Sands of Egypt

by S. J. A. Turney

  For just a heartbeat or two, he found himself surprisingly close to the front, and a desperate, wild-eyed Aegyptian threw a panicked thrust at him. Almost negligently, Fronto knocked the blade aside with his own and brought it back across in a slash at neck height. He was rewarded with a gurgling noise as a blood slick poured from the man’s neck down onto his chain shirt, and he toppled, dying. Then suddenly Fronto was back among the lines again, and in the chaotic press he couldn’t determine whether he had been subtly shuffled back out of danger by his men or simply bypassed by them as they tried to push forwards. Whatever the case, the result was the same. He was once more several lines back from the action.

  A horn blared somewhere ahead, and a strange shiver of panic seemed to echo across the fight. It was only as the enemy began to disengage that Fronto finally recognised that honking noise.

  Gallic horns.

  Galronus and his cavalry were close ahead, and the sudden realisation that part of Caesar’s force was behind them had finally broken the spirit of the Aegyptians. Indeed, as the honking of the Gallic horns repeated, becoming gradually louder as they closed, the fight broke up in a flurry, what was left of the enemy turning to flee. Legionaries did their best to take down Aegyptians as they ran, with varying degrees of success.

  ‘Hold your positions,’ Fronto bellowed as men began to lurch forwards in pursuit. Around the street, centurions blew their whistles and shouted orders, optios using their staves to jab and smack men who were too keen on the pursuit to listen. In moments the enemy were running away down the street, and the legionaries were re-forming into their units.

  Fronto almost smiled at the aural tableau that followed. The din of desperate men running away, overlain with the hooming of Gallic horns, became the sound of ever-more-panicked men running back this way, overrun with those same horns and the noise of hooves pounding on stone.

  ‘Blow your whistles,’ Fronto yelled as the Aegyptians rounded a corner, once more heading back towards the soldiers. As the centurions did so, the Gallic cavalry appeared. Galronus was close to the front, swooping low over his horse’s neck and swinging out with a sword to take the head from a screaming native. The cavalry were on them, then, riding down those poor bastards who had fled one enemy only to run straight into another. Their hasty attempts to surrender were too late as the majority went down under churning hooves or to scything cavalry blades, others fleeing into the arms of waiting legionaries who offered no quarter.

  Fronto had been just in time having the whistles blown. It was almost certainly only the sound of Roman officers’ whistles that had warned the cavalry of what lay around the corner, else they might not have had sufficient warning to stop in time and could have also ridden down lines of legionaries by mistake.

  As the last few surviving enemy infantry raced up staircases or into narrow alleys or doorways to get away from this twin nightmare, Galronus slowed and trotted over to Fronto.

  ‘You took your time getting here,’ he grinned.

  Fronto glared at him, and the Remi noble laughed. ‘Seasons turn unnoticed here, don’t they? I wonder who’s consul now.’

  ‘Shut up. We ran into difficulties.’

  Galronus fell silent, but there was still an amused smile on his face.

  ‘Caesar’s force is clearing to the north. Have you seen them?’

  Galronus shook his head. ‘Not yet, but there’s little resistance west from here now. The fleet has been battering the north coast with rocks and bolts enough that the enemy all fled south and ran straight into us in an area of fields and orchards. It was a mistake they won’t get to repeat.’

  ‘So not much for us to do now?’

  Galronus gestured back along the street and to the bend they had rounded. ‘There are maybe three blocks and side streets that way until you get to where we landed. There, it’s nice and open and green from north coast to south. A sort of belt of fields between the houses and heppy-thingummy.’

  ‘Heptastadion,’ Fronto said absently. ‘And what’s that like?’

  ‘Some enterprising fellow in the past decided that the bridge heppy-thing needed defending. It’s more or less a little fort. Quite well-manned, since it had its own garrison, but it now has everyone who’s fallen back across the island too.’

  ‘A tough proposition?’

  ‘For a horse, certainly.’

  Fronto glared daggers at him, and Galronus continued with a sigh. ‘Without siege equipment, or at least ladders, you’re going to find it a hard fight.’

  ‘Alright,’ Fronto murmured. ‘Let’s go have a look.’

  As he issued commands to the centurions and Salvius Cursor, whom he placed in command, Galronus had a second horse brought up. By the time the legionaries were beginning to march west once more, making for the last area of resistance on the island and the end of the Heptastadion, Fronto was mounted and with Galronus. At the Remi’s command, the horsemen formed up and began to trot west, ahead of the infantry and picking up the pace as they went.

  Sure enough, as Galronus had intimated, there was only a short stretch of the urban sprawl remaining before they emerged into open land. This fertile ground in a kingdom largely of desert had been made use of like all other cultivatable areas, given over to tightly packed farming with a few small orchards.

  As they moved, they occasionally saw signs of remaining Aegyptian soldiers down the side alleys in one direction or the other, but as they rode, Fronto was aware of the infantry following on behind, dispatching small units along every street and alley to clear out lurking defenders. By the time they reached the Heptastadion what resistance remained would be negligible.

  Feeling somewhat relieved, despite what lay ahead, Fronto and the cavalry rode out across the grassland and between the crops, trying not to destroy them. After all, not only were the farmers potentially not at fault in any way, but also the legion might be relying on those crops sometime soon.

  He became aware of the increasing Roman control of the island as they moved through sizzling sunshine and lush fields. Further off to the north they could now see other units of infantry emerging from streets. Here and there, small groups of panicked natives ran for the southwest and their only hope of safety, and as they reached a rise in the open land, Fronto could see the shapes of Roman ships out to sea, just a few hundred paces from shore, where they continually released missiles at the land.

  It seemed their plan had worked well. Now, if they could take the Heptastadion, their control of Pharos Island would be complete – no small coup considering the relative strengths of Arsinoë and Caesar’s forces.

  Fronto’s first sight of the Heptastadion from this angle filled him with uncertainty.

  The huge, straight breakwater marched from Pharos to the mainland, covering a distance of almost a mile, the arched bridge in it that the locals had used to sneak their ships through perhaps a third of the way along. He could make out little of the far end of the great work, for the heat haze made everything wavering and indistinct, but the near end had been fortified sometime in the past. What had once been a small residential area had been reworked with a view to defence. Houses in a horseshoe shape around the end of the great mole had been joined with ramparts, and their exterior windows blocked to form a fortress wall. Some of the houses had been raised to become towers of perhaps thirty feet in height. Only one gate had been left in the blank wall, and all other structures outside the ring of buildings had been torn down to make an open area around the fort.

  It was surprisingly defensive for a structure cobbled together from old houses. Certainly it would cost the legion dearly to take the place, and take it they must if they wanted control of the island. If the enemy had sufficient archers on those walls and towers then many, many legionaries would die before they broke in.

  Fronto’s gaze scanned the upper regions, trying to determine the level of defence, and it was then that he realised there were not the strong archers he’d expected. More than that, there seemed to be far fewer fig
ures up there at all, fewer than Galronus’ comments had suggested they would find. The reason became clearer as he watched, more and more figures disappearing by the moment.

  The defences were emptying.

  Now, as they came closer, he could hear noises from atop the walls, and though it was too far away to make out words, the general tone was unmistakable:

  Panic.

  He turned, eyes narrowed against the sun. Roman legionaries were pouring from the streets of Pharos and out into the open land in speedy, triumphant units, following in the wake of the cavalry. Rome’s power was on display as they finalised their hold on the island, and the last defenders, who had probably been given the command to hold this fort at all costs, had succumbed to fear and abandoned their posts.

  The fort was rapidly clearing of men. Glancing off to the south he could see those fleeing Aegyptians running along the Heptastadion for the city of Alexandria beyond, and the perceived safety of their young princess’ army. There were, in fact, so many people running now that some were pushed off the mole in the press and fell into the water. Others dived in on purpose, the better to get away from the approaching legion.

  Fronto, a relieved smile crossing his face, gestured to a rider nearby. ‘Take the word to the legions. The fort is ours for the taking. Get the door open and chase the bastards back along the pier to their mothers.’

  Grinning, he watched the last defenders of Pharos leaving, granting them control of the island.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘The harbour will be ours entire within the day.’

  Fronto nodded absently at Salvius Cursor’s blasé prediction. He was probably right, of course. Something was nagging at Fronto, though, something unidentified that hovered on the edge of his awareness. The Caesarian army had rolled across Pharos like a runaway cart, demolishing all resistance in the way, but despite their seemingly easy victory he couldn’t help but recall watching the enemy running back along the Heptastadion, and the piles of dead that had been gathered afterwards as the island was consolidated.

  For such a hard fought victory, the number of enemy dead was still rather minor. Unusually so. Fronto had seen enough battles in his life to know what kind of toll to expect from this sort of action, and this was not it. Many of the enemy had fled back to their own lines without falling. It was almost as though some enemy officer had given them orders not to throw their lives away but to withdraw and defend in the face of destruction. A very sensible approach, in Fronto’s opinion.

  Yes, they had gained control of Pharos, and they were on the brink of controlling the Heptastadion, which would grant them complete control of the Great Harbour, but the enemy were yet strong. They still outnumbered the Romans and were now playing a sensible game. That worried Fronto. When Achillas had been the Aegyptians’ commander, they had thrown away men and made poor tactical decisions. This new general was not doing that. He had pulled back his men and rallied in the city, and as yet they had seen no real sign of the heavy fist of the enemy – the Gabiniani. What would he do next?

  ‘The fort is going to fall,’ Salvius said with an air of satisfaction.

  Another nod from the legate. Yes, it would. But the fort was not what bothered Fronto.

  Sweeping across Pharos, they had overrun the abandoned fortification at their end of the great mole with ease. They had managed to take a few prisoners and kill a few of the last fleeing soldiers. The captives had been tight lipped, even under torture, and the Romans had gained little from them they had not already known. The common soldiery could not be expected to know the minds of their senior generals, and so the need for information from them had not been pressed.

  In control of the island-end fort, Caesar had garrisoned it and set his men to clearing the island of resistance. There, they had encountered the first unpleasant surprise. What they had assumed to be a small civilian suburb of Alexandria had turned out to be something quite different. No families were to be found therein. Instead, traps had been set in some of the buildings, while others had been sealed tight and housed fanatical archers or slingers who would wait for legionaries to pass by and then drop them with shots unseen from windows.

  The mess the problem caused had led Caesar to drastic action. Over the rest of that day and the next, while the fort was consolidated and garrisoned and supplies and equipment procured and shipped, the legion was set to work demolishing the houses of Pharos. Now, as the morning sun beat down on the third day since their island landing, little remained of the small town but a field of rubble punctuated by burial pits. From the Heptastadion fortress, they could now see clear all the way to the fort by the great lighthouse over a field of broken stones.

  Pharos had gone.

  Then, today, the next stage of consolidation had begun. Stones from the demolished houses were being carried along the great work to that arched bridge in the mole, and there dumped into the shallow harbour’s waters, more rubble being brought there by ship. Hour by hour tons of stone were being submerged, gradually blocking the bridge against any future traffic, leaving the harbour mouth the only access, controlled by Caesar’s forts.

  Everything seemed to be working smoothly.

  But there were nagging doubts for Fronto.

  The enemy force had simply watched all this happening from the city, waiting patiently. And while the Romans controlled the arms of the harbour and the island that enclosed it, the Great Harbour’s docks and jetties remained under enemy control, Caesar’s ships being berthed in the smaller Palace Harbour. The Aegyptians had a few ships that simply sat waiting, like their army. What they had planned worried him.

  And now the enemy were pulling back again, a little further, like the tide. The problem with the tide going out, though, was that it inevitably came back in.

  Caesar had brought artillery and the few archers he commanded along the Heptastadion and begun to rake the ramparts of the fortification at the city end with missiles. A few men had died and then the enemy had been sure to keep their heads down. Now there was an uncomfortable silence as the archers and artillerists waited, saving their ammunition, preparing for the next time a head popped up.

  ‘They’re not there,’ Fronto said finally.

  ‘What?’ Salvius Cursor frowned at him.

  ‘They’re not ducked down behind the walls. They’ve gone. They’ve pulled out while we weren’t looking.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Fronto chewed his lip. Well, this place is not all that defensible. After all, it’s designed to stop attackers getting onto the Heptastadion, not off it. All its main features point at the city. As you predicted, the place would fall easily, but they know that too, and their current commander is not in the habit of wasting men.’

  ‘I think you’re reading too much into this,’ Salvius grunted. ‘You credit them with more intelligence than they have. They panicked and fled from the island. It wasn’t some grand military withdrawal.’

  ‘I thought that at the time. And yes, perhaps those last men pulling back from the other fort did panic, like the men trapped in the street between us and the cavalry, but I think that was just a mistake in an otherwise solid plan. We are a smaller force than they. They’re wearing us down with attrition. We lost men taking the island, but we lost more to the nasty little surprises they left for us in the town. For the sacrifice of one archer left in a house they could take out half a dozen of our men before we got to them. They’re making us work hard, wearing us down and tiring us out.’

  ‘But we’ve nearly done it. In half an hour we’ll control the harbour.’

  ‘For how long?’ Fronto mumbled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re building up to something. I just can’t quite grasp what, but they’ve more or less given us the harbour with little cost to them. They’ll come back at us, and soon, but they’re waiting for something and I can’t work out what.’

  ‘You are a storm crow, Fronto.’

  ‘Mark me: trouble is coming our way.’

&nbs
p; ‘Shall I give the order to the men?’ Salvius said, changing the topic.

  Fronto peered at the empty battlements of the fortress and sighed. ‘Might as well. We don’t know what they’ve got planned, and we’re probably walking right into whatever they intend, but what other choice do we have?’

  Salvius Cursor rolled his eyes and turned to the signifer and the cornicen behind him, telling them to give the signal. As the horn blared out, Fronto watched the last stage of the harbour battle unfolding. The twin artillery pieces sitting at the sides of the great stone walkway remained pointed at the battlements, but the unit of archers split and moved from their solid lines to either side, gathering with the artillery and leaving a clear passage through the middle. The steady tramp of boots arose as the three cohorts lined up along the Heptastadion began to move. The front century had left their shields behind, instead carrying a huge timber beam from the Pharos ruins.

  He watched the legionaries reach the gates of the fortress without incident and begin to swing the beam, smashing it against the gate repeatedly, every blow of the timber heartbeat bringing the sound of cracking and splintering, as the gate gradually broke and gave. It took less than a quarter of an hour to smash the gates open sufficiently to grant the men access.

  At Carfulenus’ command the next three centuries ran through the gate, swords out and shields up, ready for any lurking enemies. Almost a dozen went down in agony just inside the gate before the attack was halted with urgent commands. Fronto nodded to himself glumly as he and the tribune hurried towards the gate where a centurion was waving to them.

  ‘See?’ he said to Salvius as they peered into the heart of the deserted fort to see the hundreds of small caltrops spread across the ground, barely noticeable in the shadow of the gate. Men sat or leaned against the wall, clutching crippled feet with barbed iron points buried deep in them.

  ‘It’s just a few caltrops. The men will recover.’

  ‘But they’re out of the fight. More men out and looking at a month of healing before full effectiveness, and all at no cost to the enemy. They’re planning something. They continue to pull back and make us pay for every foot we advance. There will be other surprises in the fort.’