Chapter 15

Londinium

The sun had been up for over an hour and Carus had spent the entire time staring at the corner of the warehouse ceiling, waiting for the signal to begin the attack. He’d spent the night going to each warehouse, getting the men armored up and ready. Since they didn’t know when the attack would start, all of the legionnaires had been standing ready since daybreak. After weeks of waiting, doing nothing, the men were keyed up, but holding ready to attack was draining. He hoped the signal would come soon. The longer men held the duller their senses would become.

He was doing his best to stay focused, but his mind had started to wander as he sat there waiting and almost missed the signal. The small flying disk was back, in the small nook at the north end of the warehouse like the voice said, a faint blue light strobing off and on. Although he’d been looking in that direction, he’d missed it coming into the warehouse and when the light started flashing, but he didn’t think it had been going for long.

“Let’s go,” he said, loud enough to be heard by most of the men in the warehouse.

It was still early morning, but the docks were already bustling, with the ships preparing to head out for another day of fishing to feed the city. Marius, having been warned about what was coming, had left at dawn, which was earlier than normal for him, but not so much so that it drew attention.

Carus was in the third group leaving the warehouse, behind the vanguard of his force made up of his most senior fighters, whose job it was to keep the way clear and not let them get bogged down in street fighting, and the rear guard, who actually left the warehouse first. Their job was to spread out and clear out any guards or anyone else who might cause a problem, and to follow behind after the warehouse was emptied. The rear guard would repeat this action at the other two warehouses, fanning out and keeping the area clear as the men hiding in the warehouses spilled out and joined the force moving quickly toward the gate.

Carus had gone over the plan multiple times throughout the night. There were a lot of moving parts and a lot of places where something could go wrong. That was what worried him about this plan, since a lot of it relied on junior officers keeping the men focused on individual tasks, instead of groups operating as a single unit like they did in normal combat.

Things started off well, however. The reaction of the people around the docks was instant, with screams and shouts coming even before Carus made it outside. By the time he and the second group of soldiers cleared the warehouse door, the bodies of guards around the docks lay scattered, many with their weapons still sheathed, taken completely by surprise at the sudden attack.

They moved up the main road towards the gate at a jog. As they passed the first of the two additional warehouses holding his men, more legionnaires joined his group, pouring out of the warehouse, filing into the rear of his unit as it continued past, never breaking stride. His rear guard fanned out, protecting them as the warehouse emptied, but as far as Carus could tell, they hadn’t even been needed.

The streets were empty, although he could hear commotions on the smaller streets running parallel, which probably meant a warning had already gone up. He expected to see some guards, but aside from those at the docks, there hadn’t been any in sight, yet.

He doubted their luck would hold all the way to the gate.

Outside the City

“It’s time,” Ky said to Ursinus.

The legions had been up since dawn, preparing as silently as they could, although there was no way to hide the sound of thousands of men equipping themselves and forming up in lines, which is why Ky had ordered the two cohorts left behind to face the north wall to make as much noise as possible. It would ruin the surprise that an attack was coming, but that would have happened anyway. At least this way, the city’s defenders might hold to the north wall, assuming whatever was happening at the city gate was just a feint or a distraction.

“Is Carus on the move?”

“Yes,” Ky said, looking towards the city but actually watching the feed from the drone, which had left the warehouse and was currently high above the city. “They have just passed the last warehouse where he was housing legionnaires and they are making progress toward the west gate. So far, they have had minimal resistance, but there is a force of city guards moving parallel to them, but I think they are waiting on more men before they try to attack.”

“Is he in any danger? Will they stop him from getting to the gate?” Ursinus asked.

“Everything is a danger at this stage, but I don’t think so. He has flanking guards setting up walls along each alley they pass, leapfrogging each other to keep them from getting hit in the side, and maintaining a solid rear guard. The Carthaginians closest to his force are outnumbered and I doubt whoever’s leading them will throw them directly into the path of our soldiers, since they would just roll over the token resistance. No, the street layout favors our way of battle, funneling any force trying to hit them down narrow alleys, making it hard to overwhelm them short of the open space at the gate.”

“Has word gotten to anyone on the north wall?” Ursinus asked.

It was the only legitimate chance the Carthaginians had to stop Carus. There weren’t enough guardsmen inside the city to stop him anywhere but in the gate’s open area.

“They’d have to shift soldiers from the north wall to the gate to have any hope of holding it, and I don’t see any evidence of that happening. The men who’d filed out for breakfast are starting to hurry back to their command, but they’re slow about it, and most are headed back to the north wall, hopefully thinking our attack on that part of the wall is imminent. The commanders and senior soldiers from the gate who’d gone for breakfast are on their way back, but unless something drastic happens, Carus will beat them there.”

“Good.”

“Get the Caledonian commander ready. As soon as the fight at the gate starts, I want them in motion so they can clear the gate the moment it opens. They know their routes and assignments, but make sure their leaders keep them focused. Then get with your men and get them ready to follow the Caledonians in. And Ursinus, I don’t want you going in with the vanguard. You are to stay rear of the front line, is that clear? The outcome of this isn’t in question, and I don’t want to risk losing you for it.”

Ursinus didn’t seem pleased by the pronouncement, since like all soldiers from his time, they’d been taught real commanders lead from the front, but he accepted it, giving Ky a firm nod before heading to his units.

Inside Londinium

Carus could hear the sounds of fighting behind him. This was the second attempt by the city guard to cut his force in two, attacking down alleyways from the north. The first one had been a concentrated assault down a single alleyway that his men had pushed back, only losing two legionnaires while killing almost a dozen city guardsmen.

Although he wasn’t worried about the guardsman breaking through his line, since they were generally poorly armored in leather or without armor, carrying only medium-length swords and no shields, he’d still doubled his defenders covering each alley, giving each group a layer of three rows formed into a standard shield wall. None carried spears or arcuballista, since the narrow and winding streets gave little room for ranged weapons, but they knew how to operate as a unit, their gladius stabbing out every time the guardsmen got close enough while their heavy armor and shields made it difficult for the guards to get a hit in.

Peeling off more men for his flankers and a rear guard would leave less for the actual confrontation at the gate, but he needed to make sure his men arrived as a single unit and didn’t get bogged down in street fighting. The disk thing that passed the Consul’s orders had made it clear that speed was the most important thing in this assault, and Carus had taken that to heart.

Finally, the gate was in sight! It had been less than ten minutes since the assault had kicked off, although it felt a lot longer than that. The men by the gate were armed in a similar fashion to the city guardsmen, although they at least were wearing metal armor. The standard Carthaginian phalanx didn’t work well in a city, so they’d put aside the thick walls of spears they normally fought with, switching instead of small, round shields and swords about half again as long as a Roman gladius. This was actually good for the Romans. The danger of a phalanx was the almost hedgehog nature of them when they were tightly packed.

Against a phalanx, a cohort had to go in with shields held up, with the main job of the front-line soldiers being to push the phalanx spear points up, trying to keep them from pushing into the lines of legionnaires and killing the men behind them. Without the spears, they were more vulnerable, in addition to being outnumbered.

As soon as they cleared the buildings and were into the open area, Carus shouted, “Front rank, fan out.”

The men already knew what to do, and reacted as soon as Carus’s order rang out, splitting and moving to the sides, to keep anyone from coming in on their flank. They were only one row deep, which would leave them vulnerable in the early stages, until the men further back caught up and followed their orders to fill in the gaps.

As soon as the front ranks cleared to the left and right, leaving an open space for the men behind, Carus shouted, “Charge.”

The men all sprinted forward, the front rank with their swords sheathed, holding their shields with two hands and their shoulders pressed against the layered wood. Their job was to hit the opposing men in the front as hard as they could, hopefully knocking them back. They did their job. The Carthaginians were not in a tight formation, and, being almost entirely conscripts, they began to break as soon as the Romans got close, meaning they were half-turned or hit from the rear, sending them into the ground, where they were stabbed as the soldiers behind the front line passed over them.

The gate guard folded almost instantly. One or two men tried to fight, but they were struck down quickly. It wasn’t without cost. Almost a dozen Romans were down, including one from the flankers facing north, where Carthaginian reinforcements suddenly appeared, too late to keep Carus from taking the gate, but still making the situation precarious. Thankfully, his men knew their jobs and a second rank on that flank was already filling in as more and more of his men cleared the buildings.

“Get that gate up,” he ordered the men closest to the gate.

He could see the Caledonians, thundering across the open ground towards the gate. The Consul had timed the charge well, and they’d hit the wall almost at the same moment as his men had the gate out of the way.

“Optio, take your men up those stairs and begin clearing the Carthaginians off the ramparts on the wall. Stop on the other side of the gate and prepare for a counterattack. They’re going to send men along the wall any time now.”

The optio nodded and took three contubernium up a set of stairs on the left of the gate. Until they were on top of the wall, their shields would be a hindrance, but hopefully the poor quality of the defending Carthaginians would work in their favor.

The last of the conscripts, who had been pushed against the gate, were slaughtered as the gate came up and the Caledonians came pouring through. The Caledonians swarmed through the Roman line, slamming into the Carthaginians who were running to secure the gate. However, Carus knew their lines were going to be spread out as they came through the gate in waves, which meant he needed to prepare for a counterattack.

“Form up,” Carus said, moving behind his men as they formed a perimeter around the gate.

North Wall

“What?” Maharbaal shouted, the messenger shrinking back from the anger in his voice.

Although he’d visited the walls often in the early days of the siege, worried that the Romans, or whatever they called themselves now, were going to attack, as the days stretched into weeks, he’d stopped, falling to the tedium. There had been a moment when he’d thought there was a way out of this nightmare when his officers swore they could break through the line surrounding his city, but the incompetents had wasted even that opportunity.

He had only started his trips to the wall again when it seemed like the assault on the city would begin soon. The Romans had started burning something all along their lines, hiding their soldiers behind a wall of smoke, and their strange catapults had increased their fire, constantly hammering the walls. Thankfully, the improvements ordered by that fool Bomilcar had at least been good, and the wall was holding. He could only hope that the defenses that were added on the outside of the wall, would make ladders or other siege equipment for getting soldiers over the wall useless.

Of course, the wall could also be holding up because the Roman’s new, strange catapults seemed to be wildly deficient. They had a longer range than his, but instead of moving their lines a little closer so they could get their shots over the walls, hitting inside the city, they seemed satisfied letting the rocks bounce off the wall or harmlessly plowing into the ground in front. All those rocks had begun to pile up, which made getting over the north wall even harder.

Seeing the impediments, he’d started feeling better about their chances to survive at least until the messenger arrived to report a large Roman force at the western gate.

“The gate is open and the Romans are inside the wall,” the messenger repeated his report, taking a step back as he did.

“How did this happen? Where are the men who were guarding that gate?”

“I don’t know, your excellency.”

“Is this a feint? Are they going to attack here or not?” He demanded, turning to the officer closest to him.

Officer was a strong term. There were hardly any trained soldiers left in the city, and he’d only been the commander of the city guard before everything had fallen apart.

“I don’t think so, your excellency. I think this is the attack.”

“Then counterattack. Send the men guarding the walls to take back the gate and get it shut.”

“But my lord, if we empty the walls, there won’t be anything keeping the Romans outside the walls from coming over.”

“They’re already over the walls, you idiot. If we don’t take that gate back, the whole city will fall. Just do it before I find a new commander.”

The man blanched and backed quickly away before turning and running to carry out his orders.

West Gate

“Get your men moving,” Ky said unhelpfully.

He knew Ursinus had his men moving, and the only reason they hadn’t passed the gate yet was that the small entryway created a bottleneck, and they needed to wait for the Caledonians to clear the other side before the legions could begin moving in.

His urgency came from the action on the north wall. As the Caledonians made their way through the west gate, Ky had sent a messenger around to the line facing the north wall, standing the trebuchets down and putting out the smoke pots. The haze wouldn’t clear for a week or more, but if the battle reached the north wall, he didn’t want an errant shot causing friendly casualties. They might have initially thought the warning about Britannians inside the wall was a mistake or a diversion for an attack aimed at the north wall, but even the inexperienced and incompetents couldn’t miss what was happening when the small, but consistent, barrage that had been going on steadily for a month finally stopped.