Steam Legion (31 page)

Egypt would be safe from this force, but the annihilation of yet
another
Roman force would limit any future levies in the area if the Legion didn’t get back as a show of strength. The future of the region was still in some doubt in his mind. Though Cassius was certain that Rome would eventually return order, it could be a very long time indeed before the Empire fully exercised control here again.

In the few seconds it took him to consider all of that, Cassius saw that five men had broken from the mob about him and were slowly arraying themselves in a semicircle around his position as they cautiously started to probe in his direction with their blades.

He bared his teeth, not a smile by any civilized measure but as close as he was going to offer to these temple Zealots, and once more spread his arms wide, extending his sword to one side and his shield to the other.

“You want my life, pigs?” he told him with a bloody grin. “Come and take it.”

The probing lasted another few moments, during which none of the Israelites chose to respond to his challenge, either verbally or through action, but that came to an end when the first took his chance and charged in with sword raised high.

Cassius ignored the man’s war scream as he curled his shield arm back into place to easily catch the sword as it fell. The blade bit into the wood, digging out another deep gouge, but with a twist of his arm, Cassius caught the blade in the shield tightly enough that it could not quickly be withdrawn. His gladius darted out, cutting six inches into the man’s guts, and pulled back in the span of a second or less.

Casually, Cassius hammered the mortally wounded man with his shield and sent him sprawling before he swung back to grin at the remaining men.

“I can do this all day, pigs,” he told them, well aware of the specific nature of his insult. “Next time, I really recommend you use more men.”

“Very well,” one of them said, drawing Cassius’s attention.

This one was in better armor than the rest, a sure sign in a non-Legion formation of a leader and man of wealth. Cassius’s eyes flicked about swiftly as he examined both the man and his fellows, and he decided that he was facing one of the top tier of the enemy now. Not a soldier, but one of the Generals or his direct officers at least.

Good. That’ll make this fight worth my time.

They came in smarter this time, the leader hanging back while the other three approached together. They were moving to flank him on either side with the man in the center playing the bait portion of the game.

Brave man. That or stupid.

Cassius stepped into the attack, blunting the assault by turning the blade with his shield before he hammered the scutem into the central man’s chest and easily slid his blade forward the six inches needed for a lethal cut. As the man fell back, stunned by the strike, Cassius turned on his heel and lunged out with his blade at the man on his right.

Blades clashed as the sword was parried, leaving Cassius exposed on his left flank, but he was already swinging his shield and intercepted the attack. His front was exposed to attack by this maneuver, but the only man who had a clear strike at him from there was currently stumbling around trying to keep his guts from spilling out due to Cassius’s opening strike.

That didn’t mean he was in the clear. Cassius was tying down two weapons at once, but he had nothing left to make a strike of his own with. He stepped into the opponent on his right, swinging his shield in as hard as he could, and caught the man in the arm with the edge of the shield.

The audible crack of bones breaking was loud enough to drown out the fighting in the immediate area and brought a wider grin to Cassius’s face as the man dropped his sword from the pain. Another swift stab buried his gladius in the man’s belly, ending him as swiftly as the first.

He pulled the blade out and started to spin around to meet the third man but was a hair too late. Cassius felt the sword blade deflect off his helm with enough force to properly ring his bell, nearly sending him to his knees as he was instantly assaulted by a wave of nausea and dizziness. He forced himself to stay on his feet, knowing that if he went down now, it would be all over for him. But his vision was almost as badly affected as his hearing, and he was reduced to blindly waving his sword about in an attempt to fend off the next attack as he stumbled back.

He felt another sword collide with his shield and twisted the scutem in that direction, trying to pin the blade, but he heard the steel skitter off wood. His ears were ringing, or maybe it was his helm, he honestly didn’t know at the moment. Cassius felt the world spinning and rocking around him. His foot came down on an arm or leg and he twisted it, falling back as another attack glanced off his Laminata armor.

On his back on the ground, Cassius blinked furiously as he glared up at the figure looming over him. He would have preferred to have gone out the way he’d lived, in a Legion phalanx and at the hands of an unknown enemy. Being killed by someone who might possibly be able to brag about it in the future irked his sensibilities.

He hefted his sword in his defense only to have it batted away by a man with far too a contemptuous look on his face, as if the fool had forgotten just how many of his fellows died to put him where he now stood. The Zealot lunged, only to have his sword glance off the Laminata armor, and Cassius sneered up at him in response.

“Aim for the throat, fool. You don’t have the strength or skill to pierce Legion armor.”

He almost laughed as the man flushed bright red, practically glowing with his anger as he hauled back for a strike to the neck or face. Cassius blinked involuntarily as the blade rushed in and felt a hot spatter across his face as a scream rose over the battlefield.

He opened his eyes to see a familiar, shapely leg straddling his torso, while his attacker stumbled back, holding a stump that had once been his arm.

“Really, Cassius.” Dyna glanced down at him, her falcata dripping blood as she casually flicked it clean. “What would you do without me to look after you?”

Cassius began to laugh, slowly at first and then faster and harder until he could be heard across the battlefield and many even paused in their fight to look in his direction, to see if the sound indicated victory, defeat, or something else.

In her patterned armor, Dyna of Sparta lifted her falcata blade and put the point in line with the Zealot Commander.

“You and yours are not welcome here,” she told him with a dark death’s head grin. “How many must we kill before you recognize that fact?”

Chapter 24

A woman.

More laughably, practically a child from the looks of her. If the situation weren’t so completely infuriating, he’d have joined the idiot Roman in his manic laughter.

The Commander shook his head, snarling. “Go home, you foolish woman. These matters are not for you.”

“Really?” she drawled, her lip curving as if amused. “So you’ll not touch any women in the towns you sack? You’ll leave them and their children unharmed as you ride on past?”

The Commander rolled his eyes. “I tell you again, woman, leave matters beyond your ken to your superiors. This is beyond you, woman.”

“You forget yourself, Zealot,” she returned, still with that partially amused smile. “You speak to a Spartan, and while our men wage the wars, they know better than to ignore their wives and daughters. They have to sleep within reach of our blades, and we train well in their use just as they do.”

“Pfah!” he spat. “Greek whore. It is your kind that has brought this situation to where it has fallen. Fine then, stay as you wish and die with the rest! Kill her!”

“You forget one more thing, Zealot!” Dyna screamed over the sounds of men moving again, causing them all to slow and look to her again.

“And what is that!?”

“This is Egypt, not Judea,” she told him, “and here we stand for ourselves,
pig
.”

He flushed at the insult of a
woman
having the nerve to call him dirty practically to his face, and in front of all his men. “Kill her!”

“Kill me yourself!” she countered, still grinning that evil bared-teeth snarl.

He just snorted. “I have no need to prove my manhood,
child
.” He lifted his sword into the air. “Forward, as God wills it!”

Dyna shifted her standing, hefting her blade, inverted in preparation to strike as her other hand lifted with a clenched fist.

“Forward!” she called. “For Rome and for Egypt!”

The men on both sides roared in response, shaking the air and seemingly the very earth itself. Two lines of men reformed, more ragged than when they had started, to be certain, and then rushed together with renewed vigor. The sound of their weapons clashing rose up, so loud that the Gods themselves could not have helped but notice.

****

The sounds of battle echoed through the air, audible even over the march of his forces, and Tribunus Gordian fought back a desire to rush his forces into place. A scout was waiting for them just before the next bend in the river, so he jogged his horse up ahead to have a moment to talk.

“Report.”

“Militia force, from the looks of it,” the scout said. “Perhaps a couple Centuries of Legion. Stopped the Zealots dead in their tracks, not one mile marker from here.”

“How goes the battle?”

“Just rejoined, looks like the militia isn’t likely to survive,” he was told, the scout’s report being brutally clear. “But the Zealots won’t be a threat when it’s over, either.”

“Well, that’s better than I expected. Not so well as I’d have hoped, though, I suppose,” Gordian admitted. He glanced over his shoulder to check how far head he was of his main force now. “Very well, get yourself and your fellows to a good observation post. You know what to do from there.”

The man saluted, nodding firmly before he took off. On the unlikely chance that something happened to defeat the Legion, there would be scouts ready to take the message back to Rome so that the Empire could react as quickly as possible to the loss. Gordian watched him go for a moment as the lead element of his column caught up with him, then he turned his horse so he could match pace with the Subcommanders and Centurions of the Legion.

“We have a levied militia ahead holding our quarry in place,” he said. “They’re hard-pressed, so we’ll be quick about this, but don’t be stupid, for all that.”

He glared at them and they saluted him quickly, drawing a return gesture from him.

“A smooth operation is a swift one,” he told them, repeating an adage he had long ago taken as his personal motto. “Mistakes caused by rushing impede smooth operations.”

“Tribunus!” they chorused, acknowledging the intent behind the statement.

“Good,” he growled. “Janusi, take your Cohort ahead. You will lead the attack.”

“It will be an honor, Tribunus.”

Gordian just nodded, and Janusi wheeled his horse about to head back to his Cohort, leaving Gordian with the rest.

“We’ll be supporting Janusi’s Cohort in this battle,” he said. “The terrain is too tight to move a full Legion into place, but we can still bring archers up on either flank and provide support from the rear.”

They saluted in response, breaking to take command of their individual Cohorts. Gordian stayed on pace with his signaling team, marching ahead of the Legion while the Cohorts got together and started moving. Janusi’s Cohort quickly got into action and marched past him, taking the lead position in the column while the archer Auxiliaries quickly moved into position behind.

He watched from the saddle, seen but not heard for so long as possible. He knew his men and they knew their job, so Gordian stayed out of the action unless they screwed up. Generally, he was well aware that his men were far happier when they saw him calmly riding than when they saw him coming over to give orders, and that was the way he preferred it to be.

Around the bend in the river, they came into sight of the battle, and Gordian guided his horse away from the river and higher up the rising bank so he could see over the heads of the men marching forward to meet the enemy. He and his Adjutants continued at the same unhurried pace, watching the battle ahead while their own forces moved into position.

He was impressed from what he saw and, frankly, grateful as well. The militia was holding their own well enough that the Zealot forces hadn’t yet turned around to see Janusi’s Cohort closing in on them.

That wouldn’t last, but every moment it did was another step closer for Janusi to close and ready his Cohort for the fight.

“I see a lot of Roman red and gold on the ground, Tribunus.”

Gordian nodded. “Like as not, the Legion took the brunt of the first battle. I see some Cavalry on the enemy side and not near enough on the militia’s.”

“That would do it,” the Adjutant said in agreement. “The Light Infantry seems to be holding their own.”

“I’d wager five Denarii that they’re mostly retired or Auxiliary Legion,” Gordian replied with a dry laugh. “There’s almost no other way for this Dyna woman to have levied effective militia in the time available. She had to have gone after men who’d been trained previously.”

“No bet, Tribunus,” the man said replied sourly. “I still owe you fifteen Sestertius for the last time I let you sucker me into a bet.”

Gordian smiled serenely, but declined comment.

“They’ve noticed Janusi’s Cohort.”

He looked ahead and spotted the chaos forming in the enemy’s rear flank as they tried to redeploy to intercept the Legion Cohort marching on them. Gordian signaled to the men with him, and they edged the horses forward as the Cohort settled into their assigned maniple formations.

“Alright, let’s officially let them know we’re here,” Gordian said, nodding to his signaler.

“Yes, Tribunus,” the horn blower replied, lifting the instrument to his mouth and blowing hard.

The call was clear and loud, echoing down the banks of the river with enough force to be heard even over the fighting. He could see the ripple of shock spread through the Zealot formation as those to the rear were forced to pull back and reform without the aid of their officers, who were likely still directing the fighting to the front.