by Alan Smale
“Sir.” The First Centurion saluted crisply and marched out of the Principia. From the jangle of metal, Marcellinus could tell he had broken into a trot as soon as he was out of sight of his commanding officers.
“Well?” Hadrianus looked again at Marcellinus.
“This was a highly visible display of power. The Cahokians want respect. They want you to take them seriously. Know what they’re capable of.”
“I’ll respect those savages all right,” said Agrippa, pacing. “Burn my legionaries? Set fire to the Imperator’s imago? The 27th Augustan has some respect we can show them in return.”
“The Cahokians are not a people you will find easy to cow into submission, Lucius Agrippa.”
“Perhaps you did not try hard enough.”
“And perhaps you do not have time to fight a war you could avoid.”
Agrippa shook his head and looked at his Imperator. “I must go and be seen around the camp, sir. In the meantime, can we clap this man in irons yet?”
“Certainly,” Hadrianus said.
Marcellinus recoiled. “What?”
The Imperator studied him. “Come, Gaius Marcellinus, you must surely see how this changes things. Your people just attacked us.” Agrippa made a signal, and four of his soldiers came forward.
“Is this necessary, sir?” Marcellinus said to the Imperator. “I can—”
Hadrianus held up his hand. “For now, Gaius Marcellinus, we need you under lock and key.” He looked wry. “Think of it as being for your own protection.”
Another centurion hurried into the room. He saluted Hadrianus and then Agrippa. “Redskins massing outside the camp, sir. In the thousands.”
Agrippa froze. “You’re joking.”
“Preparing to attack?” Hadrianus asked.
“Not yet, Caesar. Grouping all around the clearing.”
The soldier stood to attention, staring into the middle distance over Hadrianus’s shoulder. With no time to change into armor, he wore the usual off-duty garb of tunic and cloak, and despite the coolness of the night the sweat was pouring off him.
Agrippa strode forward. “Cahokians or Iroqua, soldier?”
“Uh, we don’t know, sir.”
“Cahokians, probably,” Marcellinus said. “Maybe a mix, but those were Cahokian Thunderbirds. Take me to look and I’ll tell you.”
“Will they attack us tonight?” Agrippa demanded.
“I don’t know,” Marcellinus said.
“And how did they launch those birds?” The Imperator stared at him through slitted eyes. “They have no higher ground, no mound with a rail.”
Marcellinus shook his head. “I don’t know, Caesar.”
“Remind me why I keep you alive, Gaius Marcellinus.”
Marcellinus caught himself about to say I don’t know again. Instead he said: “In case I may be of assistance tomorrow, Caesar.”
“They’ll wait till dawn before they attack?”
“I think so. But—”
“But you don’t know. Yes, yes, I understand that.”
The Imperator paced, and Marcellinus fell silent.
“They won’t get through my walls tonight or over them,” said Agrippa. “I don’t care how many barbarians pop out of the woods, it can’t be done. Not with ladders, not with Greek fire, not with weight of numbers. Not against my 27th or even the bloody Third Parthian.”
“I agree,” said Marcellinus.
Hadrianus looked at him. “They have siege engines?”
“They may have brought their onagers and ballistas. They can be broken down into pieces for easy transport. But the Cahokians will expect you to come out and fight…or come out and talk. They know Romans don’t hide behind walls. I’m guessing they won’t lay siege tonight.”
“You guess a lot,” Hadrianus said.
“That is because Tahtay did not tell me his war plan,” Marcellinus said. “If war is what he truly intends.”
Agrippa was fidgeting. “I must go to my men, sir.”
“Of course.” Hadrianus strode to the table at the corner of the room, threw his cloak over his shoulders, and fastened it at the breast with a silver brooch. “Come, Gaius Marcellinus; let’s get some shackles on you and take a look at your barbarian horde, eh?”
—
Trailing in the Imperator’s wake, flanked by two Praetorian Guards, Marcellinus climbed the low wooden watchtower on the southwest corner of the fortress and looked out over the clearing.
The night was deceptively calm. The low winds had died away, and the air was crisp. The clouds had rolled back, and the light of an almost full moon shone down on the Cahokian army spread out over the valley and the hills opposite.
Most were building campfires or already sitting around them. Some prowled back and forth, spears in hand, presumably looking back toward Marcellinus and the others in the twin fortresses of the XXVII Augusta Martia Victrix and the Third Parthica.
“Cahokians, then?” Hadrianus had gone ahead to talk to the soldiers of the watch but now returned to Marcellinus. “This is all of them, the entire Cahokian force?”
“Hard to say.” Marcellinus peered to the farthest reaches of the clearing. Just by counting a sample of campfires and doing simple arithmetic, he could see that there had to be several thousand warriors out there. “They’ll want to be warm around their fires. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hide in the trees instead.”
“Insolence, Marcellinus?” the Imperator murmured, and Marcellinus stood up a little straighter. His tone was perhaps getting a little casual. Then again, it was hard to stand on ceremony with his wrists chained together. “Well, come on, man. You trained these savages. How will they fight?”
Hadrianus was right. It was time to start viewing the landscape in front of them as the battlefield it would probably become when the sun rose. “One moment, please, Caesar.” Marcellinus did a slow scan around.
A mile to his southwest was the fortress of the Third Parthica. Lamps glowed in its streets and all along its wooden battlements. Fires smoldered there, too; the Third had suffered its own Wakinyan assault. The distant dark shapes of Sabinus’s soldiers lined the walls.
A hundred yards to Marcellinus’s south and east flowed the Oyo River, fifteen hundred feet wide at this point, with low hills and copses faintly visible beyond.
He turned back. The massive war party of Cahokia was spread out over the rolling land to his north and west, with the closest campfires four hundred yards away, safely out of bow range.
The Romans had clear-cut the area when building their fortresses, both to use the wood and to denude the area of cover. The nearest forests were at least two miles distant. Although the fortresses sat on the highest points, the slopes and inclines were all gradual and the lowest part of the shallow valley was only a couple of hundred feet below the short tower where Marcellinus stood. The Romans’ high ground would give them little advantage in a battle.
Although there were no Cahokian warriors directly between the two Roman fortresses, they were still too close for comfort. The two legions were cut off from each other for the night and would have to resort to signaling back and forth with lanterns.
There would be no question of the Roman cohorts going out to engage the Hesperians tonight. Night battles were rare in the Roman world at the best of times, and clearly neither side was expecting trouble until the sun rose.
“Tahtay will permit your cohorts to march out and form up. When my own legion arrived in Cahokia, his father, Great Sun Man, allowed us to form a battle line before his forces charged.” The Cahokians had also waited for Marcellinus to defeat his mutinous First Tribune in single combat, and in a sudden moment of insight Marcellinus realized one of the reasons why he disliked Flavius Agrippa: the Praetor reminded him of Corbulo.
He continued. “It was part of Great Sun Man’s strategy to allow my legionaries to establish themselves in large blocks that would be vulnerable to Greek fire from his Thunderbirds. Tahtay, Wahchintonka, and Akecheta will
do the same.”
“They will attack us in formations? Roman formations?”
It had to be admitted. “Yes, sir. Most will not fight individually. They will form ranks. They may cast pila, shoot waves of arrows, and march through ranks to keep up a rapid pace of fire, just as your troops will do. And they are familiar with basic Roman tactical movements: the testudo, orbis, cuneus, and so forth.”
“We will destroy them anyway,” said the Imperator. “And then march on a Cahokia stripped of its best warriors.”
Marcellinus nodded. Hadrianus looked at him sideways. “You agree? That we will win?”
“Eventually,” Marcellinus said.
“Both of these legions have faced the armies of the Mongol Khan on the steppes of Asia. They have little to fear from redskins in a field. Even redskins trained by a rogue Praetor.”
“Just so,” Marcellinus said.
“And the Thunderbirds? Where will they come from?”
Marcellinus still did not know how the Cahokians had launched the Wakinyan, but it hardly mattered. “The first two overflew us from the east and the south. I suspect they were launched from the far side of the Oyo. But the third came from the north, so they must have another launching site somewhere beyond the trees that border the clearing.”
He did not feel that he was betraying his Cahokian friends in speaking so freely. Such conclusions were obvious to anyone, and indeed, the Imperator was already nodding. “The Third Parthian has ballistas and will have them set up by morning. I have heard that ballista bolts do a fine job of downing Thunderbirds.”
Marcellinus grinned, trying to hide his chagrin. “Caesar, it appears I can tell you little you do not already know.”
“Then perhaps we should adjourn for the evening.” Hadrianus took one more look across the battlefield and then nodded to Marcellinus’s guards. “Don’t worry. I’ll have you woken bright and early for the slaughter.”
—
Shackled, locked into a barracks room small enough to be a cell, Marcellinus lay on his back and stared upward, gripped by despair.
Tahtay was a proud youth, and Sintikala was easily his match in obstinacy and confrontation. Tahtay had made his speech to the Imperator and been rebuffed, and Sintikala had gazed into the dead eyes of Roma once again. Hadrianus had utterly rejected their overtures. And so they had withdrawn, flown their Wakinyan, and unleashed the Army of Ten Thousand.
They had expected it. This Cahokian army had set out long before Tahtay had even met Hadrianus for the first time. Wahchintonka, Akecheta, and the others had known their orders long in advance: bring the army and withdraw only if peace was achieved after all.
This had been Tahtay’s plan all along. This was the secret that Sintikala could not tell Marcellinus in Cahokia: that Tahtay and the elders were far more ready to wage war than they had allowed him to believe. They had given Marcellinus his chance to hold back the tide, and he had failed them.
Was it a risk to bring such a substantial Cahokian force eastward with the Sixth Ironclads just a few days south at Ocatan? Perhaps Tahtay had left enough troops to defend Cahokia, or perhaps it had been clear enough to all of them that Verus would wait for the other two legions before launching an assault on Cahokia.
As for the Wakinyan…
“The waterwheel,” he said aloud, and, if his hands had been free, would have used one of them to smack himself in the head.
I can’t see us fighting Hadrianus with a waterwheel.
I wouldn’t put it past Tahtay.
On the Wemissori, Marcellinus had towed Kimimela into the air like a kite. In Cahokia, he had given Tahtay the winch. The young Cahokians had joined the dots, and now they were winching Thunderbirds into the air from level ground. That was why the wheels made in Cahokia and Ocatan had been so wide: to accommodate substantial lengths of the steel-cored hempen rope.
While Marcellinus had been giving the Ocatani their direction, Hurit had been talking with them privately to ensure that Tahtay got the type of cogged wheel he really needed. They obviously had experimented with the earlier versions of the equipment to practice the technique while Marcellinus had been away on his many trips south. That explained why the normally impeccable surface of the Great Plaza had been so torn up on Marcellinus’s return.
That was why Tahtay had been so interested in the waterwheel and the winches even with Cahokia on the edge of war with Roma. That was why Hurit had come to Marcellinus’s house in the first place: to add to the encouragement, to persuade him to go to Ocatan.
Marcellinus had been played. Countless Cahokians had been in on the plot, including many of his most trusted friends, and he hadn’t had the slightest suspicion it was happening.
He was oddly proud of them.
But war was still coming. As Marcellinus turned awkwardly onto his side on the rough straw bedding, pulled the rough blanket to his chin, and tried to close his eyes for a few hours, he was in no doubt that the dawn would bring war between Cahokia and Roma, the very war he had spent so many years trying to avert.
—
“Up,” said Pollius Scapax.
Marcellinus came awake all at once. He tried to roll up onto his feet, but the weight of the shackles held him down and left him floundering and blinking stupidly.
“Come,” said Scapax. “Time for battle.”
As the man yanked his blanket away, Marcellinus realized his mistake. This was not Scapax, the trusted First Centurion who had been slain on the Great Mound of Cahokia six years before, but an anonymous centurion of the 27th.
Marcellinus awkwardly pushed himself upright and raised his hands.
“I don’t have the keys to those,” said the centurion. “You’re to come to the wall with me.”
“What’s happening?”
“The sun is rising, and we’re about to mow down your stinking savages in the thousands.”
It was cold outside and overcast again. Marcellinus wondered how the First Cahokian and the other warriors of the Great City had fared overnight out in the open.
“Look sharp, man,” the centurion said, but Marcellinus’s wounded leg was stiff and he was walking as quickly as he could.
It was amazing that Marcellinus had slept at all, let alone been dead to the world for so long. If the centurion had not been sent to fetch him, might he have slept through the whole war?
—
Arriving on the south tower at dawn, he found Lucius Agrippa and Imperator Hadrianus with their heads together, pointing and having a discussion in low tones. Marcellinus stepped up to the ramparts and looked out over the battlefield.
A thousand bonfires still smoldered in the meadow, but now they lay unattended. The Cahokians had backed up and even now were forming a line a mile long, from southwest to northeast, about three-quarters of a mile distant. The ends of the line were reinforced twenty men deep, presumably to guard against being outflanked by cavalry. They also had left several gaps in the formation, just as they had when practicing in the Great Plaza. Marcellinus suspected that any cavalryman who galloped into one of those gaps would meet a speedy death either from a hail of arrows or by being dragged from his horse and clubbed.
The Imperator noted his arrival. “I see pila, Marcellinus. I see gladii and scuta. I see helmets and breastplates. I see onagers and ballistas. Everywhere I look, I see Roman equipment in Hesperian hands. You have outfitted and trained an army against me.”
“That was never my intent.”
Hadrianus looked away. “Perhaps you even believe that.”
As for the Romans, the infantry of the Third Parthica were taking the field already, their shields bearing the blue bull crest of their legion. They were deploying from all four gates at once and marching around to form ranks on the western side of the fortress.
They did not form a triple line. Instead they formed up in shallow ranks, by cohorts, with the double-strength First Cohort forming a much larger block at the northern end. Marcellinus spied Praetor Decinius Sabinus standing in
front of the First Cohort chatting with his tribunes and First Centurion.
They were leaving plenty of space to move should Thunderbirds overfly them. And on the flat roofs of the Third Parthica’s barrack blocks and stable buildings Marcellinus counted six ballistas and four onagers, each crewed by three contubernia.
As for the fortress of XXVII Augusta Martia Victrix where he stood, the streets behind him were abustle with centuries on the march, but the two gates Marcellinus could see—the Southgate and Westgate—remained locked and barred, the hillside around the fortress empty of troops. Parts of the barracks still smoldered and smoked and there was a queasy smell of burned flesh, hair, and grease in the air, but the soldiers he saw looked organized and determined and not even a tiny bit cowed.
In the center of the camp a new imago fluttered from a tall pole set on the Principia’s roof. The Imperator apparently traveled with a spare banner.
Beyond the fortress to Marcellinus’s left, a heavily armored cohort of the 27th marched to the Oyo to hold the riverbank. The Romans would not be taken unawares by a surprise flanking attack from the river.
As Marcellinus turned back, he felt a stabbing pain in his forehead and temples so vicious that he raised his chained hands up in front of his face. The pain dwindled and then pulsed back in full force. For the first time in several years, the headache he had gotten regularly after the sack of Cahokia had returned. He breathed deeply, trying to dispel it.
“They’re moving.”
“Hawk ho!”
Agrippa and the Imperator suddenly stood erect. The Cahokian war party was walking forward, not marching in step. A Hawk craft had appeared above the Cahokian army, flying north along the line and then flipping around to fly back in the opposite direction, as if tacking in place over the force. Behind it, nosing above the tree line a hundred yards apart, came two Sky Lanterns, still tethered but rapidly gaining height. The breeze blew from the northwest; if they dropped the tethers, the wind would carry the Lanterns over the assembled Roman armies.
