Sands of Egypt Read online

  The army began to move again, and Salvius knew then with the sinking stone of acceptance in the pit of his stomach that Achillas was at the least a competent general. His skirmishing riders peeled off to the flanks, out of the way at this stage, slingers and archers from half a dozen peoples moving into two groups, each supported by infantry with ladders. As they parted, the elephants moved into the centre, their archers nocking arrows already, forming in essence highly mobile siege towers.

  The queen had been quite right about their inability to hold the ramparts, he realised. With twice or even three times as many soldiers, he’d likely still lose the walls. Achillas was prepared to take on Alexandria.

  He looked left and right. Most of the men had pila, though only one each. Crunch time. Keep the pila to jab down from the wall, or use them early to take out the enemy? He sucked on his teeth, peered at the enemy and sighed, as he turned to his musician and standard bearer.

  ‘Send the order. Cast all available pila. Target the elephants’ drivers, missile unit officers or standard bearers, or men with ladders, but prioritise with the elephants. We want to break them if we can.’

  What he’d give for a good unit of archers. Ah well.

  A horn booed out among the enemy as the manoeuvres completed, and with a roar, they began to charge. Salvius braced himself. His men had been evenly spaced along the wall, some fifteen feet apart. Now, those at the periphery would be moving back towards the centre, knowing where the great danger lay, but it was a pitiful defence, for sure.

  The enemy managed to keep pace, which was a neat trick for infantry and elephants together. As the entire front line slowed to a halt at bellowed commands, the archers nocked, stretched and released, slingers whirling their weapons with a ‘whup whup’ noise that was audible even over the din, the elephant archers almost on a level with the wall top.

  Across the entire Roman line, centurions and optios blew whistles, and some three to four hundred pila arced out with varying levels of efficiency. Salvius watched, sword gripped tight. One particularly lucky strike against the elephants, among several good hits and a lot of fails. That pilum struck the elephant’s mahout square in the chest, punching through him and pinning him to either the beast or some arrangement between he and it. Whatever the case, he screamed, transfixed, and died there, still in place, and the elephant began to panic. Unfortunately among a dozen or so elephants, one panicked animal was not enough. The beast tried to turn and flee, but there wasn’t room, and so it remained in place, gradually calming as one of the archers leaned forwards and sought control. Other elephants had brushed off scratches from pila, and archers had been struck, but not enough to make much difference.

  In all, the entire volley had been, to Achillas’ army, little more than a gnat to a horse.

  The enemy’s initial assault, on the other hand, was a thing of horror. All along the line, archers and slingers released, from ground level or elephant back, and the cloud of missiles that struck the wall was like a hail storm, clattering, thudding, cracking and battering all along the wall top. Knowing what was coming, every man had ducked below wall level as soon as their pilum had been cast, and consequently most of the arrows and stones had whipped over their heads or struck the parapet. Still, here and there a man had been too slow and had been struck, or a lucky shot had ricocheted off a merlon and ploughed into a crouched legionary.

  If this was a taste of things to come, Alexandria was a disaster in the making.

  He forced himself to see it from the point of view of a general rather than a man on the wall. They had lost a few men, but had caused more than twice as many casualties among the enemy, perhaps even three times. And that was what this was about: doing as much damage as possible with every step back.

  Salvius risked rising above the parapet, shield held up just in case.

  The ladders were coming forward now, and he cursed. In the perfect world he would now order the men to rise and defend, but the hail of arrows and stones was almost constant. Even as he worried, two sling bullets cracked off his shield, one tearing some of the edging from it, and an arrow clacked against the stone a foot to his right. This was insane. He wasn’t going to waste soldiers here. If his men rose to defend, he’d lose that ten percent in the first breath. No, he needed to fall back early. The wall was too wide to hold.

  Cursing again, he turned to the musician and gave the order.

  All along the wall, men hurried to the nearest stair and began to race back along the streets. The last to leave, apart from Salvius, were the gate crews, who set their traps ready before running. With a last look at the enemy, who were whooping triumphantly, he dropped from the wall, hurrying down to street level.

  A quick glance at the gate as his men finished their jobs, gathered their gear and fell back, and he nodded with satisfaction. He’d done all he could here without losing men unnecessarily. He’d killed a hundred or so Aegyptians, he reckoned. Not good, but then he’d lost only about a score. And the second line would be easier to hold.

  As they ran from the wall, he slowed. One of the optios from the gate frowned.

  ‘Come on, sir.’

  ‘Go. I’ll be along.’

  The soldier ran on, looking worried, leaving Salvius standing in the street, roughly half way between the city wall and their next line. He waited, watching. There was a strange silence now. His men were settling in at the second line, and the missile flurry had died off. The locals were either ensconced deep in their houses or fled to relative safety. Then it came.

  The gate gave at the first blow. Achillas had more than one use for elephants, of course, and the city gate simply could not stand against a blow from such a great heavy beast. The traps began to kick in immediately.

  The elephant pushed on through the splintering gate, and the cord that had been attached to the two gate leaves, and had been released when they parted, slipped up through two iron rings, letting go of the heavy wooden beam they had held up, little less than a stumpy tree trunk suspended high. The great log swung down. It had been intended to hit a group of infantry at chest height, of course, but the effect was perhaps better in the end, for instead it smashed into the legs of the elephant, breaking both and causing the animal to collapse in the gateway, bellowing, crushing several of its riders. It would take some time to shift that, and the effect on enemy morale would be pronounced.

  The other small traps would kick in as they were encountered, but the first had worked well. Satisfied that the enemy would be more careful, slowed down from here, he ran on, careful of where he went, jogging from side to side appropriately until he reached the barricade.

  The second line had been formed in every street by pulling down houses and using the rubble to block the way. Over the preceding days they had formed a barrier some ten feet high with a fighting platform. Wicker screens had been constructed, backed with layer upon layer of animal hide. A stack of long spears taken from the palace armoury stood to one side, and his men were already lining the makeshift wall. The centurion here was ahead of the game, for he had judged the number of men needed to hold the street, and sent the rest on. Of the better part of five hundred men, they had ten such streets to hold, and the lion’s share of men had been assigned here to the main thoroughfare that ran from the gate into the heart of the city. Of the hundred men who’d run back here, forty had continued on, ready to man the next stage. Salvius fumed for a moment. He would like to involve himself and draw Aegyptian blood, but he was playing the role of commander here, and it was more important that he have a good idea of what was happening.

  Greeting his men with enthusiastic comments, he clambered up and over the makeshift wall, careful not to dislodge anything critical, and at the far side entered the building to the left, climbing steps and a ladder, and emerging into the sun’s scorching glare on the roof. There, he moved to the best vantage point. The enemy were succeeding in clearing the gate. In a short time, they managed to drag and push the dead beast from the arch. Salvius could
n’t see the detail, but he could imagine the panic and pain as the men doing so triggered trap after trap, breaking legs, spiking flesh and causing trouble. Finally, he saw the light in the distant gateway as the animal was completely moved aside. Slowly, nervously, the enemy sent another elephant through the gate, riders ducking as they passed beneath the high arch. The rest held back, but as the beast cleared the gate area without triggering further traps, they brought the other elephants in. Satisfied that all was clear, that lead elephant began to move down the street, stirring up the scattered palm leaves and detritus as it came.

  It managed some fifteen paces before it encountered the first lilium. Normally these pits were dug in turf and planted with a sharpened stake as an anti-personnel defence. Such was not possible in the city street, and there was precious little time to manufacture sufficient sharpened stakes anyway. However, with officials from the city detailing what lay beneath the streets, they had managed something similar. Men with picks had dug holes into sewers, water channels and other drains, cellars and tunnels, covering them with palm leaves that barely stirred in the lack of any great breeze.

  The elephant encountered one such pit, front right leg plunging down into the hole, limb breaking as it fell forwards. It screamed, and the enemy roared in panic once more. A second elephant lost to enemy trickery. The beast rolled and writhed in the street, and no one could come close as it smeared what was left of the riders into the stone beneath it. Salvius watched with grim satisfaction as it took them more than a quarter of an hour to put the beast out of its misery and shift it enough to one side to allow passage.

  He almost laughed as he watched the other elephants being guided back out of the gate, the beasts unsettled by the death cries of their brother. That was the great animals out of the fight, then. The cavalry similarly remained outside the walls, of little value in the streets. Now the infantry came on. They ran, presumably imagining the elephant’s fate to be a single trap. They learned their lesson in moments as half a dozen men disappeared into the ground with shrieks, some entirely, others only far enough to break bones and cause pain.

  Another pause for reorganisation, and the enemy formed up, white shields to the fore, and came on slowly, testing the ground with every other step, and reorganising to shuffle around any pit as they found it. As they neared the secondary blockade, they reformed once more. The infantry filtered into columns to allow archers to move to the fore. They paused some forty paces from the barricade and nocked their arrows. At the centurion’s command below, his men grasped those great wicker frames.

  The arrows came in a flurry and the frames were lifted simultaneously. The arrows thudded into the cunning defences, their momentum stolen enough by the wicker through which they passed for the layers of hide to halt most of them completely. Of several score missiles, a handful passed through the screen, only one striking a man, who cursed and threatened to ‘rip the cock off the bastard who did that’. The men roared defiance, and the Aegyptians, perhaps uncertain as to their effectiveness, released a second volley.

  Some clever sod had aimed high, and Salvius was forced to lean back and angle his shield to deflect an arrow meant for him. Once again the bulk of the arrows, though, caught in the screens, and some enemy officer put out a call. The archers dropped back and those white-shield soldiers, alongside several units of foreign infantry, bellowed and began to run at the makeshift wall.

  More commands rang out from the centurion and the screens were discarded, the men instead grasping those long spears from the armoury and dropping into position. Half the men stood on the fighting platform with their swords and shields ready, the other half below with the spears. The enemy came on and as they neared to ten paces, the centurion gave his next order. The men at the barricade thrust the spears into the carefully positioned long, narrow holes in the makeshift rubble wall.

  ‘Wait for it,’ the centurion shouted, judging the speed of the enemy, and then, as they reached five paces: ‘NOW!’

  The effect was horrific. As the first wave of infantry hit the rubble barrier, feet finding purchase as they clambered up towards the top and the waiting legionaries, spear points suddenly burst from the wall front, and thirty points drove into the flesh of the climbing men from an unseen source. The chorus of screams was appalling, and without the need for further commands those spears were yanked back in. The nature of the rubble wall was so chaotic that it was extremely difficult to work out where the holes were without the spears poking from them.

  A score of enemy infantry fell back, yelling, blood pouring from wounds, as the men behind them pushed past, uncertain of what had happened, but determined to reach the wall top. Without the need for the centurion’s command, spears lanced out of the holes in the barricade again and skewered more and more of the enemy. Now they were working at their own leisure, jabbing again and again. The enemy dead began to build up, but the Aegyptian commander was not foxed by it and, rather than pulling back, committed greater and greater numbers, swamping the wall.

  The spears started to lose their efficacy as some had their heads cut clear by enterprising infantry outside, others grabbed and hauled like a tug of war back through the wall to be disposed of.

  Here, Salvius acknowledged, he was going to lose men. He would have to leave a rear-guard of doomed legionaries to hold the enemy. He watched carefully as the spears failed and the Aegyptians reached the top of the rubble wall and began to launch themselves at the Romans. Here, at least, the legionaries had a better chance than they had at the wall. There were no missiles, and it was a simple matter of sword against sword, in which the Romans quickly proved their superior training.

  He continued to watch, tense, as his men fell gradually and the chances of holding the barricade decreased. Soon he would have to abandon it. The centurion made the decision, looking up and gesturing to Salvius, signalling his belief that they were about to lose control of the wall. Salvius nodded. They’d lost more than twenty men, maybe approaching thirty. Time to go.

  He gestured at the centurion, holding both hands splayed, and then two fingers, indicating twelve in total. The centurion nodded and picked a dozen men to stay and hold. He spoke to each man quietly and individually, and Salvius was pleased at the fact that not one of the men argued or attempted to run. They had been commanded to sell their life to buy time for their comrades. Whatever the centurion had said to them had done the trick.

  Moments later, the rest of the legionaries were running. Salvius paused only long enough to watch the centurion fight the urge to stay with his men, before he too ran, disappearing inside and taking the steps three at a time, emerging into the street and running. Behind him, he could hear a dozen legionaries bravely holding the enemy back, selling their lives dearly.

  The second line had been successful. He couldn’t imagine how many enemies they had dispatched there, but the number had been high, vastly so compared with Roman losses. It was partially about reducing their numbers as much as possible, but it was mostly about shattering their confidence and making them slower, warier and less prone to launch assaults. Caesar wanted them unwilling to commit to a full assault while he waited for his reinforcements.

  The chalk marks on the road were clear, but only if you knew they were there. Salvius slowed, knowing he was at the edge of the third line of defence. He glanced over his shoulder. The fight way back along the street must be almost over now. In fact, even as he watched, he saw white shields passing across the parapet. They were slow, though. Having encountered the nightmares the Roman defenders had prepared time after time, they were now in no hurry to rush into the next one.

  Satisfied, Salvius Cursor reached the last chalk mark and looked around. All windows and doors for the preceding and next ten houses had been blocked off, the only way out of the street the ladders that had been left leading up to the rooftops. All those ladders were gone now, pulled up onto the roofs, bar this one. With a deep breath, Salvius grasped the rungs and climbed. At the top, muscular arms reached
out and helped him up onto the roof before whisking the ladder up and out of sight.

  In moments the street was empty, no sign of defenders. Salvius dropped below the parapet, a low wall just two feet in height. He could see the rest of his men, every one lying out of sight, half this side of the road, half the other. Beside each man stood a small heap of rocks and tiles gathered from the demolitions. He smiled grimly. This one was nice and simple.

  The enemy approached the next position slowly. Now, they were checking every foot of ground before moving along it, wary of traps. There was no need to ponder on what lay ahead as they passed those chalk marks, unaware of them, eyes locked on the street. There might be no Romans there, but they had torn up the surface and the only way on would be to slowly and carefully pick a way between the holes in the ground and the jagged lumps of rubble and stone jutting up in between. Slow, laborious and potentially painful, but at least no surprise.

  Carefully, slowly, the white-shielded Aegyptians began to thread their way through the troublesome terrain. Salvius lay still, peering down through the small hole which allowed water to sluice off the roof and into the street at the bottom of the parapet, on the odd days when it did rain during the winter season. The centurion a little further along waved tightly at him, his face a question. Salvius peered down again. The enemy were committed. He nodded.

  The centurion blew a whistle and suddenly legionaries were up at the parapet along both sides of the street. The Aegyptians, surprised by the whistle, looked this way and that in confusion, their gazes turning upwards only as the Romans began to cast their rubble down.

  The effect was impressive. The enemy were forced to move slowly and carefully between obstacles, presenting the Romans with easy targets. Few of their missiles failed to find a home. Enemy soldiers were pulverised with boulders and tiles, limbs broken, skulls opened, faces mashed, blood everywhere. Screaming pervaded the street, and the men who remained below tried desperately to pick up speed, either running forwards or retreating, only to find that increased speed inevitably tipped them into deep holes or ruined shins, feet and ankles among the rubble, at which point they were once more pounded with stones.