by John Barnes
That was about the peak excitement for the day. It was bright and sunny, and a bit warmer, and we made excellent time. When the time came for the noon meal, we were told to eat a couple handfuls of hardtack and about a half cup of chipped dried beef, and then get back on the road; it wouldn’t be long till we were there.
When the valley opened out in front of us, it was really very beautiful, even in January. The dark green grass showed through the thin snow in many places, the little farmsteads were decorated with thin drifts of snow, and the bare trees stood out with every twig in sharp detail against the bright blue of the early-afternoon sun.
Far down below us, as the road ran straight down the gentle slope, the Tiber wound its way through the valley; the land rose a bit afterward, and just where low hills lay on the horizon we could see a town.
“That’s Falerii,” said one of the slaves riding with us. “I hear that’s where we’ll be stopping.”
I had come to have a great respect for scuttlebutt, at least in this timeline; when communication is not terribly fast, nobody is very careful about security, and things leak pretty fast. Besides, I could see about half the army stretched out in front of us on the road, with occasional glimpses of parties of riders on the road beyond the Tiber, also headed for Falerii.
It made sense, too—it was the first big town after the pass, so it would have to be Pompey’s staging area if he were going to attack uphill. Moreover, because it sat on the other side of the Tiber, which was covered in large places around the bank with thin ice, and infested everywhere with blocks of floating ice, Caesar could approach only over the bridge, which Pompey could easily hold.
Or he could have if he had gotten there first. Now I saw Caesar’s plan, and like so much of his best strategy, it was a very simple idea executed well. Pompey’s army was going to have to ride uphill to get here; clearly he had planned to do it in a single forced march and dig in, so that at least there would be a stalemate—Caesar couldn’t get to Rome at an acceptable cost, and would have to squat at the Tiber, with nowhere to go except backward (or try to break out and face terrible losses).
But now the plan had been turned against Pompey. Caesar’s men were good at entrenchments, and the city fortifications themselves would help. Pompey’s army would arrive, having worn itself out with a long uphill ride, late today, and would either have to fight while exhausted and cold with night falling, or (more likely) build a field fortification far into the night, and then get up for a dawn attack (or face one). All Pompey’s options were bad.
If you’re looking at a map, Falerii was a little west of where Civita Castellana is now, and on a low rise; in addition to everything else, Pompey would be forced to attack uphill, whether he fought on the offense or defense, and whether he gave battle that night or the next morning. Reports were that his army was a full four legions smaller than ours, and had many fewer cavalry—plus, I had learned, the horse pistols I had seen so many of had been an introduction of Hasmonea’s—the Gaulish cavalry with Caesar had them. Pompey’s Roman cavalry (which was less skilled than Gaulish cavalry anyway) would have only lances.
In short, this had all the makings of a massacre.
I rolled down the long hill and over the Tiber bridge, lost in my own thoughts. There seemed to be trouble if Chrys and I spoke in English, particularly if other slaves finked on us, so we weren’t discussing it, but I learned later that she had figured it about the same way I had.
The Tiber bridge was one of those things the Romans built to last forever, or maybe longer; their system of paying for public works was that the contractor got half on completion, and half after forty years, if the structure was still standing. It was a bit rough on contractors, but everywhere in Europe you can see what it did for buildings.
That night I slept uneasily; Pompey’s army had not come all the way up to Falerii, but that only meant that he had found out his situation. I didn’t like what tomorrow was promising.
Well before dawn, I heard footsteps running and orders being shouted. Leaving Porter back in the room, and Paula to guard her, Chrys and I ran to the battlements to see if we could find out what was going on.
There was almost no one up there except townspeople sightseeing, but as dawn rose we saw the two armies opposing each other. Caesar’s forces had their backs to us; Pompey’s faced the city.
“Did you manage to smuggle anything when they strip-searched us?” I asked Chrys.
“Distance glasses, holy-shit switch, transponder tracker, that’s all,” she said. “I don’t see any of the gendarmerie around if you want to try the distance glasses.”
“Hmm. I saved the distance glasses and the thumbnail atlas. Please don’t pick on me, but I didn’t manage to hang on to the holy-shit switch.”
“Mark …” She sighed. “Are they ever going to teach you that it’s okay to push that thing now and then?”
I shrugged; it’s a bigger issue with her than with me. The “holy-shit switch” is actually the call for help communicator; it contacts an Earth satellite that’s been placed in the same timeline with you and triggers a crosstime signal to let them know you’re in trouble. I had only pushed it a couple of times in my career, a lot less than most senior Crux Ops. Maybe it was because my first mission had been an improvised affair, without even a SHAKK for most of it. I had just sort of lost the tendency to call for help, even when it would have made sense.
So there was probably a little truth in what she was implying; I hadn’t kept my holy-shit switch because I hadn’t thought it was that important. And considering how much trouble we were already in, that was a pretty hard thing to justify.
Years of marriage had taught me that whenever you realize your partner is right, you should agree, and then change the subject. So I said, “Well, you’re right, of course, but at least you kept yours, so no harm done so far. Anyway, I don’t see anyone who looks enough like a cop to ask nosy questions about the distance glasses.” In fact the wall was rapidly getting deserted except for the few soldiers standing at the towers and firing positions; civilians were too nervous to stick around.
We put on our distance glasses, and since they only require one finger to control, we held hands.
“Weird to be on the sidelines for a battle,” I said. “Especially without a weapon.”
The two lines advanced slowly toward each other; I had a few minutes to see what the differences were.
The classic Roman way of fighting is sort of a zone defense; you keep your gladius, a short sword that’s about the size and weight of a machete, in your right hand, and your scutum, a small shield, in your left. You are in charge of staying in your position relative to the other legionaries, and whacking anything in a rectangle that extends about three feet in front of you and a bit under three feet to each side of your right foot. If you’re in an interior rank, your zone is bordered on all sides by other legionaries’ zones.
It worked because the Romans had nearly perfect discipline. They would die in their tracks before allowing a hole to open in the ranks; if someone fell dead or wounded, his buddies would step over him, close up the hole, and keep going. Furthermore, after a few years of training, they were effectively martial-arts masters with those gladii; they had the same kind of perfect concentration and ability to strike hard and accurately without having to think first.
The classical way of attacking was that each man carried two pila, or javelins, and as they closed with the enemy, on command the soldiers flung two volleys of javelins, then closed in for sword-to-sword fighting.
But I could see there had been modifications. Pompey’s men still carried pila, but mixed in with each century there were ten musketeers, armed only with the musket, forming a back rank. Caesar’s men had no pila, and every man carried a musket; from behind we could see there was something different on the shield, too, but we couldn’t see what exactly.
“Pompey is treating muskets as auxiliaries,” I said. “Caesar’s made them the primary weapon. Bet on Caesar,
if you weren’t already.”
The lines drew closer, and as they did I let my eyes wander farther out on the plain. The first thing that caught my eye was a strange shape—like a forest of pipes—
“Don’t look now,” I said, “but I think Pompey has invented the Stalin organ. We just might be in deep shit.”
We clicked in on it, taking things up to highest magnification, and it was clear as a bell. The round objects lying next to the sets of tubes were pretty clearly rockets; Pompey had found out about rockets one way or another.
“I’m surprised he doesn’t just build big cannon,” Chrys said.
“Roman iron won’t take the pressure very well,” I said. “For a long-range weapon, if you can’t hold much breech pressure, rockets are better. Even if they’re just fueled with black powder like oldfashioned skyrockets.”
The first volley of shots rang out from Pompey’s lines; at the extreme range for the muskets, they did no damage, for with breech pressures so low, velocity fell off rapidly, and a hundred yards away they weren’t hitting hard enough to pierce the shields of Caesar’s men.
Immediately on firing the volley, Pompey’s legionaries had broken into a trot, obviously intending to close the distance and create a shield wall behind which the musketeers could reload.
But as Pompey’s men formed their shield wall, something strange happened. Caesar’s front rank knelt; with distance glasses now I saw that a little shelf had been attached to the bottom of each scutum. They put their knees down on those shelves, so that the scuta stood up like a garden rake with a man standing on the tines, and withdrew their left arms. The muskets slid neatly through the small holes; a moment later, they fired.
The second rank advanced past them, and repeated that procedure; then the third. Meanwhile the first rank reloaded, then picked up their shields and advanced again.
“They’re firing about six volleys to Pompey’s one,” Chrysamen said. “It looks like this is it.”
Pompey’s forces took the first couple of volleys on the shield wall, with only a couple of men falling, either by stray rounds that had enough energy to penetrate the shields, or more likely shots that had found their way through niches between. But as Caesar’s force worked its way inexorably forward, shots began to break through, and the wall wavered. The next time Pompey’s front centurions turned their shields for their own musketeers to fire a volley, two of the musketeers and several of the legionaries fell; before they could reorganize, another volley tore into them.
Centurions bellowed commands, and Pompey’s legion broke its shield wall and trotted forward. A half dozen men in each century fell over dead as another of Caesar’s musket volleys struck, but they kept coming, like the real Romans they were, maintaining their positions.
The centurions barked almost in unison, and a flight of pila sailed toward Caesar’s forces; unable to raise their shields quickly, many men were killed and wounded. The second flight of pila found them better prepared, but still many hit home. Moreover, the two flights of javelins had disrupted Caesar’s volleys, which were now coming more raggedly along the line.
If Pompey’s men had somehow been carrying two more pila each, for a total of four, they might have carried right through. But with that much weight, they couldn’t have moved.
And when the javelins stopped falling, most of Caesar’s legionaries were still alive and well. As I watched from the wall, distance glasses set for a fairly wide view, the second rank of Caesar’s troops moved forward and knelt beside the first, forming a tighter line. All of them slung their shields to their backs, but stayed kneeling.
The third and fourth ranks closed up into a single line, and now there were just two lines. The troops in the rear line also slung their scuta, and stood up.
“Street Firing!” I said.
“What?” Chrys asked.
“Street Firing! I recognize it from my trips to Revolutionary America. It’s the system for getting the highest rate of fire out of a unit of muzzle loaders—”
The first rank fired; a great cloud of black-powder smoke belched forth, and the field was obscured as it blew back. I clicked to infrared, and saw the soldiers stand, as the second rank stepped through to kneel behind them. Even as they stood, their hands stayed busy—“Of course! Caldwell gave them percussion caps! It takes a lot less time to load than a flintlock—they just ram down a paper cartridge whole, set a cap on the nipple, cock the hammer, and shoot. No tearing the cartridge open, no firing pan or priming powder to deal with. Right now those troops could—”
The new first rank, now kneeling, fired, but this time when they stood they stepped back. “Now that Pompey’s men are trying to close up,” I said, “they’re backing up to prevent them from closing, and make them take more volleys before it gets down to cold steel. I wonder if Caesar invented all of this? It would be like him—”
There was another huge boom as a volley ripped into Pompey’s troops. Through the smoke, using infrared, I could see what was happening—Pompey’s men were struggling through the thick, choking clouds, trying to keep their positions, their lines being raked by the volleys coming at them. Meanwhile, Caesar’s centuries were leapfrogging backward, firing at what had to be six rounds per minute—twice as fast as the best British troops had done in 1800. It was turning into a slaughter.
The Romans had a verb, “superare,” for what Caesar’s legions were doing to Pompey’s—usually it’s translated as “overcame” or “defeated,” but it means more than that. It means “they threw their swords and shields down and ran like bunnies.” Which is exactly what happened at that moment.
I saw Caesar’s men stand up, form ranks, draw their gladii and bring their scuta back to guard position, and advance on the double. Now it would be naked butchery.
Something moved in my peripheral vision, and I scanned the back of the battlefield. No question they were loading the “Stalin organs,” which I had expected, but—
There was a big, dark mass there, and it was splitting in half like an amoeba. I stared … I considered …
“Shit,” Chrys said. “This is all a setup for Hannibal’s double bow.”
“I think you’re right.”
It was just about the most famous battle plan of ancient history. You advance in a long curved line with the center contacting the enemy first. The center fights hard, then turns and runs away. Since there are no radios on the ancient battlefield, no general can tell his men to “hang back.” The enemy pursue into the center, as your big curving line turns inside out.
Then your center meets up with your reserves, your flanks close in, and the enemy is caught in a crossfire and surrounded.
The giveaway to all that is when troops in the reserve body at the rear start to flow toward the flanks, instead of up to the middle where the fighting is.
And Chrys had just spotted that.
I scanned the field. Sure enough, Pompey’s flanks were moving in fast. Moreover, the legions on the flanks were, all of them, equipped with muskets, and the cavalry had long heavy lances like a medieval knight’s. “They’re going to crash in any second now,” I said, and even as I spoke, the legions went to double time, and the auxiliaries broke into a trot.
Gaulish cavalry from both of Caesar’s flanks charged to meet the threat.
“Looks like we’re going to see whether the pistol or the lance is superior,” I said.
And then we heard a familiar sound—a deep, bass buzz that is made by only one thing in the universe—
—a SHAKK firing on full auto.
It took me a moment to find where the sound was coming from, and then I saw—Caesar himself stood on a small wooden tower, holding the SHAKK, spraying one of Pompey’s flanks.
He didn’t really have to aim and he didn’t bother. The S in SHAKK stands for “Seeking”—each individual round was finding a target. There are two thousand rounds in the magazine of an ATN-issued SHAKK, and Caesar had two of those; he sprayed down Pompey’s left flank with one of them,
picked up the other, and sprayed Pompey’s right flank with the other. Then he calmly pulled out the SHAKK-equivalents that Porter and Paula had been given—they had smaller magazines because they had smarter ammo, rounds that communicated with each other in flight and picked targets based on maximum coverage and evaluated threat. He emptied five hundred rounds from each of those, again spraying each side equally.
I was finding myself thinking of a lot of Latin today. Our word “decimate” comes from the Latin for “ten”—if you killed ten men out of a century, the century was usually too disrupted to fight effectively.
That was approximately what Caesar, single-handedly, had just done. Everywhere out there, men or horses were converted into bags of red jam and collapsed. It was terrifying and inexplicable, and the scent of so much blood maddened the horses. Furthermore, the more-advanced SHAKKs from the Roman future apparently had some way of spotting officers, for every centurion and legate on the field seemed to fall victim to them.
By the time the Gauls got to the front ranks, neither Pompey’s legions nor his cavalry had any effective command at all. They collapsed in a screaming mess, some trying to fight, many to run away, some just to hide and stay alive. The Gauls didn’t make any fine distinctions—they used their horse pistols on everything that wasn’t Caesar’s.
Even the ones who were trying to surrender.
Sickened, I looked away, and scanned to the back. Pompey’s center didn’t know that when the trap had sprung, its jaws had broken. Thus they moved forward confidently, not knowing the battle was lost. At the range I couldn’t see exactly, but I knew more or less what happened from the clouds of smoke and the glimpses I was able to catch.
