Eagle and Empire

by Alan Smale

  All was as ready as it could be. In the meantime, the advancing Mongols had halved the separation between themselves and his front line. In mere minutes they would launch their attack…

  Marcellinus blinked and looked again, and a murmur rippled through his cohorts. What he had initially taken for an unbroken line of cavalry was no such thing. Ahead of the cavalry marched a squad of, what, infantry? Did the Mongols plan to use their fire lances right off the bat?

  He hoped so. A thrown pilum had a much greater range than a fire lance. No matter how well armored, its Mongol wielder would quickly be killed or at least knocked back. The smart time to use the fire lances was not against fresh troops but later in the battle, once the cohorts were disordered and weary.

  No. The first line had a solid core of marching infantry at its center, Hesperian in all likelihood, preceded by a wide line of other foot soldiers—

  “Damn Chagatai to hell,” Marcellinus said.

  Right now, he should dismount and allow his horse to be moved back by his adjutants. His helmet and extra height made him a ridiculously easy target. But he could not yet dispense with the mobility the Thessalian provided. Spurring it on, Marcellinus galloped back to the front line. After a moment of consternation his adjutants and trumpeter hurried after him.

  The Mongols were driving prisoners before them. The men were not infantry but Hesperian captives. By their tattoos, scarifications and paint, clothing, and hair Marcellinus recognized Blackfoot, Hidatsa, Cherokee, and what could only be Shoshoni. Brutally forcing them forward were other Hesperians, allies of the Mongol Khan: a few Tlingit and Haida, but by far the most plentiful were…the Shappa Ta’atani.

  Marcellinus cursed again. This was going to make for one hell of a complicated battlefield.

  He turned and snapped a series of instructions to his trumpeter, who looked perplexed. Marcellinus didn’t blame him. He had no idea whether there were clear cornu signals for the orders he had just given. He pointed to his Cahokian adjutants and gave them another set of orders. The adjutants ran.

  Another thought struck him. He turned again to his unfortunate cornicen. “Lanceae, not pila, for the Shappans. You hear? Lanceae! Lanceae!”

  The line of Hesperian prisoners was just three hundred feet away. The front ranks of Marcellinus’s legion had figured it out; his legionaries were swaying left and right on the balls of their feet as soldiers did when they were exchanging words, talking grimly to one another.

  For most of their time in Nova Hesperia the legionaries had lived in tents, barracks, and galleys. To most of them, all natives looked alike. And even if they didn’t, their centurions might even now be deciding that the prisoners were already casualties of war and should be dispatched as quickly as possible to get at the real enemies behind them.

  And once upon a time, Marcellinus would have made that same ruthless decision.

  At last, his trumpeter gave the commands. The cornu blared a complicated sequence of notes, quickly taken up by the lead trumpeters for each cohort and spread to the far corners of the Sixth. Centurions looked right and left, irritated. Some shook their heads.

  The Cahokian adjutants stepped forward now: Takoda, Napayshni, and Enopay, one at the front of each of the First, Second, and Third Cohorts. Marcellinus hated bringing Enopay to the battlefield, hated it more than anything he had yet done, but he had little choice. For all intents and purposes Enopay had to be considered a man now, even if he didn’t look like one.

  His three adjutants began to hand-talk in giant, emphasized motions, each saying the same thing.

  More trumpet calls, and the cohorts walked forward to meet the attack. This, at least, was normal tactics. Advancing troops were more confident than troops at rest. Stepping up to meet your opponent was always preferable to standing waiting for him. Against enemies on foot a running charge was often best, but it used precious energy. Striding with determination was almost as good.

  But now, following Marcellinus’s order, the front line of his legion began to open. Shields that had overlapped to form a wall parted as the men behind them came into open order—grudgingly in many cases.

  Arrows began to fly. The Mongol horse archers were now within bow range and were loosing arrows at a forty-five-degree angle to shower down upon the front rows of Roman troops. Marcellinus’s soldiers hastily raised their scuta.

  The Hesperian prisoners were running now, straight for the Roman front line, forced on by the Shappans and the Mongol horsemen.

  The Mongols were almost within spear range. The front rank of the Sixth Ferrata stepped forward to hurl their weapons. With relief Marcellinus saw that his message had gotten through: Aurelius Dizala had given the order to cast the legion’s lighter throwing javelins rather than the heavy pila. First, the lanceae had a longer range and would cause damage sooner in the Shappan ranks before they closed for a melee. Second, it saved the heavy pila for battle at close quarters against the Mongol horsemen.

  Even so, to hurl the lanceae the legionaries had to shift their scuta and expose themselves to the rain of Mongol arrows. Some legionaries went down immediately, but the javelins were on their way, over the heads of the Hesperians on foot and into the Shappans and Mongol horsemen who followed them. The second rank stepped past the first, their own spears at the ready, but the Mongol front line was almost upon them.

  Now the prisoners revolted. Some dropped to the ground to scurry forward on their hands and knees. Others turned on their Shappan tormenters. It became a messy brawl of Hesperians, becoming increasingly compressed as they were trapped between the lines of advancing Romans and Mongols.

  The new front rank of Romans threw their spears and fell into close order, scuta overlapping. More spears flew from ranks farther back, over the heads of their brothers in arms. The Romans had the Mongols’ range now, and as Marcellinus had expected, the Mongol horsemen broke away, wheeling around again to send more arrows into the Roman lines.

  Marcellinus had ordered his front line eased at the critical moment to give at least some of the prisoners a chance to escape through his ranks. The hand-talking adjutants had sent the word to the prisoners, and the calmer among them had cooperated in their own salvation. In some places the plan had fallen short, and many Hesperians now lay dead in front of the Roman lines. But Marcellinus suspected that the Mongols had been banking on a much higher level of chaos, with countless corpses impeding the Roman advance. That had not happened. Lives had been saved.

  Yet there was little respite. Behind the prisoners the Shappa Ta’atani, perhaps as many as two thousand of them, marched in tight formation directly toward the center of Marcellinus’s line. They wore an odd mixture of Roman and Mongol helmets, Roman breastplates and greaves, and Mongol leather armor, but in terms of their discipline and the rigor of their ranked formation they might have given the First Cahokian a run for their money.

  More shouted commands from Marcellinus, more cornu blasts and bellowing of centurions. The cohorts of the Sixth Ferrata once again stepped forward to hurl spears, and perhaps one man in four of the Shappan front line fell wounded.

  Other Shappan braves stepped up to take their place. The warriors of Shappa Ta’atan formed a solid core of infantry. On either side came the wings of Mongol cavalry, again shooting wave upon wave of arrows into the cohorts of the Sixth Ferrata. Relatively few legionaries were going down, though. The Sixth was not nicknamed the Ironclads for nothing; they were heavily armored and quick to adopt a defensive posture, the men at the front kneeling with scuta aslant, those behind standing with shields held above their heads. The Mongols could not inflict high casualties on such a formation with arrow fire alone.

  Well. Suffice it to say that this was already a completely different battle from the one that the Imperator and Praetors had envisaged just that morning.

  Marcellinus could not see Son of the Sun. The Shappan chief must be within his army somewhere—Marcellinus couldn’t imagine the clan chiefs and warriors of Shappa Ta’atan fighting for
the Khan under any other commander—but Marcellinus could not spot him. Once he did, sparks would fly.

  The first three ranks of the legion stepped forward, spears held overarm, ready to be thrust down into the Shappan ranks. They advanced in silence, and Marcellinus could see that this unnerved the Shappans. In response, they began to whoop and catcall and bang their axes, clubs, and swords against their shields. But Roma would not be cowed by that.

  Scores of the Mongols’ erstwhile prisoners had emerged from the back of the first line of cohorts. They were being gathered together by the optios and hustled back toward the water wagons to be held under guard in case of treachery. Marcellinus expected none. Few wore warrior tattoos, and they looked battered and beaten.

  “Back, sir,” said his adjutant, Furnius. “Come back now…Here they come!”

  The Mongols were charging. They would attack on either side of their Shappa Ta’atani vassals, their left wing attacking the First Cohort and their right focused on routing Paulinus’s Fourth.

  It was Marcellinus’s first view of a full Mongol charge. He hoped it would not be his last.

  Marcellinus had barely regained his place back behind the First Cohort when the phalanx of the Shappa Ta’atani crashed into the center of his front line. Just before impact Dizala’s cohorts raised a sudden ruckus, banging their spears against the iron rims of their shields. If the abrupt din threw fear into the warriors of Son of the Sun, it was not apparent from where Marcellinus stood.

  Shields clashed, and steel rang against steel. Dizala’s troops had stepped up, punching their shield bosses into the Shappan line and following with overhand spear thrusts. The legionaries behind surged forward to hold the line firm. The Shappans who did not go down immediately swung their axes and clubs, and each legionary tried to catch the impact on the steel rim of his scuta rather than the flat. Where they failed, Marcellinus heard splintering and screeches of pain where the axes cleaved the wood, but the line held, his soldiers still powering forward to split the Shappan ranks. The cohorts advanced six feet, then eight, and then the Shappan line stood firm. Their spears mostly lodged in Shappan bodies, the leading Romans drew gladii.

  The leading line of Mongol horsemen was three hundred yards distant and approaching at a canter. Although Marcellinus could not see all the ranks of the cavalry that faced him, he knew from his Sky Lantern’s signals that the Mongol force was moving forward in five lines, each separated by about two hundred yards. The first two lines were heavy cavalry, with more horse archers making up the ranks that followed.

  Marcellinus knew what would happen next. Aelfric and the other tribunes would know, too. There was no preparing for it, no orders he could give that would help. They just had to wait.

  Takoda trotted up to bring Marcellinus his shield, a large oval in the cavalry style. “Should I stay with you?” the brave asked quietly.

  Cahokian company was not unwelcome. And at this time of all times, Marcellinus remembered a much younger Takoda coming to cut his bonds with a chert blade at dawn on his very first day in the Great City as he lay out in the open at the base of a red cedar pole, wounded and desolate and waiting for death. He and Takoda had been through a lot together in the intervening years. “If you would.”

  Takoda was a warrior, but also a gentle man who loved his family and his neighbors, who loved Cahokia and the Mizipi and all of the land. He did not deserve to be at the hub of a war between two invading foreign powers that eventually might decide the fate of the world.

  Marcellinus looked again at the Mongol line. More than anything, he wanted them all wiped from the earth.

  The Mongol heavy cavalry lumbered forward. And now they were at arrow range, and their stirrup-to-stirrup formation was parting to make channels for the light cavalry.

  They poured through, sleek and merciless in their gray leather armor, standing in their stirrups, raising their bodies clear of their wooden saddles with those devastating composite bows in their hands.

  “Testudo!” Marcellinus roared, and beside him Takoda jumped at his sudden shout, his horse backing up. But his First Cohort was doing it, the front rank dropping to one knee with shields angled, the ranks behind raising scuta to interlock them over their heads against the arrow shower.

  The Mongol horsemen galloped through, a steady stream of light cavalry, and turned to form an oblique line. They were already loosing arrows in waves, their horses maintaining formation. It was amazing that so few warriors could pump out so many arrows so quickly, but now Marcellinus saw that the horse archers behind the heavy cavalry were also firing arrows up at forty-five degrees to rain down on the legionaries.

  The First Cohort staggered back as the onslaught struck. At such close range, arrows from those Mongol composite bows might punch through chain mail or even a breastplate. Shields and helmets would protect the areas they covered, but they still left plenty of vulnerability.

  Amid the arrows came the crackle and flash of black powder grenades. The Mongols were hurling pots of the Jin salt into the midranks of the First. Black smoke wafted up where they struck. Men fell, others moving forward to take their place. A few hundred yards away Marcellinus’s left wing was suffering the same barrage.

  The first wave of Mongol light cavalry curved away to the right. Behind them the heavies spurred their horses, spears at the ready.

  Marcellinus assessed quickly. Shappan warriors forming a solid phalanx of infantry to assault the center of his line. Mongol archers loosing arrows and flinging pots of black powder. And the Mongol heavy cavalry thundering in to drive home the advantage.

  This was a coordinated assault as sophisticated as any Marcellinus had seen in any of his former campaigns, and it was flawlessly executed. Sabinus was right. The Mongols had come a long way.

  The Second and Third Cohorts were still deep in combat with the ranked warriors of Shappa Ta’atan. Right in front of Marcellinus his First Cohort was only now recovering. Forced into disarray by the intensity of the arrow attack, his men were not yet ready to engage. A few moments earlier he had seen the crest of Appius Gallus bobbing on the left corner of the First, perilously close to the melee but looking the other way, undoubtedly shouting orders at his front line. But now Marcellinus could not see his primus pilus at all.

  Marcellinus urged his horse forward between the First and Second Cohorts. “Pila! Pila, damn you!”

  The men reacted to him out of quick instinct. Their shields came down, and the heavy pila came up into position. As Marcellinus arrived just behind the front line, the second and third ranks dropped their pila between the men in front of them, grinding the spear butts into the dirt, their sharp tips pointing up at an angle to form a bristling hedge.

  And just in time, because the Mongol heavy cavalry was upon them.

  No horses—not even the ugly, wild, and aggressive Mongol ponies—would ride headlong into a mass of armed men. But the Mongol arrows and the daunting sight of the heavy cavalry bearing down on the line had had their effect; already the line was buckling as men stepped back. Marcellinus heard Gallus yelling and now saw the First Centurion several ranks back in his cohort, shoving men into position.

  The Mongol heavies carried vicious hooked spears that were twelve feet long. Right behind the line of heavy cavalry were two more lines of light cavalry, firing arrows into the Roman line between the armored horses of their own heavies. Marcellinus found an instant to admire both their courage and their recklessness and also to curse the calm confidence with which Lucius Agrippa had assured him that the Mongols would not come to the melee until they had to, would keep their distance and rely on missile fire until their hands were forced…but the Khan’s shock troops had come to the fore in the first minutes of battle.

  And gods, it had almost worked. The First Cohort, supposedly the toughest and most experienced cohort of the Sixth Ironclads, had nearly collapsed in the face of their charge.

  Horses galloped up from behind Marcellinus as his adjutants arrived to defend him. From his l
eft he heard Aulus snarl, “Jupiter’s sake, sir, get back!” More practically, Sollonius handed him a heavy pilum, at the same time inserting himself between his Praetor and the front line.

  Right behind Sollonius was Takoda. So much for Marcellinus keeping the young brave out of harm’s way…

  The Mongol heavies waded into the front line of the Sixth Ferrata. Their long spears thrust past the sharp briar patch of Roman steel. But the First was rising to the occasion again at last, the men pushing forward to shove their scuta into the faces of the Mongol horses even as the Mongol warriors leaned over to smash clubs and axes into those shields. Legionaries stabbed their pila forward, knocking Mongols back and sometimes off their steeds. Close to Marcellinus two legionaries fell to their knees, slain almost simultaneously with arrows buried deep in their chests. The men behind them tried to bull their way forward, but their path was blocked by the bodies.

  Not so far away half a dozen legionaries had broken formation to drag Mongol warriors from horseback. Two of the Romans fell, but the others thrust their gladii deep into the warriors’ bodies, mindless of the horses’ hooves rearing above their heads.

  The second rank of Mongol heavy cavalry was forcing itself into the fray, cleaving the Roman line. Two Mongols came straight for Marcellinus. Spurring his horse forward, Marcellinus raised his pilum high and swung it down into the mailed chest of the nearer of them. It did not breach the man’s armor. Beside him Sollonius slashed at the horse’s face with his gladius, and it neighed and backed up. Aulus nocked an arrow and loosed it even as his horse reared. The arrow buried itself in the Mongol cavalryman’s arm.

  The second Mongol threw his spear. With no time to bring his shield around, Marcellinus instinctively shoved with his legs, standing in the saddle, and the heavy spear’s tip slammed into his breastplate instead of his neck or face. But the spear’s weight smashed him back, and he sprawled onto his horse’s rump, in danger of being unseated.