Chapter 29

Daramouda

Ky stood, looking at the high walls of the besieged port and the smoke billowing up from inside its walls. The Carthaginians had picked their ground well, even if they hadn’t done it on purpose. Almost no high ground existed, at least not within range of the port, limiting his ability to fire into the city. They’d also improved their walls more than he’d thought they were capable of.

He could see wood and dirt through the cracks and holes left by the continuous fire from his cannon, showing a pretty advanced, for the time, improvement in the walls. It also explained why they were unusually thick, compared to the other walled cities he’d seen.

“This is taking too long,” Bomilcar grumbled next to him, lowering his spyglass. “We’re going to shoot through all of our gunpowder before we get through this wall, and will have to resort to throwing bullets at them once we do.”

Ky nodded in understanding. It seemed unlikely that the Carthaginians would realize one of Britannia’s greatest weaknesses. They may have figured out that he didn’t have the manpower they did, but he doubted they’d know enough about gunpowder to work out how slow their production was or the limit that placed on his ability to bombard a fortification. They’d simply tried to protect their men from his cannon, and lucked into a strategy that played against his weaknesses.

Already, he’d had to restrain his men’s enthusiasm, slowing their rate of fire to once every five minutes, to keep the artillerymen from exhausting the supplies they currently had on hand. Not that it would ultimately matter.

“Patience. Between us and Valdar, they’re surrounded. We might be short on gunpowder, but with as many men as they’ve shoved inside those walls, they’ve got to be running very short on food. I can’t imagine they’ll hold out for long. Besides, we’ll have some new options soon. I’ve been informed that the new artillery I ordered from Hortensius, along with some other surprises, are on their way from home, and should be here in a few weeks. Once we have those, we can hopefully speed things up.”

What he didn’t say was the word from home had been Lucilla over the comm and not a runner, who’d managed to arrive ahead of the supply ships coming their way. Not that either would matter in the long run. In spite of Velius’s sacrifices, this would probably not be the last time the armies split up. The balloons would give the men not with him some of the same advantage they had when they were with him, thanks to his drone. For now, though, they were all together, which meant the balloons wouldn’t enhance his men’s capabilities much.

The howitzers would, since they would allow him to fire over the walls, which would solve his current problem of his cannon not getting the elevation they needed to fire over the walls, but it didn’t matter. As he said to Bomilcar, with Valdar shelling from the unwalled seaward side of the port, coupled with a total blockade, they wouldn’t last long. It was why trying to take the walls by force was never an option for him. That would have been costly and done little but add a few weeks to the campaign season, which would be generally slowing anyway now that winter was approaching.

“What’s really bothering me is that they’re up to something over there, but I can’t tell what,” Ky said.

“You saw this through your bird thing, yes?” Bomilcar asked, still struggling to understand Ky’s drone.

That was another thing that would change once they had the balloon. As miraculous as it was, the basics of a balloon were understandable and wouldn’t instantly devolve into thoughts of magic the way seeing anti-grav in action did. Bomilcar did well, adapting to it as he had, accepting that Ky could just see through the small disc he’d shown the general, and not questioning it at every turn like some other subordinates had.

“Yes. They’ve had heavy traffic in and out of it for days, but I can’t figure out what they’re doing. They’ve got most of the entrance covered, probably as protection from the heat and sun and not to avoid detection, since I doubt they’ve realized we can see what they’re doing, but the effect of blocking my observation is the same. I do occasionally see barrels, but they seem to both be going in and coming out in equal numbers, making it impossible to guess what they’re doing.”

“Maybe just a place to feed and rest their men on the walls out of the sun.”

“Maybe,” Ky said. “But I don’t think so. It feels like I’m missing some...”

“Commander,” Sophus’s dispassionate voice said, interrupting him.

Its warning was too late, with the words barely said when he felt the earth tremble like an earthquake, the ground shifting underfoot. Part of his brain almost dismissed the thought, since there were no fault lines where they stood, making an earthquake unlikely, except the expression on Bomilcar’s face indicated he felt the same thing. Ky’s brain was still grasping for an understanding of what happened when the entire world seemed to heave and rip apart.

Ky and Bomilcar were launched into the air as a massive explosion ripped up from the earth. He slammed hard into the ground a dozen meters away from where he had stood, only his advanced reflexes allowing him to roll with the impact, keeping him from being seriously injured. He and Bomilcar had been lucky. They’d been on the edge of where the explosion occurred. The center of his line had been shattered, with the bodies of legionaries lying hundreds of meters from where they’d previously stood. Even sections of the line away from the blast had not gone unscathed. In places, Ky could see men crushed by the heavy steel tubes of cannons that had been launched into the air before falling on them.

The blast hadn’t been right on his line. The crater it left marked the center of the explosion several dozen meters ahead of the front of his line. It was large enough that the edge of the crater, over a hundred meters from its center, still extended into his line, completely breaking its center.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what happened, or how they’d done it. Clearly, the activity he’d seen had been tunneling. Their commander had taken the lesson Velius had taught them and adapted it, moving their stockpile forward under his own line. Considering how high the groundwater table was here, the tunneling itself was an impressive feat, since water would have been a serious problem. They must have also spent their entire supply of gunpowder, since the blast had been very large. Not as big as the one Velius had set off, based on the reports, but still massive.

A groan nearby broke Ky out of his thoughts. Bomilcar tried to push himself up and then collapsed as his supporting arm gave way.

“Ahh...” the general groaned, clutching the offending appendage.

“Easy,” Ky said, helping the man up.

The man’s shoulder bent at an unusual angle, not severe enough to be absolutely broken, but definitely unnatural.

“It appears to be dislocated,” Sophus offered, superimposing an anatomical display on top of the general’s shoulder, highlighting the affected joint and surrounding musculature. “It will have to be reset into the socket for his arm to be mobile again. If left untreated, the arm will lose circulation and become lame.”

“Show me how to fix it,” Ky sub-vocalized.

In his time, nanos would swarm the area, putting the affected limb in something like a cushion, releasing micro-targeted numbing agents before slipping everything back into place. It would have been nearly painless and happened almost as soon as the joint went out of its socket. Unfortunately for Bomilcar, he didn’t have that advantage.

Sophus overlay the steps Ky needed to take.

“I need to put your shoulder back in place,” Ky said, putting his hands on either side of the man’s shoulder as Sophus’s display showed him what to do.

“The line,” Bomilcar said through gritted teeth, trying to push Ky away.

“I know,” Ky said, already seeing the gates of the city open through the drone feed, Carthaginian soldiers lining up on the other side of the wall, ready to march through. “I need you mobile and leading the men on the wings.”

Moderating his force, to keep from causing more injury, he pushed the joint back into place as Bomilcar screamed as the muscle and sinew stretched, the bone and cartilage scraping as it slotted back where it should be.

“They’ll be coming,” Bomilcar said, as Ky helped him up, still gritting his teeth through the pain. “Following up on the blast.”

A thick haze of dust covered everything, limiting visibility, but Bomilcar’s years of experience told him what was happening, even if he couldn’t see it.

“I know. They’re already coming through the gates. I’ll get our center back into place. Our line covers the entire arc around of the city, so they can’t flank us. They’re going to try and push through the hole in our center. I need you to get to the men on the flanks. We’re going to be weak and even pieced back together, the center won’t hold for long. Once they’re fully committed, I need you to bring the flanks in, wrap around them.”

Bomilcar’s eyes flicked to the side as he visualized the battlefield, something Ky needed Sophus and his advanced retinal displays to be able to accomplish.

With a nod, he said, “The center has to hold long enough for that.”

“I know. I’ll take care of it. Go,” Ky said, slapping him on his uninjured shoulder before turning his attention to the task in front of him.

As soon as Bomilcar was off, Ky grabbed the nearest soldier he could find.

“Go to the reserves, order their cohorts, all of them, to double time to the center of our line to reinforce and plug the hole,” Ky told the bewildered man, still trying to make sense of what was happening.

Being given a specific task seemed to be enough to shake the man out of his fugue, his eyes focusing on Ky as he spoke. The man gave a shake of his head, maybe in an attempt to clear it, before running off toward the rear. At least, Ky hoped he shook off his confusion since he didn’t have time to go to the rear and get the reinforcements himself.

“Spread out. Grab anyone you can and get them back in line,” he yelled at his lictores.

They seemed torn, unable to decide between staying with their charge or following his orders. Strabo finally settled the indecision, yelling at them to follow orders before cutting to the right, grabbing and shoving stunned legionaries as he went.

Ky didn’t pay the men any more attention, his focus was on the line in front of him and the drone as he moved toward the crater. The scene of devastation grew worse as he approached ground zero of the explosion. A massive crater yawned open where solid earth had been just minutes before. Bodies and parts of bodies were strewn around the rim and littered the bottom.

Men staggered around in shock, many with ghastly injuries, bleeding and hobbled. Some crawled on hands and knees, while others just sat staring blankly ahead. The blast had shredded the center of the line. Through the drone, Ky could see the enemy closing on the other side of the crater.

“On your feet! The enemy is on us!” Ky bellowed, trying to get through the daze all of his men seemed to be in. “Back in line, now!”

Slowly, some of the men at least began to come to. Ky’s words pierced the veil they were under, the danger of their situation suddenly becoming real.

“Move! Form a line!” Ky continued to yell, grabbing men by their armor, yanking them to their feet and into place.

Then the enemy did something Ky didn’t expect. Instead of going around the crater, circling the obstacle to get to the still-shattered men, they flowed down into it. Row upon row of Carthaginian soldiers ran down into the center of the crater, almost funneling into it rather than going around. For the life of him, Ky couldn’t imagine what they were thinking, but he wasn’t going to let this moment pass him by.

“Open fire,” he yelled, slapping several men’s rifles into their hands, pointing down into the crater. “Pick up your damn weapons.”

The enemy suddenly appearing through the haze, right in front of them, did more to get the stragglers moving than any yelling he did. There were less than a hundred of his own men at the front of the crater, versus the hundreds flowing into the crater itself, but at least they were moving. Raising their weapons or finding dropped weapons, resetting the primer, and aiming.

If the messenger he sent did his job, the reinforcements should be here soon. He just needed to hold out for a few minutes. The Carthaginians seemed to be doing their best to help him, putting themselves in the worst possible position, but he needed his men to shake off their shock and get into action.

The first rifle cracked, and then two more. With the throng of enemy soldiers reaching the center of the crater, there was no chance of missing, the bullets punched down into them, causing ghastly wounds as they killed. More and more rifles began to fire as his men finally got back into the fight.

“That’s it,” he yelled. “Keep firing. Don’t let up.”

The men fired and reloaded, their training taking over. It was almost like being on the range again. It was also not having enough of an impact. There were just too many Carthaginians and not enough of his own men firing. Their explosion had done its job, ripping apart his line with such devastation that he couldn’t bring enough men to bear in time. Carthaginians fell by the dozens, but more pushed in behind them. Ky had to slow them down, to buy time for his reinforcements to arrive.

Drawing his sidearm, Ky carefully placed two precious rounds into the teeming mass below. He had less than a dozen rounds left, and with these, he was now in the single digits, but there was no choice. Once the enemy started up the sides of the crater, his line, and then the entire army, would fold.

The pellets expanded into burning balls of green flame, rolling through the enemy, melting men, twisting armor and weapons, vaporizing skin and bone. Men on the edges of the blast caught on fire as the super-heated air reacted with the loose tunics and treated hide armor. With the men packed so tightly, the fire started to spread to their neighbors; beards and hair, shirts and bindings went up in flames, the tightly packed mass at the bottom of the crater making perfect conditions for the fire. It was like an inferno in the heart of a wooden city, except these weren’t buildings, they were people. Too pressed together to run or put out the flames, they burned. Screams echoed from inside the crater.