The cornicens blew a series of three notes over and over, and all along the vast line there was a shimmering as the maniples of Rome moved with a discipline unmatched in the world. The hastati brought their shields up to protect themselves and moved smoothly back through the ranks as the triarii moved forward. They were panting and tired but still filled with a savage pleasure, and they shouted encouragement to the twenty-year veterans who ran to make the new front line. These were the best in the line, and apart from Renius, Primigenia had only a handful, making up the numbers with Cato’s fresh troops. The slaves threw themselves at the legions and Primigenia bore the worst toll of dead, the new recruits dying faster than the experienced men around them. Renius held the Primigenia line steady as they fought to move forward.

The advance surged again through the bodies of the slain. The only way was over the dead as neither side wavered or stepped back from the bloody gash that was the front rank. The triarii were the best of the legionaries, men at their fullest strength. Their family and friends were the legions they served and they were soon splashed as redly as the hastati before them.

Julius stood waiting in the fifth rank, with Primigenia straining to attack. Arms and swords shook in anticipation as they stood close enough to the cutting to have more and more of the blood droplets spatter over them like rain, running down their shining armor.

Some armies broke on the hastati, others when the triarii were brought in to crush the will of the enemy. The bodies they walked over and speared so casually numbered in the hundreds, perhaps thousands along the line, but they had only begun to cut away the outer layers of the army of Spartacus, and soon every man knew they would have to take their place. Once they saw it was inevitable, the nerves settled even in the weakest as they waited to reach the first rank.

“Primigenia—second spears!” Julius ordered, repeating the shout to his left and right. The ranks behind him launched without pause over the heads of their own men and the shafts landed unseen on the mass of the enemy. All along the line the action was repeated, and only distant screams told of the lives the points had taken.

Julius craned onto his toes to see what was happening on the flanks. Against so many, the cavalry had to prevent encirclement. As the line of Spartacus’s army bowed before the Romans, a memory flashed into Julius’s head of a distant schoolroom and a lesson of Alexander’s wars. Huge as it was, the Roman army could be swallowed and destroyed unless the flanks remained strong.