Just like yesterday and the day before yesterday, he thought grimly, shifting his attention to the left. The Persians had developed a frustratingly efficient means of advancing against the Legion opposition. Aurelian's troops would deploy behind a natural barrier-in these swampy lowlands a canal, tributary arm of the Nile or marsh-and dig in with spade and mattock, throwing up a rampart faced with stakes. The Persians would advance, encounter the barrier, then fell back. The next day, or perhaps the day after, the excrement-faced mobehedan sorcerers would savage the Roman fortifications with fire and lightning and ghastly phantoms. While the legionaries suffered and died, unable to strike back, a heavy flanking attack would be launched to the left or right, wherever the ground was more suitable. After a sharp engagement, the Romans would be forced to retreat.
Aurelian could count the number of Legion thaumaturges still alive on the fingers of both hands. The levies from the Egyptian temples had been slaughtered in the debacle at Pelusium. Those priests still living had been sent back to Alexandria a week ago, most of them wounded, in mule-drawn carts. The prince fought this hellish, vermin-infested delaying action without sorcerous support. He'd never seen such casualties. Those burned by the foul green flame were the worst-many lived through the blow, but there was no way the Legion healers could tend to them all. More than once, Aurelian had ordered the wounded slain as a mercy. In this dank air, filled with swarming clouds of gnats and flies, men's wounds suppurated in a day and gangrene set in within two.
Choking back rising nausea, Aurelian tried to focus on the line of battle. There, where the orchard ended and some open fields ran alongside the shallow river, a sharp melee raged across the open ground. Two cohorts of Romans, fighting shoulder to shoulder, mixed it up with a crowd of men in brown-and-tan robes. A shrill wailing touched the prince's ears. Arabs, he thought glumly. Fanatics. The desert tribesmen expressed no fear of death, hurling themselves into the fray with reckless abandon. Aurelian had no idea where the rebellious Greek city-states had found the mercenaries, but he doubted they were being paid in any mortal coin. Luckily, not many of the religious zealots seemed to be with this wing of the Persian army.
After breaking through at Pelusium, the Persians had split their army into two columns. One advanced along the northerly axis of the Boutikos canal, a waterway running across the Nile delta from east to west. This force, as far as Aurelian had seen, seemed to be composed mostly of the Persians and the infantry contingents of their allies. A second force-the main body of the Greek rebels and the Persian horse-had swung south, taking the Roman military road sweeping along the southern edge of the delta. The hard-surfaced road was the long way 'round, but passable for cavalry. Both canal and highway led, inevitably, to the gates of Alexandria.
"Runner!" Aurelian called, swinging down from the wagon. A legionary turned toward him, bare head swathed in bandages. One eye watched the prince, the other obscured by a ruined flap of skin. The prince looked him over, feeling the constant sick churning in his stomach spike. He recognized the man-one of the young patricians who had joined his expedition to learn how to be an officer.
"Caius, get over to the left and tell whoever's in charge to disperse his men." Bitter anger was plain in the prince's voice. This campaign forced a harsh new reality even on the tradition-bound legionaries. Standing in steady lines, shoulder to shoulder, was sure death if one of the Persian sorcerers was nearby. "When the reserves come up, they must advance in loose order! No bunching up!"
The legionary jogged off, disappearing into a stand of willows. Aurelian waved his bodyguards and aides over. "Where's the next place we can dig in?"
"Fifteen miles west, lord Caesar," grunted Scortius, his head of engineers, waving toward the water. "This canal we've been falling back along crosses the Bolbinitis channel beyond the town of Bouto." Aurelian saw a flash of despair in the older man's expression.
"How far to Alexandria from there?" the prince asked softly.
"Less than fifty miles." Scortius looked lost, his craggy old face slack with exhaustion. Only decades of strictly-held Legion discipline kept the veteran from weeping. The prince clenched his own jaw, measuring distances in his mind. Scortius took a breath and continued. "From the crossing over the Bolbinitis, the canal runs straight southwest into the Kanobikos channel at Hierakonpolis and meets up with the military highway from the south. That's the next place to make a stand." Scortius swallowed. "Unless Fourth Scythia has been flanked down south… then the pus-eating Persians could be behind us already."
Aurelian put his hand on the upright of the wagon to keep from swaying. His stomach turned over again, a hot coal of pain burning down in his gut. Nothing impressed Aurelian about the Persian preparations for this campaign more than their provision of shallow-draft boats. Poled by skilled river men-from Mesopotamia, doubtless-the King of King's river flotilla let the invaders use any canal or arm of the Nile as a swift means of advance. Aurelian and his officers struggled to keep from thinking of water as a defensive barrier. Against this enemy, a river was a broad road. "Can we block the canal?"
Scortius shook his head, gray hair hanging lank beside his face. "We can fill the canal with mud or bricks or block it with sunken boats-but they've the men to clear most any obstruction we can put in. And if we're forced back to the main channel of the Nile? The river's a quarter-mile wide! We don't have the men, material or time to make a dam."
"Very well," Aurelian replied, forcing confidence into his voice. Can't spook the men with my own fear. "We fall back to the Bolbinitis as we've done the past week, cohorts alternating. All wounded into boats and back to Alexandria at best speed. Scortius, get your engineers back to Hierakonpolis as fast as you can. If the gods smile even a little bit, the Fourth Scythia has kept the Arabs at bay and they won't be blocking our retreat."
The engineer nodded wearily, knuckling sweat from his eyes.
"At Hierakonpolis…" the prince continued, trying to marshal fatigue-addled memories, "the military highway comes up from the south, goes over the Boutikos canal, then makes a turn west and vaults the Nile channel. Both crossings are arched bridges. Use the stone-I remember enormous granite pilings and a heavy roadbed-to block the canal. We'll make a stand at Hiera on the eastern bank. If we have to retreat again, we'll use the Nile bridge, then destroy the main span." Aurelian summoned up a feeble grin. "That should make a fair barrier for their damned boats."
"Yes, my lord." Scortius nodded. "We'll do what we can."
A column of legionaries tramped past, heads bent in exhaustion, the setting sun throwing a hot glare in their faces. The air was so muggy their passage didn't even raise a pall of dust from the road. Instead, their hobnailed sandals squelched wetly in a slurry of watery mud. Aurelian squatted in the shade of a farmhouse gate, a courier's pouch opened on the ground in front of him. His guardsmen were sound asleep under the eaves of an abandoned stable, their boots lying out on a bricked patio, drying in the last remnant of the day.
The prince brushed flies away from face, reading the dispatches with a steadily sinking heart. The governor of Lower Egypt was in a panic, urgently requesting troops from Aurelian to police the port and streets of Alexandria. So many citizens had fled, crowding any ship sailing west or north, that refugees flooding in from the countryside had begun looting the abandoned shops and houses. Squatting and larceny was the order of the day. Civil order, in the opinion of the governor, was close to collapse. Crushing the papyrus sheet into a crumpled ball, Aurelian pitched the letter aside. There will be order aplenty, when we're forced back to the city, he thought savagely. I'll deal with this fool of a governor then, if he's still there. And any looters.