Eagle and Empire

by Alan Smale

  “Dizala, Paulinus, Urbicus. Caecina. Ifer.” Marcellinus looked from one quinquereme to the next, settling the names in his mind.

  “I wouldn’t try too hard,” said the ship’s master. “Half of ’em will be in Elysium by sunset.”

  —

  A few moments later they came out of the smoke and took stock of their next riverine battleground.

  The dozen battle junks that swarmed around the Fortuna were better armored than those that had attacked the Providentia. One was larger than the rest, its wide curving prow decorated with a tiger’s face. It also flew a complicated standard on its mast. This must be Subodei Badahur’s flagship, within his own personal squadron.

  They were trying a more innovative approach than Marcellinus had seen so far. Better able to resist bombardment from the decks and battle towers of the Fortuna, these junks were using their striking arms as delivery devices for thunder crash bombs. A Mongol sailor in the rigging would load one of the large metal bombs onto the end of the striking arm and set the fuse. He would light the fuse and drop the arm when the battle junk was at its closest approach to the Fortuna, carrying the deadly black powder bomb straight down to the quinquereme’s deck.

  It was a bold tactic that was having mixed success. Three junks already lay dead in the water, having been blasted by their own bombs or otherwise immobilized by the Romans, but the Fortuna had two broad and smoking holes side by side at its port bow and was listing and taking on water. To starboard it had been joined by the Triumphus, and the two ships were braced together stem to stern by harpax cable, their hulls moored together to make a single fighting platform. The Triumphus was taking heavy fire on its own flank, though its onager and scorpios were currently keeping the Mongols at bay. More soldiers were spilling up from belowdecks on both ships, presumably the oarsmen.

  The Providentia was still several hundred feet away when two junks under full sail changed course to make a concerted and apparently suicidal run at her. With the wind directly behind them, their attackers approached at an almost uncanny rate.

  “Trying to strip our oars,” Titus Otho said tersely. “Helmsman! To port!”

  Agonizingly slowly the quinquereme yawed to port in an attempt to ram one of the attack junks, but the sailing ships were much more nimble. The leftward junk arrived first, sliding along the hull of the Providentia closely enough to slam into its leading oars and smash them to matchwood. At the same time, a Mongol sailor slung one of the lighter thunderclap bombs onto the Providentia’s top deck, where it duly exploded. The nearer Romans and Cherokee had hurled themselves aside even before the junk arrived; those farther away did their best to protect themselves behind their round naval shields. The enemy sailor who had thrown the bomb now flew backward straight off the top deck of his own ship to splash into the river behind, already dead with a Roman scorpio bolt clean through his chest.

  Two dozen oars had broken by the time the junk’s momentum failed it. The ship then faced a barrage of Roman missiles and erupted in a mass of splinters and chunks of wood. Warriors jumped overboard.

  Marcellinus was already running for the bow, but the Providentia’s crew was well trained; injured legionaries were being pulled away from the burning hole the Mongol bomb had carved in the top deck while other men flung water from the barrels on deck to quench the burning. Unlike Cahokian liquid flame, it appeared that the incendiary black powder of the Jin and Mongols could be neutralized by water.

  As Marcellinus passed it, the great ballista on the Providentia’s deck fired and sent a huge bolt into the stern of the Mongol vessel that menaced them on the starboard side. The ballista bolt practically split the helmsman of the junk in two, and the tiller behind him exploded in a flurry of shards and splinters of wood. Although Marcellinus had not heard the command, at the same time the starboard oarsmen had backwatered, guiding the now helmless enemy vessel into the Providentia’s hull.

  The legionary manning the harpax ballista had not been idle, and as he pulled the other attacking Mongol vessel toward the Providentia, the Roman corvus fell, locking it into place. A good half century of the Sixth Ferrata was already in position and now began to board the Mongol ship. Marcellinus swerved in midrun and joined them. As he leaped from the bulwark of the quinquereme, the brown river flashed beneath him, providing him with the sudden realization that if he went overboard, his armor would carry him down to the mud at the river bottom in moments. Then his boots landed on the deck of the Mongol ship and he was driving a Roman hasta spear through the chest of a Mongol warrior and swinging his gladius, and all rational thought left his mind once more in the flurry of combat.

  They made short work of the remaining Mongols, but this time there was no chance to search the junk for black powder. Marcellinus barely made it back up onto the deck of the Providentia before the Romans cut the wrecked junk loose with its cargo of corpses.

  Breathing heavily, Marcellinus threaded his way to the bow of the Providentia and took stock.

  The Fides was still beside them, having fought off its own attackers. The hospital ship Clementia had gotten off lightly and was gamely following them. A pitched war of attrition was going on to the east between the Roman archers on the flotilla of assembled drekars and triremes and a mixed force of bowmen of the Yokot’an Maya and Shappa Ta’atani on the other, but that would have to wait. If the two largest galleys of the Roman fleet went down with all hands, the battle was lost. The Providentia had to get to the Fortuna and the Triumphus.

  Increasingly, their river battle was beginning to look like a land war. The Fortuna and Triumphus were locked together, a floating island under attack from at least a dozen Mongol ships, many Tlingit canoes, and two longboats of the Yokot’an Maya. In short, the Roman forces were besieged within a field fortification of floating wood, and it was up to the forces at Marcellinus’s disposal to raise the siege.

  And by that point, Marcellinus had little doubt that it was up to him. Vibius Caecina had reappeared but was sitting by the Providentia’s onager with his hand over his mouth, giving no orders. Marcellinus briefly considered going to talk to the tribune, then discarded the idea. At no point in the battle had Caecina approached Titus Otho to give him a command or offer intelligence. Neither had he fought with the Roman vexillations that had resisted the Mongol junks. For a while he had stood with the centurion of the launch team, attempting to look useful, but his demeanor spoke “civilian” to Marcellinus. As often happened in the lesser legions, it was the noncommissioned officers, centurions and others of similar rank such as the ships’ masters, who were directing this battle.

  Well. As it now seemed that Otho was willing to work with Marcellinus, so much the better.

  He glanced across at the Fides just in time to catch the eye of Manius Ifer. Ifer pointed to port of the Fortuna and then to starboard of the Triumphus and made broad gestures in hand-talk. Query: dock each side?

  As the Romans’ expert in covert expeditions, Ifer had spent more time than most in the field with Hesperians. Naturally he would know the hand-talk by now. Marcellinus cast his gaze again over the beleaguered Roman vessels ahead of them and the positions of their Mongol assailants and made a series of broad gestures back. Ifer raised his eyebrows in surprise but nodded quickly and turned to talk to the master of the Fides.

  Marcellinus made his way back to Titus Otho on the poop deck of the Providentia. “Swing around to port and raise the rowing tempo. We’re going to smack Subodei Badahur right between the eyes.”

  Titus Otho nodded. “About bloody time. Long past bloody time. How do you boys want to proceed?”

  “Boys?” Himself and Ifer? No matter. “Titus Otho, I have an idea in mind that you might not like.”

  “Oh?” The ship’s master raised his eyebrows. “Try me. I like a challenge.”

  —

  The Providentia went in first at slow ramming speed, hitting the Fortuna amidships at a forty-five-degree angle. With its hull weakened by the repeated assaults from the thunder cr
ash bombs, the Providentia’s ram cleaved straight through the side of the Roman flagship with a grating cacophony of steel against wood.

  Naturally enough, Badahur must have assumed his own flagship would be the Providentia’s target and had backwatered to bring its bow around to face the Roman quinquereme. Caught unaware, this junk became the focus of a hail of ballista fire and arrows from the Providentia and beat a hasty retreat. Her oarsmen had to put in a heroic effort to overcome the current.

  As for the Mongol forces on the deck of the Fortuna, they could scarcely believe their eyes. The remains of the First Cohort under Calidius Verus’s command was bottled up at the ship’s stern, arrayed in a rough defensive formation between the growing Mongol force and the poop deck. The artillerymen with their scorpios had fallen back to line the bulwark at the front edge of this deck. The spectacular arrival of the Providentia had forced Badahur’s flagship junk and two other junks back from pulling alongside the Fortuna and assailing the First Cohort from two sides. Now the tables were turned, with the Mongol forces divided and under attack from the First on the Fortuna and the Ninth Cohort on the Providentia.

  The Providentia’s corvus fell into an open area of the Fortuna’s deck, but it was largely superfluous; the ships were locked fast together, and Marcellinus’s legionaries were already rushing aboard over the port and starboard gunwales at the ship’s prow. At the same time the Fides arrived on the far side of the Triumphus and moored to it in more conventional style with harpax bolts to stem and stern, delivering a further five hundred men directly to the heart of the battle.

  “Keep them off,” Marcellinus said to the artillerymen at the scorpios, then ran forward to give the same message to the centurion in charge of the onager crew. “Keep the ships of Badahur away. That’s your one job. Hold them at bay. Nobody boards us again. Understood?”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” said the centurion. Vibius Caecina gaped at him. Marcellinus nodded curtly, resisting his urge to stab the man, and kept moving.

  He had lost sight of Hanska, Taianita, and Enopay, but the mopping-up operation on the stern deck of the Fortuna was going well. Two quinquereme decks away, the legionaries of the Fides were in ruthless hand-to-hand with Mongol warriors, and Marcellinus was sure they would prevail; more Romans were joining the battle all the time from belowdecks on the Fides.

  Perhaps it was time to save lives rather than destroy them. He ran up to a centurion, by his insignia the fourth centurion of the Ninth Cohort. “Rescue party. Belowdecks on the Fortuna. Let’s leave no one behind. Yes?”

  The man nodded tersely and gave the orders. He and Marcellinus jumped aboard the deck of the Fortuna at the head of a force of some sixty legionaries.

  The Fortuna was listing badly to port, but the support of the Providentia was preventing it from rolling any farther. The foredecks of Verus’s flagship were now mostly clear, mainly as a result of the firing of ballista and scorpio bolts right over the heads of Marcellinus and the Fourth Century to keep Badahur’s junks at bay. Now those junks changed course, rowing around the bow of the Fortuna to lend support to the increasingly beleaguered Mongol force aboard the Triumphus next door.

  As Marcellinus took a deep breath and prepared to run down the steps into the lower decks of the Fortuna, Enopay appeared beside him, panting, the gladius in his hand wavering with the effort of holding it. “Enopay! Damn it, go back!”

  Enopay glanced around and gasped, “More dangerous…back there than…with you.”

  “Then stay close.” Marcellinus pounded down the steps behind the centurion.

  Ramming the Fortuna had been a calculated risk. After all this time in battle the oarsmen from below should have left the rowing decks. The Fortuna itself was so badly damaged, the holes in its sides so gaping, that it would never be navigable again. As a wooden vessel it would not quite sink but would eventually lie awash, completely bilged and incapable of salvage. If anything, the buoyancies of the Providentia and Triumphus were now holding the Fortuna up and preventing it from slumping even deeper into the Mizipi. But if there were men still belowdecks, perhaps injured men whom Verus had chosen to keep out of the battle, Marcellinus did not want them on his conscience.

  It was even more cramped on the rowing decks than Marcellinus had thought possible. On the third and highest of the decks there was almost no headroom; the oarsmen must have had a backbreaking shuffle to get to and from their rowing stations. At this level there were two men per oar on either side, and many of the oars were still lying higgledy-piggledy across the thwarts and making their passage difficult. The lighting was dim, the louvers not having been opened again after the gas assault, and Marcellinus saw nothing. “Enopay, for Juno’s sake, don’t run ahead.”

  “But I know where I’m going,” Enopay said, and disappeared.

  Marcellinus banged his head, swore, ran forward, and looked down. Enopay had darted down through a hatchway, taking broad steps down to the deck below. Behind Marcellinus the men of the Fourth were spreading out, searching, many of them now running down other stairwells.

  The second deck was much like the third: cramped, airless, empty of oarsmen. Here the floors were awash in several inches of water, with more flowing in, and with a chill Marcellinus realized that he was standing below the level of the Mizipi outside the ship. “Damn it. Enopay, there’s nobody here.”

  “Come on. If there’s anyone, they’ll be where the Providentia came through.”

  “First deck is underwater,” said a laconic voice from behind them. “Anyone down there is done.”

  “Anyone still down there was an idiot,” Enopay said. “Eyanosa, come.”

  The cramped space and the water underfoot were increasingly oppressive, the light level even lower, and Marcellinus banged his head on something hard that jutted out of the hull in front of him. “Shit.”

  “Watch out for the Providentia,” Enopay said at the same moment.

  Sure enough, Marcellinus’s probing hand in front of him had just slapped the wet outer hull of the warship he had ridden in on.

  “We can get around it,” Enopay said, and disappeared again.

  From sixty feet away beneath the hatchway where they had entered the second deck, the centurion called. “No one. We’re out of here. Come on, sir.”

  “Get clear,” Marcellinus said. “We’re going aft.”

  He splashed through water, following Enopay. They were now in the rear of the Fortuna, and he became aware of an increasing rumbling sound and an ominous creaking. The rumbling was the noise of men running and fighting two decks up. He preferred not to speculate about the creaking.

  “Man down,” Enopay said. “Help me.”

  “Alive? Roman?”

  “Sailor. Breathing. Unconscious.”

  Enopay pulled ineffectually at the man. Marcellinus helped him. In the dim light he at first thought that the sailor was holding a club in his hand, but once he seized it, he realized it was a bottle.

  Marcellinus threw it away from them. It broke against the inside of the hull, filling the air around them with the sickly smell of wine. “Damn Verus.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Let’s get this man out.”

  Enopay heaved and Marcellinus shoved, and they got the sailor up into the third deck. “One more.”

  “Can’t.” Enopay was panting. “Too heavy.”

  Marcellinus leaned down and sniffed the sailor’s lips. There was no hint of wine on his breath, and anyway, he did not look the type: well groomed and attired, wet only from the flooding river water he had been slumped in when they had found him.

  “He is not drunk,” Marcellinus said. “You agree?”

  “What, Eyanosa? Wait, he’s awake.”

  Hardly that, but the man was stirring. He raised a shaky hand to his head, opened his eyes, and tried to focus.

  Marcellinus knew what a strong blow to the head could be like. “We’re friends,” he said gently. “But the Fortuna is finished. You have to come with us. Hurry.”
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  —

  As they emerged on the poop deck of the Fortuna, behind Roman lines, the ship creaked again and rolled to the left, putting the deck at an even greater angle. Marcellinus had never been so happy to get out of a confined space.

  Leaving the stunned sailor with Enopay, Marcellinus pushed past the guards on the steps and ran up to Calidius Verus’s side. The Praetor goggled at him. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Belowdecks,” Marcellinus said tersely. “I rescued the man you sent to fetch your wine.”

  Verus eyed his expression and turned his face back to the battle before them. “I believe we have more important matters to attend to.”

  “We do indeed.” Marcellinus stalked forward, still breathing deeply, and looked between the scorpio men at the scene beyond.

  The cohorts of the Sixth Ironclads were conducting a textbook military operation on the joined decks of the Fortuna and Triumphus. Uneven terrain, to be sure, but the ranked soldiers were in a triple formation, three grouped lines with shields guarding the first rank, bowmen behind, and men armed with a mix of hasta and pila. On both ships they were advancing in lockstep despite the bulwark and the slight gap between the decks that separated them. The Mongol line was being irrevocably pushed back. Unfortunately for the enemy, behind them were the legionaries from the Providentia. The Mongols faced a battle on two fronts, fighting unhorsed.

  Calidius Verus was hurrying forward into the thick of the action now, flanked by his adjutants and a century of his First Cohort, keen to take personal charge of the remaining effort. Good enough. Perhaps the outcome here was not in doubt. Off to the side of them Manius Ifer’s men from the Fides were fighting on the decks of the Triumphus. Ifer himself was leading his men, his tribune’s helmet clearly visible at the front right edge of his troops. This was one of the most dangerous areas of a Roman formation; centurions customarily took that position, and the death toll among them was high. Marcellinus hoped Ifer would survive the day.

  Looking farther afield, he realized that the ships of Subodei Badahur had broken off their attack on the Fortuna’s flank under heavy assault from the Roman artillery and had hoisted sail. He could even see Badahur himself waving his arms to give orders, the bandage distinctive across his face.