The Sea of Grass

by Gilbert M. Stack

  Without another word, Marcus stalked off toward the makeshift hospital that Lord Evorik’s wives had erected in the center of the fortress.

  ****

  “Tribune Marcus!” Señora Carmelita cried out as he entered the Praetorium. The building was nominally the legion headquarters in Fort Defiance, but the Tribune had not used it as such. He spent his days checking on his men, the enemy and the state of his improving defenses. He had neither the staff nor the desire to sit in this building and send other people out to do his checking for him. So when he’d asked the Gota Ladies Hilduara and Riciberga to take charge of the care of his wounded, he had given over the Praetorium to their needs.

  Now he was thinking better of his moment of generosity.

  “It’s good to see you, Señora,” he greeted Alberto’s wife. “It’s very generous of you to volunteer to help with the wounded. How is your new son doing?”

  “He’s sleeping right now,” Carmelita told him. “Would you like to see him?”

  Marcus actually had no time for looking at babies, but he knew it would crush the young mother if he turned her down so he agreed to follow her into the main hall of the building where the wounded lay on the floor and her child in a crib made out of the drawer of an elaborate dresser which the Great Tribune might have brought with him all the way from Aquila. Like most new babies, Gaspar Marcus Lope was a tiny little thing, fortunately sleeping peacefully at the moment. The most notable thing about him was a shockingly full head of rich black hair—not at all the bald thing that described the couple of handfuls of other babies that Marcus had seen over the years.

  “Quite a handsome young man,” Marcus praised her. “I think he gets his chin from his father, but that cute little sleeping smile must come from you.”

  Carmelita beamed with pride and pleasure at his words, but fortunately, the two Gota women had come over to see why he was visiting.

  “Ah, Lady Hilduara,” Marcus addressed the senior of the two wives. “How are my men doing?”

  “We’ve only lost one more man since your last visit, Tribune,” the noblewoman informed him.

  Marcus knew that that meant his lethal casualties had risen to fifty-two men—far more than he could afford to lose but far less than the twelve to fourteen hundred savages that he estimated they had killed so far. Those numbers were extraordinary and had been helped along by the excellent cavalry work of Warrior Atta and his men, and even more so by the temper of Teetonka in striking down a couple of hundred of his own men.

  “And the injured?”

  “I’ve already sent back to you those who can fight. I don’t think you can count on getting any more.”

  That was worse news. While there were only thirty-one men still out due to injuries, combining them with the dead meant he’d lost eighty-three of his five hundred ninety-five defenders. Most of the losses—although by no means all—had been from the civilians, but every man down made it more difficult to continue to hold his walls.

  Marcus decided to get right to the point. “My magus tells me that the savages have begun to gather another thundercloud. I have been thinking about how to handle this and worry that by putting you in this building I have actually made you more vulnerable to attack rather than providing you with more protection as I intended. These two buildings can be seen from beyond the wall and while they are safe against arrow fire, they are not safe against lightning.”

  Both of the Gota women nodded solemnly as if they had already considered this problem.

  “So what I propose to do is to dig a large pit and, time permitting, roof it with the walls from this building. The pit will not be visible to Teetonka and his men. The roof will give you some protection from arrow fire. Do you have any objection to this plan?”

  “Six of the men really should not be moved,” Riciberga told him, “but I think we have no choice. We will have them ready when you give the word.”

  “Good,” Marcus said. “I’m also going to move the rest of our supplies out of the Quaestorium and into similar pits. Anything we think might be useful to you will be moved into the hospital pit with you.”

  Task accomplished Marcus left the women and set about getting men to start the new construction.

  ****

  When they’d seen the first thundercloud in the distance after emerging from the salt pan it had looked to be a relatively tiny thing. Now, watching the clouds flow toward them from the hills, the roiling mass of darkness seemed anything but small. It covered the sky, not just for a mile or two but for dozens with more clouds being drawn to the coming storm like iron filings to a load stone.

  Upon the surface of the clouds, lightning crackled, forewarning everyone of what was to come and Marcus could see the vision insidiously worming its way into his men’s morale. He had to do something so he took a gamble and summoned all but a few watchers off the wall to address them.

  When they aligned before him the difference between the three groups of his troops could not be more apparent. The legionnaires formed his center rank and stood in perfect lines, backs rigid and silent as the tomb. The Gota stood making a great show of their bravery, nonchalantly conversing in low tones while pointedly ignoring the thundercloud approaching them from the north. But the civilians, they stood in little groups staring at the clouds with fear on their faces. It was the civilians Marcus needed to worry about now, but he could not humiliate the proud Gente by making it too obvious that he was singling them out for their fear. Still…

  “That’s right,” he said approaching them. “Take a good look at that cloud.” He raised his voice. “All of you do the same. There’s no use in pretending it’s not coming. We’ve made some preparations for it that I’ll explain in a minute, but the odds are some of us are going to die by lightning bolt and all of us are going to get damn sick of the thunder blasting out our eardrums.”

  He gestured at the cloud. “So go ahead and look. Teetonka has killed fifteen of our men with lightning.” Someone groaned which was actually precisely the response Marcus was hoping for. “Of course he’s killed five hundred of his men that way so his men are probably more nervous about those clouds than we are.”

  Warrior Atta laughed and the sound cut through the tension in the men—even Marcus’ highly disciplined legionnaires—and suddenly everyone was laughing with him.

  Perfect!

  “We probably can’t count on him continuing to murder his men by the hundreds, but, who knows? Sol Invictus is with us! He looks down upon us from his fiery seat in the sky and he has to be pretty happy about the way we’ve faced up to our problems and thrown a thousand of those bastards into their graves.”

  For some men, laughter gave way to cheers.

  “Now the lightning is going to come, but Teetonka can’t see what he’s shooting at. So we’re going to spread you men out on the wall and pull some of you back a little bit away from it to shelter and rest in the small pits we’ve been digging everywhere and leave only about one in fifty of you—camouflaged with dirt and mud so that Teetonka can’t see you—to keep watch on our savage friends. For the rest of you, let the lightning fall. He’s not going to have an easy time hitting you. I’m far more worried about the savages’ arrows because, let’s face it, a few thousand of those launched at the same time almost have to hit something.”

  That took the men back a moment, but before fear could set in again, Marcus gave them the solution to that problem. “That’s why the Aquilan legions use such large shields. They defend us from arrow fire in battle and at rest. Those little holes we’ve been digging are big enough for four men to squeeze into, but the opening can be covered with two shields. So when we’re ready for you to charge out and defend the walls, you might have to pull six or ten arrows out of your shields, but you’re not going to be pulling them out of your bodies, understand?”

  Men nodded—the experienced legionnaires with quiet confidence, the civilians and the Gota with slow understanding.

  “I won’t lie to you,” Marcu
s told them. “It’s not going to be fun to sit back and let them fire arrows and lightning at us. Once in a long while, they almost have to get lucky and hit something or someone. But this storm will not break us! When the savages charge that wall again, we will leap to our places and kill them with pilum and sword until they run screaming back out onto the plain just like the last time!”

  This time the cheers were both heartfelt and prolonged.

  ****

  Almost with the severity and suddenness of extinguishing a lamp, the black thunderclouds rolled between the earth and mighty Sol Invictus and left Fort Defiance covered in darkness. For a moment, all work froze as men accustomed themselves to the new conditions, then—just as they started to move again—a bolt of brilliant white lightning carved its jagged path out of the heavens to rip into the roof of the Praetorium.

  Chips of wood shot into the air followed a moment later by a flickering tongue of flame which the men stared at with the same sickly fascination that a sparrow stares into the eyes of a hungry snake. Then the thunder boomed seeming to shake the very ground with its fury.

  Men flinched away from the building—the apparent epicenter of the blast—with even Marcus’ prized Black Banders holding up an arm or their shields as if to protect themselves from the noise.

  “This is going to be worse than I thought,” Marcus muttered before bellowing to his men in his loudest voice. “All right, then! Now you’ve seen the show you get back to work! Watchmen face outward! Are you going to let the savages sneak up on us! The rest of you—back to your holes or your jobs! We’ve probably got a few hundred more blasts like that coming and I for one hope they’re all as useless!”

  Calidus and Severus picked up the Tribune’s shouts, followed very quickly by Atta and Lysander and finally by Capitán Adán. Phanes and Cyrus remained silent as if trying to prove that they were the weakest links in Marcus’ command. Severus could be counted on to drag Phanes back in line, but as for Lesser Tribune Cyrus, no one but Marcus had the rank to deal with him.

  He quickly crossed what he was now thinking of as the inner bailey to find the man cringing as he sheltered in the four man holes that had been dug as protection against the arrows and bolts from heaven. “Lesser Tribune!” Marcus shouted.

  Cyrus looked up with a disturbing combination of loathing and fear.

  “A word please, Lesser Tribune Cyrus!” Marcus made the words sound like a request but both men knew they were an order.

  Very reluctantly, Cyrus began to climb out of his hole.

  The prickling of Marcus’ skin peaked and he braced himself against the next bolt. Like the first stroke of lightning it impaled itself on the roof of the now abandoned Praetorium, which suited Marcus just fine. Let Teetonka waste a thousand bolts on the building. Let him spend all his strength smashing it into the ground. It made no difference to Marcus. His wounded had all been moved out.

  As the thunder rang in his eardrums, Marcus turned back to Cyrus only to find him cowering back in the bottom of his hole.

  Something would have to be done. He hated to break the man on the eve of the next battle, but he had to consider the real possibility that leaving him in command could undermine all of his men.

  “Lesser Tribune!” he snapped with absolutely no compassion in the tone of his voice.

  This time there was more loathing than fear in the junior officer’s gaze—except that here, in these conditions, Cyrus wasn’t a junior officer. He was second in command.

  “I asked for a word, Lesser Tribune. Don’t make me repeat myself a third time.”

  Even more reluctantly, the frightened officer pulled himself up to the surface next to Marcus.

  “Walk with me,” Marcus told him aware that every eye around them was watching the conversation. Fortunately, the peals of thunder had been so deafening that none of the men could likely hear them.

  “You’re putting me in a very difficult situation,” Marcus told Cyrus when they had moved a hundred feet away.

  “Tribune?” Cyrus asked.

  “You’re showing the men you’re frightened. It’s all right to actually be scared, but you’re never permitted to show it.”

  Cyrus looked at Marcus as if he was utterly insane, but the Tribune did not waver from his purpose. He was actually trying to save the Lesser Tribune’s life, because if he could not get him to change his ways, Marcus would have no choice but to execute him, shaming both the man and his family for all time.

  “I can’t afford to lose you, Lesser Tribune, but you’re no use to me hiding in your hole.”

  Cyrus reached out to grab hold of Marcus, but the next bolt of lightning struck the Praetorim and the Lesser Tribune jerked back in fear as if he thought he was about to be burned. “We can’t fight that!” he shouted, pointing at the burning building.

  “We don’t have to!” Marcus reminded him. “We only have to endure it until the savages come a calling.”

  “But we’ll die!” Cyrus screamed, attempting to be heard over the bellow of thunder.

  Marcus waited for the sound to fade away. “Maybe we will and maybe we won’t,” he halfway conceded. “But do you know what is sure to kill us? Ignoring the walls while Teetonka plays magus on our heads. If we’re not ready when the savages charge, we are all dead. And you can’t be ready to fight hiding in the bottom of your hole like a toddler who’s just wet his pants.”

  “We can’t—” Cyrus started to protest.

  This time it was Marcus who grabbed him. “You’re the second ranking man in this army—a Lesser Tribune. The men look to you for an example and you’re failing! Now get back to your men, stay out of your hole, and do your job!”

  Cyrus’ eyes had grown almost mad with fear and for a moment Marcus didn’t think he had the courage to do as he was ordered, but the man took a deep wavering breath and saluted. “As you command, Tribune.”

  He’d started back toward his men and Marcus turned toward his next task when the next bolt of lightning struck, illuminating the shadowed world just long enough for Marcus to see Cyrus draw his sword.

  With a howl of fury definitely tinged with madness, the Lesser Tribune threw himself at his superior officer. Marcus leapt back, drawing his own blade to fend off the attack. The two swords clang together as a new crack of thunder split the night.

  The failure of Cyrus’ initial attack only increased his look of desperation. He hammered at Marcus with his blade and it was everything the Tribune could do to keep his own sword fending the attacking weapon away. This was not how Aquilans were trained to fight. They stood in ranks—shield on the left arm to protect the body—not twisting and hacking with only naked steel to defend them.

  Men peeked out of their holes in the earth to see what was going on and the damned perimeter guards assigned to keep watch on their enemies did the same. Marcus needed to put an end to this before the savages figured out that no one was paying attention to them anymore. He also needed to end it before Cyrus managed to cut or kill him.

  He gave ground looking for some way to turn the tables on his opponent. There were pits scattered about the landscape but as none of the men watching them had come to help Marcus he suddenly feared getting too close to them. What if the men inside grabbed at his ankles in the insane belief that Marcus’ death would make them safer? No, he had to—

  Marcus tripped, falling hard on his backside and then rolling quickly to the left just before Cyrus smote the ground with three feet of sharpened steel.

  The Lesser Tribune recovered faster than Marcus, swinging viciously at his superior officer who barely deflected the blade. Eschewing the sword, Marcus kicked out and hit Cyrus’ shin, but his opponent was wearing his grieves and the blow didn’t really hurt him. He chopped at Marcus’ foot, then in a backhand stroke took a cut at his face which Marcus only avoided by flinging himself flat on his back.

  Then he took a chance to end everything, rolling back into a sitting position just as his opponent stepped closer to finish him. The point of Ma
rcus’ sword drove hard into the other man’s stomach just below the breast plate.

  Cyrus’ eyes widened with shock and pain, but Marcus wasted no time looking at them. He kicked again, this time against the ankle and succeeded in knocking the Lesser Tribune down, He then let go of his own blade so he could grab Cyrus’ sword arm by the wrist and just hold on until the bleeding man grew too weak to attack again.

  “You damn fool!” Marcus hissed at him. “Outnumbered ten to one and you waste your life attacking me?”

  He clambered to his feet, fury coursing through his veins. “What are you all staring at?” he bellowed even as the lightning flashed again. “You men on the wall—get back to watching, damn you!”

  His hands shook with rage at the idiocy of the whole thing. What good would killing Marcus have done Cyrus? Did he think the savages would accept their surrender and let them march away? Did he think he could run, slipping past the savages camped around them in siege? Or did he really think hiding in a hole was going to somehow see him through to safety?

  He grabbed his sword still sticking out of Cyrus’ belly and pulled it free. “Of all the stupid ways to waste your life,” he mumbled as he wiped it on a relatively clean part of Cyrus’ shirt.

  “What are you looking at?” he growled again at the nearby men before pointing at one of the survivors of the Battle of the Thunder Cloud. “You, Eolus, you’re Acting Red Vigil. Take charge of these men. Keep someone on the wall watching at all times and the rest of them in the pits ready to come out and slaughter these savages when they finally work up the nerve to come at us again.”

  Eolus saluted. “You men—get out of that hole and drag the Lesser Tribune’s body into an unused pit. As for the rest of you, get back under cover. Not you, Diomedes, you have the watch, don’t you? So get back to watching then!”

  Still shaking, Marcus strode away.

  Day Twenty-One

  We Are Legionnaires!