Chapter 21

South of Devnum

Claudius led his squad of Praetorians through the dense woods, trudging along the damp trail. Normally, he hated the way the ground turned soggy from the endless early summer rains, but now, it worked to his benefit. The ground had been muddy when the prisoners came through, preserving some signs of their passing, enough so that his trackers could follow.

Still, the forest was not where he wanted to follow them. The towering trees blocked out the sun, leaving them in an eerie, almost twilight. The thick stands of trees took away his greatest combat advantage, the range his men’s rifles afforded them. Claudius dropped one hand subconsciously to the hilt of his sword as the shadows grew deeper.

“Swords at the ready,” Claudius ordered. “The rifles will be near useless once we’re deep in the woods.”

The Praetorians slid their rifles onto their backs and pulled their gladius free, the scrape of metal on leather loud in the muffled silence of the forest. They could sense the danger, and the banter that had flowed freely when they’d been in more open environments ended. Their steps grew more cautious, booted feet careful to avoid snapping twigs or rustling leaves. It was impossible for twenty armored men to be silent, but they seemed determined to try. Although Claudius knew it was more from a desire to hear an impending attack than to attempt to sneak in unnoticed.

Up ahead, Claudius spotted faint wheel ruts cutting through the muddy trail. The Carthaginians had hit a farm a half-day’s ride to the north and taken supplies and a wagon after slaughtering the family that lived there. The tracks weaved erratically, evidence of inexperienced drivers, dodging trees on the rough cart path.

A snapped branch to his left drew Claudius’s attention. He froze, fist raised to halt his men. Silence descended, interrupted only by the occasional bird call. After a tense minute, Claudius waved his squad forward, quickening their pace. The prisoners couldn’t have gone far on foot. There’d been indications that some of them had been injured in the fight to escape, which was another reason they’d needed the cart.

They’d gone perhaps another hundred yards when the trail opened into a small clearing. Claudius crouched low, taking cover behind a fallen tree, signaling for his men to do the same. Across the glade stood the stolen wagon, traces dangling loose from the harness. No horses were in sight. Nor were there any signs of the escaped prisoners.

Claudius considered the scene across the glade. Either the prisoners had abandoned the cumbersome wagon and continued on foot, or this was an ambush. He scanned the tree line, searching for any hint of movement or glint of metal among the branches.

His hand signals ordered two men to circle to the right, two more to the left. They were to converge on the wagon, rooting out anyone hiding nearby. The rest of the squad would provide cover. Claudius watched his men melt into the brush, proud of their stealth. Moments later, sharp whistles signaled the all-clear.

Claudius stood, gesturing for the others to follow. They crossed the clearing and examined the wagon. The rough ground had broken one of the axles loose, the wheel sticking out at an awkward angle. It wouldn’t move without being fixed and the prisoners wouldn’t have wanted to stop long enough to do that. Of course, that also meant that they were carrying the wounded with them, since there weren’t any bodies left behind. Supplies were strewn about; the escapees had taken what they could carry before abandoning the wagon. Claudius crouched to examine the ground. The tracks were messy, obscured by kicked-up debris, but clear enough to follow.

Claudius signaled his men forward, plunging deeper into the dim forest. Despite the distraction of the abandoned wagon, Claudius remained focused on the trail. Even with the escapees’ speed slowed, they could still be far behind them, since they’d had a significant head start. He quickened their pace as much as the rugged terrain allowed.

The trail narrowed ahead, choked with underbrush. Claudius hesitated, weighing the risk. The limited visibility created a perfect spot for an ambush. The trail ran clearly through it, however, with incredibly thick undergrowth and trees on either side. There was no choice but to follow the trail if they were to recapture the escaped prisoners.

Claudius picked his way forward, flanked by his men. The close quarters forced them into a single file. A sound, something picked up by his unconscious mind, drew Claudius’s attention, revealing the ambush seconds before it was sprung.

“Ambush!” he yelled, diving for cover as a barrage of stones and crude spears flew from the concealing underbrush.

The makeshift spears thudded into the mud. Stones bounced off armor and shields. Claudius risked a glance around and saw the forest was suddenly swarming with the escaped prisoners.

“Form up!” he bellowed. “Prepare for close combat.”

In trained precision, the Praetorians drew their swords. Claudius kicked out at a charging prisoner as he backed up, causing the man to stumble before Claudius ran him through with his sword. Whipping his blade free, Claudius engaged the next man, continuing to have his men back up slowly in the face of the pressure from the onslaught that attempted to overwhelm them.

The initial assault hadn’t been avoided entirely. Four Praetorians lay unmoving, their lives lost in the initial surprise attack. Claudius swore under his breath. They were outnumbered, and at the moment the ground favored their attackers.

More prisoners appeared, crude weapons in hand. Claudius slashed and parried, edging slowly backward through the dense trees.

“Back,” he commanded over the sound of clashing steel.

Step by step, the Praetorians closed the gaps in their formation, surrounded on all sides.

One of Claudius’s men stabbed a man through the chest, while another swept the legs out from under a prisoner, bringing his sword down in a killing blow. Claudius slashed and parried, edging back down the cart path. They moved as one, swords whirling. A prisoner leaped forward, a makeshift spear aimed at Claudius’s chest. Claudius sidestepped, knocking the spear aside as the man stumbled past. His sword flashed, and the prisoner fell without a sound.

Claudius risked a glance around as he parried a sword blow from another prisoner. More than a quarter of his men were down, strewn on the ground alongside Carthaginian bodies. They couldn’t defeat the prisoners if they continued to sustain losses at this rate. As three more Praetorians fell, cut down by the mob, he knew that they had to seize the initiative.

“Counterattack!” he bellowed.

At his command, the Praetorians surged forward, several drawing their rifles from their backs, bayonets already locked in place.

Claudius led the advance, his sword streaking out to slash across a prisoner’s chest. Blood sprayed as the man fell back with a gurgling cry. Around him, the Praetorians engaged with their blades and stabbing bayonets, driving into the confused mob of prisoners.

Rifles cracked behind Claudius as the Praetorians began firing into the fray. Prisoners screamed and fell, some wounded, others killed instantly by the gunfire. The acrid tang of smoke filled the air.

Pressed by the fierce attack, the prisoners began to fall back. Their crude weapons were unable to stand up to the Praetorians. More prisoners fell until finally, they wavered and then broke, turning to run headlong into the woods.

“Break. Don’t let them escape,” he called out.

They’d trained for this, a squad breaking off their attack and chasing men attempting to flee. The training had been intended to be used in the pursuit of criminals in crowded city streets, but the application was the same. His men didn’t need to discuss what to do, pairing off automatically, so that no man fought alone, and they began the chase.

Claudius pursued his group like a man possessed, slashing a prisoner across the back of the legs to send him sprawling. His squad exploded in all directions, anywhere a prisoner might have attempted to run. Unfired rifles tracked fleeing prisoners between the trees, their gunfire echoing through the forest as they picked off the runners.

In minutes it was over, the forest silent once more but for the moans of the wounded. Bodies littered the leaf-strewn ground, blood seeping into the earth. Wounded men crawled and moaned while others lay still in death.

Claudius quickly assessed the situation. Nearly half his men were injured in some way, and seven were dead, but they’d accomplished their mission. Of the escaped prisoners, only a handful remained alive, trembling on the ground surrounded by watchful Praetorians.

“Secure any prisoners still breathing,” he ordered two of his men.

The Praetorians moved swiftly, binding the few surviving prisoners with ropes and hauling them upright. Claudius continued his count as he walked. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine ... when he reached the last body, he came to a total of thirty-six. A significant number of the escaped prisoners had been killed or recaptured, but not all of them.

Claudius turned and surveyed his men. Eleven Praetorians remained of his original twenty, and at least five of those were injured. The escapees had put up a fierce fight, more than he had expected.

“Take four men and go back for the wagon. We’ll fix the axle and use it to carry our dead and injured,” he ordered a group of uninjured Praetorians.

It angered him that good men had lost their lives to such prisoners. But they had done their duty with honor, and he was satisfied that the threat had been neutralized. Only a handful of prisoners remained on the loose. Faenius would demand they find them, but this was a good start. He saw a few older injuries among the fallen or captured, so most of the prisoners wounded in the initial attack had gone in another direction. Which meant a portion, at least, of those prisoners remaining at large were injured one way or another.

Once back in Devnum, he’d request to take another detachment to root out the last of the survivors. For today, however, his duty was done.

Germania, South of the Rhine

Ky watched his officers dismount from their horses, weary and sore, glad for the hundredth time that his body had been engineered to handle the rigors of a hard day’s march without the pains they dealt with. What it didn’t help him with was the mud, which caked nearly everyone, from the officers on horseback to the legionaries marching through the mud. The parts of him that weren’t covered in mud were soaking wet from the non-stop rain. Worse than how miserable it was making everyone was what it was doing to their timetable. They were covering a fraction of the distance they needed to make every day. If it was just the supplies holding them back, he’d leave them and a detachment behind, and the men could make the march on rations, but it wasn’t. The artillery was, if anything, worse off with the long metal tubes and the even heavier caisson full of gunpowder and heavy iron shot digging deep into the thick mud.