The Sea of Grass Read online

  He watched the water spread for another minute, then walked on to check on the progress of his inner wall. He had gained eighty-five men today—a combination of Gota horsemen and legionnaires—and hoped to get more tonight and tomorrow. Every single one strengthened his defenses—especially the legionnaires trained to fight hand-to-hand on the ground. Already most of them were hard at work completing the new ditch which, with a little luck, would be filled with water before the savages arrived.

  That ditch and the wall behind it were about three-quarters finished now and the men were exhausted. He’d keep pushing them until the line of defense was completed, then rest them in greater numbers to boost their fighting fitness. He’d keep working those not sleeping in part to keep them from thinking too much about what was coming, and in part because there was much that could still be done to strengthen this fortress. It was far too early to have genuine hope, but they’d come a long way. This would be no easy victory for the savages.

  The horse team was dragging yet another boulder out of the ground. Where did a land so basically flat get so many rocks from? They’d drop this one in the creek bed, strengthening the dam. Slightly smaller and thus easier to transport boulders went into the mound walling off the fort’s gate. There was so much to do yet, if only the savages gave them another day.

  Marcus looked at the moon overhead, no longer full but still giving quite a bit of light. “Just one more day, Sol Invictus,” he prayed. “Please give us one more day.”

  Day Fifteen

  It Might Get Bloody

  It was dawn before Calidus woke Marcus. That was three hours more sleep then he had ordered his adjutant to give him but frustrated as he was at the disobedience, it was hard to be angry about it. Calidus knew as well as Marcus did that it would be damn hard for the Tribune to get any rest at all once the attack began so this could be his last hours of sleep for days or even the rest of his life if things went badly.

  “Fifty more men came in during the night,” the adjutant told him.

  “That is good news!” Marcus agreed. “Any sign of the savages?”

  “Not yet,” Calidus shook his head. “I’ve been talking with some of the red banders who’ve been out here the longest and they gave me a critical piece of information that I can’t understand why no one told us before this. The reds say that the savages don’t like to fight at night. It doesn’t mean they won’t, but it’s not their preference.”

  “No one really likes to fight at night,” Marcus told him. “It’s too hard to control the action so it breeds more chaos.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. The savages have a superstition which they take quite seriously. They believe that each of us is inhabited by a ghost and that when the mortal body is killed the ghost walks towards the sun and paradise. If the body is killed at night, the ghost becomes lost because it can’t see the sun and so must unhappily wander the earth forever.”

  Marcus arched an eyebrow at the strange tale. “They can’t just wait for morning to start their journey?”

  Calidus grinned. “It’s not my superstition.”

  “But if it comes to that, I need to remember that a night attack might be more effective than one in daylight,” Marcus summed up. “Good work! Keep the information coming.”

  He got up to find some breakfast. “It also means my hope that they will go floundering around at night in my manmade lake is not going to happen.”

  “It could happen,” Calidus insisted. “This Teetonka is changing the old rules. He’s got the tribes working together. He may be able to convince them that his magic is powerful enough to show the ghosts the road to paradise without the sun.”

  “But it’s still less likely than I had hoped,” Marcus grumbled. “How is my lake coming?”

  “Faster than we expected. In fact, it’s already interfering with finishing the inner wall.”

  “That quickly?” Marcus asked. The news delighted him. His men could dig in the mud. The lake was never going to be deep enough to threaten them, just make it more difficult to attack the inner fort.

  “The wall is coming faster too. The new legionnaires we picked up yesterday are really increasing the pace. These are not lazy good-for-nothings like we found everywhere in the Fire Islands and they’ve seen what the savages can do to an army. They are digging with gusto and their energy has inspired the other legionnaires and the civilians. I think we’ll have the wall basically completed by noon and be able to start broadening and deepening the ditch while adding a few feet of height to the wall itself.”

  “Excellent! And my Gota?”

  “They refuse to dig,” Calidus told him.

  “That’s no surprise. Cavalry always think they’re too important to do any real labor.”

  “Severus has them heading out on another patrol—no more than ten miles out, but we need to sweep up any straggling survivors while we still can.”

  “Just as I would have ordered,” Marcus said. In point of fact, those were the instructions he’d given Severus and Calidus yesterday. If they were very lucky and the savages didn’t come sweeping in for another day, they could potentially add a lot more survivors to their small fighting force. He had hopes—although he had no idea if they were realistic ones—of picking up another hundred men. That would give him nearly four hundred legionnaires, a couple of score of dismounted Gota horsemen, and more than a hundred civilians to hold the inner fort. While far from ideal, that was enough experienced men to mount a serious defense, even against Teetonka’s reported five thousand savages. It wasn’t going to be easy, and frankly, if the savages pushed hard enough and long enough they would win, but Marcus was increasingly confident that wouldn’t happen. His tricks in the outer fort were setting the savages up for initial failure. That would both weaken their morale and strengthen that of his men. After that, well it was a waiting game punctuated by battles of attrition and his defenses gave him advantages in that sort of fighting that he doubted the savages had much experience with.

  They could do this!

  All they had to do was hold them off for another seven to eleven days and as the enemy wasn’t even in sight yet, that seemed eminently possible.

  He found himself whistling a battle song as he went to get his breakfast.

  ****

  Enemy scouts began to appear within sight of Fort Quartus’ walls at noon. A dozen men on horseback composed the first group and they hesitated about a mile out for a good hour observing the walls of the fort. Marcus doubted that they could actually see anything happening within the walls but he pulled twenty men off the construction project and got them into their armor just in case he needed a reaction force. What he really needed was his Gota but they were out patrolling somewhere in the surrounding territory and he was forced to get by without them.

  Without warning, the savages advanced, picking up speed after half a mile to a fast trot before breaking into an all out charge one hundred yards out. They came straight at Marcus where he stood alone atop the wall in his armor and with his shield. Their bows came up and they began to fire, possibly trying to force him off the wall, or possibly just seeing if they could kill one of the men from Aquila.

  “Now, Severus,” Marcus ordered in a quiet, almost nonchalant voice as he raised his shield to defend himself.

  “Pilum ready,” Severus ordered. “Advance!”

  Twenty red and black band legionnaires formed in a single rank climbed the steep inner embankment of the earthen wall until they reached the top—startling the savages who were now only twenty yards away.

  “Target and throw!” Severus commanded.

  Almost as a single body, twenty pilum launched from the line of men taking down three savages and one horse—a damn fine showing.

  The raiders immediately left off attacking Marcus to shoot their arrows at the new threat.

  “Second pilum, throw!” Severus ordered.

  This time, Marcus put his own pilum into the flight. He was quite probably the best pilum throw
er in the legion. He had taken the gold in each of his four years at the lycee and had lost none of his skill since then. His four foot weapon flew from his hand and took a savage in the side as his men took down another two men and three horses.

  The savages turned and fled as if they feared that his men were carrying even more of the weapons.

  Marcus watched them retreat impassively before sending out a group of men to claim his prisoners. Perhaps they could learn something about Teetonka’s numbers and plans before they killed the survivors.

  ****

  “Remember that the savages respect courage and one of the ways they test a man’s bravery is to torture him to see if they can make him scream,” Calidus told Marcus.

  “Meaning?”

  “I think the savages are genuinely insulted when we offer to make it stop hurting if they tell us what we want to know.”

  It was an hour before the evening meal and Marcus had gathered his officers for a quick meeting to make certain they were all up to date on the state of the defenses. Some of that was simply a matter of looking around them. The creek had overflowed even better than Marcus had hoped for. The water was already three or four inches deep and would probably double over nightfall. If they could steal another day before the savages attacked, they might have a full foot of water in what the men had taken to calling Lake Defiance. They used the same term—Defiance—for the fort because the Gente thought naming castra by number—Prime, Segundus, etc., lacked spirit.

  The only problem with the success of the dam was that it made setting up his layered defenses a bit more difficult. It was, as Lord Evorik would say, a pain in the ass to dig in ground covered even by a few inches of water. This slowed down the strengthening of the inner wall and complicated the task of laying the scattered lines of shallow trenches Marcus was putting everywhere in the hopes of tripping up the savages and their horses if they came splashing through the water to attack the inner wall. In the hopes of keeping his own men from falling victim to these traps he had marked them with the mounted heads of the savages they’d killed earlier in the day. Marcus hoped this would be sufficient to warn off his own legionnaires from these pitfalls without alerting the savages to their danger. Of course, it might all be for not. As of now, all of the pits were perfectly visible through the clear water of the lake, but hope springs eternal and at the very least he was keeping the men too busy to think much about their plight.

  “So we’re not getting any information?” Marcus asked. “I don’t want to be holding any prisoners when the attack begins. There is too much chance that they might get free and cause mischief in our rear, so make certain they die before the action begins.”

  Calidus nodded his understanding and Marcus turned to his least experienced officer. “Lesser Tribune? What is the state of our supplies?”

  Cyrus, the officer left behind by the Great Tribune when he set off to relieve Fort Tertium, was the least happy with their circumstances in defending Fort Defiance. When the full scale of the catastrophe to the Great Tribune’s relief force had become apparent, he had privately argued to Marcus that Fort Quartus—Defiance now—should be abandoned and they should make a run for the Jeweled Hills. Marcus had squelched his own desire to dismiss the notion out of hand and taken time he truly didn’t have to explain to the frightened man that doing so would force them to abandon any survivors of the slaughtered legion and probably compel them to leave behind most of their merchants who would not lightly abandon their wagons and goods. Furthermore, it would complicate reasserting civilized control of the plains as it would cede control of an important water source and the staging area that was Fort Defiance to the savages. These arguments had not terminated Cyrus’ objections and Marcus had reluctantly moved him away from the men to work on the supplies to keep his obvious fear from infecting the other legionnaires.

  “The supplies in the wagon train help our situation considerably,” Cyrus informed them, “The caravan has brought ample numbers of pilum plus sixty replacement shields to bolster our defense. That’s not enough to give shields to all of the survivors of the Battle of the Thundercloud, but it helps significantly.”

  “What about breastplates and swords for the civilians?” Marcus asked.

  “Those are equipment for legionnaires,” Cyrus reminded the Tribune in what could only be described as a haughty tone of voice.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” Marcus observed, “all of those civilians will be acting as legion auxiliaries the moment the savages arrive in force. I want them armored and armed to the best of our ability.”

  Cyrus’ lip puffed out as he pouted for a moment, but he did not protest again.

  “Severus?” Marcus asked. “Just how many men do we have now?”

  “Three hundred eighty-two legionnaires, forty-seven Gota horsemen, seventeen civilians who were already here at Fort Defiance including four women of easy virtue, ninety-six civilian males from the caravan, three women from the caravan and one infant less than a week old.”

  “That’s actually better than I expected,” Marcus admitted.

  “But not as good as it may appear at first. We lost most of the Dona merchants to the return trip to the south and the Gente do not take orders well.”

  Señor Capitán Adán bristled with indignation. “Those men will fight with courage and honor!”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Severus said, “but what they will not do is fight as legionnaires. They will fight as individuals who happen to be standing around in a line—not as an army.”

  Severus’ explanation had done nothing to calm the temper of Capitán Adán, so Marcus offered him some mollification to keep the meeting from boiling into an argument about the relative quality of Gente warriors. “It takes a long time to train men to fight as legionnaires, Capitán. Far more time than we have in this crisis—especially when we have had to put all of our time into erecting our fortifications. Have no doubt, everyone here understands that we are stronger with your valiant countrymen beside us than we would be alone.”

  Without wasting any more time on the older man’s feelings, Marcus returned his attention to Severus. “I think under the circumstances the lack of discipline of the Gente warriors will be ameliorated by the need to fight behind the wall. The Gente will not be called upon to maneuver their lines in battle—just to stand fast and kill any savage who dares to climb the wall in front of them.”

  Severus nodded understanding full well that if any such maneuvering was required it would fall on the legionnaires to carry it out.

  “I think when Warrior Atta brings his men back into the fort tonight, we will finish sealing the front gate. We can let men on foot continue to join us if any more make it this far, but I can’t risk losing seasoned warriors before the horde attacks my walls.”

  “I’ve been giving some thought to that,” Red Vigil Honorius announced. “We have had more opportunity to work with the Gota here at Fort ur, Defiance,” he grinned for a moment before continuing his report, “than they do further to the south, and I think there might be a role to play for the horsemen inside the fort. I recommend you walk Lake Defiance with Warrior Atta and seek his advice on how best to implement his men. When the savages come over the wall, there will be an opportunity for the cavalry to strike, although how we would get the horses back into the inner fort, I cannot say.”

  “Hmmm,” Marcus considered the idea. “I’ll speak to Warrior Atta. If we can do it without losing the Gota, I’m inclined to give it a try.”

  He turned to his Acting Black Vigil. “Lysander, how are the caltrops coming?”

  “Very good, Tribune,” the Black Vigil reached into a leather bag and pulled out two pieces of iron about three times the length of a man’s little finger and three times as thin. The two pieces had been wrapped around each other so that three of the ends formed a tripod while the fourth stuck straight up in the air. All four ends had been sharpened to points.

  “It took my friend a while to get the hang of the forg
e again, but he’s got about thirty of these now with more coming together all the time.”

  “Thirty are not many,” Marcus said. He had begun to picture thousands of these little horse cripplers.

  “We will definitely have enough to make the backside of the entrance mound a death trap for the first savages through. Other than that, it depends on how much time they give us. My friend is working all by himself.”

  “I will speak to my people,” Capitán Adán announced. “It is quite likely that someone among them has experience working a smithy. You should have come to me immediately with this idea,” he reproached the Tribune.

  Marcus had been tired of tiptoeing around the prickly older man before he’d ever promoted him to capitán, but he schooled his face once more and told him, “We would all be grateful if you can find someone to help the smith with his work.”

  Adán nodded with great dignity.

  “Good, so I’ll speak to Warrior Atta when he returns. Until then, everyone get back to work.”

  ****

  “It’s a fucking good plan,” Atta agreed in the coarse fashion of the Gota. They were standing in roughly five inches of water—the fort wasn’t precisely flat so Lake Defiance wasn’t precisely the same depth everywhere—and surveying the ground for a possible cavalry counter-strike. “All of your little traps are being set toward the front of the fort, hoping that the savages will come through on their horses. If we hold my men back at the rear, we should be able to swing around and cause a lot of confusion as the savages pour into the bailey.”