The Sword of Jupiter (Imperium #1) - Chapter 37

Even though the crowd broke for their horses, it was still slow going to the center of town, with the mass of Romans fleeing increasing, packing together tighter and tighter.

“Leave the horses,” Ky said. “We’ll have to go on foot from here.”

They tied the horses up to one side, although Ky was fairly certain one of the fleeing Romans would get the idea to take the unattended mounts so they could make a faster escape from the city. It took more time for them to push through the crowd, Ky leading the way since he towered over most of the Romans.

Had they been hit now, their ability to defend themselves would have been limited, but Ky didn’t think they’d run into any of the rebelling legionaries until they got right up to the Palace. While Eborius was smart enough to have his men encircle the palace complex, they would be completely focused on that series of buildings and wouldn’t be expanding out, since their only real goal was to kill the Emperor and as many of his advisors as possible. They saw themselves as liberators, so they’d probably try to keep from causing much damage outside of the seat of government, since they’d still want a city to rule once they succeeded.

As they pushed their way through the crowd, Ky sent communications requests several times to Lucilla, without any response. He would have had Sophus try and break through, but the communicator required her to activate it on her own, which is why he’d had her not disconnect when she’d been captured up North.

Maybe it was too loud or there was too much going on and she just didn’t think of it. When she’d contacted him right before she’d been kidnapped by the Picts, she’d been locked inside the small temple, and had time to think before the Picts were on her.

Ky hoped that was all it was, because the alternatives didn’t bare thinking about.

By the time they ran into their first soldier, Ky could see the tops of the palace. Ky didn’t doubt that the soldier was from the First or Second Legion. There hadn’t been time for Llassar to warn any friendly legions and have them respond for him to be anyone else.

At first, Ky thought he might have been there as a scout, watching for the loyalist counter-attack Eborius would have expected, since the camps of the Seventh and Ninth Legions were roughly in the direction Ky had come from, or from city guardsman. If he had been a scout, he would have turned and run away, off to warn his comrades that people were coming.

Ky was surprised when he didn’t do that as Ky and his companions emerged from the back of the crowd that was still fleeing the city center. Maybe he saw four men and thought he could take them or maybe he recognized Ky and thought there was some chance of personal glory, but instead of fleeing, the soldier lifted his gladius and took up a fighting stance, waiting for the four of them to reach him.

Ky accelerated, leaving his men behind, just in case the soldier got a lucky swing at them, reaching the man a good ten steps ahead of Carus. The soldier pulled up his shield, half covering his body, his gladius ready to stab out, in the classic Roman fashion.

Ky didn’t try anything fancy. They were close to the palace and he could hear the noise of fighting. The man stabbed out, his timing good, and nearly lost his sword as it bounced against Ky’s shield, not that it mattered. Ky’s own sword shot out with inhuman force, tearing through the layers of wood, the force pressing the shield into the man. Ky’s sword punched through the metal armor, its tip exploding out his back. Ky hadn’t been able to see the man’s body, but Sophus had been able to project targeting based on the limbs it could see and his aim was true, as Ky’s sword obliterated the soldier’s heart on its way through his body.

The poor man was dead before his body hit the ground, by which point Ky was already several feet away, having hardly broken stride. His men had seen Ky work before and didn’t slow down either, other than to step around the body as they struggled to keep up with their commander. They were on the north-south thoroughfare through the city, which made a sharp turn right before the palace, part of the original planning that was meant to slow down an attacking force if they got through the outer walls.

As soon as they turned the corner, Ky could see the swell of men pushing into the palace, which looked to be surrounded, at least on the three sides he could see. Ky hoped this meant that the commander had been smart and abandoned the rest of the buildings, holding up in the center of the palace and forum. It had also been designed to be defensible, in case an enemy had gotten to the center of town, with twisting, narrow hallways that lead to the forum in the center. That allowed an open area for the defenders to retreat to, creating bottlenecks from the two entry points on either side. A larger attacking force would lose their advantage of numbers thanks to the way the Romans fought, forming a shield wall and pressing against the attacker. While that probably wouldn’t save them, since any force that got this far into the city would eventually win through simple attrition, the designers had apparently decided they’d settle for extracting a large body count from their enemy before the city fully fell.

In this case though, it might save the Emperor, if Ky could get to him and Lucilla in time. The attacking Romans were paying attention, however, and weren’t going to make it easy. A dozen men turned and broke off from the mob of soldiers pressing into the palace entrance, formed up into a battle line, and began a steady approach.

Carus and his men did not have the tall Roman shields, since they were expected to be bodyguards, not soldiers. Ky didn’t have time to face off against the Romans in small pockets while they continued trying to get through the palace.

Reaching down, Ky activated his sidearm. He didn’t want to use its precious ammunition and had been holding off using it even when things were desperate, such as his attack on Talogren’s village, but he had no choice now. He could see the men outside the palace slowly making their way inside, which meant they were pressing back the defenders.

Ky also had to be careful with its use since its super-heated gases could easily tear down parts of the palace after passing through soldiers. It would be a cruel irony to defeat the attackers by crushing the defenders inside.

Ky fired twice, Sophus calculating the angles well. The first shot ripped through four of the Romans marching towards them and tore a swath through the Romans advancing towards the palace, killing twenty by his count before taking out a corner of one of the nearby buildings and dissipating. The second shot left the weapon less than a second later in a similar arc down the other side of the palace, killing five more of the approaching men and another fourteen behind them, closer to the complex.

The remaining three men did the smart thing as Ky turned his weapon towards them. They may not know anything about the technology he was using, but they’d seen the small box in his hand melt their friends twice, and had figured out that it destroyed what it pointed at.

The men threw their weapons to the side and ran.

“Let them go,” Ky said when one of Carus’s men tried to follow. “We need to get into the palace.”

The soldiers that had been coming in from either side, having circled around the palace, had ground to a halt after seeing the destruction Ky’s two blasts had caused. Some ran, others just stood still, staring at melted piles of metal and bone. That level of destruction, especially how quickly it happened, was beyond anything they’d experienced, just like it had been for the Carthaginians at the swamps.

Ky didn’t dare use it again, still hoarding the precious remaining ammunition for the coming fight with the Carthaginians, but the two shots had been enough to slow the flood of soldiers around the building. The soldiers close to them, at the back of the crowd pushing to get inside the palace, had turned at the tearing sound of Ky’s weapon and the shouts of their dying and mortally wounded comrades, but were locked in place by shock, the same as the men closer to the dead rebels.

They fell easily under Ky and his lictores’ swords. Ky had waded halfway into the massed soldiers before he started getting real resistance, with soldiers desperately trying, and failing, to harm him. Had he been alone, Ky would have gone through them like a buzz saw, but he was slowed trying to block the blows directed at Carus and his two men. For a moment, Ky thought he might be successful in getting through the line of soldiers, having pushed almost to the entrance of the narrow hallway being defended by the Emperor’s guards.

Then tragedy struck. The men outside had begun to move again, closing in behind them. Iovinus, the man furthest back, fell to a gladius through his side as he tried to defend against three attackers from different directions. Ky reached out and pulled Carus and then Pacatianus behind him, changing places with them, reasoning they would have a better time against men fighting in two directions than trying to keep from being flanked on all sides.

“Switch. Fight through to the Emperor. I will follow behind.”

“Consul,” Carus shouted, starting to argue.

“Don’t argue. Get to the Emperor. I am right behind you.”

By then Carus was fighting off two soldiers and couldn’t respond. The floor was slick with spilled blood and hard to traverse without tripping over the quickly piling bodies. They were brave, Ky had to give them that, as men fell one after another under his sword. Occasionally he would turn around, letting his shield take the brunt of the attacks as he closed the distance between himself and Carus. Carus and Pacatianus had found shields from fallen men and were using them to slowly push back the men between themselves and the Emperor’s guards, the two-person abreast formation working to their advantage.

Carus was still doing well, but Pacatianus was limping badly, blood trickling down his leg from a deep gash just below the edge of the armored skirt that covered the Romans from their waist to a few inches above the knees.

“Consul, I can see some of the praetorians,” Carus called over his shoulder.

Ky glanced back quickly to assess the situation. Carus was right. They had eight rebels caught between them, in four groups of two, with the rear two facing Carus. Unfortunately, the second pair closest to the praetorians had the short spears the Romans were fond of, allowing them to stab over while the soldiers in front of them stabbed low from the hip. The two angles made it hard for the praetorians to defend against, which is why the Romans had devised that as a standard method of attack in the first place.

Even as Ky watched, one of the praetorians took a spear to the chest and fell back. The group pushed forward in the moment it took another praetorian to step forward, which meant the guard who’d been uninjured had to step back as well, to maintain a solid wall with the replacement. The rebels getting precariously close to the opening that led into the forum, where they wouldn’t be confined by the narrow hallway any longer.

Carus and Pacatianus would be through them soon, since the rebels were caught between two sets of attackers, but it wouldn’t be soon enough. Pushing through to join the Emperor only to have the rebels into the forum itself, would have been just as bad as failing to link up with the Emperor at all. Ky hated to use his sidearm again, but he needed to clear a path so he could switch with his guards. More than that, the turning hallway made it impossible to fire straight out.

“Can I fire without taking the building down?”

There was a pause as Sophus did the calculations, which spoke to how complicated that question was. Ky could see in his readout a long series of calculations, examining past views of the building, inside and out, looking for structural weak points and material analysis, and then a series of rapid simulations.

While it had all happened in under a few seconds, which was an astonishing display of computing power, it felt like an eternity as Ky fought off more Romans, who were trying to push him into the guards behind him. Although they couldn’t actually harm Ky, they could get around him. Ky wasn’t large enough to actually block the hall, and the soldiers understood that. They had tried time and again to stab his guards in the back, to even up the score, which meant Ky couldn’t just stand there and take the hits. He had to actually block the stabs and thrusts that tried to get around him.

“There is a seventy-two percent chance the area around the forum will not collapse if you fire on this precise vector,” Sophus said as Ky slashed down, taking off the arm of another attempted stab in the back on Carus.

“Seventy-two is not good odds.”

“You do not want to know the odds if you miss the displayed vector,” Sophus said, its emotionless voice making the warning that much more ominous.

Ky didn’t have a choice. They were running out of time. Pulling his weapon, he locked his arm in place and took careful aim along the targeting path displayed across his vision. For a moment, the Romans in front of him must have thought they had amazing luck, as Ky switched his sword to his off-hand and lowered it as his attention was focused on making sure his shot was accurate. Both men began to lunge forward, to stab around either side of Ky, when the simmering blue orb expelled from the end of the weapon and ignited the molecules in the air around it. They never had a chance to scream, both men obliterated in an instant. Most of the men in the hallway didn’t have a chance either as the plasma radiated out, killing all of them.

The screams didn’t start until the brick and mortar melted at the first turn. Sophus had been accurate in its calculations. The area around Ky and his men stayed firm, but beyond the turn, the room and walls collapsed in, raining tons of stone down on the attackers. As the hallway became blocked off, the sounds muffled, which made it impossible to tell how far the collapses had reverberated and how many men had just been crushed to death.

Their rear secured, Ky turned and pulled Carus back, so he could slip around them, blocking an opportunistic jab by one of the rebels to try and take out a momentarily exposed Pacatianus. That was the only chance they got as Ky tore through the men remaining between the praetorians and themselves.

“Friends,” Ky called out as he cut through the remaining two rebels, at last opening a space between themselves and the Emperor’s guards. “This way is blocked for a while. Go help defend the other hallway.”

It took a second for his words and identity to pierce the focus of combat before the handful of men by this hallway went scrambling towards the other hall, Carus and Pacatianus in their wake.

The scene in the forum was ghastly. The marble floor was wet and pink from the blood of almost two dozen men lying on it in various levels of distress. Some of them wouldn’t make it through the evening, let alone survive their ordeal. Even the ones better off were seriously injured, and it looked as though any of the men who could still stand were engaged in the fighting at the other end of the forum. Ky wanted to join them and help keep more of their men from dying, but the Emperor intercepted him, blocking his way.

“How is it?”

“I don’t know,” Ky said, his eyes staying on the remaining hallway, watching for a sign that he’d have to run and help. “I was already in town investigating a report of two Picts assaulting Roman women and killing one of the men who came to their aid. It turns out the men have worked for Silo before. We were just finishing up when the insurrection began. I believe this is only the First and Second Legions, and it appears the bulk of their forces are still outside the city.”

“And our forces?”

“I sent a man back to Velius and Aelius with orders to circle the city in either direction, putting the two legions between them and using the Picts as a reserve. We outnumber them and even with the element of surprise, I don’t believe they will be successful. My only concern was that they reach you and Lucilla before we could stop them, which is why I came here instead of leading the counter-attack myself.”

“While I appreciate you thinking of our safety, you should have gone to the legions. If they don’t win, all is lost, regardless of what happens to us.”

“If you are lost, then all is lost anyway. Your son has made it clear that he agrees with Silo. If he becomes Emperor, Rome stands no chance,” Ky said, before movement in at the hallway entrance drew his attention. “I’m sorry, but I have to go help them, or this conversation won’t matter either way.”

The Emperor gave a nod and stepped away, letting Ky pass. As he crossed the floor of dying and wounded men, he caught Lucilla’s eye as she looked up from assisting in tending to the injured. They didn’t say anything, but Ky felt a wave of information pass between them. He was surprised that a single look could communicate joy, sorrow, relief, and reassurance all at once, but he felt all of those from her and was certain she felt them in return.

Ky looked away, refocusing on his task at hand, but a part of him stayed with her, thinking about her as he assessed the situation. Another praetorian was carried out of the hallway, passed back by his colleges. Ky used the opportunity to move up in his place, taking his short stabbing spear from him as he passed. It was awkward going past a dozen men filling the hallway, but he eventually made it, behind two praetorians fighting for their lives. They were being pressed hard and Ky needed an opportunity to get past them. Using his sidearm again wasn’t an option since it would, at the very least, seal them into the forum from both sides, to say nothing of killing the two men in front of him.

Instead, Ky sheathed his sword and took another short spear from one of the men that had, until a moment before, been thrusting it over his companions’ shields in hopes of catching one of the rebels from a different angle. Gripping both above his head, so they cleared both men in front of him, Ky threw both spears simultaneously, putting all of his power behind each.

They punched down, through both rebels’ shields and continued through the men’s bodies, into their companions beyond, at a sharp angle so that they pierced shoulder to mid-torso of the first man and then mid-torso to the groin of the man behind him. Even Ky’s strength couldn’t make them go through the second man, but it didn’t matter. Their bodies worked as a barrier for the men behind, at least for a moment, which was enough time for Ky to push to the front. Reaching down and grabbing one of the fallen men’s gladius, Ky was ready when the bodies were pulled away and the attack resumed.

This time, the situation from the other hallway was reversed. Ky stood in the middle of the hallway, with the two praetorians behind him, shield blocking any attempt to stab around Ky, their short spears stabbing down over either side of Ky, not that they found many targets. The tempo changed, the flow of men slowing as Ky cut down any new attackers almost as quickly as they moved forward, the bodies beginning to pile up, making a barrier of their own, forcing their friends to remove them before they could continue the attack.

As a dozen, and then two dozen and then three fell beneath his swords, Ky wondered how long these men could keep coming forward to be slaughtered. The men moving up had to see how hopeless the situation was. Finally, the flow stopped; and the men Ky could see started backing out of the tunnel. He could hear shouts, but the hallway’s turns blocked most of them, making it difficult to tell what the men were saying.

When the last rebel retreated from view, Ky said to the men behind him, “Stay here, hold this position.”

Thankfully, Carus was too far back to be able to reach Ky, letting him venture out on his own. There was a chance this was some kind of chance, a ruse to lure Ky out and try to dispose of him another way. Ky could think of several ways they might kill him despite his shielding. Collapsing the building on him, perhaps, and he didn’t want to give them that chance, if he could help it.

Coming out into the outer foyer of this side of the Palace, Ky could see what had made them back up. Battle standards of the Seventh Legion were moving down the street. The soldiers that had been assaulting the palace were outnumbered significantly from just the men he could see, and their coming from the direction where the First and Second Legions had been camped meant that those two units were no longer able to come to their aide.

The coup was over. Now they just needed to assess the price they’d been forced to pay for their victory.