Caesar Triumphant

by Peake, R. W.

  Watching the friends now, the Han couldn't help feeling a sense of pride that his skill had something to do with the scene, but the predominant feeling was one of puzzlement, because never in his long career had he successfully treated a man as grievously wounded as this giant barbarian. To the Han, this meant that there was something inside this man that refused to submit to death, and underlying his curiosity about understanding what this spirit might be, there was a nagging disquiet that made him uncomfortable. Obviously not every one of these barbarians possessed this fierce animus that refused to submit to defeat; like everyone else attached to this army, he had seen the bodies of the dead barbarians stacked like cordwood. But if just a few of these men were like this one, and the Han suspected that the man for whom he worked, the barbarian Caesar, was of the same nature as this giant, it helped to explain why they were so formidable.

  However, that meant that they would be hard, if not impossible to defeat, and while the Han took the barbarian's silver and gold, he was still of the Han, and loyal to his emperor. And he had been given very explicit instructions by the emissary of the Han accompanying this army, the man Zhang, that the moment for which this physician had been introduced to Caesar and who Zhang had persuaded Caesar to hire, was rapidly approaching. But, when confronted with the evidence of the formidable power of the spirit that these barbarians possessed, the Han wasn't sure that he could carry out the orders he had been given. Naturally, as Caesar had noted with such frustration, none of these turbulent thoughts were visible as he sat there, with a slight smile on his face, watching the two barbarians bantering back and forth. None of them—Pullus, Scribonius or Diocles—had the slightest hint of what was coming.

  And he had been given very explicit instructions by the emissary of the Han accompanying this army, the man Zhang, that the moment for which this physician had been introduced to Caesar and had been persuaded to hire, was rapidly approaching. But, when confronted with the evidence of the formidable power of the spirit that these barbarians possessed, the Han wasn't sure that he could carry out the orders he had been given. Naturally, as Caesar had noted with such frustration, none of these turbulent thoughts were visible as he sat there, with a slight smile on his face, watching the two barbarians bantering back and forth. None of them; Pullus, Scribonius or Diocles had the slightest hint of what was coming.

  Shortly after the march resumed the next day, one of the mounted patrols came galloping back to the column, where they made immediately for the command group where Caesar was located. Finding him still there, as it was his habit to range up and down the column, talking with his men and letting them see that their general was with them, although he no longer walked the entire day as he had in his younger days, the leader of this patrol gave him news that caused him to stop the column.

  "Are you sure?" Caesar demanded of the Decurion in charge of this detachment, a Parthian.

  "Am I sure that it's there? Yes," the Parthian replied cautiously. "But am I sure that the bottom is sound enough for the wagons? No," he conceded. "That I am not sure of Caesar. I believe it is, but it is still not a rock bottom. The water comes up to mid-wheel, but that is only if the wagons don't sink into mud."

  Caesar pursed his lips, unhappy, but understanding the Decurion's caution. The spot that the scout was talking about was almost directly west of their current position and appeared to be roughly midway between each end of the lake. Most importantly, it would cut at least two days, probably more, off their march to the base of the ridge between their position and the capital. To this point, none of the scouts had returned with news of a pass through the ridge that was suitable for taking the wagons, and from Caesar's admittedly limited experience with this rugged island, those were few and far between. That meant that it wasn't a given that fording at this spot would save time, if the only way around the ridge was to skirt it to the south, which from what he knew to this point, was the only way around if there wasn't a pass. Caesar had sent a half-dozen scouting parties out to the north, and four of them had returned, all with essentially the same story. Even if they had taken the northern route and threaded their way between these two lakes, the ridgeline that was the last obstacle appeared to continue for many, many miles in a northerly direction. Given the information he had at that point, Caesar and the army's best option appeared to be to approach either from the south, or if there was a pass on the other side of the lake to the west of their position, descend on the capital from that direction. Frankly, Caesar's hope was that there would be a pass somewhere roughly due west that would allow them to begin their assault on the capital from that direction, for the simple reason that he would be attacking from higher ground. Whenever possible, this was his favored method of attack, using the greater momentum that came from his men charging downhill. This would only work if either the outskirts of the capital, or if whatever Wa forces remained to defend it were positioned at the base of the ridge, and his scouts hadn't ventured far enough downslope to determine that. As the Decurion sat his horse, Caesar bit back a curse, not wanting to give the Decurion the belief that he had let his general down. This in itself was unusual, and was just another sign of Caesar's awareness of the tenuous hold over his army that he didn't want to upset one of his junior officers. But neither Caesar nor the Parthian had been in this position before, so both were already unsettled. Finally, Caesar made his decision.

  "We're going to head for this ford. Even if it's not suitable for the wagons, it might be enough to send some of the Legions across to block any attempt by the barbarians, if they show up from the capital."

  With that, the column resumed the march.

  In the capital, those nobles who survived the battle had arrived the day before, and the reception they received from the palace officials had been chilly, to put it mildly. It was only through the intercession of the commander of the emperor's bodyguard that the survivors hadn't been taken into custody and executed on the spot for failing the emperor so horribly. The commander's mercy wasn't from any kinder feelings than those of the courtiers and administrators; his decision was purely practical. He commanded a thousand hand-picked mennone of whom had been part of the Wa assaultequally divided between men who wielded the teardrop-shaped spear as their weapon and those who carried a sword. The difference was that the spear carriers, while recruited from the lower classes, were men whose bravery and skill had been proven in battle, and who were rewarded by living a life that was much different than that of their counterparts in the ranks. Although they were far from pampered, unlike the common soldiers, they had no other job than this. They were never used for farming and filled their time with training, relentlessly, so their skill with the spear was equal to that of the warriors who came from the higher class. As skilled as these men were, the royal guard commander knew that he needed every body he could throw into the ranks, since the Wa had their own scouts. While they were mounted, their horses, brought over from the mainland, were more like ponies, but they were extremely sure-footed and hardy, allowing their riders to take them up and through the narrow defiles and ridges that were such an integral part of their land. And these scouts had left no doubt that as badly mauled as the grubworm army may have been, they were still headed in the direction of the capital. Understanding this, the royal guard commander was determined that he would have to be the immovable object that would stop what had been to this point the unstoppable force of these barbarians. Contrary to Caesar's belief, the manpower resources of the Wa hadn't been completely drained; the lords who ruled in the name of the emperor in the northern part of the island had yet to arrive with their own armies. But as much as the mountainous terrain hindered any force that invaded this island, it posed almost as much of a challenge to the defenders. Their only advantage lay in their intimate knowledge of every fold of ground and passes through seemingly impenetrable lines of mountains only they knew. Nevertheless, a mountain was a mountain, and men could only ascend at a certain speed, whether they knew the shortest point or
not. The last messenger that had been sent to the capital from the north said that now that the lords of the north had gathered what forces they could in the time they were given, they were still a little more than a week away from reaching the capital. This made it even more imperative that the commander use every man available to him to hold the grubworms away, no matter how soiled the cowards who had chosen to retreat might be. There was a larger question for the commander to decide, and that was whether to spend what time he had on strengthening the defenses of the capital, or to sally forth and meet these barbarians on ground that favored him and the rest of the defenders. Before he could make that decision, however, he had to know from which direction the attack would come. The obvious way for any attacker without an intimate knowledge of the land would be to skirt the ridge between the lake and the capital to approach from the south. However, the commander had to prepare himself and his men for the possibility that the grubworm scouts, who were much more numerous and better mounted, would find the location of the one pass through the hills that was the most direct route, if they came across the ford at the narrow part of the lake. Because, unlike Caesar, the commander knew that not only would the bottom of the ford support the weight of even the wagons that the grubworms carried with them, but also that the pass was just wide enough to accommodate the wagons, as well. If the grubworm general, who seemed to have the luck of the demons, found that pass and used it, this would actually be preferable to the commander than if the invader were to take the southern route, because he was certain that even with as few men as he commanded, they would be able to block the pass long enough for the lords of the north to come to their aid. As desperate as their situation might be, victory was still possible; the grubworms could be crushed and the threat to the emperor ended. As of this moment, the commander determined that the best tactic was to wait.

  The end of the second day of the march found Caesar's army at the narrowest part of the lake, and although there was enough light to cross, the general made the choice to keep the lake between his army and any possible attack. Just a week before, Caesar wouldn't have even considered such caution, but much had happened in the intervening time. And while his engineering officers confirmed that the mud bottom seemed to be founded on a bed of rock and was firm enough to support the wagons, that was where the good news stopped. On crossing the ford, which was almost a mile wide and was one of the longest stretches of water that either Caesar or his most veteran men had experienced, the engineers discovered that just a couple of hundred yards from the far shore, the bottom dropped significantly. Most troubling was the presence of what felt like a strong current along the bottom, and while the water would still be only about chest deep for most of the men, the footing was made treacherous by the current. Although it wasn't a swiftly flowing river where men who lost their balance might be swept away before any chance of rescue, there also seemed to be a precipitous drop in the direction the current was flowing just a few paces to the left of their direction of travel.

  This negated one of Caesar's favored tactics on crossing any body of water like this, the placement of the cavalry aligned end to end to help break the force of the current not only upstream but downstream to catch any Legionary swept off his feet. It was an error on the part of the Parthian scout that he hadn't performed a thorough job of scouting the entire width of the ford, but it was also something that Caesar wasn't going to punish the man for, yet another difference brought on by the series of setbacks Caesar had suffered, weakening his hold on his army. Nevertheless, it caused Caesar to reconsider using the ford, but between the added challenge that would come from the deeper crossing and the fact that no passage had been found anywhere in the vicinity of the ford through the hills ahead, he deemed it prudent to turn south the next morning and skirt the lake and the ridge. This decision didn't make him happy, as it added at the very least a day and probably more before he could even lay eyes on the capital and get an idea of what kind of resistance to expect. Finally, it just rubbed Caesar the wrong way to waste precious daylight that could be spent marching. However, as it would turn out, the watches weren't wasted at all.

  Because of that hidden pass through the hills, the Wa royal guard commander learned that the barbarian army was going to cross at the ford within a watch, after it was clear to his scouts that this is where they were headed. When the next scout arrived in the capital to inform him that the grubworms were stopping for the day and making one of their infernal camps that, according to the survivors of the attack days before, were as close to impregnable as it was possible for a temporary fortification to be. As loath as the commander was to take the word of men who were shamed cowards, he couldn't dismiss the possibility that they were simply being accurate, given that they had prevailed over what had been the largest army ever assembled in the history of this island. Between that possibility and the paucity of his own forces, he immediately dismissed any idea of assaulting the barbarians, especially when he learned that they were doing so on the other side of the lake. Even with the ford, and as swiftly and silently as the men of the royal guard could move, there wasn't any way that he could hope to overcome these grubworms if they were behind those ditches and ramparts.

  It was ironic, the Wa thought, that even as the grubworms were doing their fortification work, so too were the Wa, as they continued working feverishly on fortifying the grounds surrounding the imperial palace. Unlike the Han, or these previously unknown barbarians, the Wa didn't have permanent fortifications, especially around the capital. The reasons for this were twofold; the first was that the very ground these people walked could suddenly begin to shake so violently that large structures were always in danger of collapse, so such things were avoided where possible. Instead, the Wa used the terrain and the land itself, taking advantage of the rugged hills and steep, narrow valleys to aid in the defense of their sacred islands. The second reason was more from accident than any design on the part of the Wa; the simple truth was that no invasion force had ever successfully penetrated this far into the interior of their lands. This was a fact in which the Wa took enormous pride - and viewed it as the surest sign of how favored they were by their gods. But now that it had happened, it had not only shaken the very foundations of their society, it had ignited a sense of urgency and concern that was now fueling what had become an operation that continued through every watch. Unlike the Romans, however, who allowed only their Legionaries to construct camps and fortifications, the warrior class of the Wa viewed such work as beneath them. Fortunately for them, every Wa peasant had been instilled with the belief that they owed their emperor not merely allegiance, but unflinching obedience. Therefore, when the call was sent out for every available laborer within a day's walk to come to the capital, the response was immediate.

  Now, thousands of peasants were hard at work, under the direction of the royal guard, creating an earthen wall to surround not just the imperial palace, but also a good part of the imperial city. Critical points like the warehouses and granaries, the armory, the barracks, and every other structure considered vital to the defense of the capital were enclosed by this earthen wall. Even Caesar, the world's undisputed master at the rapid construction of fortifications, would have been impressed if he had known that what he was about to face hadn't been present just days earlier. Yet, even as formidable as these fortifications would be, the Wa guard commander wasn't willing to put all of his faith in them, and he was pondering how to come up with another stratagem that would give him the time he needed for the northern lords to come to the rescue. This was what occupied his mind, if not his attention, as he strode along the new ditch, watching the peasants throwing dirt up onto the earthen wall, while others carried stacks of wood that were going to be used to create a palisade not unlike what the Romans used. How could he use his knowledge of the land to their advantage? Chief among his worries was that the grubworms would find the pass, and although their army was still on the other side of the lake, he had little doubt that their scout
s were even now scouring the hills, looking for any passage that would accommodate their needs. Like a thorn in his mind, no matter what he was doing, a part of him worried and picked at this as he continued supervising the work. He had received the latest report that the grubworms had indeed begun making camp on the other side of the ford just moments before, and it was as he was directing one of his lieutenants on how to use a grove of trees with such heavy underbrush that it was an impenetrable barrier to their advantage that it hit him. Here, he was taking advantage of what the land offered him in creating a choke point that would force the grubworms to move in a direction he wanted. Why should he restrict himself to just around the capital? His greatest fear was that the barbarians would locate the pass, but at the same time he had hoped they would, for the same reason he was using this grove: the terrain suited his needs and would make his job easier. So, was it a bad thing that they find the pass? In fact, wasn't this preferable to an approach from the south, where the land was too wide open to stop the grubworms from moving up to where he was standing right now? He was planning and hoping for a defense of his weakest point, rather than making the enemy come to him on ground of his choosing. Excited now, the Wa commander whirled about, looking for the mounted scout who had given him the last report. Spotting him watering his horse, he barked a command to the man, who hurried to him. There was much to do, but it had to start with this man, and the royal commander wasted no time.