by David Weber
"He is neglecting the assault on the walls," Falco continued smoothly. " 'Under cover of my new device,' says our friend, 'so new indeed that even you cannot imagine it, your worship-" Falco smirked.
The goblet which the Commander had been swiveling gently, froze although the fluid continued it's slow motion within.
Falco was terrified. He of all the Romans was most conscious of the blue figure's power over them and most concerned that the Commander was truly inscrutable, his face and gestures not those of a man-though they might be. Falco was too experienced to intellectually believe his rival was cool and collected, but his gut accepted Vibulenus' appearance as his reality-tall, calm, a hero in battle while Falco could claim only the Commander's ear in a place of safety.
Well then, this was his field. "My colleague proposes," continued the shorter tribune as his mind cut away the rhetorical flowers which he suddenly feared would bring his end, "that a party attack the walls with picks, drawing the attention of the defenders on the tower who will then be dispatched by his wonderful device. It is patent to all of us who were near the walls during the previous attack-" Falco had been well back, as always, but the chaos forebade certainty; and in any case, stating a "fact" loudly was most of the way to being believed. "-that this attention, if drawn, means the immolation of the attacking force."
The speaker paused. All around the circle, Romans frowned and pursed their lips as they considered the words and agreed with them. Neither the officers nor centurions who had cut their way to command through heroism were willing to damn the plan at once for its danger, but…
"You have already lost twenty-seven valuable men to no effect," continued Falco, whose sole audience was the figure in blue who was more powerful than all the consuls and legions of Rome. "You must not throw away more on my colleague's hare-brained scheme."
"Must," realized everybody in the courtyard as the gerundive construction rolled off Falco's tongue, had been the wrong thing to say.
Vibulenus held silent with his tongue poised, letting the Commander break the hush by saying, "Starvation is still certain enough, I suppose. Eventually. But go ahead, Gaius Vibulenus, put your plan in effect, only-"
"Yes, your worship?" said the lips of the tall tribune while his mind watched and listened to his body appreciatively from a distance. He wondered if he were going to faint.
"Only don't spend more than twenty men on the feint, will you?" the Commander continued before he took another sip. "Perhaps you can get the locals to do it instead of your own people. Certainly we pay that lot enough. Or at least their chiefs."
"I…" said Falco as he tried to clear himself. The argument was lost, that was certain. "I-"
The Commander's head turned. Falco could not meet the eyes which would not, in any case, have told him anything. He collapsed to a sitting position, wishing the sun were not so bright… wishing everyone else in the courtyard were frozen and he could hack through their throats with impunity, including the Commander and most especially Gaius Vibulenus Caper…
"The attack will be real, your worship," said Vibulenus as he alone remained standing. His viewpoint had drifted back within his body as soon as Falco sank away, but knew his heart was beating abominably fast and he was sure he was going to lose control of his tongue before he could make the necessary explanations.
Plowing on regardless like a runner who knows his legs will give way if he slackens in the least, Vibulenus said, "We need to breach the wall as quickly as possible so that the defenders can't come up with another means of thwarting us-"
"Yes, I understand, Gaius Vibulenus Caper," said the Commander, rising in dismissal. One of the armored toads behind him snapped the folding stool closed with enough force to threaten the frame. "Your preparations will take some time, I'm sure, so you'd best get on with them if you're to be any use at all."
He waved a slender, blue, deformed-looking hand. Non-coms began lurching to their feet while the tribunes tried to rise with greater delicacy.
"Sir," said Vibulenus in a voice of such penetrating clarity that everyone paused and even Falco looked at the still face of his rival. "I'll be leading the assault myself, sir. I think we can make the attack in safety."
The Commander made a corkscrew motion with his free hand. "Whatever you choose, Tribune," he said. "Just no more than twenty men. And-" he was walking daintily toward the gate of the living quarters within the blockhouse, but he paused for a moment "-see that there's a follow-up squad at a comfortable distance. In case you're wrong about the safety."
The blue figure disappeared indoors. In the milling confusion of the courtyard, filled with glances and whispers, Gaius Vibulenus wondered what he did choose.
And why.
"You shouldn't be here, sir," said Pompilius Niger, and the flight of arrows which punctuated the statement thudded into the roof of the mobile gallery above them like rain on thatch.
"I ought to be in Baiae," Vibulenus replied. Floating in a one-man skiff in the middle of the Bay of Naples. Surrounded by the prismatic beauty of thousands of dancing waves and covered by an open sky colored the rich blue of indigo-dyed leather.
"Watch it!" called a soldier beyond the gallery. No way of telling what he was warning about. A thud shook the footing of the men preparing to lift the heavy roof covering them, but it could have been an accident to the Roman preparations as easily as a missile flung some distance by the defenders.
The impact brought Vibulenus quivering back to the fear and near darkness within the mobile gallery, however. "You do your job, Niger," he added harshly, "and let me do mine!"
"Sir," said the senior centurion of the Tenth Cohort, his voice deadened and attenuated because he was speaking from outside the protective walls. "We're about to lower the walkway. Wait the signal so's we get it straight before you step off."
Vibulenus nodded agreement, then realized that the centurion couldn't see him through the layered mud and wicker that shielded the assault party-for a time. "Fine," he said, "fine. Get on with it."
Bows nearby popped, though the hissing thunk of quarrels striking showed that the auxilliary archers were only responding to the defenders. There was a crash, loud for all its distance. Seconds later, the gallery and its surroundings were pelted by shards of a ballista ball which had disintegrated against the tower close above them.
The cohort leader shouted an order. Wood squealed, and a section of men grunted together as they shifted a heavy weight.
"What he means," said Gnaeus Clodius Afer, "is you understand that business best, so it's you needs to be out there running it. We can handle this shit."
The twenty men under the heavy gallery were all volunteers and all from the Third and Fourth Centuries- paired according to a practice more ancient than any history that was not myth. Presumably they all knew how risky it was, since they'd also seen the first ramp destroyed.
Vibulenus doubted that any of them save Clodius and Niger had a real grasp of the plan, although he'd tried to explain it to them. The volunteers didn't much care-a normal attitude for soldiers, and one which the tribune was better able to appreciate now that he had become a soldier himself.
Siege work was boring and, in this case, apparently pointless. The Commander believed the works should be continued to put pressure on the defenders, but the legionaries were running lotteries as to what time the enemy would destroy this "threat" with the same offhand precision as before.
An assault on the walls was something different, and a chance to come to grips with opponents who were invisible-unless you wanted an arrow through the eye you were looking with. One of the tribunes said it'd work, that he had some screwy contrivance that'd keep the wogs in the tower from frying the attacking party alive… but nobody really expects to die, coldly assesses the likelihood of that. And the near-magic available through the Medic and the recovery vehicle didn't much affect the equation.
Gaius Vibulenus Caper knew very well that he could die. In fact, he had no difficulty in intellectuall
y convincing himself that he would die… but his gut didn't believe it any more than did the guts of the troops around him. That was a blessing and no small one, since it permitted him to function in this tight enclosure, already hot with the warmth of sweating bodies.
Functioning meant speaking in a normal voice to the men who shared the danger, convincing them by calm example that they were part of a military endeavor rather than a method of suicide by fire. "No, centurion," Vibulenus said in what he hoped were tones of composure. "The work outside is a matter of timing and military judgment. The leading centurions in charge of it are much better suited to the task than I am."
That the tribune's gut didn't believe, not for an instant; but his intellect did, and he had no choice anyway. He had to be part of the assault he had planned. Vibulenus was young enough to know that he could not otherwise live with himself if the result turned out as badly as it might.
The first centurion, Julius Rusticanus, shouted, "Forward!" Then: "Put your backs in it, you pussies!"
Rusticanus had the scars that had promoted him through the lower ranks, but he had also the exempla that fitted him for his current position. He could handle returns of the legion's equipment and personnel, duties that frightened many men who were willing to charge spears stark naked. Beyond that, he had the carrying voice and absolutely precise enunciation which would have suited him for a life on stage-if he had not been built more like an ape than a Ganymede. He was as likely as any Roman present to be able to understand the complex operation outside the tower, and by far the most likely to have his orders obeyed.
While Rusticanus had overall charge of the operation in lieu of the Commander (whose bodyguard would not protect him from fire), the Tenth Cohort's senior centurion had been delegated tasks involving the assault proper. That meant building a gangway of solid timbers and organizing teams of men to slide it into position when required.
Which was now. Without the gangway, Vibulenus' party and their mobile gallery could not have climbed down the fascine-bulging front of their own siege works. As it was, the descent would be a steep one for men so awkwardly burdened.
The cohort leader gave another muffled command, and the guardwalk shook with the pace of over a hundred men. The gangway was of four-inch planks, planed smooth on their upper surface so that no one would stumble in the quickmarch down from the siegeworks. The stringers were halved logs; and the whole contrivance, carried upside down, weighed the better part of a ton.
The important responses by the defenders were hidden thus far behind the tower's crenellations, but a storm of crossbow bolts was as obvious as it was expected. The siegeworks themselves could not cover the teams moving the gangway; even the light breastwork which shielded the guardwalk had to be thrown down so that the gangway could pivot into position.
Instead, other legionaries attempted to cover their fellows with a tortoise of shields locked overhead and to the sides. Between that formation and the gangway itself which acted as a roof, the legionaries were as safe as reason expected in the heat of battle.
The defenders snapped their volleys down as quickly as they could work the levers of their bows. Each time an archer pulled his cocking handle, a claw drew back the bowstring and the wedge which retained bolts in the magazine slid out far enough to drop the lowest missile. A sear released the string automatically when the bow reached its full draw-and the archer pumped his lever to repeat the cycle.
Bolts that hit the gangway pattered. Those which struck shields thudded on plywood or rang peevishly if they glanced from a metal boss. A scream pierced the confusion of shouts and shuffling hobnails, but the advance did not pause for one casualty running to the rear with a bolt in his shoulder and the pain of poison blazing in his imagination.
"Down front!" ordered Rusticanus in a voice like a scythe. The log surface of the rampart quivered on its base of earth and wicker as soldiers butted the forward end of the gangway in the pits provided for that purpose.
"Now push, curse you!" the centurion shouted. There was a lull in the volleys of missiles from the top and arrow slits farther down the tower face: most of the defending archers had exhausted their magazines and were ripping open fresh bundles of quarrels to shake into the feed lips of their weapons. Through the snap and patter of the occasional shot came a mechanical screech and the collective wheeze of scores of men as they lifted the far end of the gangway against the fulcrum provided by its stringers bedded at the edge of the rampart.
As the gangway lifted, legionaries waiting with stout poles ran up to continue the momentum of the end which hands could no longer reach unaided. The arrow storm broke again with a viciousness that equaled its first intensity. The gangway lifted to its zenith like a wall, but it was too narrow to provide full protection. Bolts clicked against armor, and less fortunate soldiers cursed or bawled according to their temperament as points gouged their flesh.
But the gangway continued to swing upward until it paused trembling, just short of vertical. "Push!" roared Rusticanus. He reached over the back of a legionary to add the thrust of one hand while his other braced a shield studded with half a dozen quarrels already.
The unlubricated stringers rotating in adze-cut pits shrieked louder than the triumphant legionaries as the gangway crashed over the edge of the siege ramp.
Released from duty at the same instant as their major protection toppled away, soldiers ran to the rear in a diminishing shower of bolts as archers emptied their magazines again.
Rusticanus and some of the lesser non-coms stepped deliberately to cover behind their shields. As was usually the case, it was much safer to face danger steadfastly than to flee it; but the experience that allowed a soldier to stand when he could flee was hard-bought and a long time coining.
The mobile gallery had no front or rear wall, but the roof overhung by three feet on either end to block plunging missiles. There was little to be seen, even for Clodius Afer and the other three soldiers in the front rank. Vibulenus, in the row behind them, was lighted dimly by what sunlight seeped past the heads and armored shoulders of the leading rank; and the twelve men arrayed behind the tribune might as well have been in a sealed tunnel for any view they had of what was about to happen.
Vibulenus felt a sudden urge to scream, hurl the gallery away from him, and rush toward the wall which loomed unseen somewhere before him. He couldn't have budged the cover of mud and timber, couldn't rush anywhere while the rest of the assault force packed him tightly… and he probably couldn't even scream through a throat which had gone as dry as old bone. He was shaking all over, and he had a terrible need to urinate.
That could wait until they started moving and the act became less obvious. Vibulenus relaxed, feeling enormously pleased that he had just demonstrated intellectual control over one of the few factors within his capacity to change.
A single trumpet signalled them.
"On the count, boys," said Clodius Afer over his shoulder as his own muscles bunched on the crossbar.
There were five transverse poles, as thick and sturdy as a quinquireme's oars. They would make it hard to move forward and back in the gallery, to exchange workers-or flee-but they had to be solid to accept the strain of moving so heavy as structure. Most of the men in the assault force would be unable to help prise apart the tower wall. They were present simply to add their strength in shifting the gallery.
And to swell the butcher's bill in event of disaster, but that was a purpose only for the gods-should they will it. Let the thought not be an omen.
"… two," said Clodius, "three!" and the gallery lifted with a slight sway to the left as if the structure were a turtle just sober enough to walk.
"Pace!" the centurion ordered. "Pace. Pace. Swing right, boys, just a cunt hair-pace, that's the way, pace-"
Vibulenus heaved at his bar with a sidewall to his left and a legionary he didn't know grunting to his right. He was lifting with all his strength, but that strength was nothing in comparison to the mass of the gallery. He could f
eel it shift above him, and his instinctive attempt to counterbalance that thrust was as vain as trying to bail Ocean dry.
Guided and controlled by Clodius Afer, who at least sounded as calm as the stone wall, the assault party staggered onward. Bolts spat into the wet mud with which the gallery was covered, audible but unfelt as the protective roof swayed step by step across the guardwalk.
"Watch it here, now," the centurion called, as the motion threatened to become uncontrolled. Where the gangway met the surface of the rampart, there was a lip and a gap of several inches. The leading rank tried to hop the irregularity, but the gallery was too massive for that to be possible. Divided among twenty men, the weight was acceptable, but no individual had the strength alone to make the structure so much as quiver.
As the assault party jerked their loads high again… a poisoned quarrel flicked past the roof gable and thumped the guardwalk between Vibulenus' boots.
"Pace, curse ye!" shouted the centurion.
The quarrel that Vibulenus snapped off beneath his hobnails as his foot shuffled forward must have kissed Clodius' thigh on the way past. Perhaps the poisoned head had not broken the skin; probably the centurion had not received a lethal dose-and very likely they were all dead in the next few minutes anyway.
The gallery tilted down as rank by rank the men supporting it found footing on the slanted gangway. Vibulenus was straining so hard at his burden that fear of stumbling drove out his fear of what would happen if they reached their goal.
Behind them and to one side, centurions shouted hoarsely as their squads began to raise and swing the hollowed timber on which rested all hopes of success. The trunk that had given Vibulenus the idea, a hundred and twenty feet long and straight as a die, had been chosen to execute the plan as well. Legionaries had sawed the trunk in half lengthwise and hollowed it with adzes so quickly that the tribune himself marveled.
On the estate of the Vibuleni, such labor would have been performed by slaves-less well, and taking three or four times as long to accomplish. They were slaves, every man in the legion, and at some level they all knew it; but they didn't think like slaves. There were citizens of Rome and the best soldiers in the world, despite the vagaries of a consul who should have stuck to politics and similar forms of extortion.