Paullus still sat, with drooping head, faint with fatigue and loss of blood, while Decius, Sergius, and Lentulus stood by him, helplessly awaiting the end. A rush of fugitives swept by and almost overwhelmed the wounded man; but Decius passed his arm around him, and the press slackened.
"It is time for you to mount and ride, Cneius Lentulus;" and the consul raised his head again, while the old-time spirit of command flashed in his eyes. "You shall be my envoy to the fathers. Bid them fortify and garrison the city; go—"
A new rush broke in upon his words,—a rush, in which the whole front was borne back a spear's length beyond them. Sergius was thrown down, but some one raised him, dazed and stunned, and seemed to bear him along. A moment, and he found himself standing once more upon his feet. Cneius Lentulus and his horse were gone; Paullus and Marcus Decius were left alone far beyond—no, not alone. He saw the tunics of the Iberians, now all as purple as their borders, thronging around; he saw his general and his comrade give their throats to the sharp, slender swords; and then he saw, far ahead, amid the Carthaginian syntagmata, a swarthy, smiling face with crisp, curling beard; he saw the brown-bronze corselet rich with gold, the meteor helmet with ostrich plumes floating between its horns, the snowy mantle bordered with Tyrian purple; and he saw the white head of the horse whose feet needed now no dye of art to stain them vermilion. All the fury of battle, all the madness of revenge overwhelmed him in an instant; despair was gone, thoughts of past and future were swept away by the surge of one overmastering idea: he must reach that man and kill him. He looked around at the scattered, reeling maniples. A standard bearer was lying at his feet, striving with his remnant of strength to wrench the silver eagle from its staff, that he might hide it under his cloak; but the death rattle came too quickly. Sergius picked up the standard.
"Come," he said, "there is the enemy." And then, without a glance to note whether his appeal was regarded, he rushed blindly forward.
It was a discipline inspired by tradition rather than taught by drills and punishments that came to the Roman recruit, and now it played its part. These peasants, these artisans whose eyes had seen naught save unaccustomed horrors through all the day, turned at once to answer the summons of the eagle. Sergius heard the feeble shout of battle that rose behind him, heard the scattered clanging of sword and shield, and when he struck the long pikes of the first square, it was with the force of half a dozen broken maniples welded into a solid mass.
Still the sarissas held firm. Perhaps two lines went down, but the pila rained their slant courses from the rear; the feeble rush was stopped, and the legionaries struggled helplessly upon the spears. Sergius saw nothing but the dark, bearded face among the squares—scarcely nearer than before. Had he not read in a little book written by one, Xenophon, a Greek, and purchased, at great cost, at the shop of Milo, the bookseller in the Argiletum, how Oriental armies won or lost by the life or death of their leaders? He would kill Hannibal! Would to the gods that Paullus had fallen in the Cinctus Gabinus! Paullus, too much of an infidel to think of such old-time immolation; but there was yet one last appeal.
Seizing the tough staff of the standard almost at the end, he whirled it around his head and let it go at full swing; the silver eagle flashed in the light of the setting sun, as it described great arcs, and plunged down amid the hostile ranks; a hoarse cry went up: the very deity of the legion was amid its foes! no Roman so untried as not to hear its call. The short swords hacked and stabbed among the spears; the first square swayed and rocked, shivered into fragments, and, hurled back upon the second, bore it, too, down in the mingled rush of pursuers and pursued. On every side of the dwindling band of assailants, front, flanks, and rear, the pikes dipped and plunged, the Gallic swords hissed through the air, the Spaniards ravened and stabbed; but, to the Romans, flanks and rear were nothing: it was the front, the Libyans, the lost eagle.
And now, at last, it was won; the advance had been checked by the closer welding of the syntagmata, half his men were down; but Sergius, still unhurt, had stooped and raised the standard, kissing its crimson beak and wings. Then he looked up.
Half the space between himself and the bearded horseman had vanished, and the latter was no longer talking carelessly with those about. His steady gaze was fixed upon the young Roman, as if studying the exact measure of strength that remained to him. There was nothing else for it. Again the great staff described great circles through the air, and again the crimson eagle soared and stooped, and the white stallion reared and snorted, as it struck the earth before him; again the shattered fragment of an army hurled itself, wounded and weary and bleeding, among the ever thickening spears; yes, and forced its way a quarter, half the remaining distance, until Sergius, whose eyes had never for a moment forsaken those of the Carthaginian, saw them grow troubled, saw the black, bushy brows draw together. Then his enemy turned and spoke a few hurried words to an attendant, gesticulating freely, until the man whirled his horse about and drove back through the throng. When Sergius looked into the face of the general again, it wore a disdainful smile—the smile of a Zeus that watches the sons of Aloeus pile mountain on mountain in the vain effort to storm Olympus. Again Hannibal was careless and unconcerned; again he laughed and joked gayly with his attendants; his soldier's eye had set the limit of Rome's last paroxysm, and it fell short of the spot where he sat—not by much, but enough. All that remained was for the arrows of Apollo to do their work, and now he had set these to the string.
Wearily and yet more wearily the wolves bit and tore their way; then they came staggering to a stand, three spear lengths from the lost eagle, and then the pressure behind seemed to slacken, and the serried spears in front bore them slowly backward.