‘Buy the mules, Morban. Leave the rest of it to the grown-ups.’
The next morning saw a repeat of the previous day’s training march, with much the same result once the Tungrians hit their stride. After the lunch break, the legion was sent to weapons practice, thousands of men settling into the mind-numbing routines intended to make the use of their swords, shields and spears second nature when the time came to fight in earnest, but two centuries of the First Tungrian Cohort followed their officers away to a quiet spot between two barrack blocks. Scaurus and his first spear watched in silence as Qadir’s Hamians and Dubnus’s hulking axe men paraded on either side of him, each of the two centuries considering the other with expressions of disparagement. The Tungrians of the Tenth Century loomed over the Syrian archers, every one of them taller and more muscular than the biggest of the Hamians, and Dubnus shared an amused smile with Qadir before barking out an order.
‘Attention!’
The Tenth Century stamped to attention in perfect synchronisation, chests and jaws thrust out pugnaciously, while the Hamians stiffened into the brace with less drama, but equal speed and precision. Julius nodded at Dubnus, and the big man strolled forward, looking up and down the double line of his men.
‘Very good, Tenth Century! The Bear would have been proud of you! You’re still the biggest, nastiest and proudest century in the First Tungrians, but now you’ve got an entire legion to dominate!’
The soldiers stared fixedly ahead, their eyes shining with pride and the memory of their former centurion. Dubnus swept his gaze up and down their ranks with a knowing smile before speaking again.
‘And now, my brothers, you have the opportunity to wield a power so great that it will strike a mortal fear into the hearts of all who oppose the legion’s will. You will be responsible for striking blows into the ranks of our enemies that will demand every ounce of strength in your bodies. And you will perform this duty in combination with our Hamian brothers here.’
He pointed at the archers with his vine stick, fighting to restrain a smile as the eyes of the men closest to him widened with surprise. Scaurus walked forward, beckoning to Avidus, who was waiting with several of his pioneers beside something the size of a small altar that had been shrouded in thick cloth to disguise its purpose. The grizzled centurion nodded to the men waiting around whatever it was that was concealed, and they picked it up, carrying the mystery object forward and placing it between the two centuries. Dubnus grinned at his men.
‘You won’t be needing to lift any more weights to build up your arm strength from now on, my lads!’
The legatus nodded to Avidus, who pulled away the cloth to reveal a machine of wood and metal mounted on a wooden frame. The seam-faced African gestured to the weapon.
‘We have thirty of these beauties, the single most deadly weapon on any battlefield. This, gentlemen, is a Scorpion. It is a lightweight two-man model of the big bolt throwers carried by the navy’s ships and used to protect our legion fortresses. It can throw one of these …’
He took a bolt from Avidus, holding it up to display the missile’s sharp iron point.
‘Out to a range of four hundred paces. It is so powerful that when this bolt hits a man – or a horse – protected by armour at close range, it will tear through that armour and kill the target, quickly and without fail. And this is how it works.’
He pointed at the Scorpion.
‘Load!’
A pair of his men stepped up to the weapon, swinging it to point at three wooden posts joined by a crosspiece one hundred paces distant, the middle post rising above its fellows. Taking a whistle from his belt pouch Avidus blew a single note, and a pair of men hurried out from behind the barrack block closest to the target point. They were carrying between them a shirt of laminated armour and a standard-issue helmet, placing the armour onto the crosspiece and balancing the helmet on the nub of the middle post that rose above it before running for cover. The bigger of the two men standing by the Scorpion had grabbed a pair of winding handles, and was working vigorously to crank a ratcheted slide back down the channel that ran the weapon’s length, his biceps bulging with the effort as he laboured over the mechanism.
‘The Scorpion stores its user’s strength in these …’
Avidus pointed to the machine’s innards.
‘Torsion springs made from animal sinew. As you can see, the bow arms are inserted through them, and are gradually being forced back against the springs’ resistance. When the springs are stretched to the maximum safe extent, the bolt is placed into the channel.’
The soldier working the weapon’s crank stepped back, nodding to his comrade and shaking his aching arms. The other man placed a bolt gingerly into the channel that ran down the machine’s length, sighting carefully on the target.
‘Shoot!’
The waiting soldier pulled a trigger, loosing the bolt in a whip-crack explosion of motion. In an instant the missile was gone, spat across the gap between weapon and target faster than the eye could follow. It struck the armour with a metallic thump, drawing a chorus of appreciative mutterings from the Tungrians.
‘Reload!’
The big man bent to his task again, grunting with the effort as he turned the twin cranks as fast as he could. Sneaking a sideways glance at the Tenth Century’s men, Scaurus smiled to himself at the sight of their massive biceps twitching in sympathy as they imagined themselves working to wind the terrifying weapon. The Scorpion’s operator placed a second bolt into the mechanism, bending to crouch over the weapon, and a hush fell across the parade ground as the watching Tungrians realised what he was attempting to do. With a twang and a thump the bolt smashed the helmet from its resting place on the central post, throwing it back thirty paces to clatter off the wall of a barrack.
‘Cease shooting!’
Avidus blew the whistle again, and the same pair of men re-emerged from their cover of the barrack block, hurrying to collect the battered targets and carry them across to where legatus and first spear were waiting.
‘Look closely, gentlemen.’
The laminated armour was wrecked, a hole the size of a man’s thumb having been punched in the overlapping plates that would have been protecting the wearer’s stomach and back. The helmet was horribly deformed, the bolt that had smashed it almost flat stuck halfway through its thicker iron plate. The soldiers stared at it with expressions of fascination and horror as Scaurus held it up for them to see.
‘The man who was wearing this armour is dead. And so is the man behind him, most likely. The officer who was wearing this helmet is no more than a maimed corpse, with his head burst like a melon that’s fallen off the farmer’s cart. His fellow officers will be terrified to raise their heads for fear of stopping a bolt in the same manner once they see the state of him!’
He strolled across to the bolt thrower.
‘As I said, we have thirty of these beauties, which means we can kill between twenty-five and fifty of the enemy with every shot. But to make the most of this power we need two different types of men.’
He pointed at the Tenth Century’s hulking axe men.
‘Giants, like you, with the strength to make your weapon ready to fire in less than a dozen heartbeats, time after time.’
His gaze turned to the waiting Hamians.
‘And men like you, with the skill to put your shot where it will do the most damage, time after time.’
He grinned at their faces.
‘I know, it’s not what either of you would have expected. But believe me, soldiers, the combination of your brute strength and skill with the bow is going to make the sight of you the most terrifying thing our enemies have ever seen. And quite possibly the last …’