Soldier of Rome: The Last Campaign (The Artorian Chronicles) (39 page)

Alaric simply nodded and walked his horse off to the side of the path, where he watched intently as the huge column of legionaries slowly approached.

“Sir, we also bring word from Tribune Cursor,” one of the troopers spoke up. “We’ve found a good location for staging the ar
my. We’re to escort you there.”

“Excellent!” Vespasian said excitedly. He turned back to the two master centurions and his chief tribune. “We have found our enemy, now we must break him!”

Chapter XXIII: The Siege Master Unleashed

Hill Fort of Mai Dun, Southwest Britannia

September, 43 A.D.

***

The region around Mai Dun was mostly rolling farmland, though there were sufficient woods for Tribune Cursor to keep to as he guided Vespasian and his senior leaders towards the expanse that led to the eastern gate of the massive hill fort.

“We scouted around the entire hill, and the surrounding areas are all open like you see here,” the Tribune reported.

“Good,” Vespasian replied. “Let them see us coming!”

The men dismounted and walked to a small clearing, where Cursor and his men had scrawled out a crude depiction of the hill in the dirt.

“The northern and southern slopes are all very steep,” Cursor explained. “We could not see any palisades or wooden fortifications at the top. From what we could gather, there are two, perhaps three sloping ramparts encircling the fort.”

“An impressive feat of engineering,” Lyto observed. “Is the east gate the only feasible way in?”

“There is one to the west,” Cursor said, pointing to a spot on his makeshift earthen map. “However, the slope is very steep here as well. Something else, though it’s hard to tell from this vantage point, but this hill is huge. We simply do not have the numbers to completely encircle it. To be blunt, I can understand why the locals think this place is impenetrable.”

“And from what we’ve gathered from interrogations,” Artorius added, “An entire town sits atop with supplemental farm fields, livestock, and its own wells. No real chance of starving them out in the short term.”

“Agreed,” Vespasian replied. He was kneeling on the ground, looking back and forth between Cursor’s diagram and what he could see of the hill behind him. “And as our cavalry commander has pointed out, we do not have the numbers for a full encirclement anyway; meaning they could still ferry supplies and food in and out. Besides which, time is not something that is on our side. Plautius wants this hill fort broken quickly, lest a lengthy defense give other nefarious rebels an incentive to continue in their futile struggle against us.”

Shouts and a commotion of men crashing through the trees alerted them. Two barbarians stumbled into the glade, being prodded on by several mounted cavalry troopers with their lances.

“We found these two skulking about off the main road,” one of the soldiers reported. “No doubt they were spying on our advancing columns.”

“Well
, of course they were,” Vespasian replied calmly. “We would do the same.”

He then dismissed the troopers and had a couple of on-hand legionaries drag the two men to their feet. They were grubby and disheveled, looking like they hadn’t slept in a couple days.
One of them, who appeared to be much older, spoke quickly, in a language the Romans could not understand.

“What is he saying?” Vespasian asked Alaric.

“He’s speaking awfully fast,” the young man replied. “Something about meeting your doom on the bloody slopes.”

“Oh
, fuck this!” Master Centurion Lyto snapped before kicking the man hard in the stomach.

“Easy there,” Vespasian said, placing a hand on his shoulder. He then turned to Alaric. “Tell the older one that he is to return to Donan and inform him that if he does not surrender immediately, everyone inside Mai Dun will meet this man’s fate.” He then nodded to Lyto, who drew his gladius and stabbed the younger man in the stomach.

The lad gave a piteous cry through clenched teeth as his bowels were run through. The older man gave a scream of sorrow, which was met by the brutal stomping of several legionary sandals.

“Get him out of my sight,” Vespasian ordered. The soldiers drug the screaming man along with the twitching corpse of what they guessed might have been his son.

“This is going to take careful timing,” Vespasian observed as he continued to scan the hill as if nothing had happened.

“Sir,” Artorius spoke up. “I request that my three cohorts lead the attack on the east gate.”

“Very well,” Vespasian nodded. He looked out ahead and pointed. “Those rolling mounds by the gate are not very large, and if they have all their warriors massed there, it could turn into a bloody grind even with artillery support. Once your men are committed, I’ll give the order for the supplemental assaults on the flanks. However, given the steepness of those slopes, the main task of taking this hill falls on you. Well, gentlemen, that does it. We’ll camp here for tonight, get the men a good, hearty breakfast in the morning, and then send those impudent bastards to oblivion!”

“All units are in position, sir,” the chief tribune reported
the next morning as he rode up on his horse.

Vespasian simply nodded and made one final mental assessment of the task at hand.

The commanding legate was on foot, electing to advance with the primary assault elements who would attack the east gate. With him was a pair of equite tribunes, his aquilifer, cornicen, and a single squad of legionaries. His master centurion was with his cohort, which Vespasian had placed on the extreme right of the huge formation. Part of Lyto’s mission was to reinforce the Batavian auxiliaries who came to support them, as well as to make certain no Durotriges escaped from the western entrance.

Centered on Vespasian were not his own soldiers, but those of the Twentieth Legion’s First Cohort. Their Fifth and Eighth Cohorts positioned on their immediate flanks. Artorius stood to Vespasian’s left, also eyeing the ground to their front and envisioning what had to happen within the next couple hours. Behind him stood his cohort’s signifier, along with another soldier bearing the square red vexilation flag of the Twentieth Legion, something that legionary cohorts carried whenever they were attached out from their parent legion.

Just behind the command group, and standing directly in front of the First Cohort were the skirmishers of Achillia’s allied detachment; the archers of the Second Legion dispersed to cover their own soldiers when they moved against the northern and southern ramparts. The Syrian woman looked over her shoulder and saw Magnus staring at her, his face full of worry. She simply smiled and winked at him reassuringly.

“Ready to write the pages of history?” Vespasian asked Artorius, a sinister and determined gleam in his eye.

“Yes, sir,” the master centurion replied confidently. The fear and uneasiness that came before every battle he’d fought in over the last twenty-eight years suddenly vanished. The wait was always the worst part for Artorius and, now that it was over, training and discipline took over.

“Then take up your position,” the legate directed.

Artorius saluted sharply and quickly walked to his position at the extreme right of the First Cohort’s front rank. Vespasian then dismissed the legionaries who had been acting as his bodyguards, releasing them back to their respective units. The Siege Master would advance alone at the head of his army with just his cornicen marching behind his right shoulder. It was not a matter of grandstanding or ego, but was, in fact, a practicality, since from there he could observe the advancing of his entire force, while directing maneuver as much as possible before all units converged for the assault.

“Sound the advance!” he ordered.

The loud notes resounded on the cornicen’s horn and the army began its move. Artorius and the cohorts of the Twentieth Legion were in the very center and stepped off slowly, as the cohorts of the Second Legion on either
advanced at a much quicker pace. Directly behind them, the artillery crews drove their massive siege engines forward. Each crew supplemented by more than a dozen auxiliaries to drag the heavy machines forward. In the far distance, Cursor’s cavalry regiments rode in front of the north and south face of the hill. Two regiments of Batavian auxiliary infantry blocked the western approach to the hill, having positioned themselves in the middle of the night.

Anxious as the men were for battle, they kept their pace slow and measured; the hill being much further away than it appeared.
Despite it being nearly fall, it was an unusually warm morning. The sun was already beating down on them and, remarkably, there was nary a cloud in the sky.

From the top of the great hill, King Donan watched intently as the Roman
Army advanced. Even at a distance of a mile, their footfalls echoed across the ground. The armor and shields of the legionaries gleamed in the rising sunlight. While still confident that Mai Dun could withstand the coming assault, Donan was struck with fear. What would happen to his people should his men fail? He had perhaps four thousand warriors, along with about twice as many boys and women who were able to fight and had grabbed whatever they could in the way of weapons.

He had numerous bows, slings, and short throwing spears in his arsenal, which had always proven more than enough whenever neighboring tribes had been brazen enough to attack Mai Dun during the incessant disputes over the region’s fertile lands.
And yet, having witnessed firsthand what these Romans were capable of once they closed the distance, he knew that if they breached the ramparts and a close-combat battle ensued, his people were finished. What Donan was not prepared for were the large wooden mechanisms that were being wheeled, almost inconspicuously, behind the advancing wave of legionaries.

“Cohorts…halt!”
Vespasian shouted.

The Twentieth Legion’s men took one final step then stopped. The units of the Second Legion continued their advance towards their supplemental assault positions.

The rolling mounds where the road had to wind its way through were now clearly visible, as were the wooden barricades where numerous warriors clustered with slings and bows. Vespasian knew how to break them up.

“Onagers
and ballistae make ready!”
he ordered.
“Scorpions…post!”

Having taken every piece of siege equipment available, Vespasian was able to mass twenty scorpions between each of the gaps of the assaulting cohorts. The rest were dispersed to cover the Second Legion and provide harassment fire to the defenders on the other ramparts.
In addition to the onagers, he had acquired the ten heavy ballistae the emperor had brought to Britannia. Given their cumbersome weight and lack of mobility, they were almost never used in open battle, and were, instead, employed strictly for sieges against large strongholds. Vespasian reckoned there was no better place to finally put his heaviest weapons to use.