This time, his chin was clearly quivering, but his voice was firm enough. “Yes, Primus Pilus.”
“Centurions in Caesar’s army lead from the front, Annius,” I continued, in a calmer tone. “It’s what makes us so feared, and it’s the only real way your men will respect you, if you set an example.”
His eyes were locked above my head, his tone flat as he answered that he understood, telling me that I was having no impact on him at all. I sighed and shook my head, dismissing him to go back to his men. Maybe he will do everyone a favor and get killed, I thought.
~ ~ ~ ~
This was the manner in which we secured the island; house by house, floor by floor. Methodical, professional, and completely without mercy, we killed every Egyptian who chose to fight. Finally, after several blocks of buildings fell in this manner, the remaining Egyptians finally lost their nerve, and on some silent signal, most turned to run for their lives. Many of them simply doffed their gear before jumping into the water to begin swimming to safety; some of them even diving from the roofs of a series of buildings built up to the very edge of the harbor. Another portion, about 6,000 in all, chose to surrender, but we did not put these to the sword, being ordered by Caesar that they would be sold as slaves and we would share in the proceeds.
As further reward, we were given a full watch to ransack the village, the men stripping it clean of anything remotely valuable, and even of things that held value only to the man who took it. It always amused me to see what some of the men thought of as worthy of being taken. Usually it is a statue of one of the local gods, which the man who took it would somehow convince himself is incredibly valuable in and of itself, or that it had some magic power that made it so. Sometimes, however, it was little more than an old brass coin or an amulet made of hair or something similar, but the man who took it would consider it his most prized possession and would kill anyone who tried to take it. I saw men kill each other over a comb, or a cloak clasp worth less than a sesterce. Now, we were in a somewhat unusual situation. Normally, there are merchants among the camp followers whose sole business it is to relieve the men of the items that they have looted, giving them cash money in exchange, but none of these merchants had come with us. Additionally, it was doubtful that any of the Alexandrians would be willing to serve in this function, since their neighbors would probably take a dim view of them profiting from fellow Alexandrians’ misfortune. Therefore, the men were now stuck with their pile of possessions, and I knew from bitter experience that over the next few days there would be a number of disagreements about combs, amulets, and cloak clasps.
Once we secured the men from their spree, we were ordered to begin tearing down the houses along the southern edge of the island, using the stones from the buildings to build a fort to guard the northern end of the Heptastadion. We also took stones and dumped them in the passageway under the nearer drawbridge to block Egyptian access to the Great Harbor. By the time the fort was finished, it was almost dark and Caesar sent orders that my and Cartufenus’ Cohort would return to the redoubt. Loading into the same boats we had come to the island in, we were rowed back to the royal docks. By the time we unloaded, it was now dark, for which I was thankful since it would help us make our dash back to the redoubt. Another factor helping us was the chaos caused by our attack and seizure of the island, so we managed to make it back to the redoubt without a single loss. All told, our losses were almost astonishingly light; a total of five dead, three of whom were wounded on the way to the docks and were never heard from again, with about a dozen wounded, none of them seriously. Before I left, I told Diocles to scour the area to find some wine, and he somehow managed to produce a dozen large amphorae of something that could only be charitably called wine, but I ordered a ration for all the men who participated in the assault. The men passed the night, reliving the battle and bragging to their friends in the other Cohort, waving their spoils and otherwise rubbing it in their faces. In other words, a normal night after a battle.
~ ~ ~ ~
While taking the island was important, it was only a first step; next was seizing the rest of the Heptastadion. The Egyptians held the southern drawbridge, and had built a fort mirroring the one we constructed; an annoying habit of theirs, copying the things that we did. I do not know what was more infuriating, that they copied us, or that they did such a good job of it. Whatever the case, the Egyptians who were manning the fort had to be dislodged, and the day after the island was taken, Caesar gave the order for a total of three Cohorts to make the assault. Two of them would advance up the Heptastadion, while one would make a landing from ships. To provide support, Caesar filled a couple ships with the archers, sending his heavier vessels with their artillery as well. The small flotilla did its job very well, scouring the small fort of defenders, the bulk of whom simply fled back into the city rather than face such a ferocious and sustained barrage, leaving behind a number of dead and wounded. Seeing the defenders flee, the Cohorts from the northern fort left their own defenses, marching down the mole to take the fort without the loss of a single man. The seaborne Cohort landed without incident as well; all of this we were again watching from the rooftops, and Caesar put the men to work immediately tearing up some of the stone docks to use to build a wall and parapet on the western side of the mole, running lengthwise across the bridge.
“What’s he having them do that for?” Sertorius asked, clearly puzzled, but I could not help because I had no idea.
“Maybe he’s trying to screen the Egyptians from seeing what he has planned,” suggested Fuscus.
I bit back a sarcastic reply, chiding myself for letting my personal feelings for Fuscus color my opinion of the validity of his comment. The truth was that what he said was perfectly reasonable, although I did not think it was likely, because I was sure that the Egyptians knew exactly what his intentions were, to fill in the southern passageway the way he had the northern one. Consequently, I chose to remain silent, and we kept on watching as the work continued. One Cohort was given the task of carrying stones from the razed buildings on the island to use to fill in the passageway, earning our sympathy.
“That’s got to be a bastard of a job. They have to carry those rocks more than seven furlongs. That’s what, about a mile?” This came from Sertorius.
“Near enough,” I grunted, trying to disguise the fact that I could not do sums that rapidly in my head.
“In this heat? I’m just glad it’s not us,” he laughed and I had to agree.
Most of the men carrying the rocks appeared to have teamed up, stacking a number of stones on one of their shields, with each man carrying one end. Some of the men had grabbed the wooden boards that are used as stretchers for casualties, but most of the men appeared to be using the first method. I could not help wondering how long it was going to take for them to block up the southern passageway at this rate. Meanwhile, the Egyptians were not idle either, as Salvius called out, pointing to the western side of the harbor. We watched men begin boarding the ships moored there. In a few moments, the first of the Egyptian craft pushed off from the quay, the oars dipping into the water, glinting like silver when they were pulled out. There is something inherently graceful and beautiful in watching a vessel moving through the water under oar, the hull slicing through the water, leaving a steadily widening V behind it, the oars that power it moving in unison, each one powered by one, two or even more men, individuals acting as one unit. Who else but a Roman could appreciate such precision, such teamwork? The fact that the ship was filled with men who were going to try to kill my comrades was the only thing marring the beauty, and I had to force myself to remember exactly what was going on before us. Another ship pulled away, then in a few moments, the water in the harbor was roiling as more and more vessels made their way across to the mole. Then, something happened, and I do not know if it was part of the plan, or if one of the Egyptian commanders, perhaps Ganymede himself, saw an opportunity to put our men working on the mole into difficulty. Whatever the cause, suddenly a number of ships suddenly veered off their course to the southern end of the mole, instead moving quickly towards the opposite end, towards our northern fort. As is our custom, Caesar would allow only Legionaries to perform the labor for his engineering projects, so in order to keep a presence in the fort, he had ordered the seamen from a number of our ships to land and take up positions there. But seamen, foreign-born seamen at that, are not Legionaries, and now Ganymede or one of his commanders was going to put them to a test. In growing shock and dismay, we watched the Egyptian craft disgorge their passengers, who came swarming up the same rocks that we had been forced to climb the day before, although being more lightly armed they were able to ascend more quickly. We could not hear them, but we could just make out the men waving their weapons over their heads as they charged, and I imagine that they were screaming their heads off. Even if they were not, the effect the sight of the charging Egyptians had on the seamen was immediate and dramatic. As we moaned in disgust, the sailors in the fort simply turned to run without putting up even the pretense of a fight, dashing headlong across the mole to the eastern side, back to the ships from where they had come. Men went scrambling down the sides of the mole since there were no quays this close to the northern drawbridge. Naturally, they were forced to stop at the water’s edge and beckon their comrades still aboard ship to come closer so they could climb aboard. No more than a moment later, there was a confused mass of men jammed together at the shoreline, with the pursuing Egyptians beginning to catch the slower of the sailors. Even as all this was happening, the first of the enemy ships heading for the southern end had unloaded their respective contingents at the foot of the newly built rampart, while other ships ranged offshore firing missiles at our men at the wall in much the same way that our archers drove off the original occupants of the fort.