B4 Chapter 16: Less Than It Could Have Been
B4 Chapter 16: Less Than It Could Have Been
The Third Legionnaires wasted no time. The centurion shouted and, as one, they began to advance in formation. Quintus recognized the sharp movements of a group connected by [Unity] and his own rare [Coordinated Offense]. More men pooled at the edges of their formation to keep Quintus and his group from targeting it, while those behind the front lines readied firearms of their own.
Quintus knew well what those firearms could do. He knew what all of these men could do. Understanding the specialties and roles of his men was the bare minimum for a leader, and he’d looked over the reports of each contubernium’s skills more times than he could count. This century in particular was composed of marksmen, though they obviously were held to the same standards as any other front-line fighter. Unfortunately for the opposition, they did not have the same kind of knowledge of Quintus’s skills. Not to mention his group’s.
Before the men had time to move two steps, Quintus’s aquilifer gave a shout of his own. A flood of energy invigorated the nine men as the standard bearer’s buffing skills were dialed up to their maximum. The aquilifer then raised the Legion’s eagle standard and slammed it into the ground, sending out a wave of golden energy that clung to their skin and armor. Finally, he pointed the standard toward their opponents. Quintus felt a sudden gust of wind at his back spurring him forward. He grinned with feral anticipation and drew his standard gladius from his belt.
Then, he charged.
He shot toward the weakest point on the line like an arrow. [Lead From the Front] activated as his men seamlessly fell into a spearhead formation, further spurring their flight forward. He lowered his shoulder into his shield, angling it to ensure its full force struck one particularly nervous man whom he’d identified as a weak point.
The Legionnaire’s eyes widened in panic at the unexpected aggression, and he reflexively gripped the shield with both hands. A poor habit that had evidently not yet been beaten out of him. [Coordinated Bulwark]’s shimmering barrier flickered before him as though to reinforce that fact.
Bone cracked. The man stumbled backward, crumpling to the ground and opening a gap in the formation. But the gap disappeared just as quickly as it had been made. Other Legionnaires slid into the opening from the sides and behind to try to prevent Quintus from capitalizing on the momentary weakness.
He eyed the maneuver with approval. Good. At least the others had taken their training to heart.
A spear slid between the swiftly closing shields to strike directly at his face. Quintus deftly deflected it, letting the steel slide along the haft to slice at the wielder’s fingers. A yelp of pain rewarded his maneuver.
“Overextended! You leave an opening if you hold your spear that way.”
Another slash from his blade struck the man’s shield, staggering him and forcing a wedge into their closing formation. Behind him, his fellow Legionnaires pushed forward to widen the gap further, striking at their juniors and leveraging every slight opening they saw. The men who had been readying their firearms were forced to holster them and focus on defense instead.
The opposing centurion shouted for them to regroup, but the damage was done. Already half a dozen Legionnaires had been trampled or wounded enough to take them out of the fight. The eliminated competitors immediately retreated, falling back toward the edge of the arena where healers would keep their injuries from worsening. Thankfully, some of the enchantments laid on these arena weapons made it much harder to deal a lethal blow to others and made them functionally practice weapons. Not all of the bouts utilized such restrictions, but Quintus didn’t particularly want to risk killing a hundred of his freshly minted Legionnaires to make his point.
Quintus’s formation split. He and half his men turned right while the others faced left, putting their backs to each other as they faced the line that had now been divided into two uneven parts. The larger group facing Quintus pivoted to defend, regrouping to prevent Quintus from getting entirely behind their line. Behind him, Quintus heard the splintering of wood and squeals of metal as the smaller group’s [Coordinated Bulwark] proved insufficient against the sheer force of the incoming assault.
“Encirclement!” The opposing centurion shouted. The man’s name was Conrad, if Quintus remembered correctly. “Reinforce your brothers!”
The larger group instantly swung around, working to connect the ends of their longer line with the struggling shield wall of their allies. One of Quintus’s guards hurled a handful of metal caltrops to the right to intercept the group. As they tried to pick their way across the now treacherous ground, the caltrops exploded into massive starbursts of twisted metal. The elongated spikes took another handful of Legionnaires out of contention and severely hampered the advance from that side.
The attack had more lethal potential than most, but Quintus trusted his man. Besides, he wasn’t one to object to such things. Not when his windblade lacked those protections as well.
They continued their assault, making the Third Legion fight for every step as they continued their encirclement. Quintus heard the repeated twang of crossbow strings as the men behind him sent volleys into the encroaching enemies, their ranged attacks effortlessly covered by their brethren. [Unity] had long since proven its worth and was often designated as a cohort-wide skill. But [Coordinated Offense] wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous. Quintus had been considering replacing the skill among his self-defined contubernium of guards, but now felt glad that he hadn’t.
It took far more effort and losses than it should have, but the Third Legion finally completed its encirclement. By that point, Quintus’s team had managed to almost completely dispatch the smaller group of opponents and tighten into a small cluster. Once the encirclement was complete, the enemy pulled back as well as they could; those furthest from Quintus and his men pulled out firearms to assault them from a distance. Their shots were answered in kind by the Legatus’s group as they also began firing off shots from behind their shields.
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The tactic was a tried and true Legionnaire strategy for pulling down outnumbered combatants without sustaining additional casualties. Unfortunately, the opposing centurion Conrad made a few oversights. The first was that he didn’t have an entire Legion at his back. The series of exchanges had left the Third Legion century without a third of its forces, making their shield wall considerably weaker.
The second was that the encircling Legionnaires would come out victorious in a war of attrition. Though it was true that Conrad’s men were still more numerous and able to switch out with each other for rest, Quintus had levels and stats on his side. Compared to the level eight veterans, the collection of level one to four men remained far weaker. It meant that such a tactic wouldn’t be nearly as clear a route to success. Not to mention that both sides were ironically drawing on the same stamina pool.
The third oversight, of course, was more problematic. It was assumed that no individual within the encirclement was powerful enough to smash through the line outright.
Centurion Conrad slipped into the wall in front of Quintus and began a series of rapid sword strikes toward his Legatus. Quintus deflected them easily, though it did take some amount of his attention. In the meantime, he cast his [Tactician’s Awareness] around the encirclement to search for opportunities once more.
To his pleasant surprise, the opposing centurion seemed to have learned from the opening attack. Now, those men with slightly weaker grips or other failings that made chinks in their wall were covered by additional firepower and outstretched spears that made assaulting their positions far more difficult.
The shields of his own contubernium rattled like metal roofs in heavy rain, but they hardly budged. Still, Quintus allowed the Third Legionnaires to keep up the assault for a short while. This was a teaching opportunity, and letting his own men practice and learn was a very worthwhile endeavor.
Suddenly, the opposing centurion lunged. He lashed out with a flurry of spear strikes of his own, each one glowing with light. A shieldbreaker skill.
Quintus suspected it wasn’t strong enough to pierce [Coordinated Bulwark]. But between the somewhat higher level of the centurion and the measly nine men in his own wall, he didn’t want to chance it. He lunged to meet the strikes, diverting each one easily with his sword and—
[Tactician’s Awareness] alerted Quintus to the trap just in time. His eyes widened, and he threw himself backward, yanking the aquilifer with him. At least a dozen shots tore through the [Coordinated Bulwark] and passed through the air right where the man’s head had been.
Quintus swore under his breath. Sure, they had a secondary shield thanks to the aquilifer’s skills. But those shots had also been meant specifically to punch through defenses. These men were way too trusting of the arena’s safety measures.
He was a little proud of the men’s maneuver, though. It was a smart ploy, and if he’d been a second slower, it might have worked.
Both Quintus and the aquilifer quickly regained their feet, but the opponent was already taking advantage of the opening. Centurion Conrad stepped forward to force his way into the gap and try to take the veterans from behind. The aquilifer stabbed forward to ward him off with the standard, halting his advance, but would it be enough?
Quintus decided this had gone on long enough. The longer they continued, the more chance that one of his men would take a lethal wound—or that their victory would prove less convincing than he wanted.
Slipping the gladius back into his belt, Quintus drew out the wooden pommel of the windblade. “On my mark. Brutus, brace.”
He didn’t need to elaborate further. His contubernium redoubled their efforts as he raised one sandaled foot up into the air. The edge of his toe caught on Brutus’s belt, finding solid footing as though it were a stepstool. Then, he launched himself skyward, out of his own circle of men and behind the enemy’s own lines.
Immediately, the Third Legionnaires raised their firearms toward him. A volley of shots raced toward Quintus, who swiped forward with the windblade while activating [Rend] and [Tear]. A hurricane of razor wind sliced the incoming projectiles into mere puffs of metallic dust that dispersed through the air.
The frontliners raised their spears in an attempt to skewer his falling form, but his blade cut through the wooden hafts of their spears as though they weren’t even there.
Quintus felt himself grinning with exhilaration. He kicked off his shield and launched himself toward the ground even faster. His foot took a surprised Legionnaire in the head, ringing his helmet like a bell before he landed deftly. His metal gladius was already in his now free second hand, and he spun to lay into the Third Legionnaires’ backs.
The Legatus lashed out with both blades, using the windblade on weapons and armor while the gladius struck at flesh. He danced across the Legionnaires' back lines, forcing them to address the threat or be crushed entirely. Their encirclement became a trap in itself, pinning part of the line between two attacking forces that didn’t let up. Quickly, they began disassembling the Third Legion’s defenses before they could regroup.
Quintus launched himself off a fallen opponent and toward the next, dancing on shoulders and heads as often as the ground itself. Periodic slashes from his windblade kept projectiles at bay while his contubernium repaid any who fired on the Legatus in kind. At one point, he was almost certain that his sandal kicked off a lead bullet as though it were solid ground, a completely preposterous notion. But he didn’t have time to think about it further.
The contubernium of veterans split. It once again swept out, pushing aside the Third Legionnaires where the line was only a few men deep as Quintus acted as a distraction. Their leading centurion suffered a rather severe knock to the head that rattled him and made any further orders slow in coming, further adding to the confusion. But he wasn’t entirely out yet. That made Quintus smile.
From there, it was mostly cleanup. Quintus and his men systematically chewed through the rest of the Third Legionnaires with a steady advance. At one point, he took the battle too far from his men and allowed one of his own men to get picked off by a coordinated spear and firearm assault. He fell to the ground, still but breathing.
It was a blemish on the otherwise resounding victory. But it was an earned one. These men had done well, better than expected. And while they certainly had much work to be done, Quintus found himself not nearly as disappointed as he’d initially expected. There were several marks of inexperience, but they followed their centurion’s orders. Their battle doctrine was solid.
When the fight finally finished, only eight men remained standing. A hundred and one other Legionnaires lay across the sands in heaps, some groaning and others unconscious. The majority had already made their way to the edge of the arena, where a team of overworked healers worked to stabilize them.
Quintus strode over to the centurion in charge of the opposition. He’d ended up falling to Quintus himself after attempting to rally the last of the men into a final charge—a valiant effort, if a futile one. He was one of the groaning ones, still lying where he fell from a rather nasty series of painful but nonlethal cuts.
“A good battle.”
Conrad looked up at his Legatus with a bit of surprise. Then he grunted. “Was it, sir? It felt like a slaughter.”
Quintus chuckled. He extended a hand toward the man. “Less than it could have been.”
The centurion eyed his Legatus’s hand warily, then took it. Quintus hauled the man to his feet, seeing him wince with the movement, and helped him over to the healers. From the start, Conrad had respected his leader. He would not have been promoted to centurion otherwise. But now, Quintus also saw something else in his eyes. A touch of awe.