by Alan Smale
—
Even under deadly archer fire Sabinus’s men had done a creditable job of lining up in their defensive infantry squares. Their weariness was obvious, but desperation spurred them on. Bodies lay bent and broken all around them.
A cohort consisted of six centuries, and so allowing for casualties, the two-cohort squares should contain about a thousand men each. That was consistent with the orbis Marcellinus saw before him now: a haphazard square 120 feet on a side, each side consisting of legionaries standing in close order three deep. The front row of men had taken a knee and held their scutum shields directly in front of them and their spears out at an angle. The second row also held outthrust spears, with the third row close behind them, its soldiers each bearing either a pilum or a bow. Each side of the square thus made a wall that bristled with sharp points.
Under usual circumstances a well-formed infantry square might provide an impenetrable barrier to cavalry, turning the military action into a slow, debilitating grind. That would not be the case here. The fire lances would carve its front line into pieces, inflicting grievous burn wounds on the infantry, allowing the mounted heavy cavalrymen to penetrate the destroyed formation and cut down the remaining foot soldiers of Roma.
The horses moved forward at a trot, with the soldiers of the Sixth and the warriors of Cahokia gamely doing their best to keep up. “Slow down!” Marcellinus called back. “Save your breath for the fight!”
As they approached the square, Marcellinus saw more. Centurions and optios passed their Imperator’s orders up and down the line and shoved foot soldiers into position with their staffs to close up the order. Perhaps brutal, but essential when everyone’s life was at risk. Signiferi stood in the front line holding their standards high, generally round silvered disks of their centuries mounted on a pole, although some were the vexillum flaglike standards of the special units. They wore small round shields over their shoulders, but their most distinctive features were the animal skins they wore on their heads: bear, lion, leopard. The signiferi were remonstrating with the tired legionaries, bucking them up and stiffening their spines, but Marcellinus guessed they also were trying to distract attention from Hadrianus. No man wanted to die knowing the dishonor of not having been able to protect his Imperator.
The leader of the Mongol jaghun raised a blue flag over his head and snapped it to the left and right. In response, the Mongol light horse archers peeled off the back line and charged the Sixth as a single column. They nocked arrows even as they galloped, and soon these arrows began to fly in earnest, the foremost archers loosing missiles into the Sixth and then curving away to come around again. They would form a steady stream of fire until stopped.
“Countercharge, countercharge!” Dizala shouted. Not waiting for the signal, he spurred his horse forward. Marcellinus followed, and the Ninth Syrian fell in behind them, storming into the fray.
Together, the Ninth Syrian and the Cahokians were achieving their objective, which was the disruption of the Mongol attack. Meanwhile, the infantry of the Ironclads had regained their fighting spirit and were charging into the colorful mass of gold and blue and green that made up the forces of the Yokot’an Maya and Tlingit.
The long line of Jin fire lancers was walking forward again with its protective rank of Mongol heavy cavalry close behind. Leather masks in front of their faces provided some protection from the fire they were about to unleash into the Third Parthica.
Thirty feet away from the Roman line the fire lancers halted. Centurions shouted, and some of the legionaries hurled javelins, but the Jin soldiers did not even trouble to protect themselves; the javelins bounced off their heavy armor without effect. In return the light horse archers now fired a wave of arrows into the Roman line.
The arrows must have served as a signal, for at that point each Jin foot soldier grounded his fire lance in front of him. From a pot, pouch, or box at his waist each man produced a short length of what looked like burning rope. They were fuses of the type that Decinius Sabinus had termed a “slow match,” a cord impregnated with saltpeter that burned slowly and was an effective way of lighting a bomb or a lance on the battlefield. The Jin soldiers applied their slow matches to the large bulbs of black powder on their fire lances.
Two hundred fire lances ignited with a roar, shooting concentrated flame a distance of ten paces in front of them. The trails of smoke that arose from them soon entwined above them into an ominous cloud.
The lancers stepped forward as one, a line of fire projecting in front of them. From Yupkoyvi, Marcellinus knew their lances would burn for at least five minutes before sputtering.
With perfect clarity, Marcellinus saw the Imperator Hadrianus step forward from the Roman line with his shield up. Beside him stepped a signifer of the Third, and on his other side a Praetorian centurion. As the Imperator raised his gladius, there came a second roar, this time of focused Roman rage just as powerful as the tongues of Mongol flame.
The legionaries of the Third Parthica cast their pila, the iron-shanked spears flying forward in a cloud of steel of their own. And the Romans stormed forward after them.
Hadrianus would not wait in line to be burned. He evidently had no wish to see his orbis broken up around him, its ranks cleaved, his men slaughtered. He would meet attack with attack in an all-or-nothing surge out of the breach.
And running through the horses of Marcellinus’s Sixth and streaking out ahead of them was Tahtay with his Blackfoot around him and Akecheta and the warriors of the First running behind him with spears and swords raised and nary a shield among them.
Tahtay’s warriors were dancing amid the Mongol horses now, and Marcellinus could scarcely bear to watch. It became a deadly game of chicken, repeated a hundred times. A Mongol warrior would bear down on a Cahokian, shooting an arrow or wielding a saber. At the very last moment the Cahokian would leap aside and bring his long club around to strike at the horse or rider. When it worked, the braves might knock a horse archer clean out of the saddle. If the Mongol’s foot caught in the stirrups, he might be dragged along by his horse; if not, he might fall to the earth, where other Cahokian warriors could converge on him and pummel him to death. When it failed, the brave would fall, his face, neck, or shoulder slashed by a saber, a spear or an arrow through his gut, or a shattered skull. The combination of fire and arrows could be deadly, but so could the combination of heavy clubs and sharp steel in Roman and Cahokian hands.
Marcellinus slid off his horse again. There was no way the poor beast could cope with the unholy mix of streaking fire, smoke, noise, and bright colors. For the remainder of this battle Marcellinus once again would fight on foot. In some desperation Furnius had rearmed him. In his hands now was a contus lance, a weapon more appropriate for a mounted warrior; a Cahokian ax was slung over his shoulder, and at his waist he wore his gladius.
This time, anger was not hard to come by. He was surrounded by warriors of his First Cahokian and legionaries of the Sixth. Tahtay was close by, fighting at great personal risk like a man possessed. Ahead of him were Romans in peril, among them the Imperator of Roma going blade to blade with the Mongol foe.
Marcellinus had fallen to a fire lancer outside Yupkoyvi. It would not happen here. He chose an enemy, raised his heavy contus, and charged forward.
The Jin lancer saw Marcellinus coming and turned his deadly torrent of flame toward him. Marcellinus swung his lance around quarterstaff-style; it was a clumsy move, but the heavy wood of the contus parried the barrel of the fire lance. Hot sparks raked Marcellinus’s cheek, but he kept running forward, reversing his grip on his lance and thrusting it forward. It smashed into the Jin’s face mask and propelled the man backward. The column of fire arced into the air, and around Marcellinus came Dustu, leaping at the Jin. With the dull crack of his club, the lancer was tumbling into the dirt, his skull cracked and his neck probably broken.
The fire lance hit the ground, still spewing flame. Marcellinus jumped over it and chose his next Jin target.
&nbs
p; Men came to his side to fight. For a while it was Appius Gallus and three anonymous legionaries of the First. Then, as Marcellinus pulled his sword from the gut of a Mongol archer he had just dragged from his mount and stabbed, he found Dustu again to his left and Takoda to his right.
Takoda wasn’t supposed to be fighting. Then again, neither was Marcellinus.
It was a surreal fight. Marcellinus had no breath to speak, neither to berate nor to command. He was sucking burning air into his lungs, and every time he closed with a fire lancer, it got worse. The men around him were coughing, their eyes streaming. It was not hard to imagine they were in Hades, buried deep in the underworld, there to fight forever.
The blur of combat continued. Fortunately, their foes were easy to pick out. Wearing bright feathers? A foe of the Yokot’an Maya: stab him with a gladius. A sinister helmet looming out of the smoke bearing a carved human face out of a nightmare? Cleave it with an ax.
A Jin bearing a fire lance? Most definitely a foe. And now, after several minutes spent battling with Tlingit and Maya, Marcellinus was back among them. Fortunately, the fire lances were two-handed weapons; once Marcellinus had driven back the Mongol horseman who was guarding him, the Jin could only swing his weapon and try to spray him with flame. Many times Marcellinus felt the hot breath of fire scorch his flesh or beat against his breastplate with a noise as if he were being hosed down with water. Each time, he sent the Jin to hell.
They got into a rhythm, now, he and Dustu and Takoda and four others of the First Cahokian who had joined them. Dustu and one of the other Cahokians would club at the Mongol cataphract in his heavy armor and try to take down either the horse or the man. Takoda and the rest would drive back any surrounding Mongols, isolating the fire lancer. Marcellinus would then assault the Jin if there was not already a legionary from the Third Parthica leaping in to do the job himself. All around them other teams of Romans and Cahokians were doing the same thing.
And then as Marcellinus leaped forward through the smoke, he came across Tahtay with his sash pinned and knew he could go no farther.
Tahtay was battling a fire lancer. His ten-foot sash was taut, one end attached to his waist, its other end hammered into the ground with a stake. As a Fire Heart of the Blackfoot, Tahtay could not retreat from the position he now held even if it meant his death.
Marcellinus did not need to ask why Tahtay had chosen that spot to make his stand. Hadrianus was fighting just twenty feet behind him, a gladius in one hand and his shield in the other. Because of the crush of battle they could get no closer to the Imperator than that, but Takoda and Dustu came in around Marcellinus and Tahtay, along with a battered-looking foot soldier of the Third with gladius and scutum and a Praetorian with so much blood on his face and so many burns across his body that it was a wonder he could still move, let alone fight, and the six of them waged a defensive action then and there against an onslaught of a dozen more Jin fire lancers and their Mongol escorts.
Marcellinus had lost the heavy lance long before. He had fought with the ax for a while, but now his gladius was in his hand, his last remaining weapon. Even in the fierce melee, with his mind a haze of battle fury, Marcellinus instinctively felt the moment when the battle turned.
The Jin were beginning to lose spirit. Most were on their second fire lances now, the first having coughed and died. They were backing up, away from the infantry square of the Third, and they kept stealing glances behind them as if they expected the Mongol heavies to desert them at any moment.
A prescient fear, because that was exactly what the Mongol cavalry did. Marcellinus neither saw nor heard a signal, but with one accord the Mongol horsemen steered their mounts left and galloped away, leaving fifty fire lancers unsupported. Most fought on and were cut down; a dozen attempted to flee and were chased and gutted. The remainder dropped their lances and fell to their knees trying to surrender, but it was much too late for that, and they perished, too.
Marcellinus pulled his gladius from the neck of a Jin warrior and blinked, his eyes stinging from the smoke. Dustu and Takoda were now to his left, and Furnius had somehow appeared on his other side, wide-eyed and bloodied. They all turned this way and that, peering into the haze for enemies.
As clear thought returned, Marcellinus realized he no longer could see the Imperator and had become separated from Tahtay; he could not, in fact, even see the infantry square of the Third they had just been fighting tooth and nail to defend.
The sun struggled to pierce the pall of smoke above them, its golden orb so obscured that Marcellinus could look straight at it without discomfort. And so that direction must be south or slightly west of south, and they needed it behind them if they were to walk back into the area where the Roman orbis had stood.
He coughed as another wave of smoke rolled across the battlefield. Damn it. After surviving so many attacks, was it his fate to die from asphyxiation?
Never had Marcellinus been on a battlefield where the air was so full of explosions and smoke. He was in no doubt: what they were witnessing today was the future of warfare. And it was terrifying.
“That way,” said Furnius. “Holy Cybele…”
Marcellinus’s answer was forestalled by another thick, retching cough. He merely nodded, and they walked north.
The first man he saw was Akecheta with a bloody burn across his face, and then others coalesced from the hellscape around them. Here were the Cahokians, their clubs and axes bloody. Some already wore the distinctive Mongol scalps on their belts, others the feathered braids of the Maya, dripping gore onto their legs and onto the ground. Even in the thick of battle the Hesperians would have their trophies, though having seen their skill at scalping, Marcellinus knew that such trophy hunting had not slowed them down more than a few moments.
And here, now, were the remains of the Imperator’s Praetorian Guard, scattered among the other more conventionally armored legionaries of the First and Second Cohorts of III Parthica. Praetorians, yes, obvious by their distinctive armor and plumes, battered and burned, sooty and sweat-stained, pale shadows of the splendid figures they had cut when Marcellinus had first seen them in the Oyo Valley all those years before. The smoke was clearing now that the fire lances were all out, rising to reveal a battlefield scene out of hell.
Recognizing Marcellinus, the Praetorians ushered him, Furnius, and the two Cahokians forward into a large square of smoky, sooty legionaries.
And there Marcellinus found his Imperator. Praetorians knelt on either side of him, and for a long and anguished moment Marcellinus thought Hadrianus was dead. Then the Imperator turned his head an inch at a time, torturously slowly, and looked at Marcellinus.
Marcellinus moved closer. Blood-darkened bandages swathed the Imperator’s midsection. His face was as pale as parchment, and he had closed his eyes again, and although his breathing was irregular and unsteady Marcellinus did not think he had lost consciousness. “Hail, Caesar.”
The Imperator almost grinned, though he looked as if it pained him. “Gaius. Hail.”
“He should not speak,” the Praetorian said to Marcellinus, and then leaned over Hadrianus. “You must not try to speak, Caesar.” But Hadrianus’s head lolled to one side, and now he was certainly out cold.
Above them, brightly colored flying craft appeared, sending a wave of alarm across the square until they were identified as Macaw Warriors of the Hand rather than aerial warriors of the Yokot’an Maya. Marcellinus looked around him for a ranking tribune of the Third but saw only its primus pilus, weary and begrimed, exchanging notes with the Imperator’s adjutants.
And now they heard the deep rumble of hooves. Horsemen were bearing down on them from the north.
Takoda’s shoulders fell, and Dustu’s chin dropped to his chest as if he had suddenly fallen asleep. Both men were dirty, smoky, and ragged, their arms straight down by their sides, weapons almost slipping from their fingers. Marcellinus could not imagine they could fight anymore today.
“Fuck,” said Furnius, the onl
y one of them who seemed to have retained the power of speech.
However, the Praetorians were not reacting with alarm, and listening to the sound, Marcellinus nodded with relief.
Moments later the Chernye Klobuki thundered in all around them, their leader’s face the picture of concern and chagrin, and Marcellinus found that he could speak after all. “Merda. Decinius Sabinus.”
Tied onto the horse behind the Chernye decurion was the limp body of a familiar figure, his white helmet still strapped to his head, his body a hacked-up mass of bloody wounds. Alongside rode Aelfric and a tribune of the Third, their faces grim.
Praetor Decinius Sabinus had fallen in battle, just as he had predicted he would.
—
As they cut Sabinus off the horse and laid him on the ground, the primus pilus of the Third came running, calling Sabinus’s name and crying out curses to the gods. Aelfric and the other tribune dismounted more quietly, their heads lowered.
Suddenly, Marcellinus’s remaining strength gave out. He collapsed to the ground beside Sabinus, not in grief, for he was too drained by the combat he had just been through to feel much of anything. It was more through some kind of fellow feeling that was based on the camaraderie they had shared over the last year. A fragmented, inchoate feeling that Decinius Sabinus might be dead, but at least he did not deserve to be alone.
Then he rubbed his eyes. The Imperator down, Sabinus down, and a Praetor, two tribunes, and a primus pilus all standing around in shock, saying nothing, doing nothing.
Marcellinus roughly shoved himself back up onto his feet. Time to get up to date on what was going on elsewhere on this terrible battlefield.
—
The central contingent of Mongol horsemen under the command of Subodei Badahur had fallen back in the face of repeated onslaughts from the cataphracts of the Ala I Gallorum et Pannoniorum. The damage done to the Khan’s camp by Cahokia’s Sky Lanterns and Thunderbirds earlier that day had dramatically reduced the number of remounts available to the Mongol cavalry, and they badly needed to consolidate. Meanwhile, Lucius Agrippa had managed to bring order back to his fragmented cohorts and, with the support of the Ala IV Polovtsia, had reestablished a line.
