Steam Legion (7 page)

Its arc was invisible to friend and foe alike in the dark of the night, but when the lethal spike fell from the sky, it perforated the back of a man who was watching and laughing as two of his comrades tore at the clothing of one of the women they’d cornered. He barely made a sound as he went down, the arrow buried deep in his lung, gurgling as he struck the ground and flopped around.

Screams of pain would have been nice in Cassius’s opinion, but the gurgling and flopping was enough to attract the attention of the other two and send them scurrying for cover. The women scrambled away—a nice bonus but not his goal—while the Zealots covered themselves in the building they’d just looted.

Pity they hadn’t already set it on fire,
Cassius supposed.
I would have liked to see them choose between the flames and arrows from the night.

He patted the archer on the shoulder and they pulled back into the night. With only three men plus himself, there was no way that Cassius was going to commit to a straight up fight. Luckily, that wasn’t the plan either. For now they were just to harass the Zealots’ thugs, make them frightened and make them angry.

Fear and rage would be the weapons they turned against the enemy on this night, and Cassius suspected that there were few weapons more effective that he could hope to wield. He just hoped that Heron and Dyna came through with their end. The idea had seemed too elegant and irresistible when it presented itself, but now he was worried that they were making this too complex and too prone to failure.

The night will tell. Whoever among us lives to see the dawn will know whether we are brilliant, or simply foolish.

****

Across the city of Alexandria, similar events were playing out as small squads of the Deiotariana Legion ghosted through the city as best they could in armor and field kit. Quiet as thieves they were not, though the studded-leather armor of the archers wasn’t too bad. The heavier Infantry armor wasn’t so quiet, however, but considering the riots going on through the city, a few disciplined military squads were hardly noticeable.

In another section of the city, a group of Zealots just finished setting another building aflame when their Commander arrived beside them with his two guards. He looked them over before nodding approvingly toward the burning building.

“Were any of the Roman unbelievers within?”

“Yes, three adults and four children.”

“Good. Very good work. Move on to the next street, continue according to your orders.”

They saluted and ran off, leaving him to stand and watch the flames lick at the stone and terracotta off the construction’s exterior.

“Burning a city is much easier away from the desert,” he said idly to his remaining men. “Still, even here, there is enough oil and cloth to set the internal frames ablaze.” He half turned to see a troubled look on the face of his youngest soldier. “A problem, Joseph?”

“No, Amichai,” Joseph said, hesitant.

“You may speak without fear.”

The young man took a breath, “The burning of the city I understand, Amichai… but the children?”

“Your concern does you credit, but they are not people, Joseph,” Amichai said seriously. “Remember Deuteronomy….”

The man took a breath before going on and quoting, “If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of this, shall fear and never do such evil as this in your midst.”

“That is the scripture, Joseph. It is the Word of God delivered unto man,” Amichai said seriously. “The Pax forced upon us by these Roman bastards is an abomination before God. They demand that we revere the Emperors as Godly, and for that alone, neither you nor I, nor any of the faithful, shall stay our hand. They are not people, Joseph, they are unbelievers. Our duty before God is to end their lives before they can corrupt those who may be saved.”

Joseph bowed his head. “I see, and apologize.”

“Do not apologize for your doubts. They are normal and speak well of you.” Amichai clasped a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps you may apologize for your timing, as this is not the place or the time for a lesson in the Word, but it is understandable. Remember, we do not do this to punish the unbelievers, it is not about them.”

“I don’t understand.”

The Commander glowered. “Were you not listening? We do not bear them ill will, Joseph, because that, too, would be hateful in the eyes of God. Punishment is His right, and we are not here to usurp His right. This city will burn this night, not as punishment on the unbelievers, but to preserve others from their future corruptions. We condemn their souls to the flames of Hell, Joseph, that many others may see the gates of Heaven. Burn out the disease, afore it spreads and fells the healthy.”

“I see, of course.”

“Good. Now let us move north, to the harbor section. I have more groups there to check on,” Amichai said as he looked toward the sea. “And with the events at the Library earlier, it would be best not to leave them with too much time to think.”

They moved northerly, heading for the harbor, as he’d said. Around them, the sounds of fighting ruled the city, screams in the distance clearly pointing out that they had succeeded beyond Amichai’s wildest hope in their assault on Alexandria. He’d had grave doubts concerning an open assault on one of the Empire’s more important cities; the Library here was known to all points of the compass as the place of learning for civilized men.

Pah. Civilized pigs,
Amichai corrected the thought as he led his men to the harbor.
They believe that their Empire makes them
civilized
, that the might of their Legions can stand against the righteous and the Word. Here is proof that it cannot. For all their power, we easily came within their walls, and now we will slaughter the unbelievers in His name.

For too long the Romans had been looking down on His children, even while supposedly granting them “protected status” within the Empire. Said status was ephemeral at best, coming and going depending on who was in power at the time. The only reason the Romans even permitted temples to remain open was due to the legal fiction listing them as “colleges,” a
gift
bestowed by Caesar.
A gift!
A gift that should never have been needed. Temples were places of worship; they should not be hidden merely so that they might exist without being desecrated by the law.

The massacre of the Garrison in Jerusalem was long overdue. The sheer abomination of forcing temple guardians to offer sacrifices to the so culled
Cult of the Empire
simply boiled his blood and chilled him to the bone all at once.

Contrary to what Amichai had told Joseph, he took a great deal of satisfaction in what they were doing here. Punishment may belong to the Lord, but that was in the afterlife. Here and now, he relished delivering unto the oppressors what they had sown in the eyes of God.

****

“’Ere’s another one. Leader type, I’d say.”

Immune Sevarus of the Deiotariana Legion moved closer so he could look out over the Pedes’s head to see what the man was speaking of. Sure enough, there were three armed men moving down the darkened streets, heading toward the docks. They’d heard fighting in that range earlier, but it was out of their assigned area. Now, however, they had specific tasks to accomplish, so they had ignored it in favor of trailing this new group.

He patted his spotter on the shoulder. “Good eye. Middle one is no thug, that much I’ll swear to.”

Before being pressed into service with the Legion, Sevarus and his “colleagues” were well-known in the dark alleys of Alexandria as the people to avoid if you had a full purse.

“Let them pass. The lead man looks preoccupied with something,” he decided. “Let his trail of thought lead him down a dark alley of our choice.”

“Right.”

They fell back into the shadows, hiding themselves in the crux of an aqueduct support while the men passed. With the enemy inside the walls, the Garrison largely defeated, and the Legion hundreds of mile markers away from Alexandria, the Zealots were almost literally walking around like they owned the entire city.

Time they learned that this is my city.

“Move,” he ordered as the men passed.

His squad—half squad really—had four men whom Sevarus personally picked. He knew them, had haunted more than a few back alleys with them before his Legion days. So when he told them to move, they moved, rushing the men from behind.

It was impossible to move quietly in armor at the best of times, one reason why he’d stripped the Legion-issued Lorica Laminata and told his squad to do the same. So, barefoot and dressed in cloth tunics, they padded quickly behind the trio and struck without slowing.

Two of the three heard them coming, but it was too late by far. A long, slim dagger drove deep into the kidneys of the first, while the second turned just as the short-bladed gladius thrust into his side and exited through his back, severing his spine.

Sevarus and his spotter, however, had other ideas in mind. They hit the leader, hard, slamming him to the ground while he was still thinking about whatever had been preoccupying his mind and held him down as the other two finished with his guards. They’d gotten lucky catching this group off on its own and now had a plan that they intended to enjoy carrying out.

The leader swore at them as they twisted him over, but the four ignored it. There wasn’t a thing he could say that would cause them to let him go, and certainly nothing he could call them that would not be repaid by what was about to happen to him.

“Silence him,” Sevarus ordered.

His spotter, Pedes Gungsun, cold cocked the man with his dagger in his fist, then pulled his captive’s own dagger from his belt. It was child’s play to snap the cheap iron blade off at the pommel. Then he jammed the papyrus-chorded hilt into the man’s mouth, breaking teeth liberally in the process.

“Spit it out,” he hissed in the man’s ear, his tone making a promise, “and I’ll drive it elsewhere.”

“Leave them,” Sevarus ordered as he climbed to his feet. “This one will do.”

The four men left the two cooling bodies face down in the street, picking the single live man up and dragging him down the road.

“There’s a place that will suit just ahead,” Sevarus said. “Gung, take Loren and run ahead. I want to know where their closest groups are and what direction they’re moving.”

The two Pedes saluted, running ahead while Sevarus and the fourth man continued to drag their prisoner along the paved street toward their destination. They hadn’t reached the spot they intended to meet at when Gung and Loren returned, gesturing in another direction.

“There’s a large group, working their way down the street from the docks. They’ll reach the marketplace in a few minutes.”

“Good, that’s perfect. Pick him up,” the Immune ordered.

They grabbed the prisoner and broke into a jog, heading for the marketplace. Their orders weren’t to merely eliminate the enemy this time, but to send a message. None of the Legion soldiers knew exactly what was going on, but they knew the situation. The remaining members of the Garrison were badly outnumbered and clearly couldn’t win the fight without something tilting the odds to their side, so it was something of a relief that they weren’t being ordered into ranks to march out and meet the enemy.

It meant that someone at the top was thinking, and while that could mean trouble as often as anything else, they were already
in
trouble, so they’d take it and be happy.

They arrived in the marketplace well ahead of the Zealots they’d tracked and wasted no time slamming their prisoner up against the wooden trestle that normally served to mount the sign announcing to visitors that they’d located the market.

Tonight it would announce something else.

“Hold his arm out,” Sevarus ordered, drawing one of many daggers from his belt.

They slammed his right arm to the wood, holding in place. The man’s eyes widened, but he couldn’t break free against three strong men holding him in place. Sevarus slammed the blade into the exposed arm, digging into the wood behind the flesh and bone. He left it there for a moment, hefting a hammer casually as he looked in the man’s eyes.

“Did you really think you could come into my city and walk around like you owned the place?” he sneered before hammering the blade deep into the wood. Blood flowed wildly, and he figured he’d cut into the artery but didn’t care. Alive or dead would send similar messages, and arguably dead was more effective. “Put his other arm up.”

The grisly work was done in just a few seconds, really, maybe a minute at most from first blood to finished task. Gungsun yanked the broken hilt from the man’s bloody mouth, smiling darkly at him.

“You can scream now.”

They left him there, cursing them in at least two languages, and most likely more, generally screaming at the top of his lungs. All of that was exactly what they wanted, however, and as they headed out in one direction, they could hear the cries of shock come from the Zealots entering the market from the other.

“I hope the Commanders know what they’re doing, Immune,” Gungsun said with a grin as they ran out of the market, “because we’re leaving some pissed off Zealots wandering around the city.”

“Have you ever heard of a Zealot who wasn’t pissed off?”

“No, not that I can recall. Still, there’s pissed off and there’s enraged beyond measure.”

Sevarus shrugged. “They’re razing our city to the ground, looting what they see, and helping themselves to anything and anyone they wish. What worse could they honestly be if they were angry?”