The Fires of Vulcan - 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.

As with the first attack, once his men passed some invisible line in the grass, the enemy line billowed smoke once more. More screaming. More death. They didn’t even get as close as they had in the first attempt, his men starting to waver after the first volley, some slowing or even stopping as their fear overtook them.

Another series of deafening volleys and his second wave collapsed just like the first. Additional bodies added to the bodies from the first wave, creating a nightmarish vista of carnage.

Tabnit’s frustration was growing. He had to get close enough and keep them distracted, so he could roll up his catapults, but none of his attacks managed to hold together long enough to get that far. He’d seen their weapons work in smaller engagements, but never in an open battle like this. He had known victory would have a bloody price, but this butchery was beyond what he’d imagined. Still, he needed to make it work.

“Get the survivors back in line and spread us out. I want to wrap around them on either side. Wrap their flanks. They can’t mass fire if we spread out enough,” he ordered, sending messengers sprinting off to deliver his message.

It took nearly twenty minutes to reform his lines and get the men moving, stretching his lines. The Romans, damn them, just stood in their formation, watching. Part of him had hoped they’d press the attack against him, moving into range of his catapults, but their commander wasn’t a fool. The weapons had surprised them the first time, but now they were ready for them and weren’t going to allow him to get into range.

Finally, his army marched forward again.

The Romans hadn’t stayed static while his men were redistributed. It wasn’t hard to figure out what he was planning, and the Roman commander reacted instantly, shifting the wings of his line, bowing them back in on themselves to counter his wider formation. If this had been traditional armies, Tabnit would have considered that a mistake, since it increased the likelihood that his army would completely envelop the enemy, setting him up to repeat Hannibal’s victory at Cannae. Their thunder weapons made that unlikely, and again showed how much they had changed the way war was waged.

His soldiers moved slowly at first, recognizing the danger they were walking into, only picking up speed as their officers cajoled and pushed them, knowing that only momentum could push them through the death they were marching toward. Their walk turned into a trot and then a full-out run as the men picked up speed, regiments jogging forward, spears lowered.

Then his men passed the line, no longer invisible but marked with the bodies of the already fallen men, and the enemy line erupted once more, the deadly fire smashing into his men as if they’d run into an invisible wall. Something suddenly dawned on Tabnit as he watched death rain down on his men. Fewer bodies were falling. Not a lot less, with hundreds dying with every volley, but less. The swaths cut by the larger weapons killed fewer men. The only thing that had changed was that his men were spread out more, to extend their line, causing his army to be less dense than before.

He’d had a conversation with one of the engineers from the Far East, after defeating the Roman port and seeing the potential of their fire powder. It had been awkward, as every conversation with them had been, having to go through multiple interpreters who translated their harsh language into Persian, which was then translated into his own language, but it had been enlightening. The engineer explained to him how the enemy thunder weapons worked, with a metal or stone ball in the long metal tubes, with the fire powder behind it. Because the fire powder could only erupt down the enclosed tube, unable to go anywhere else, the power of it forced the ball out the end, sending it to tear through his men. Although the engineer didn’t know specifically, he had guessed their smaller weapons, carried by each of the men, operated using the same principle.

The engineer also indicated that the powder they provided did not have enough power to replicate this, except on very large scales, which meant they couldn’t give the Carthaginians the same weapons, even though they understood how the weapons worked. Part of Tabnit thought that was a lie, that they did have the capability to copy the Roman weapons, but he wasn’t in a place to force the man to tell the truth. They needed more of the fire powder and none of the emperor’s artificers had been able to duplicate it, meaning they were beholden to the Easterners’ goodwill. Since it hadn’t been immediately helpful to Tabnit’s goals, he shelved the information in his mind as something interesting but ultimately unhelpful.

This new revelation, coupled with what he learned from the engineer, however, was useful. If the smaller thunder weapons also pushed out small balls, and that was what was killing his men, then it made sense that if his men weren’t as densely packed there was a greater chance some of those projectiles would miss, and even fewer deaths would occur since there weren’t men coming behind to be killed in the place of their original target.

This could be a key to countering the Roman weapons. Not one he could use now. His men had trained in the phalanx style, where regimented actions were paramount. A man operating independently could cause the entire formation to fail, which had led to a harsh and inflexible training regimen. It had also helped keep the men, most of whom served out of fear and not out of loyalty, in check. It would take time to change their training, adapt a new strategy that could help them win this fight, much like they’d adapted the trenches, but one that could help turn the tide.

For now, his men still died, their lines starting to waver as they hit the first wave of death.

“Keep going, damn you!” he yelled, not that they could hear him.

They could hear their officers, who pushed the men forward, sometimes at swordpoint. More volleys slammed out, but the formation held this time, absorbing the losses as his troops drew tantalizingly close to the Roman lines. They were in arcuballista range, and a few bolts shot out, killing a Roman here or there. Not enough to change the tide of battle, but seeing their enemy finally die cheered the men, pushing them on.

Then the Romans showed their real surprise. He hadn’t noticed it right away, but there were more of their larger thunder weapons here than he ever remembered seeing. Two hundred paces out, his men’s charge disintegrated as those weapons finally fired. It wasn’t the long, narrow lines of death like they had witnessed before. Instead, it was as if a phantom swept across his line, killing every man in the front of his line, and many of the men in the second. A thousand men died in an instant as those weapons fired at once, the sound deafening, almost as loud as the massive eruption that ultimately destroyed the Roman port.

It was enough to break his men, their line disintegrating as his soldiers turned and fled, all semblance of order lost. The Romans, for their part, held their discipline, the staccato pattern of fire barely breaking even as their enemy fled before them. Of course, that might be because he still had thousands of men held back for another charge. They’d already shown they weren’t foolish enough to spread themselves out chasing his running men, throwing away the strength that resulted from their defense.

“Pull the men back and prepare to withdraw,” he ordered Nabalsa, who’d returned to his side once this latest attack had launched.

“Retreat? We still greatly outnumber them, My Lord,” Nabalsa said, shocked that Tabnit would give the order. “Our frontal attacks failed, but we’ve seen how effective digging the trenches has been. Couldn’t we …”

“No,” Tabnit said, cutting him off. “This army isn’t locked behind walls. As soon as we start digging, they can march around us, turning our flank. There’s also no point at which we can start the trenches that is outside of their range. As soon as we start digging, they’ll move forward, putting their weapons in range of our men, still well outside of the range in which we could respond. Entrenching now, here in the field, would be death. Besides that, did you notice anything about this army? Anything unusual?”

“Unusual?” Nabalsa asked.

Tabnit repressed a sigh. Nabalsa was a good man, determined and intelligent, but he was too much like the majority of their officer corps. Stuck in the old ways of doing things; too used to rolling over the enemy without any finesse, substituting brute force instead. They hadn’t learned to read the enemy to determine a way to counter them instead of just all-out attacking.

“I was right. The majority of the Romans didn’t retreat from their forts. They rendezvoused with this army and brought all of their large thunder weapons with them. Did you not see what they did with them? With them having that kind of power, we won’t last in the field. No, we retreat to Daramouda. Send out riders. Any remaining forces we have in Hispania or Germania are to fall back to Daramouda as well. That’s clearly where the Romans are headed, and we can’t afford to lose our supply chain to Carthage. We’re going to need every man we can get to defend it.”

Nabalsa looked uncertain, “But My Lord, if we retreat behind the walls, the Romans could destroy us once we’re trapped there, just like we did to them at the port?”

Tabnit shook his head, “While we’ve been on campaign, several of the engineers from the east have improved our defenses, thickening the walls with layers of wood and earth in between the stone walls. They tell me they are strong enough to absorb the impact of their weapons. If the Romans want Daramouda, they will have to take our walls, finally bringing them into range of our catapults where we can utilize our fire powder. We can shift the balance of power back in our favor. Now, go. Select a unit to block the Romans so the rest of the army can escape. Use most of the mounted forces, they won’t be useful in the defense of Daramouda, but their charges could cause the Romans to hesitate, slowing them long enough for us to get away.”

“Yes, My Lord, at once,” Nabalsa said, bowing his head before hurrying off to carry out Tabnit’s orders.