The Roman Traitor Volume Ii Part 39

Instinctively he felt a.s.sured that his enemy had not retreated. Almost he feared that his death had crowned some other hand with glory.

When suddenly, a mighty clatter arose in the rear, toward the Roman camp, and turning swiftly toward the sound, he perceived a desperate knot of rebels still charging frantically onward, although surrounded by thrice their numbers of inveterate and ruthless victors.

"By the G.o.ds! he is there!" and with the speed of the hunted deer, he rushed toward the spot, bounding in desperate haste over the dying and the dead, blaspheming or unconscious.

He reached the melee. He dashed headlong into the thick of it. The Romans were giving way before the fury of a gory madman, as he seemed, who bore down all that met him at the sword's point.

"Catiline! Catiline!" and at the cry, the boldest of the consular army recoiled. "Ho!-Romans! Ho! who will slay Sergius Catiline? Ho! Romans! Ho!

His head is worth the winning! Who will slay Sergius Catiline?"

And, still at every shout, he struck down, and stabbed, and maimed, and trampled, even amid defeat and ruin victorious, unsubdued, a terror to his victors.

"Who will slay Sergius Catiline?"

And, as Arvina rushed upon the scene, the veteran who had so confidently announced his coming triumph, crossed swords with the traitor, and went down in a moment, stabbed a full span deep in his thigh.

"Ho! Romans! Ho! who will slay Sergius Catiline?"-

"Paullus Arvina!"-cried the youth, springing forward, and dealing him with the word a downright blow upon the head, which cleft his ma.s.sive casque asunder.

"I will! I, even I, Paullus Arvina!"-

But he shouted too soon; and soon rued the imprudence of raising his arm to strike, when at sword's point with such a soldier.

As his own blow fell on the casque of the traitor, _his_ shortened blade, aimed with a deadly thrust tore through the st.u.r.dy s.h.i.+eld, tore through the strong cuira.s.s, and pierced his side with a ghastly wound.

Arvina staggered-he thought he had received his death blow; and had not the blade of Catiline, bent by the violence of his own effort, stuck in the cloven s.h.i.+eld, resisting every attempt to withdraw it, the next blow must have found him unprepared, must have destroyed him.

But ere the desperado could recover his weapon, Arvina rallied and closed with him, grasping him by the throat, and shouting "Lucia! Vengeance!"-

Brave as he was and strong, not for a single moment could Arvina have maintained that death-grapple, had his foe been unwounded.

But the arch traitor was bleeding at every pore; gashed in every limb of his body; he had received three mortal wounds already; he was fast failing when Arvina grappled him, and at the name of his injured child, his conscience conquered. His sword at length came away, extricated when too late from the tough bull-hide; but, ere he could nerve his arm to strike again, Arvina's point had torn his thigh, had gored his breast, had pierced his naked throat, with three wounds, the least of them mortal.

But even in that agony he struck home! He could not even curse, but he struck home, and a fierce joyous smile illuminated his wan face, as he saw his slayer stumble forward, and fall beside him on the b.l.o.o.d.y greensward.

In a moment, however, Paullus rallied, recovered his feet, drew from his bosom the long black ringlet of poor Lucia, and bathed it in the life blood of her slayer.

"Lucia! Ho! Lucia! Rejoice! my vow, my vow is kept! Thou art avenged, avenged! Ah! Lucia!-Julia!"-

And he fell sick and swooning upon the yet living bleeding body of his mortal foeman.

CHAPTER XXII.

A NIGHT OF HORROR.

Rider and horse, friend, foe, in one red burial blent.

CHILDE HAROLD.

The battle was at an end; the sun had set; the calm and silvery moon was sailing through the azure skies; as peaceful as though her pure light shone upon sights of happiness alone, and quiet. The army of the commonwealth had returned to their camp victorious, but in sadness, not triumph.

Of the magnificent array, which had marched out that morning from the Praetorian gate, scarce two-thirds had returned at sun-set.

And the missing were the best, the bravest, the most n.o.ble of the host; for all the most gallant had fallen dead in that desperate struggle, or had sunk down faint, with wounds and bloodshed, beside the bodies of their conquered foemen.

Of the rebels there was not a remnant left; some had escaped from that dread route; and of that mighty power, which at the close of day was utterly exterminated, it is on record that neither in the combat, while it lasted, nor in the slaughter which followed it, was any free born citizen taken-a living captive.

For the numbers engaged on both sides it is probable that never in the annals of the world was there the like carnage; nor is this wonderful, when the nature of the ground, which rendered flight almost impossible to the vanquished, the nature of the weapons, which rendered almost every wound surely mortal, and the nature of the strife, which rendered the men of either party pitiless and desperate, are all taken into consideration.

In long ranks, like gra.s.s in the mower's swathes, the rebel warriors lay, with their grim faces, and glazed eyes, set in that terrible expression of ferocity which is always observed on the lineaments of those who have died from wounds inflicted by a stabbing weapon; and under them, or near them, in ghastly piles were heaped, scarce less in number, the corpses of their slaughtered conquerors. So equal was the havoc; so equal the value which the men had set on their own lives, and on those of their enemies.

Never perhaps had there been such, or so signal, a retribution. They who had taken to the sword had perished by the sword, not figuratively but in the literal meaning of the words. Stabbers by trade, they had fallen stabbed, by the hands of those whom they had destined to like ma.s.sacre.

With the exception of the five chiefs who had already wrestled out their dark spirits, in the Tullianum, slavishly strangled, there was no traitor slain save by the steel blade's edge.

The field of Pistoria was the tribunal, the ruthless sword the judge and executioner, by which to a man the conspirators expiated their atrocious crimes.

No chains, no scaffolds followed that tremendous field. None had survived on whom to wreak the vengeance of the state. Never was victory so complete or final.

But in that victory there was no triumph, no joy, no glory to the victors.

So long, and so desperate had been the battle, so furiously contested the series of single combats into which it was resolved, after the final and decisive charge of the Praetorian cohort, that the shades of the early winter night were already falling over the crimson field, when, weak and shattered, sorrowful and gloomy, the Roman host was recalled by the wailing notes of the brazen trumpets from that tremendous butchery.

The watches were set, as usual, and the watch fires kindled; but no shouts of the exulting soldiers were to be heard hailing their general "Imperator;" no songs of triumph pealed to the skies in honor of the great deeds done, the deathless glory won; no prizes of valor were distributed; no triumph-not an oration even-was to be hoped for by the victorious leader of that victorious host, which had conquered indeed for the liberties of Rome, but had conquered, not on foreign earth, in no legitimate warfare, against no natural foe, but on the very soil of the republic, at the very gates of Rome, in an unnatural quarrel, against Romans, citizens, and brothers.

The groans of the wounded, the lamentations of friends, the shrieks of women, went up the livelong night from that woful camp. To hear that grievous discord, one would have judged it rather the consequences of defeat than of victory, however sad and b.l.o.o.d.y.

No words can express the anguish of the ladies, with whom the camp was crowded, as rus.h.i.+ng forth to meet the returning legions, they missed the known faces altogether, or met them gashed and pallid, borne home, perhaps to die after long suffering, upon the s.h.i.+elds under which they had so boldly striven.

Enquiries were fruitless. None knew the fate of his next neighbor, save in so much as this, that few of those who went down in such a melee, could be expected ever again to greet the sunrise, or hail the balmy breath of morning.

Averted heads and downcast eyes, were the sole replies that met the wives, the mothers, the betrothed maidens, widowed ere wedded, as with rent garments, and dishevelled hair, and streaming eyes, they rushed into the sorrowful ranks, shrieking, "Where are they," and were answered only by the short echo, "Where."

Such was the fate of Julia. No one could tell her aught of her Arvina; until at a late hour of the night, remembering her solitary situation and high birth, and taking a deep interest in her sorrows, Petreius himself visited her, not to instil false hope, but to console if possible her wounded spirit by praises of her lost lover's conduct.

"He fought beside my right hand, Julia, through the whole of that deadly struggle; and none with more valor, or more glory. He led the last b.l.o.o.d.y onset, and was the first who cut his way through the rebel centre. Julia, you must not weep for him, you must not envy him such glory. Julia, he was a hero."

"_Was_!" replied the poor girl, with clasped hands and streaming eyes-"then he _is_ no longer?"

"I do not know, but fear it," said the stout soldier; "He had vowed himself to slay Catiline with his own hands. Such vows are not easy, Julia, nor safe of performance."

"And Catiline?" asked Julia,-"the parricide-the monster?"