Steam Legion (25 page)

“I can, and I will,” she told them coldly. “I did not ask for people to question my decisions, I asked for four men to man the cannons.”

There was a long silence before first one, then three others, quickly stepped forward.

“We’ll stand this line with you, my Lady,” the first said after exchanging glances with his comrades.

Dyna gazed at them intently for a long moment and then set her jaw with the finality of a decision made. “Good. I will consider it an honor, Immunes.”

“The honor is ours,” they responded.

She smiled thinly but nodded in acceptance before turning to another of the Immunes who had traveled with her.

“Aelia, you and your group are to move to the top of this hill.” She looked to a nearby hill.

It wasn’t particularly tall—there were no big hills along the range of the delta—but it would be enough to give the signaling team a good vantage of the battle and a line of sight to convey information to Cassius and his group to the north.

“Build a hide,” she ordered. “The enemy is
not
to find you, not even should they break through our line. Is that quite clear?”

Aelia nodded in understanding, saluting in response. “As you will it, my Lady.”

“Good. Go.” She gestured, turning away as the specialist Immune hurried off to gather his small group and head for the hill.

Preparing the ambush positions at the choke point afforded them by the bridge crossing took the entire day and well into the night for many of them, particularly those few of the library’s craftsmen who came with Sensus to bring the supplies to Dyna from Alexandria. The soldiers of the Legion serving as Dyna’s command actually got more rest than almost any of the others, but that was considered fair since most of them would be holding the line directly behind Master Heron’s automatons when the time came.

The eighteen cannons not placed on the bridge were arrayed six on either side, with the final six mounted on three of the chariots for higher vantage points and to allow better mobility if absolutely needed.

This time she wasn’t going to bother with working out the angles of indirect fire, but had selected positions for the cannons that aimed directly into the point where the enemy would be. Dyna doubted very strongly that even the best Legion scutem would be able to stand up to a single bolt from a cannon fired directly from the range she had paced out and had no worries that the Israelite forces would have anything even comparable as part of their standard equipment.

The scutem shield, while simple to build in absolute terms, was something of a monster of complexity on the degree they would have needed to produce to properly arm a Legion-sized force.

Of course, they may have shields captured from the Twelfth,
Dyna supposed. In that case, the battle would likely be a little more difficult, but they still should be able to hold up their end well enough.

The bridge would serve to narrow the enemy forces down to manageable numbers, and like her ancestor at Thermopylae, Dyna felt that her better-trained forces would be able to make the fight extremely expensive for the enemy.

Unlike Thermopylae, of course, the enemy had another option. They could fall back, refuse battle, and seek to cross at another position.

Of course, with Cassius already in position to ambush them as they crossed at the next best place along the river, Dyna felt confident in believing that they would find ugly surprises in their path the coming day, no matter which direction they took.

She obviously wanted them to turn aside, since her survival was depending on it, not to mention every man under her command. However, if they chose to bull through the force holding the bridge, Dyna was confident that she had enough to ensure that the enemy force was badly mauled, if not crippled, in the process.

Enough so that Cassius will be able to hunt them down to the last and avenge our stand.

Dyna barely slept that night, every indivisible atom of her body feeling energized by the knowledge of what was to come. She lay quietly in her ruck, eyes closed most of the time, as thoughts and, occasionally, dreams of the battle to come danced across the inside of her eyelids. She knew that what she was feeling wasn’t the way a proper woman child should feel, not even one of her line, but for all that she had been taught, Dyna knew she had found her destiny with a blade in her hand and soldiers at her command.

****

When dawn arrived, Dyna was already standing by the automatic chariot, familiarizing herself with the controls she could see. They were not spectacularly complicated; the power was sent to the free-standing automatons by way of a spinning axel powered by the powerful steam engine mounted on the chariot.

She had taken a peek inside the chests of the impressive automation soldiers and knew that the inner workings of the armored figures were fitting, given the genius of their creator. However, as complex as they were, she was able to decipher most of the workings after a few moments’ perusal. The shaft running from the chariot would allow the inner workings to be pulled taught, preparing the devices for the strike.

When triggered, they would snap to their natural position, with spear or sword thrust forward. From what she had seen, there should be easily enough power in the torsion springs to drive their weapons through all but the finest shields and armor.

What the automatons really served as, beyond the obvious fear factor if any of the approaching enemy had heard rumors from the riots in Alexandria, was a defensive wall. They would slow the enemy, bottling them further as they came forward and lining them up perfectly for a strike from the cannons.

If that is not sufficient to turn them aside, the enemy Commander is surely stupider than either Cassius or I either hoped or feared,
Dyna thought wryly.

In the event that they didn’t turn, it would be to the Legionnaires standing with her to convince the enemy that this was not the path to victory.

We can do this. We
will
do this.

“And just what are you doing, my lady?”

Dyna started slightly at the voice, half turning as Sensus approached. She took a breath, willing her heart to slow its beating before she spoke. “Merely familiarizing myself with the chariot, Sensus.”

“Why?” he asked, a hint of a smile on his face.

She rolled her eyes. “So that I might run it properly during the coming battle, clearly.”

He snorted. “My Lady, you worry about stopping them here on the bridge. I’ll run the controls.”

Dyna hesitated a moment, eyes snapping up to look at him. “Sensus, if they overrun our line—”

“Then this will be the first position to die, yes, I am aware,” he said.

She stared for a moment that seemed to stretch out, then finally nodded. “Very well. You were shown how to run the automatons?”

“I was.”

“Wait until the enemy closes,” she ordered. “Just before the shields clash, thrust with the spears.”

He nodded. “Understood.”

“Will the automatons be able to stay standing from a true clash?” she asked, eyeing the unknown elements curiously.

“They should,” he said. “They weigh more than a person and use a gimbal to cause the mechanism to lean against a tilt. Hit them hard, and they will push just as hard and fast into the strike.”

“Impressive,” she mumbled, promising herself that she’d take one apart as soon as possible. A gimbal made sense; the device would always remain upright relative to the ground so it could be used to detect a shift in balance quite well. She just wasn’t sure how one would trip a strong enough reaction to keep the automatons on their feet, and she was looking forward to finding out how Master Heron had solved that problem.

For the moment, however, she had other concerns.

The Legionnaires assigned to her were preparing for the coming battle when she stepped back to their camp. Most were already in armor, some were sharpening blades or bundling pylum for the day, but all were clearly performing whatever rituals they felt improved their connections to the Gods.

“The battleground has been chosen, our trap laid out,” Dyna told them as she took a seat on a stump in sight of them all. “The enemy should be here this morning.”

She planted the butt of a pylum into the dirt between her legs and leaned forward with the shaft braced against her shoulder. “You all know our goal. We want them to divert to where Centurion Cassius and the rest are waiting, but I would prefer to bleed them a little before sending them on their way.”

Her smile was confident, if a little disturbing to men who rarely dealt with women of influence. They knew her, however, as Cassius had left her with his own men rather than any of the untested forces levied in recent weeks, and that familiarity bred a confidence that few would have felt just a few months earlier.

So they smiled in return, the hint of bloodlust in her eyes echoed in the men now under her command as they chuckled softly in anticipation.

“May we presume that my Lady has a plan to do just that?” one of them ventured.

“You may,” Dyna said. “You may indeed, Lathius.”

The Pedes nodded in response, having expected nothing else. He didn’t ask anything else, however, but merely waited for her to explain.

“We’ll use the automatons sent by Master Heron as a shield wall,” she said, looking around. “Stay low and out of sight. Arrows are worthless against them, and not much better against us beneath a scutem wall, so they’ll have to close across the bridge.”

The men clearly understood, so she continued, “We’ll let them commit as many men as they wish. I don’t expect more than two Centuries’ worth to be able to fit on the bridge without being totally worthless, because they have no room to swing their weapons. They’ll have to close on the automatons, and once they’re packed shoulder to shoulder on the bridge, they’re ours.”

The men glanced over at the cannons mounted on either side of the bridge, and she could see them thinking about the two waiting on the bridge as well. They nodded slowly, understanding the strategy, and her smile spread to them.

“Honestly,” she said, “I expect that they’ll likely withdraw after that. The cannons are still very new and frightening, so when their fellows fall, I expect them to pull back and reconsider their path. If they do, well, I have plans of my own for that eventuality, but you won’t need to concern yourselves with them. Your task is to deal with them if they get stubborn and attempt to come through in force.”

Smiles were gone now, but the men nodded in grim acceptance. They were all familiar with the results if that eventuality came to pass. Holding the bridge here, over a narrow but deep and swiftly moving portion of the river, would permit them to keep the enemy from bringing their full numbers to bear, but the battle would not be easy, despite that advantage.

With arrows raining down while they fought, they would have to commit their entire force to the battle. With less numbers on their side, they would be forced to fight constantly while their enemy would always have a fresh supply of soldiers for their cause.

In the end, it would be a losing battle, and there would be no way to break off and fall back should it begin to turn irrevocably against them. No, they would be forced to surrender or fight to the death, and surrendering to the Zealot forces was somewhat less attractive than paying a visit to Pluto.

“We’re with you, my Lady,” the lead Pedes said after looking around. “Have no worries of that.”

“I never did,” she smiled, “not for a moment.”

She waved at them and pushed herself up to her feet, casually flipping the pylum around and resting it on her shoulder as she walked away.

“So then, do you suppose we die here on this bridge today?” one man asked quietly.

Another shrugged, eyes on Dyna as she walked away. “That I cannot say. I believe that I would wager that if we do die here today, we’ll be going out in good company…and bad.”

The men laughed openly at that, and with those words, any doubts were washed clean. They would stand where the Lady ordered them to stand and trust in her to at least permit them to die with their enemies’ blood pooling all about them.

****

“Scouts just got back,” the Adjutant said as he stepped into the tent.

Gordian finished lacing up his greaves, then shrugged into his armor and turned so his slave could properly secure it into place. “Distance?”

“Almost five mile markers, but they’re moving out already.”

Gordian curled up his lips but nodded. “Understood. Get the camp ready to move. We’ll catch up to them in another day, maybe two.”

“As you say.” The man saluted before ducking out of the tent.

Gordian grunted as his armor was pulled tight and laced. They had made good time, but his men were getting tired. If they didn’t catch up to the enemy forces within the timeline he’d said, he would have to let the Legion rest before he dared engage them with a force the size his scouts were reporting.

The enemy was moving faster than he’d expected, which showed discipline and probably decent training. Untrained groups were slower to organize, faster to distraction, and rarely could march well. The group was not up to Legion standards, but they were trained and more effective than he’d planned for.

Time to change plans, I suppose.

It was going to be a long week.

Chapter 20

The Zealot forces came to a ragged stop as the bridge ahead came into clear sight, their leadership looking as confused as the rank and file as they saw the eight gleaming figures holding position across the great stone passage.

The Commander froze as he recognized the formation and the armor, but didn’t believe his own eyes for a long moment.

Hoplites? Spartan headgear but Roman armor? Someone is playing games with us.

It had to be some pitiful attempt at intimidation, there wasn’t any other real explanation. Oh, if they had the force available, they picked the best place to meet his army, that much was true. The bridge was a channel that would limit the force he could bring to bear on any defenders, but eight? Eight men, no matter how strong or skilled, would certainly fall in moments.