A letter to the Senate
Senators,
I received your commission on the first day of July, while the legion was making camp at Mediolanum. Given the urgency of my orders I begged Consul Trivarius release me from my duties to the legion, which given that we had just made camp, were many. He may have been reluctant to part with the men of his 1st Century, but your orders prevailed over any misgivings he may have wished to voice.
So, leading the 1st Century of V Macedonica, I began our forced march for Noviomagus at dawn the next day. The battles in Germanica have made it near impossible to obtain mules or horses, and we could not find mounts at for any price in the market at Mediolanum. But wielding the authority of the Senate I seized a horse-merchant’s stock at Arborum, two days march north of the city. Regrettably I could not appeal to the man’s loyalty to the Senate and so regrettably had to resort to force. Thereafter we made good time, despite the fact that most of my legionnaires made middling horsemen at best—of course they are not of the equestrian class, so I expected no better.
I have given the horse-merchant a Roman scrip instructing the Consul to pay him a fair price for his animals. I hope it will be honored, as the legion has won few friends in the provinces in recent months.
We made great haste for Noviomagus, and arrived at Secracium—just three days south of our destination—on the 17th day of the month. I will not waste the Senate’s time recounting the minutia of our journey there, but will state only this one extraordinary observation. North of the Elbe we found the Roman roads choked with people heading south, their belongings on their backs and their children and slaves in tow. I have seen such movement amongst the provincials during my time with our campaign to suppress the rebellion in Hispanica, and it is as sure an indication of war as dark clouds are an indication of incipient rain.
I instructed Marcus Domina, Centurion of the 1st Century, to interview a fleeing farmer, but the man had nothing coherent to say other than that Noviomagus was fallen, and that our border province was ransacked. However, in retrospect I must add that he had also raved much about how Rome had displeased the gods, and about how demons had descended upon us in retribution. These ravings are common in wartime amongst the fleeing provincials, and so I took no heed of them. However by the end of my report you may reconsider the man’s words.
I conferred with the Prefect of the road garrison at Secracium, but the man had no news beyond what we had already heard ourselves. He said he had sent three messengers north to Noviomagus a month earlier, when the migration south had been but a trickle, but he had heard nothing from our garrison there. The Senate knows of course that Legion II Augusta was camped at Noviomagus, so it was unbelievable to me that the town would have fallen without word reaching a garrison just three days south.
Thereafter we proceeded with caution, as I did not know what to expect. The Senate’s instructions to me were simply to investigate the matter of the strange murders reported in our Germanic provinces, so this news of the likely annihilation of an entire legion was beyond what I was expecting to encounter. I considered turning back to Mediolanum, and returning only with the full strength of V Macedonica at my back. But Consul Trivarius is a cautious man, and I knew he would not march without information regarding the disposition and nature of our enemy. I felt it my duty as a Roman to obtain this swiftly.
I sent two men back to Mediolanum, with an extra horse each, to inform Trivarius of what I had learned. I knew that if the rumors of Noviomagus’ fall were true, then the Consul would need time to gather our auxiliaries before moving, as any enemy that had overcome II Augusta would be a formidable opponent. Of course my first suspicion was that the Ostrogoth had mustered beyond our borders and had simply encircled Noviomagus. It was possible that II Augusta was simply besieged, not annihilated.
I decided to proceed to Noviomagus with just a dozen chosen men, including Centurion Domina, as more would attract needless attention. The rest I left to bolster the garrison at Secracium. This visibly pleased the Prefect, a craven man if ever I have seen one. He has been derelict in his duty, having done nothing over the course of the last month’s extraordinary circumstances. He could well have conducted the reconnaissance himself weeks before, but was fearful of doing so because of his messengers’ disappearance. I fear someone has been remiss in appointing him to command of the garrison, as any callow optio would’ve shown more initiative. I would’ve advised his immediate recall, but by this reports end you will learn that that action is unnecessary, as the man, and indeed his command are no more.
We left our uniforms at Secracium and traveled incognito from that point. My thinking was that it was best not to be seen as Roman if the province was in the hands of the Ostrogoth. I had no intention of doing anything but observing the situation around Noviomagus, and returning with all haste to Secracium—and from there to return to Mediolanum with a report for Trivarius.
I am sure however, that you have already gotten other reports, and by now know that events have diverged a great deal from my expectations.
I do not know what news the Senate already has, but I shall endeavor to give you the information I have gathered in a passionless manner, although I fear my intimate involvement in some of the events makes this very difficult. Senators know this: I vow to you, that what I relate here is the truth and only the truth! What I will relate may seem like the impressions gathered by a man much disturbed, but though I am that, I swear to you I have made my observations in a manner dispassionate. My father sits amongst you as a comrade. You may ask him as to my nature. He will reassure you that I have never been one to give much heed to the soothsayers or auguries. Even as a child my nurses could not frighten me with tales of monsters, and as a youth I spent a year studying at Lyceum. I am well aware that the hand of god should not be evoked when the hand of man would do the job as well.
But hear this tale, and tell me truthfully Senators, is this not the anger of the gods made manifest?
We reached Noviomagus on the 21st day of the month, approaching cautiously from the southwest. We had abandoned the Roman highway the day before, fearing it watched, and made our way to the city using hedge trails and unpaved peasant roads. The last person we saw was two days south of Noviomagus. Thereafter we saw not a single living soul. Every farmhouse and market was deserted. The evacuation was so complete that even the priests at the temple at Navus had deserted their sacred post.
A couple of hours south of Noviomagus we encountered something very strange. We had been following a narrow goatherd’s trail that paralleled the Roman road, and our route took us beside a fallow field. There we saw something, which at the time was inexplicable. Someone had dug a very large number of holes, each two man-heights deep, and several dozen paces across, in a perfectly spaced series checkering the entire field. We counted the holes and there were exactly 144. The size of each hole and their numbers were such that they represented the labor of thousands of men. A legion could have done the work in a day, but nothing less than that.
But to what purpose these bizarre holes? That we did not know at the time. At first we had thought them graves, but they were unnecessarily deep for that. And why dig many holes, and in so perfect symmetry, when one large one would suffice? Of course by the end of the day we had an answer to this riddle, but at the time we could think of nothing to explain their existence, and so we were greatly disturbed.
We made the final approach to Noviomagus on foot. I left two men with the horses and took the rest with me. I instructed the men to remove their armor and discard their helmets and pila, so that we could move quicker and more quietly.
Noviomagus is surrounded by a low earthen embankment, less than a man’s height above the plane in places, circumscribing the city at a distance of 1 mile. This embankment is both road and wall, and was used by the garrison as a patrol route. When we came within sight of the embankment I ordered the men to ground, and thus hidden we watched for any activity for several hours. But we saw nothing, neither Roman nor Ostrogoth, nor for that matter slave or citizen.
I deemed it safe then for us to approach the wall, so we rose up quickly from our hiding places, and sprinted for the embankment. There we threw our selves prone again, and crawling on our bellies crested the earthen wall to look upon Noviomagus which was less than half a mile away.
Noviomagus looked peaceful. The buildings far from being burnt, as the Ostrogoth are want to do, appeared untouched. At the city center we could see the roof of the Consul’s palace, its roof of beaten bronze reflecting the midday sun like a mirror.
But something was wrong. Where was the hustle and bustle of midday activity? There were no people, there were no invaders, and there were no legionnaires.
But still I was cautious. We waited on our bellies for another hour, and watched as the sun began to sink towards the horizon. Finally I could wait no longer.
With dusk still many hours away we entered Noviomagus. And there we saw horror.
What had looked peaceful at a distance of half a mile resolved itself to be anything but. As we crept soundlessly through the streets we saw signs of battle everywhere. Windows and doors were shattered, as though beaten down with stone hammers. In some places we saw copious amounts of blood and at times entrails, as though there had not been merely battle, but wholesale butchery. But through it all we saw no sign of person either living or dead. The silence around us was unnerving. We could hear each other breathing, and the whistle of the wind was the loudest thing around us. Where were the bodies that should accompany such slaughter? Where were the crows that follow such battle to feast on the dead?
I sent the men in pairs to investigate the interiors of several buildings, keeping only Centurion Domina by my side. Though they were all stout men of the 5th and veterans of dozens of battles, they went fearfully to this task, like raw recruits entering battle for the first time. I could not blame them. The words of the provincial came back to haunt me—this was the wrath of the gods--and it was only by recalling the words of the Orators of Lyceum that I kept my sanity. Superstition and madness are the resort of fools, slaves, and barbarians—for the Roman is pragmatic!
And my men were admirably Roman that day. Though our first instinct was to run from Noviomagus, and to not stop till Mediolanum, we continued our investigation, with swords drawn, each man depending on the courage of his comrades.
When we reached the Consul’s palace the mystery of the missing inhabitants of Noviomagus was solved. For horror there they were! Piled in the square that lies in front of the palace was a giant mound of bodies. No, not bodies, but the eviscerated remains of what was once townspeople, soldiers, and slaves. No body was whole! Limbs were detached from torsos, heads from shoulders, torsos were cut in half. It appeared as though men had been clipped with titanic shears and discarded into a giant pile.
It was hard to estimate how many men lay before us, but given the size of the mound of remains, it was easy to believe that every one of our comrades from the 2nd lay dead there, joined with the remains of every man, woman and child of Noviomagus.
Although it was difficult to do so, I had Centurion Domina drag free from the pile the torso of what had clearly been a legionnaire. The torso still had on a suit of lorica hamata, but something had gripped the legionnaire so forcibly that the chainmail had been driven into his body, shattering the ribs and giving the torso a horrific spindle shape.
I could think of nothing that could do such a thing to a man on a battlefield. It might be possible to replicate such injuries by throwing a man on his back onto an anvil, and striking him with a weighted axe, but one could not do such things to disciplined soldiers that were fighting back. And if they were already dead, then why bother with such mutilation after death?
Our Consul in Hispanica once took the right hand of every male of a tribe of cattle thieves, but he left witnesses to this punishment, that others might take heed of Roman law. Here there were no witnesses left alive to carry the tale. So to what purpose this carnage I wondered?
We left Noviomagus before dusk. Although we found no sign of any danger within the town, we had no desire to linger longer amongst the dead there. As for the dismembered remains of our comrades and the townspeople, there were far too many for ten men to bury. And we were fearful that burning the bodies would attract unwanted attention, as we still had no idea as to the identity or proximity of our adversaries.
We left the city by way of a cattle trail on the north side of the town, as I desired to see if there were signs of any incursions from that direction. An army of any size would have left an easy trail to follow. But while we did see much sign of churned ground and disturbed flora in that direction, it was all very strange. Not at all like the spoor left by men and horses. North of the city huge stretches of ground had been churned up as though thousands of slaves had labored to till the soil. Trees had been cut, nay not cut so much as forcibly bent and broken, much as a man might break a green branch by brute force.
I wanted to head south again and rejoin the rest of the men at Secracium, but the signs north of the city were so singular that I decided to follow the trail some miles further to see if we could learn anything else. We returned for our horses which we had left south of the town, and circled back north to pickup the strange spoor.
We followed the bizarre trail north about an hour and found ourselves at dusk, at the top of a small hillock overlooking a field much like the one we had found south of Noviomagus. That is the field was checkered. Only where the other field had had holes, this one had small mounds of soil, each about man-high.
The descent into the field was rocky, so we dismounted on the hilltop, and leaving one man to tend the horses, climbed down into the field to examine the closest mound. By now the sun was sinking below the horizon, so I made haste, wishing to investigate while there was still light.
The mound was of very loose soil. And when I stuck my hand into it, I felt moisture within it, so it could not have been made more than a few days earlier, otherwise the sun would have dried it out.
Naturally I was curious as to whether there was something buried within the mound, so I drew my gladius, and was about to stick it into the earth. But before I could, one of my men, who had climbed to the top of the heap, took his pilum and drove the shaft forcibly downwards. Perhaps he had had the very same idea.
But we shall never know, because in the moment he did this the ground beneath us churned, much as water boiling in a cauldron, and those of us on the mound were thrown off our feet.
Something then emerged, nay erupted, from within the mound! One moment my man was pushing his pilum into the ground, and in the next he being torn into two by something black and terrible.
What it was exactly I cannot say. Everything happened so quickly that I did not have time to observe it precisely. But this I know: in all my years I have never seen anything like it, nor have I read of any such beast in our records or in the scrolls at Lyceum. It was roughly the size of a bull, but there the resemblance ceased. Where beasts have hides of leather, this had a jet black carapace much like one sees on an insect. But it had no discernible head, nor mouth even. The best I can say is that it looked like the mating of a crab with a rhinoceros, but even that description does it no justice. Nothing in my experience has been remotely like it. The way it moved was unlike anything I have seen before.
With lightning speed it had used a pincer like claw to cut my man in two. And he lay there in shock, unaware that he was already dead. The creature then shook itself, like a dog emerging from a pond, showering us with dirt. It was then that I heard it give a shrill chirp. Not a cry or a roar, but a chirp, much like a bird might make, only much louder, and at a pitch that was so high that it pained us to hear it.
I had little time to give orders to my men, and in any case they did not need them. As one man they were already getting to their feet and sprinting back for the horses. I joined them, running as hard as I could up the hill.
The man we had left with the horses was ahead of us all, and he had already mounted and ridden off before we were halfway up the hillock. When I turned back to see if the creature had given chase a horror greeted my eyes.
Hades!
The entire field was erupting, and one demon after another, identical to the one that had slain my man, were emerging from their mounds! There were more than a hundred of them, and like a mass of ants they began to scuttle towards us.
The one we had awoken, had overtaken another of my men on the flight up the hill, and had dismembered him as well. But delayed in this task, it could not prevent the rest of us from mounting and riding hard down the other side of the hill.
If the creatures gave chase I do not know, for I did not look back to check until we were many hours south of there.
We hardly rested until we were back in Secracium.
I am exhausted now as I write this missive, and I cannot ride further until I have slept. I have instructed the Prefect to make a copy of this message and to send each by a different messenger to Mediolanum and Rome. Now even if we suffer the same fate as Noviomagus, Rome shall know what became of us.
In the morning I shall instruct this garrison to evacuate, and with my men we shall rejoin Trivarius at Mediolanum. He will know what to do until we receive orders from the Senate.
Your faithful servant
Tribune Cornelius Scipio
I received your commission on the first day of July, while the legion was making camp at Mediolanum. Given the urgency of my orders I begged Consul Trivarius release me from my duties to the legion, which given that we had just made camp, were many. He may have been reluctant to part with the men of his 1st Century, but your orders prevailed over any misgivings he may have wished to voice.
So, leading the 1st Century of V Macedonica, I began our forced march for Noviomagus at dawn the next day. The battles in Germanica have made it near impossible to obtain mules or horses, and we could not find mounts at for any price in the market at Mediolanum. But wielding the authority of the Senate I seized a horse-merchant’s stock at Arborum, two days march north of the city. Regrettably I could not appeal to the man’s loyalty to the Senate and so regrettably had to resort to force. Thereafter we made good time, despite the fact that most of my legionnaires made middling horsemen at best—of course they are not of the equestrian class, so I expected no better.
I have given the horse-merchant a Roman scrip instructing the Consul to pay him a fair price for his animals. I hope it will be honored, as the legion has won few friends in the provinces in recent months.
We made great haste for Noviomagus, and arrived at Secracium—just three days south of our destination—on the 17th day of the month. I will not waste the Senate’s time recounting the minutia of our journey there, but will state only this one extraordinary observation. North of the Elbe we found the Roman roads choked with people heading south, their belongings on their backs and their children and slaves in tow. I have seen such movement amongst the provincials during my time with our campaign to suppress the rebellion in Hispanica, and it is as sure an indication of war as dark clouds are an indication of incipient rain.
I instructed Marcus Domina, Centurion of the 1st Century, to interview a fleeing farmer, but the man had nothing coherent to say other than that Noviomagus was fallen, and that our border province was ransacked. However, in retrospect I must add that he had also raved much about how Rome had displeased the gods, and about how demons had descended upon us in retribution. These ravings are common in wartime amongst the fleeing provincials, and so I took no heed of them. However by the end of my report you may reconsider the man’s words.
I conferred with the Prefect of the road garrison at Secracium, but the man had no news beyond what we had already heard ourselves. He said he had sent three messengers north to Noviomagus a month earlier, when the migration south had been but a trickle, but he had heard nothing from our garrison there. The Senate knows of course that Legion II Augusta was camped at Noviomagus, so it was unbelievable to me that the town would have fallen without word reaching a garrison just three days south.
Thereafter we proceeded with caution, as I did not know what to expect. The Senate’s instructions to me were simply to investigate the matter of the strange murders reported in our Germanic provinces, so this news of the likely annihilation of an entire legion was beyond what I was expecting to encounter. I considered turning back to Mediolanum, and returning only with the full strength of V Macedonica at my back. But Consul Trivarius is a cautious man, and I knew he would not march without information regarding the disposition and nature of our enemy. I felt it my duty as a Roman to obtain this swiftly.
I sent two men back to Mediolanum, with an extra horse each, to inform Trivarius of what I had learned. I knew that if the rumors of Noviomagus’ fall were true, then the Consul would need time to gather our auxiliaries before moving, as any enemy that had overcome II Augusta would be a formidable opponent. Of course my first suspicion was that the Ostrogoth had mustered beyond our borders and had simply encircled Noviomagus. It was possible that II Augusta was simply besieged, not annihilated.
I decided to proceed to Noviomagus with just a dozen chosen men, including Centurion Domina, as more would attract needless attention. The rest I left to bolster the garrison at Secracium. This visibly pleased the Prefect, a craven man if ever I have seen one. He has been derelict in his duty, having done nothing over the course of the last month’s extraordinary circumstances. He could well have conducted the reconnaissance himself weeks before, but was fearful of doing so because of his messengers’ disappearance. I fear someone has been remiss in appointing him to command of the garrison, as any callow optio would’ve shown more initiative. I would’ve advised his immediate recall, but by this reports end you will learn that that action is unnecessary, as the man, and indeed his command are no more.
We left our uniforms at Secracium and traveled incognito from that point. My thinking was that it was best not to be seen as Roman if the province was in the hands of the Ostrogoth. I had no intention of doing anything but observing the situation around Noviomagus, and returning with all haste to Secracium—and from there to return to Mediolanum with a report for Trivarius.
I am sure however, that you have already gotten other reports, and by now know that events have diverged a great deal from my expectations.
I do not know what news the Senate already has, but I shall endeavor to give you the information I have gathered in a passionless manner, although I fear my intimate involvement in some of the events makes this very difficult. Senators know this: I vow to you, that what I relate here is the truth and only the truth! What I will relate may seem like the impressions gathered by a man much disturbed, but though I am that, I swear to you I have made my observations in a manner dispassionate. My father sits amongst you as a comrade. You may ask him as to my nature. He will reassure you that I have never been one to give much heed to the soothsayers or auguries. Even as a child my nurses could not frighten me with tales of monsters, and as a youth I spent a year studying at Lyceum. I am well aware that the hand of god should not be evoked when the hand of man would do the job as well.
But hear this tale, and tell me truthfully Senators, is this not the anger of the gods made manifest?
We reached Noviomagus on the 21st day of the month, approaching cautiously from the southwest. We had abandoned the Roman highway the day before, fearing it watched, and made our way to the city using hedge trails and unpaved peasant roads. The last person we saw was two days south of Noviomagus. Thereafter we saw not a single living soul. Every farmhouse and market was deserted. The evacuation was so complete that even the priests at the temple at Navus had deserted their sacred post.
A couple of hours south of Noviomagus we encountered something very strange. We had been following a narrow goatherd’s trail that paralleled the Roman road, and our route took us beside a fallow field. There we saw something, which at the time was inexplicable. Someone had dug a very large number of holes, each two man-heights deep, and several dozen paces across, in a perfectly spaced series checkering the entire field. We counted the holes and there were exactly 144. The size of each hole and their numbers were such that they represented the labor of thousands of men. A legion could have done the work in a day, but nothing less than that.
But to what purpose these bizarre holes? That we did not know at the time. At first we had thought them graves, but they were unnecessarily deep for that. And why dig many holes, and in so perfect symmetry, when one large one would suffice? Of course by the end of the day we had an answer to this riddle, but at the time we could think of nothing to explain their existence, and so we were greatly disturbed.
We made the final approach to Noviomagus on foot. I left two men with the horses and took the rest with me. I instructed the men to remove their armor and discard their helmets and pila, so that we could move quicker and more quietly.
Noviomagus is surrounded by a low earthen embankment, less than a man’s height above the plane in places, circumscribing the city at a distance of 1 mile. This embankment is both road and wall, and was used by the garrison as a patrol route. When we came within sight of the embankment I ordered the men to ground, and thus hidden we watched for any activity for several hours. But we saw nothing, neither Roman nor Ostrogoth, nor for that matter slave or citizen.
I deemed it safe then for us to approach the wall, so we rose up quickly from our hiding places, and sprinted for the embankment. There we threw our selves prone again, and crawling on our bellies crested the earthen wall to look upon Noviomagus which was less than half a mile away.
Noviomagus looked peaceful. The buildings far from being burnt, as the Ostrogoth are want to do, appeared untouched. At the city center we could see the roof of the Consul’s palace, its roof of beaten bronze reflecting the midday sun like a mirror.
But something was wrong. Where was the hustle and bustle of midday activity? There were no people, there were no invaders, and there were no legionnaires.
But still I was cautious. We waited on our bellies for another hour, and watched as the sun began to sink towards the horizon. Finally I could wait no longer.
With dusk still many hours away we entered Noviomagus. And there we saw horror.
What had looked peaceful at a distance of half a mile resolved itself to be anything but. As we crept soundlessly through the streets we saw signs of battle everywhere. Windows and doors were shattered, as though beaten down with stone hammers. In some places we saw copious amounts of blood and at times entrails, as though there had not been merely battle, but wholesale butchery. But through it all we saw no sign of person either living or dead. The silence around us was unnerving. We could hear each other breathing, and the whistle of the wind was the loudest thing around us. Where were the bodies that should accompany such slaughter? Where were the crows that follow such battle to feast on the dead?
I sent the men in pairs to investigate the interiors of several buildings, keeping only Centurion Domina by my side. Though they were all stout men of the 5th and veterans of dozens of battles, they went fearfully to this task, like raw recruits entering battle for the first time. I could not blame them. The words of the provincial came back to haunt me—this was the wrath of the gods--and it was only by recalling the words of the Orators of Lyceum that I kept my sanity. Superstition and madness are the resort of fools, slaves, and barbarians—for the Roman is pragmatic!
And my men were admirably Roman that day. Though our first instinct was to run from Noviomagus, and to not stop till Mediolanum, we continued our investigation, with swords drawn, each man depending on the courage of his comrades.
When we reached the Consul’s palace the mystery of the missing inhabitants of Noviomagus was solved. For horror there they were! Piled in the square that lies in front of the palace was a giant mound of bodies. No, not bodies, but the eviscerated remains of what was once townspeople, soldiers, and slaves. No body was whole! Limbs were detached from torsos, heads from shoulders, torsos were cut in half. It appeared as though men had been clipped with titanic shears and discarded into a giant pile.
It was hard to estimate how many men lay before us, but given the size of the mound of remains, it was easy to believe that every one of our comrades from the 2nd lay dead there, joined with the remains of every man, woman and child of Noviomagus.
Although it was difficult to do so, I had Centurion Domina drag free from the pile the torso of what had clearly been a legionnaire. The torso still had on a suit of lorica hamata, but something had gripped the legionnaire so forcibly that the chainmail had been driven into his body, shattering the ribs and giving the torso a horrific spindle shape.
I could think of nothing that could do such a thing to a man on a battlefield. It might be possible to replicate such injuries by throwing a man on his back onto an anvil, and striking him with a weighted axe, but one could not do such things to disciplined soldiers that were fighting back. And if they were already dead, then why bother with such mutilation after death?
Our Consul in Hispanica once took the right hand of every male of a tribe of cattle thieves, but he left witnesses to this punishment, that others might take heed of Roman law. Here there were no witnesses left alive to carry the tale. So to what purpose this carnage I wondered?
We left Noviomagus before dusk. Although we found no sign of any danger within the town, we had no desire to linger longer amongst the dead there. As for the dismembered remains of our comrades and the townspeople, there were far too many for ten men to bury. And we were fearful that burning the bodies would attract unwanted attention, as we still had no idea as to the identity or proximity of our adversaries.
We left the city by way of a cattle trail on the north side of the town, as I desired to see if there were signs of any incursions from that direction. An army of any size would have left an easy trail to follow. But while we did see much sign of churned ground and disturbed flora in that direction, it was all very strange. Not at all like the spoor left by men and horses. North of the city huge stretches of ground had been churned up as though thousands of slaves had labored to till the soil. Trees had been cut, nay not cut so much as forcibly bent and broken, much as a man might break a green branch by brute force.
I wanted to head south again and rejoin the rest of the men at Secracium, but the signs north of the city were so singular that I decided to follow the trail some miles further to see if we could learn anything else. We returned for our horses which we had left south of the town, and circled back north to pickup the strange spoor.
We followed the bizarre trail north about an hour and found ourselves at dusk, at the top of a small hillock overlooking a field much like the one we had found south of Noviomagus. That is the field was checkered. Only where the other field had had holes, this one had small mounds of soil, each about man-high.
The descent into the field was rocky, so we dismounted on the hilltop, and leaving one man to tend the horses, climbed down into the field to examine the closest mound. By now the sun was sinking below the horizon, so I made haste, wishing to investigate while there was still light.
The mound was of very loose soil. And when I stuck my hand into it, I felt moisture within it, so it could not have been made more than a few days earlier, otherwise the sun would have dried it out.
Naturally I was curious as to whether there was something buried within the mound, so I drew my gladius, and was about to stick it into the earth. But before I could, one of my men, who had climbed to the top of the heap, took his pilum and drove the shaft forcibly downwards. Perhaps he had had the very same idea.
But we shall never know, because in the moment he did this the ground beneath us churned, much as water boiling in a cauldron, and those of us on the mound were thrown off our feet.
Something then emerged, nay erupted, from within the mound! One moment my man was pushing his pilum into the ground, and in the next he being torn into two by something black and terrible.
What it was exactly I cannot say. Everything happened so quickly that I did not have time to observe it precisely. But this I know: in all my years I have never seen anything like it, nor have I read of any such beast in our records or in the scrolls at Lyceum. It was roughly the size of a bull, but there the resemblance ceased. Where beasts have hides of leather, this had a jet black carapace much like one sees on an insect. But it had no discernible head, nor mouth even. The best I can say is that it looked like the mating of a crab with a rhinoceros, but even that description does it no justice. Nothing in my experience has been remotely like it. The way it moved was unlike anything I have seen before.
With lightning speed it had used a pincer like claw to cut my man in two. And he lay there in shock, unaware that he was already dead. The creature then shook itself, like a dog emerging from a pond, showering us with dirt. It was then that I heard it give a shrill chirp. Not a cry or a roar, but a chirp, much like a bird might make, only much louder, and at a pitch that was so high that it pained us to hear it.
I had little time to give orders to my men, and in any case they did not need them. As one man they were already getting to their feet and sprinting back for the horses. I joined them, running as hard as I could up the hill.
The man we had left with the horses was ahead of us all, and he had already mounted and ridden off before we were halfway up the hillock. When I turned back to see if the creature had given chase a horror greeted my eyes.
Hades!
The entire field was erupting, and one demon after another, identical to the one that had slain my man, were emerging from their mounds! There were more than a hundred of them, and like a mass of ants they began to scuttle towards us.
The one we had awoken, had overtaken another of my men on the flight up the hill, and had dismembered him as well. But delayed in this task, it could not prevent the rest of us from mounting and riding hard down the other side of the hill.
If the creatures gave chase I do not know, for I did not look back to check until we were many hours south of there.
We hardly rested until we were back in Secracium.
I am exhausted now as I write this missive, and I cannot ride further until I have slept. I have instructed the Prefect to make a copy of this message and to send each by a different messenger to Mediolanum and Rome. Now even if we suffer the same fate as Noviomagus, Rome shall know what became of us.
In the morning I shall instruct this garrison to evacuate, and with my men we shall rejoin Trivarius at Mediolanum. He will know what to do until we receive orders from the Senate.
Your faithful servant
Tribune Cornelius Scipio
posted by Horsey at 11:57 PM
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