Gods and Legions Read Free Page B

the sides, leaving nothing but empty ground in the middle as the enraged elephants raced through the passage left between the men and skidded to a confused stop.
    Instantly our troops let out a roar, drowning out the trumpeting of the angry beasts, which wrenched their heads in bewilderment from side to side as they sought to peer around their blinders and make out the source of the sound.
    'Pikes!' screamed Julian, though his order was superfluous, overwhelmed by the bellowing of the furious troops. A hundred, five hundred heavy-shanked spears flew through the air simultaneously at point-blank range, penetrating the elephants' thick hides with a slicing sound, burying themselves deep in flanks and ribs. The beasts reared, thrashing front legs and trunks in fear and agony, as the archers in the towers on top ceased to fire and struggled to hold on to their ominously rocking platforms.
    Emboldened at their success, the men rushed in closer to the enraged animals, encircling each elephant on all sides, cutting off the beasts' contact with one another. Soldiers who had kept or recovered their pikes dove in toward the elephants' stamping and circling feet from behind, poking and slashing at the backs of their legs and arses, further maddening the animals, which shook and stamped in a desperate effort to dissuade their tormentors. The tower on the enraged bull tilted precariously off its back, leaning almost horizontally to the side as the Persians inside clung to the support posts with their hands, and then the girth strap broke, sending the entire contraption tumbling to the ground, where it crumpled into a confused jumble of leather, lumber, and broken limbs. Twenty Gauls surged forward to finish off the hapless archers, but scrambled back as the bull did the job for them, wreaking revenge for the years of training and torment his masters had put him through as he leaped upon the broken structure and stomped and slashed at the screaming survivors until they were silent.
    A cheer rose from the Roman troops as the first of the beasts dropped bawling and trumpeting to the ground, the tendons at the back of its knees severed. The drivers had lost control of their terrified mounts now, and all around were thrusting their great iron spikes into the necks of the doomed beasts. One by one the monsters dropped, to the shrill shouts of triumph of the Gauls, who now swarmed over them even before they fell. One ill-trained driver thrust frantically again and again into the leathery hide of his animal's neck, each time pounding the spike in deeply with his mallet in an unsuccessful effort to find the fatal spot. Another elephant slammed into it with a terrible scream, and then a third, creating a wall, a writhing mountain of bloody flesh, legs kicking and trunks flailing. The Romans flung spears and shot arrows into the heaving mound, and one of the animals, thrashing blindly about with its trunk, seized a dead driver from off the neck of another and placing the man's torso between its great rubbery lips, proceeded to tear off his limbs one by one in its own terrible death throes.
    Seeing that the elephant charge had been repelled, the body of Persian infantry, who had now approached to the very edge of our lines, stopped suddenly in a confused jumble, their officers unsure whether to follow through with the attack or retreat to safety on the ridge top. Julian did not hesitate. Turning the attention of his troops away from the dying elephants to the greater danger they faced from the Persians at their backs, he quickly organized a charge. The Roman troops howled for revenge for their downed comrades, their shields and weapons smeared with elephant and Persian blood. They leaped at the enemy, slashing and hacking, blood spraying the filthy dust which was now scattered with severed limbs, and no longer were there distinct lines of battle, for the two sides had become thoroughly confused with each other, the one seeking only to preserve their