by Alan Smale
“Come on, sir,” Aulus said. Enopay, the only adjutant with no horse, was already running back to safety at the rear of the First. “Sir?”
A second cornu sounded, and Marcellinus’s front line raised shields. Marcellinus and his adjutants made haste, riding back through the ranks to take their place behind the First Cohort. There they found Sollonius, who looked relieved to see Marcellinus following common sense for once.
Mongol arrows began to rain upon his line, but Marcellinus was watching the Roman cavalry. Having wrought their havoc, the Second Aravacorum was falling into a sleek column and riding back toward the left-hand end of the Sixth. The two Polovtsian alae were all mixed up together as usual, but once they got themselves sorted out, the Third Polovtsia would move to join Sabinus’s legion while the Fourth hightailed it across the field to support Agrippa’s 27th Augustan.
For a few dire moments Marcellinus saw nothing else and began to worry. Then the heavily armored horses of the Ala I Cataphractaria exploded out of the Mongol line in much more of an organized formation than he might have expected; on either side of them were the light horsemen of the Ninth Syrian and Hanska’s Third, jumbled together almost as badly as the Polovtsians. And yes, there was Hanska herself, raised up out of the saddle and waving a bloody spatha over her head. Probably screeching her bloodcurdling battle scream and scaring the crap out of everyone around her.
“Told you,” Enopay said.
“Yes, adjutant, thank you,” Marcellinus said, and winked at him.
—
Ten minutes later they were in a pitched battle. Almost as soon as the allied cavalrymen cleared the Mongol line, the Horde was on the move, charging out in pursuit. Chagatai might have hoped to run down the stragglers, or perhaps thought that the withdrawing horsemen would disrupt the Roman line. Neither happened. The Roman and Cahokian cavalry were already well clear and cantered safely back through the gaps between the infantry cohorts of the Sixth Ferrata, which then closed up behind them. This left only moments for the Fifth through Seventh Cohorts to step forward into position and create an unbroken line of Roman steel, but all those drills out on the west bank of the Mizipi were paying off now.
Through his discussions with Gallus, Sabinus, and Agrippa, Marcellinus had become familiar with the Mongol names for their various formations. Their formation from the first day, with broad rows of horsemen attacking in waves, was known as the Lake Formation. Today he was enjoying the dubious honor of seeing two different formations attacking his legion at the same time. The first was Moving Bush, in which independent squads of light horse archers assaulted almost randomly from different directions, each pummeling a small section of his line with great ferocity and then breaking away. The second was the more deadly Chisel Formation, similar to the Roman cuneus: a narrow but deep squadron of fully armored heavy cavalry that came at full charge and slammed obliquely into the front of his First Cohort with such ferocity that Marcellinus half expected sparks to fly and the grass around them to catch fire. In principle, the Chisel allowed his men to attack the Mongol flanks. In practice, the heavy horsemen at a gallop were moving too fast for infantry to assail them effectively.
The nice theory was that horsemen could never break a determined infantry position. The truth of it was that the Mongols’ horses were trained to be almost as dangerous as their warriors, and it would take a stout Roman cohort indeed to resist the combination of biting, kicking horses and the long hooked spears and sabers of their riders. In the face of such concerted and focused battering, the most that Marcellinus could hope was that his line would only bend, not break, and would reestablish itself promptly once the Mongol heavies were beaten back.
Tahtay and the others were, however, having much better success with the light cavalry. It turned out that an athletic Cahokian, Blackfoot, or Iroqua warrior with a long club was quite as nimble as a Mongol horse archer, if not as fast. A well-aimed blow with the club could cause substantial injury to a horse’s legs or chest. An even better-aimed blow could knock the rider right out of the saddle to either sprawl painfully across his horse or tumble off onto the ground.
All this simultaneous activity had the odd consequence that at any given moment some sections of Marcellinus’s line would be hooting and laughing and mocking fallen Mongols or leaping forward to spear to death enemies who had been knocked to the ground, even as other sections were locked together in furious combat with heavily armored adversaries and grimly fighting for their lives.
Meanwhile, Marcellinus was watching the skies.
At first he thought there were spots in his eyes, perhaps afterimages of the flashes of light from polished Roman helmets. He blinked and squinted. They were real.
A trumpet shrieked, and at the same time Sollonius said: “Thunderbirds, incoming. Bit low, though. Sir?”
Marcellinus grinned. “Look again, adjutant.”
It was rare indeed that Marcellinus got to correct someone else on his long-distance vision.
Here they came, slow and stately: three Sky Lanterns in free flight, riding the wind at an altitude of about fifteen hundred feet.
“A Sky Lantern can carry a far heavier cargo than a Wakinyan,” Marcellinus said.
“Liquid flame?” Enopay shook his head. “But they can’t steer. Can’t go back…”
“Once they drop their load, they’ll rise in altitude. They’ll go west with the wind, hopefully far beyond the battlefield. Once down, the crews will cross the Wemissori and find their way back. If we can, we’ll send horses for them.”
“Your idea? It sounds like you.”
“Yes.”
“Rather them than me,” Sollonius said with fervor.
The clangor of sword against shield, spear against sword drew Marcellinus’s attention back to his front line. He spurred his horse forward without responding but overheard Enopay’s wry reply: “Probably safer up there in the skies than down here with the Praetor.”
It took another ten minutes before the Sky Lanterns passed over their heads on their inexorable journey toward the Mongol line.
Sollonius nodded. “All right, this time I’m certain. Thunderbirds, incoming.”
“And Sintikala is overhead,” Enopay reported in Cahokian and sotto voce.
Marcellinus glanced up just once. Yes, the woman he loved was flying two thousand feet above his head.
Did she know he was there? Of course she did. Even if she couldn’t see him.
—
A dogfight broke out above the Sixth shortly afterward. Firebirds formed the vanguard of a Mongol aerial blitz, followed by two of the writhing and disconcerting Feathered Serpents of the Maya.
One of the Serpents dropped a thunder crash bomb over the Sixth Ferrata. It exploded just as it hit the ground and tore an immense hole in the Fourth Cohort, flinging men through the air, screaming in pain.
Its second bomb exploded above the Eighth. Molten shrapnel rained down on Vibius Caecina’s men, but the loss of life was much less, and it was the last bomb the Serpent managed to deliver. Six Eagles and Hawks converged on it from three directions with startling rapidity, perforating its wing with the broad-headed arrows devised by Sintikala that would maximize the rips in the canvas. Those arrows must have done serious damage, because rather than merely fluttering down to earth the Feathered Serpent folded and plummeted, barely missing the third rank of the Ninth as it smashed into the ground.
“Sintikala, overhead again,” Enopay said.
Marcellinus grunted. “You don’t say.”
The second Serpent writhed leftward sharply, heading for the Third Legion. “Good. Let them go and bother Decinius Sabinus for a while.”
To his right the tip of the latest Mongol Chisel had impacted his First Cohort front and center, and the enemy cavalry was carving a hole in his front line. Legionaries fell back, and centurions and optios snarled vile threats at their own men. Appius Gallus himself was running in on foot carrying a contus lance, which he thrust into the face of a Mongol heavy at
the front of the line. Good man.
Marcellinus was looking for the Wakinyan, and now he saw them. They had looped to the south to avoid the aerial conflict with the Feathered Serpents and were returning to their course. They began to separate, fanning out in the sky, just as he, Sintikala, and Chenoa had planned the previous evening—
“Shit,” Sollonius said. “Jupiter, fuck, sir: take cover!”
Marcellinus reacted immediately, kicking his leg up and over his wood and leather saddle. He half slid, half tumbled to the ground without even knowing where the threat was coming from.
Then came the loudest explosion that he had heard yet, and he was knocked off his feet and back against his horse.
The horse reared, whinnying. Marcellinus was on the ground with something heavy on top of him and his horse’s hooves kicking clods of earth into the air just a few feet away. A dark shadow passed over him.
From next to his ear came a screech of pain that terminated in a choking cough. Broken porcelain rained down over them.
Marcellinus twisted and shoved, trying to free himself. “Enopay! Enopay!”
“Jupiterrr…!”
While the First’s attention had been drawn away by the heavy cavalry attack, a Firebird had come in fast and low and thrown a thunderclap bomb. Seeing it coming, Sollonius had flung himself in front of his Praetor and had taken the brunt of the blast.
Sollonius’s armor had protected his torso from the worst of it, but he was bleeding extensively from the back of his neck, arms, and legs, and the left side of his face was a mass of blood. He writhed on the ground in his agony in an unconscious parody of the Serpent that had flown by just moments before.
“Aulus! Get a medicus here!”
It was Enopay’s voice. In relief, Marcellinus turned to see the boy already running away—unharmed—between the columns of legionaries. Aulus stood dazed, and Enopay had obviously decided it would be quicker to run for help himself than to wait for Aulus to signal for it.
Napayshni hurried to Marcellinus’s side, guilt twisting his face. “I am sorry I was not beside you, Wanageeska…”
“I’m not.” Marcellinus looked up, scanning the skies. Sintikala and Kimimela were high above them, turning to help escort the five Wakinyan that were about to overfly the Sixth.
“There, look,” Napayshni said. “The Firebird has come down in the land of no men.”
“No-man’s-land,” said Marcellinus, and indeed the three Firebird pilots were shucking their wing in the area between the two armies, trying to keep their heads low.
It didn’t matter. A war party of six Iroqua loped toward them. The pilots turned to face the threat, and one tried to draw the bow he had slung over his shoulder, but the first three Iroqua were already slamming their clubs and axes into the Mongols’ bodies while the other three covered them, ready to ward off any enemy horsemen that might be approaching. None were. The Firebird pilots were soon dead and scalped.
“I’m starting to like the Iroqua,” Marcellinus said, and at Napayshni’s pained expression he added quickly: “I was joking…but some are fierce fighters.”
Sollonius had stopped crying out now but was curled into a ball hissing air through his teeth, still bleeding profusely. Chumanee was coming at a run with Enopay trotting behind her, weaving between Romans who looked startled to see a woman on the battlefield. Marcellinus nodded at her and almost threw himself on the ground again when he heard a detonation behind him.
It was the whump of Cahokian liquid fire. The leftmost of the Sky Lanterns had just released a barrage onto the trebuchets. He saw the familiar red and white flames and the oily cloud rising up, heard the cries and screams of men doused in the agonizing incendiary.
A Thunderbird passed over him and almost immediately began to spray the Chisel column with liquid flame—a little too soon, as part of the Roman front line got spattered. Foul words howled in Latin turned to cheers as the Mongol heavies broke off their attack and scattered away.
For a few brief, miraculous moments, the Sixth Legion’s front line was unassailed. “Forward!” Marcellinus shouted. “Cornicen, sound the advance! Take ground!”
Freed of the weight of much of its load of liquid fire, the first Sky Lantern rose dramatically in the air. By this time Marcellinus was actually learning something from his aerial reconnaissance crews: from an Eagle, Taianita was signaling down to Enopay, who quickly relayed the information.
The second Sky Lantern was overflying the Mongol camp, targeting the crude corral where the Mongols were keeping most of their remounts and the wagons that carried their black powder bombs. The third was conducting a literal scorched-earth policy and setting fire to what remained of the grass along the right side of the camp, bringing ruin to the two-mile-long stretch of open runway that the Mongol horsemen had been using to haul their Firebirds and Feathered Serpents aloft and managing to destroy several of the flying craft on the ground. Once their missions were over, the Sky Lanterns climbed higher into the sky and kept going into the west.
Right now, there were no Mongol craft in the air and the jaghuns responsible for launching them were scurrying to regroup. Marcellinus hoped they would not get the chance.
The assault of the Sky Lanterns had rendered the skies safe for the Thunderbirds, and the huge aerial craft were making the most of the opportunity. The first two Thunderbirds were spraying Mongol horsemen in the field with liquid flame, with variable results—the cavalry were too spread out, too mobile, and too well armored to suffer as badly from the liquid fire as infantry and civilians did, but the Wakinyan certainly put a crimp in the Mongols’ maneuverability. The third Wakinyan diverted once its pilots saw the damage the trebuchets had sustained from the Sky Lantern attack and instead flew on over the Mongol camp, saturation bombing the central area where the Keshik tents surrounded the great yurt of the Mongol Khan and burning more of the supply wagons in the rear of the camp, along with the unfortunate oxen that had hauled the wagons across the continent.
Turning sharply right, those Wakinyan were able to fly over the Wemissori before having to land. The fourth and fifth Thunderbirds had disappeared off through the Jin salt smoke and haze to the right, presumably to menace the central grouping of trebuchets that threatened the Legio III Parthica.
Now Aelfric led his detachment of legionaries from the Sixth and Seventh Cohorts forward to assault the trebuchet towers that remained unburned and mop up the Mongols who manned them.
Once the Wakinyan were past, the Mongol light cavalry set about organizing itself in broad lines for another wave attack on the Sixth. It was clear that they lacked some of the vigor they had shown earlier in the war and that the aerial assaults were having an effect on the Mongols’ morale. Capitalizing on that, Marcellinus sent the joint force of the Ninth Syrian and Hanska’s Third Cahokian back into the field in a hit-and-run attack to break them up, then marched his legion forward another hundred feet.
“Damn this smoke,” he said.
“Your other Roman battles had no smoke?” Takoda was guarding Marcellinus now, his eyes flickering nervously from the battle line to the skies, from behind him to in front of him and over to his right. Aulus and Furnius had moved to the back to prepare dispatches to send to the Imperator. Enopay had gone off to the area they were using as a hospital with Sollonius and Chumanee, and Napayshni was busy sending runners back and forth to the tribunes of the Sixth to receive their reports.
Of course, there was no reason Takoda should know about Roman battles. “These are my first battles where the enemy has the exploding black powder. Nor have any of my previous opponents thrown buckets of stinking pitch.”
“Oh.” Takoda’s eyebrows shot up. “Then you are doing quite well.”
“Thank you. Although it’s mostly because of you.”
That was true enough. The Sixth was taking casualties, but not at an unacceptable level. Its cohorts were standing firm and fighting with calm efficiency. But it was Cahokian ingenuity and bravery that had made all t
he difference. The valor of the Hawk and Thunderbird clans had mostly negated the threat from their enemies’ Firebirds and Feathered Serpents as well as considerably disrupting their cavalry charges. The aerial attacks with the Cahokian liquid flame had disabled the Mongols’ siege engines, strafed their camp and killed or stampeded many of their remounts, and helped prevent further Firebird launches.
And then there were the Hesperian foot soldiers. Rather than fight like Romans, the braves of the First Cahokian were fighting like Hesperians, joining the Blackfoot, Iroqua, and Wolf Warriors in running around in ruthless and agile war parties to sow death and confusion among Chagatai’s light horse archers.
A sheet of fire leaped into the sky far to Marcellinus’s right. He hoped that would be one of the remaining Thunderbirds dropping its fiery load over the central grouping of Mongol trebuchets. Almost absently, Marcellinus noted that Aelfric’s cohorts had moved back to join the rest of the Ironclads.
For a brief moment he allowed himself to hope that the worst of all this was over, that they were finally gaining the upper hand over the forces of the Mongol Khan.
A short cornu blast came from behind him: not a signal but someone trying to get his attention. Marcellinus turned to find five men riding up behind him: Aurelius Dizala, the adjutant Aulus, Isleifur Bjarnason, Einar Stenberg, and a signalman bearing a cornu. None looked elated at the successes of the Sixth. “Juno. What?”
“We’re fucked,” Aulus said, ever economical with information.
Exasperated, Marcellinus looked instead at Aurelius Dizala.
“The 27th has broken,” Dizala said tersely. “Bjarnason?”
The Viking dismounted in a single swift movement. “They pushed forward too hard. Cohorts got split. Then the Mongols broke and fled toward the Wemissori, and the Fourth Polovtsian chased them, with three cohorts of the 27th Augustan in hot pursuit. It was a trick, of course. The Yokot’an Maya swept in to cut them off, then the Mongols turned on them. Circled them into a tight crush and dropped thunder crash bombs into them with Feathered Serpents. Drove the rest into the Wemissori, where the Tlingit were waiting in force in canoes to hack them to death in the water. Bloodbath.”