Steam Legion (2 page)

Her lips curled up, amused by the direction her mind was taking given the circumstances, but her eyes never left the four thugs before her. When one twitched in her direction, Dyna knew it was time to move.

They charged forward, swords raised to deliver clumsy overhand strikes that would likely cleave her in two if she remained in place.

She didn’t.

Dyna dove to the right, coming up along one flank of the group, and slashed out with her blade. The unarmored Zealot thug never even saw the flash of the blade as she caught him low in the abdomen, opening his guts to the night air. She drew the blade out along his spine and spun, ending his life with a diagonal slash across the face.

Three left.

The others were still trying to get turned around on her when she leapt over the collapsing body of their comrade and charged into the middle of them.

Zealots, religious fanatics whipped into a frenzy by fools in Jerusalem, were devoted to their cause, but hardly warriors. Dyna slit the hamstrings of one, ducking under a clumsy swing of a sword, and flipped her blade forward while bracing herself against the pommel. She drove it through the second, only stopping when the hilt was a half inch deep in his gut and his blood was pumping furiously out over her hands.

“Tell your God that Sparta’s shine may be faded, but it will take more than the likes of you to humble any empire we claim allegiance to,” she hissed in his ear as the lights faded in his eyes.

She let him drop then and turned to the single remaining man.

“And then there was one.” She smiled coldly, spreading her bloody hands wide, as if in invitation.

This Zealot wasn’t of the sterner stuff some of his brethren; his legs shook as he looked on the nearly-nude beauty before him. She was covered in the blood of his comrades, a demonic gleam in her eyes as she dared him to attack.

He quivered for a moment, then screamed, dropped his sword, and ran.

Dyna smirked as she watched the coward run right into a small cadre of Legionnaires who were jogging up the path in various states of dress and armaments, presumably drawn by the sound of fighting. The Centurion in the lead barely paused as he drove his gladius into the man’s gut and stepped lightly to the side to let him fall.

“Miss? Are you…” The Roman froze when he saw her, both because he recognized Dyna and because of the state of her clothing, or lack thereof.

“I am fine, Cassius,” she said calmly, planting her foot on the last man she’d killed and grunting as she pulled the blade clear of his torso.

“My Lady!” He stiffened, slamming his fist over his heart and looking away from her as much as he could force himself, though his eyes kept darting back.

She ignored the glances, both of horror and lust, from the men. She was no Grecian doll or Roman lady, a whore in private yet too concerned with proprieties in public to get dirty when needs be. She would live her life honestly in all aspects and do what needed to be done to forward her goals.

“These are your men?” she asked, picking up her torn tunic and using it to clean her blade.

“I… Yes, my Lady. Are you certain that you’re fine?”

“They didn’t lay a finger on me that I did not allow,” she said coldly, eyes drifting out to the city beyond the Library Campus. “Zealots. I didn’t know they’d come this far west.”

“No one did, my Lady,” Cassius said, still trying not to look like he was looking at her. “Reports had them a hundred mile markers from here, at a minimum. I do not believe these are soldiers from Jerusalem, however.”

She glanced at him, an eyebrow crooked in question.

Cassius sighed, pursing his lips as he spoke. “Most likely, this is the result of agitators stirring up our own population.”

That surprised her, though she supposed that it probably shouldn’t have. Alexandria contained one of the largest populations of Jewish people anywhere other than the Province of Judea itself, so it wasn’t so unlikely that the unrest elsewhere would billow up here as well, she supposed. Still, those she worked with were among the most dedicated to knowledge and research of any people she knew. It was difficult for her to match those men with the ones on the ground around her.

“What caused this?” she asked dumbly, not really thinking.

Cassius grimaced this time, knowing that she wouldn’t like what he was telling her. “Likely? There were reports of Grecian assaults on the Israelite centers of town, including the defacing of a temple earlier. I have been undermanned here since the Senate ordered the Twenty-Second to the north to cover for the loss of the Twelfth, however, so I can’t be certain.”

“Imbeciles,” she muttered, not clarifying if she was referring to the rioters, the instigators, or the Senate itself.

When the Jewish revolt occurred in Jerusalem, it had not come as much of a shock to those in the Empire who paid attention to such things. The tensions had existed for generations, and recent actions by Grecian elements in Jerusalem had only served to exacerbate them significantly. Particularly when the Roman Garrison had chosen to ignore their actions outside the Temple of Jerusalem.

Honestly, Dyna had no particular love or care for the Israelite people, as a rule. Their religious beliefs not only did not reflect her own—the two clashed quite severely—but she actually held a great deal less respect for many of her countrymen. As a Spartan, even when her and her city’s interests coincided with those of other Greek cities, she tended to follow her ancestors’ beliefs and watch her back constantly for blades.

The entire situation, however, looked more and more traceable to the Senate and, through them, the Emperor himself. The destruction of the Twelfth Legion near Galilee had been the result of orders of nearly incomprehensible stupidity, and now this situation was thrust upon them by the reassignment of the Twenty-Second to the north of the Judea Province.

It almost seems that the Senate or the Emperor hopes to induce the very sort of actions we are now seeing.

For the moment, that was neither here nor there. They had other concerns to be dealt with. If the instigators of this mess were Grecian, likely
Athenians
, in her opinion, they would be dealt with later. Of course, given the mess the mob was currently making of the city, it was unlikely any of them would be found even if the Governor could be convinced to punish them. In either case, it wasn’t her immediate concern.

She nodded. “I see. Have you contacted any others of the Garrison?”

He shook his head.

She pursed her lips sourly. “Very well. With me, the lot of you. We have work to do, and little time to do it, I expect.”

“My Lady?” he asked, sounding confused.

Behind him, one of the others grumbled about not taking orders from a highborn whore, but she ignored the comment for the moment. Time enough to deal with slights later.

“I detest an enemy too stupid to know the first rules of warfare,” she said coldly as she watched the fires burn.

“Which rules would those be, my Lady?”

“When you capture a city, Cassius, first you pillage…and only
then
,” she said sourly, “do you burn. I will not lose the Library to these ignorant goat-mating bastards. It is bad enough that the
civilized
presence of Julius Caesar himself nearly resulted in burning the whole lot to cinders, but
there are scrolls of knowledge here older than their cities, older than their
God
. We will
not
let them destroy the light of Alexandria this night.”

“My Lady, we’re undermanned,” Cassius said, shaking his head. “A short unit, not fully armored or fully armed. I hate to admit it, but we aren’t a match, even for these thugs.”

The men behind him grumbled, some angry at the words, some relieved and in agreement. Dyna merely turned to look at the Centurion for a long moment before she spoke.

“Thirty feet behind you, Cassius, lies the workshop of Master Isthene, one of the finest iron workers in the Empire. Another eighty will bring you to the supply room in which we keep materials for testing against the weapons we develop here at the University Campus, and to the right of that you will find the personal workspace of Master Heron himself,” she said coldly. “Weapons, Cassius? Armor? These things we have. The question of men is one I leave to you. Men may follow me, boys may return to their beds and hide from the terribly
frightening
Zealot soldiers.”

With those words, Dyna simply turned around and strode through the group of Roman soldiers without another glance, completely ignoring her nudity and blood-spattered state. The men were too surprised to do more than dodge quickly out of the way before she was gone.

One of them turned to Centurion Cassius, eyes flaring. “Who does she think she is?”

“She thinks she’s Dyna of Sparta,” he said simply, “born to the Agiad line, one of the last of the adherents to the old Spartan Code. Don’t mistake her for the pandering sops you see in Laconia today. She’s held a sword longer than you, Tempius, and had harder knocks as a child than any of us here have experienced in battle, I’d warrant.”

He frowned for a brief moment, and then shook his head. “Legionnaires! Form up! We march. We prepare. We fight!”

A couple of the ten-man unit appeared to want to object, but they stiffened to attention anyway and clapped their fists over their hearts.

“For the Legion!” he called out.

“For Rome!” they answered back.

The unit turned and set off in pursuit of the blood-soaked woman who’d left seven armed men rotting on the ground in her wake.

Chapter 2

They found her in the workshop of Master Isthene, an iron smith from the northern provinces who had been hired down to the Library as part of a military project for Emperor Caligula some years earlier, one of the man’s less insane concepts. She had used what was left of her clothing to smear the blood from her body as best she could and was now dropping a new tunic over her shoulders.

Cassius watched as she prepared a small set of Loricus Laminata for use, but the odd dull color of the torso armor caught his eyes. “My Lady, are you certain that suit is in proper shape? It appears corroded.”

She smiled at him, cool but not angry or annoyed. “This is Damascene steel, Cassius. It is in perfect shape.”

He eyed the armor, eyes wide. “I thought that the technique was a closely held secret of the Masters there?”

“We’ve had the techniques stored here for some time,” she said as she donned the armor and began tightening it. “The issue is not with technique, but rather with cost. A single sword of Damascene quality requires many times the forge hours and dozens of times the material cost of a gladius. This armor I wear, alone, costs more than a home in the Capital itself.”

Cassius pursed his lips and blew softly, shaking his head. “Why do you have it?”

“It has been sitting here since Caligula was assassinated, gathering dust. It was made to be presented to him as a gift from the city,” she explained. “It’ll tighten enough for me to wear, and is lighter than standard armor.”

“Stronger?”

“Yes, but only effectively so against arrows and cutting strikes,” she said, finishing the last of the laces. “Hammering blows will be felt all the more through its lighter weight.”

When she was finished, Dyna looked over the men who had been listening and nodded in satisfaction. “Find armor that fits and a sword that rides well in your palm. Tonight, cost is no factor. You will fight the enemies of Rome outfitted in the finest weapons and equipment the Great Library and University can provide. There will never have been men outfitted as well in the history of the Empire, and may never be again. This night, men, you carry weapons fit for Emperors and armor fit for the
Gods
!”

The men roared, some divesting themselves before digging through the supplies that were stored in the master smith of Alexandria’s private workshop. Cassius watched them for a moment before looking back to Dyna. “You’ll catch Pluto’s wrath for this, come morning.”

“If we live come morning, and the Library stands still, they can flap their lips all they like. If we die, we will not care.” She paused and shrugged. “And if the Library burns, Cassius, who is to say what burned with it?”

The Roman laughed cheerfully and nodded before tossing his own gear to the floor and looking through the stored treasures for something more fitting for what may well be his last night alive and in service to his Emperor.

Dyna watched them briefly, her mind more focused on what was to be done next. What she had told them aside, a single squad of men, no matter how well-trained or equipped, would not stand long once the Zealot mobs finished with the city proper and turned their attention to the Light of Alexandria. They would need manpower, a lot of it, and time.

The first she could find, she had little doubt. The second, however, may take an act of the Gods to accomplish.

An act of a specific God, to be precise.

Hephaestus, bless your loyal servant’s masterworks this night,
she thought to herself,
for they will be sorely needed.

She waited until Cassius was done finding equipment and weapons to suit him and called him over. “I need you to send one of your men to the Library’s tower. Within, he will find a fire pit and the tools to send messages to the lighthouse. The men holding that post must be given orders.”

“Orders, my Lady?” he asked softly.

“Yes. Have them send out messages to all surviving Garrison members to reform on the Library with all haste,” she said. “And have them bring any able-bodied civilians or slaves they find along the way.”

He saluted quickly and in short order had detailed two of his men to secure the tower as ordered. “And the rest of us, my Lady?”

“Come. We go to Master Heron’s private storage. We will have need of his genius tonight. Pray that his health is good this night; he has been weak of late.”

Cassius nodded and signaled his men to gather round, giving them their orders after informing them that they were moving to secure Heron’s workshop and private rooms at the University. The Legionnaire squad, now two men lighter, formed rank and marched across the Campus to the lair of one of the Empire’s more notorious and formidable geniuses.