Authors: David Drake,Janet Morris
Pauli’s wet mail gleamed in each flash. The steel links would be a good ground. Rebecca wondered what would happen if a bolt
hit him.
If lightning killed Pauli Weigand…
If lightning killed Team Leader Weigand, Riders Carnes and Barthuli would make their way to Xanten, neutralize the two revisionists
remaining, and wait for pickup by TC 779.
Unless Rebecca was standing close enough that the stroke killed her also, instead of just killing the part of her that would
die with Pauli.
He saw her looking at him and smiled. His faceshield was transparent from the outside, but rain streaked its slick surface.
Gerd stood up with care born of stiff muscles and the slick leaves underfoot. “I believe we can cross now,” Gerd said via
their headbands, safer than trying to talk over the storm. “There isn’t a way around the fighting for farther than I can view,
even extrapolating beyond the sensors’ real range.”
“Then we go through,” said Pauli. “Just give me a vector. I’ll lead from here on.”
Rebecca saw the analyst’s nose wrinkle, though the
tsk
his tongue made against the roof of his mouth didn’t transmit. “I may wander off occasionally, Pauli,” he said, “but I hope
I can usually be trusted to carry out my duties when I’m present. I will continue to lead.”
Gerd set off through the brush, holding the sensor pack in front of him in both hands. Pauli slid his left hand down to the
reins and followed. He held his pistol in the other hand, ready to act if a band of howling Germans came out of the night
onto them. He didn’t like putting the analyst in front when they knew there were warriors nearby, but Gerd was right: the
sensors should be in the lead.
“Come on, horse,” Rebecca said to her shivering animal. She stroked its neck. “I know, none of this was your idea, but life
isn’t fair.”
T
wenty meters to the right, Pauli Weigand saw a score of Roman soldiers and civilians stand circled, trying to defend themselves
against hundreds of capering Germans. This part of the forest was sandy bog. The trees were cypress, spaced more widely than
the oaks and larches of firmer ground, and the undergrowth grew only waist high. Rain and darkness hid the team from the fighters,
but it was still closer contact than Pauli would have chosen.
Thermal vision gave Pauli a good view of the fighting; he could have done without that also.
Most of the Romans had shields: thick, leather-covered ovals of cross-laminated birch. They knelt so that the curved bottom
edge could rest on the ground. Two male civilians, wagon drivers by the broad leather hats both wore, huddled behind military
shields they’d picked up.
The only woman among the defenders had a dazed expression and a short German spear whose tip was bloody. The merchant beside
her held a small brass-faced buckler in his left hand and a leaf-shaped sword of Greek pattern in his right. He looked as
if he knew how to use his weapons and the legionaries certainly knew how to use theirs; but it wasn’t going to matter, and
everybody knew that also.
The defensive circle had contracted as victims fell. A dozen Roman bodies lay outside it, sinking noticeably into the wet
soil. There were two Germans as well. More warriors lay against tree roots where their fellows had dragged them wounded or
dead.
A dozen Germans charged, shouting and waving spears. They were commoners. None had a sword, body armor, or a metal helmet,
though a few wore cone-shaped leather caps that would be some protection against a blow from above. Their round bucklers were
made of wicker covered with cowhide worn hair side out to give each shield a distinctive pattern. Most of them were barefoot
and bare-chested, their only garments breechclouts and sometimes a short fur cape.
Legionaries rose, lifting their heavy shields with difficulty from the ground. Two days of driving rain had soaked the wood
and leather, doubling the shields’ weight and making them hard to move, much less handle in combat.
The Germans fenced, staying just out of contact. Mud squished between their toes. The Romans held their places.
Several warriors stepped back, butted their stabbing spears in the ground, and began throwing the all-wood javelins they carried
in sets of three or four in their shield hands. Even at such short range the darts couldn’t penetrate Roman shields, but one
stuck a legionary beneath his helmet’s cheekpiece.
Bawling with pain and frustration, the Roman lurched forward. The missile flopped from his face. He thrust his own long javelin
into a warrior’s shield.
The German hopped nimbly away. Other warriors attacked the legionary from both sides. A spear pierced the Roman’s thigh. He
shouted and staggered back, dropping his javelin.
Two legionaries stepped out to cover him. One chopped overhand at a German who didn’t dodge swiftly enough to avoid a shearing
scalp wound. It bled like a waterfall. The Roman shouted in fierce joy and sloshed forward to finish the job. A javelin from
the other side of the circle caught him in the neck. He pitched forward on his face.
The legionary with the leg wound stumbled. A warrior thrust the third of the advanced Romans through the face because the
victim couldn’t shift his waterlogged shield in time to block the spear. Germans surged through the gap in the circle before
the tired defenders could back closer together for mutual support.
Romans turned to meet the warriors leaping onto them from behind, but fatigue and their heavy equipment slowed them. Warriors
rushed the defenders from all sides. The Germans’ own numbers worked against them for a moment, but only a moment.
The merchant broke free of the crush. His intestines dragged behind him in coils. He took three steps forward and fell. A
warrior bellowed in guttural triumph, brandishing a bloody Roman sword in one hand and the woman’s head in the other.
Pauli Weigand followed Gerd through the muck, drawing his horse along behind him. The smell of blood terrified the animal.
A hell of a trait in a warhorse. The cavalry troop leader who’d sold Pauli the mount wouldn’t be spending the money he’d bilked
from the emperor’s envoy, though.
Gerd pushed into a clump of willows that would screen the ARC Riders from the nearby Germans. Pauli felt the hair on the back
of his neck prickle. Lightning struck a cypress a dozen meters to the team’s left, knocking all of them off their feet. The
thunderclap lifted waves from the brilliantly lighted puddles, but the shock—mental and electrical—was so great that Pauli
didn’t hear the sound.
He struggled to his feet. The horse had stumbled also; by the time it was up, Pauli had both arms around the beast’s neck
to prevent it from bolting. Beckie’s horse charged blindly into the haunches of Pauli’s, staggering both animals long enough
for the ARC Riders to regain control.
The top of the cypress burned briefly. The flames decayed from sulphurous yellow through red to blackness, leaving the air
sharp with the smell of smoke and ozone. A strip of bark three fingers wide had peeled from the peak to the ground. Willows
near the base of the big tree were withered, and a branch broken by the flash now twisted loose in the wind.
The Germans turned from where they were looting the bodies of those they’d slaughtered moments before. The sky god’s finger
had pointed directly at the three ARC Riders.
“Pick up Gerd and ride!” Pauli shouted to Beckie Carnes. She might have argued, but the practical aspect was obvious: the
team leader was much heavier than either of the other two, and the horses were little more than ponies. Beckie dragged herself
into the military saddle, cursing the rain-soaked leather and the lack of stirrups.
Screaming like furies, hundreds of warriors charged their fresh prey.
Pauli aimed over the gelding’s withers and swept his microwave pistol across the Germans. The pulses atomized raindrops. Fog
filled the air between muzzle and target. Beyond the gray wall a few warriors fell, but the rain absorbed most of the weapon’s
output. Steam crackled from the pistol’s receiver as droplets hit plastic heated by continuous use.
Pauli tried to mount with the pistol in one hand. The horse shied. Shouting in frustration, Pauli thrust the weapon under
his sword belt and prayed it’d stay there. Using brute strength and a roll of skin gripped from the screaming animal’s barrel,
the ARC Rider hauled himself aboard. In a battle, they don’t give points for gracefulness.
The sudden fog stopped the German rush for a moment. The leaders hurled javelins. Somebody’d picked up a heavy Roman missile
that might have penetrated, but only a native weapon hit Pauli. The wooden point shattered on his mail coat
He let his horse follow its head for a moment as he turned and tried his pistol on the Germans. A few more tumbled; the central
wooden boss of a shield shattered like a gunshot. The main result was a gush of fog to replace what was dissipating. Some
of the shouts were fearful.
Pauli kicked his mount forward. The horse with Gerd and Beckie astride splashed on just ahead of him.
Pauli didn’t know whether his teammates were riding in a direction Gerd had chosen or just
away,
clearly a good choice with warriors whooping behind for another orgy of slaughter. He waved his gun blindly to the rear,
holding the trigger down. Continuous operation wasn’t supposed to overstress the mechanism, though he wasn’t sure Central’s
technical staff had tested the weapon with rain spattering the hot receiver.
The microwave pistol operated with no sound or flash to betray its use. Normally that was an advantage. An ARC Rider could
drop an opponent in his tracks without warning those nearby that anything had occurred.
Right now the lack of spectacular effects might get the team killed. There were too many Germans to fight even if conditions
hadn’t seriously degraded the pistol’s performance. A huge flash and bang might have frightened the war-band into searching
for safer prey. Warriors with their blood up simply didn’t notice when a few of their neighbors fell down silently.
The revisionist submachine gun was in one of the satchels balanced across his horse’s withers. It was even more useless than
the ARC pistols. The silencer throttled the weapon’s flash and muzzle blast, and the light bullets didn’t have nearly the
authority of a microwave pulse. An adrenaline-charged warrior would ignore a body shot, though he might bleed to death internally
five or ten minutes later.
The lead horse trampled through a screen of ferns. Pauli’s mount was nose to tail. Beckie shouted. They’d ridden into a cleared
strip.
In preparation for the ambush, Hermann and his allies had built ramparts of logs and earth along the expected Roman line of
march. The team had blundered into this one from the rear, where the Germans had camped and waited.
High-stoked bonfires lit the scene. The flames overwhelmed rain that tried to quench them. A band of Germans, many of them
nobles whose horses were tethered nearby, busied themselves with prisoners they’d taken during the fighting.
‘Ride on!” Pauli said.
“To the left!”
Gerd directed, swaying as he tried to stay on the saddle. Beckie tugged her reins with one hand and gripped the analyst’s
waist with the other.
The Germans had overrun part of Varus’ train. Lawyers traveling with the governor had been stripped and tied to frames of
bent saplings. Slaves and servants were roped together nearby, weeping and terrified but not under immediate threat from their
captors.
Pauli kicked his mount to better speed in the clearing. He saw Silius Gallus, the lawyer who’d been speaking the day the team
arrived in Aliso. The Germans Gallus had milked dry through his advocacy encircled him now.
The lawyer’s lips were sewn shut with a thong. Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. One of the Germans waggled Gallus’
ripped-out tongue in his face.
A warrior stepped in front of the ARC Riders and shouted at them to halt. Beckie’s horse shied. Neither she nor Gerd had a
hand free to use their pistols. Pauli shot past his horse’s neck. He rode over the German fallen in a gush of fog.
More Germans sprinted toward the team. Pauli dropped a pair only a few meters from his mount’s flank. Mud from the hooves
of the leading animal splashed back at him. In this rear area most of the warriors had butted their spears in the mud and
leaned their shields against them in miniature A-frames.
A noble wearing checked woolen trousers and a Roman mail coat ran for his horse instead. Others followed, shouting to one
another. Half the Germans present had at least some piece of Roman equipment. Several were dressed in complete legionary garb
with the exception of the waterlogged shield.
Beckie guided her horse into the unbroken forest. They crossed a game trail. A branch slapped Pauli’s forehead even though
he’d tried to duck away from it. The pull-down faceshield smeared away from his left eye. He slid the headband back in place
with the thumb of his gunhand.
The ARC Riders’ mounts were tired and overburdened; the German nobles were better horsemen besides. The team was going to
be ridden down with absolute certainty, even if they managed not to blunder into another of the scattered warbands.
The analyst was looking for a route clear even as he and Beckie staggered through the forest. Specks of light twinkled in
the air over the horse’s neck: raindrops scattering the scanner pack’s display.
Pauli risked a glance over his shoulder. The leading German was barely a horse’s length behind, riding with the reins in his
teeth as he guided his mount with his knees. The German carried a lance more than three meters long and an oblong shield with
a prominent boss. The shield’s face was painted with star bursts and red crescents; glittering brass studs circled the rim.
When Pauli turned, the German noble snarled around his reins and thrust with his lance. The steel point quivered a handsbreadth
from Pauli’s ribs. He swept the pistol around more like a man swatting a fly than a marksman.