Conn Iggulden - The Death Of Kings

Julius dismissed the scouts to fetch food and get some well-deserved rest. It would be little enough, he knew.

Gaditicus came to his side, his eyebrows raised in interest as the scouts left.

“We've found him,” Julius confirmed. “Ten thousand of them at the highest estimate. I'm thinking of moving ten miles tonight and then the last twenty or so when it gets dark tomorrow. Our archers will drop the sentries and we'll hit the main force before dawn.”

Gaditicus looked worried. “The veterans will be close to exhaustion if you push them that far in darkness. We could be slaughtered.”

“They're a great deal fitter than when we left their city. It will be hard and we'll lose a few, I have no doubt, but we have surprise with us. And they have marched all their lives. I will want you to organize a fast retreat after that first attack. I don't want them to think about a death struggle against so many. Pitch it to them as a running blow-straight in, kill as many as we can, and away. We get as far away as possible before dawn, and, well, I'll see what shape we're in then.” He looked up through the mossy trunks at the sky above.

“Not long till darkness, Gadi. Make your men ready to move. I'll halt them as close as I can for tomorrow night, but we must not be seen. We'll work on the tactics when we're closer. There's no point planning the details until I can see how they have set themselves. We don't need to beat them, just force them to break camp and move west toward the legions coming from the coast.”

“If they are coming,” Gaditicus replied quietly.

“They will be. No matter what happened after Sulla's death, the Senate can't afford to let Greece go without a fight. Form the ranks, Gadi.”

Gaditicus saluted, his features smoothing. He was aware that any attack would be risky against such numbers, but he thought the night strike Julius suggested was the best choice, given the men they had available. In addition, Mithridates had assembled an army from untrained irregulars who were about to meet a force that included some of the most experienced gladius fighters alive. Against ten thousand, it wasn't much of an edge, but it would make a difference.

As he gave Accipiter cohort the orders to break camp, he watched how the younger men and veterans worked together, quickly and quietly assembling in loose formation until they cleared the woods. Wolves indeed, some of them.

Mithridates had lost his perimeter guards and didn't yet know it. Julius had watched his outer ring for almost an hour, smiling at last when he saw the simple system the Greek king used. Each of his guards stood next to a burning torch set atop a wooden pole. At random intervals, they would detach it and wave the flame above their heads, answered by the inner ring and the others spaced around them.

Mithridates may have been a king, but he was no tactician, Julius had realized. The Wolves had broken the defense with pairs of archers, one to down the sentry as soon as he had signaled, the other to collect the torch and replace it in the bracket. It was quickly done and they were able to draw in to the inner circle. Those men were closer to each other, and replacing them took almost an hour. Julius had urged caution, but even he was growing tense as the time wore on waiting for the last to make his signal, the man completely unaware that only Romans could answer him.

Cabera loosed the final silent arrow and the enemy soldier fell in a shadowy heap without a sound. Moments later, the spot of light illuminated another dark figure who stood calmly as if all was well. There was no alarm and Julius clenched a fist in excitement.

The camp at the foot of the hills was lit by pole torches like the ones the sentries used. Seen from afar, the dark winter night was broken by a sea of golden spots, unwinking eyes that glowed at them as they waited for Julius's signal. For the young commander, the whole world seemed to be hanging on his word. He approached the nearest of his false sentries and nodded to Cabera, who lit an oil-soaked arrow from the torch, firing it quickly as the flames spread toward his fingers.

Gaditicus saw the splinter of flame launch upward and pointed his sword at the camp before them. His men moved in from their staggered position without a single shout or battle cry. They ran in eerie silence toward the pools of light that marked the camp, converging with Ventulus on two sides to cause maximum panic and disruption.

The Greek army had retired with the coming of night, depending on their far-flung rings of guards to warn them of an attack. The first many of them knew of danger was when their leather tents were ripped open and unseen swords stabbed through at their sleeping bodies, killing dozens in the first few seconds. Shouts mingled with screams and the sleeping camp began to wake and take up weapons.

“Wolves!” Julius bellowed, judging the time for silence was over. The excitement swept him as he and his men ran through the camp, killing anyone who stumbled out of their tents. He had told his men to kill two each of the enemy and then fight their way out, but three had fallen to his own blade and he was barely at the end of the first rush. He could feel the panic of Mithridates' men. Their officers were slow to respond to the attack, and without orders, a hundred individuals tried to take the battle to the shadowed attackers, dying in scores on veteran blades. Julius's cry was echoed by Gaditicus's cohort, hundreds of voices adding to the confusion and fear of the enemy. Cabera fired his remaining arrows into dark tents, and Julius cut a naked man down as he tried to bring his sword to bear. It was chaos and in the confusion Julius almost missed the moment he'd sworn he would not ignore.

It came after many minutes, when horns sounded and the running Greeks began to gather in their units. In the tents the Roman forces had missed, the enemy had armed themselves and now began to fight back, orders in Greek heard over the hack and thump of blows.

Julius spun round to take off a man's hand at the wrist as he leapt at him. Every cut with the heavy blade caused awful damage, but his next blow was blocked neatly and he found two men against him and more running in from all sides. They had recovered and it was time to retreat before his Wolves were cut to pieces.

“Disengage!” he bellowed, even as he swung low with the gladius, cutting deeply into an ankle of the closest man to him. The second sprawled over the body as he rushed in, and Julius stepped clear, turning in the space and suddenly sprinting away, his sandals skidding in the bloody dust. His men came with him on the instant, turning and running as soon as they could get free of the press.

Outside the torches of the camp, the night was a black hiding place. As Julius called the disengage, all the sentry torches had been extinguished and the Romans scattered invisibly, disappearing rapidly from the edge of the camp, leaving wreckage and bodies behind them.

The Greek units halted at the edge of the camp lights, unwilling to run into a darkness that seemed to contain thousands of the enemy-a foe they had been told was more than a week of marching away in a different direction. Confused orders were shouted back and forth as they hesitated and the Wolves ran clear.

Mithridates raged. He had been torn from sleep by screams at the farthest end of his camp. His own tent was in the mouth of the narrow pass, and as his sleepy mind cleared, he realized they were under attack from the safe side, where he knew his men had cleared out Roman settlements all the way from the encampment to the frightened cities along the eastern coast.

His ten thousand men covered a vast stretch of the valley, and by the time he had brought his captains to the scene of the attack and begun restoring order, the Romans were gone.