Chapter 16 – Scipio's Sabre
Marcus Scipio and the Battle of New Serai, 1770 AD
Part 6 - Conclusion
Scipio could feel his stomach clenching as he walked out from behind the dubious safety offered by the barrels he and his men had stacked into one corner of the square. The barrels were filled with gunpowder; he had intended to ignite the explosives here at a weak point in the city walls, opening a breach and allowing the Romans to infiltrate the Mongolian city of New Serai. Before he could complete his mission, however, a squad of Mongolian cavalry had arrived in the square. If any of the Mongolians fired, he’d likely strike a barrel and ignite the gunpowder within, which would lead to a chain reaction with the other barrels. Scipio’s mission objective would be accomplished, but there wouldn’t be much of him left upon which to pin a medal.
So instead he’d tied a strip of white cloth around his rifle’s bayonet and now walked out from behind the cover of the barrels. The rifle was slung over one shoulder now, the strip of cloth fluttering from it in the gentle early morning breeze. He had no idea what he was going to do; he’d just wanted to keep the Mongolians from firing at the barrels, and a truce seemed like the best way to do that. Beyond that, though, he was all out of bright ideas.
Scipio scanned the group of a dozen Mongolian horsemen opposite, and his eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in anger when he spotted the group’s leader. He was a middle-aged man with a bald head and a black patch worn over one eye. Instead of sporting a carbine, he held in his right hand the large, heavy sword of a cavalry officer; the silver epaulettes on his uniform denoted him as a full colonel. He was the man who’d killed Private Li Wei, a man Scipio had personally sworn to kill.
“I know you,” Colonel Subotai said in nearly unaccented Latin, his one good eye narrowing when he saw Scipio.
“And I know you too, you one-eyed bastard,” Scipio replied.
Subotai grunted, amused at the insult. “That day I led my cavalry against your column. You rallied your men. You fought well.” Scipio said nothing, and Subotai shrugged slightly as though that earlier battle didn’t matter. “And now here you are, inside
my city.”
“It’ll be ours soon enough,” Scipio remarked.
“Perhaps,” Subotai acknowledged, “but not before I send as many Romans to hell as I can. I can start with you, if you’d like.”
“You killed one of my men, you black-hearted bastard. A friend.”
The corners of Subotai’s mouth twitched upwards. “I hope to kill
all your men, and
all your friends, before I’m done.”
Scipio stole a glance to his left. A barrel was there, right beside him. Suddenly he had an idea. As he’d noted during the night, the ground of the square sloped downwards from the corner of the wall, where he now stood, to the warehouse, where the Mongolians were assembled. Scipio almost laughed. It was dangerous, desperate, even crazy, this idea… but it just might work.
“Yeh, well, I have something to give you first,” Scipio said.
“Oh?” Subotai said, watching Scipio suspiciously.
“It’s in here,” he said, nodding at the barrel beside him. He raised his left leg and placed it on the barrel’s top rim. He then pushed the barrel over onto its side, and as it started to roll down the gentle slope of the square towards the Mongolians, he gave it a shove with his boot just for good measure.
Subotai almost laughed at the gesture. He and his men were already moving their horses out of the barrel’s path. What did the Roman expect to accomplish? Then he saw Scipio drop to one knee and pull his rifle from his shoulder. He was looking down the rifle’s sights toward rolling barrel…
At that moment, everything came to Colonel Subotai in a rush. He spotted the pile of barrels behind and beside the Roman Lieutenant and immediately discerned their contents. A split-second after that, he comprehended the danger he and his men now faced. The barrel was getting closer, rumbling cacophonously as its wooden sides rolled over the cobblestones.
“GET AWAY!” Subotai shouted as he pulled back hard on his horse’s reins, making the beast whinny in surprised and rise on its hind legs, then turn and begin to gallop out of the square.
But his men were too slow to react. By the time they followed their officer’s lead, the barrel was practically in their midst. Which was exactly the moment when Scipio took his shot. The bullet flew fast and true. At such a close range, it easily penetrated the wood of the barrel. The heat the bullet possessed from being fired and the friction it generated as it drove through the barrel’s contents were more than enough to ignite the gunpowder. The barrel erupted in a ball of black, foul-smelling smoke and fierce flame. Splinters of the barrel’s wood and fragments of the metal bands that had bound it flew everywhere.
The shock wave of the blast knocked Scipio backwards into the barrels behind him, winding him. His ears were ringing as bits of wood and metal from the destroyed barrel rained down upon and around him. Across the square, he could see the Mongolians and their horses—or at least what remained of them. The men and their mounts closest to the blast suffered the most, of course. Of one horse all that seemed to remain was a head and a foreleg. The remaining horses were either injured or in a blind panic. One Mongolian rider slumped in his saddle, dead from a piece of shrapnel that had penetrated his skull, as his mount wheeled around and around in a panic. Another horse side-stepped to its right as if drunk, blood pouring from its belly, before it fell over, breaking and pinning the leg of its rider, who screamed in pain and then beseeched his God and his mother for relief. Yet another mount was galloping out of the square in a panic, its rider struggling to control the frightened beast.
Scipio gave his head a shake, then pushed himself to his feet. He turned and ordered his men back to the warehouse, but the ringing in his ears meant he couldn’t even hear his own voice and suspected his men couldn’t either. So instead he began waving and pointing, and they understood him soon enough. A moment later, his riflemen and Nara were all running toward the warehouse, picking their way over the gruesome remains of the Mongolian cavalry.
Scipio brought up the rear. He reached the warehouse door just behind Nara and pushed her towards it. Then he saw her glance over his shoulder and her eyes widened and her lips parted as she gasped. Scipio turned in time to see Colonel Subotai, who had escaped the carnage unscathed, facing him atop his horse from the eastern entrance to the square. Scipio’s jaw clenched. He pushed Nara through the warehouse door, where Necalli took hold of her and pulled her out of harm’s way.
“NO!” Nara shouted, but there was no way the slender Mongolian woman would escape the big Aztec’s grip.
Subotai and Scipio eyed each other appraisingly for a heartbeat. Scipio knew Nara had a point; a lone infantryman facing a mounted cavalry officer was one of the most uneven military matches imaginable. But the man facing him now had killed Private Li Wei. And more than mere revenge was on the line. Marcus Scipio may have been gutter-born and gutter-raised, but since joining Rome’s army he had gained something he’d never had back home: pride. The Mongolian Colonel had killed one Scipio’s men right in front of him, and for that he had to pay.
Subotai spurred his mount and the beast lurched forward, the great war horse achieving a gallop in the time it took to blink. The Mongolian knew Scipio had not had time to reload his rifle, and he had no intention of granting the rifleman such an opportunity. For his part, Scipio clasped his rifle, pointing the bayonet towards the approaching horse and rider. Sweat was dripping down his face and his back, and his heart was racing, but Scipio didn’t notice; his attention was fully focused on the rapidly-approaching threat.
Scipio remembered that the Mongolian had been wise to the trick he’d tried that day the column had been caught off-guard, of slashing a sword or bayonet at the horse’s mouth, so he didn’t bother. Subotai was expecting the Rifleman to dodge to the dubious safety of the warehouse, possibly trying to duck into its doorway. Scipio deceived him there as well. Instead, when the war beast and rider were almost upon him, Scipio pivoted to his right and back-pedalled into the square. Just as the Colonel’s cavalry sword slashed down at his head, Scipio fell backwards and performed an awkward but serviceable and life-saving backwards somersault.
Scipio rolled into a crouching position and raised his bayonet just in time to ward off another slash from the cavalry sword. Instead of trying to arrest the blow, which had broken his sword last time, Scipio instead used his bayonet to redirect the sword away from him. He then twisted the rifle in his hands while he thrust it upwards. Subotai tried to pull his sabre away, but found that Scipio had managed to trap the blade in the narrow space between his bayonet and the end of the rifle barrel.
The rifleman now had an advantage, if only for a moment, but he intended to exploit it. Just as he had thrust the rifle upwards a moment ago, he now pulled it back down, bringing the trapped sabre with it. Subotai, instinctively seeking to kept hold of his weapon, tightened his grip around the hilt, but this allowed Scipio to pull him off-balance so he was leaning out of his saddle towards his opponent. The tall rifleman twisted his wrists again, releasing the sword from the grip of his rifle and bayonet, and swung the butt of the rifle towards the colonel’s head.
The blow knocked two of Subotai’s teeth loose and opened a bloody gash over his ear. He was momentarily stunned, and his horse, left with a limp rider incapable of commanding it, could only shimmy away from the man beside it. Scipio moved with the beast, wary of coming within range of the slashing front or back hooves. He kept hold of his rifle with one hand and reached up with the other to grab the Mongolian’s coat. He pulled Subotai out of the saddle, and both men tumbled to the ground.
The Colonel recovered some of his senses and struck at Scipio’s head. The Roman rolled his head with the punch, just like he’d done in countless tavern brawls back home, and stunned his opponent again with a vicious head-butt. Dazed, Colonel Subotai’s one good eye rolled upwards into his head. Scipio released his grip on the man. He drew his rifle above his head, his grip high on its barrel, and with a guttural cry, thrust the bayonet down. The tip of the blade entered the Mongolian’s throat and ripped a bloody gash in it, spraying the front of the rifleman’s white shirt with a gout of red blood, but Scipio did not stop shoving it down until he heard the bayonet scraping against the cobblestones on the other side of his opponent’s neck.
Breathing heavily and shaking from the adrenaline coursing through in his body, Scipio stood up. He then remembered the Colonel’s deadly war-horse, and looked around in trepidation. He exhaled heavily and his shoulders slumped in relief when he saw that Sergeant Necalli had run out of the warehouse and had grabbed the horse’s bridle. The big Aztec was patting the beast’s flank and muttering something soothing to it in his native tongue.
Scipio was nearly knocked over when someone ran into him and locked arms around him. He wondered for a moment if one of the Mongolian cavalrymen had survived the blast of the gunpowder barrel, but then he felt the soft crush of breasts against his chest and relaxed. He embraced Nara and stroked her hair.
“I thought you were dead,” she told him, her voice shaking.
“I thought so too,” Scipio replied with a relieved laugh. He leaned his head back and looked into her face. Her dark, narrow eyes were shimmering with tears. “I didn’t know you cared, love,” he murmured.
“I wish to hell I didn’t,” she replied as she brushed a stray tear from her eye. Scipio smirked and laughed, and nodded to indicate he understood. It must be hard, he imagined, being in love with a soldier. But then again, it was no easier being in love with a spy.
“Lallena!” Scipio shouted, and the Spanish private quickly emerged from the safety of the warehouse. “Light that bloody fuse and let’s get out of here before any more patrols show up!”
“At once, sir!” Lallena responded and ran forward to where he’d left the fuse among the barrels.
Scipio began to march back towards the warehouse, Nara still in his embrace. He glanced back over his shoulder at the corpse of Colonel Subotai and then he suddenly stopped short.
“Hang on,” he said, “There’s something I need to do…”
Lieutenant Claudius Varius watched as the Roman cannon crew he commanded prepared their weapon for another long and no doubt fruitless day of firing at the solid walls of New Serai. The young soldier was well aware of the impatience of his commanding officers, and of the other men in the Roman army. He shared it. Nevertheless, he knew the walls would eventually fall. It was simply a matter of applying enough force in the same location; the result was inevitable. If only everyone else understood the physics involved as well as he did, maybe they’d be more patient.
Varius had been studying that very subject at the Academy in Ravenna back home when he’d been recruited. Caesar had recognized that properly utilizing cannon involved more that just loading the barrel and firing away. So bright young men like Varius had been wooed by army recruiters to bring their intelligence and skill to the vexing problem of bringing down thick stone walls with nothing more than a metal ball about the size of a man’s head.
“The brass are out in force today, sir,” Sergeant Quintus Pollo muttered to Varius, gesturing with a sideways nod of his head to a grassy ridge behind their position.
Varius glanced over his shoulder and felt his stomach lurch. Almost all of the Roman army’s command staff were gathered at the top of the ridge, sitting on their horses, watching his crew—including General Lepidus himself. The young lieutenant swallowed hard. He’d been criticized by his commanding officers for taking too long and firing too few shots; he’d countered that additional preparations were necessary to ensure better accuracy. Nevertheless, he wondered if such criticisms had filtered up the chain of command. Is that why the command staff were here, to monitor his performance first-hand?
“Well, let’s give them a good show!” Varius told his men, attempting to sound much more confident than he felt. “What’s the wind reading, Private Verenus?”
Verenus was a slender young man wearing spectacles who would have looked more in place in a classroom than a battlefield. He checked the gauges of a windsock he was holding.
“Southwesterly at five knots, sir,” Verenus said.
“Very well,” Varius answered. He flipped through a booklet of tables and figures that never left his side. He paused for a moment to study the numbers and performed a calculation inside his head. “Sergeant Pollo, have the men adjust the barrel to the northeast by… three degrees, and an additional degree and a half of elevation.”
The cannon crew adjusted the weapon, and Varius felt a small surge of pride at how quickly and professionally they responded.
“Ready, sir,” Pollo said.
“You may fire at will,” Varius told him.
The shot wouldn’t do anything dramatic, of course, but Varius was confident that, with his adjustments, it would strike the wall in the exact same spot his crew had been targeting for several days now. Between the efforts of his crew and the dozens of other cannon targeting the city walls, they were sure to see results… eventually.
He raised his telescope—a gift from his father—to his right eye and focused it on their target. Was there a crack there in the wall? Yes, he was sure there was a crack, it certainly looked like one. Maybe it had been there before. No matter, a crack was a crack, and the cannon balls would exploit it and eventually the wall would tumble. It may take several days, but Varius knew the result was inevitable. He felt a trickle of sweat roll down his back as he thought of his unexpected and high-ranking audience. If only they understood…
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Pollo shouted as he lit the fuse at the base of the cannon’s barrel, and the cannon crew all ducked and covered their ears. They already had cotton batting stuffed in their ears to protect against the noise, but the boom of the cannon penetrated into their eardrums and left their ears ringing almost constantly. No member of a cannon crew retired with good hearing.
A second later, the cannon roared and flame and foul-smelling smoke erupted from its barrel, as did the cannonball, flying too fast for the eye to see. The cannon rolled several feet back on its wheels in recoil. Almost immediately, the crew were washing it down with wet sponges to cool the barrel while other men hauled it back into position.
Through his telescope, Varius watched the target, waiting to see a puff of masonry dust to indicate the ball had struck home. Any second now…
Just then, a sound like the thunder from a dozen simultaneous storms rolled over the plains and hills outside the city, making every Roman flinch and unconsciously take a couple of steps back. All eyes were pulled towards the city, where an enormous fireball lit up the morning sky, briefly glowing brighter than the morning sun before turning into thick, black smoke. Masonry from the corner of the wall where the explosion had occurred flew outward. The explosion was then followed by another loud thunder-like rumble. As the Romans watched in stunned silence, the section of the wall where the explosion had occurred cracked, then crumbled and collapsed. Huge sections of the wall fell into the glacis, accompanied by smaller boulders. When the smoke and dust cleared, the Romans saw, to their astonishment, that the explosion had opened a huge breach in the wall, and that the rubble practically formed a natural staircase leading to it.
Varius was watching, shocked into silence like everyone else, when he noticed a horse standing beside him. He looked up and saw a Roman Major with long, dark moustaches looking at the breach appraisingly. Then the Major looked down at Varius and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards.
“An exceptionally fine shot, Lieutenant,” Major Scaurus said to Varius in a nonchalant tone.
“Er… th-thank you, Major…” Varius stammered as he tried to work out, in his head, what had just happened. Perhaps they’d overshot the wall and hit a powder magazine…?
“As you were,” Scaurus said, then turned his horse and trotted back to his General, chuckling softly as he rode.
Scipio watched with the rest of his men as the Roman army marched into New Serai. The riflemen were standing to one side of the city’s central square as Roman infantry and cavalry filled the space, asserting their control over this new acquisition for the empire in a very public fashion. Some Mongolians had gathered in the square to watch, though most had remained in their homes. They watched in silent resignation, though a few of the men paused to spit desultorily on the ground every now and then.
The Romans had poured through the breach in the walls in seemingly endless waves, and without Colonel Subotai to lead the garrison, the Mongolians had put up only a token resistance before surrendering. Scipio had considered his men’s part in the fight to be successfully completed once the gunpowder had been ignited and the breach opened. They were exhausted and they stank of stale sweat and the sewer; they’d spent the entire night hard in either hard labour or dodging cavalry patrols—sometimes doing both at the same time. So, led by Nara, they’d woven through New Serai’s alleys to a safe house where they had awaited the end of the battle.
The tall rifle Lieutenant smiled as he thought of Nara and all she’d done for him and his men. Bless her, but the girl had somehow arranged for them to hide in, of all places, a proper Roman bath—one of the best exports of Roman civilization, he reflected. He and his men had been able to scrub off the stench of the sewer they’d crawled through the night before. Nara had even arranged to have their uniforms cleaned. They were still a little damp, but they no longer reeked. The blood of the Mongolian cavalry colonel had faded from dark red to a dull pink on Scipio’s shirt. Nara had also provided them with a meal, and his men had had time for a little shut-eye before being called to this assembly. Scipio and Nara, however, had not slept, and the thought of how they’d filled the time instead made Scipio smile once again. He was tired, but for the first time in several days, he felt content.
Scipio saluted smartly as General Lepidus and Major Scaurus rode by. The General brought his horse to a halt and stared down his nose at the tall rifleman.
“Hrmph. Yes. Well done… Scipio, isn’t it?” Lepidus said. A little reluctantly, Scipio noted, but the General’s praise was all the more valuable because of how rarely and grudgingly it was given. “Major Scaurus tells me you’re to be granted a Captaincy soon.”
“So I’ve been led to understand, sir,” Scipio responded.
Lepidus just nodded. “Very well. Carry on.”
The General rode to the center of the square, but Major Scaurus climbed down from his horse and approached Scipio. The Major, Scipio noted, was wearing a grin beneath his moustaches, and his eyes were twinkling like those of a proud father.
“Well done indeed, Marcus,” Scaurus said. He then turned serious. “Did you lose any men?”
“Just one, sir,” Scipio replied.
Two if I count Wei, he thought, but did not say.
Scaurus nodded. “Regrettable, but much better than expected, eh?” Scipio said nothing, knowing that the Major had expected all of his men to die on this mission, Scipio included. Then the Major’s eyes, which never missed anything, gazed for a moment at Scipio’s left hip. “Found yourself a new sword, I see.”
Scipio grinned. “Indeed, sir,” he said.
“May I?”
Scipio drew the weapon for the Major. He clasped the blade with his fingertips near the cross guard, careful to keep his fingers away from its razor-sharp edges, and allowed Scaurus to grasp the weapon’s hilt. The Major’s eyes widened a little as he took hold of the sabre and was moderately surprised by its weight. He held the sword upright and looked at the blade appraisingly. It was long and straight and sported a double-edge; combined with its weight, it was a deadly weapon—even a blow with the flat of the blade, if solidly struck, could crush a man’s skull.
“A fine blade,” Scaurus said. “I doubt
this one will break in a fight. A Mongolian cavalry sabre, unless I miss my guess?”
“Yes, sir,” Scipio said.
Scaurus glanced at Scipio. He studied the big rifleman’s height and broad shoulders and reckoned silently that he could ably wield the sword even though it was designed to be used from the back of a horse.
“How did you get it, if you don’t mind my asking?” Scaurus inquired.
Scipio shrugged. “Found it lying in the street, sir,” he said, which was true enough.
“Did you now?” Scaurus said with a knowing grin. “Did you indeed. Very well…
Captain Scipio,” Scaurus said as he handed the weapon back to the rifleman. “Good work. I’ll be in touch.” The Major climbed back on his horse, his grin still in evidence beneath his moustaches.
As Major Scaurus had a moment before, Scipio held the sword upright and studied it thoughtfully. The late afternoon sunlight shone off of the polished steel. Colonel Subotai’s sabre had killed Private Wei, but he was the last Roman who would fall under this blade. Scipio would use it against Rome’s enemies now; there was some poetic justice in that, which he thought Wei would have appreciated. It didn’t make up for the loss of the young man’s life, but it would do.
It was Scipio’s sabre.
