CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
North of the Danube,
Kingdom of the Marcomanni,
Barbaricum of Germania Libra
April 4th, 167 CE
“They come,” the Nabatean said two hours later, rising from where he’d been pressing his ear to the forest floor. “Many horses.”
This would be a perfect time for extraction by chopper, Artorius thought. Or maybe a tiltrotor. Fly away and leave the locals biting their thumbs and stamping their feet and pouting.
Instead they simply pressed the pace. He looked up and took the time. A little less than two hours to sunset, which would make it just before the eleventh hour in local reckoning; he still had trouble adjusting to the way the twelve hours of the sunrise-to-sunset Roman day shrank and expanded drastically depending on the season. Which this far north meant that summer hours were much longer.
And the ones chasing us are mounted, he thought, looking over his shoulder. Not as much of an advantage as it would be in open country, but this is climax forest, mostly fairly open. And it’s not far enough for humans to outrun horses.
You could do that.
Which was why armies in the old days . . . or these days . . . left a trail of foundered horses; fit humans just had more long-range endurance. The only way cavalry could stay ahead of good infantry over a week or more was to have a bunch of remounts and change off frequently. The way Mongols would have done it in a thousand years from now . . . or the way Sarukê’s relatives did when foot soldiers tried to invade their steppe.
But over this distance, four hooves beat two feet, he thought unhappily; it took days to outmarch a horse. They’ll be traveling twice, three times as fast as us.
Then he recognized the scar on a tree, and whistled sharply. The same sound came back at him—which meant Filipa was still alive, free and just ahead of them.
They all put on a burst of speed. Sarukê tore ahead, urging the horse she was leading into a trot and hanging on the saddle herself—and ignoring the man bound across it as he flopped and banged and whimpered.
Then they were in sight of the horses, where Filipa was stripping the reins from the picket line with swift skill. The Sarmatian tossed her the led horse’s reins, ran right on past her, and vaulted into the saddle of her horse. It pivoted in place and she was galloping back northward past them with her knotted reins dropped on the saddlebow and an arrow on the string, teeth bared.
“I slow!” she shouted as she passed Artorius.
He took that as I’ll slow them down, and didn’t waste time on answering as he ran for his mount. His leap wasn’t as spectacular as the Sarmatian’s, but it got him into the saddle quickly.
“Move! Now!” he shouted at Filipa, who was hesitating.
She turned her horse. The two Britannians were already nearly out of sight heading for the Danube, and one of them had the leading reins of the captive’s horse in his hands as they galloped.
Now it’s our advantage; these horses are fresh except for the ones carrying the prisoners, and it doesn’t matter if they founder as long as they hold out for the next little while. Whoever’s chasing us has been going as fast as they could for a couple of hours now. Close bet. Either they’ll catch up in time to kill us . . . or they won’t. Ain’t war exciting?
The others followed, and then Filipa, with Artorius and the Nabatean bringing up the rear.
The swarthy man was grinning tautly and had an arrow on his string as he made the same calculations; he was the only other horse archer in the group.
“This Sarmatian, she one fine killing bitch!” he said.
There was a sound behind them of blurred shouting and then a massive thudding sound, unmistakably a horse hitting something at speed.
Horses didn’t like doing that.
“I doubt her. I wrong!” he added.
Artorius concentrated; riding at speed through a forest, even a hardwood climax forest with not much undergrowth in most places, wasn’t easy. Sound was tricky in the woods, but . . .
Another shout, a choked off scream, and the massed thudding of hooves drew back a little, fading. Two horses came into sight, both galloping flat out. One was Sarukê’s; but she was bent over the neck of her mount, and an arrow stood out of her back below the left shoulder. The other was a Marcomanni, one with a forked beard and a helmet with a bear crest, his torso covered in a tunic of metal scales on leather; he was gaining and drawing back his spear for a thrust.
The Nabatean fell off a little. He stood in the stirrups at the gallop and drew his bow in the thumb-ring eastern fashion, holding the draw for a long moment as trees flashed between him and his target. Then he loosed, the bowstring slapping his bracer.
“Too low!” Artorius cursed.
Then, in savagely enjoyable self-criticism: “No!”
‘Abdu l-‘Uzzá was either a very good shot—probably, given the way he’d quickly grasped the benefits of stirrups for mounted archery—or very lucky or both.
Both, Artorius decided.
The arrow flashed down the fifty yards of distance, barely missed the trunk of a hornbeam . . . and plunged into the left fetlock of the German’s horse. Right at the joint; that had to be luck, you couldn’t do that deliberately even with a sniper rifle and mildot sight at this range, not on a moving target you couldn’t. Good luck, just as Sarukê running into a competent German archer was the opposite.
Plenty of the Germanic tribesmen hunted with bows, but only those who couldn’t afford anything better took them to war.
Maybe they were having a deer hunt as part of this conference at the Barbarian United Nations & Let’s Kill Romans Alliance. Not at all unlikely.
The wounded horse bugled shock and went over, its own speed and momentum ensuring disaster as the leg buckled; there was another massive thud as it pivoted and plowed left-shoulder-first and downward into the roots of an oak. That gave its rider only time for one startled yip before he smashed into the tree at thirty miles an hour himself . . . and the mass of his horse smashed into him at the same speed.
The tree remained stationary.
“I good killing bastard too!” the Nabatean shouted gleefully as he bent and clapped his heels to his mount’s ribs.
Sarukê’s horse was slowing because she wasn’t signaling it with heels and balance any more. Only the new saddle and a training that had begun as a toddler kept her from toppling off.
“I’m coming, Sarukê!” Filipa shouted, and angled back.
“Oh, hell,” Artorius said, and joined her.
What was it Plato had said about an army of lovers?
Right: “Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?”
Seems he had a point. Filipa shouldn’t be here! But then, arguably neither should I. Right now I feel the force of that argument more and more. Approaching spearpoints will do that.
Filipa came in on the Sarmatian’s right side. She leaned far over, grabbed the other’s right arm, and slid it over her own shoulder; her own left gripped the mane of the Sarmatian’s horse and kept them close, galloping like a chariot team. Sarukê’s horse matched the speed of Filipa’s automatically, from herd instinct. Artorius came in on the other side and snatched up the reins loose across the front of the saddle.
“Keep up!” he snarled, as he spurred forward and all three horses went to flat out.
He glanced over his shoulder, one of the benefits of equine autopilot driving. The beast did the detail work, which was great as long as you remembered horses weren’t cars and didn’t necessarily want to do what you wanted them to do.
Pursuers from Marcomanni & Friends were in sight, their spearpoints and the polished, gilded or silvered crests on many helmets catching the declining light from the west, along with the cold gray glitter of mail.
Lots of decorated helmets and lots of armor and lots of good well-mounted horsemen.
All three were serious status markers among the Germanic tribes.
Either there’s a really exclusive Marcomannic polo club right around here, or we really did interrupt a high-level diplomatic conference of bigshots. The ones with poor impulse control came after us. Because they don’t know what they’re chasing us into, and if they don’t catch us before that . . . but they probably just automatically thought they could cram us up against the Danube and that would be that.
They were in the floodplain of the great river now, a district his century had called the Lobau; they were also following a marked path that they’d checked out coming in yesterday. That was another reason going out had been much slower than coming back.
The river was getting higher as the snows melted further up. The trees got bigger around them with fertile soil and lots of water, and then he blinked and squinted against the sudden late-afternoon brightness as they came out into wet meadow where the water table was too high for tree roots. Spurts of black muck went flying from the pounding hooves of the horses, and he could feel his mount starting to labor hard, panting like a bellows between his knees. Patches of shallow pond glimmered, with white water lilies just opening, buzzing with insects and busy with the birds that fed on them.
Mud slowed them, and the shouts of the pursuers grew even louder and even more savage as they saw bloody revenge laid out before them like a varied, tasty buffet dinner.
Artorius looked over his shoulder again. The pursuers had gained on them, and were closing rapidly. No more than a hundred yards, and he could hear their wolfish howling. Big shaggy hounds ran with the horses. This might very well have been a planned hunt in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time. That was just the sort of thing the chieftains would do at a gathering, along with drinking and boasting and sacrifices to the Gods and occasional duels.
Bad luck for us, or bad luck for them, but I think for them, went through him tautly. Far too close, though. Ask me for anything but time, as the man said!
They quartered left, and the pursuers gained again; some of them tried to cut the cord of the movement, and he heard their screamed curses as their horses bogged. Ahead of him ‘Abdu l-‘Uzzá slowed for a second and shot behind him, the arrow zipping uncomfortably close to Artorius’ face. One of the bogged-down men toppled off his horse and landed facedown and thrashing in the calf-deep water and mud, and two more jumped down to try and help him.
Artorius followed the Nabatean around the bend. Ahead the marsh grass was chest high on the horses, save where a sandspit reached through, dry and showing bare spots. The barge waited at the end of it, covered in another innovation—camouflage netting this time, studded with tufts of grass that hadn’t had time to go limp. Crewmen with oars threw it off as the riders thundered into view.
A ramp led up to the tubby vessel, and the two Britannians took it scarcely slowing, with the crew ready to help secure the captives. Filipa was next, calling out to the men to handle Sarukê carefully and fetch the medicus.
Beyond the sandspit was fifty yards of open water, then a long, low island overgrown with willows and other water-loving trees. Artorius reined aside and turned his horse.
“Ready!” he called.
Worth it, he thought to himself.
A risk, but only a slight one.
Do some wholesale decapitation on the other side. And I do not like these proud and noble-savage sons of untamed nature and various bitches. No, I do not like them. At all. Not in the abstract, and not in the personal sense of being married to Julia now, and we have little Claudia and another child coming and a home to defend. Debellare superbos!
Half a century of Syrian archers rose out of the tall grass; he suspected that some of their guttural Aramaic war cries were curses on his name, for having them wait this long squatting ankle deep among the mosquitoes and leeches, with the added strain of keeping their beloved bows from damage by the damp and the skirts of their long tunics sopping up swamp water.
“Take it out on them, boys!” he called, pointing behind him.
“Draw—” the decurion in charge of the archers called. “Shoot! Rapid!”
The Germanic diplomats didn’t see the men for a moment, with the blowing grass breaking their outlines. By the time they did they were well within range of the powerful laminated recurve bows, no more than fifty yards, and their hurtling pursuit turned to chaos as they tried to pull up. There was marsh on either side, deep and sticky. The gap of firm ground behind them had been easily wide enough for the exploratores, but it was badly crowded with forty or fifty riders.
The first flight of arrows slashed down just as the headlong rush slowed, and it continued to sleet long shafts until the decurion called out:
“Cease shooting! By contubernium, board the boat! Fast! Fast!”
They were trotting aboard when the two galleys came around the islet just offshore. One was busy for the next few minutes hooking and hauling up the buoy with the towing cable for the barge, and making it fast to the stanchions by the stempost. The barge lurched just as Artorius led his horse into its crowded hold, the last aboard; the beast snorted with laid-back ears, rolled its eyes and tried to rear, but he kept a firm grip on the bridle and calmed it.
“Soooo, boy, soooo,” he said. “We’re safe now. For now.”
Tunnngg-WHACK!
A shell full of Roman Fire went by overhead. Artorius frowned; not the load he would have chosen . . .
He glanced around and grinned like a shark himself. The catapult crew were using their heads. It was good to have men fast on the uptake backing you.
They’d aimed high, and the twenty-five-pound load of ur-napalm landed behind the clot of chieftains and their retainers. The tall grass there was damp, but the firebomb had it burning briskly almost at once, with copious sparks and lots of thick black smoke.
Some of the men were shaking their fists at the galley, and doubtless cursing the unmanly distance weapons in end-stage Proto-Germanic. The smarter ones, mainly Marcomanni and Quadi who’d had some experience with the new Roman gear, were trying to flog their horses through the barrier of burning grass, or get around it without bogging their mounts.
Or just running through it afoot with their arms in front of their faces; those were the ones most likely to live to see next morning.
Just why that was a good idea arrived with another tunnngg-WHACK! as the catapult’s throwing arms hit the stops. The fuse was different this time, the slight spitting trace of saltpeter-soaked cord rather than flaming cloth. They’d lit the fuse at just the right length, and . . .
CRACK!
The red spark and puff of smoke was right in the middle of the surviving riders. Hundreds of lead bullets flayed them. It wasn’t quite like having a Victorian steam gunboat shooting up some luckless natives, but . . .
“Close enough for government work,” he muttered to himself.
CRACK!