“Some of the men call him the Siege Master,” Artorius said, “both your soldiers and mine have referred to him in such terms. I dare say, he’ll get his chance to prove it soon enough. The locals believe that Mai Dun is unconquerable.”
“Anything can be conquered,” Lyto scoffed. “Still, I suppose we’ll put it to the test soon enough.” He paused and furrowed his brow as he saw three riders approaching them. “Here, isn’t that the messenger you sent forward?”
“I do believe it is,” Artorius replied as he spotted Alaric, accompanied by a pair of troopers from the Indus Horse regiment, who had joined him on his way back. “Let us go see if King Donan has any sense or if he’s determined to face extermination.”
The two men, along with Vespasian and his chief tribune, rode forward to meet the men. The troopers saluted the legate before addressing them.
“The hill fort is barely half a day from here,” one of them reported.
“And what of King Donan?” Vespasian asked Alaric. “We smashed him in battle, we’re set to ravage his kingdom, surely he has to know he’s beaten!”
The saddened expression on the young man’s face told of the king’s differing disposition. “No,” he replied, shaking his head. Clearly Alaric was hoping to save lives, sickened by the slaughter of war. “I was not even allowed to see the king. I told his men that I was sent on behalf of Queen Cartimandua, to plead with him to show reason and spare his people. Donan is convinced that Mai Dun is impenetrable. I was told to tell you that the only way through the gates will be on a ramp made up of slain legionaries.”
“So be it,” Vespasian acknowledged. “Let his people face annihilation for his folly. You will remain with us and bear witness to those in this land who would dare face the power of Rome!”
Alaric simply nodded and walked his horse off to the side of the path, where he watched intently as the huge column of legionaries slowly approached.
“Sir, we also bring word from Tribune Cursor,” one of the troopers spoke up. “We’ve found a good location for staging the army. We’re to escort you there.”
“Excellent!” Vespasian said excitedly. He turned back to the two master centurions and his chief tribune. “We have found our enemy, now we must break him!”
Chapter XXIII: The Siege Master Unleashed
Hill Fort of Mai Dun, Southwest Britannia
September, 43 A.D.
The region around Mai Dun was mostly rolling farmland, though there were sufficient woods for Tribune Cursor to keep to as he guided Vespasian and his senior leaders towards the expanse that led to the eastern gate of the massive hill fort.
“We scouted around the entire hill, and the surrounding areas are all open like you see here,” the Tribune reported.
“Good,” Vespasian replied. “Let them see us coming!”
The men dismounted and walked to a small clearing, where Cursor and his men had scrawled out a crude depiction of the hill in the dirt.
“The northern and southern slopes are all very steep,” Cursor explained. “We could not see any palisades or wooden fortifications at the top. From what we could gather, there are two, perhaps three sloping ramparts encircling the fort.”
“An impressive feat of engineering,” Lyto observed. “Is the east gate the only feasible way in?”
“There is one to the west,” Cursor said, pointing to a spot on his makeshift earthen map. “However, the slope is very steep here as well. Something else, though it’s hard to tell from this vantage point, but this hill is huge. We simply do not have the numbers to completely encircle it. To be blunt, I can understand why the locals think this place is impenetrable.”
“And from what we’ve gathered from interrogations,” Artorius added, “An entire town sits atop with supplemental farm fields, livestock, and its own wells. No real chance of starving them out in the short term.”
“Agreed,” Vespasian replied. He was kneeling on the ground, looking back and forth between Cursor’s diagram and what he could see of the hill behind him. “And as our cavalry commander has pointed out, we do not have the numbers for a full encirclement anyway; meaning they could still ferry supplies and food in and out. Besides which, time is not something that is on our side. Plautius wants this hill fort broken quickly, lest a lengthy defense give other nefarious rebels an incentive to continue in their futile struggle against us.”
Shouts and a commotion of men crashing through the trees alerted them. Two barbarians stumbled into the glade, being prodded on by several mounted cavalry troopers with their lances.
“We found these two skulking about off the main road,” one of the soldiers reported. “No doubt they were spying on our advancing columns.”
“Well, of course they were,” Vespasian replied calmly. “We would do the same.”
He then dismissed the troopers and had a couple of on-hand legionaries drag the two men to their feet. They were grubby and disheveled, looking like they hadn’t slept in a couple days. One of them, who appeared to be much older, spoke quickly, in a language the Romans could not understand.
“What is he saying?” Vespasian asked Alaric.
“He’s speaking awfully fast,” the young man replied. “Something about meeting your doom on the bloody slopes.”
“Oh, fuck this!” Master Centurion Lyto snapped before kicking the man hard in the stomach.
“Easy there,” Vespasian said, placing a hand on his shoulder. He then turned to Alaric. “Tell the older one that he is to return to Donan and inform him that if he does not surrender immediately, everyone inside Mai Dun will meet this man’s fate.” He then nodded to Lyto, who drew his gladius and stabbed the younger man in the stomach.
The lad gave a piteous cry through clenched teeth as his bowels were run through. The older man gave a scream of sorrow, which was met by the brutal stomping of several legionary sandals.
“Get him out of my sight,” Vespasian ordered. The soldiers drug the screaming man along with the twitching corpse of what they guessed might have been his son.
“This is going to take careful timing,” Vespasian observed as he continued to scan the hill as if nothing had happened.
“Sir,” Artorius spoke up. “I request that my three cohorts lead the attack on the east gate.”
“Very well,” Vespasian nodded. He looked out ahead and pointed. “Those rolling mounds by the gate are not very large, and if they have all their warriors massed there, it could turn into a bloody grind even with artillery support. Once your men are committed, I’ll give the order for the supplemental assaults on the flanks. However, given the steepness of those slopes, the main task of taking this hill falls on you. Well, gentlemen, that does it. We’ll camp here for tonight, get the men a good, hearty breakfast in the morning, and then send those impudent bastards to oblivion!”
“All units are in position, sir,” the chief tribune reported the next morning as he rode up on his horse.
Vespasian simply nodded and made one final mental assessment of the task at hand.
The commanding legate was on foot, electing to advance with the primary assault elements who would attack the east gate. With him was a pair of equite tribunes, his aquilifer, cornicen, and a single squad of legionaries. His master centurion was with his cohort, which Vespasian had placed on the extreme right of the huge formation. Part of Lyto’s mission was to reinforce the Batavian auxiliaries who came to support them, as well as to make certain no Durotriges escaped from the western entrance.
Centered on Vespasian were not his own soldiers, but those of the Twentieth Legion’s First Cohort. Their Fifth and Eighth Cohorts positioned on their immediate flanks. Artorius stood to Vespasian’s left, also eyeing the ground to their front and envisioning what had to happen within the next couple hours. Behind him stood his cohort’s signifier, along with another soldier bearing the square red vexilation flag of the Twentieth Legion, something that legionary cohorts carried whenever they were attached out from their parent legion.