Crassus gave Maximus a very direct look. "Tribune, I hereby order you to stop whining."
"That never worked for Scipio," Marcus noted.
"It's a sacred right," Max said. He chinned himself up on the palisade briefly, then dropped back to the ground again. "Looks like they're getting ready to change the guard."
"Signal the engineers," Crassus said.
Marcus turned and flashed a hand signal at the nearest Marat horseman- in this case, horsewoman, he supposed. She nodded, turned, and galloped to the top of the low hill behind them, and repeated the gesture in broader strokes.
"It isn't going to buy us much time, hitting them during their shift change," Max said.
"It doesn't need to," Marcus replied. "They're expecting a shooting match. A few seconds will make the difference." He turned and nodded to the file leaders of the Prime Cohort. They saluted, and murmured orders went down the ranks. The veterans drew their swords in slithering whispers of steel.
Crassus turned and beckoned a runner. The young man hurried over. "Please inform the Honorable Senator that our initial assault is about to begin."
The runner saluted and pelted away.
Marcus stepped up onto the block again and watched the river.
At first, he couldn't see it happening. The change was too slight. His ears, though, picked up on a change in the constant, almost-silent murmur of the water sliding between the banks. The pitch rose, and Marcus leaned forward, watching intently.
The ford was about three feet deep under normal circumstances-slightly deeper, given the steady rain they'd had during the past week. It was not too deep for infantry to ford, but it was more than deep and swift enough to take a man from his feet if he wasn't careful. Trying to cross the ford in the face of the enemy's defenses would be a slow and bloody business, where the balests and bows of the combined Canim and ex-slave forces would be able to take a terrible toll. It would be possible to grind resistance down, eventually, but a conventional assault would require a hefty price in blood.
Which was, Marcus reflected, probably why Amos had given the First Aleran the dubious distinction of leading the attack.
Marcus wasn't sure if the captain would have run the battle the same way, but he was certain that he would have approved of Crassus's immediate response to such a bloody scenario-to change the scenario.
"Sir," Marcus growled.
Crassus drew his blade and nodded to Maximus. The big Antillan gave his half brother a grin, and, with a murmur to the Knights Pisces, drew his sword. They immediately readied their own weapons.
Marcus kept his eyes on the river, struggling to see through the almost-lightless evening and the steady rain. The reeds the scouts had placed earlier that day had been stripped to pure, white wood that would be more easily seen in the dark, but even so, Marcus began to wonder whether or not it would do him any good.
Then he saw a gleam of fresh white on the river. And a second. A moment later, a third.
"That's it," he hissed. "Three rods. The river is running less than a foot deep."
"Now," Crassus snapped.
Marcus jerked hard on the rope beside him, stepped down from the block, drew back his leg, and kicked at the palisade. Though it seemed a standard Legion defensive wall from the other side, the engineers had altered a two-hundred-foot section of the fence, and when Marcus kicked down the section immediately in front of him, the others fell as well in a sudden wave, crashing to the earth on the far side.
Cries went up in the other camp, but they were immediately drowned out as Crassus lifted his sword, let out a howling battle cry, and the knights and veterans around him responded in kind. Crassus dropped his blade forward, and the Prime Cohort and Knights Pisces surged forward, with Marcus, Crassus, and Maximus in the first rank.
The First Aleran hit the now-shallow water of the ford and surged toward the opposite bank. Arrows began to fly from the earthworks. In the dark and confusion and splashing water, Marcus knew that only a very skilled or very lucky shot from any Aleran bow would have a chance of downing one of the heavily armored legionares. Most arrows skimmed off of the steel helmets, or slammed harmlessly into the steel-lined wooden shields of the Legion.
Some didn't.
Marcus heard a scream on his right, and felt, more than saw, the sudden drag in the integrity of the cohort's formation as someone else went down and slowed the advance of those behind him. An arrow struck sparks from Maximus's helmet, and another flickered past Marcus's ear with an eerie, fluttering hiss.
They were halfway across before the Canim sharpshooters went to work.
The flat, metallic twang of the odd bows was not loud, but they were near enough now to hear it. Each twang was followed almost instantly by the heavy sound of impact-a thud accompanied by the shriek of torn steel. Marcus saw from the corner of his eye as another file leader went down-as did the two men in tight formation behind him. Men screamed, and the advance grew more sluggish.
"Now, Max," Crassus shouted. The acting captain of the Legion lifted his blade, and it was suddenly wreathed in brilliant flame, a beacon and a signal to every man in the Legion-not to mention to everyone in the enemy lines as well.
At the same time, Maximus stretched out a hand toward the waters remaining between the First Aleran and the shore. He cried out, and a sudden swirl of wind went rushing down the river, spinning and twisting into a miniature waterspout that threw up great, shimmering sheets of water, obscuring the flaming sword and its wielder from easy observation.
"Forward!" Crassus cried. The fire on the blade pulsed and shimmered. "Forward! For Alera!"
As he finished his cry, Crassus unleashed the firecrafting he'd been preparing.
Rage poured through Marcus, more sudden, hotter, and more violent than any he had felt in years. Every other thought was scorched away by the fire of his anger, and he found himself letting out another cry of eagerness to meet the enemy in battle.
The hesitation of the advancing force vanished entirely, as nearly eight hundred throats erupted in a simultaneous bellow of raw hostility. The First Aleran picked up speed, building to a furious charge as they crossed Maximus's windcrafted water screen. Driven by that anger, they thrust themselves into the teeth of the enemy, utterly ignoring the missiles that continued streaking toward them, claiming lives.
The First Aleran took its hits as it emerged from the river, and accepted them as a necessary price to come to grips with their foe. They surged up the earthworks, spearheaded by the First Aleran's Knights Terra. They struck the mixed earth-and-stone defenses with their great hammers, triggering a minor landslide-one that could be climbed, up and over the defensive walls. Marcus, Maximus, and Crassus were the first to set foot on the improvised ramp, advancing up to the makeshift battlements.
There, they met the enemy.
Marcus had been ready to face the Canim again, but the former slaves were another matter entirely. As he gained the wall, a boy of no more than fifteen summers raised a bow, fumbling at an arrow. Marcus had no time to think. His arm lashed out, and the young soldier fell back, blood rushing from his opened throat.
Marcus stared at the boy for a shocked second, a single thundering heartbeat that suddenly stretched, elongated, drawing the rest of the world into a deceptively dreamy languor. The rage still burned in him, but for that instant, it existed outside of himself, a part of the background that was neither more nor less important than the sounds of battle.
The boy's neck was marred by collar scars. Old ones. If he truly had been fifteen years of age, then he must have gained his scars when he was scarcely old enough to walk-and Marcus had few illusions about what sorts of uses a slaver would find for a helpless child.
Arnos had named the "Free Alerans" traitors-but crows, Marcus wasn't sure that he would not have done precisely the same thing had he been in their place. The lot of a slave in the southern portions of the Realm was a dismal one, and the tolerance of every man, Citizen or not, had its limits.