FIFTY-EIGHT: THE WILDS’ SIEGE

  “Welcome, General,” Cassius said as the General’s steed crested the hill, riding between rapidly dug out trenches. Heavily armed teams were already venturing into the forest to chop trees to bring back wood to form stakes. Excavated dirt had been piled up and stamped down to make the trenches sides even higher. Javelins were already being tossed by defenders from their elevated positions to impact into the trickle of imps that came from the far side of the woods.

  “Acceptable work,” Invictam said as he swung his leg over the front of his horse and landed with the harsh clank of armor. For the first time since Cassius had met him, the General wore his full armor. Modeled more closer to the nobility than to the legion, the armor shone with light as the General threw the corner of his fur coat over his arm. A long sword hung from his hip and Cassius recognized the hilt and make as dungeon forged steel.

  “Your orders, sir?” Cassius asked as he fell in line with the General as Invictam walked the perimeter. Everywhere he went men hurried faster under his stern gaze, but never once did Invictam say anything to the men or even acknowledge them aside from a dutiful nod at work well done.

  “Marcus has already sent the first team to enter the second tier?” Invictam asked finally after they had walked across the entirety of the hilltop.

  “Led the team himself with Valeria in case any of the second tier creatures are there. Basilides went with them for his sight skills,” Cassius informed the General.

  “Lady Flavinia seemed in a festive mood. I can assume it was her that led to the mess on the hillsides?”

  “Yes, sir. Said she needed her morning exercise," Cassius said, managing to keep a straight face as they stopped by the General’s horse. The great beast hadn’t moved a single step, simply leaning its brown head down to graze on the purple grass that was trampled into the dirt.

  “Reports from Villa Ore Mundi said a portal is what allowed that devil to come across. They sacrificed their own men to let the beast across and your report had the witch’s anima caught in similar runes. I have to assume that this infestation of monsters is from the sacrifice of the witch. I need to know where it is.”

  “You wish for me to find it?” Cassius asked. He turned back to look at the streams of hunched over imps as they came in ones and twos out of the forest only to die to a javelin or arrow from one of the Equites.

  “No, I have scouts for that. I want you to be present and in front of the men. Slay the imps and make it look easy, brighten their moods if you can. Until we have a target this is going to be a siege,” Invictam said with a frown.

  “Can we withstand a siege, sir?”

  “Water, food, shelter. We have several water casks like yours that ensure we have water. We are building our shelter. Food is our weakness here. We will need to find the enemy quickly and destroy them in short order.” Invictam stopped and looked at Cassius before his frown faded and nodded to himself before he asked.

  “If you were in charge of these creatures, how would you work to destroy us?” Cassius stopped and thought over the question as he looked over the long line of legionnaires as they worked their way up the hill. Nobles rode on either side of the columns acting as guards as the legion advanced to the top of the hill. With so many men and horses it would be crowded up here and there would be no shelter from the elements.

  “I would have worked to destroy you in the forest where you would struggle to maneuver. Imps have better mobility than the men and fear not spear nor mana. That is what I would have tried to do,” Cassius said.

  “And since our enemy did not do that? What can we assume or guess?”

  “Incompetence?” Cassius said.

  “Dangerous assumption. Underestimating your foe can be just as disastrous as overestimating yourself.”

  “Lack of a formal structure then. They do not have outriders or can not properly contain a horde of this size. They are beasts at best from what we have observed with limited intelligence.” Cassius slowed and thought more about what the General was poking at.

  “That could be an element to it.” Invictam did not sound impressed as men saluted him as they passed by. Every now and then Invictam would nod to a passing legionnaire but otherwise he kept a stern face as Cassius thought next to him.

  “They do not think like we do,” Cassius finally said. Invictam nodded at once.

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  “They are alien to us and we must not assume that they follow the same logic we do. This could be what they deem military action, a stumbling horde of beasts ravaging their foes' lands. Or it could be as you guessed; that the horde is too large and can not be contained or directed well. Or something else entirely.”

  “And if we can not guess what their logic is then we can not predict what they will do,” Cassius inferred.

  “Not accurately. Which is why we must gather information on how our foe works, how they think, what they believe in, and what their victory conditions are,” Invictam said.

  “Victory conditions, sir?” Cassius asked.

  “How must the battles go for them to declare a victory. Is it the entire annihilation of our forces? Or is it subjugation? Or are they perhaps uncaring at all about us and we are just an annoyance to their primary objective? If we can ascertain what the victory conditions for our foe are, then we can make informed choices,” Invictam explained.

  “What are our victory conditions?” Cassius asked. Invictam smiled slowly, a long grin that stretched across his taciturn face as he nodded.

  “That is just as important if not more so than anything else. You will not be given a Baton of Command soon, but as a General when we set out we must know our victory conditions. When I earned the title Imperator it was the total annihilation and subjugation of a rebelling province. I put to the sword thousands of people in acts of butchery that defy humanity. That was the victory conditions placed upon me by the Senate. To show all that none can stand above them no matter how far they are from Aurum.”

  Cassius swallowed hard as he looked out the corner of his eye at the General. Invictam was not an imposing man, but as he stood there in his fur cloak and polished armor in martial splendor, Cassius could sense something more. Destiny or fate or simple willpower emanated around the man, a bending of the world as if Invictam could simply warp reality to his whims. This was the Imperator of the Republic. A force of disciplined carnage in human flesh.

  “And our victory conditions, sir?” Cassius asked again.

  “I can see Basilides attention has already sharpened your mind. We have multiple victory conditions here. The legion’s objective is punitive in nature while also being exploratory. We are to destroy those who have done us harm while also mapping out and scouting the area around the Shifting Wall.”

  “And yours is to reform the legions by scaring the senators,” Cassius said.

  “And what is the senators’ victory condition?” Invictam asked.

  “Discredit you. Weaken any possible threat to their powerbase,” Cassius said.

  “Good, you have been paying attention. Now, each of the senators will have their own goals and objectives, but that will fray the point of this too far for you now. In time you will learn to balance out all of these variables.”

  “How does knowing all of this change what we are to do, sir? We must reinforce this hilltop and destroy the summoner, same as it was when Marcus led us across the Shifting Wall,” Cassius said.

  “How one accomplishes their goal can matter just as much as accomplishing it. If the senators use their guards to land a decisive blow in the battle they will steal the legion’s battle glory. It would diminish my own importance and while not a stain on my honor it would not inflate it. I must be wary of one of them, or even all of them, doing something foolish like leading a charge out to attack a critical objective.”

  “Which would change how you deploy your legionnaires,” Cassius said. Invictam nodded along as his smile faded as the subjects of their talk came into view. Nestled inside a cordon of [Praetorians] and [Varangians] the senators rode horses while looking at the imps with scornful gazes.

  “Sir? If the senator’s victory objective is your diminishment, is that not in direct contrast to your objectives of reformation and expansion of the legions?”

  “You see the problem now. I must make them act against their own political interests. To do that they must truly be frightened, to know that civilization ending threats are right beyond the Shifting Wall. Which has stopped shifting,” Invictam said.

  “You will want to bring the imps towards us. Massive waves of them to strain our legion while they watch the unending tide.”

  “That is a possibility. Not one I would enjoy,” Invictam said.

  “Many would die in a holding action like that,” Cassius said. The imps might be weak to him now, but how they had ravaged his original file still haunted him. Hunger beyond reason lurked in those creatures, they would flay themselves to simply bite flesh, dying in droves for every man they killed.

  “They would. I do not enjoy defensive actions in general. They limit my ability to maneuver and apply pressure to my enemies. I wish to find their lair and meet them there and crush them there.”

  “There are already tier twos in their numbers, sir,” Cassius said.

  “I heard from a runner. If you truly wish to rise higher than just a sword you must know that politics run the republic whether you like it or not. And those politics will follow you to the battlefield,” Invictam paused as the senators rode up to them.

  “Sometimes literally,” the General said dourly as he straightened up to greet them.

  “The more I learn, the less I understand,” Cassius whispered under his breath. Invictam snorted softly and nodded his head as the politicians arrived at the siege.