Steam Legion (9 page)

A second flight from the archers produced similar results, and there was no third flight forthcoming.

The Zealots were clearly confused now, lost even. They were being blocked by only eight men, but eight men in armor that no educated man of the Hellenic world could mistake. Despite the current state of the Spartan world, the legend of the Hoplite Spartan warriors transcended national borders. Dyna was proud of her heritage, but then and there, she had never been prouder.

It took them what felt like an eternity to decide on the course of action, worrying her as she watched. She didn’t want to scare them away just yet. She needed them in that alley, but she also needed their attention fully on the eight Spartans and nowhere else.

In the second part, at least, she had now succeeded.

Dyna sent another signal, and the men caused the Spartans to again mechanically pound their swords against their shields.

It was a challenge, an insult, and an invitation all at once. Dyna hoped they took it as an affront to their God, that these “men” would not fall from arrows. She wanted them unable to think of ought else. When they slowly began to advance, swords out this time, cautiously moving to test out the waters…it was then that Dyna knew she had won.

“Signal the cannons,” she ordered Aelia.

“Yes, my Lady. Orders?”

Mentally, Dyna calculated how long it would take to convey the order through the signals tower, how long it would take to fire the Master’s steam cannons, and how fast the enemy was moving. Just as they came within a dozen yards of the automatons, again she nodded.

“Fire.”

She turned to another man. “Archers to the ready.”

“Yes, my Lady,” he answered before sending the signal.

Along the rooftops above the street where the Zealots were corralled, men shifted into position on either side. They were waiting for the order or, rather, the signal they had been told to expect.

Just before the lead men reached the Spartan line, a roar of what even to Dyna sounded like a living beast shook the city as the cannons exploded their payloads from the buildings to the rear of the Zealot positions.

Thick siege bolts and ten-pound stone weights blew through the Zealot lines from the rear, throwing blood and limbs to the street. The archers rose up from the rooftops, firing down into the massed group of Zealots, killing by the dozens. Men screamed, some thinking to throw up their shields, most just dying where they stood.

Dyna showed teeth as she smiled, then waved to the men on the ground once more.

Above the screams, in the strangely still air after the roar of the cannons, the rhythmic banging of swords on shields rose again.

Really, that was the last straw.

The few survivors in a state to move broke then; they’d had enough. Death from above and behind, ghost warriors of ancient myth and legend to the front…it was too much. They turned and ran, some clawing over their own dead and dying to escape.

Dyna watched them run, eyes glinting with triumphant joy as she leaned closer and closer to the edge of the building until Immune Aelia grabbed her by the armor and pulled her back.

“My Lady, take care,” he said when she turned to glare at him. “It is a long trip to the ground.”

She shook his hand off, stalking away from the edge of the building and heading for the stairs. She paused, however, and looked back at him briefly to nod before disappearing into the building, heading for the ground.

Juranus shook his head as he stepped up beside his friend. “You have more colei than brains. I’d not touch that one with
your
mentula, let alone my own hands. Did you see the look on her face when those things gutted the first line? I’ve only seen that look on the face of my bedmates, my friend.”

Aeilia snorted. “Unlike your bedmates,
she
wasn’t faking it. However, Cassius would have our heads if we let her fall to her death after the battle was ended.”

“Truth,” the Pedes admitted, shuddering slightly.

Aelia smiled privately, noting that his friend hadn’t said which of the two statements he was admitting to. Amusement aside, however, the Immune had to admit that the Lady unnerved him. He had never seen those expressions on the face of a woman before, Juranus’s rather coarse humor aside. He had seen them more than once on men in the Legion, however. Men who enjoyed battle a little too much, and men who were far too good at it.

For the moment, it was beyond his ken and above his grade, however, so he just focused on the duty at hand.

“Clean up this roof, we move as soon as we’re able.”

Chapter 8

Dyna reached the ground floor and jogged out to meet the gathering men of the Legion. She immediately spotted a pair of runners and grabbed them by the backs of the necks with a grip that wasn’t hostile but clearly serious.

“You two, follow the fleeing men,” she ordered. “I will send relief after you as soon as we get things organized, but for now keep them in sight and leave a trail.”

The two soldiers saluted instantly and ran off into the graying morning.

Dyna picked out eight more with a sweeping motion. “You eight, with me.”

They, like the two runners, fell into step behind her without question as she led them across the street to the automatons. She gestured to them casually. “Strip.”

That, however, gave them pause.

“Excuse me, my Lady?”

“Strip,” she growled, wrenching the helm off one of the automatons and throwing it at the man who had spoken. “And get dressed in this armor. Now, hurry!”

That got them moving because, despite the oddity of the order, they were Legion soldiers and she had been given authority somehow. While they were stripping down to their limited under layer, Cassius arrived.

“My Lady?” he asked, clearly confused. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure that they don’t come back,” she answered. “Detail men to put paid to the enemy wounded, Cassius. Keep any you think we need for interrogation.”

“And these eight?”

Dyna smiled as the first of them started pulling bronze armor from the automatons. “These eight will be going out after the enemy.”

They froze at that.

Despite massive losses, they knew that dozens of the Zealots had survived to flee. Sending eight against them was lunacy.

“My Lady, I don’t think—”

“No, but I do,” she cut Cassius off. “They’ll not be going alone. Archers, Infantry, you’ll accompany them.”

Dyna turned to the men who had gathered, including the eight she had initially chosen, and her eyes swept across them all with cold intensity.

“You eight will follow them,” she ordered. “When they stop to rest, I want you to step out of the shadows and rap your swords on your shields. Do this whenever they try to stop, haunt them across Egypt, across Africa! Run them until they fall. You are Legion, they are
nothing!
”

She grabbed the closest man’s tunic and pulled him close, staring into his eyes but speaking to them all.

“I want them run all the way back to Jerusalem with no rest if you can manage it. Just ensure that at least one of them arrives on their temple steps to speak of what happened here,” she ordered, then smiled. “I would prefer he did not survive past that, however. His heart exploding in his chest would be ideal, but an arrow in the back will do.”

They were all silent, shocked by her words, as she looked them over.

“Before another Zealot
army
marches on Alexandria again,” she sneered, “I want them to have to calm the tears of every man they try to recruit. Make them
fear
us! This city is
ours!
For Rome!”

“For Rome! For the Legion!”

The men’s response was automatic and quick; they returned her challenge in spades and set back to work. Her chosen eight stripped down the Spartan automatons and donned their armor and arms, then saluted Cassius and the Lady before jogging off with archers and Infantry in their place.

After they were gone, Cassius swallowed, looking over at the woman he had known for so long.

“That was all we had for a Garrison, my Lady.”

She waved. “We couldn’t keep the barracks secured with so few, Cassius. They can send a message to our enemies, however. Find runners, send them to the Legion, and have a new Garrison dispatched immediately. We will have to secure the city ourselves until it can arrive.”

“Yes, my Lady.”

Before he left, she sighed.

“I know that it is a risk, Cassius,” she said softly, that no one else could hear. “However, right now, it is bold moves that will preserve Alexandria. Not a weakened defense.”

He nodded hesitantly but didn’t question further as he jogged off as well.

Dyna remained standing there for a moment, after everyone had gone, and just stared at the wooden skeletons that had been her Spartan warriors only a few candlemarks earlier.

Was that what it was like, ancestors?
she wondered, remembering the rush of the battle even as she felt it all drain from her body and leave her feeling weak as a newborn.

Her legs wobbled as she turned away from Master Heron’s final play—which had been a huge success to her mind—and began to walk back to her rooms at the Library. She suddenly couldn’t control her arms, her hands clenching into fists as she fought against the shaking that overtook her.

What is happening?
she wondered, having never felt anything like it before.

After feeling so powerful just candlemarks earlier, Dyna now felt as vulnerable as she’d ever imagined…more so, even, than in her worst nightmares.

Get back to my rooms. Just don’t let anyone see. I’ll be better soon.

Dyna turned to the northeast and walked into the rising sun as she headed back to the Great Library that she and the others had fought so hard to save. If anyone saw her passing, none would later remark on how her steps seemed unsure, or how she hugged herself a little oddly.

****

Cassius planted a foot on the edge of the rail that surrounded the guard tower, leaning weight into the solid wood as he thought about the situation.

“Centurion.”

He glanced to one side and accepted the tin cup full of water handed to him by his aide, nodding his thanks. “How many men are left in the city?”

“After those dispatched by the Lady?” the younger man asked, his tone slightly acerbic.

“Obviously.” Cassius was in no mood.

The younger man flushed, but went on with some hesitation, “Less than fifty able and capable of fighting.”

“So few.” Cassius shook his head.

The Alexandria Garrison was normally two full Cohorts, four hundred eighty men each. Even at that, they were often understaffed, given the city’s prime location at the southern end of the Empire. With the Deiotariana Legion deployed to the east, ironically in hopes of containing the revolt by the Empire’s Israelite citizens, they were now far more vulnerable to assault from the south and the kingdoms that envied Rome’s wealth and power in that direction.

Our Garrisons to the south should still be intact, but most of those are nothing more than outposts with horses and runners. The Legion has been pulled too far away from the city to be considered a viable deterrent, and now we’re effectively undefended.

He shook his head, trying to find a way out of the current conundrum, but nothing seemed to offer an escape.

“We would have almost your full Century, had she not ordered them away.”

“Perhaps,” Cassius conceded. “However ,she is right. A single Century to Garrison a city this size? Lunacy.”

“The risk…”

“The risk is the burden of command,” Cassius countered. “What do you do, Timer, when you know that you cannot defend an attack?”

Timer frowned, confused. “Centurion…I…”

“When you know you cannot defend, you must attack,” he said with certainty, convincing himself.

Cassius would not admit it, but he had the same misgivings his aide spoke of. The loss of more than twenty men as part of Dyna’s play at deranging the enemy’s already deranged minds was something he felt deeply. He had questioned her choice ever since he left her…

Cassius winced.

Left her in the middle of the street after her first major command in battle. Cassius, you imbecile, what possessed you to be so foolish?

He knew what had possessed him, of course. He had been angry with her, despite himself.

Angry that she had discounted his obvious discomfort with her orders. Just possible he had even been angry that she had succeeded so spectacularly without his close advice. He didn’t think that was so, but now that the night was over, he could hear the small voices of the spirits taunting him, making him question his own manhood for so easily taking orders from a woman…even a woman such as Dyna of Sparta.

Now Timer came to him, saying all those things he was thinking in the depths of his soul, and they all sounded false.

“No, Timer,” he said as he looked out over the walls to the farms and scrub beyond. “No, in this she was right. Those men would do nothing against any foe we could not already handle. They are better utilized on the task she gave them.”

He pushed off the rail and handed his now-empty cup to Timer. “Stand the men down by squads, keep two of three active while one rests. We must do what we can, even should it not be enough.”

Timer nodded. “It will be done, Centurion.”

“Good. I’ll be at the Library if I should be needed.”

Cassius didn’t know how things were going to turn out, but he figured that he could worry about that when it became something that was within his grasp to control. For now, the veteran soldier of the Empire within him was telling him that he had made a mistake with a young officer whom he owed some fealty. He never would have left any young stallion from Rome alone after his first messy battle, no matter what else had to be done. There was some reason in the fact that they were sorely undermanned, it was true, but reason and excuses were far from the same thing.

I should confirm the wellbeing of Master Heron, as well. The Emperor would have me strung up if we lost him due to my negligence.