The Poct’on warriors loomed over their counterparts like moving cliffs. The giant “hyenas” looked like so many puppies before the elephants. Bad-tempered, nasty, snarling puppies, true. But thoroughly intimidated, for all that. Despite the best efforts of their Gha riders, the hyenas were slinking back toward their lines.
Ainsley could hardly blame them. Even from the remoteness of his televised view, the war elephants were—as Clodius Afer had rightly said—”purely terrifying.” These were no friendly circus elephants. They didn’t even look like elephants. To Ainsley, they seemed a perfect reincarnation of mammoths or mastodons. The beasts were fourteen feet high at the shoulders, weighed several tons, and had ten-foot-long tusks.
They also had a temperament to match. The elephants were bugling great blasts of fury with their upraised trunks, and advancing on the hyenas remorselessly.
“Jesus,” whispered Tambo, “even the Gha look like midgets on top of those things. They seem to have them under control, though.”
“I’m telling you,” insisted Clodius Afer, “the Gha are wizards at handling the brutes.” He snorted. “They always did hate those stinking hyenas, you know. But with elephants and Gha, it was love at first sight.”
Tambo glanced up. “Whatever happened to their own—uh, `hyenas’? The ones they had on the ship they seized?”
Gaius whistled soundlessly. Clodius Afer coughed, looked away.
“Don’t rightly know,” he muttered. “But Pompilius Niger—he raises bees now, you know, on his farm—told me that Uddumac asked him for a couple of barrels of his home-brewed mead. For a private Gha party, he said.”
Tambo winced. “Don’t let the SPCA find out.”
The centurion mumbled something under his breath. Ainsley wasn’t sure, but it sounded like “modern sissies.”
“The hyenas are breaking,” announced Gaius. “Look at them—they’re completely cowed.”
Tambo slapped the heavy wooden table under the viewscreen. The gesture expressed his great satisfaction.
“It’ll be a straight-up fight, now! Between the legion and those—what in the hell are they, anyway? Have you ever seen them before, Gaius?”
The tribune grinned. So did Clodius Afer.
“Oh, yes,” he murmured. “These boys were the opposition in our very first Guild campaign.”
“Sorry clowns!” barked the centurion. “Look at ’em, Gaius—I swear, I think those are the same wagons they were using two thousand years ago.”
The Ty’uct mercenaries started their wagon charge. Clodius Afer watched them on the screen for a few seconds before sneering: “Same stupid tactics, too. Watch this, professor! These galloping idiots are about to—”
He scowled. “Well, if they were facing a real Roman legion.”
Deep scowl. “As it is—against these puling babes—?” Low moan of despair. “It’ll be a massacre. A massacre, I tell you.”
“Actually,” murmured Gaius, “I think the puling babes are going to do better than we did.”
He glanced over at Tambo, who was sitting to one side of the big screen. The naval officer’s eyes were on a complex communication console attached to the viewscanner. “Are we secure?” asked Gaius.
Tambo nodded. “Yeah, we are. Our ECM has got the Federation’s long-distance spotters scrambled. Everything in the castle is out of their viewing capability.”
He sat up, sneering. “And, naturally, the lazy galactics never bothered to send a personal observer. Even if they shuttle one down now, it’ll be too late. The battle’ll be over before they get here.”
“Good.” Gaius turned and whistled sharply. A moment later, several natives appeared in the main doorway to the great hall. Gaius gestured, motioning for them to enter.
Somewhat gingerly, the natives advanced into the room and approached the small knot of humans at the viewscreen.
“You watch now,” said Gaius, in simple Latin.
“Is safe from Federation?” asked one of the natives, also in Latin. Ainsley recognized him. The Fourth-of-Five, that one was called. He was a member of the clan’s central leadership body, as well as the clan’s warchief.
“Safe,” assured Gaius. “They can not see you here with”—he groped for a moment, in the limits of the simplified language—”high-raised arts. But must keep this secret. Not tell them. Not tell anyone.”
“Secret be keep,” said the Fourth-of-Five. Still a bit gingerly, the warchief leaned forward to examine the scene on the scanner.
“Battle start?”
“Yes,” replied Gaius. “Now you watch. I explain what we do. Why we do.”