Warrior Conflict: Roman Legionnaires versus Zulu Impis.

The Scenario.


Centurion Giraldi swatted the back of a sweating, armored legionnaire with his oak rod of office and shattered it.  “Dig deeper, lad,” he intoned without skipping a beat, “and pile it high.  We don’t have a terrible amount of time.

“Decanus Bernard,” he shouted to his aide down the line, motioning at his broken stick, “bring me another.”  The Germanic recruit answered an affirmative, and set to quickly cutting down one of the staves too short to be used as a proper stake for a more important use.  The centurion stalked further down the line, reprimanding soldiers and urging them on.

The Ninth Legion had mustered in Rome itself to recoup and restore itself to fighting condition following a foray past Hadrian’s Wall in Britain.  The bloodied Legion was now back to fighting-shape and once again on the march, having been sent first to the island of Sicily to gain passage to Egypt.  There it had acquired some auxiliary soldiers to further build up its numbers, as well as scout ahead into the new terrain that the Legion had found itself in.

It had marched south over the past several months, and except for a few brief skirmishes with hostile natives there had not been much action to threaten it and the men that constituted it.  But with every hovel and tribe that they passed by, and every lonesome herdsman that they interrogated, they heard rumors of a power moving in the southern part of the continent.  They heard rumors of a new, powerful tribe that had absorbed its neighbors and slaughtered its enemies.  Only boys and women herded cattle there; the men, young and old, fought and died and trained to fight and die.  And they had a name, too; Zulu.

Now the Ninth Legion was in what their guides and captives called, “Zululand”.  It was a green, hilly country lightly forested and populated by some scant herds of wild animals.  There was no trace of the Zulu, and the centurio primo pilus, a man called Rufus Scipio rumored to be a bastard of one of the Italian governors, was considering a return voyage back to Rome.

Then one man alone returned from a forage party, and died that night from his wounds.  Before he had expired, though, the Egyptian had spoken of an ambush – he and his four fellows had chased a boy no older than ten winters into the bush, and only he had escaped the slaughter that waited there.  It was the Zulu; one of them had struck him through the side with his short stabbing spear, and only by luck had he managed to escape.

So then Rufus Scipio had sent out orders that the Legion was to make camp where it stood; walls were to be raised, tents to be raised and men to be gathered in close so as not to be picked off.

It was while these orders were just being relayed and the outer pickets being chiseled out of the earth that the Zulu first appeared.  The most far-sighted of the legionnaires first saw them off a-ways; a teeming, two-pronged mob of brown flesh shaking spears and shields above their heads.  After deliberating with his subordinates, Rufus Scipio had decided the Legion was to cease construction of the fortifications and to take the field in battle order.

Centurion Giraldi bellowed new orders to his century, relaying orders down through his decanus’.  They formed up in battle column alongside two other centuries in their side of the formation, making a box ten rows wide and eight deep as each tent massed tight together.  They were professionals, leaving the three feet necessary between each man with which to efficiently fight.

The Zulu impis advanced in similar order.  What had formerly been a mob was now a wide front that threatened to overlap the Romans.  To refute that, the center cohorts had been ordered to march up at the double so as to break through the enemy center, splitting the force.  Auxiliaries had been dispatched on either wing to halt the opposing advance long enough for the legionnaires to catch up and make combat on their own.

As light combat erupted on the flanks both centers charged each other shouting insults and appeals to greater powers.  At fifty feet, Legion-issue light pila soared through the dusty sky.  Pained screams broke out from both sides; the next volley, consisting of heavy pila found their marks from thirty feet away, and the Legion shouted en masse a salute to Mars as the foremost cohorts drew their swords.  Throughout all of these uncoordinated waves of Zulu assegai arced swiftly from hand to target, looking like nothing so much as schools of darting fish.  There were more screams and shouts from both sides.

Among one of those cohorts nearest the front was centurion Giraldi and his century.  The centurion had drawn his spatha, noticeably longer than the legionnaires’ gladius, and had plunged the tip into the throat of a man trying to do the same to him with a short spear.  Crouching habitually behind his oval-shaped scutum, Giraldi watched the soldiers near him and observed how to fight these Zulu.

Slashing attacks were too slow to find their targets; the Zulu simply dodged out of the way and struck out like adders.  They also could not penetrate the Zulu shields that way, as their curved shape worked much like Legion-issue scutums and redirected the force of the strike away from the target, causing the sword to bounce harmlessly away and leaving the wielder vulnerable.

So it was the thrust, then.  The most basic of all techniques, which all Romans had been taught to do from first recruitment, would be the key here.  Giraldi watched as an old, grizzled legionnaire struck out, catching a Zulu in the chest, and withdrew just as quickly to continue fighting.  The next instant, a Zulu spear had been thrust deeply into the man’s stomach and wrenched out with a high-pitched scream of steel.  The man was pulled back by his companions into the safety of their ranks, and remembering his wits Giraldi blew a shrill note from the small clay whistle that he had kept clinched between his teeth.

The first ranks of the Legion drew back as the second relieved them, presenting a fresh front of unbloodied shields.  Zulu axes scythed through Roman helmets and shields; clubs rebounded off of both, as well as the lorica segmentata.  Again unlike his men, Giraldi wore the less common lorica hamata; it would serve well against the slashing strokes of the enemy, but he was disturbed to see that most of the enemy’s attacks pierced, like the Romans’, rather than cut.

The new line stabilized under the heavy Zulu pressure; Giraldi paused and stooped down to lift up a somehow-intact pilum that had fallen short of the enemy.  He stuck his sword in the ground tip-first for a moment, hefted the missile back, aimed carefully, and threw it at what appeared to be a headman of the Zulu, judging by his elaborate headdress of tall feathers.

The pilum hit home.  It struck the man in the lower chest, just above his stomach and liver but between his lungs and below his heart.  Somehow, it was not an immediately-fatal wound.  Retrieving his spatha, Giraldi watched with amazement as his counterpart among the barbarians looked down at the javelin lodged in his gut and slashed the haft of it off just above where it had entered his skin without missing a beat.  He then continued to shout orders and encouragement to his men even as he slowly bled out into the grass.

As the rest of both lines entered combat, Giraldi looked around to see that his fears of envelopment had been unfounded.   Despite their initial bravery and discipline, the outer wings of the Zulu – though they really looked like nothing so much as the two wide, sweeping horns of a steer – had been repulsed and pushed back by the auxiliaries and elements of the legionnaires with great loss to their own.

Centurion Giraldi offhandedly blocked a thrown club out of the air with his shield, and inspected the bodies of the slain out near the flanks.  Most of them were youths, no more than boys, though armed for battle like the men.  The Zulu battle strategy was beginning to make sense to the experienced soldier; the youngest warriors would take the flanks, having what would normally be the easiest of the fight.  The older, more experienced fighters would hold the center, stabilizing a front with which the youths to build off of.  It was a sound concept; though it had fallen short of expectations when under such strong pressure as the Romans provided.

And yet he was perplexed.  He stopped his thoughts, machine-like, to again thrust out and impale a charging warrior into his loins with extreme prejudice.  The thick leather apron he wore initially protected him, but only for a moment before his flesh was viciously ripped and torn.  Giraldi performed this technique twice more before the man hit the ground, stabbing twice into both his lower and upper torso, both bare of armor.

There was a gradual color evolution among the Zulu shields.  They started out black as midnight, out near the now-ruined flanks; but they gradually acquired more and more whiteness as they spread to the center.  And yet even those were not full white in color.  Some had tan, some had black, but none were purely white.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Giraldi sagely murmured beneath the din and crash of battle all around him.

Suddenly he felt a hard slapping on his helmet, a traditionally Gallic-looking model with small visor and extended neck-plate.  Turning sharply to see what this was, and hoping that it wasn’t some kind of Zulu pre-mortem joke, Giraldi saw that another centurion, a middle-aged man named Valiar Marcus, was shouting into his ear and resting a bloodied dolabra pickax over his armored shoulder.

“We’ve got orders to get the hell out of here, Giraldi,” Marcus roared, “These damned barbarians haven’t even let loose their veterans yet.  Our scouts spotted them on the move not far off from the main formation.”

Giraldi nodded and replied, “Alright.  Tell me:  were their shields all-white?”

“Bugger if I know,” Marcus answered, snapping his pickax to attention and then shearing a luckless Zulu’s arm off at the shoulder with it, “The idiot tribune didn’t think to notify me of such semantics.  Get your century out of here; not a tent is to be left.  They’re sending in the prime cohort.  Old Rufus Scipio himself is leading it.”  Without another word the other centurion stalked off back to his unit, bellowing orders to his eight decanus’ to cut a smooth evacuation out of the killing-zone.

“Testudo,” Giraldi cried out, over the rush and noise, “testudo!  Form up boys and we’ll pull our pants back out of here with us!”

The legionnaires did as he commanded without thinking; they’d been taught to do so since they’d entered Legion service.  The first spears, the file leaders, linked up and braced their scutum shields together to make a united front to the enemy.  The Zulu spears and axes fell off of the curved shields, much to their owners’ dismay.  They themselves seemed to be making room for their relievers to take the field among their ranks.  Within minutes the entirety of Giraldi’s century, or all of the survivors, had made the tortoise and were withdrawing slowly to the rear. 

To his surprise, Giraldi saw that his losses had not been as severe as he may have feared.  While many had taken gut-wounds from the short stabbing spears that the Zulu had employed, the overhead strikes with long-spears and axes had largely floundered against Roman steel.  And yet to his chagrin, not one tent among his ten had emerged unscathed; decanus Bernard had been slain, stunned by a club-blow and then dragged to his death amongst the enemy ranks.

But now centurion Giraldi was distracted by the prime cohort engaging the Zulu elites.  With the centurio primo pilus at its head, easily visible by the tall crest that crossed his helmet, the double-strength cohort slammed into the elite of the Zulu nation with a force that echoed across the plains.  They had only thrown their light pila, and many a Zulu fought without his shields because of it.  Rather than use their gladius swords they used the heavier pila as spears, keeping the Zulu warriors back and out of range of their own weapons, protected by their swords from any spears or axes of their own.

The remnants of the younger Zulu force was dispersing, fleeing back to watch the spectacle.  The Romans were doing likewise, amazed by the site as they watched their own battle unfold before them.

It was a slaughter, pure and simple; the Zulu would not retreat, and even though any man that charged ahead was skewered in his throat or chest they would not break rank or fall back.  Very soon many of the Roman pila were shattered or ruined beyond use, and it fell to sword-work to make more progress.

At one point in the line where the pressure was greatest, Giraldi saw many Roman bodies and wounded men falling to the ground to join them.  There was a danger that the Zulu would split the prime cohort; and so, blowing shrilly on his whistle, Giraldi led his century out to reinforce them.  Marcus’ century followed, and another behind them both did as well.  Soon the entirety of the Legion was behind them, spreading out the front and turning the tables on the Zulu despite all of their fierce determination.

What remained of the Zulu army had been scattered away by nightfall, chased out into the night by auxilia units and a few Roman volunteers, centurion Marcus among them.

And that night, for his bravery in the face of death, centurion Giraldi, now the oldest centurion in the Ninth Legion, was promoted to centurio primo pilus to replace the fallen Rufus Scipio.  His century had been integrated into the prime cohort to replace lost and dead, and they were on their way back to Rome to report their findings in the South.  He sincerely hoped that they did not encounter any more warrior-cultures on their trek back home, especially none as fierce and war-like as the Zulu.

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The Conclusion.

Roman Legionnaires
-Offensive Assessment:  thirty-one (31) of forty (40) points.
-Defensive Assessment:  thirty-three (33) of forty (40) points.
-X-Factor Assessment:  sixteen (16) of twenty (20) points.
~Total Composite Assessment:  eighty (80) of one hundred (100) points.

Zulu Impis

-Offensive Assessment:  thirty (30) of forty (40) points.

-Defensive Assessment:  twenty-one (21) of forty (40) points.

-X-Factor Assessment:  sixteen (16) of twenty (20) points.

~Total Composite Assessment:  sixty-seven (67) of one hundred (100) points.