A part of him hated Antony for what he had done. Why he sent him away? It was unprofessional to put his feelings before his duty as an officer. The Wolves deserved to be at Cannae. They had fought, lost and suffered as much as any two legions since this war had begun. Still, however, something in Gaius’ old friend’s eyes told him a different story. It wasn’t as if Antony was afraid of battle. While he wasn’t nearly as seasoned or as trained as he, Antony was no coward, Gaius knew that. It seemed as if he had seen something, perhaps a vision of what was to come in his dreams; that something horrible was coming, and that he needed Gaius away from it; for Rome, for himself, for Julia.

He knew the reasoning, but failed to understand its meaning. Now going on two full days, there was no word from the army. The battle should have started by now. However, there had been no dispatch or wounded coming in from Cannae from the time he arrived at Canusium. If there was a victory, subsequently Rome would have sent word. Even if the battle was a defeat, still word would have arrived about what actions the men stationed here should take.

Even the worst imaginable defeat couldn’t have been that suffered.

Gaius could not take it anymore as he had spent the better part of the day pacing back and forth along the high walls, looking out over the rolling brown hills that surrounded the town, waiting, hoping for any sign from Cannae to reach them. He was done waiting. If he had to ride out to Cannae on his own, he would. However, before he deserted the army to seek his answers, Gaius figured he had better ask permission first, and see what came of it.

As he walked down the crowded streets towards the building that Valerius had chosen for his headquarters, the roads were mostly filled with bored and frustrated soldiers who had little to do, other than sit out in the hot sun and speculate among themselves why they were here, doing nothing.

They, like he, needed to know what was going on. Many were not happy about missing the battle, victory or defeat they just wanted to be where the action was. Some watched Gaius as he walked by them, he could tell that they wanted to ask him for any updates, if he knew anything, but most hesitated, seeing that he was obviously rushing towards the headquarters.

Truthfully, for the whole fourteen minutes that it took him to cross the town he was trying to think of a million and one excuses that he could make up so that Valerius would authorize him to take men to the battlefield. When he finally reached the building and stepped inside, into what had been the home of one of Canusium’s wealthier citizens, he saw Valerius in the back room, in what had been the dining hall. A dozen aides were with him, all going back and forth taking care of the various orders that Valerius was issuing out. He had scouts in the field, shift rotations for men behind the walls that needed taking care of, management of the food stocks, and over a thousand men who were bored with nothing to do but listen to each other’s fears and doubts about what was happening.

Valerius glanced up and saw Gaius standing in the doorway. To even his surprise, Gaius never got the chance to say anything — use one of his reasons for why he should take some men to Cannae. He had a good argument ready, but Valerius just looked back down at his maps and started speaking.

“I want you to take the first cavalry cohort to Cannae. Find out what the fuck is going out there, and report back to me once you have some answers. Is that understood?”

Gaius perked up, standing a bit taller as he was a loss for words. He didn't expect his old mentor to issue such an order.

“Yes, sir. At once.”

Gaius turned quickly and raced out of the manor and towards the army barracks that housed the men he would be taking with him to Cannae. It took him less than five minutes, and when he called forth the eighty men that he would be taking, they all eagerly leaped to their feet, grabbed their gear, and raced off with Gaius.

The distance between the city of Canusium and Cannae was covered by Gaius and his men fairly quickly. They had left Canusium in the morning, and now with less than an hour before night fall, he could see the surrounding hills of Cannae before him. And immediately, he knew something was wrong as he could see thousands of birds circling overhead, further towards the plains set between the city of Cannae, which was where Hannibal had based his army, and the Roman camp.

He kicked his horse, demanded that it run faster as he needed to get to the far side of the hill and see for himself what he already knew a battle took place. But who won? The knot in his stomach gave him early indications that it wasn’t his side.

It was very hot, and the smell of the dead and putrid flesh hit him hard as he rounded the bend, following a narrow paved road that was cut in between two daunting hills. And then, when the fields of Cannae came into view, Gaius’ mouth opened wide as, he and his men stopped abruptly in their tracks.

For miles, further than he could see with his naked eyes, laid the bodies of tens of thousands, all stretched out, and clumped together like stacks of logs, as if an entire forest had been cut down.

Banners, flags and standards of the various Roman cohorts, units and entire legions stuck out of the ground, between the fallen. Birds, thousands, more than Gaius had ever seen flew, landing between the dead, filling their bellies with putrid human flesh; even wild dogs had come down from the hills and walked among the Roman deceased as well. None fought one another, there were so many bodies that they could feast for months without worry of hunger.

Gaius and his men slowly trotted into the battlefield. Along the outer edges, they could see the severed heads of their countrymen stuck on pikes, a clear warning set by the barbarians that were under Hannibal’s command.

A number of Gaius’ soldiers, mostly his newest recruits, could not stand the sight or the smell as they dropped from their horses, and puked their guts out. A few men leaped down from their animals and helped those few that couldn’t bear to look at the carnage any longer, as more than a few of them were openly crying now.

Gaius paid little attention as he continued forward, eventually leaping down from his horse as the animal could not go further through the thick carped of dead men.

He looked around him, barely sure of where he could go. There were so many bodies that he couldn’t avoid stepping on pieces of men, entrails and globs of blood that had pooled, soaking into the earth before drying under the baking sun.

He hated the faces of the dead. Most, nearly all had their eyes open, mouths wide as the look of share terror had filled their expressions, before they had died, slowly, painfully, clumped together with the men before them, beside them, and behind them. Many of the dead were naked. The Carthaginians and their allies would have picked the lifeless clean of anything useful: armor, weapons, coins, jewels, even body parts such as tattoos and heads to be displayed as trophies.

Gaius had a rough estimate where Antony would have been positioned. He needed to move forward and find him. He knew it was impossible to find one man among the countless thousands. It did not matter — he had to try.

He could see, as he worked his way deeper into the body laded ground a few hundred people also walking among the corpses. Most of them were women, and all were sobbing openly. Gaius knew that these women would have been the wives, mothers, sisters and other relatives who had followed the army. They would sift through the remains of the dead looking for a familiar face of a loved one, hoping that they could find them so that they might give them a proper burial. It was morbid and a tedious task, but these women would stay here for as long as they could — weeks, even months picking through the stacks of dead, trying as hard as they could to find those men they had loved; only now, most of the dead looked alike.