Great victories out of small ones.
Generals. Ha!
On the fifth day of the "siege," the first real trouble began. As one of the wives approached the fortress—this had now become a daily occurrence, almost a ritual—a small crowd of officers forced their way through the mob of soldiers standing on the battlements.
Threats were exchanged between officers and men. Then, one of the officers angrily grabbed a soldier's bow and took it upon himself to fire an arrow at the wife standing on the street below.
The arrow missed its mark, badly. The startled, squawking, outraged housewife was actually in much greater danger of being struck by the next missile hurled from the walls.
The officer himself, half-dead before he even hit the ground, fifty feet below.
The shaken housewife squawled, now, as she was spattered by his blood. Shrieked, then, covering her head and racing from the scene, as six more officers were sent on the same fatal plunge.
The rest of the day, and into the night, the crowd standing outside the fortress could hear the sounds of brawling and fighting coming from within. Antonina herself, even from the pavilion's distance, could hear it clearly.
By now, Antonina had relented enough to allow Ashot and Hermogenes to return to Nicopolis. Some of Hermogenes' soldiers had been allowed in, as well—just enough to provide her grenadiers with an infantry bulwark in the event of a battle. But she still kept the cataphracts well out of sight.
She stood in the entry of her pavilion next to her two officers, gauging the sounds.
"It's not a full battle, yet," opined Hermogenes.
"Not even close," agreed Ashot. "What you're hearing is about a hundred little brawls and set-tos. Ambrose is losing it completely."
Hermogenes glanced sideways at Antonina. "He'll sally tomorrow. Bet on it."
Ashot nodded. "He's got to. He can't let Antonina sit out here, rotting his army out from under him."
"How many will he still have, do you think?" she asked.
Ashot shrugged. "His cataphracts. The most of them, anyway. Those aren't Egyptians. They're a Greek unit, from Paphlagonia. Been here less than a year. They won't have much in the way of local ties, and all of their officers—down to the tribunes—were handpicked by Ambrose."
He tugged his beard. "Six hundred men, let's say. Beyond that—"
Tug, tug. His eyes widened. "Mary, Mother of God. I think that's it."
Eagerly, now: "I could bring up the Thracian bucellarii. Those fat-ass garritrooper shits'd never have a chance! We'd—"
"No."
The gaze which she bestowed on Ashot was not icy, not in the least. The past few days, if nothing else, had restored her good temper. But it was still just as unyielding.
"My grenadiers I said it would be. My grenadiers it is."
Ashot sighed, but did not argue the point. Anton-ina was wearing her armor at all times, now, except when she slept. True, the sun was down. But the many candles in her pavilion still shined off her cuirass, making her seem—
Jesus, he thought, how can any woman have tits that big?
* * *
As the night wore on, the sounds of fighting within the fortress waned. Then, at daybreak, a sudden outburst erupted. Rapidly escalated to the sounds of a pitched battle.
Antonina had prepared the grenadiers the night before. By the time the battle within the fortress was in full swing, Antonina was already out on the street, in armor, on horseback. Ashot and Hermogenes sat their horses alongside her.
Ahead of them, drawn up and ready for battle, stood the Theodoran Cohort.
Three hundred of them were now armed with John of Rhodes' new handcannons. The handcannons had barrels made of welded wrought-iron staves, hooped with iron bands, mounted on wooden shoulder stocks. The barrels were about eighteen inches long, with a bore measuring approximately one inch in diameter.
The guns were loaded from reed cartridges with a measured charge in one end of the tube and a fiber wad and lead ball in the other. A hardwood ramrod recessed into the front of the stock was used to ram the charges down the barrel. The handcannons had no trigger. The charges were ignited by a slow match—tow soaked in saltpeter—held in a pivoting clamp attached to the stock.
As handheld firearms go, they were about as primitive as could be imagined. John of Rhodes had wanted to wait until he had developed a better weapon, but Belisarius had insisted on rushing these first guns into production. From experience, he had known that John would take forever to produce a gun he was finally satisfied with. The Malwa would not give them that time. These would do, for the moment.
Primitive, the guns were. Their accuracy was laughable—and many a bucellarii did laugh, during the practice sessions in Rhodes, watching the Syrian gunners miss targets at a range that any self-respecting Thracian cataphract could have hit with an arrow blind drunk. But it was noticeable that none of the scoffing cataphracts offered to serve as a target. Not after watching the effects of a heavy lead bullet which did happen to strike a target. Those balls could drive an inch into solid pine—and with far greater striking power than any arrow.
The formation into which the Cohort was drawn up was designed to take advantage of the hand-cannons. Half of the gunners were arrayed at the Cohort's front, in six lines stretching across the entire width of the boulevard, twenty-five men to a line. Squads of Hermogenes' infantry were interspersed between each line of gunners, ready to use their long pikes to hold off any cavalry who made it through the gunfire.
The other hundred and fifty gunners were lining the rooftops for fifty yards down both sides of the boulevard, ready to pour their own fire onto the street below. The rest of the Cohort, armed with grenades, stood in back of the gunners, their slings and bombs in hand.
The sounds of the fighting within the fortress seemed to be reaching a crescendo. For a moment, the gates of the fortress began to open. Then, accompanied by the steel clangor of swords on shields, swung partially shut.
"Christ," muttered Ashot. "Now that poor bastard Ambrose has to fight his way out of the fortress. What a mess that's got to be in there!"
Suddenly, the gates of the fortress opened wide. Seconds later, the first of Ambrose's cataphracts began spilling out into the street.
It was immediately obvious that the enemy cata-phracts were totally disorganized and leaderless.
"That's not a sally!" exclaimed Hermogenes. "They're just trying to get out of the fortress."
"Fuck 'em," hissed Antonina. "Euphronius!"
The Cohort commander waved, without even bothering to look back. The nearest cataphracts were not much more than two hundred yards away. Well within range for his best slingers.
"Sling-staffs!" he bellowed. "Volley!"
Twenty grenadiers standing in the rear wound up, swirled in the peculiarly graceful way of slingers, sent the missiles on their way.
His best grenadiers, those twenty, with the most proficient fuse-cutting wives. Only three of the grenades fell short. None fell wide. Only two burst too late; none, too soon.
The crowd of cataphracts jostling their way out of the fortress—perhaps four hundred, by now—were ripped by fifteen grenades bursting in their midst. Then, a moment or so later, by the belated explosions of the two whose fuses had been cut overlong.
The casualties among the cataphracts themselves were fairly light, in truth. Their heavy armor—designed to fend off dehgan lances and axes—was almost impervious to the light shrapnel of grenades. And while that armor provided little protection against concussion, a man had to be very close to a grenade blast in order to be killed by the pure force of the explosion itself.