"Diana!  No!"<br/><br/>And Decius Gallus awoke.  All was black.  The stench of coagulated blood assailed his<br/>senses.<br/><br/>He still had the use of his arms.  With a push, he slid the corpse which had lain crosswise<br/>over his upper torso and head away.  A cool rain pattered down on his face, and he opened<br/>his eyes.  A gray light shone in.<br/><br/>Decius looked left and right.  He was in a small glade surrounded by ancient trees.  The<br/>field was littered with corpses of both men and horses.  Pools of blood were punctuated by<br/>raindrops.<br/><br/>Decius remembered now.  He was not in Etruria, or Elysium, his last memory before waking.  He was in<br/>Germania.<br/><br/>His platoon of Equites had been given the panicked order to retreat, and that idiot of a<br/>Centurion, Crassus, had led them through here.  He remembered a javelin impaling Octavius,<br/>and then howls emerging from the forest all around them. A barbarian had emerged from the<br/>treeline, seemingly out of nowhere. The horses were panicking.<br/><br/>Decius' hand went to his belt.  His Gladius was still in it's scabbard.  His chain armor<br/>was caked in thick black and red mud.  He was covered in blood.  But he yet lived.<br/><br/>The barbarians hadn't had time to loot the fallen yet.  He decided he must move now, before<br/>they returned to practice their barbaric, pagan rituals on the dead.  No heathen would<br/>drink from a cup fashioned from Decius' skull!<br/><br/>As he tried to stand, sharp pains ran everywhere through his body.  He dropped back down<br/>and vomited twice.  The nausea faded and he looked for the source of the pains.  Ah, yes.<br/>He had been pierced twice: along his outer left thigh and along his outer right ribcage.<br/><br/>Serious wounds, but he had experienced far worse.  And these were starting to scab over.<br/><br/>Decius attempted to rise again, this time successfully.  He limped over to where a pilum<br/>was stuck in the ground and retrieved it.<br/><br/>Then he heard What sounded like the clash of metal upon metal and a bellowing yell.  It was<br/>indeed far away, and he wasn't sure of the exact distance.  The battle lay that way.<br/><br/>He thought of Calista, whom he had not seen in three years.  He resolved he would see her<br/>again.  He would rejoin whatever was left of his army, recross the Rhine, and return to<br/>Italia, Etruria, and Calista.<br/><br/>He limped out of the circle of gray light and into the blackness of the endless forest.