out how to make armor.”
The armor was waiting for them after lunch, a pile of boxes in the back of an ox cart.
Deann climbed into the cart and looked at the topmost box.
“Armor set, loricated, one each,” she said, reading the label gummed to the top of the wooden box. “Size, small. That’s me.”
“Get them all off the cart,” Gunny said. “Move them into the decuri bay and we’ll show you how to assemble them.”
The boxes, when opened, contained plates of steel, fittings, rivets, strips of leather and baffling instructions. Along with the boxes were some tools that Gunny added to their triari equipment.
Loricated armor was made by taking the plates of steel, bending them to the body and then overlapping them using the fittings and the leather strips. The plates had to be measured to the individual, however, so that they would fit snuggly, but not too snuggly, around the torso. The armor was then made in four sets. Two “torso” halves, one for the left side and one for the right, and two shoulder halves.
The triari worked for the next two days at the armor, cutting the plates to appropriate length, bending them around forms, punching holes for rivets, setting in the fittings and attaching the leather straps. In addition to the armor there was a thick “scarf” of cosilk that was wrapped in a tube then bent around the back of the neck and folded across the chest. This prevented chafing from the edges of the armor at the neck.
Herzer, as usual, had problems with “standard” sized anything and several of the pieces had to be form fitted for him. But after two days that encompassed much swearing as fumble-fingered recruits tried to get the pieces to go together, everyone in the triari was in armor.
After the armor finally passed Gunny’s inspection, they were issued their new helmets, pilums, swords and large wooden shields. The helmet style was a “barbute,” a solid helmet with a “T” opening at the front, instead of the Roman helmet. The barbute style had several things favoring it over the Roman. From a chance snippet of conversation Herzer overheard, he learned that the helmet was the hardest part of the armor to produce. And Roman helmets, with their several parts, rivets, fittings and hinges, were far more difficult to produce than barbute. But, despite this, the barbute was arguably a superior design. The open-faced Roman helmet, while light and permitting easy breathing, meant that a slash across the face or a point driven in was virtually guaranteed to drive home. The barbute covered much more of the surface area of the face and thus made injury less likely.
The downside to the barbute was that it permitted a lesser field of vision and was a pain to march with. On the whole, however, Herzer was glad they had chosen this design. He’d rather have a hard time seeing around than never see again.
The pilums were the spears of the Roman legions and it was another design that had been copied virtually intact. It consisted of a relatively short wooden shaft, no more than a meter and a bit, and an unusually long, thin spearhead with a wickedly sharp, barbed head. The weapon could be used as a spear and the triari trained extensively with it in that manner, marching in formation and then advancing with them lowered. But the primary use of the pilum was as a throwing weapon. The long, light-steel head was designed to penetrate a shield and then bend. With it stuck in a shield and bent over onto the ground, the enemy would be forced to stop and work it out, with their shield well out of line when they did so. Since the weapons were thrown at “point blank” range, the technique was to throw and then immediately charge. The front rank of the enemy would then be stuck, essentially shieldless and without a defense, open to a sword charge.
The swords they were issued were short and almost leaf-bladed, a Celtic design rather than the original Roman. They rode in a high scabbard tucked just forward of the armpit on the right side. Their primary method of employment was short, fast, chops and jabs, designed to wound the enemy as much as kill them. The ones that they were issued now were wooden with a heavy weight of lead down the center. Herzer hoped that the “real” ones would be a tad lighter.
The last of the new equipment was the shield, and Herzer found himself dissatisfied in the extreme with it. Instead of the shield being held at two points with the forearm going across the back, it was held at one point with the arm extended straight down. For formation fighting it was superb; the idea was to form a “shield wall” and the shield was difficult to hold any way but directly in front of the body. But for someone who had trained in a much more “open” style of combat, it was a pain to use and gave a feeling of being “trapped.”
They began training immediately, primarily formation marching with the new weapons. Carrying the swords was simply an additional weight but the shield and pilum were another matter. When marching they did not “sling” their shields and simply holding onto the shields, which, like the swords, had been weighted with lead, was agony until the appropriate muscles strengthened.
The pilum wasn’t as painful to carry, being lighter, but maneuvering with the things, until they got used to them, was difficult. More than once the armor was put to good use as a pilum head was jabbed into a back.
Each afternoon they were given one hour to prepare and then held a full dress inspection. The slightest hint of dirt on any of their equipment led to a harsh rebuke and rust was punished by the entire decuri being loaded with weights and forced to run the Hill. They quickly learned to take good care of the equipment they had been issued.
Finally, the Gunny pronounced himself marginally satisfied that they could march with the things. At which point, naturally, they went out on a long forced march.
If they thought the previous marches had been brutal, Gunny quickly disabused them of the notion. Instead of staying mostly to the Via and some of the better graded roads around it, the Gunny took them on long marches by tracks that only he seemed to know. At one point Herzer realized that they had never gotten more than twenty miles from the town, but it was impossible to recognize that from the terrain and the distances they had marched. They marched on traces along the ridgelines where hawks flew beneath their feet and narrow trails through marshes. They marched along the edges of cliffs where one slip would mean instant death and across rushing streams cold from spring water. And all of it at a clip that made the previous marches seem like nothing. Gunny wasn’t as much into setting up camp; he seemed to think that movement was the key. They would awake in the morning and eat as they marched; for five days they ate nothing but parched corn and monkey washed down with water. For the last two days, before they met up with a packtrain in the middle of no-where, they were at half rations.
Every morning there was an inspection of their gear. Woe betide the person who had so much as a spot of rust on armor, pilum, shield, helmet or sword. If he did, the gunny loaded up the whole decuri’s rucksacks with rocks until they could barely stagger. And then took off at full speed, fully expecting them to catch up.