Caesar Ascending-India Limited Edition

by R. W. Peake

  Abhiraka was witness to the defeat and destruction of roughly a quarter of his remaining armored elephants inside the city from his spot standing on the northern rampart above the gateway, and the sight seemed to paralyze the king. During this period of time, men were constantly coming and going along the rampart, racing from the other walls to give their king the dispatches his sub-commander on each wall hastily jotted, apprising him of the situation. However, while he always took the scrap of parchment, then glanced down at it, using the light from a nearby torch, it didn’t appear to anyone who saw him that he was taking much interest.

  “I always knew he loved those elephants,” one of the men muttered to his comrade next to him. “I just didn’t know he loved them more than his people.”

  Although this was said as more of a bitter jest, it was closer to the truth than any of Abhiraka’s subjects would have liked, which was one reason why the king and his chief handler Memmon shared a special bond. It was the plight of Memmon and his Anala that arrested Abhiraka’s attention, from the moment when the animal suddenly broke through the ring of Romans surrounding the pair to flee towards the city. At first, Abhiraka assumed that, as commonly happened, particularly when the fighting was so fierce, that Memmon had lost control of his elephant, but of all the men selected to handle these creatures, Abhiraka had the most faith in Memmon’s ability to reassert his control. It was when the elephant got within a few hundred paces, just before the first of whatever potion the demons used to create such a massive fire that never seemed to exhaust itself was hurled into the middle of the camp, that Abhiraka saw the true cause for Anala’s behavior. Abhiraka could only watch helplessly, a lump forming in his throat as the elephant finally collapsed close enough to the wall that the king could see the shaft of the spear protruding from almost dead center in the bronze chest piece. Consequently, he couldn’t watch as Memmon dropped to his knees in front of the animal, although it wasn’t because he was king and this was just one animal of many in whom he had essentially placed the fate of his capital and the subjects living within its walls and he had to keep his attention on the larger situation, but if any of the men around their king noticed the shining of unshed tears in his eyes, they were wise enough to say nothing about it. Returning his attention to the area around the rampart along the canal just in time, Abhiraka watched as, once again, what he had deduced were large arrows trailing flames began streaking from the pieces placed on the dirt rampart, but he instantly saw that these weren’t aimed at seemingly random spots in the camp as before. Now they were clearly targeting the rest of his elephants, and if he had the presence of mind to do so, he could have counted aloud and not made it to one hundred before any chance of repelling these Romans, at least on the northern side of the city was gone. It was when the boiling flames suddenly erupted in a rough line that bisected the camp from east to west, trapping a half-dozen animals on the other side before Abhiraka turned away, unable to watch anymore.

  “Highness! Highness! We need you!”

  For an instant, Abhiraka debated the idea of pretending he hadn’t heard the man, who was sprinting down the rampart from the direction of the western wall, but his sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow it.

  “What is it?” he asked warily, certain that he wouldn’t be hearing good news.

  “Nahapana has sent me, Highness!” The man had dropped to his knees, and his voice was muffled because he was bent at the waist. “He begs you to come to see for yourself what these demons are doing to your Harem!”

  If he had been asked an instant before, Abhiraka would have sworn that he couldn’t feel more wretched than he did in that moment; now, he realized that he would have been incorrect.

  “What are they doing?” he demanded, but then, before the man could respond, realizing that they weren’t standing close enough to the rampart for the messenger to have seen, he reached down and wordlessly drew the man to his feet. Naturally, the man allowed his king to do so, but with an expression of bewilderment and more than a little fear, which Abhiraka ignored as he led the man to the parapet. Pointing down, he asked the messenger simply, “Is that what they’re doing?”

  The messenger actually gave a small moan of despair before he swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, Highness. These demons have a magic potion that they are using.” Closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see anymore, he finished in a whisper, “Just like here.”

  “Highness! King Abhiraka!”

  The call came from behind Abhiraka, yet even as he turned to face towards the eastern wall, he was certain he knew what to expect. Arshad was hurrying towards him, but it was the man behind him that Abhiraka recognized as one of the men from the eastern wall; what was his name? he wondered absently. His father served my father when he was king, he recalled, and he came from a good family, but Abhiraka’s absorption in this inconsequential detail was more of a defense mechanism than anything; there is only so much horror a mind can absorb at one time.

  Neither Arshad nor the messenger, whose name was Ermias, had any idea of their king’s distraction, both men intent on relaying what they considered the vital information sent by the royal bodyguard Abhiraka had placed in command on the eastern wall, but it was Arshad who informed his king, “Highness, you need to hear this!”

  Before Ermias could say anything, Abhiraka raised a hand, saying wearily, “The Romans are using…” since he couldn’t think of a proper term to describe this pernicious device, he simply pointed to where there seemed to be a wall of solid flame, “…that to destroy the elephants I sent to Pranav. Is that it?”

  Ermias’ expression was almost identical to that worn by the first messenger, but he simply nodded. With this confirmation, Abhiraka was faced with a choice, and while it might not have been for the reasons his subjects would have appreciated, he nevertheless didn’t hesitate.

  “Go back to Pranav,” he ordered Ermias, then turned to the first messenger, “and to Nahapana, and order them to sound the recall for the elephants. But,” he added harshly, “only if they can allow them back into the city without running the risk of these demons getting through the gates behind them. Also, they’re to leave enough men to slow the Romans down but send the rest back to the palace.” Both men didn’t immediately respond, and he thundered, “GO! NOW!” As both men went sprinting away in opposite directions, Abhiraka turned to Bolon. “Take my horse, go to the southern wall as quickly as you can, and give Eshan the same order I gave them.”

  Bolon had been expecting something like this and was quickly gone, leaving Abhiraka to walk the short distance down to where a man was standing with a horn that, while it bore no real resemblance to the Roman cornu, served the same function. Just as he came to the man’s side, he was in time to see whoever was in command of the remnant of swordsmen and javelineers he had ordered guard the eastern flank of his elephants launch their assault, too little and too late. He watched impassively for a moment, trying not to be impressed by how rapidly the Romans on that side responded, forming a line perpendicular to the dirt rampart that Abhiraka could see was two groups of men almost identical in size and arranged in neat rows facing his men racing towards them in what the king knew was a futile gesture. If only, he thought bitterly, Bhadran hadn’t waited so long, and whoever he had appointed to command the men on the western side had coordinated their attack with their comrades on the opposite side, this might have had even a remote chance of working.

  Turning to the man with the horn, Abhiraka had to force the words out, commanding him, “Sound the recall for all our men here on the northern wall.” Pointing to the street below, he said, “Give the signal from down there so they will know where to form up.”

  The horn player acknowledged the order, then, thinking that he would show his initiative and fighting spirit, he asked his king hesitantly, “Highness, should I move closer to the gateway so they will be ready to stop the demons at the gate?”

  It was a sensible question; when it caused Abhiraka to laugh, bitterly, the man s
uddenly feared that the king had lost his wits, but that wasn’t the case.

  “We’re not going to stop them at the gate,” Abhiraka said, exhibiting a patience that was another sign of the enormous stress he was under. “We’re falling back to the palace and the enclosure. The walls,” he finished grimly, “are lost. Now we need to hold out for Ranjeet and his men to arrive. They will attack from outside, and we will attack from within.”

  Ranjeet had relentlessly driven the remnant of the northern army through the night, although it had cost him two of the surviving elephants, both of whom had to be killed by their handlers with their hammer and spike. Now they were three miles to the north of the city, close enough to see a faint but clearly visible reddish-orange glow just above the line of trees that signified the last of the dense forest before the landscape turned to fields, mostly owned by small farmers who supplied a goodly portion of the foodstuffs for Bharuch. He had called this halt, both to allow his exhausted, and demoralized, men to rest, but also because of what he saw above the trees.

  “They couldn’t have gotten around us,” he mused aloud, but none of his subordinates made any comment. “Not this quickly, and not in territory they don’t know.”

  He fell silent then, perplexed but also thinking that whatever reason there was for that fiery glow, it was extremely unlikely to be for a reason he, or Abhiraka, would find positive.

  “Lord.” His thoughts were interrupted by Ushabad, the man who was the permanent commander of the phalanx troops, the upper portion of his head and one eye obscured by a bandage.

  Ranjeet turned away from his examination of what lay to the north, his only acknowledgment of Ushabad’s greeting, but it wasn’t from a lack of regard; the two men were close friends, and Ushabad’s use of the honorific was because other men were standing nearby. Ushabad’s good eye was still turned towards the city they both loved, where the king they both served was waiting for them.

  “Do you think,” Ushabad spoke quietly, which Ranjeet understood as soon as the words came from the other man’s mouth, “that there was another force of Romans we didn’t know about?”

  Ranjeet considered this for a moment, and it made his stomach twist, but he forced himself to sound dispassionate as he asked, “What makes you think that?” Then, before Ushabad could respond, he added, “Do you think that a force of any size could have gotten around us without knowing about it? Surely someone from one of the villages would have come to warn us.”

  While Ushabad, who actually wasn’t born into the same caste as men like Ranjeet but had risen to his post by competence, wasn’t so sure this would be the case, he was also politically attuned enough to agree, “Yes, I agree that they would have. If,” he cautioned, “these demons did that. But,” Ushabad’s tone turned urgent, “what if they didn’t do that? What if they came upriver?”

  This caused Ranjeet to stare at Ushabad, not as much in disbelief as in a sudden dawning that this was not only possible, it was likely; after all, he thought, it’s the only way to explain it.

  Ranjeet turned back to stare at the horizon, and after a long moment, he asked quietly, “So, what do we do?”

  “We need to get close enough to see if that’s the case,” Ushabad answered, because while he felt certain he was correct, he desperately wanted to be wrong. “And if it is, then we know what we must do.”

  “The men are already exhausted,” Ranjeet pointed out, but Ushabad shook his head.

  “And most of them have family behind those walls,” he pointed out. “They will find the strength.”

  Taking a deep breath, Ranjeet finally nodded, then turned to the horn player standing a few feet away, saying curtly, “Sound the call to reassemble. Then, the call to advance. We’re returning to Bharuch.”

  Next to the 10th, the 3rd suffered the most from the rampaging elephants before Macula and his party returned from the ships with the crates of naphtha, which they hurriedly distributed and began hurling at the animals outside the walls. While this turned the tide of the battle for the southern wall, it also presented Spurius with a dilemma because, in order to allow the rest of the 3rd into the city, the fastest way was through the gates. However, opening the gates not only enabled the elephants whose handlers managed to avoid having their animals immolated, along with the handlers and their remaining crews to flee back into the city, it endangered the men who Spurius had delegated to open the gate. Two of his men were crushed when they tangled together as they were trying to leap aside when the handler nearest to the gate saw it opening and reacted immediately, putting his animal into a dead run. The men of the First and Second Cohorts who had battled for the rampart and driven the Bargosans down off of it and sent them fleeing had exhausted their supply of javelins, and although several of the men who thought more quickly picked up the discarded Bargosan javelins to fling them down onto the heads of the surviving crew, they only managed to inflict a handful of casualties. Even so, those Bargosans who were struck managed to cling to the box as the eight surviving elephants went stampeding down the street, deeper into the city, heading for their enclosure with the mindless panic of animals seeking safety. The 28th took casualties; Cartufenus had marched his Third Cohort directly in front of the eastern gate in preparation to storm through it once the men of his First and Second Cohort seized the gateway, part of Cartufenus’ plan to be the Legion who penetrated more deeply into the city first, and the First of the Third was caught by surprise when the gates were flung open, but it was by the Bargosans sending armored elephants at them. Fortunately for the men of the 28th in general, and the Third in particular, Asprenas and Rufus had just arrived from Caesar’s quinquereme, so the Septimus Pilus Prior was already directing his Legionaries in unloading the volatile naphtha when the gates opened. Seeing their comrades in the Third under assault, a half-dozen rankers chose not to wait for further orders and dashed towards the animals who had emerged from the city, shouting warnings to the men who were scattering out of the path of the leading animal.