Devan Chronicles Series: Books 1-3 (106 page)

“It’s about time they showed up,” he said testily watching his only mounted contingent ride in.

Cavalry, what wouldn’t he give for more horses right now? Two mounted battalions would sort out these flaming raids in a hurry! Since the night of the assassination attempt, his men had been plagued with hit and run raids,
every single
day
. At night, he had to keep half the men awake, and as a result they were all tired and not at all looking forward to the next day’s march. He was losing men and he couldn’t do a thing to stop it! As soon as the clansmen released their shafts, they galloped away and he couldn’t catch them. They didn’t even wait to see if their arrows struck their targets, as if the very idea of missing never occurred to them! Discipline in the ranks was getting worse. More refereed fights were taking place each night, and more injuries were being inflicted. It was as if being unable to hit the clansmen was transferring the men’s rage to their own numbers.

“Report,” he said to the sergeant in charge of the scouts and Corbin halted the column for a short rest.

“—half a league ahead, Sir. I can’t be sure, but I think they’re setting another ambush for us.”

Bastards!
Navarien saw red at the news. “How many would you estimate?”

“Don’t need to guess, General. I counted them! That’s why we were late back.”

“How many, sergeant?”

The sergeant flushed. “Sorry, Sir, it’s a big one. I think they’re after doing us in this time. I counted nearly fifteen hundred. Took a while it did—kept getting lost…” the sergeant flushed again. “Sorry, Sir.”

“Did they
see
you?” he asked intently. If the clansmen knew what he was planning, they would be gone in a flash.

“I think not, Sir. I can’t be certain like, but I snuck up on me belly—alone this time, Sir.”

“Good man!” he crowed in delight. He would show these clansmen what happened when they baited him and a legion of frustrated men. “Detail one of your men to bring up Tikva and the others. Tell him to leave the baggage with a strong guard and double time to us here.”

“Yes, Sir!” the sergeant said with a salute. He turned and ordered a man, “Feagan, you heard the General. We’re going to make these bastards pay!”

“On me way, Sarge!” Feagan said, and galloped to the rear.

Navarien smiled grimly. The clansmen were going to pay all right, and with luck, he would have his horses. It wasn’t long before he and Corbin resumed their march, but at a much reduced pace this time. The men were excited and looking forward to paying back their tormentors, so much so, that he had to hold them back. Walking into a trap like this was not something
he
was eager to do, but the men didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Are you sure about this, General? I don’t like giving up our javelins,” Corbin said marching backward to watch his men’s spacing.

This was what came of letting his captains speak their minds, he thought ruefully. He still thought it was a good idea, but some of the disadvantages were now making themselves plain.

“We have the easy part. We won’t need the javelins, but the others will.”

Corbin shrugged, “I suppose—”

“I know it’s hard, but
we
aren’t going to win this fight. Tikva and the others will do that for us. All we have to do is fix the clansmen in place.”

“I understand that, General, but I didn’t join the legions
not
to fight!”

“Oh?” he said coldly. “I joined the legions because I like the life, and I like to
win!
”

Mumble, mumble, mutter, mumble!

He shook his head as Corbin grumbled. The legion was a single force and not ten separate groups, as Corbin seemed to imagine. Pride in their battalions was good for the men, even for the captains it was good, but only as long as they remembered who the enemy was! Rivalry between maniples and between battalions was common, but when the fighting started, such childish concerns were to be forgotten until after the battle was won.

Navarien was tense as he marched into what should be the ambush site. He couldn’t see any clansmen and was wondering if he had mistaken the distance they had travelled. He turned to look back and was about to ask Corbin’s opinion, when all along the column men fell transfixed by arrows. In some cases, they were struck by two or even
three
arrows a piece! His shock wasn’t tempered by his advance knowledge of the ambush. The situation threatened to turn into a disaster as his men tried to duck under shields.

The surprise was complete.

He was surrounded and losing men fast. He was shouting orders, but many of the sergeants were down. The clansmen had chosen their targets well, but Corbin wasn’t hit, and he soon began making sense of the chaos. Meanwhile, Navarien gave up shouting and started kicking the men into the beginnings of a square. With this example, discipline returned and two squares formed twenty-five men wide and twenty ranks deep—or they would have if not for the losses to First Battalion. Navarien’s square was three ranks short already and more men were falling.

“Lock shields!” he screamed as loud as he could, hoping Corbin would hear and comply.

A shell of legion shields appeared over the two battalions and no more men fell. The clansmen were evidently not impressed as they continued loosing their shafts. Arrows continued to rain down, but all they did now was make clattering noises as they struck the overhead shields. One or two arrows did find targets in shoulders or feet, but none of the men died from such strays. Navarien was panting in fright, and so were many of his men. He had nearly lost two battalions without reply.

By the God, I nearly lost two out of seven…

He took a deep breath and calmed his racing heart, he hadn’t died, and neither had
most
of his men. He would never,
never
again walk into a trap set by clansmen. If he did, he had no doubt that he would die. Clansmen were better than any bowman he had ever come across. It took moments only to organise a shell-covered phalanx, but he had lost upwards of two hundred men before it was fully formed.

He had never been in a situation like this. The phalanx wasn’t just the best tactic, it was the
only
tactic. From his place in the first rank, he saw the sky darken with flights of arrows. They rained down on his position without let up. He ducked down behind his shield as another arrow came in low and struck the top of it. He looked up again to see the arrowhead had punched right through. Clan bows had a heavy pull, and would go clean through his armour. Luckily, legion shields weren’t as flexible as armour, they were able,
barely
, to hold against the arrows.

“Where are the others, General?” a man to his left said nervously and then ducked as another stray arrow came in.

Good flaming question!

“I told them to have dinner first. Can’t have them getting tired arms, can we?”

The legionnaire gaped, but then he realised and laughed sheepishly, which gave the others more heart. Navarien grinned more in fear than any real feeling of humour and forced a laugh. The others took it up until it was loud enough for the clansmen to hear. The warriors glanced at each other as if wondering what the jest was.

They soon found out.

Four battalions of legionnaires marched into position at treble time—almost running—and cut off any chance of flight by the clan warriors. At an order from each captain, every second man dropped his shield and ran forward to cast his javelin.

Screams erupted from the clansmen and their horses as a deadly hail of javelins two yards long rained down upon them from all sides. Many missed their targets, and no few struck horses, but they were only the first wave. Navarien had distributed his and Corbin’s javelins to the other four battalions, which equated to five waves of four
thousand
javelins each—twenty thousand javelins to kill a few hundred warriors. They had no chance—no chance at all.

The javelin throwers ran back to retrieve their shields. A few men fell to arrows in the back, but very few. Perhaps only a quarter of the clansmen died to the first wave of javelins, but the terror engendered from seeing friends nailed to the ground with three javelins in some cases, was enough to make anyone reconsider their plans. They attempted to mount and flee, but the first four thousand very sharp javelins, were quickly followed by a second wave, and then a third in quick succession.

All was chaos.

Falling men here, horses lying pinned to the ground and still kicking there. The screams were terrible to behold—horses and men screaming fit to burst eardrums. A hundred or so clansmen without mounts were charging the line and dying beneath legion steel, legionnaires were falling beneath clan arrows, screaming for wives or mothers as they died. One clansman, perhaps destined to live, maybe just lucky, leapt his horse over the legion line and killed two men in passing as if he did it every day. The warrior tried to weal his mount, but his horse was crazed and it would not turn back. The warrior howled in rage as he was carried away from the site of his tribe’s destruction.

The arrows ceased to fall, and Navarien issued new orders. “Shields down! Form line of battle!” The two phalanxes reformed into line seventeen hundred and fifty two men strong. “Out swords!” he ordered and the few remaining sergeants echoed the order.

Seventeen hundred and fifty two blades made quite a loud sound as they whisked free of scabbards, but it went unheard in the din. Clansmen arrows were sporadic now, but they still continued to take a toll. Navarien ignored the missiles and concentrated, waiting for the optimum time. He raised his shield to intercept the occasional arrow, and watched the fight intently.

And now!
“Advance at the walk! Ad-
vaaance!
”

He knocked aside another arrow with his shield as it sought to stop his orders, but he couldn’t be stopped—not any longer. All six battalions advanced, implacably squeezing the remnants of the tribe into a compact mass.

The slaughter commenced.

Navarien called a halt at noon a few days later and sat cross-legged to eat food no better than that given to pigs. He couldn’t recall ever eating worse, but then he was young yet. No doubt in some future time he would look back at this day with fondness. Much of the meat was rancid, but he cut away the worst portions and forced the rest down with some water. He listened to the usual grumbles of ill fed men and grinned, this was the life!

He had no doubt the God would send him back when it was his turn to be judged. When that time came he wanted to be in the legions again. Failing that, he thought a clansman riding forever across the plains would be the next best thing. Fighting another tribe when he was bored, hunting the bison when he was hungry—yes a clansman’s life was a good one.

He looked around and found Tikva tending his men, Bannan sat not far away eating doggedly, and obviously not enjoying it. Duer and Fifth Battalion was taking their turn at what had come to be called the cavalry screen. Corbin had argued as usual, but he had subsided when told he could have the screen tomorrow. The cavalry position had become a choice assignment—not surprising when one considered how many leagues on foot they had covered since leaving the boats in Cantibria.

“Some of the men have the foot rot, Sir,” Tikva said sitting next to him and taking a drink from his water bottle.

“Hmmm, not really surprising is it?” he said taking another swallow of water himself. “Make sure everyone uses their magic powder.”

The powder was something that all legionnaires carried. They were supposed to use each it morning before pulling their boots on. As far as he knew, it wasn’t really magic, but its effects seemed magical to men marching day after day.

“I tell them every morning, Sir, but there’s always someone who knows better—until they come up lame that is.”

He nodded. Since the destruction of the clansmen at the ambush site, he had marched the legion unimpeded toward Calvados. That pleased him and the men no end, but it was the capture of the horses that had been the real prize.

“What do you think of the cavalry screen?”

Tikva was the closest thing to a Cragson that he had here. Duer was good, so too was Bannan, but as with Corbin, neither was general material. Unlike the others, Corbin didn’t realise this and chafed at restrictions he felt were unnecessary.

“I like it, Sir,” Tikva said thoughtfully. “If we all had horses, we would be chasing the clans over the plains trying to force them to engage us. If we had
none
at all, we would be dog meat! They could hit us and disengage at any time, and we would be unable to give chase.”

“I like your thinking,” Navarien said. Tikva’s words mirrored some of his own thoughts with regard to next year’s campaign. “The legions have always fought either afoot, or all mounted with nothing in between, but this way we can force the enemy to attack the infantry where we choose, at the same time as hitting the wings with the cavalry.”

Tikva rocked a hand, not quite in negation, but not precisely agreeing either. “I was thinking we could keep them at a distance with the cavalry, Sir—just far enough for the javelins. If they pull back, we use the cavalry with the captured bows to harry them.”

“Hmmm, a possibility I’ll admit, but if we do that, their bows will also be in range of our throwers. With a full legion in mind, I think I like my idea better, but we need more than a thousand men mounted—two would do it, four would be better.”

“That’s a great many horses, Sir. Where are you planning to get them?”

“I’ll buy them from the clans with gold captured at Calvados.”

Tikva whistled. “Do you think Mortain—may he live forever—will agree?”

“I don’t know, but I can hardly ask him can I? I’ll use the gold and hope all will be well. It’s all I can realistically do, isn’t it?”

Tikva nodded then left to chivvy his men back into line. Navarien dusted himself off and resumed the march with Bannan’s men in the lead this time.

This land, this unending ocean of grass, made time seem unimportant, but the rest of the world continued its pace unimpeded by his progress or lack thereof. The campaigning season was ending, and he had yet to reach Calvados. The clans couldn’t have realised just how successful they had been at buggering his plans. With their harassing attacks during the day, and their night time exploits keeping everyone awake at night, his pace had been reduced by as much as two-thirds. They should have been there days ago, but they were, still in the middle of nowhere.