Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5) Page 17

‘They got in somehow. Do what you can to plug the gaps. I have to go to the general, now. Anyone I find on the way I’ll send to you, Captain…’

  ‘Barrus, sir.’

  ‘Good man. I’ll look for you when this is over and share a drink.’

  Without further word, he turned and ran back across the camp. Here and there he found small units of men forming and looking for their officers. These he sent to find Captain Barrus and help hold the eastern edge of the camp.

  All around, he could see individual sleepy and confused men struggling into their kit and looking for their friends or running in blind panic. These he ignored as currently of little value – they would take too long to organise to be an effective use of his time. As he passed the headquarters tent, he saw an auxiliary captain giving orders to several of his men.

  ‘I’ve a job for you, Captain. Gather up all the stragglers and take them east. Get them committed to the defences.’

  ‘Sir, I’m an auxiliary officer, not regular legion.’

  ‘If they complain, slap them. I’ll defend you later. Just get them together and being useful.’

  As the man saluted hesitantly, Cantex ran on. There was a faint slope at the other side of the headquarters, only a couple of feet, but it allowed him a view across the tents in front of him, and he could see a similar situation developing over at the river, where the enemy were crossing the water and barely being repelled by shocked and unprepared legionaries.

  A bobbing standard caught his eye, gleaming in the light of one of the camp’s communal fires, and he recognised it for the general’s own. Keeping it in sight as best he could between the bulky shapes of tents, he ran that way, down the slope and between endless rows of identical tents. Fortunately, the general and his close companions seemed to be stationary, for that standard remained in position as Cantex raced through the camp.

  Finally he reached the end of the tent rows and could see a large number of natives sloshing their way across the slow-flowing river, waist-deep and baying as they came for imperial blood. The legion had seemingly had more time to prepare here than in the east, and the infantry had managed to form pretty well, creating shield walls with auxiliary archers behind them. There was even a two-man artillery team setting up a portable bolt thrower. Imperial arrows arced up over their allies’ heads and fell upon the enemies in the water, picking them off in droves.

  Satisfied that there was no immediate danger of the defences collapsing here, Cantex turned and ran along the edge of the camp’s tent rows towards that standard.

  As he arrived at the scene he could see the auxiliary tribune flinging out his arms this way and that, deeply involved in some discussion or argument with a captain. The general’s personal guard, a troop of eighty veterans from the legion, were formed in a square around the standard, the officers, and the camp fire. Of the general he could see no sign.

  Hurrying over, he waved at the soldiers to move aside, which they did without comment, closing ranks once more as soon as he was within their protective square. The auxiliary tribune spotted him and brushed his companion aside, rushing over to Cantex.

  ‘Fucking disaster,’ was his opening comment.

  ‘To say the least,’ Cantex replied.

  ‘What do we do?’

  Cantex frowned at the tribune. ‘What are the general’s orders?’

  ‘The general?’ The auxiliary tribune’s brow folded for a moment, and he pointed towards the imperial standard, his face bleak. Cantex realised in a heart-stopping moment why he’d not spotted the general. He had been expecting to see Quietus upright.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Stray arrow,’ the tribune said, and then hurried to keep up with Cantex as he ran over to the small group beneath the standard. Half a dozen of the guard surrounded a surgeon and two field medics as they examined the general, who was lying on the ground, sheeted with blood, his head gently resting on a rolled up blanket, keeping the neck off the floor.

  Cantex could see why as he approached and dropped to a crouch. The arrow had punched into the side of the general’s neck and transfixed him. It had not cut through his throat, spine or windpipe, and so had not robbed him of life immediately, but from the colour of the man, Quietus had lost an almost critical amount of blood.

  ‘Can you patch him?’ Cantex asked the surgeon, causing the general to cough up a spray of blood and grin, oddly, through crimson and white teeth. ‘Don’t you… ever stop joking, Cantex?’

  The surgeon shook his head. ‘The arrow cut an artery and is lodged in it. There’s nothing I can do. The general lives as long as he doesn’t move or talk, but every time his neck even twinges, he loses more blood and there’s precious little left to lose.’

  Cantex swallowed in horror and disbelief. ‘You can’t do anything?’

  ‘I could take the pain away, but the general wouldn’t let me. Not ’til he’d seen you.’

  The tribune felt a moment of guilt at the time he’d taken to get here from the other side of the camp, but something suddenly struck him and robbed him of all other thought.

  ‘That’s an imperial arrow!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the auxiliary tribune said, with a distinct air of embarrassment. ‘Don’t know how it happened. A most incredible piece of misfortune.’

  ‘Misfortune?’ Cantex frowned. ‘This has to have been deliberate. The army we brought from imperial lands are all veterans. They’re the best the northern provinces have to offer. I cannot credit that one of your archers would be so inept as to loose an arrow backwards into his own camp. This is deliberate – I’d stake my life on it. And I’ll be damned surprised if it doesn’t have something to do with the apparent complete disappearance of all our scouts and pickets. This is not a random disaster. This whole attack is the subject of planning.’

  He turned to the auxiliary tribune and an infantry captain standing nearby. ‘Your archers can stop them crossing, yes?’

  ‘I think so, as long as they only have infantry to come at us.’

  ‘Good. Captain, we don’t need as many shields here as we have. The river is a good obstacle. Select every second man and send them to the eastern escarpment to help there, since that’s where the main danger is coming from.’

  He became aware of a gurgling sound behind him and gestured for the two men to go. The tribune and captain ran off to carry out his orders as he dropped down next to General Quietus, who was trying to talk, blood dripping from his lips as he did so.

  ‘General, this is an imperial arrow. And I don’t think from one of ours.’

  Quietus gurgled what could only be an affirmative. One nod and he would die of blood loss. ‘They are… turning on me.’

  He coughed more blood. ‘Crito. And Volentius. One… or both. They are behind… this.’

  He winced for a moment, and then sighed, his eyes closing. For a moment, Cantex thought the general had passed away, but then the eyes opened once more.

  ‘Thought I could… outrun the snakes. They move… fast for serpents on their… bellies.’

  He grinned that white and red grin again.

  ‘See, Cantex? I do have a… sense of humour.’

  ‘General, the pickets and scouts. We had no warning. I don’t think the enemy overran them by stealth. I think they weren’t there in the first place. How could Crito or Volentius arrange that?’

  ‘Can’t,’ the general replied, then winced again. ‘These are my men… Loyal to me. Hand-picked… and trustworthy. Unless…’

  ‘General?’

  ‘We were short one… captain. And his men. They were left at… Saravis Fork. Illness or something. We… we had reinforcements sent… last minute. Met us at… the coast.’

  ‘Who sent them?’ Cantex urged, shivering at the implications of all this.

  ‘Rufus. Anicius Rufus.’

  Cantex blinked. ‘The senator?’ What would he have to gain? No, that was a simple question to answer. The man had suffered twenty years with a reputation for failure, and now he was i
n danger of being embarrassed a second time around when his former juniors achieved what he could not.

  It seemed ridiculous. Impossible, even. Yet somehow he knew it to be true.

  A captain working for an ambitious senator, who had infiltrated the legion so as to position his own men as the entire watch for the night. Then to withdraw them all and let the enemy fall on the legion unprepared. And perhaps to kill the general with a well-placed arrow? Sacrifice a whole legion just to prevent embarrassment?

  Fury rose in Cantex to a degree he’d never before felt.

  ‘General, I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this, and how I’m going to do it, but I promise you this here and now: Senator Rufus will pay for this.’

  Quietus sighed and smiled weakly, then raised a hand with difficulty and made a beckoning motion. The general’s adjutant came scurrying over from somewhere, his thin face ashen, and crouched on the other side of him.

  ‘I’m gone,’ Quietus said quietly. ‘Cantex is… your general. Make sure… the legion knows.’

  The general suddenly coughed with the effort of all this, and his head jerked from the rolled blanket. Blood jetted from the wound around the arrow shaft with the sudden violent movement. The surgeon and his assistants gently lowered the commander’s head to the blanket and wadded the arrow with fresh padding, but Cantex knew as soon as he saw the eyes that the general had left the shell of his body.

  The glassy orbs stared unblinking at the sky, and a final sigh escaped his lips.

  The tribune rose slowly, shaking. He had inherited a legion that was on the verge of being wiped out, betrayed by a ruthless senator or other scheming generals, or possibly even both.

  ‘What are your orders, General?’ the adjutant asked quietly.

  Cantex paused for a moment, then blinked, realising that the man meant him. Oh, how he wished Bellacon was here with his natural way of command, or Convocus with his labyrinthine mind. He took a deep breath and straightened.

  ‘First we secure this river, and every spare man gets sent to the east. Send runners to all the senior officers and tell them what’s happened. Tell them I will be with them all presently. I’m damn well not losing this camp now. Time to find out what these natives are made of.’

  Chapter 14

  The river was a flood of gleaming black, interrupted by the shapes of floating or snagged bodies, the moonlight casting a silvery sheen across the dark, rippling surface. The far bank thronged with enemy warriors, watching, waiting, hungry for blood.

  But they had learned the folly of crossing the river. Cantex had lost hundreds of men, but had regained control of the bank and the river, and the auxiliary archers and the artillery officers with their small, two-man bolt throwers had been brought up and were now arrayed along the near bank. The enemy in the water had been systematically picked off, and finally they had stopped trying. Each time one of the natives felt willing to try and launched himself out into the water, a carefully aimed bolt plucked him from his feet and threw him back into the torrent, or halfway across he would be pinned by half a dozen arrows.

  For a quarter of an hour now the river had become a deadlock. Cantex had been twitching to get away and secure the rest of the camp, but he also knew well enough not to leave a seemingly solved issue until he was certain.

  Now, the enemy lined up on the far shore had taken to some kind of native chant, a rising howl followed by a rhythmic grunting as they smacked weapons on shields or thighs in time. It was unnerving in the dark, and the imperial troops were unsettled, half expecting this behaviour to be a prequel to another mass charge. Cantex chewed his lip, contemplating the very same thing. It did have all the characteristics of summoning up the blood for a fight. He’d seen the Gota do similar things.

  Mathematics came to his rescue. He estimated the time it would take a man to cross that water, made a rough calculation of the numbers on both banks, and the time it took his men to reload. The resulting sum was close, but he believed that even if the entire mass of enemy charged at once, enough of them could be taken down with missiles, that before they reached the near bank either their morale would break, or the men there would be able to draw on reinforcements and the remaining native force would be too small to endanger the camp.

  ‘Bring up all the spare archers and artillery,’ he said to the adjutant beside him. ‘Any man who can draw a string or turn a windlass needs to be on the bank, stretched out from one end of the curve to the other. Concentrate them here where the bulk of the enemy are, but they are gradually extending to north and south, and we don’t want to give them an opening.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The adjutant, a flat-faced, nervy looking man by the name of Geminus, had stopped calling him ‘general’ at Cantex’s insistence, though the man looked uncomfortable with the decision. A laughable thing to be concerned about really, when their potential extinction loomed so close.

  ‘I will have a reserve of mixed heavy and light infantry positioned at the heart of the camp, able to react to trouble in any quarter in good time. Make sure you have a musician with good lungs who knows all the calls every five hundred paces along the water’s edge. If there is any danger of the enemy reaching the camp, they are to put out the call, and the reserves will comply. Alright?’

  ‘Got it, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Cantex grinned. ‘You are in charge of the river, Geminus. Don’t let them across.’

  Leaving the seemingly able officer in charge of what appeared to be a settled situation, and with a plan should the worst happen, Cantex beckoned to a standard bearer and began to hurry back through the camp. Part-way up the wide path between the orderly rows of tents, he spotted an officer coming his way slowly, limping and leaning on the shoulder of one of his men.

  ‘Captain, are you whole?’

  ‘Bastard got me in the calf, sir. Just a flesh wound, but it’s slowed me down a bit.’

  Cantex nodded. ‘I’ve got a job for you if you feel up to it?’

  ‘Just ask away, sir.’

  ‘I need you to stay at the headquarters. There’s a small medical station being set up there anyway and they can deal with your leg. I’m going to arrange a reserve force, mainly of men who need a rest for now. I’ll send them to you and you can all get your breath back, but if there’s a call from river or escarpment, you’ll need to mobilise them quickly. Can you manage it with your leg like that?’

  ‘I’ll damn well run if I have to, sir.’

  ‘Good man. The reserves are yours. I’ll be at the escarpment.’

  Precious heartbeats later, with a small force in tow, the tribune passed the now-working aid station outside the command tent, and nodded in satisfaction at the growing force already gathering there. Those infantry who had already been showing signs of fatigue at the river had been sent here earlier and had formed the nucleus of the reserve unit. He paused at the medical centre and waved at the chief surgeon, who looked up in irritation while stitching a bicep.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Any wounded man who can still fight needs to join the reserve force gathering here. See to it, will you?’

  The surgeon grunted an affirmative and went back to his work. Cantex, long since used to the temperamental ways of the medical corps, accepted the confirmation and moved on.

  The escarpment was still hard pressed. The enemy were fighting below and throwing missiles from above, and the imperial troops were struggling to maintain a line at the camp’s edge. The tribune heaved in a deep breath and pondered the problem. His gaze slid up to the sky, where the very first signs of morning were beginning to show, a lightening of the black to a deep, rich purple. Within an hour it would be dawn, for all the difference that might make. At least they would see better then and not be so reliant on the fires and the torches.

  Fire. Fire and water. Two of nature’s great obstacles…

  A moment later, he was running towards the fighting, gesturing to any officer or signaller he could see.

  ‘We’re getting worn down
and brutalised here. This is what I want to do: tear down the nearest three rows of tents and set up a barricade of anything combustible, including those tents, about forty paces back from the escarpment. Get pitch and torches ready. As soon as it’s done, we pull back behind it and ignite it. They seem to be very light on archers, but the rocks they’re throwing are causing havoc and I want our men out of missile range from that rise.’

  As the officers saluted and orders were given out, the few men who could be spared rushing off to pull down tents heedless of all personal belongings within, Cantex hurried on towards the fray.

  The entire line seemed to be under the command of two captains who were liberally coated in blood, both their own and that of the enemy. They were yelling in hoarse voices, their vocal cords ruined by over an hour of bellowing above the clang of steel and the screaming of men.

  The line was roughly four men deep, though it varied, in places perilously thin at a single soldier. The wall of imperial steel was being battered by howling natives hammering down with axes, clubs and swords, and jabbing with spears. Occasionally a sling shot would clang or thud among the press, and rocks, branches and clods of earth were sailing out from the escarpment to fall on the lines with varying degrees of damage and distraction.

  The men were in trouble, trying to concentrate on keeping the shield wall solid and deal with the combative natives facing them while also attempting to stay wary of the falling debris. Even as Cantex took it all in, he estimated they were losing a man every five to ten heartbeats now. At that rate the legion would be a field of ghosts by the time the sun cleared the horizon.

  Each man was struggling individually. Despite the best efforts of the two captains and their juniors, the constant pounding from front and above simultaneously had left the men unable to adhere to any kind of group manoeuvre beyond maintaining the basic shield wall.

  Order might save them, the tribune mused, but how could he instil it?

  Cantex smiled, despite everything. When he’d been a young recruit, he remembered sharing a sly drink with a friend while on guard duty. An officer had walked past and shouted the call to attention and Cantex had saluted automatically, even with a cup of wine in his hand. A cup which had then disgorged its heady contents all over his face. The military life bred into the men a certain level of instinctive reaction that went beyond conscious thought. He took a deep breath, summoning up all the power and energy he could muster.