Steam Legion (8 page)

Gung had no response for that, so the group just continued to jog into the night.

****

Through the city, small squads of the Legion Garrison engaged in similar actions. Sometimes driving the enemy to terror, other times to rage, always with a goal in mind. Their orders were both simple and enormously complicated.

On the one hand, the method of the madness was simple and straightforward. Picking off stray and vulnerable enemies was a time-tested skill, one that many in the Legion had even if the Legion itself didn’t prefer to fight that way.

The second part of the plan Centurion Cassius had brought to them, however, was something entirely different.

The Centurion and others in charge wanted the enemy to be herded, corralled, and generally either pushed or drawn into a specific part of the city at a very specific time. Getting them there probably wouldn’t be the hard part, not with the way they were driving the enemy to rage. The timing, however, was going to take both skill and, likely, sacrifice.

Sneaking around a burning city while constantly jabbing angry revolutionaries with sharp sticks was dangerous business at the best of times. A good many of the Legion squads sent out didn’t return to report on their assignments, but in their deaths, Cassius and the others in command of the Garrison remnants knew that they’d likely managed to achieve at least partial success.

The fighting continued through the night, and most of them lost track of the time as they fought away from the water clocks of the Library and Garrison. But when the sky began to turn from deep black to dirty grey, enough took notice to spread the word.

Horns blew, echoing from one side of the city to the other, causing other horns to blow in response. The meaning of the sound was not entirely lost on the Zealots and their leaders; they knew it was communication, but it fit none of the known codes the Legion employed, and they were at a loss to identify its exact importance.

For the surviving members of the city Garrison and those of the Deiotariana Legion who had been left behind, it was the signal they’d been waiting for. Across the city, they made their last strikes, arrows falling on their enemy from the grey of the sky while swords flashed in the light of the burning buildings. Men fought and died, on both sides, but this time, when the engagement was over, the Zealots found that their enemy hadn’t been able to escape cleanly.

Down one street, men helped a limping comrade, barely moving faster than a jog as they tried to escape their pursuers. On another, a squad bumbled around a corner, coming face to face with a large group of Zealot armsmen and stared in almost comical shock for a moment before they turned and ran with the Zealots hard on their heels.

Scenes repeated from one side of the stricken city to the other. The Zealots found themselves finally able to capitalize on mistakes made by their Legion counterparts, and they gave chase. Each chase led a winding path but arrived at certain junction points in the city layout, combining the forces of the Zealots and giving them even more confidence as they roared after their hated enemy.

Well-trained leaders might have spotted the oddities in that, could have smelled out the trap, but the Zealots were short on experienced war leaders, and even had they been there, they would have found it remarkably difficult to control such an enraged mob.

Legion and Zealot alike descended on a single unremarkable side street near the south sector of the city, a street with four- and five-story buildings on either side and an aqueduct crossing the way. A street that was already populated by twenty Legion Pedes, an old man, a lady of Sparta…and eight Spartan warriors in full arms and armor standing shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield.

Chapter 7

“It’s time,” Dyna said urgently, eyes falling on the complicated contraption of wood and sinew ropes. “Are we ready? We
must
be ready!”

“Relax, Dyna, child,” the tired voice of Heron wheezed as he leaned against the stone wall. “We’re almost there. You! Hang that stone. Pull! Pull!”

The small group of men heaved on the rope they held, lifting a large stone that had been attached to a second rope. They got it into place, leaving Dyna to tie it off, then relaxed for a moment.

Relaxation was over when a runner arrived, panting as he gasped out his message. “They’re coming. Three streets down, they’ll be here soon.”

“Right, that’s it then,” Dyna said. “Master Heron, it’s time for you to leave.”

“We’re not quite done yet,” he objected.

“I’ll finish it.”

“Dyna, child, this is my play. I’ll see it through.”

“Pedes,” her voice cracked out, sharply and clearly not to be ignored. She pointed to two of the Legion and then at Heron. “Escort Master Heron to a safe location.”

“Dyna!” Heron blurted out as the two burly soldiers picked him up bodily and carried him back and away from the coming fight.

She looked around, an air of satisfaction clear on her face a she nodded to the remaining eighteen men. “Tie the rest of those off, then get out of sight. Aelia.”

The Immune looked up. “Yes, my Lady?”

“Signal the cannons. Have them stand to the ready,” she ordered.

He saluted, his fist slapping over his chest. She turned away as the Immune grabbed a torch from the side of the alley, stepped out into the middle of the street, and waved it. On the rooftop down the street, another torch appeared, waving in place. Immune Aelia stepped over to a barrel of water they’d filled from the aqueduct and signaled to the man beside it.

He swept the torch down, hiding it from sight, and the man pulled a plug from the barrel. The water slowly drained, sinking a float in the barrel that had messages written on it at different levels. He waited until it reached the first message and then lifted his torch again.

Stand by for battle.

On the distant rooftop, he knew that a man was reading an identical message off an identical float drifting in a matching barrel. Satisfied, the signals Immune extinguished his torch in the barrel while pocketing the float.

“Time to go,” he told Pedes Juranus.

The Pedes nodded and they packed up their things quickly, retreating out of the back street and heading for a position on a neighboring building.

Dyna noted them leaving but was focused on last-minute details of the rig designed for Heron’s play. It was ingenious, as was nearly everything the man did, but she had already spotted a few places it could be tweaked.

The Master was planning a spectacle, a magnificent play,
she noted as she adjusted some of the knotted ropes and weights.
I have another spectacle in mind entirely.

She moved without hurry, yet faster than any of the Legion conscripts had managed under Master Heron’s direction. She was making small changes, altering the Master’s play on the fly. She had the greatest respect for her mentor, but for all the weapons he had designed, he was an academic and not a warrior.

When she finished with the work, Dyna dropped back down to the street level and jogged to the building directly across from her. She took the steps inside two at a time, heading for the roof, and burst out into the dawn air in just seconds.

“Are we ready?” she demanded, walking briskly to where Immune Aelia was still laying out his tools.

“Almost,” the Immune replied, not looking up as he focused intently on his task.

Aelia specialized in battle signals, the sending of messages vital to maintaining the plans of battles for the Legion. Unlike most Immunes with his specialty, however, he’d always worked with systems designed primarily for pre-battle work: light signals, disguised sounds, other non-obvious methods that weren’t as well-known and glory-filled as the horns.

At night his list of tricks was limited, generally to the torch and water barrel or some variation on waving flame around. In Alexandria, however, Aelia had access to a few things that the Legion would kill for in the field. Had killed for in some cases, often for much less, in fact.

They were close enough to the Library to use the smaller lighthouse tower there as a relay to send messages via the Great Pharos itself, as they had earlier. Once the battle began, it would not be of great value. People would be too distracted with watching the lights, but in preparation for the clash, he was almost giddy at the opportunity to use it a second time in the same night.

With his and Juranus’s scutums propped up to block the light from unfriendly eyes, he struck his blade along a flint striker, sending sparks to an oil-soaked torch. Once it caught, he kindled the flames until they were burning brightly, and then he waved it vigorously from cover. A moment later he got a flash from the distant tower, so he covered his flame and began to send a flash pattern signal.

When he was done, another set of flashes came back.

Immune Aelia looked over his shoulder. “Ready, my Lady. They’re coming now.”

Dyna stood on the edge of the rooftop, planting her foot on the edge of the building so she could lean forward. “Send to the cannons, give air to the bellows.”

“Yes, my Lady,” he said, sending the signal to the Library tower. The actual signal was more along the lines of “cannons, signal b,” but the meaning was passed along.

Below them they saw the lead elements of the Legion Garrison appear, running ahead of the coming wave. The men stumbled slightly when they saw the Spartans standing in the middle of the street but were waved through by the Pedes on the street. They followed, running through and ducking around the corner past the Spartans.

The next group was a repeat of the first, and then again and again. For Dyna, it was somewhat amusing to see Roman Legionnaires so perturbed by coming face to face with a Spartan in full battledress and, if she were honest, more than a little satisfying as well. It wasn’t their opinion that she was most concerned with, however, and the ones she wanted to see were almost there.

“There, my Lady.”

“I see them.” Dyna nodded, gesturing to the men controlling Master Heron’s apparatus.

They gripped the ropes and waved back, and she knew that everything was as ready as it could be.

The Zealots filled the street like a wave funneling into a narrow cove. The lead group was halfway to the end before they seemed to spot the eight Spartans standing there. She wondered how it would look to them; with the torches backlighting the figures in Spartan armor and the sun rising in the east behind them, there was no way they could tell that those were not men.

They faltered, the leaders almost being run over as the wave willed itself to a brief stop. They had to be concerned. Men in armor standing before them like that signified some sort of a trap, but she could read their minds from where she stood.

There are only eight of them. We can take them. It won’t be a problem.

Dyna unconsciously ran her tongue across her upper lip, enjoying the moment of anticipation. Before her was the last and finest play designed and built by Master Heron himself, and more than that, it was everything she’d grown to idolize in herself and her family.

Rise, ancestors,
she thought to herself.
Eight soldiers against eight hundred. It may not be Thermopylae, but it will be glorious.

The Zealots had gotten over the shock; really it only took a few seconds, but it felt longer to Dyna as she waited for them to approach. They didn’t disappoint her, opting to charge. She waved to the men manning the device and watched as they tensed, then closed her fist and pumped her arm.

They loosed the first rope.

A massive block of stone dropped. Rope tied to it spun one of Heron’s knotted gears, and just as the lead Zealots reached the Spartan line the…the automatons swung their shields in a perfect strike, heavy brass and wood hoplite shields swinging out and catching men across the sides and heads with enough force to throw them into the wall. The bronze swords stabbed out next, skewering the next rank of men, and then the Spartan line closed ranks again and hunkered behind their large circular shields.

The single, almost unbelievably violent slice of time was over practically before it began, but it had stopped the Zealot line dead in its tracks as they stared with unbelieving horror at the carnage.

Dyna signaled another man, smiling as she did. The expression on her face would have chilled the blood of most brave men; in fact, it did cause two of the Legion near her to step back for fear that she may decide to play with them as surrogates for the Zealots below. She paid them no heed, however, as another weight was dropped, and the eight silent Spartans began to rhythmically hammer their shields with their swords in apparent challenge.

The uncertainty in the enemy line was as palpable as it was amusing to her. She could almost feel the fear growing, turning to anger and rage. Dyna knew that the game would not hold them for long, not as it played, but she needed them to do something else before she could close on them with her end game stratagem.

The mob of Zealots fell back about a quarter of the way down the street, far enough that they were barely visible, but she could see their archers step to the front and fought the urge to laugh. Despite her efforts, a chuckle did escape, almost a giggle, though she would deny that to her dying breath. The almost innocent sound did nothing to convince her guards of her sanity, but again, Dyna had other priorities at the moment.

“Scutum,” she bade, reaching behind her.

The large rectangular shield was passed up, but she left it resting against her right arm as she watched, barely looking behind her to issue her next order.

“Ware arrows.”

The men got their own shields in place, just in case they’d been spotted, but the loosed arrows from the street below were not aimed at them. The fletched projectiles arched high and low, obviously staggered to catch the Spartans when they lifted their shields to defend. When the automatons did not move, the arrows rained down on them uselessly, most bouncing off the armor or the wood, but enough sticking in to present a striking image even from Dyna’s rooftop position.