Sands of Egypt

by S. J. A. Turney

  Salvius gave him a despairing look, but nodded. ‘I shall take charge of occupying the fort. We’ll go carefully.’

  Fronto waved him on, turning instead to look across the water at the city, an enemy lurking there, out of sight.

  ‘What are you up to, Princess? What are you planning?’ he fumed as he turned back to watch the three cohorts moving into the fortress and taking control. Occasionally he heard cries of alarm or pain as the men discovered traps or nasty surprises left by the enemy. Back along the Heptastadion he could see other men on board two triremes completing the infill of the bridge which was yet still well below the waterline. Then, back across the harbour on the island, he could see the bulk of the Roman force embarking.

  Their army was so spread out now. That was another worry. They had been in control of the palace and its redoubt with only a small force and had been careful and conservative with their activity. Yes, they now had a much larger force, but the push to control the island, the mole and the harbour had resulted in that force being so divided that, if anything, their territory was less well defended than before. Men at the palace redoubt. Men at the twin forts at the harbour mouth. Men at the fortifications at both ends of the Heptastadion, and the lion’s share now boarding ships.

  This, Fronto couldn’t help but think, was a mistake.

  Other officers had thrown their support behind the idea of pushing to control the city’s waterfront and thereby deny the enemy any naval capability in the Great Harbour. The idea was to man the Heptastadion fortification with three cohorts, the maximum force that could realistically be housed there, and to bring the rest of the force across on ships, along the side of the great mole. Then, when all was prepared, to land the men at the same time as the cohorts sallied forth from the fort, and seize control of the shoreline.

  What Fronto had pointed out in a tired tone at that briefing was that the shoreline was the very place from which they had pulled out when the enemy first arrived, as it was far too difficult to hold. Yes, he’d argued in the face of opposition, the army was now far more numerous, but they were also more widespread. It was a mistake. But it was a mistake they were determined to make.

  To the background melody of soldiers occupying the fort, with the occasional scream of an encountered trap, of the general hum of city life, and of the two Roman triremes busy dropping stones into the water to fill the arch bridge, Fronto waited and fretted.

  He was almost expecting it when it happened.

  A series of honks and blarts across the city cut through the aural tapestry like a sword. Clearly everyone else had heard it, too, for all activity in the fort ceased instantly, and the Roman force at the city end of the mole fell silent, listening to the discordant chorus.

  Then they came.

  An area some four hundred paces across stood clear and empty between the Heptastadion fort and the nearest blocks of the city, open flat land that had been left clear deliberately to give the fort a good field of missile range.

  Into that open space poured the Aegyptian army.

  They did not look panicked. They did not look like they were reacting, or on the defensive. They looked like a well-organised field army going to war, and forming the front centre of the force: two thousand Gabiniani, like some parody of a Roman legion, their equipment akin to that of Fronto’s men, but adorned with Aegyptian accoutrements, their shield design a weird native one, animal pelts over their shoulders. Once again, Fronto cursed the fact that the young princess had escaped the palace and removed the headstrong and foolish Achillas from command. Their new general knew what he was doing.

  Thousands of men began to assemble in careful lines, armed and ready, confident of victory.

  Given time to prepare, the Romans could have mounted artillery on the fort’s ramparts, gathered every missile they could, and put them up there. But they’d had no time. The enemy stood in a perfect killing zone for missiles, and Rome had nothing to throw at them. The legion had teeth but its mouth was shut.

  Legionaries began to line the walls of the fort, looking down at the assembling force, and even in the silence Fronto could sense the air of nervousness. Rome had placed three cohorts into the playground of the enemy.

  Fronto turned, looking over his shoulder. Their only hope of holding this end of the Heptastadion and perhaps, in fact, not being wiped out entirely, was the rest of the army. He felt a few moments of tentative relief as he spotted the ships bearing their soldiers ploughing through the harbour’s waters at a fast pace, aware of trouble and trying to deliver relief in time. As such, the fleet was shunning formation, each hurtling as fast as it could on its individual path.

  That could be their undoing.

  His relief evaporated at the sight of what lay beyond them. Where just moments ago there had been two Roman triremes dumping rocks into the water back beyond the last approaching ship, halfway between the fleet and the island they had just left, there were instead two blazing infernos.

  Fronto’s eyes widened in shock. The triremes had been fired with speed and efficiency, and now he could see how. Other, smaller ships from the Aegyptian fleet were hurtling through the bridge that was not yet blocked. The cunning bastards. The Romans had dropped enough rocks there over the past hours that no deep-keeled warship stood a chance of getting through the gap, but the small, shallow boats were coming through, straight over the blockage that had not yet become deep enough to stop them. Just like those boats they had tried to send against the Rhodians in battle, these small vessels were crammed with combustible material. Even now several had passed the flaming triremes and were racing across the harbour in the wake of the fleet.

  Finally, some of the ships of the Roman relief fleet noticed the disaster occurring behind them, but there was nothing they could do about it. If the fleet halted to deal with the threat closing on them from behind, then they could not deliver the reserves to the shore, and the Aegyptians would annihilate the cohorts there with ease. Instead they had to hope they could get to shore, drop their men and still have time to turn against this secondary threat before the Aegyptians could fire the entire fleet.

  Damn that cursed cow Arsinoë and the clever shithead she had put in charge of the army.

  Signals were given across the fleet as a few of the vessels slowed. Somewhere on one of those ships Brutus was in command, and he would now be forming a plan. No man stood a better chance of solving this than him, unless that be Tiberius Nero, the hero of the pirate wars, who, thank the gods, served alongside Brutus.

  A roar drew Fronto’s attention back to the enemy. Thousands of men now stood in the space before the city, and at a new signal units sidestepped to make space. Archers with very dark skin and brilliant white tunics, hair straight and black, shuffled forwards with shields of mottled animal hides. These they dropped and crouched behind, drawing up in a line three men deep all across the space.

  Fronto prayed Salvius and Carfulenus had the sense to keep the men in the fort in cover as another command began the barrage. Arrows struck the top of the parapet and many sailed over, arcing high in order to drop from the sky like a rain of death inside the fort.

  A cacophony of cries suggested that not all the men in there were out of danger. Likely the officers had not considered the likelihood of the enemy dropping arrows over the wall like that. The disaster had already begun. Only something bold was going to change things now.

  Hoping Brutus and Nero knew what they were doing, and praying that someone had carried news of this to Caesar, who was somewhere further back with the army, he committed himself to action. Racing forwards, he passed from the Heptastadion into that beleaguered fortress. The sight that greeted him was bleak. Men clutching injured feet hid in the safety of the gate passage, while out in the open courtyard area, between the north and south gates, half the century of men who had been given the task of clearing away the caltrops now lay dead in the blistering sun, arrow shafts jutting up like accusing fingers. The only active soldiers he could see, which was
astonishing given that three cohorts were now based here, were small groups of legionaries hiding in the lee of walls or crouching behind battlements, the rest safely inside.

  In mere moments he spotted Salvius Cursor lurking in the shadow of the exterior gate opposite, fuming at his impotence and desiring nothing more than to get his teeth into the enemy. Fronto moved to rush quickly across the courtyard, but even as he did so the next flurry of arrows dropped from the sky, putting out of their misery several of the wounded men floundering on the ground and yelling. Fronto pulled himself up short and waited for the barrage to die down, then ran for it across the sandy flagstones. Salvius seemed genuinely glad to see him, which was alarming in itself.

  ‘Tribune, keep the men under cover, but have them ready to sally on command. As soon as I give the word I want them pouring out of that gate.’

  Salvius gave him a horrible feral grin. ‘Time to bloody our blades.’

  ‘Hades, yes. I have no intention of sitting here and waiting. If we don’t do something to break them, we’re going to be annihilated. I need to time it with the landings, though. What’s left of three cohorts charging against that lot would look like an angry child charging a century of veterans waving a stick.’

  Salvius saluted and turned to the standard bearer beside him, who looked as though he might sweat to death under the weight of his burden and the horribly impractical wolf skin he wore over his helmet. ‘Pass the word to every officer to form their men under cover. Have every century move as close to the front gate as they can, while staying under shelter from arrows, and be ready to sally from the gate at the legate’s signal.’

  He then turned to the men lurking nearby at the gate.

  ‘Get that bar removed and the gates ready to open at a heartbeat’s notice.’

  ‘Sir? What if they attack?’

  ‘Then you draw the pointed thing at your side and you stick the sharp end in them, soldier. Get the damn gate ready to open and stop questioning my orders.’

  Flushing, the soldier saluted and ran over to the gate, readying his men. Leaving Salvius and the legionaries to it, Fronto looked this way and that and spotted a man emerging from a rooftop onto the wall, shield held over his head and crouched low. Reasoning that the nearest stairs must lie there, he took a deep breath and ran once more across the courtyard to the door of that building. For just a moment he panicked that he was going to fall as his knee gave way, but he gritted his teeth and lurched back into a run, disappearing in through the doorway as the next barrage of arrows began to fall where he had just been. Grabbing the Fortuna amulet at his neck, he thanked the goddess of luck for her continued care and peered around.

  An entire century of men and more stood silent and worried in the dim interior, hiding from the rain of iron-headed destruction. They lowered their eyes respectfully in the presence of a senior officer as Fronto spotted the staircase in the corner and began to push through the crowd. As they tried their best to pull back and make room, he gestured to the corner.

  ‘Up to the walls?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Nodding his thanks, Fronto forged on through the tense crowd of men to the stairs and began to climb. It came as no surprise when he emerged onto a second level equally full of men. The only real open area here lay in another corner where sunlight announced stairs emerging onto the ramparts. Hurrying across, he noted with a sour look the arrows lying there where they had dropped. No wonder the men were not gathering in that corner.

  ‘Anyone here wounded?’

  Two or three men, looking nervous, raised their hands. Fronto looked at them and selected the worst of the three, a man who still had an arrow jutting from his forearm, snapped off below the flights. ‘Lucky you, soldier. You get to stay here when we sally, ‘cause I want your shield.’

  With a grateful look, the legionary handed over the scarred shield with his uninjured arm. Fronto took it, raised it with difficulty in the press and approached the steps. Taking a breath and hunching below it, he scurried up the steps, emerging into the sizzling sunshine.

  Almost instantly, he heard someone yell ‘Down!’ and saw the soldiers up here crouch lower and push themselves against the wall. Fronto hunched under the shield and ran. Time was too short now. Hearing the clatter of arrows on stone all around him, he reached the area of wall closest to where the Heptastadion and the shore met and clambered into the tower there, hurtling up another set of steps and emerging onto the top.

  The soldier there looked as tense as everyone else, but stood tall with his shield at his side.

  ‘Not finding cover?’ Fronto breathed at him, sucking in air after all the climbing and running.

  ‘Too high here, sir, and too far away. No arrow’s come close.’

  ‘Good.’ Lowering the shield, Fronto hurried to the edge and looked down.

  He was immediately relieved. The fleet had almost reached the shore now, and Brutus had been at work. The larger ships with the greater numbers of soldiers on board had been given priority and had moved to the front in a line six vessels wide, ready to disgorge their cargo simultaneously. Lesser vessels followed in two more lines, the smaller fire ships still chasing them but unable to quite catch up with the fast Roman warships. Fronto smiled to see the Ajax and the Chimaera among the front line.

  He looked down from the tower and spotted a signifer and a cornicen standing together in the shade of the next tower.

  ‘You there.’

  The men looked up, squinting into the sun, straightening and saluting as they spotted the senior officer.

  ‘How loud can you tootle your horn?’

  The cornicen looked faintly offended at the phrase, but yelled back. ‘If I try hard, they’ll hear me in Tartarus, sir.’

  ‘Good. The moment I give you the signal, I want you to sound the Sixth’s, the Twenty Seventh’s and the Thirty Seventh’s orders to advance at double time. All of them. You can do that?’

  ‘I can, sir.’

  Fronto turned back to the sea to catch the first ship striking the dock. As it rocked to a halt, men were leaping to the jetty even before the ramp was run out. Ropes were thrown and looped around the cleats but nothing was tied, the men holding the ships to shore with simple muscle power as the soldiers disembarked as fast as they could. He couldn’t tell whether they were the Twenty Seventh or the Thirty Seventh, but it mattered not. All the calls would be given.

  Moments later the second and third ship were mirroring the action, cohorts of men hurrying from the quay to fall into formation along the shore. Even as he watched, that first ship unloaded its last man and the sailors pulled in the ropes swiftly, never having fastened them. In heartbeats the ship was pulling away from the quay and arcing wide to allow the next ship in. As it put back out to sea, Fronto watched the sailors dousing the sail and ropes and what they could of deck and hull with water, while artillerists loaded the weapon in the prow. They then began to pick up speed, slipping back past their own fleet and making for the fire ships that closed on them. Brutus was on form, clearly. Even as the first wave of men were landed, their ships changed role from transport to warship and raced back at the secondary threat.

  Good. He could trust Brutus and leave the naval activity to his friend. The big threat now was the army gathered up before the fort.

  He could hear them chanting in their weird language. It sounded warlike and angry. They were trying to make the Romans nervous, and from the sight of the men in the fort, it was working. But the Aegyptians had made one error. They had assumed they were untouchable. Just because they had the fort pinned down, the fleet under threat, and superior numbers, they felt they were on the cusp of victory.

  Fronto was about to change that.

  Holding his breath, he watched the last of the lead ships, the Ajax, land its men and begin to pull away, the second line of vessels approaching. The moment the last hobnailed boot of the first wave struck stone, Fronto turned again and gestured to the cornicen.

  ‘Now. Advance at the d
ouble.’

  The man saluted hurriedly and lifted the great curved horn to his mouth, taking a deep breath and blowing into it, unleashing three loud sequences of notes in quick succession, at least one of which the men down by the ships would recognise. Fronto turned back, looking down at the shore, and grinned as the men, startled by a call to advance being given from the fort and not their own officers, began to move in formation at a double march.

  Even as they started to advance, Fronto heard other orders relayed across the fort and the legionaries there also began to move, pouring from doorways, heedless now of potential death from above as they made for the main gate, beyond which lay open ground and the enemy force.

  This was it.

  The legion was moving to engage the enemy. The Aegyptians might outnumber them, but if they thought Rome was going to bend the knee in fear, then they were sadly mistaken. He just hoped the men had it in them to make the enemy regret offering battle.

  Something nagged at him, like someone pulling his sleeve, and on instinct he turned and looked down at the newly arrived cohorts on the shore, now marching into battle. Behind the front line, a man on a white horse with a scarlet cloak was looking up at him with a furrowed brow. Caesar had arrived and been immediately swept into an unexpected battle.

  Ah well. That was an argument they could have later. Right now there was an Aegyptian army to attack.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Fronto stood atop the highest of the fortress towers, giving him an excellent view of the northern, southern and eastern sides of the place. The Heptastadion mole behind them was dotted with men from the three cohorts and other support units on various tasks, but remained solidly in Roman hands.

  The east, where the Great Harbour’s quayside and many jetties lay, was now filled with Roman ships, while others sat out in the water, engaged in a conflict with a myriad of smaller Aegyptian vessels. Brutus might have planned his reaction better than anyone could have expected, but he was still having trouble. The Roman warships were to the Aegyptian skiffs as a bull to a fly, but like flies, the small vessels continually shifted, darting this way and that and harrying the bigger warships with fire arrows. Consequently the Roman ships, lacking military manpower, were expending much of their sailors’ time extinguishing fires. Brutus would carry the day, certainly, but it would be a long job and a difficult one, with attrition, and would keep the ships out of action elsewhere.