Beyond the Bulwarks

by K. J. Coble

  Today, it would see use.

  The Legion and its Auxiliaries had mustered without undue urgency, sloughing off the funk of the night’s revelries and shambling to their posts. Archers and artillery crews formed along the walls. Gates warbled open before quietly debouching columns of infantry and then Enu’s cavalry—the Kharzulan officer’s departure a pang in Anzo’s chest. Officers whispered last-moment orders in tight voices. Civilian volunteers huddled in the courtyard, murmuring and awaiting instructions.

  Anzo knew the mind of every soul crouching behind the defenses along the Salient, knew it because he felt it himself: the awful loneliness of knowing the entire world was coming to kill you.

  Soft footsteps padded to his side. Varya emerged from twists of fog, was pulling her hair back into a bun. She offered him a fragile smile as she joined him. “Soon?”

  “Yes.” Nerves made his voice harsh. Of course, something in him wanted to snarl. But it wasn’t her, he knew; it was Theregond, out there, waiting for him.

  Raised voices carried from the top of the northeast tower. The signal fire flared to life. A sentry mounted the battlements, a lantern atop a long pole. With quick tugs at a lanyard, he flicked its shutters, rattling out pinprick patterns that were answered by pulses in the distance. A similar scene played out at the southeastern tower.

  Jangling armor presaged the arrival of Paulus Maricius on the wall, the Legate looking unfazed by the previous night’s excess, though the trio of young-faced aides at his back moved with considerably less vigor. The commander paused to stare out over the battlements before pivoting to look up at the code patterns blinking from the towers. He nodded and turned to Anzo and Varya. “Good morning to you both.”

  “And you, sir.” Anzo nodded toward the northeast tower. “What word?”

  “There’s heavy movement opposite Way Forts Four and Three, north and south of us.” The Legate scratched at his neck where his breastplate chaffed. “They’re massing against the tip of the Salient. It makes sense: the river’s lowest at the bend. Everywhere else, they may still need the boats.”

  “And your dispositions?” Anzo asked without thought to formality or is own rather meager place in the hierarchy of things.

  Maricius didn’t seem to mind. “The Way Forts and Watch Towers have ditches and palisades. Attacks against them will be costly, as those fools found out with that amphibious debacle. Each post is close enough for mutual support, cavalry sorties against flanks if any barbarian thrust gets serious and tries to go around them.” He nodded out over the walls. “An attack on Terminus has to go around it, unless these rustics have learned how to scale sheer rock. That channels them to the north and south.” He pointed into the mists. “Estpont is something of a blind spot, but I’ve a Legion century there on its walls, backed by an Auxiliary cohort. The Vhurrs can go around that to the south and over the ridge, but I’ve a surprise there for them.”

  Anzo nodded, thinking of Enu’s smile. “The cavalry?”

  “Three cohorts of the Ala Secundus are massing behind the ridge.” He offered a feral grin. “Close to four hundred heavy horse.” The grin faded. “But that’s the entirety of my reserve. Everything else is strung out in support of the other outposts.” He waved northward. “Then there’s the lower rise to our left, where the rocks fall off and the riverside is more open. I had the civilians digging cavalry traps and spreading caltrops last night and the better part of my line infantry is arrayed above that in ditches below the Legion road.”

  “Good positions,” Anzo said, trying to believe it.

  “We’ve had a lot of time to get ready for this.”

  The sky continued to lighten, revealing angry, black twists of cloud. Thunder growled in the distance. Moisture flicked Anzo’s cheek as he looked up, stinging with chill. Stone pattered, metal pinged. Flames hissed and spat in a brazier nearby. Thunder shuddered through the valley again, was followed by a gentle hiss that built from the south until it spread up the river to Terminus in a damp, darkening haze smelling of earth and cleansing.

  The long overdue rains had arrived.

  Maricius chuckled. “Well, it’s better late than never.” Around him Legionnaires were looking to the sky, tongues out to taste the droplets, grinning like children, a few removing helms to let dust-caked hair shake out in the moisture.

  The opposite bank of the Lydirian roared.

  Smiles and relief withered in an instant. Men tightened to their positions along the battlements. Anzo crowded close to Maricius as the Legate moved to the wall, Varya at his back.

  The darkness of the Vhurrian camps shifted and knotted in the obscuring haze, a dense gray band against the green-black of the mountains. Fires guttered out and died while smoke sank low to the ground under the weight of rain. The Lydirian sizzled under the squall.

  Its eastern edge whitened and frothed, churned into foam by thousands of feet as another mighty roar set the barbarian host surging into the water.

  Anzo licked lips dry despite rain now cascading into his face. The blackness that had been the Vhurrian camps flowed like a river of shadow, glimmering at its edges with steel. Mist boiled from the barbarians, who trudged down from the desiccated heights of the Bulwark foothills into the valley in untold masses, stripping them of their presence as they had stripped them of their growth. Only steaming wastes remained behind. Anzo heard quickly-suppressed gasps along the wall as young men saw with their eyes but disbelieved with their minds.

  Columns, what could more accurately be called masses, formed as the Vhurrs came on, three of them, one lapping to the north, one to the south, one straight for Estpont and Terminus. Behind these great throngs formed along the river bank, the families and dependents filling the drenched morning gloom with shrill screams of encouragement and wilder hatred for all things Aurid. Their jarring clamor was lost in moments as the horrid song of the barbarians resumed. Oo-rah-crash! Oo-rah-crash! The oncoming formations seethed with motion, tossing bodies, bobbing helms, clattering shields, weapons and bared teeth flashing.

  OO-RAH-CRASH!!!

  A young archer near Anzo shrank back from his crenel, lips moving in prayer. A noncom passing by cuffed his helmet, growled to those around. “They’re just men,” rasped the haughty tones of an Aurridian, born-and-bred, “but they’re going to die like dogs!”

  Squinting, Anzo sidled past Maricius, put a boot up and hefted himself onto the battlements. Haze gave the oncoming horde a muddy appearance, details difficult to discern. The column moving south roiled with motion at its edges. He pivoted to look down at the Legate, watching him with eyebrows arched incredulously. “I can’t be sure, but I think their cavalry is on the right.” He straightened again to appraise the northward thrust. “I can’t see anything on the left.”

  Raised voices drew his attention to the northeastern tower. The signal lantern was fluttering wildly. Below, Maricius’ features stilled to iron impassivity. “Way Fort Four is under attack. There must be another column.”

  Varya touched Anzo’s boot. He got down from his perch to find her features tense and pale. “I can feel Him, Anzo, but it’s strange. It’s like He’s holding back something.” She turned to Maricius. “I need a better vantage point.”

  The Legate nodded. “Go to the northeast tower.” He pointed at one of his aides. “You go with her, Sparto. Tell the signal man to order ‘Hold in place. Do not counterattack under any circumstances.’ I won’t be suckered in by a false retreat.”

  Varya squeezed Anzo’s hand. “Be careful.”

  “You, too.” He wanted to say more but she was already scurrying after Sparto.

  The Vhurrs were reaching the middle of the river, their mass an uneven ripple, some men hitting sandbars and wading up to their thighs, others dipping in up to their necks, shields held overhead. Squalls of panic reached Anzo’s ears over the susurrus of the rain, Vhurrs stumbling in the currents and murk and pressed from behind, some slipping under the water to drown or be trampled. The columns slowed, their leading
edges billowing out like the flattening tops of thunderheads.

  Maricius drew his sword with a hungry smile. “It’s time they got a taste of Imperial fire.” He raised the blade to the sky, pivoted around to be seen from every corner of Terminus, and brought it down with enough force to whistle.

  Catapult lines cracked with released tension, sent firepots snarling across the rain-shot sky. The thrum of ballista shots followed, weighted, spear-sized bolts and stone balls seen as blurs, arching in shallow trajectories for the Vhurrian masses.

  The ballista fire hit first, alleys ripped through the fore of Vhurrs, men skewered together or bowled aside in sprays of bloody pulp. Shockwaves rippled out from the strikes, barbarians tumbling back, into one another, more dragged by the weight of weapons and the mass of comrades under the slurp and churn of the Lydirian.

  The firepots hit a moment later, caught the Vhurrs bunched and reeling. Naptha flashed in their midst, blossomed outward in orange-red of fire and flickering white of steam, birthing shrieks as flesh flash-boiled and armor meant to protect became a searing cocoon. The middle column shuddered practically to a halt straddled by flames and whirring death.

  A second and third volley slammed out from the Salient defenses, each followed by a roaring cheer from the men at the battlements. Then the artillery was firing at will, a steady stream of destruction humming and snarling forth. The central column quivered and slogged forward again in dribs and drabs, men realized only death could be found where they stood. The northward column passed to the left, kept coming on, surging for the lower banks and the open ground above it.

  Maricius pivoted left and made a chopping motion with his free hand. He clapped one of his remaining aides on the shoulder. “Make sure that was understood. Crews on the north wall are to shift their fire to the column on the left. The rest of the crews are to keep the pressure on to the front.”

  Anzo watched the aide depart then nodded southward. “And them?” The column to the right was sidestepping, slowly but gaining speed, opening the range even as the ballista stationed on the walls of Estpont struggled to keep raking their flank.

  Maricius didn’t acknowledge but turned to his last aide. “Sartorus, my lad, mount up and get down to Estpont. Find Optio Herzok and tell him to ignore those men.” He pointed at the southward mass. “Keep the fire on the front. Tell him not to detach anyone from Estpont’s walls.”

  The aide rushed away. Anzo looked at Maricius. “The cavalry?”

  The Legate shook his head with a touch of the annoyance of someone concentrated on a task. Chastised, Anzo clamped his mouth shut.

  Streaks of fire leapt from the haze to the south, momentarily silhouetted the walls of the Way Fort there. Naptha streaked into the head of the column on the right, kicked its fore back on itself with gouts of flame and squalls of outrage and agony. The mass split, some of its flank peeling away as Vhurrs avoided the fiery touch and made instead towards Estpont. Anzo couldn’t see the horsemen he thought he’d spied before but thought a fight was breaking out between the Vhurrs, chieftains and their retainers trying to bully the fragmenting formation back together with violence.

  With a tumultuous Oo-rah-CRASH the central column lurched forward again, having come two thirds of the way across the Lydirian, gaining renewed courage from momentum and the knowledge that the Imperial artillery could not fire into the dead ground below the Estpont and the Fort’s walls. Mobs congealing around the metallic knots of noblemen came on at a run, splashing, stumbling, and screaming. A few Vhurrs, driven by pain, drink, and frenzy still trailed flames from scorched tunics and animal-hair mantles.

  “Archers!”

  Maricius’ order repeated all along the walls of Terminus. Bows bent, raised, and loosed. Glimmering arrow clouds swarmed above the Fort and fell with an insect buzz not lost in the rain. The leading packs of Vhurrs raced into the storm. Hundreds crumpled, a horrendous groan rippling through their masses. Many had cast aside their shields in favor of speed and were hit again and again as the arrows sleeted down. Groupings formed about leaders, shields clattering together in domes of protection. A firepot loosed at a dangerously low angle struck one such cluster at its heart and the shield mass shattered like ripe fruit struck by a thunderbolt.

  “Idiots,” Maricius spat.

  To the right, a mighty bellow rose. The northward column had reached the river bank and was scrambling up the low rise. Artillery fire from Terminus scythed into their flank. Ignoring flames and missiles that slashed men down by the dozens, they kept coming, slowing, trudging into a wind of arrows as archers stepped from the Legionnaires waiting in ditches at the top of the rise and began firing. Nearly flat trajectories gave the arrows most of their power as they hit, pinning dead men to dying. Still the Vhurrs came on, stumbling, grabbing feet or fractured ankles as they hit the caltrops and tiny pits of cavalry traps.

  A deep shout resounded from the Legionnaires as they stepped up from the ditches, advanced a few paces, halted, and threw their javelins. The heavy shafts cascaded into the packed Vhurrian mass, bowling men down. Even those that survived the deadly hail found their shields riddled with the bent iron heads and were forced to cast them aside, leaving many defenseless as the leather and banded-steel line of the Legion followed its javelin volley and surged downhill against them. Packed Legion shields smashed into Vhurrian bodies, splintering bone, pulping skulls, while fabricae-issue blades darted through openings to kill.

  Smiling grimly, Anzo recalled the struggle on the slopes above the Icing Creek and knew that the Vhurrian northern thrust was doomed.

  A purple glimmer from the northeast tower drew Anzo’s attention. But he saw nothing when he looked directly and found his gaze drawn to the signal lantern, instead, its shutters rattling out their manic codes.

  “Way Fort Four is under heavy attack, but holding.” The lantern patterns winked in Maricius’ eyes. “Watch Towers Seven and Six are being hit, too.” He turned his gaze to the lantern on the southeast tower. “Way Fort Three and Watch Tower Five report the thrust in front of them falling back.”

  Anzo mounted the battlements again, drenched now, the rain turning leathers and mail into dragging weight on chaffed shoulders. A rising breeze buffeted him, flung drizzle into squeezed eyes. “They’re not falling back.” He pointed.

  The southward column had bowed away from its original course and was flowing sideways, a howling torrent of inhuman humanity gushing towards Estpont and the rise to its left. Ballista on the town’s walls pivoted desperately to shift their fire. The steep incline of the rise channeled the Vhurrs into a narrow torrent, rushing along the riverside towards the settlement. Ballista shot ravaged the head of the mob repeatedly, flung it back on itself, but the barbarians kept coming, stampeding over their dead and mangled. At a frantic wave from Maricius, the catapults on Terminus’ southern wall shifted their attention, too, sent firepots whistling over Estpont into the throng choking the river.

  The central column frothed at the base of the limestone face below the river wall of Terminus. Legionnaires shouldered by archers to cast boulders down upon them and they foamed southward, away from death towards Estpont. They staggered into the slop of the empty harbor, clawed and crawled through the liquefied murk, churning it into a cauldron as they writhed up amongst the abandoned piers and docks. Estpont’s walls lay open there, a gap held by barricades improvised from wagons and torn-down homes, a line of Legionnaires behind them. Compressed on both sides by archery from Terminus’ southern wall and from the rooftops of Estpont, itself, the column bulged into the small space to die. The tightly packed mass of mud-caked forms that reached the barricades, mindless from fear, were no match for steely Legion discipline and lightning jabs of spear and sword.

  Roaring shuddered the south wall of Estpont, the Vhurrs there impossible to see and impossible for the supporting artillery atop Terminus to hit. Anzo made out tree trunks handed forward across the heads of the mob, stripped of all but nubs of branches placed to serve as steps. Th
e improvised ladders crashed into the walls and the battlements, many flung back, but others staying in place as storms of throwing axes sent defenders reeling. Vhurrs scrambled to the top. Auxiliaries met them with the zeal of men determined to prove their worth to Legion compatriots and a doubting Empire.

  Anzo leapt down from the battlements and reached for his scimitar. Maricius grabbed his arm. “Don’t be a fool, Severnus.”

  “They need every man down there!”

  Maricius shook him. “One more will make no difference.”

  Anzo yanked his arm free. “With respect to the Legate, I’m no Legionnaire.”

  “No, you’re not.” Maricius grinned unpleasantly. “And don’t think that I fear the Imperial Eye so much that I won’t throw one of its agents in irons!”

  Clarion calls sounded over the roar of battle and hiss of rainfall. Gentle thunder built on the rise above Espont. Windsock banners crafted to flow out like dragon tails fluttered above the ridge top. Armor glinted and a mass materialized from the haze, horses stomping in agitation, breath pluming blue-white from nostrils, riders pounding spears to shields and giving voice to a deep, bawdy song Anzo recognized from the revelries the night before. He spotted Enu, edged slightly ahead of the double ranks, the saber Anzo had carried through the Barbaricum held high. The blade chopped down and the Tribune was charging, the Ala Secundus Kharzulius at his back.

  Four hundred Aurridian heavy cavalry rumbled down the slope.

  Vhurrs that had sprayed away from the mob tearing at Estpont’s walls, shirkers and wounded, saw them first, began to scatter back for the river. The Secundus washed over them as though they weren’t there. The rest had moments to realize their doom before a wave front of spears and slashing hooves crashed into them. A monumental groan went through the Vhurrs, the whuffed-out breath of a monstrous prize fighter gut-punched. Then, like a blade hammered too many times against a shield, they shattered.