Steam Legion (20 page)

“But, sir! The battle!”

“The battle is lost, fool! The war may not be,” he snapped. “Tell the runners that they must have stripped Alexandria to the bone to pull this much force this far out!”

“Alexandria?”

“Where else would they have this much manpower with the Twenty-Second Legion so far to the northeast?” the Commander said, frustrated as he watched the Romans step up their pace into a fast double time march. He could paint the outcome of the battle with excruciating detail, but it would, in fact, be all over and done with before he could do so. “Send out our runners and then join them yourself!”

“But, sir, you can’t stay—!”

“If I stay, I may be able to bleed them enough to cripple this force. Now
go
! Before I run you through and pick someone else,” he ordered, threatening the man with his blade.

As his, now former, Adjutant scrambled away, the Commander turned back to the battle just in time to see the front lines clash. He grimaced as the Roman line showed its superior training and equipment, the entire first line “punching” with the shields at the moment of impact. The larger and heavier scutem was known to shatter lesser shields with that maneuver, and this time was no exception to the rule. His line fell back from the force, wicker and wood shields splintering under the force, and the Romans hadn’t even brought their swords into play yet.

That changed an instant later as the Legion line stabbed their gladii with that remarkable unity the Legion were famed for. Men took a foot of iron through their guts, and the battlefield began to churn into an unholy mud of blood and dirt.

That wasn’t to say it was entirely one-sided, of course.

His line answered with strikes of their own, and while a great many were turned away by the great shields of the Legion where the enemy swords could strike from, his own blades could answer. Holes appeared in the front line of the Legion forces, men going down with wounds of varying degrees, but were quickly plugged again as they were stepped over and on by their comrades to bring new shields and swords to the forefront.

“Put your weight into it! Lean into the line!” the Zealot Commander called as loud as he could, his voice reaching down the line as they rallied and pushed into the Romans’ line.

Men surged forward, the weight of those behind slamming into those ahead and pushing the shield wall into the Roman line. The weight of the Zealot line hammered into the Romans’, pushing them back by steps. The Legion soldiers responded by throwing their own weight back, but they were still outnumbered more than four to one; just holding the line, the Romans’ entire strength was required, while the Zealots still had some forces free to maneuver.

The Commander grabbed the closest runners he could. “Order the rear guard to swing out and around on the flanks while we have them tied up!”

The two nodded and bolted off to follow their orders, leaving him spitting in disgust as he glared out over the battle.
Two Centuries of the Legion against a full Cohort of my men, and I will lose this battle.

It was infuriating, boggling, and had he been even slightly less educated, he would never have believed it to be true. With the support of their Auxiliaries, however, Rome’s Legions were nearly unbeatable in a head-on confrontation such as he had stupidly permitted himself to be maneuvered into. Men on his line were falling as many as five for every Roman they killed in exchange.

Alone, even with such losses, he would be able to inflict crippling damage to the enemy formation, even possibly forcing them to retreat in defeat if they lost their taste for battle before his own faithful. However, the thunder of horses on his left flank, combined with the sure knowledge of the Roman siege Auxiliaries on the hill to his left, told him that his faith would not be enough on this day, barring a miracle.

As his flankers moved out and came around to hammer into the weaker Roman flank, the Cavalry hammered in with their archers, just to prove that miracles weren’t in the cards for him this day. Arrows sprouted from his men’s sides, dozens of them falling to the hundreds of arrows fired into their sides.

He cursed the unbelievers, their gods, and everything about them down to their horses as his flanking line faltered on that side and the maneuver was crippled in motion. The Cavalry line swept around behind him, and with that, he knew that the battle was coming to an end, even though he still outnumbered his enemies.

The right flankers were almost to their targets when a roaring sound rose above the clash of battle, drawing his eyes up to the hilltop again, where he saw the great clouds of smoke breathing as if from the throat of some great beast.

They wouldn’t dare,
he thought, shocked.
We’re far too close to the Infantry line for that!

****

“Lower the cannon angles by four degrees,” Dyna ordered tersely. “And put full air to the fires.”

“Yes, my lady!”

The men screwed the cannons down as she walked the line, her personal planetaria in hand as she recalculated her numbers for the fourth time. Without the changes made to the cannons by Sensus, what she was about to attempt would have been impossible. The older versions of the weapons were simply not predictable enough.

As it was, this would surely be one of the most challenging problems of mathematics she had ever attempted.

She paused and ordered half her cannons turned two degrees to the north while leaving the rest on their current directions. The flames were blazing hot already, and the metal was beginning to glow. It was time, otherwise the boilers would surely melt.

“Draw up the stoppers,” she ordered, her voice flat even as her heart raced deep in her breast.

The acknowledgement of the order was lost in the sudden rush of water boiling off as the boilers built pressure. As before, once the critical mass was met, the great bronze plates on the front of the cannon barrels broke loose and flapped down to let the bolts and balls within fly free.

Great steam clouds erupted again, obscuring vision briefly, and the hilltop was once more rocked by the roar of the dragon’s breath.

“Eyes!” she called loudly. “Eyes on the field! See to where the weapons land!”

The round of projectiles had been fired at an even lower angle, providing less arc as they were flung through the air toward their destination. Again, the carved-stone balls pushed past the heavy iron-tipped bolts, some falling short of the target and bouncing up into the unshielded flanks and backs of the men trying to squeeze the Roman lines from the side. Those took men’s legs out from under them, in some cases in permanent fashion as the limbs were torn in twain from the impact.

The balls that landed on-target slammed into tightly packed formation, blood spraying wildly as the heavy stone projectiles tore through helmets like they were made of papyrus instead of metal. Two ricocheted off their intended targets and continued on into the Roman line, breaking bones and throwing men to the ground in bloodied heaps as the shots found the wrong target at the end of their journey.

As the men on the ground were recovering from the shock of the sudden bloody assault, the slower moving bolts rained down on the outer edge of the ranks. Most fell short due to the lower angle of the shot, but about a third slammed into the back and side of the Zealot flank with devastating effect.

Men were driven to the ground, literally pinned in place by the thick iron-tipped bolts that had slammed into them from the air. They couldn’t do more than scream as their blood soaked into the increasingly mud-filled battlefield, often being trampled by their own comrades as the instant of panic set in.

On the hilltop, Dyna watched, most satisfied with the effort. She cringed at the losses inflicted on her own men and growled at the wasted bolts that had fallen short. But the sort of close siege support she was attempting had never been done in a field battle like this before, and as much as she hated the brutality of it, the numbers had worked out in their favor this time.

I will need to refine our methodology, however,
she told herself, eyes taking in everything as she continued to command her group.
This is too valuable a tool to ignore.

****

The damage to his forces was less physical than moral, the Zealot Commander could immediately see, but between the total disruption of both flanks and the resurging assault from the Legion Heavy Infantry, he knew that the battle was lost. From the corner of his eye he could see men beginning to falter from his own lines, falling away and making a run for it.

When the Legion’s Auxiliary Cavalry didn’t bother to either attack or pursue them, it was all over. More men broke as they realized that running wouldn’t get them immediately killed, and within mere moments, his unit cohesion was shattered.

The core of his forces, those of the Zealot belief, stayed true, but now they were being forced back as the Legion rallied and began to inexorably shove forward while using their shields to clear the path of the resistance, even as their short swords cut down any that were unwilling to retreat.

The steady staccato rhythm of the Legion’s swords banging on their shields told the story as the much smaller force overwhelmed, and what had begun as a battle swiftly turned to slaughter.

****

From Centurion Cassius’s point of view, the critical moment of the battle arrived and passed largely without him having to do a thing. His men could feel it just as he did, and they reacted according to their training. As the enemy line fractured, his men punched forward with their shields. The weight of a scutem with a man behind it would break bones with that maneuver. The Zealot line broke, and Cassius hefted his sword as he screamed above the noise and charged forward.

Even he himself couldn’t have told what words he screamed, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the war cry that galvanized his forces as they strode forward and literally marched right over their enemies, only pausing to stab their swords down into the fallen to ensure that they would not be able to get up by some miracle and strike at them from behind.

As the Zealot forces lost cohesion, the Roman lines had to spread a little more than normal, as well, in order to maintain contact with the enemy. They charged in, now bringing their swords into more use than just stabbing from behind the shields, slashing out the legs of men as they tried to run or across the guts and arms of those who tried to fight.

This sort of melee wasn’t where the Roman forces were at their strongest, but it certainly wasn’t their weakest point either. The Legionnaires thrust, slashed, stabbed, and even stomped their enemies into the ground as they tasted victory against the supposedly superior force, and each of them wanted to drink his fill.

****

The Commander of the Zealot forces could feel it all slipping away and knew that there was nothing he could do to recover, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. He rallied the faithful as best he could, leading a countercharge against the Roman line personally. Their counterattack was mostly blunted by the superior armor and shields of the Romans, but none of his faithful faltered even as they were cut down.

A crushing blow to his right side sent the Commander to the ground, and as he rolled over in a daze and tried to get to his feet, the last thing he saw was a Roman Legionnaire standing over him and stabbing downward with his blade before moving on to the next target.

He coughed up blood, eyes casting upwards to the heavens.
I have failed You, my Lord, and I am sorry. Please forgive Your unworthy servant.

It was then that the world went black and he saw no more.

Chapter 15

The aftermath of the battle was practically routine as the Cavalry was dispatched to hunt down the escaping enemy now that the main force had been dealt with. Cassius first saw to his men, ensuring that their basic needs were attended to until Dyna arrived with the supply train and doctors they had brought from Alexandria.

The battle had been a route, and he was honestly shocked by that. There had been little doubt in Cassius’s mind that he would be able to eliminate the much more numerous enemy—his men were well-trained, and the Zealot forces by and large were not—but the sheer attrition of the enemy numbers should have cost him considerably more.

He shook his head, eyes falling on the gleaming brass of the cannons, and knew that it was the power of those new weapons that had changed the tide. Oh, they hadn’t inflicted all that much
damage
to be precise about things, but the sheer terror evoked by the enormous plumes of steam they emitted and the volume of fire from a single weapon had been enough to spook the enemy this time.

That wouldn’t last, of course. As they were used more and more, the cannons’ weaknesses would be divined, and they would lose their mystical and visceral fear factor. Until then, however, Cassius was certain that they had a weapon that would truly change to field of battle.

He shook off the thought as he stepped into Dyna’s tent and saluted.

“It’s good to see you alive and well, Cassius,” Dyna said, smiling up at him from where she was working at a field desk.

“Thank you, and you, my Lady.” He smiled. “I wanted to compliment you on your use of the cannons.”

Her features darkened. “Don’t. I overshot the target and injured our own men, possibly killed some.”

“That has happened before in battle, my Lady, and it will, like as not, happen again,” he told her. “Be glad that you were not using naptha fire pots. I have seen those do truly ugly things to men.”

She nodded jerkily, but her face didn’t change expressions. “Fortunately, or not, I suppose, those would likely not survive being fired from a cannon. It still doesn’t excuse me for fouling my calculations, however. I will do better in the future.”

“My Lady, I never doubted it,” he told her honestly. He’d known her since she was barely twelve summers in age, and she had never been the sort to make the same mistake twice. “However, battle is fluid, my Lady. You will never account for everything that can happen and will likely go mad if you try.”