“Your worship, it occurred to me that the wheels of the enemy chariots were iron-rimmed, and that the . . . the grinding sound reported would come from iron wheels moving over cobbles.”
The infantry attack had been delivered with dreadful speed and intensity—the wogs might as well have been bloody Gauls, as Clodius Afer had commented—but it was only cover for the chariots behind. Those had made straight for the remaining gaps in the walls of the circumvallation. Some had gone into the ditches and pits; some had run into lilies or stimulators. The Guild’s local auxiliaries had taken a fair toll of the rest. Plenty of them had made it out into open country, though, and from the watchers’ reports they were scattering in every direction. The auxiliaries tailing them were reporting that each group was making for its home tribal territory.
“Well,” the Commander said. “Be that as it may. Yes, apparently your . . . engineering . . .” the cool mechanical voice had a tint of well-bred amusement ” . . . has alarmed them to the point of demoralization. I think we may expect them to yield soon.”
“Your Worship . . .” Vibulenus said. “No, I’m afraid that’s not the purpose of this breakout.”
The Commander didn’t have eyebrows to arch, but somehow managed to convey the same silent doubt. The Roman tribune went on:
“Sir, I don’t think they could have persuaded that many of their infantry to fight that hard just to cover a bugout by their overlords. And they’re not just running, they’re heading for their tribal homelands.”
“So?”
“Your worship, what they’re doing . . . those ones in the chariots, they’re the leaders, the landowners, the patricians—the men who’ll be listened to. And what I think they’re going to do is gather every wog in three hundred miles in every direction, every wog who can walk, and head straight here. As a relief force, to catch us and smash us against the anvil of the fortress.”
He nodded to the great timber-and-earthwork fort looming above them. “While we fight the relief force, they’ll sally against us, or vice versa. That’s their objective.”
Beside him, First Spear Rusticanus nodded and went on: “Sir . . . Your Worship . . . them wogs is pretty densely packed around here. There’s going to be a lot of them coming at us.”
The Commander went halfway into his defensive crouch again. The mechanism that turned his voice into too-perfect Latin wouldn’t let squealing fright through into the tones. “Then you must storm the fortress at once! The Guild will not tolerate failure!”
Meaning your ass is in a sling if we lose, Vibulenus thought. Of course, the legion’s ass was in the same unpleasant situation, and in a far more literal sense. He looked up the steep turf of the earthwork, at the great logs of the fort, at the locals prancing and yelling on the bulwarks.
“Your Worship!” he barked, in a tone that contained all he could put into it of servile enthusiasm. “Under your leadership, we Romans will now show you that the Guild’s confidence in us is not misplaced!”
The Commander blinked, and let his rubbery pinkish lips cover the multiple-saw layers of his teeth. “You have a plan?”
“Sir, I do,” Vibulenus said. He poured strength into his voice, as he might into a wavering rank. There was none of the concern he’d have felt for men in that situation, but he had to do it nonetheless—the blue-suited figure before him could order his men, his men, into a suicidal frontal attack. If he thought that would secure his position with the Guild, he’d do it in a moment. “My plan is—”
He went into details. The Commander raised a hand. “Surely there isn’t time for all that?” he said.
Vibulenus exchanged a brief glance with the senior centurion, saw an imperceptible nod. “Your Worship, until now we’ve been assuming we had plenty of time. Now we’ll show you what Romans can do in a hurry.”
* * *
“Think they’ll come, sir?” Clodius Afer said quietly.
The ground in front of the outward-facing line of fortifications looked as if giant moles had been gnawing and chewing their way through it. There hadn’t been time for neatness, and there wasn’t a man in the legion or its impressed labor force that didn’t have blisters even on hands calloused to the texture of rawhide. But the fortifications that fenced out the rebels’ relief force were now complete, as complete as those that faced inward towards the native citadel. Light came from the towers that studded the Romans’ walls, the light of something like pine burning in big metal baskets . . . and from three moons, two of them far too large. Vibulenus looked over his shoulder. The lights on the inner wall would show the bodies of the natives who’d tried to sally . . . and the skeletal forms of the civilians they’d driven out of their lines, to save their remaining food stores for the warriors. The Commander had ordered that any who approached the Roman works were to be killed.