by Alan Smale
Marcellinus’s first thought, that the Khan’s best general was fleeing the battlefield, was soon disproved. Badahur aimed to cut off the Minerva and prevent it from going to the aid of the Romans, Norse, and Hesperians aboard the tangled mess of dragon ships and knarrs, Tlingit and Shappan canoes, and Maya longships that were doing battle. Even now, that whole combat area was being carried downriver on the Mizipi current, away from the larger war being fought on the decks of the four linked quinqueremes.
“Gaius!” Taianita sprinted toward him, gladius in hand, and Marcellinus gasped. Her tunic was doused with blood and what looked like entrails. Blood gushed from her mouth and was smeared all across her face and down her bare legs.
“Merda. Taianita, are you hurt?”
She spit. “Lost some teeth. Killed some Mongols.” She grinned at him hideously, and he realized that she was not quite sane, not quite the Taianita he knew anymore. “Where is Son of the Sun? Where the fuck is he?”
Marcellinus pointed at the drekar battle. “Perhaps over there.”
“Let’s go. Let’s get the verpa. Where’s Hanska? Shit, come on.”
“Taianita—”
“Futete!” Taianita ran from him to the edge of the Fortuna’s deck and measured the distance.
With horror he realized that in her battle madness Taianita was considering swimming across to the battle for the longships. With a few steps he arrived back at her side and grabbed her arm. Glancing back quickly, he saw that Manius Ifer’s men had broken the Mongol column. The invaders were in rout, and shortly the Romans and allies would be victorious on the flagship.
The Minerva and Clementia, caught in a stronger part of the Mizipi current during their long fight, also had won their battles. Their oars were beginning to move, but it would be a while longer before they could rejoin the rest of the galleys. They had been carried back so far that they were almost back in range of the Jin trebuchets, and Badahur’s ships would reach them first. “Damn it.”
Neither the Fortuna nor the Triumphus would ever be riverworthy again. Their damage was too great. Marcellinus had to get everyone off the stricken ships and then cut the Providentia free.
Taianita was trying to pull away from him. Now she punched him on the shoulder. “Juno, Taianita, wait just—”
“Use your eyes, verpa,” she snapped. “They’ve won. The bastard Shappans have the longships!”
“Shit…”
It was true. Some of the warriors of Shappa Ta’atan were manning the oars of the two drekars while others threw Roman corpses overboard in full armor, where they disappeared quickly into the murky river. Alongside the dragon ships, warriors of the Yokot’an Maya and the Tlingit were returning to their own longboats and canoes.
Beyond, one of the triremes was bilged and half sunk, its top deck now resting almost at water level and listing to starboard. Bodies, blood, and jagged burned holes covered the deck. The second trireme was already moving unsteadily toward Shappa Ta’atan, twisting back and forth in the current. The Shappans had themselves a prize.
Then the trireme suddenly straightened, the rowers on both decks pulling together.
That was impossible. Hesperians learned fast, but not that fast.
The Shappa Ta’atani had Roman prisoners at the oars.
Well, that made all the difference.
The Mongols’ allies aimed to take the trireme and the two dragon ships to berth at Shappa Ta’atan. The Roman prisoners would become slaves of the Mongols or die terribly at their hands.
“Futete,” Marcellinus said yet again. “Taianita, go find Hanska. Otho! Ifer!”
But it was Vibius Caecina who came to him first. Pale, sick, and shaking, the tribune saluted him. “You’re needed on the rear deck, sir. Our Praetor is down.”
—
On the Triumphus and the Fortuna the remaining Mongols had been crushed. The decks were littered with corpses, and the scuppers ran with blood. Roman sailors were dragging the bodies to the side and dumping them ignominiously into the river.
But the victory had come at a terrible cost to the Sixth Ferrata. Calidius Verus was smashed and bloodied, his legs crumpled under him. He coughed, and blood welled over his lower lip and spilled onto his chest. The Praetor clearly had only minutes to live.
By Verus’s side stood another tribune. Marcellinus eyed him uncertainly. “Gaius Marcellinus reporting.”
Getting no response, Marcellinus leaned forward. “And you are, sir?”
The tribune blinked and focused on him. “Aurelius Dizala, First Tribune.”
Marcellinus nodded. “Your orders, sir?”
“Orders?” Dizala looked around and shook his head. “Dear God, man, my Praetor is not even dead yet. A moment’s peace if you would be so kind.”
“Yes, sir.” Marcellinus looked back at the trireme moving slowly across the river. “No. Sir, I’m afraid we don’t have that luxury. This cannot wait.”
Caecina took a step back. Dizala looked him up and down. “Gaius Marcellinus. It was your decision to ram your own flagship? You gave that order?”
“I did, sir.”
“If that’s how you treat your friends, God alone knows how you deal with your enemies.” Dizala shook his head. “It was well done. Unorthodox but…”
“It was a close thing, sir.”
Dizala looked down at Verus and up again at Marcellinus. “Very well. Report.”
“The quinqueremes are secure. Most Mongol ships in flight. But two drekars and a trireme have been captured by the Shappa Ta’atani and are under way for the city. They have Roman prisoners.”
Dizala looked very tired. “I would think the right course of action was apparent.”
“It is, sir,” Marcellinus said. “Let us finish this once and for all. Praetor Calidius Verus wanted the Sixth to retain control of the Hesperian Nile. Crush Shappa Ta’atan now, rescue our prisoners, and Roma will hold the Mizipi. But I cannot commit your troops without your orders.”
“It seems to me you already have.”
Marcellinus grinned. “That was expediency in battle.”
Verus coughed, his hands flailing weakly. Dizala knelt and wiped the new blood from his commander’s mouth. The Praetor’s head was lolling, and he was obviously no longer aware of his surroundings.
Life was draining from Calidius Verus. Marcellinus would never berate him for his drunkenness or his failures of command or achieve any kind of peace over the matter of Corbulo. None of that mattered anymore.
Dizala passed his hand over his eyes. He glanced at Caecina and then away. “Candidly, Marcellinus, I’m not up to any more today. You’ve crossed swords with these barbarians before? Then yours is the crest. Give the orders. Deal with them. Caecina, the field is Marcellinus’s. Give him your support.”
Caecina nodded dumbly. Marcellinus saluted. “Yes, sir.”
—
Legionaries ran. Under Marcellinus’s and Ifer’s commands the soldiers from the two dead ships divided themselves between the Fides and the Providentia. The injured were helped to one or another of the navigable quinqueremes. Scorpios, shields, rope, and other vital equipment were passed from the Fortuna’s deck to the Providentia. Undamaged oars were brought up from belowdecks to replace those of the Providentia that had been smashed in the battle.
Marcellinus looked around with grim satisfaction. Despite his harsh thoughts about the Sixth Ferrata, they were now working as one, everyone moving on the double, everyone knowing his job and rushing to get it done. Meanwhile, at the prow of the Providentia and belowdecks, sailors and legionaries worked to cut the quinquereme loose with axes, saws, and levers. Otho was up front with them, his shouting and cursing almost louder than the banging and hammering of his crew. Oarsmen were already seated at their stations in the aft of the quinquereme, ready to row once they were able. The hortator and the drummer stood ready to give them the pace.
The warship shook several times, and its prow lifted. Otho looked back at Marcellinus and gave him the high si
gn.
“Go,” Marcellinus said. “Back up, slowly.”
The hortator nodded. Marcellinus heard his brisk instruction to the crew, and the drum began to beat time. As the Providentia backwatered, the Fortuna slumped even lower, muddy water rippling across its top deck.
Side by side, the Providentia and the Fides rowed for Shappa Ta’atan. The captured dragon ships were at the shore now, their prize crews jumping off and joining the rest of the Shappan army at the water’s edge. The trireme was still offshore.
Enopay looked behind them and all around. “We’re going to Shappa Ta’atan? Just us?”
“Just us?” Marcellinus laughed. “You weren’t at Ocatan, Enopay. Even tired, even outnumbered, the Sixth will destroy them.”
“If the Shappans were smart, they would hide behind their great walls.”
“Let them. We’ll have those walls down in moments.” Marcellinus jerked a thumb behind him. On his prior orders the onagers on both the Providentia and the Fides were being loaded for action.
“Look.” Hanska was pointing downriver.
The eight junks of Subodei Badahur had not engaged the two quinqueremes in the rear of the fleet. Carrying full sail, they had passed them by. Junks were heading to the shore on each side of the river, presumably to pick up the artillery crews manning the trebuchets, while the rest held formation and sailed on. The Tlingit and the Maya were leaving, too, rowing their brightly colored canoes and longboats close to the riverbank, where the Roman warships could not easily go, following Badahur.
“The Mongols have abandoned the Shappans,” Enopay said in wonder.
Taianita stared at the walls of Shappa Ta’atan. “They must be feeling really fucking stupid right about now.”
Her venom daunted them all. Hanska regarded the girl with some concern.
Enopay looked around him at the resolute Roman crew. “This is going to be a bloodbath, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Marcellinus said. “Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t,” said the ship’s master, Titus Otho. “They’re surrendering.”
Sure enough, the Shappa Ta’atani warriors on the bank were laying their weapons down on the ground and stepping back. Behind them the gates of the city were swinging open in capitulation, with men disappearing from the battlements to file out onto the riverbank, unarmed. The trireme’s gangplank was now down, the Shappans walking calmly off the ship onto dry land while the freed Romans mustered on its top deck.
“Damn it,” Marcellinus said.
Otho looked at him sideways. “We could still…?”
Marcellinus shook his head, his heart heavy. Much as his blood still boiled, much as he would have loved to have his revenge on Son of the Sun, he could hardly order a legion to attack unarmed Hesperians.
Otho shrugged and gave the order, and the hortator slowed the drums.
“I know these people,” Marcellinus said. “We’ll land to accept the surrender. We’ll need troops from the Providentia to secure the banks, confiscate the weapons. While we’re doing that, hold the other ships offshore at the ready in case of treachery. Scorpios up, onagers and ballistas armed.” He looked at the Mizipian city again and at the Shappans now kneeling on the bank and muttered under his breath. There would be no resistance.
“No!” Taianita’s cry was so harsh that it sounded as if it were tearing the skin of her throat. She ran off the poop deck and slumped to the deck, head in her hands.
“Hanska?” Marcellinus said, but the warrior was already going to talk to the girl.
“Phew,” Enopay said in heartfelt relief.
Marcellinus just kept shaking his head.
“I know you want to hurt them,” the boy said. “You and Taianita. Kill them all. But they are Hesperian. They did not ask for this. And our men are tired. If the fighting is over for today, you must be glad.”
Marcellinus was certainly weary. Exhausted, in fact. And of course he knew that if the full force of Roma came down upon Shappa Ta’atan, hundreds of innocent people would be killed and injured and suffer terribly in other ways. But for once, he could barely stand to be magnanimous in victory. “Please be quiet, Enopay,” he said, and went forward to prepare an honor guard.
—
The Shappa Ta’atani council of elders and clan chiefs claimed that Son of the Sun had fled the city, although he might just as well have been hiding in the Shappan sacred area. They insisted that he had betrayed them as well as Roma and that if he attempted to return, they would bind him and deliver him to Marcellinus. They pledged renewed allegiance to Roma, although Marcellinus did not believe them for a moment.
Standard Roman military protocol would have been to take hostages, the oldest sons or daughters of leading chiefs and elders, to accompany them back to Cahokia as an assurance of continued allegiance in the future. Marcellinus rejected that approach. He was not about to take slaves in Roma’s name. Leave such barbarism for the Mongols. Nor would he deprive anyone of their children.
Instead he demanded tribute, and in large quantities: corn and beans and sunflower oil, fish and ash cakes and whatever else they had. The Shappa Ta’atani soon opened their granaries to the galleys’ quartermasters.
Marcellinus informed them that the Romans would be making castra on the far bank overnight and leaving the next morning but that a strict watch would be kept, and if any Shappan vessel so much as touched the water overnight, it would be destroyed and Shappa Ta’atan would be pounded to rubble the next morning. The Shappans promptly took every canoe, dugout, and coracle inside the gate. Marcellinus demanded that the Shappan homesteads on the eastern shore of the Mizipi be evacuated and remain empty overnight to ensure the security of the Roman legion, and three Shappan elders accompanied two Norse knarrs across the river to hurry the homesteaders in packing up and leaving.
The Shappans showed every sign of being a people vanquished and compliant, yet Marcellinus was rock-solid in his conviction that even if the bulk of the Shappa Ta’atani this time remained allies of Roma and Cahokia, he had not seen the last of Son of the Sun.
By dusk, the Roman fleet was moored and its soldiers and sailors were eating. Guards had been set, and Marcellinus finally was able to sit down on the bank and stare at the remains of the sunset over Shappa Ta’atan. The tribunes wanted to speak with him, but they could wait. Enopay wanted to talk, but Marcellinus sent him away with Hanska and Taianita.
He needed a few moments to himself, and it was only now that it finally sank in that the day had been a success.
The Sixth Ferrata had taken losses, including its Praetor, but they had achieved their goals. They had broken the blockade and vanquished the Mongol fleet. The Hesperian Nile was Roman again, even if in reality they now lacked the ships and troops to police it.
That would have to be sufficient for today. But one day a reckoning between Marcellinus and the Shappan chief must surely come.
Three weeks later, shortly after the dark of the Hunting Moon, the remains of the Legio VI Ferrata passed the mouth of the Oyo River where it emptied into the Mizipi at Ocatan. Even now, the sight of the four quinqueremes and the accompanying vessels was enough to prompt the Ocatani at the riverbank to hurry back through the gates of their town and bar them. From where Marcellinus stood at the prow of the Providentia he could see Mizipians lining the newly rebuilt town ramparts to watch the Roman ships pass.
The oarsmen were not rowing at full speed, and the ships were not in an attack posture. The fighting towers had been dismantled and stowed, the onagers and scorpios were covered, and the legionaries stood easy on deck. The galleys were ragged, with burn and scorch marks along their hulls and blistered paint. The hulls of the Fides and Minerva and both the prow and the stern of the Providentia had taken significant damage that the Sixth had made only a minimal effort to repair. Marcellinus and the surviving tribunes had agreed that in the aftermath of their tribulations downriver, appearances could be neglected till the crew joined up with the rest of the Roman army at Cahokia and
had a chance to recuperate.
With so many troops injured or exhausted it was hard enough to row the massive galleys against the incessant Mizipi current and build a secure camp on the shore every night. Over the last months the Sixth Ferrata had suffered both a major defeat and a Pyrrhic victory; they had prevailed at the blockade but had lost their commander, two tribunes, and more centurions than Marcellinus could count. The quartermaster and Enopay agreed that in all the Sixth was approaching Cahokia with a mere 2,500 men out of the 4,800 with which it had begun the year. More than five hundred men were injured, and every day brought more deaths as men finally succumbed to their wounds.
Understandably, the mood aboard the ships was dour. Among the tribunes Aurelius Dizala was grimly competent and nominally in command but prone to black depressions at the death of his Praetor and the damage to his legion. Flavius Urbicus, tribune of the Sixth and Seventh Cohorts and a popular man, had died two days after the river battle of wounds sustained defending the hospital ship Clementia. The only other surviving tribunes were Vibius Caecina, young and disgraced, who avoided Marcellinus wherever possible; Statius Paulinus, hardworking but not really leadership material; and Manius Ifer, whom Marcellinus was coming to respect more and more each day for his gruff pragmatism and down-to-earth good sense.
None of the tribunes was really stepping into the role as acting commander, but coordinating the voyage to Cahokia was largely a matter for the ships’ masters in any case. Titus Otho and the other senior centurions who served as ships’ masters of the quinqueremes largely made the navigational decisions among themselves, and woe betide anyone who disagreed with them. As the local expert, Marcellinus liaised among them all and made suggestions that generally were accepted as orders, and the flotilla made as steady and efficient a progress up the river as anyone could have wanted.
