The Tiger’s Imperium

by Marc Alan Edelheit

  Still, the enemy had more than enough men to eventually overwhelm Spatz’s half company, but they would pay a steep price doing it. And yet, that did not take into account his gnome company, or Ruga’s men, who Stiger could not see. He assumed they were somewhere behind the stables, getting organized.

  Stiger stepped over to Lepidus, who was standing off to the side, shouting encouragement at his men, who were engaged in the first rank. Lieutenant Spiro was off to the left, getting the extension of the line into position and better organized as they joined the fight.

  “Lepidus.” Stiger leaned toward the captain’s ear. “How are you doing?”

  “It was touchy at first,” Lepidus said, looking back. “They came at us something fierce. But we’re holding now, sir. I figure I am facing around four hundred militia.” He waved a hand toward his front. “My men are butchering them something good.”

  “Excellent,” Stiger said.

  “I think we can keep this up all day, sir,” Lepidus added. “I want to bleed them a bit more before we begin pushing at them.”

  “Listen,” Stiger said, “I am going to need you to end this as soon as possible.”

  “I was hoping you weren’t going to ask that of me,” Lepidus said.

  Stiger pointed to their left. “There are three auxiliary cohorts over there that will shortly join the action.”

  Lepidus looked in the direction Stiger indicated. The captain’s eyes narrowed as he took in the enemy. His focus had been on fighting his company. By his reaction, he’d clearly not seen them.

  “Spatz and Wast,” Stiger continued, “are going to move into a blocking position to screen you, but when they become fully engaged, they will be badly outnumbered.”

  Lepidus gave an understanding nod. “Shall I give these bastards to my front a shove or two? It will cost me more casualties but I have no doubt we can break them.”

  “Do it,” Stiger said. “Once you’ve broken them, reform, turn, and join the fight as you see fit.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lepidus said and waved toward the militia. “And what about prisoners after I’ve broken them? I will need to detail men to guard them.”

  Stiger felt himself scowl as he considered the problem. “Only hold the officers and sergeants. Those are the ones that matter. Send the rank and file through the gate and on their way. Without their leaders, I seriously doubt they will reform on their own and come back at us, especially after you’ve beat them up something good.”

  “That works,” Lepidus said. “I’ve got this.”

  “I know you do.” Stiger took several steps back and away to allow Lepidus to get back to the fight.

  “Lieutenant Spiro,” Lepidus called, “on me. We’ve got some work to do.”

  “This is going to get tricky,” Therik said.

  “Agreed,” Stiger said, glancing in the direction of the cohorts. “It all depends upon how aggressive and determined the auxiliaries become.”

  “Prepare to push,” Lepidus shouted, and hesitated a long moment, his head moving slowly from the left side of his formation to the right. He pulled a wooden whistle out from a chain that hung about his neck. “Push.” Lepidus blew the whistle.

  The legionaries of Tenth Company took a half step forward, shoving with their shields, pushing the enemy back. The Tenth gave a massed grunt as they made the effort. The movement caught the militia by surprise. A heartbeat later, the legionary shields scraped aside, and the deadly short swords stabbed out. Men by the dozens screamed as sword points found purchase.

  “The auxiliaries are moving,” Restus said, calling Stiger’s attention.

  Sure enough, one of the auxiliary companies had finished forming and was advancing down the street toward the Tenth. Spatz’s half company was in motion too, moving across a series of snow-covered garden beds to intercept them. Stiger looked around for Wast’s boys. Though they were almost ready, the gnomes were still forming up into four ranks just behind the Tenth but were angled toward the praetorian barracks and the oncoming enemy. It was only a matter of time until Sixth Company got moving.

  “Again!” Lepidus roared, drawing Stiger’s attention. He blew his whistle and through the side of his mouth shouted, “Push!”

  The front line of the Tenth gave another mighty effort, shoving the militia back several steps. The legionaries stepped over the bodies of men they had just felled. Most were still alive but injured. Men in the second rank stabbed down. Efficiently and without thought to mercy, they finished the enemy’s wounded off so that they would not be a threat to the front rank.

  After shoving them back a step, once again, the shields scraped aside and the swords stabbed out. Screams and cries of agony followed as dozens of men were wounded and fell. Stiger ran his gaze over the Tenth one last time to make sure things were well in hand, then turned toward Spatz’s line and started over to them.

  The cohort that had been advancing down the street toward the Tenth had altered their advance and were now closing on Spatz’s company. As the two formations neared contact, the enemy cohort abruptly halted. Each man was carrying a javelin. A series of orders was snapped. The front rank took two steps forward, while the rear rank took four back. The entire formation was spreading out for a massed toss. Stiger came to a stop to watch.

  “Halt,” Spatz ordered and joined the line. “Stand ready to receive missiles. Shields up. Stand ready, boys. Lock your shields.”

  The legionaries held their shields over their heads, locking them together for added protection. An order to release was shouted by an officer in the enemy cohort, just yards away. A heartbeat later, a wave of javelins flew up into the air, toward Spatz’s half company. The deadly missiles seemed to hang for a prolonged moment before falling downward in a steel-tipped rain of death.

  The missiles crashed into the raised shields, making a terrible clatter. A number of men screamed or cried out as the heavy javelins punched through the shields, injuring or outright killing the men behind. A dozen fell out of the formation or collapsed to the ground. More than a dozen more men tossed aside ruined shields that had been pierced by the javelins. It was almost impossible to quickly remove a javelin.

  All in all, Stiger decided the toss had been poorly made, with many of the missiles having fallen short or to the sides of Spatz’s formation. Spatz lowered his shield and looked over the results of the toss.

  “Let’s make them pay for that, boys. Shields, front!” Spatz roared. “Shields front! Advance!”

  The enemy formation began adjusting their lines, closing up their ranks from their javelin toss. Stiger started forward again. Before he arrived, the auxiliaries and legionary lines met with a loud crash.

  Spatz had formed his half company up into two ranks of fifty men each. The auxiliary cohort was organized into a solid block of equal length. Stiger counted eight ranks of men, which told him the enemy’s strength was at least four hundred men.

  He looked beyond the fighting and studied the auxiliary cohort still in the process of forming before the barracks and the third enemy cohort by the palace. Between the militia and the three auxiliary cohorts, he estimated the enemy had more than twelve hundred men on the field. And Stiger still did not see the legionary light company. That told him that his understanding of the combat strength Lears could field had been incorrect and woefully underestimated. How many more men did he have?

  He wondered where Lears’s legionaries were. Was the man holding them in reserve? Were they guarding him in the palace, keeping the emperor safe? If he had been in Lears’s sandals, he would have deployed them with the auxiliaries to add backbone to the ambush.

  “Hold steady, hold!” Spatz was shouting. The captain was pacing behind the line. “Hold them, boys. Use your shields, block them. Remember your training. Stab. Stab them, jab them. You are doing a fine job. Keep up the good work. Keep it up.”

  Stiger came to a stop a few yards from the fight. He glanced back at the gnomes. They had finally formed up and were moving forward, angling to
the left of Spatz’s line. Wast was in front of his boys, pointing with his sword, as he guided them toward the fight.

  The gnomes held their shields, which were half the size of a legionary’s and nearly too large for them, forward. Swords were positioned at the ready. As they worked their way almost slowly across the field, they began humming. It was something Stiger had heard once before. He found it somewhat unnerving.

  “I don’t ever want to hear that sound again,” Therik said.

  Stiger glanced over and gave a nod.

  An indistinct shout over the fighting farther back caught his attention. The second auxiliary cohort by the barracks had begun moving forward. Stiger knew it was about to get ugly. Worse, the auxiliaries already engaged with Spatz had begun extending their line to the left with the clear intention of wrapping around to flank.

  “Spatz … you need to extend your line,” Stiger hollered, “before you are flanked.”

  “I am already on it, sir,” Spatz said, and Stiger saw that he was shifting ten men from the second rank over, only they would not arrive in time. The enemy would get there first.

  Stiger clenched his fists. In his mind he could see the line being flanked and rolled up, as if it had already happened. He could not allow that. He glanced around at his escort. They were closer than Spatz’s men, who were being repositioned. Instinctively, Stiger knew he had to buy time for Spatz to get his men into position to block the flanking effort.

  Opening the wizard’s prison, Stiger drew Rarokan. The energy flowed into him and, like a tidal wave, slammed home. The day brightened and, with it, Stiger felt an intense surge of warmth. The cold of the winter day retreated. Any tiredness he had felt vanished instantly. Stiger was invigorated, alive, energized, as if he had downed three mugs of fresh coffee in rapid succession.

  He felt a terrible spike of anger. A matching rage at what was going on gripped him. He and his men were killing their fellow soldiers, who in another place and time would have been comrades in arms. And it was happening when the empire desperately needed every sword. It was a bloody waste, and the tragedy of it all tore at Stiger’s heart. That fired his rage even further.

  Handi and Lears had brought them to this. They had caused this. Stiger understood he had to bring the killing to an end. For that to happen, Lears and Handi would die this day. That was the only way to stop it from spreading and consuming the empire.

  “It is time to join the fight,” Therik said to him, for he had clearly seen the same thing. “We must throw ourselves into the line.”

  “You men, join the line at the end there,” Stiger ordered his escort and pointed. His sword flared into life, burning with blue fire. The men jumped into action and rapidly moved up to the end of Spatz’s line. The four legionaries brought their shields up to face ten auxiliaries who were moving into position opposite. Another ten men were behind those. They had only moments now.

  Stiger did not have a shield. He looked around for one, but a spare was not close at hand. He gave a mental shrug and stepped forward, next to the last legionary of his escort. Therik joined him on his right.

  The orc bared his teeth at the enemy falling into position and closing on them. Therik gave a roar that set the hair on the back of Stiger’s neck on edge. Eyes upon the large orc, those nearest auxiliaries hesitated, making the oncoming line abruptly uneven.

  Something flashed between Stiger and Therik, hissing as it passed. He felt the wind of its passing against his cheek. It was followed by a crack as an arrow slammed through the chest armor of one of the auxiliaries. The stricken man rocked unsteadily for a moment, then collapsed to his knees. A heartbeat later, he fell onto his side into the trampled snow. Stiger did not need to look. He knew who had shot the arrow.

  There was another hiss, followed by a crack. A second auxiliary went down, and with that, Therik sprinted forward, throwing himself at the enemy’s broken line. The move caught not only Stiger by surprise, but the auxiliaries too. Stiger went forward, after the orc. So too did his escort.

  The sounds of the fighting faded around him as his vision narrowed down to his opponent, as an auxiliary stood in his path and brought his round shield up to block Stiger’s attack. Stiger lunged over it, hammering down with the blade. There was a solid-sounding clunk as the steel of his blade bit into the rim of the shield. Stiger got a flash of the auxiliary’s terrified face. Before his opponent could react, he lashed out with his fist and hammered the auxiliary in the cheek guard of the helmet, as hard as he could.

  As the man’s head snapped back from the strike, pain exploded through Stiger’s hand. Dazed, the auxiliary fell backward, stumbling away and dropping his shield and sword into the snow at their feet.

  Stiger spun and jabbed at an auxiliary directly to his left, taking him in the side. The sword went in easily and grew warm in his hand as it took the man’s life force.

  Dog flashed by him, shooting through the air. The animal took a man who had been about to strike at Stiger to the ground. Growling, Dog stood upon the man’s chest, seized upon his sword arm, bit deeply, and in one powerful motion, ripped the arm free from the socket. As if in a death grip, the hand still clenched the sword tightly. Dog dropped the arm and then, snarling, tore out the screaming man’s throat.

  Stiger caught a glimpse of Therik stabbing a man through the stomach with so much force it picked his opponent up and off the ground. Then Eli was by Stiger’s side, bow strapped to his back and daggers out, moving with a deadly gracefulness that would have made the best dancer envious. Eli killed two men in quick succession and then engaged a third as he went spinning away from Stiger in what could only be described as a blur of motion.

  Stiger attacked the next man, stabbing him in the thigh. This one screamed as the sword went in. He fell to a knee and dropped his sword. Stiger threw him aside and stepped past, intent on the next man, only feet away.

  His anger had grown to a terrible fury. All that was on his mind was kill, kill, kill, and the sword was loving every moment of it, feeding him additional rage and energy. Rarokan blazed like a sun as he swung the dread weapon again and again, taking one life after another. Stiger lost track of time as he fought with a fury.

  Abruptly, a legionary bashed the man Stiger was going after next with a shield, knocking him violently to the ground. A blinding flash snapped Stiger back and out of his rage. He glanced over to the right, from whence it had come. Father Restus had his hands out. In each were glowing balls of white light. A man lay in a heap at his feet.

  “Forgive me, my son,” Father Restus said. There were tears in his eyes as he raised his hand toward another auxiliary three feet to his front who had raised a sword to strike at the paladin. Before the auxiliary could react or bring his sword down on the paladin, a beam of white light shot out from Restus’s left hand. It encased the man, and as it did, he went rigid. When the beam ceased, he fell limply into the snow. Stiger knew, without knowing how, that the man’s soul had been torn from its body and sent back to the High Father.

  A sword swung for Stiger’s head. Having been distracted, he barely managed to catch it and block the strike. The two blades met in a powerful clang that, in the cold air, set Stiger’s hand tingling and sparks flying through the air.

  The auxiliary slammed his round shield into Stiger’s side, knocking him painfully back. Stiger staggered, almost tripping and falling over a body. The auxiliary brought his sword around and lunged. The tip punched into the armor over Stiger’s stomach.

  Stiger gave a grunt, as the armor absorbed much of the blow, but not all. As the pain registered, the rage returned, and shouting incoherently, he lunged forward, stabbing with his sword at the arm of his tormentor. The sword slid into the arm. Hot blood sprayed into the air and over Stiger as the steel nicked an artery. The auxiliary, arm ruined, still clutching the sword in fingers that had gone stiff, attempted to fall back.

  Stiger pushed forward and stabbed again, this time in the man’s collar, just above where the armor ended. It was on
ly a glancing strike, but it was enough to take him down. Thoroughly enraged and hurting from the blow he’d taken, Stiger made for a finishing strike, but was abruptly knocked aside by Therik as the orc stabbed another auxiliary who had gone for Stiger’s exposed back.

  Before Stiger could recover, the men Spatz had sent to extend the line arrived and, rushing forward, moved before them, shoving violently at the confused auxiliaries with their shields in a unified line. Within heartbeats, the auxiliaries were roughly forced back and away.

  Breathing heavily from the exertion, Stiger felt bruised from where the shield had hit him. His stomach hurt too, as did his hand. His anger and rage once again began to drain away as the legionaries before him solidified their line and thoroughly blocked what remained of the enemy’s attempt to flank.

  “Kindly let my men do the bloody fighting,” Spatz called over to him, “and try not to be killed before we win you that throne. You’re supposed to be the emperor, for gods’ sake.”

  Stiger blinked, and as he did it, reason fully returned. Spatz was right. He had a battle to fight. He looked up and around. Spatz’s men were holding. They were actually doing better than holding. They were beginning to drive the auxiliary cohort back, one difficult step after another. It was a testament to the toughness of the legions, for Spatz’s company was outnumbered. The auxiliary cohort had far more reserves and were able to swap out the front rank at a more rapid pace with fresh men. And still, the heavy infantry of the legions was managing to shove them backward.

  There was a thunderous clash. The gnomes had struck home against the second auxiliary cohort. From his current vantage point, Stiger could not see the action clearly, for Spatz’s men were between him and the gnomes. He was about to move to a position to see better when a mass groan from behind caused him to turn.

  The Tenth had broken the militia. Dozens were dropping their weapons and holding their hands up in surrender. The rest were running for their lives, fleeing in nearly every direction. A few who were attempting to surrender were cut down in the heat of the moment before Lepidus and Spiro, both shouting, got the men back under control.