by Alan Smale
So be it. They’d marched only twelve miles today. Still enough freshness in those hard Roman legs to carry them up and over a half-naked foe armed with sticks. They might even sleep in the Great City tonight.
Another stand of tall hickory trees stood in their path, and Tribune Corbulo, riding ahead of him in the vanguard, steered the Legion around it in a broad rightward curve. A series of long huts with thatched roofs now bordered the Hesperian road; the troops stayed wary, shields at the ready in case of a sudden fusillade of arrows, but none came. Corbulo sent in his incendiary-men to fire the huts, which went up in a fast popping blaze.
Now a corresponding crackle of excitement flooded the Legion, the men in the lead raising a ruckus, shouting “Roma!” and fanning out efficiently into battle formation. Marcellinus spurred his mount forward and was soon by Corbulo’s side, where he took in the scene with a broad sweeping glance.
He looked out across a plain studded with hundreds of sculpted earthworks: cones, ridge mounds, and square-sided platform mounds arranged in well-ordered lines. Set around them in a more haphazard pattern was a swarm of long huts with walls of reed matting and thatched roofs, along with larger wooden structures that must be granaries and lodges. The Cahokiani obviously did not believe in urban planning or a grid pattern or even in streets. But a mile or more away, across what looked like a giant plaza, Marcellinus saw a stockade fifteen feet tall, built of giant logs, extending hundreds of yards in each direction. And within the stockade …
“Juno!” Marcellinus swore. “Hold! Hold!”
Within the stockade sat an immense two-level platform mound constructed entirely of earth. Its four sides angled up steeply like a pyramid to a first plateau with a thatched hut on one corner and then up again to a final flat crest. The mound was topped with a huge wooden structure that must have been eighty feet long and two or three stories high.
“What?” Corbulo paused, contemptuous. “It’s a lump. We’ll slaughter ’em, then kick it down.”
“It’s farther away than you think,” Marcellinus said. “Look at it. It must be over a hundred feet high and a thousand feet across the base of it.”
How long must it have taken to construct such a massive pyramid, even using slave labor? The legion dug a six-foot earthen ridge around the castra each night, but that was the work of thousands of tough men at the peak of fitness. This thing had to be fifteen acres in area and as tall as the Palatine Hill in Roma. They must have spent lifetimes building it up to its current height and girth. And on wet foundations such an earthwork had to be hell’s own job to stabilize. How could one even engineer it?
This was no scaled-up version of a fishing camp or nomads’ village. This truly was a Great City, complete with suburbs, urbs, and citadel. From the sheer number of houses and mounds and the expanse of corn that stretched beyond and behind them as far as he could see, Marcellinus reckoned it must hold well over the ten thousand people Bjarnason had estimated, perhaps twice that number. After their trek across the most desolate and unpromising territory he had ever seen, the Great City had a grandeur for which he was not prepared.
In that moment Marcellinus radically revised his assessment of their enemy. Savage, yes, but in the scope of their organization as civilized as many a Roman province.
And here they came, row upon row of Cahokiani pouring out from the palisade and hurrying in like ants from the outer regions of their city. Around Marcellinus his legionaries were similarly arraying themselves for battle, as they had to, since their enemy could charge at any time. He became aware that near him Corbulo was shouting the order to advance. The trumpeters raised their instruments to their lips.
“Wait,” Marcellinus said. “Deploy and hold. We don’t advance yet.”
Corbulo turned, stiff-necked. “What?”
“There’s more here than meets the eye. Look at the terrain. The braves can use the huts and mounds to good effect. Advancing, we’ll take attacks from the flanks as well as the front.”
Twenty-five years of soldiering had lent Marcellinus a powerful intuition. He had not become a Praetor for nothing, and his gut told him now to keep his distance from that Master Mound.
“We wait?” said Corbulo in contempt just as Aelfric rode up from behind and cursed in his own tongue at the stupendous sight before them. “No, we must charge immediately while they’re still forming up. Frontal assault. We’ve come a thousand miles for this.”
“Yes, and so we can wait ten minutes more.” In the ranks his centurions were in the thick of preparations, running back and forth bellowing at their men. Despite never having received a command from Marcellinus, his Legion already was deployed in an admirably straight north-south triple line. The banners of the cohorts flapped in the growing breeze, the signa of individual centuries were displayed proudly, and at the line’s center he saw the golden Aquila raised high.
Despite the stress of the moment a lump came to Marcellinus’s throat. They’d endured a grueling trek with hunger, discomfort, and danger. Dissent and discord had never been far away, but his men had risen to the occasion in double-quick time. The Legio XXXIII Hesperia was ready for battle. And yet, and yet …
“Wings ho!” someone cried. And so there were, a dozen or more, leaping off the top of the Master Mound and circling out over the assembling barbarian horde like moths before gliding back to land behind the palisade.
“They can’t reach us,” Fabius said. “That mound isn’t so high, and they have no updrafts to sustain them. Showy enough but no threat.”
Corbulo nodded. “These red bastards don’t like to fight unless they hold the advantage of stealth, darkness, or altitude. There’s no honor in ’em. Burn a captive, drop a rock, poison a scratch, hack at a soldier squatting under a tree—that’s their game. We kill them all now.”
“Tribune. Attend me.”
Corbulo turned on him. “You told the men the redskins are cowards! They cower in defeat. Look at Fuscus!”
“The Powhatani, yes. Even the Iroqua. Perhaps not these Cahokiani.” Marcellinus strode forward and clamped his hand onto Corbulo’s arm. “I gave you an order, Tribune. Obey me.”
Corbulo’s hand dropped to the hilt of his gladius. “Not today, I think.”
Their eyes met. Looking deep into Corbulo’s soul, Marcellinus saw many things: fear, resentment, and above all Corbulo’s desperate and enduring need to redeem himself.
It was the same wild look he had seen in Corbulo’s eye during the ambush in Appalachia. Corbulo was suffering from that same panic now. His nerve was cracking.
Corbulo broke eye contact but dropped his voice. “I know you, Gaius. You’re looking for an excuse to avoid slaughter. But it’s too late. The men will revolt and kill us both if we don’t attack now.”
“The men will do as I order. They respect prudence.”
“Prudence?” said Corbulo, reverting to a voice loud enough to carry to the nearest troops. “Prudence says we wipe out the savages, take their corn and their gold and their women, and, yes, grind the bones of the men to pave the temple to Jupiter Imperator that we’ll build on that sand castle of theirs. As you said yourself just the other night. Did you lose your stomach for the fight, Gaius Marcellinus? Forget so soon how these savages mutilated your Norse catamite? Or have you made deals by night and now favor the red men?”
“What?” Marcellinus shook his head, overwhelmed at this knot of bizarre accusations. But Corbulo’s gladius was now unsheathed, and that was something Marcellinus could understand.
Legionaries might take advantage of the chaos on the battlefield to rough up an unpopular centurion. It happened often enough. But for a tribune to challenge a legate’s authority a few hundred yards from the enemy’s gate was unthinkable.
“I’m relieving you of your command,” Marcellinus said.
Corbulo grinned. “I think not.”
Suddenly, all around Marcellinus was movement; Gnaeus Fabius seized a pilum and stepped up to stand with Corbulo, and flanking the two mut
ineers came four swarthy auxiliaries, mercenaries from east of the Danube, Magyars, perhaps, or Bulgars. Too late, Marcellinus saw that this little scene was not as impromptu as it had first appeared. He dropped back several paces to open up space around him, his adrenaline surging.
The pilum of Fabius was the first danger, with its reach so much longer than a sword’s. The javelin was capable of ending a fight in a single well-aimed throw but could be cumbersome as a hand-to-hand weapon. A better fighter than Fabius might have charged in and pinned Marcellinus to ready him for the dispatch, but apparently Fabius’s magistracy had not primed him for such martial boldness; instead he launched the pilum at Marcellinus from fifteen feet away. The Praetor took a single step to the right as it flew by, and remained on balance.
Hands free, no shield within reach, Marcellinus unsheathed his gladius with his right hand and his pugio with his left and stood fast as the six men charged him.
With a strange howl that was neither a berserker yell nor a cry of abandon, Aelfric hurled himself into the fray at his commander’s side. So nimble was his charge that if the Briton had been a party to the treachery, Marcellinus would have been on his knees with a blade through his kidney before he could have parried.
Marcellinus cut down the first two mercenaries with swift slices to the gut. They were hardly the first young hotheads to fatally misjudge his speed. The paid help from Roma’s provinces were generally not skilled gladiatorial fighters; on the battlefield they relied on ferocity rather than virtuosity, and Marcellinus had been training daily in swordplay since he’d been a child.
Once they saw the fight was not as simple as they’d hoped the third and fourth auxiliaries backed away rapidly and stepped apart to encircle him.
Meanwhile, Aelfric’s gladius clashed with Corbulo’s; the two men slashed and parried, swung and ducked, and Aelfric staggered back. Faced with the choice between two opponents, Marcellinus chose the third, darting between the two Magyars to lunge at Domitius Corbulo’s flank. Corbulo spun to face him, startled, and Marcellinus drove the pugio up under his breastplate and deep into his ribs, leaning back to slice his gladius across his former tribune’s gut. As Corbulo reeled like a drunkard, swinging his blade wildly, Marcellinus dropped to one knee, allowing Aelfric to leap over his sword arm and slam bodily into the nearest of the mercenaries, bowling him over.
The unexpected trade in opponents made short work of the insurrection. Corbulo screamed like a banshee as his entrails tumbled out into the dirt, a cry that turned into a guttural bubbling as Marcellinus tugged his dagger free and severed the man’s windpipe.
The mutineer fell to the ground with an audible thump.
Beside him Aelfric had handily slain the third mercenary. The fourth raised his sword over them with a yell and was almost casually decapitated by Pollius Scapax, arriving better late than not at all.
Left alone in his mutiny in a matter of seconds, Gnaeus Fabius stood stupidly before them, his gladius pointing at the ground. He looked around for reinforcements, but the men near him stood mute. Praetor Gaius Marcellinus calmly cleaned his two blades on Corbulo’s tunic at his feet while holding his Second Tribune’s gaze.
Pollius Scapax strode the ten paces that separated them. Fabius raised his sword but didn’t have the courage to swing it at the centurion. Gently, almost kindly, Scapax reached forward and seized the tribune’s gladius at the hilt, turned it toward Fabius’s belly, and kicked his knees from behind. As Gnaeus Fabius fell onto his own sword, Scapax ripped off the man’s cape and plumed helmet and threw them aside, demoting him from the rank of tribune and the ranks of the living in the same moment.
Marcellinus sheathed his pugio. The closest legionaries swiveled their heads almost comically back and forth between Marcellinus, Scapax, and the assembled swath of the Cahokiani nation behind them. Marcellinus realized that two entire armies had come to a halt, waiting for the leadership battle to be decided.
Aelfric had stood by him, after all. But Marcellinus was not surprised that no one else had come to his aid. To most of the men Marcellinus and Corbulo were of a common stripe: patricians, Roma’s natural masters, representatives of the ruling class. Their lot would be much the same whichever man wore the Praetor’s crest. Unless they were paid or coerced, they had naught to gain and all to lose by picking a side.
Scapax approached, his gladius still unsheathed but reversed so that the point pushed up against his breast. “I was not close by when I might have served you, Praetor,” he said gruffly. “And so I offer you my life. But I’d rather expend it killing some barbarians for you than follow Fabius to hell right away if you’ll give me leave.”
“Of course,” Marcellinus said calmly. “Think nothing of it. I relished the chance to clean house.”
His First Centurion’s relief was palpable. “My thanks.”
“In addition, I find myself short of field lieutenants. I will take the Second and Third. Assume the tribuneship of the First if you please.”
Scapax’s eyes glinted. “Very good, sir.”
He saluted, and Marcellinus returned the salute. His new officer marched to his command.
Likewise, Aelfric turned to hurry back to the Fifth.
“Tribune?” said Marcellinus. “My thanks.”
Aelfric looked back, and their eyes met.
“And my apologies. I was perhaps … harsh.”
The Briton grinned. “Not at all, sir.”
“We’ll drink wine tonight.”
“As my Praetor requests.” Aelfric bowed and set off toward his cohorts at a trot.
Considering that there were thousands of men present, the stillness of the afternoon was impressive. If not for the tension in the air, Marcellinus could have closed his eyes and thought himself alone in the sunshine. As it was, he felt his army extending out from him in all directions like a drawn bow, arrow nocked and at the ready, bowstring tight, arm muscles aquiver.
The Praetor slowed his breathing and studied the battlefield. His Legion was deployed uniformly, presenting an even front a thousand yards long. The Cahokiani horde was by no means so well distributed; the northern end of their line was thicker, holding thousands more than the southern end that stood between him and the Master Mound. Would they deliberately expend more troops defending their population center than their sacred hill? Was it just an accident of formation? Or was the nearer end of their line guarded by something he couldn’t see?
Not the wings, certainly. Though impressive, their Master Mound did not approximate to a mountain. Pilots who leaped from its top barely had time to loop back around before they were on the ground again.
A hidden pit? All the soil that went into the mounds had to come from somewhere. Had the Cahokiani concealed their borrow pits in the hope of enticing their enemies to charge headlong into them?
Perhaps. But in that case all Marcellinus had to do to minimize his losses was have the Legion walk rather than run. And Marcellinus still didn’t like the looks of the mounds and houses that stood between his army and the palisade; he wasn’t about to rush pell-mell into them in any case.
He turned his attention to the enemy line. At last Marcellinus could see the Cahokiani clearly. In their garb they were a mixed bunch, some wearing only breechcloths and swirling tattoos, others decked out in what might be tunics with wooden mats hanging down over their chests and stomachs as the simplest armor. Here and there men wore a woven sash, a kilt bearing geometric patterns, moccasins of deerskin, or a collar of what might have been rabbit. Hanging from many ears he saw pendulous adornments of antler and bone.
The Cahokiani had no flags, standards, or symbols and little organization. Nowhere was this more apparent than in their array of weaponry: wooden bows probably crafted of hickory, spears of wood much shorter and lighter than the Roman pila, and clubs and axes, too, but also a variety of tools hurriedly pressed into service: hafted hoes, mattocks. Some of the men clutched nothing more deadly than a rock or a knife.
He faced a mass of nobl
es and commoners, farmers and traders, warriors and weavers all mixed together, and a style of fighting the Romans had outgrown a millennium and a half earlier. The Romans were heavily outnumbered, but they had metal blades and armor and intense discipline on their side. Marcellinus’s sympathies lay with his foes.
Yet he still felt an instinctive unease at these people with their almost intimate stares, waiting as calmly as if they went toe-to-toe with a Roman army once a week. In the mountains, people not so different from these had assaulted them from above. What was about to happen here?
Isleifur Bjarnason’s voice echoed in his head. “They have more … You haven’t seen anything yet …”
Corbulo had been quite right; now that Marcellinus had seen the Great City for himself, he would have given anything to avoid this battle. But such a thing was impossible.
They already knew the Hesperians did not understand the civilized conduct of war. Their sneak attacks, their use of poison arrows, the torture and murder of his scout, and their use of the flying machines all provided adequate testimony to that. Marcellinus could easily ride out between the armies under a flag of truce to try to parley only to perish in a hail of arrows for his pains. No leader or chieftain was evident in the massed line of Cahokiani that faced him. He saw no one to negotiate with even if he’d still had a word slave at his disposal.
Besides, they had literally passed the point of no return. The Legion needed the city’s food. And for that Marcellinus needed to conquer the city.
It was a testament to the steadiness of his centurions that none of his cohorts had yet erupted into a charge. Marcellinus could not halt this battle any more than he could hold back the tide.
Very well, then.
Praetor Gaius Publius Marcellinus raised his gladius high and gave the signals to his aquilifer and signiferi while shouting: “Advance in steps, covering! Burn all buildings; secure high ground! Arrows in rotation once in range; maintain formation till melee. Forward the Legion, for Roma, the Imperator, and the Fighting 33rd!”