Final Campaign

thereby basicallygiving them the key to the fortress to reoccupy. If that happened,once again, we would have an enemy force in a position to cut offour line of supply and communication, and was why we took it in thefirst place. Beside the tangible reasons I just described, therewas also the effect it would have on the morale of the army if wedid that; nothing infuriates and demoralizes men more than givingsomething up without a fight that their comrades died taking. Whatall this meant was that cutting off their water was not an option,in turn informing me that the siege was likely to last much longerthan we had hoped, making it even more crucial that we keep theroad south open. Very soon, the cavalry would have to be employedin foraging patrols, and if we were forced to send out Cohort-sizedpatrols as well to take whatever food we could find, that wouldhamper the siege. Our inspection revealed that Serdica was largerthan we had been led to believe, although since it had been MarcusPrimus who insisted that this would be little more than acollection of huts and a wooden wall, I had been skeptical. Still,until I saw it with my own eyes up close, I really did not knowwhat to expect, and what I saw I did not like in the slightest.After some desultory remarks between us as we began, the entireparty had fallen silent as we rode around the city, looking forobvious weak points. Once we had completed our circuit, andFlavianus had taken copious notes, I girded myself to ask him hisopinion, despite being fairly sure what it would be.

“Well?”

As usual, he was succinct, wasting nowords.

“We’re going to need a bigger army.”

It may sound funny, but he was beingserious. Making it worse, I knew he was right. With two Legions,Legions that had suffered losses at that, even if they were notparticularly heavy, we would be stretched extremely thin, and thatwas if we focused on just two or three spots to conduct an assault.We had learned from some of the prisoners that the garrison thatremained was not all that large, perhaps five thousand men,including almost a thousand cavalry, that arm of the army beinguseless for a besieged army. However, they had the advantage ofinterior lines, forcing us at the very least need to station mencompletely around the city to keep them contained. Our scouts hadreported no signs of any other Thracian tribes coming to the aid ofthese Serdi, but we could not count on that lasting, and this factrequired us to be prepared for a relief effort from the outsidealong with being ready for an attempted breakout.

“Ideally, this calls for a circumvallationat the very least,” Flavianus continued. “But of course that’simpossible with the men we have.”

His scowl deepened as he consulted his waxtablet.

“Undermining is an option, but only on theeastern wall, or maybe on the eastern half of the southern wall.Anywhere else is too close to the river, and the tunnels will justflood.”

“Do we have enough ten pound ammunition leftto breach?”

Flavianus shook his head, pointing to thecity wall at one particular spot.

“See that section there, just to the rightof the gate? That’s the thinnest part of the wall that I can see,and it looks at least twelve feet thick. Also, it looks like adouble layer wall, with a layer of logs laid lengthwise between thetwo. We’d have to crack the outer layer, then burn through the logsbefore we could punch through the second layer.”

It was a very grim report by our engineeringofficer, but while sieges and all the engineering aspects that gointo one is not my strong point, I knew enough to understand thegravity of the situation.

“So we’ll have to scale the wall,” Ifinished for him, because he clearly did not want to be the man tomake that pronouncement.

He nodded unhappily, chewing on a dirtyfingernail that I could see had been gnawed on to the point that hewas now drawing blood. An escalade was the absolute worst of allthe options, requiring the building of more than one tower, thewall being too high for the use of ladders. With two towers, theenemy would know exactly where to focus all of their defensiveefforts, and would not be worn down trying to cover multipleassaults. Even if both towers survived, which was unlikely, thatwas still only two points to defend. Compounding the difficulty wasthat for the best chance of success, we needed to try and place thetowers as far apart as possible, in order to split the enemy force.If we built the towers side by side, that would mean that one wouldhave to be moved a long distance, a precarious business at best,since the chances of the tower toppling over at some point was veryhigh. If we built the towers near the respective points, placingthem against the wall, it meant that we would have to divide ourforces again, leading to the problem explained earlier. It was justnot a palatable solution, no matter how one looked at it, and Idreaded having to try and explain this to Marcus Primus.

“Why can’t we try one of those…what do youcall them?”

Primus turned to Masala for the term he waslooking for, which his aide supplied.

“Contravallation.”

“Yes,” the Praetor said triumphantly,thumping a fist on the arm of his chair. “A contravallation, justlike Caesar did at Alesia! Let’s do one of those!”

Primus’ enthusiasm was akin to that of a manwanting to try a new dish, or to play a new game of chance, notremotely connected to the reality of the backbreaking laborinvolved in digging a double trench and rampart completely around alarge city. I allowed Flavianus to address this, or rather, I madehim do so by looking at him pointedly. He shot me a bitter look ashe addressed the Praetor.

“We don’t have the manpower for acircumvallation, Praetor, I am sorry to say,” and Flavianus didindeed look unhappy.

“But we build a ditch and rampart everynight when we make camp,” Primus protested, looking at me,presumably for support. None was forthcoming as I just looked athim impassively. “This is just bigger, so it will take longer.”

Now Flavianus looked