Invasion (Tales of the Empire Book 5) Read online

  The artillery captain gave him a glare that Bellacon was aware carried the blame for any deaths that would occur in the next few hours, and then stomped off. The tribune turned and glanced along the low ridge. Every one of the larger onagers and bolt throwers that had travelled with the army was now lined up facing the fortress of the enemy.

  They were almost ready, going by the fact that each man along that line was wincing and holding his breath with every twist or adjustment.

  It occurred to the tribune that standing in front of them might be a very poor decision, given what he’d heard from the artillerists over the last hour, but for all his blasé unconcern with their plight, he did feel for them and could hardly ask them to put themselves in such danger if he would not join them. And so he stood some ten feet in front of an onager the men called Bovis – the cow – which stood to three times his height.

  He chewed his lip – a habit of his when nervous. A lot was riding on this gambit. And even when he’d probed the experience of the best men in the unit, none of them had been able to guarantee him that even this range would be enough.

  It was simple in theory. At normal range, the artillery would have to be placed so close to the fortress that the angle of attack would be too steep and they would be more or less ineffective. So if they couldn’t move the artillery closer, they had to increase the range

  That young bowman had tightened his string to do just that, and if that would work for him, then in principle it would work for any missile weapon. The artillerists had confirmed that it was possible, but every twist of the torsion sinews past the standard limit put extra pressure on the machine’s frame, and the results of that were invariably bad.

  As if thinking about it brought forth the reality, there was a tortured ligneous groan somewhere close by. Bellacon winced and almost bit through his lip.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘As we’ll ever be,’ grumbled the captain off to his right.

  He glanced to the other side, where a lone rider sat on the hillside. He waved at the rider, who returned his wave, signalling that everyone was in place. This was it, then.

  ‘Begin the attack.’

  Behind him there was another worrying groan, and then a slithery rope noise and a muffled thud. A heartbeat later a rock the size of a pig hurtled through the air. He watched this first shot, tense. The boulder sailed through the grey morning and struck the tip of the middle bank in the outer defences, tearing a chunk of it out as it crashed into the ditch beyond and leaving what looked like a chalky bite mark in the rampart.

  Damn it. A good forty feet short.

  He heard an officer behind him shouting something about lighter ammunition but the words were cut off by the thuds and rattles, almost in unison, of a dozen bolt throwers loosing. The three-foot wood and iron missiles flew through the air like a skein of geese winging their way to the enemy. Fully half the missiles either fell short or struck the heavy wall around the fortress’ periphery. The rest, though, passed within, one of them plucking a man from the battlements in the process.

  Good. A palpable success at last.

  ‘Tighter!’ he shouter. ‘Further!’

  The captain said something else that started with an ‘f’ but fortunately for his career, the next shots of the artillery drowned him out. Bovis launched what appeared to be a sizeable piece of tree trunk over him, and two more huge boulders hurtled through the grey. One boulder struck the outer rampart leaving just a crater. The other smashed against the inner wall and sent shards of stone flying into the air. The tree trunk disappeared from sight within the fortress.

  The tribune couldn’t see within, and was definitely too far away to hear the effects of the hit, but he could imagine how its arrival had almost certainly ruined someone’s day.

  He turned to congratulate the men close by, only in time to see the first accident. A bolt thrower some distance along the line simply exploded. He stared in astonishment. When the captain had described it, he’d pictured the thing falling apart with a few pieces of kindling shooting outwards. What had actually happened was that the entire machine detonated, slivers of wood and iron bursting outwards like a deadly cloud.

  The two soldiers manning the machine stood no chance. The one who had been winding the torsion arms tighter was more or less vaporised on the spot. The marksman at the rear was struck from head to groin with shards of deadly material and thrown backwards to the turf, dead before he landed. The shrapnel had also injured an artillerist at the next machine and had damaged the sling of an onager.

  Bellacon stared in horror.

  The captain, who was uttering a string of words that would make a sailor blush, turned his disapproving look on Bellacon again. ‘Unless you’re going to call a halt to this, there’s no point in you putting yourself in danger, Tribune. Might as well head out and prepare yourself. Once we’ve secured the range we’ll light the pitch.’

  * * *

  The sun was beginning its descent through the leaden afternoon sky, a watery white glow pushing down for the horizon, when the artillery barrage finally forced the enemy into action. Bellacon had moved into position with the cavalry along the fortress’ south side during the morning and had watched the bombardment continue from there with periodic visits to other sites as necessary. They had lost two more bolt throwers and an onager during the morning, each with varied but utterly horrible consequences.

  Bellacon had forced himself to pay a brief visit to the medical station to check on the casualties and had immediately regretted it, returning to his place with the legion swiftly. There had been surprisingly few men in the hospital. Most of the artillerists had been dead before the orderlies reached them. Those few who’d been taken to the hospital had at best a minimal chance of making it through the night, missing limbs and torn to pieces with shrapnel. Only one artillerist had survived seemingly intact, and he’d refused to even look at the tribune. When finally he had turned his head there was a mangled red hole where one of his eyes used to be.

  Still, for all the casualties, the barrage had continued and gradually improved as they found their range, adjusted the ammunition and torsion and dropped more and more bolts, rocks and chunks of wood into the fortress. Pretty soon the enemy had removed the bulk of their men from the walls, just a few watchers in place, ducking reflexively each time there was a twang or a thud.

  Then at some signal just before noon when everything seemed to be working just right, the artillerists had begun to send huge earthenware jars of burning pitch and fire-wreathed pitch-coated bolts. The sky throughout the afternoon had been filled with constant streams of roiling oily black smoke, and the air smelled of burning pitch.

  The enemy had access to water and began well enough trying to put out the fires that were caused by the artillery. But burning pitch was something gods-awful difficult to extinguish and as the afternoon wore on the inhabitants began to lose the fight against the flames.

  Another onager went in the afternoon, with the added horror of spilling the load of burning pitch as it exploded. Bellacon had resolutely vowed not to visit the medics after that one. Now, for the last half hour or so, it had seemed clear that the enemy had given up. Flames roared over much of the fortress, and columns of black coiled into the sky all around it.

  The enemy were moving. One of the messenger riders waved a signal at him.

  They were opening the west gate.

  The tribune took a deep breath and hoped against hope that he’d done enough. They needed to bring the enemy to combat in the open, but he’d been forced to make the decision as to where to place the main force.

  General Volentius had retired to his tent with enough wine to float a galley before the entire assault began, seemingly uncaring of the whole thing now he had dropped the problem into Bellacon’s lap, and so all tactical decisions had come to the tribune.

  The enemy had to leave by either the east or west, and could then spill out around the open land below the fortress as far as the treel
ine in three directions. To the north, a river ran past. Not particularly deep or wide, but enough to make a fleeing army think twice about crossing. And flee they would. He felt sure that an army who had so resolutely clung to their defences had no intention of meeting the legion in the open. They would defend or they would flee. And if they successfully fled, this would be a hollow victory, forcing them to chase the Dunarii across the peninsula.

  No. He needed to make them fight here.

  He had reluctantly been forced to conclude that the east was his only real choice. He had to protect the artillery, and keeping the bulk of the army in the camp, looking unprepared, was part of his gamble. But he had also needed to stop the enemy doing exactly what they appeared to be attempting – fleeing to the west.

  He held his breath. Had he done enough?

  The Dunarii began to pour out of the gap between the embankments at the western end. Bellacon squinted into the increasingly dim grey. It seemed to be the whole tribe, or the whole population of the fortress at least. Thousands of men, some on horses, issued from the gateways, racing across the flattened market ground towards the woodlands and the trade road that led off through them. He’d been right. Flight was uppermost in their thoughts.

  The tribune sent up a brief prayer to every deity whose name he could remember who had a connection with either luck or war, and watched.

  The barricade came seemingly from nowhere, run out from the woodlands at either side to block the trade road. It was just the same wicker fencing they always used for camps, but with additional spikes and stakes. Behind it, fifty spearmen emerged and took up a position, braced. Simultaneously the five hundred archers hidden within the eaves of the forest let loose with their arrows.

  Somewhere in there was the lad with the missing bow string who had been unwittingly behind the whole plan. Bellacon hoped against hope the lad was doing well and would survive the day.

  Confusion immediately swept through the ranks of the Dunarii. They had been fleeing a burning world and attempting to ride to safety, but that safety had been denied them and, though they could not know how few men there were holding them off in the woods, the native host recoiled. Wave after wave of arrows thrummed from the trees, plunging into men and horses, creating a barricade of writhing bodies at the western edge of the enemy host.

  The spearmen positioned their polearms so that they would be able to impale anyone trying to cross the barricade and make off down the road. They were clearly unnecessary as anything but a deterrent. Like any mass of creatures caught in a disastrous situation, the Dunarii were led by the most decisive, whether for good or ill, and the decisive among that fleeing mob decided that the forest was clearly impossible, turning and fleeing across the turf below the fortress, heading south – towards Bellacon – seeking an alternative escape route.

  ‘No full engagements,’ he bellowed to the others with him. ‘We are the breakwater, not the beach.’

  The Dunarii were flooding towards him now, and Bellacon turned and waved down to the cavalry prefect, gesturing. Apart from a few men, the bulk of the three hundred strong cavalry unit was down in a gulley.

  The tribune made an attempt to estimate the numbers of the enemy, but it was almost impossible, given that they were moving fast, some mounted and others on foot, all mixed together, changing direction like a flow of water that had met a barrier, and they were still yet emerging from the fortress gate above. The best he could manage was ‘somewhere above three thousand’, but not limited to even twice that.

  Would three hundred riders do it? Even as a breakwater?

  If not, then this was as dreadful a miscalculation as any other he could have made today.

  The enemy were racing for the cavalry’s mostly-hidden position, still in a mass panic as they fled from the unseen archers in the woodland, their mass leaving the fortress and turning back, heading south as arrows thudded repeatedly into them.

  ‘Now.’

  The cavalry burst forth from the gulley and roared like lions, swords and spears out as they charged the Dunarii. Sometimes fear and confusion are a far more effective force than any number of heavily armoured men, Bellacon mused. The Dunarii were having a bad day. Battered with missiles and then their home turned into an inferno, they had attempted to flee for safety only to have their way blocked and vast numbers felled by hidden bowmen.

  Now, fully panicked and already having changed their direction of flight once, they were suddenly faced by howling, roaring horsemen coming from nowhere and blocking off yet another route of escape. And without a decision having been consciously made by any leader, now the mass of natives were racing along the grass beneath the fort towards the eastern end, where the bulk of the imperial army waited in the camp.

  Of course, even in the panicked mob, here and there were pockets of men who had begun to pull themselves together and make attempts to break out. A small group had gone for the woods, and even though many were being picked off as they ran for the trees, those that reached the sylvan haven might cause havoc among the archers.

  Another group was now at the barricade, struggling against the jutting, lancing spears of the defenders there. Bellacon couldn’t worry about them now – he just had to trust that the officers there could keep control. Other small numbers of Dunarii were making a spirited attempt to charge the imperial horsemen, but the bulk were now running in blind panic towards the main imperial force, and Bellacon knew the inevitable result of that.

  The legion was ready.

  It was trained.

  There was no force in the world it could not beat in clear ground and with even numbers.

  Bellacon watched as the cavalry did their job with skill and aplomb, skirmishing rather than charging, cutting at the enemy’s edges and steering them, driving them on to the east. A breakwater, guiding the currents elsewhere, rather than a beach, absorbing them.

  With satisfaction he noted that the last of the enemy had now abandoned the fortress. Still, he did not engage. It was not that he couldn’t take part in the fight, or even that he didn’t want to, but someone had to watch and give the orders. As the last of the Dunarii burst forth from the earthen ramparts and were turned away by the archers, the tribune rose in his saddle and waved his signal.

  The spearmen and the archers, having removed those men directly threatening them, were now free of trouble, and in answer to his signal, they began to emerge from the trees, following the enemy. They didn’t engage. They let the Dunarii run east towards the legion, and formed up into a coherent unit, slowly following up. Sure enough, shortly thereafter, the cavalry also found themselves free of assailants as the Dunarii massed in the east, suddenly halted by the appearance of the legion as the infantry poured from the camp and fell upon them.

  Bellacon scanned the field of battle thus far. The western approach, from which the enemy had issued, was now a carpet of native bodies, most having sprouted one or more arrows, others trampled to death in the disaster. More lay strewn across the turf south of the fortress where the cavalry had trimmed the herd to guide them east.

  As the main battle was joined on that same stretch of grass where Bellacon had spoken to the archer with the wet bow, the more desperate Dunarii peeled off from the rear of the force and tried to run for it. They paid the price for their terror, as the archers following them simply came to a halt in formation, nocked arrows and sent a deadly cloud into them.

  Time to join the fight.

  Bellacon took a deep breath and raced to catch up with the rest of the cavalry where they were even now falling again upon the confused flanks of the enemy and tearing them to pieces. The tribune raced into the fray, sword raised, and hacked down at the first native he saw, cleaving an arm at the shoulder.

  Then he was riding again, hurtling along the edge of the army along with the other riders, slashing and stabbing at anyone he saw and knew he could take without becoming bogged down in the fight. These riders were not the heavily armoured clibanarii cavalry of Pelasia, encased hea
d to toe in steel, both man and beast, but rather imperial skirmishers, lightly armed and armoured and quick. They tore at the edge of the enemy rather than charging them head on.

  The tribune fought hard without the exultation of the gleeful killer, efficient and swift like most of the horsemen. His arm was beginning to ache with the effort of the blows and by the fifth time he had raced along the Dunarii’s flank his forearm displayed two minor cuts and a sea of other people’s blood so thick and cloying it was difficult to tell at a glance where his arm ended and the sword began.

  As he rode away from the fight for just a moment’s rest, something drew his eyes back towards the camp. He was not remotely surprised to see Lissa, the witch woman, watching him from the rampart.

  The Dunarii would fall, she’d said, and it would be because of him.

  And they were falling even now, body by body.

  The enemy broke completely even as he watched, before he had a chance to rejoin the fight. Those at the periphery took their chances with the archers and the cavalry and ran for the hills. Others threw down their swords and raised their arms in a gesture of supplication. A few hardened warriors, clustered around noblemen, of course, fought on valiantly and fruitlessly until they were cut down.

  It was over. The first true battle of the campaign and, if the rumours were to be believed, the key to the western tribes.

  Bellacon sagged in the saddle and thought on what he would say to Volentius, half-cut in his tent.

  He hoped the general had left them some wine…

  Chapter 5

  Bellacon stood atop the ancient rampart and peered at the Vulture Legion making camp, ants moving across a cluttered landscape, organised and organising. The men were tired from three days’ hard march, and had been immensely grateful when the scouts had found a native fortification long abandoned yet clear of undergrowth and capacious enough to support the entire legion.