Sands of Egypt

by S. J. A. Turney

  As the Sixth Cohorts slowly caught up with them the thunder of hooves arose, and Fronto spotted the officers and commanders cantering along the sides of the column, surrounded by their personal guards, making for the head of the army in response to the tidings of the scouts. Caesar drew up alongside, eyes narrow.

  ‘Our Remi friend and the cavalry?’

  ‘Went east to find a crossing, General,’ Fronto replied.

  ‘My native advisors tell me that it is many miles to any reasonable cavalry crossing,’ Caesar murmured.

  ‘Thank the gods these aren’t reasonable cavalry, then,’ smiled Fronto. ‘They’ll find a way. I’ve yet to see the Germans miss a fight.’

  Brutus barked out a laugh at that.

  ‘We still need a way to get across for the rest of the army,’ Cassius said. ‘There used to be a bridge, apparently, and that was what we were making for, but the enemy have presumably brought that down. Given the number of men they’ve fielded on the far bank, even if the cavalry get across, they’ll be massively outnumbered without infantry support.’

  Fronto nodded. ‘But if there was a bridge across then that means it’s crossable. I have an idea.’

  The army surged on, the commanders now at the fore, with men of their guards riding ahead to clear away any potential dangers. It seemed only moments later when the enemy came into sight. Off to the left lay a stand of tall old sycamore fig trees and acacia, and to the right the sluggish wide flow of this branch of the Nilus. Centrally they could see what Ganymedes had sent against them.

  The veteran Aegyptian spearmen formed a solid wall on the far bank, four rows deep, cavalry sitting in ordered ranks behind them, the odd plume of an officer visible amid the lines and blocks. As a force it was considerably smaller than Caesar’s army. To Ganymedes, it probably represented all he thought necessary to keep an enemy from crossing. Of course, they had little familiarity with Rome, and the ingenuity the legions’ officers and engineers had shown, along with the experience they had gained during their time in Gaul, would give them an edge in situations like this.

  ‘How wide would you say that is?’ Cassius asked, gesturing ahead.

  ‘Perhaps forty feet,’ Hirtius mused.

  ‘Closer to fifty,’ Fronto corrected.

  ‘And the banks are supposedly steep,’ Cassius said again.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘The far side is higher, I think. Could be trouble here.’

  ‘Perhaps I could have my archers clear them?’ Mithridates mused.

  Caesar shook his head. ‘It would be a waste, Highness. They would have to loose from a distance of perhaps sixty feet, and the enemy have large, solid shields. The vast quantity of ammunition you would use to make any real difference could leave us deficient when we encounter the rest of the enemy. The Aegyptians know this land. If they have not fielded archers against us, then they know this to be true.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’ Cassius muttered.

  ‘We bridge the river,’ Fronto said brightly.

  All eyes turned to him.

  He grinned. ‘I’m not talking about sinking piles into the water and shaving planks under the eyes of the enemy. Even Pomponius and Mamurra couldn’t build us a bridge quickly enough here. But a makeshift crossing would do. We only need to get sufficient men over quickly to get stuck into them.’

  ‘What are you suggesting, Fronto?’ Caesar asked, frowning.

  The legate pointed off to the east as they slowed their horses to a gentle walk. ‘Sycamores. Several dozen of them. Ignore the acacia, but those sycamores are old. Some of them have got to be fifty feet tall at least. Bring them down and take off the branches, then drop them across the water, and there you have it. A bridge.’

  ‘It’ll be difficult to keep balance,’ Brutus said doubtfully. ‘Rounded surfaces and at an upward slope too.’

  Mithridates shook his head. ‘Then, gentlemen, why not build a mound this side. The trees could be made level with the far bank.’

  Caesar smiled and turned to Fronto. ‘Well?’

  ‘Give me half an hour.’

  Driving his heels into Bucephalus’ flanks, he wheeled and rode back along the line of men to the Sixth Cohorts. It was standard practice in marching order to place close to the front of the column, between the vanguard and the main force, a unit of engineers and pioneers, for at the end of a day’s march it would be their duty to begin creating a marching camp, while the rest of the army pulled in and joined them. As such, the Sixth Cohort was filled with the best technical minds of the legion, as well as the biggest, strongest arms and backs.

  None of these cohorts were carrying their poles hung with pack and equipment, for those were transported in the baggage train, allowing the pioneers to concentrate on their primary tasks, and three men in every four had a pick, shovel and mattock over their shoulders instead, the rest with surveying groma and other equipment.

  Their senior centurions marched at the head of the Cohort, alongside a junior tribune from the Thirty Seventh, who looked a little older and considerably more natural in uniform than most of his ilk. Dropping into a walk alongside them and pointing off towards the stand of tall trees, Fronto explained his plan. The tribune, clearly a cut above the usual glory-hungry politicians’ sons found in the role, sucked his teeth. ‘It’s feasible, sir, but it wouldn’t take a lot of imagination or work among the enemy to mess it all up for us.’

  Fronto frowned. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, sir, they only need to heave the logs about a bit and they’d tip our men off. If they can chuck water over the trunks, they’ll make them slippery too. There’s endless ways it could be made bloody awful for the men.’

  The centurion beside him shook his head. ‘A little extra work and we can stop them moving about anyway, sir. Nothing we can do if they sluice them down with water, but we can make them stable. Then it’s down to the footing of the lads.’

  The tribune nodded slowly, then looked up at Fronto. ‘My advice, sir, is to send the Second Cohort of the Thirty Seventh over first once we’ve built it. Their officers are proud. Call them the “Mountain Goats” sir. Should have seen them at the Heptastadion. Up and over narrow ramparts in the blink of an eye. They’re your men.’

  Fronto grinned. Let’s do it. Get to work. You lot deal with the trees and I’ll get the ground level for you.

  * * *

  Less than a quarter of an hour had passed since they had come within sight of the enemy at the river, and Fronto had spoken to the engineers, and just half an hour in total since Galronus had ridden off with his cavalry.

  The officers sat astride their mounts off to one side with their guards as the army continued to position itself, the baggage still arriving from the north, escorted by Mithridates’ horsemen. Four cohorts were at work or preparing, the rest saving their energy for what was clearly to come.

  The Second Cohort of the Thirty Seventh stood in solid lines, stripped of all unnecessary kit and ready to attack at the signal. The Sixth Cohort were hard at work as was evidenced by the sounds of sawing and chopping, planing and hammering from the copse of sycamores upstream, and by the occasional almighty crash as one of the larger trees suddenly disappeared from the canopy top. All the while, as the enemy watched them with a clear mix of trepidation and interest, two more cohorts worked with shovels, removing earth, rubble and turf from a field off to one side and ferrying it forward to the riverbank where they were rapidly constructing a mound, with a sloping ramp that would crest at a height equal to the far bank.

  The Second Cohort, lined up with the ramp and twitching to move, waited.

  Fronto had dismounted and stood nearby, far from the other senior officers, where he periodically stretched or dropped into a crouch, loosening his muscles. Ostensibly, to any other officer in view, he would be recovering from the ride, but the truth was that he too was preparing. And it was Fronto, who was renowned for roving about, so no one would question why he wasn’t with the Sixth now.

  The longer
he had watched the preparations and seen the men waiting, the more he had become convinced that it was time to take a more active part in matters. Since the day they had tried to hold the harbour when Achillas had arrived in Alexandria, Fronto had stood at the rear. Occasionally he had been forced to defend himself, but rarely had he put himself in that place that had ever been his position of choice: in the midst of battle with his men.

  He had grudgingly admitted to himself that he was not that same vital younger officer who had faced Ariovistus or the Nervii. Too many parts of him ached, and he ran out of breath quicker. His eyesight wasn’t what it once was, either.

  Perhaps that was what this was: a challenge to himself. A desperate need to prove that he wasn’t past it all. But the more he had watched, the more he had recalled those early days in Gaul, sneaking along a riverbank with his men at Bibrax, storming bridges and attacking forts, and he couldn’t help but see them as halcyon days.

  He was going over the bridge with the Second Cohort. He hadn’t told anyone yet, and the officer corps were far away, leaving him to his planning. But he’d removed anything he didn’t need to fight with and had left them with Bucephalus, who had been walked back to the baggage.

  He was determined.

  He listened to the general murmur of the army as it waited, overlain with the sound of hard labour as men dug and shovelled earth, and adzed and shaped timber. He felt a sense of relief as he realised that the chopping and sawing had died down and almost out. All the trees they’d identified had been brought down and were now being tidied and prepared.

  He cocked his head to one side. The decrease in the volume of their labours allowed a new sound to filter through the din.

  A horn.

  His gaze rose to the army across the water, trying to identify what had changed and what signal had been given, before realisation struck him. That had not been one of the strange hooming noises of the Aegyptian signallers, but a much more familiar sound.

  His gaze slipped from the Aegyptians, who were looking equally alert and concerned, eyes sliding this way and that, and off to the east. Sure enough he spotted them quickly, now that he knew what to expect.

  That had been the honk of a Gallic cavalry horn.

  The blurred shape of a mass of distant horsemen was moving at an astonishing pace along the far bank, making for the ordered lines of the enemy. An explosion of panic suddenly burst out amid the Aegyptians. Fronto almost laughed as he watched officers bellowing out orders, half of which contradicted each other.

  The line of spear men at the top of the far bank broke up to move, following an order to come about and face the threat of the cavalry approaching from the east, then became tangled and confused as other officers and signallers told them to remain where they were, as the cavalry behind them milled about in response to half a dozen different orders of their own.

  This was the time. They had to move, or Galronus and his men would be trapped on the far side with a much larger opposition. He turned to the nearest centurion, who was overseeing the ramp, bellowing orders to his men.

  ‘That’ll have to do, Centurion. Pull your men back.’

  The officer looked faintly offended. ‘It’s not finished sir. Not level.’

  Fronto waved aside his protestations. ‘We’re out of time. Call them back into position.’

  Leaving the centurion to it, he turned to find the nearest rider, who sat beside a cornicen, awaiting orders. ‘Go and find the Sixth. Tell them…’

  His voice trailed off as his gaze rose above the man and caught sight of the activity beyond.

  ‘Never mind.’

  The legion’s engineers had appeared, trudging slowly but steadily from the tree line, hauling their new construction between them. Fronto stared. No matter how long he served alongside them, he never failed to be impressed by what legionary engineers could do with a vague brief, few resources and less than half an hour to work with.

  What they carried resembled more than anything a giant version of a ship’s boarding ramp. As they came closer they became aware of the cavalry approaching on the far bank and thus of the sudden urgency of their task, breaking into a rhythmic jog, accompanied by a breathless chant.

  Fronto watched as they neared him, ogling the massive ramp. Formed of six wide trunks, they had been pegged together, holes drilled in them and wooden connectors, which they must have had ready beforehand, driven in to hold them together. Even as they ran with the construction, others of their unit ran alongside, throwing ropes back and forth, lashing the trunks together on the move.

  ‘Get it in place,’ Fronto yelled as they hurtled towards him.

  They were going to be late to the banquet, he knew, but every moment counted now for the cavalry. Fingers twitching at the urgency of it all, he watched Galronus and his riders close on the enemy flank. Someone across the river seemed finally to have pulled together order among the Aegyptians, and the reserve infantry had been moved east to form a thin hedge of spear points facing the fresh danger, their own cavalry pulled back into a square now behind an L shape of infantry.

  Galronus had seen the defensive formation, Fronto realised, for the riders split up, the bulk of them racing around to the south, still trying to flank the much larger enemy. The rest continued to race for that wall of spears, and Fronto winced, knowing full well that no horse willingly charged such a thing, and that what was about to happen could be a massacre.

  As he watched, Fronto rubbed his eyes, wondering if they were getting worse, if they were playing tricks on him. For precious moments he was sure the entire German cavalry racing into battle on the far bank were gleaming like Noric steel, and as he realised why, he let out a disbelieving laugh.

  They were soaked.

  All of them, men and horses alike, were completely soaked. They had not been able to find a crossing, and so they had found another way. They had swum across. Fronto shook his head with a grin and promised to find the Boii officer Galronus had called Gauto later, and buy him a large drink.

  If he survived.

  He laughed again at the ingenuity and sheer crazed bravery of the German cavalry as he watched their response to the enemy’s hedge of spears. They knew their horses wouldn’t charge that line, and that if they did many of their prized mounts would die. And so, as they closed, the moment the horses became nervous, the men simply threw themselves from the saddle and drew their blades, hurtling on foot at the astonished Aegyptians while bellowing guttural war cries.

  ‘How the hell did we ever beat them?’ Fronto sighed, before having to grudgingly admit to himself that they might have beaten the German tribes more than once, but all they had done was knock the crazed bastards back for a time. The day they could be brought into the empire like the Gauls, gods help the rest of the world.

  The Germans crashed into the shield wall, diving between the spears and stabbing, slashing and hacking at the natives. In moments they had driven several gaps in the wall, and Fronto had the fleeting notion that they were simply going to win the fight on their own. Then he shook off the fantasy as he took in all that was happening. The Germans had certainly made their mark and shaken the enemy, but the Aegyptian force was far from done. Indeed, unless they received support soon, every rider across there was going to be butchered. The shield wall along the river bank had not thinned out, though another reserve line from behind them had been moved. Those men were being brought to bear against the Germans, and the initial success of the dismounted tribesmen had been overcome. They were being pushed back, and now German bodies were falling, adding to the carpet of corpses. Moreover, the rest of the riders who had veered south to flank the enemy had met fierce resistance from the Aegyptian cavalry.

  The butchery had begun.

  He turned to watch the engineers, sweating and chanting, bearing the huge bridge forward, carrying it to the recently-created mound. As they began to stump up towards the crest, he turned to the Second Cohort, who stood tense, waiting.

  ‘Hit them fast a
nd strong. Our only hope to help the cavalry is to hit them hard enough to break them and gain us a foothold on the far bank. Don’t stop once you cross. No careful formations and lines. Centurions, keep an eye on your units, each contubernium look to your mates. Form into whatever small units you need to to survive, but push your way in and kill the bastards.’

  This received a roar of approval from the men.

  The officers nearby peered at him for a moment, and then wrote him off as simply egging on his men. They thus didn’t see him draw his sword and fall in beside a tall centurion with dark, hairy ape-like arms. The man looked at him with a frown.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Fronto, and grinned.

  He watched, tense. The engineers reached the top of the mound, shuffling forwards with irritating slowness until their officer called a halt. The enemy watched, nervous, as men stepped back, away from the river, hauling on ropes. As they pulled, the men carrying the tree-trunk bridge moved slowly forwards and, as they did, the entire apparatus rose until it was near vertical, the men underneath struggling so hard to move forwards that they often cried out in pain.

  It all happened at once, then. At a triple blast from the centurion’s whistle, the men simply dropped the bridge, which hit the fresh mound so hard that the timbers sank deep into the earth. Then the men began to let out the ropes. Slowly, at first, then more and more, until another whistled signal came and they let go.

  The tree trunk bridge hit the far bank hard, and the line of spearmen there scattered in panic, not wanting to find themselves crushed beneath its weight.

  Fronto never heard the signal to advance, so all-encompassing was the noise around them, and suddenly found himself surging forwards with the men. He wondered briefly whether any of his fellow officers would spot him among the infantry. Then, amid the front runners, he was suddenly clambering up the mound at the fastest pace he could manage. He tried not to be disappointed and irritated by the fact that others overtook him, reminding himself that he was a generation older than every last one of them.