Chapter 27

Gaul, North of the Pyrenees

“This is unacceptable!” General Tabnit said, slamming his fist against the wooden gate of the empty Roman fort. “How could you let them slip through your hands again?”

“My apologies, sir, the terrain was difficult and...” Atar, leader of his advance units, started to say, until another shout from his commander cut him off.

“Enough excuses! Time and again your men have arrived to find an empty fort, the Romans escaped, taking their weapons with them. I have told you what would happen if you didn’t quicken your pace, and still you defy me. If anything, you’re getting slower. What should have taken us a day at the most to assault here from the previous fort has taken us almost three. Meanwhile, the Romans were able to run, dragging their large weapons with them, so far ahead of your men that we’ve yet to even see one of them.”

“The men are tired, General. We have been keeping this pace for weeks, with hardly any rest. And the Romans have been leaving behind traps. We’ve lost more than a hundred men so far. The men are down to fighting one another to keep from being the first one to enter the empty forts. If we could just...”

“No,” Tabnit bellowed. “Cowardice and weakness is what this is, and I can only assume your men learned that from you. You are demoted in rank and will lead a single phalanx. If we ever manage to engage the enemy again, instead of chasing their footprints, and if you survive and show ability, perhaps you can gain back your rank. Otherwise, the emperor will hear who is to blame for our continued failure. Go. Find your new command and get out of my sight.”

At the mention of the emperor, Atar blanched and scurried away. The man knew it was no idle threat. Tabnit had been successful so far, but success only mattered yesterday. The emperor expected, demanded, new victories, and there had been none since destroying the Roman port. The day would come soon when he’d have to answer for his lack of new victories, and he was more than willing to hand Atar over as the cause of their failures.

Still, something had been bothering him with each successive fort. Seeing Nabalsa, who’d been elevated to his second in command after his predecessor died in the eruption of the Roman port, Tabnit waved him over.

“No sign of any of their weapons, or anything left behind that might be useful?” he asked.

He already knew the answer to the question, but it was a placeholder. Something to say while he picked at the thought that had slowly been making its way to the surface of his mind.

“No, General. They were as thorough as ever. As with the other forts, there are clear signs that they dragged their weapons with them, although how they’re moving so many this quickly is still a mystery.”

“That’s the problem,” Tabnit said, realization finally setting in. “Does it strike you as odd that these traces we’re seeing are the same, fort after fort?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, General.”

“I mean, we know that each fort had the large thunder weapons of their own, correct? We saw that when probing them over the summer. And we’ve seen that at each fort, the Romans have removed their thunder weapons. Weapons large enough to leave deep gouges in the earth where they pulled them. They should be pulling dozens of those weapons by now, maybe hundreds, yet the trail they leave behind is the same every time.”

“Perhaps they’re pulling them in a row, obscuring the evidence?” Nabalsa offered.

“Perhaps, but ... after so many forts, we should have seen some sign. No, this feels wrong. They changed something once we destroyed their port and started taking their forts.”

“Maybe they fled north, or a good number of them, anyway. They heard what we did to their other fortifications and realized the futility.”

“I don’t know. Unless all the forts emptied at once, giving the ground time to clear up the signs of their passing, it seems unlikely we wouldn’t see any sign of it.”

“We could have missed it. Our scouts are as worn out as the rest of the army. We’ve already had two accidental skirmishes between our own scouts who confused each other as Roman during nighttime reconnaissance.”

“Possibly,” Tabnit said, still not sounding convinced. “We should...”

Whatever he was going to suggest to Nabalsa was lost, the words trailing off as a messenger, riding his horse hard, rode up to them, the horse’s hooves spraying dirt and gravel over them in his haste.

“What the...” Nabalsa started to say angrily, before being waved off by Tabnit.

“General, a report from some of the straggling units. Romans sighted to the west.”

“They got around us?” Tabnit said, shocked. “How many?”

“The stragglers were very spread out and ran when they saw the Romans. We also don’t have any scouts with the rear units, so no reconnaissance was done, but the impression our men had was that it was a goodly number, although less than our numbers. Maybe five to ten thousand, although it could be more.”

“Ten thousand? That’s not men from the forts. Our reports said there were maybe four thousand men spread across their line of forts. Is it the rest of the men that ran from the battle at their port?”

“There were less than five thousand that fought. We’re seeing some signs that hundreds, maybe thousands, of men are still evacuating the line of forts to the east. It doesn’t matter. They’ve finally shown themselves, which is what we’ve been trying to get them to do for weeks. Turn the army around and form lines for battle.”

Nabalsa simply nodded and ran off to get the men ready to attack. Tabnit was pleasantly surprised by how quickly his men moved, in spite of how exhausted they claimed to be. There was nothing as motivating as the enemy on their heels to get his men to finally start moving. Not that he let them know he was satisfied; walking up and down the lines outside the Roman fort, he yelled and cajoled his commanders to move faster, in making their preparations.

His phalanxes began to stretch across the open plain in an odd mixture of spearmen interspersed with men wielding Roman-style arcuballista and catapults. Warfare had changed radically in the last two years, although those changes took longer to get to his people, and they still hadn’t worked out a tactical doctrine for this new mix of weapons. Not that it mattered much. Even the borrowed weapons from the Easterners and the Romans’ newer design of arcuballista for close-in support weren’t a match for the Romans’ thunder weapons. The new trenching techniques they used at the port worked to negate that advantage for fortifications, but it wouldn’t work in the open field where the enemy could circle around him, at least not without a hundred times more men to allow him to not be flanked. No, their only option was still trying to overwhelm the Roman lines with men, absorbing the losses until they could come to grips with them. Men, however, was something he had and was willing to sacrifice.

It didn’t take long for the Romans to make their appearance. Across the rolling plains, their army looked small. Deceptively weak. The original estimate seemed accurate, unless they had other men he couldn’t see, giving him roughly five times the advantage in men.

“Signal the advance,” Tabnit ordered, initiating a ripple of trumpet calls and yelling as his commanders got the men moving.

His army lurched forward, attempting to get within range of the Romans, who’d halted and spread out to meet his men. All they needed was to get within catapult range to even the odds. The Easterners’ fire powder had proven how effective it was in countering the Roman weapons.

Of course, he had to get in catapult range to use it, and the Romans once again showed how effective their weapons were as their lines erupted in a wave of smoke and fire as his men approached, at three times the range of his own weapons. A wave of death swept through his packed ranks, leaving hundreds screaming and dead in a moment. Their larger weapons tearing great swaths through his tightly packed lines.

His men quickened their pace, their formations starting to break apart as they charged, attempting to close the distance and return the pain they were experiencing. Not that they needed the tight-packed formations anymore. The Romans were spread out, no longer using their shields as a tight wall for his men to smash against. Their lines had wide gaps in them for their larger weapons, their legionaries in rows of three or five and maybe a dozen and a half men wide. For a moment, he had hope that his soldiers would do it this time, cross the gap between the armies and come to grips with the Romans.

They endured another round of fire. And then another. Steady like a heartbeat, the Romans’ line thundered, belching smoke and fire. A blanket of bodies was left behind his army as it ran forward, the men pushing hard. But it wasn’t to be. The momentum started to drain away, the charge disintegrating as his men were transformed into a chaotic mob of terrified men. First a handful, then dozens, then hundreds turned and ran for the rear. It was foolish, as they encountered nearly as much devastation in their retreat as they had in their advance, but a man’s bravery only lasts so long in the face of that kind of devastation.

For their part, the Romans didn’t move as his men ran away, they only slackened their fire and then finally halted it. Why would they move to engage them? They didn’t need to go toe-to-toe with his men to fight, and they had the range now. The field in front of them was covered with bodies, macabre markers of where their fire was most effective.

“Again,” Tabnit ordered.

His losses had been heavy, but acceptable. They still greatly outnumbered the Romans, and he’d been smart enough to not send the entire army in one wave, knowing what might happen from previous clashes with the enemy.

Tabnit watched as the second wave of men charged toward the Roman lines. The plains rumbled under thousands of marching feet as the fresh troops advanced, though with a lot less vigor than the first line had shown. Seeing their comrades cut down had been demoralizing, gaps opened up in their ranks as some men hung back or slowed, having to be forced forward by officers placed behind them for exactly that purpose.