Caesar Ascending-India Limited Edition

by R. W. Peake

  In a remarkably short period of time, Memmon was forced to call on every trick he had learned in the prior forty years spent in the company of elephants to keep Anala under control and responding to his commands. He was alone now; he hadn’t seen it happen, but he heard Aditya’s gurgling cry of despair before tumbling out of the box, and he wasn’t unscathed himself. One of the Romans had managed to get close enough to reach up with one of their long spears to thrust it into the back of his thigh, but while it was painful, his blood had already clotted. He also had a gash in his scalp, the result of a glancing blow from the javelins they had thankfully at least stopped hurling at the two of them, but it was the pounding in his head that bothered him more than the gash itself. Now he could sense that Anala was tiring, and he had risked sitting up just long enough to perform a quick examination of his elephant. While Anala was bleeding in several places, Memmon saw these were superficial wounds, the most serious being the spear that was still embedded in the muscles behind Anala’s right shoulder, so the handler was heartened that the elephant was only feeling fatigued and not weakening because of a mortal wound. These Romans, he thought bitterly, must be demons, because normal men would have long since fled in terror, and the fact that they hadn’t posed a grave problem, not just for Memmon and Anala in particular but the entire corps of elephants, and by extension, the people of Bharuch. The problem was based in a simple but profound truth; none of the enemies that had tried to stand in the face of Abhiraka’s elephants had ever lasted this long without breaking, and in doing so, thereby allow the elephants to pursue and crush or impale fleeing men. But these Romans, while he could see the fear in their faces and who, to his surprise, were actually quite small in stature for the most part, had stood their ground, absorbing the punishment Anala meted out. And, as the elephant had spun about, whenever possible, Memmon glanced at the other elephants on either side, and nowhere could he see the enemy behaving any differently. He couldn’t see all the way to the elephants on either end of the line, but he assumed that they were in the same situation, surrounded and being worn down by a group of determined, disciplined men. Handling Anala, or any elephant, for that matter, meant acting as a pair of eyes for the two blind spots the animal had, directly in front, and directly behind. One of the first things men who worked with these animals learned was there was a significant expanse that, because of the wideset eyes, elephants simply couldn’t see, and knowing that there was an object in that blind spot made them nervous, even when it wasn’t a man trying to kill them. As soon as Aditya was killed, Memmon had lost the ability to guard his animal’s rear, forcing him to become more aggressive in keeping the animal pivoting back and forth, which of course had only hastened the onset of the fatigue Anala was experiencing. Elephants didn’t have particularly keen eyesight; they worked more off smell and hearing, but their vision was sufficient to track movement, and with their eyes on either side of their massive head, their peripheral vision was actually superior to their human masters’. This was the only reason why Anala hadn’t been overcome, but Memmon was growing increasingly desperate, and it was when, after repelling a charge from both sides that had been coordinated, Memmon’s attention turned to the Roman who he was sure had given that order, a taller, lean man with a sword in one hand and some sort of stick in the other.

  “All right, my beauty,” he didn’t have to shout because his mouth was next to Anala’s ear “we’re going to cut off the head of this viper. Then we’ll see if it still bites.”

  He didn’t attack immediately; instead, he allowed Anala to keep the men around him at bay by swinging his head back and forth while Memmon watched the Roman who wore the crest that ran from ear to ear. When he saw the Roman turn to another man who was wearing a headdress that Memmon assumed was made of a wolf’s skin, Memmon made his move. When he jabbed Anala with the goad to get him moving in the direction Memmon wanted, while making a clicking noise at the same time, the elephant suddenly stopped swinging his head back and forth, lowered it, and charged forward. Memmon’s lips peeled back in a ferocious grin when he saw the Roman officer turn back just in time to see Anala thundering toward him, but in the fraction of time he had to look his enemy in the face, what Memmon saw in the man’s expression was disquieting enough that his suspicion of demonic origin seemed confirmed, because he saw no terror there, just a calm resolution. Then, from their right, both Memmon and his elephant saw something moving.

  To Porcinus, it seemed as if in one moment, he was standing with a comrade from the Fifth Section on one side, and a man from the Second Century on the other, then he found himself standing squarely in front of the animal, having dropped his shield to hold his spear in both hands, waiting to die by either being trampled underfoot or being transfixed by a tusk that was already covered in blood and still dripping the gore from his slain comrades. What this sudden movement did, however, was give both Porcinus and Scribonius the barest eyeblink of time. They didn’t know enough about elephants to understand about their blind spot in front of them, and how disconcerting it was for them for some creature to suddenly vanish into that space, especially in a situation like this. The animal didn’t stop its charge, but it did seem to alter its stride; it wasn’t much, and in fact was barely noticeable, but it gave Porcinus the chance to drop to his knees, not out of fear but to allow himself to brace the butt of the siege spear into the ground, allowing the momentum of the huge animal to run itself directly onto the point of the spear. Fighting the urge to close his eyes so he didn’t have to see his own demise, Porcinus instead tried to guide the spear so the point struck at a spot just above the bronze breastplate; in this, he was unsuccessful, the spear striking almost squarely in the middle of the armor instead. But, between the massive weight of the animal and its momentum, the iron point punched through the softer bronze and drove into the elephant’s body. The shriek of terror and agony that essentially originated just above Porcinus’ head was totally deafening to the young Legionary, but it was the sudden rearing in the animal’s attempt to stop from impaling itself that allowed him to roll out from under the elephant and out of immediate danger of being crushed. For what seemed to be an eternity, the elephant hovered in the air on its hind legs, and Porcinus was close enough to see the shine of blood streaming down from behind the breastplate, which matched the flow coming from the animal’s mouth. He was also close enough to feel the deep vibration as the animal came crashing back down to the ground on its front legs, and it immediately became obvious that the beast had lost any thought of combat, even if its handler had not, because instead of resuming its charge towards Scribonius, it turned its head in the direction of the city walls and began a stumbling run. Once again, Porcinus, along with his comrades between the elephant and the city were forced to leap aside, but this time, the elephant didn’t even seem to notice the men it had just been trying to kill, its trunk raised as it made a staccato bleating noise as it fled, leaving the Romans panting and shaking from exhaustion and fear. What Porcinus noticed first was the silence, relatively speaking, and he saw it as a sign that none of his surviving comrades were doing their normal jeering and shouting in triumph at the sight of their fleeing enemy of how desperate the fighting had been.

  While Pullus and his Equestrians were the first to experience the wrath of more than a dozen armored elephants, the other three Legions were also subjected to the storming fury of multi-ton, armored animals. For Spurius and his 3rd, when the animals came streaming out of the gate, two of his Cohorts were either on the rampart, or were still ascending the ladders, and it was the latter men who suffered first. The majority of the animals came charging directly out towards the neatly aligned Cohorts awaiting their turn now that the artillery on the southern wall had been neutralized, but several of the animals turned in both directions and headed parallel to the wall, the former scattering the men waiting for their turn for the most part, but inevitably an unfortunate few Romans who were either slow, or most commonly, tripped or somehow lost their footing were e
ither trampled, impaled, or hit by one of the pair of archers riding in each basket. Meanwhile, dozens of men waiting for space to be cleared on the rampart were trapped in their spot on their assigned ladder by the animals who turned to run along the wall, and while the siege ladders were heavily constructed, their vertical legs were snapped as easily as a man breaking a piece of kindling over his knee, the leading animal smashing through one after the other. For the Bargosans, particularly the men who served as the crew of that lead elephant, this proved to have deadly consequences, as the heavily armored Romans who had been above them at some point on the ladder came tumbling down, and by the time the first animal had struck three of them, it was essentially crewless, its handler and the three crewmen swept from its back by falling Roman bodies. However, it was the actions of one quick-thinking Gregarius, from the Third Century of the Second Cohort, who saw what was about to happen, bracing himself to land feetfirst in the middle of the now-empty wooden box. The impact knocked the wind from him, but he was otherwise unharmed, and he quickly recovered enough to rise to a crouch, trying to time his movement to the motion caused by the lumbering elephant before leaping out of the box to land astride the animal’s neck, landing in the saddle that was now empty as well. Without pausing, he drew his sword, then holding it with two hands, plunged the point down, using all of his strength, just as the animal was smashing into the fourth ladder. The animal collapsed in a heap, with the same sliding impact as the one killed by its handler on the opposite side of the city, but unfortunately, the heroic Gregarius was a casualty as well, killed when the falling body of one of his comrades from the final ladder struck landed on him and broke his neck. In the ensuing weeks, much attention would be devoted to this by his surviving comrades as they argued about the caprice and fickle nature of the gods who would allow this man to survive to perform a deed that was universally agreed to have saved his comrades’ lives, then be accidentally slain by one of the men he was trying to save. In the moment, however, his sacrifice had an even more profound effect because the first elephant’s corpse blocked the path of the animals trailing behind it, forcing them to veer away from the wall. Perhaps more importantly, it gave the men on the remaining ladders on that side of the gate the time to prepare, and while the two bowmen aboard each animal were still loosing as quickly as they could, in order to get to the remaining ladders, the handlers were forced to move their animals within range of the javelins the men were carrying. Once the Romans already on the rampart became aware of this threat, the Centurions and Optios took charge, designating a single line of men who faced out from the wall, javelin in hand and relying on their comrades on the rampart to protect their rear. Using the height advantage to add to the range and force of their throws, it enabled the Romans on the rampart to eliminate the most vulnerable member of each elephant crew, the handler. Sitting in his exposed position, without even the sides of the wooden box to provide a modicum of protection, it wasn’t long before four of the surviving elephants had lost their original handler and were now under the control of his replacement, at least until they were also struck from the saddle. Perhaps even more importantly, elephants were completely unaccustomed to being assailed from above, and while most of the hurled missiles were aimed at the animals’ human crew, it was inevitable that some of them managed to strike each animal where its hide wasn’t as thick, the height helping to increase the force of the missiles’ impact and driving more deeply into the animals than the men on the ground were capable of doing.

  On the opposite side of the gate, while it wasn’t accomplished exactly the same way by slaying the leading animal, after the first few ladders were destroyed, these elephants were driven away from the remaining ladders as well by Romans hurling their missiles down from above. The main group of the armored animals who headed for the Cohorts assembled and waiting their turn to either move into position to scale the ladders, or ideally, rush through the gate once it was opened by their comrades already on the wall, were now essentially in a similar position as those on the northern side. After the initial onslaught, the animals were surrounded by Legionaries who were using their superior mobility and ability to dodge out of the way, waiting for an opening, while the crews aboard each animal exchanged missile fire with the Legionaries. It was inevitable that blood was spilled on both sides, but once it was determined that, between their armor and the natural toughness of their hides, the elephants were impervious to serious injury from the Roman javelins, attention was turned to the Bargosan men. The Romans were experienced facing bowmen, and they kept their shields up and in front of them, while their foes had never faced anything like the Legions, men who worked in teams and whose javelins proved so deadly to them if not their elephants. Not helping the Bargosans was the quality of their armor; because of the expense, the vast majority of Abhiraka’s troops were clad in bronze rather than iron armor, with the exception of the king himself and his personal bodyguard, and the hardened triangular iron points punched through the weaker bronze scales. When combined with the further tissue damage inevitable when the softer iron of the shaft bent under the weight of the wooden portion, the Bargosan numbers were quickly reduced, most of the survivors being the lone spearman, only because they weren’t considered the deadlier foe. Inevitably, however, this came at a cost in Roman lives, as the elephants responded to their handler’s commands, sending men flying when they misjudged the speed with which these massive beasts could move, or more commonly, the Legionary had just been forced to raise his shield to block an arrow, which obscured his vision at a crucial moment, and it became apparent that something different had to be done. It fell to the Quintus Pilus Prior, Lucius Macula, to send a party of men running back to one of the beached ships and return with boxes of naphtha, realizing it was the only weapon they had that might subdue the rampaging elephants in their midst. Without any communication between the two forces of Caesar and Pollio, their Centurions independently assessed the situation and reached the same conclusion; what remained to be seen was if it was in time to matter.

  Caesar’s quinquereme had been rowed to a spot in midriver where he could see both the southern and part of the western walls, the city being too big for him to see more than this unless he moved to the opposite bank almost a mile away. He had watched as Spurius and his men endured the barrage of stones, the sounds of some of the ships being struck rolling across the water to him, but even with the pyres the Bargosans had ignited, it was impossible for him to make out much detail. The splintering crash of Spurius’ ship smashing into the wharf was the loudest noise to that point, then his Legionaries began unloading, swarming across the wharf and getting organized with the speed that he expected from one of his Legions. As he stood there watching, the only sign of his tension was the flexing of his right hand over and over, something that only a few men ever noticed and correctly interpreted. Otherwise, he was the same imperturbable Caesar, watching what was unfolding as if it was going exactly according to the plan he had devised. Internally, his mind was racing, as he realized that the method for transferring men from shipboard to land was anything but satisfactory, something with which he’d been grappling ever since the first landing in Britannia, when his men had had to fight their way out of the surf against the wild Britons, but with some chagrin, he realized that he had pushed this problem to the bottom of the proverbial pile because of the nature of the Parthian portion of this campaign. No, he thought, there has to be a better way to do this, so as he watched, a part of his formidable mind wrestled with the problem, somewhere back in the recesses of his consciousness, even as he watched Spurius decide to rush for the walls to get underneath the artillery with two of his Cohorts. When the ladders went up, only then did Caesar begin to feel more comfortable that his plan would succeed; after all, these men had scaled more walls, against more peoples in the known world than anyone other than perhaps Alexander. It was actually the Legate Volusenus Ventidius who noticed it first.

  “Caesar, the gates are opening!”

>   The general had been squinting at the top of the Bargosan wall, trying to get at least a sense of how the battle for the rampart was going, but this naturally got his attention immediately, and he began watching this development with a feeling of sick certainty that he knew what was coming. Since there was no real light source anywhere near the gate, it wasn’t until the first elephant emerged fully out of the gateway, already moving at a quick trot, that Caesar’s fear was confirmed.

  “By the gods!” Volusenus gasped, his voice tight with the same kind of fear that Pullus was hearing in his own men. “How many of them are there?”

  “One is too many,” Caesar said grimly, but he maintained his demeanor of icy calm, lifting his chin slightly as he watched the potential destruction of one of his most veteran Legions.

  More than twenty elephants emerged from the city, their trumpeting cries barely discernible over the roaring of a few thousand alarmed men, his men, but as bad as it was already, it was nothing compared to watching helplessly as some of the elephants turned to lumber parallel to the wall in both directions, smashing into ladder after ladder. Somewhere behind Caesar, someone moaned in what sounded like a combination of shock and despair, but he wouldn’t tear his eyes away, thinking that at the very least, he owed these men that much, to watch them suffering. The figures of his Legionaries tumbling down to the ground, the pyres providing sufficient illumination, was the hardest to watch, although he was thankful that their screams didn’t rise above the general noise or at least carry all the way across the water. Cornu calls were coming so quickly that the notes overlapped, making it difficult for Caesar to determine exactly what was being done by the Centurions down on the ground, and he wondered who among the Pili Priores not on the rampart was giving the orders. Spurius, he was certain, was already on the wall, and he could only imagine how anguishing it had to be for the Primus Pilus to be separated from what was now the direst threat to his Legion. The meaning of the calls became clear when he saw the normally compact lines of Legionaries suddenly spread, most of them managing to do so just before those elephants who weren’t involved in destroying the ladders and the men on them reached the front ranks. These animals and the men facing them were easier to make out because they were within the pools of light formed by the pyres, which were still blazing brightly, but despite the fact that the unknown first Centurion had correctly assessed the situation and spread the men out, he still winced at the sight of a man being tossed high enough in the air to be outlined in the light of the pyres, his shield flying even higher, then landing several paces away with the kind of limp limbs that Caesar knew meant that he was either unconscious or dead.