That would be when I’d attack into the rear of the army when they’d least expected it.
Taking Iona and two others, we scouted that area. The legions had passed through, and so their passing was obvious, but they were not here now. There were the supply units, and camped support units; cooks, engineers and other artisans, together with the camp-followers, but no soldiers save the wounded in the hospital.
With steep slopes up the valley, with trees on both sides, it was not good country to mount an offensive uphill against archers in well dug-in positions.
As we scouted, we saw some horsemen among the trees. There were around half a dozen, at first, with the sound of more coming. They were all dressed in long cloaks, as Armes and his companions had been, so not like the Dacian soldiers.
“The advance party!” Iona said, astute as ever.
“I think you are right, let’s get out of here in case we are observed.”
We retired up the valley towards our unit and observed as the horsemen – now some twenty in number, appeared to be also checking the lie of the land.
Gaius and the rest of the men would be with us soon, so we settled down to watch what these men would do.
The twenty became a hundred, and they immediately started preparing the ground. Several wagons and more men appeared, and the wagons produced many ready-made stakes and wicker woven shields. They hacked bushes for camouflage and wood to create more sharp stakes upon which advancing cavalry would be impaled.
This was the place all right.
More men arrived all night. I split the girls into six groups to scout exactly where their positions were placed, and also to take a count of how many archers there were.
It started to sleet, showing us that winter had not yet retreated. It was bitterly cold, and I had decreed no fires, as I didn’t want anyone to shine out. The men digging in had the same rule, but they stopped digging to take some form of shelter. Crude tents were erected in the trees, under which the men huddled.
The girls returned with alarming news, we were up against around six thousand men, the bulk of which were archers.
I tried to imagine the legionaries having to link shields and advance up steep hills against archers who could easily penetrate the standard shields and kill or maim those carrying them. It could be a slaughter.
What was their aim?
With Trajan defeated, the victors could sweep into the Empire and take over. This would change history entirely, taking out of the line the Emperor Constantine, who had legitimised the Christian faith and thereby given birth to the Roman and Orthodox Churches.
This enormously powerful and influential organisation would be missing when Mohammed rose in another eight hundred years; was this the key?
I had no way of knowing, but it seemed logical. At this time Christians were still being persecuted, so had yet to establish any form of official recognition in any state. By perpetuating this state of affairs, and possibly increasing the pressure, it was conceivable that those responsible saw their target the end of the Christian influence in the world.
It wasn’t my place to deal with that. I had to deal with the here and now. These archers were out of their zone, so that was my problem.
“Get the girls back, out of harm’s way. Make sure they get some food and water and find somewhere dry. I am going to meet Gaius and let him know what we’re up against,” I said to Iona.
“How can we fight them up these slopes?” she asked.
“We don’t. We come from above them.”
She looked down the valley at their positions and then at the crest of the hill. The top of the hills were just above the tree line, so we could turn the tables very nicely.
“Will the horses manage going downhill?” she asked.
“We won’t know until we try, but it will be less effort as gravity will assist us.”
“Gravity?”
“Don’t worry about it. See to the girls.”
I rode like the wind, not knowing exactly how far away our men were. The rain turned to snow, which would make life equally difficult for everyone. Archers needed dry strings, so this might just be in our favour. Swords and pila work in the dry as well as the wet.
The wet going had hampered our wagons and equipment, so I met them further away than I had expected.
“Six thousand!” Gaius exclaimed. “How do we fight that many?”
“We use our equipment and training and we use the element of surprise coupled with the terrain.”
Pushing the men on, we didn’t stop as they wanted to. Trajan was already laying siege to the town, so we were close to the wire.
We pushed through the night, in the snow and cold, arriving as dawn broke. Fortunately, the snow had stopped any attacks during the night, so the town was still firmly in enemy hands when we finally arrived.
Iona had pulled the girls back even further, so had a good fire going in a deserted village. Apparently some enemy riders came through and as there were just a few women in the village, thought nothing of it. Iona had started fires in all the empty hoses and slaughtered some cattle. The men were only too delighted to have a hot meal and somewhere to rest out of the cold and damp.
Once having eaten and rested, they started assembling the apparatus.
The basis was a chariot, but pushed instead of pulled, as per my original idea. However, the men had come with variants involving foldable wings, behind which infantry could advance under cover from arrows. They were very basically horse pushed tanks, giving protection to the crew and around forty foot soldiers at the same time.
The protection was to the front and overhead, so reducing any archer’s advantage as the ‘tank’ closed the distance between them and allowed the infantrymen to then undertake close-quarter combat with archers who wore little or no armour and possessed only the minimal of back-up weapons. They were not swordsmen as they hoped never to be that close to a determined and well-trained man with a sword.
A great cry from the Roman ranks drew our attention to the fact the city defences had fallen. Rapid deployment of cavalry indicated that Decebalus was probably in flight, so I knew the end was imminent, which meant the beginning was as imminent.
Gaius ordered his people into position. We rose on the hill behind the enemy and crested the ridge still under cover of the trees.
As we got to the best possible position, we could see the surge of the legions as they advanced up the now undefended slopes and into the town.
Gaius and I sat on our horses looking down.
“When will they start?” he asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I think as the legions start to make their way back to their supply lines just below. They will not be expecting an attack.”
He nodded.
“So, do we attack them or wait for them to start firing?”
“If we wait for them, they will be so concentrating on what they are doing that they will be taken completely by surprise.”
He nodded again.
“Sounds good. I agree.”
We waited.
Two hours or so went by. The legions started to return to their lines in dribs and drabs. The precision discipline we’d seen earlier was now relaxed.
The first arrows surprised me. In fact, it was the cries of the dying and injured that alerted me to the fact they’d started. In Ed’s life time, gunfire was easy to hear and so we knew when things were heating up. These bows were entirely silent and deadly.
“There’s no time like the present,” I said to Gaius.
He looked at me sharply and then grinned. He drew his sword and waved his commanders to initiate the attack.
Chapter Fourteen
Looking back, I am still uncertain exactly how long our little conflagration took to complete.
They say that those who seek to ambush others are always the most surprised when they are ambushed themselves. That was certainly the case here.