Lit+ M/f, Sci-fi, Post-Apoc, and Historical

In the years immediately after the change, the free cities of Yakima had been a collection of tiny farming towns in the deep south, separated by little more than a mile in any direction from the others, each with their own sense of community pride. They were always poor, in those days, the people living by catering to tourists who hoped to go back to the land for a time and stealing one another blind. There was never much in the way of surplus, and what there was quickly disappeared when the change hit.

Gangs of youths had formed when the first readily accessible food had been stolen and eaten, roaming the countryside between the towns, fighting any killing anyone that they found. Some had went cannibal, and degenerated into madness. Others had kept away from that ultimate taboo, but indulged in every taboo but that. They kidnapped and raped young women they liked the look of, beating them into submission. Without guns, it truly was the rule of the strong. Most of the elderly died in the months after the change, and for years after the change the cities had been nothing but a den of vipers.

As is the case in these things, though, eventually leaders began to emerge. The city of Lavonia was the first to incorporate, with Hartwell not far behind it. Canon and Lewisville followed shortly, each building fortified palisades around their camps, and swearing not to attack the others. It was then that they turned their attention outward. What farmers were in the immediate area were turned on, each individual farm attacked viciously, hauling off men and women alike in chains. It did not matter, black or white, young or old, rich or poor, the slavers from the Free Cities sought out strong backs, or pretty ones, to build their houses, work their fields, and warm their beds. Those who they could not make use of, were killed with little mercy.

It had been six years since then. She was the adopted daughter of a Hartwell merchant, adopted because she was too young to be enslaved, even under the barbaric laws of the people she grew up in. All the same, she was property. She was beaten with bare hands and straps for the least mistake, kept confined in his house when he was not showing off how diligent his daughter could be. There was little doubt that he intended to sell her soon, as she had just reached marriageable age, and she would have no say in the matter of who she was sold to. That was, of course, until the City of Lavonia decided to poke the fire ant's nest that was Arx Bellum.

Arx Bellum had, of course, started far differently than the free cities, being the vision of several men...one of which, perhaps one of the most important, had been the man leading the army just outside the gates.

Six years ago, Michael had been college bound, his fate seemingly clear. The change, for him, was far than just losing his toys. He had grown up some seven hundred miles to the south and east in a suburb of Atlanta, and when the cars stopped working, it had been anything but a peaceful change over. For the first day or two, people tried to continue their lives as if nothing had changed. Food was still plentiful, then. A week passed, and as it became increasingly obvious that food was going to be hard to come by, the fighting had started. Roving bands of young men at first, going from house to house, searching for hidden hoards of food.

When hoards became scarce, and hunting even more so, people turned on the one large land mammal still in abundance. As a bonus, it was easy to catch, if you weren't squeamish. No one knew who started the eating of humans, but once it started the bands quickly multiplied, and those who did not were quickly killed. Within a month, the city of Atlanta was a charnel house.

Not that Michael had been there during this. He had been among the few who really understood what this change had meant, the fighting and the dying. How little food was produced around the city. The second day after the change, he had stolen a horse from one of the expensive ranches that surrounded the city outskirts. Once he had loaded it up with as much supplies as the poor beast could carry, he left the city and never looked back.

The best weapon he could find then was a Gladius, kept from his days of re-enacting. Those days also provided him a Lorica Segmantata, which with two cans of dark green spray paint was a workable enough suit, and the knowledge of how to use both, at least in theory. He got plenty of practice in the days to come. His destination? Anywhere with food.

He had traveled like that for close to two years, hiding when needed, fighting when he absolutely had to. He improved the Lorica as he went, adding more plates down to his elbows, vambrances for his forearms, and plates down to his knees to protect his lower body as well. The gladius had been traded for a spatha, and the square shield he had taken at first replaced with a round one of boiled steer hide over a half inch of plywood.

He had eventually fallen in with a band of men in similar straights, teaching them the fighting that he had learned, picking up a bit more as he went with them. By the end of his wandering days, he had picked up three dozen men. The band had joined up with a half dozen others to make up the founding seed for the city of Arx Bellum. The collection of huts had swelled from a palisaded village to a walled city with high stone walls built by those who came seeking safety and were willing to submit to the founders to earn their keep.

What had started as a bare thousand people had quickly blossomed into a shining city on the hill, a beacon of civilization, and the heart of a nascent empire. The city of Arx extended to cover quite nearly what had been an entire county at one point...Some hundred and fifty square miles of land, most of it intensely cultivated to produce the food required for the burgeoning population, which was estimated to be close to fifty thousand people. Land was cheap, and available for all citizens, with raw land selling for less than a silver rose per acre, while cleared and farmable land went for much more....as much as five silver roses per acre, though even at that price many families owned small plots near to the main city for truck gardens, and it was not out of the question for new farmers to get a start pretty quickly. The soldiers of the city patrolled the outlying districts, but the city saw the value in having the land intensely cultivated....when people's livelihoods rested in a plot of land, they were far more likely to notice when strangers were around, and they could be dealt with.

What kept Arx Bellum together was a series of heliographs that relayed messages from one end of the land to the other....towers perhaps thirty five feet tall with a two man team in each one, just barely within sight of one another. During the day, they used a mirror to reflect signals much like old fashioned Morse code to the other towers. At night, they used a shuttered carbide lamp to much the same effect. They had the advantage of being far faster than any rider could hope to be, as well as more accurate. Thus far, they had turned back a half dozen major incursions, allowing the armies of Arx Bellum time to mobilize and strike out to attack any incoming force while giving them a fair idea of where the armies were thanks to the redundancy in the system that kept messages coming through.

These Heliographs also allowed the city the supposed comfort to build smaller farming communities away from the main city, destined to produce food to feed the burgeoning population growth. Often, they were built with minimal defenses...a six foot high stone wall with a catwalk around the top, four archer's towers, and two heliograph posts to alert the main army of any trouble their defenses couldn't handle in time for the main army to arrive and pull their bacon from the fire.

That was not to be, however, in this case.

The city of Lavonia had marched their entire militia on the closest of the Halo towns, known halfway jokingly as Nowhere, Middle of, and attacked it mercilessly. Increasingly frantic heliograph signals passed from tower to tower, begging for aid from the main city, but the town fell in little more than an hour, well before the militia could be mobilized, much less advance. When they arrived at the site, the found a burned out wreck of a halo town, with dead bodies laying in the streets putrefying, women ravished and babies with heads dashed against stones. What few survivors there were, pitiful wretches left for dead, spoke of horrible acts of wanton torture. The entire city of Arx Bellum cried out for vengeance.

The Senate had cast their black tokens before the public, and the Judicia and Maester had passed their rods to the Macto, signifying giving up their right of power to the war effort. The city of Arx Bellum was at war. War to the knife, war to the last breath. They had marched on Lavonia within the hour.

The age of universal literacy was passing, and outside of Arx Bellum the sight of a book not made before the change was a rare one. When those decayed, as they were sure to do, there would be no more. Given another twenty years, Arx Bellum would be even more powerful than it was now, not only because of it's size but also because of it's learning. Every child attended at least basic schooling and those with aptitude continued through what would be considered high school pre-change, with truly excellent students able to get up to doctorate level and beyond. Not to mention the fact that they were rapidly copying books...relevant books, at least, to rag based paper and copying them with Gutenburg style presses with move-able type. Indeed, the university got nearly as much funding as the military, though it didn't pay back as much in the short term it surely would in the long term. Already, people outside of the city were beginning to fall back on folk remedies for common ailments, within another ten years they'd be back to eye of newt and dust from a saint's tomb. Within the city, they were still producing penicillin and other antibiotics, not to mention when it came to building.

Yet what could be used for healing, could also be used for war. Brilliant minds mined the annals of history for siege engines, building massive engines of war. The lumber and rubble walls of Lavonia were no match for them, and within a day, they were within the city. The efficient, mobile army, clad in regulation Lorica Segmantata, had moved in, and within another day, the city was pacified.

Part of it was the standardized training every legionnaire received before marching on the field. Sword work for legionnaires was kept deadly simple, compared to the duelists style that Michael had learned pre-change. There was a slash over the head to the head, a slash over the head to the enemy's weapon arm, and a stab upward into an enemy's gut. Any of the three could be executed in the three inches between the big square shields, and any were deadly when employed properly. The idea was that the enemy was faced with an impenetrable shield wall and every time they stepped forward to challenge it they were struck down before they could even think of mounting a breach.

Every soldier was also taught the basic use of the pilum, a spear made of wood for half it's length and re-bar hammered into a small, wickedly barbed spearhead for a tip. It's soft metal bent easily when it penetrated a shield, preventing it from being thrown back at the legionnaires during the battle but was easy enough to re-shape after the battle. Perhaps the favorite of everyone was the plumbata, or, as they were more affectionately known, lawn darts. They were a regulation twelve inches long, eight of which was in a wooden shaft with metal vanes attached four inches from the back end, an inch in a heavy lead weight, and three more in a thin shaft with a large arrowhead attached. They were designed to be thrown overhand, gripped below the vanes. When in flight, the heavy weight and air resistance from the fins would flip the arrowhead forward, and the same weight would drive it deep into an enemy. Each legionnaire carried a full half-dozen of them in a special holder on the back of their shield, and though they were unlikely to kill an enemy, they could be thrown with a degree of accuracy out to twenty yards, disrupting formations and forcing men to advance more cautiously. Together with the heavy spears being thrown at closer range, it was a massive amount of missile weapons coming the enemy's way as they closed in to get to grips with the unbeatable shield wall.

In many ways, it was the side that was most sure it was going to win that won battles. The armies of Arx Bellum fought alongside their friends and neighbors in close combat, with a seemingly unbeatable technique for slaughtering the enemy. The entire purpose of a legionnaire was to make the enemy not so sure they could actually beat the legions of Arx Bellum...and against the city of Lavonia, they were unequivocally successful.

There had been calls at first for the war to be over, for the people to go home, but the Macto spoke. No, better to dig out this den of parasites while the soil was loose. And so, they had. Canon had fallen to fire and steel, then Lewisville. Only Hartwell remained. It was the largest of the four cities, and the most heavily defended. Four thousand men ringed it's walls, against a force of two thousand men of Arx Bellum. They could not be defeated.

The siege had started the day prior with the sounding of the black watch, a tattoo of drums that suddenly stopped, a warning. The men within were dead, that watch said, but women and children who wished to leave, could. The gates did not open, and the black watch was sounded again. Still no response. One more time, and no response from the city, other than the jeers of the defenders. An hour passed, a final chance, and then the bombardment began.

Clay pots of naptha and gasoline mixed with benzene, chopped up tires and soap flakes had flown over the city walls, home-made napalm wrought raw, and exploded within. Massive ballista shot bolts as long as a man was tall into the defenders atop the walls, skewering two and three men at a time, and even larger trebuchets launched quarter ton boulders into the walls themselves, collapsing them beneath the feet of men and causing them to be crushed within the stone. A sally was attempted, pushed back by men wielding iron pipes filled with the napalm mixture, squirted over the troops approaching. What stragglers got past their fear and the flames were cut apart by the mercilessly advancing shield wall, short chops and stabs of the flashing swords of the men mowing down the would be defenders like so much wheat before a McCormick reaper.

Within the walls, all was chaos and terror. The men of Arx Bellum are coming, it was wailed. They are here, and they are coming within the walls!

**** **** ****
"Stay together lads, stay together!" Michael cried as he and the remainder of his men, the Band of the Black Hand, waited in a ha-ha a hundred yards from the wall, crouched beneath the four foot wall as the trebuchets launch missile after missile into the wall. From four, five hundred yards away, he could still hear their practiced loading...the sound of the crank drawing down the beam, the three hundred pound stone rolled into place in the sling, then the shout of clear!. A pin was pulled, and with a long creak the basket fell, flinging the stone into the air and then out to smack into the curtain wall of Hartwell with a boom just before them. Stone shattered, crunching, and the top of the wall began to shift uneasily beneath the feet of men as it readied to give way.

The Band of the Black Hand were far from the only men that were taking cover behind the ha-ha, waiting for the wall to come down. The Red Suns were a little further on, and the White Trees just a little further down. All were dressed in regulation armor, modified Lorica Segmantata that provided far superior protection when compared to the boiled steer hide that the men of Harwell wore. Their helmets were stolen from the Japanese, Samurai helmets wrought of steel, with long guards that covered their necks and emotionless masks that made them all the more terrifying in battle. They carried large, square shields with plumbata holders on the back, most of which are empty now, and had started the battle with pilum, of which only a handful remain, most of their missiles spent at the top of the twenty foot wall, keeping men from bringing up boiling oil to throw at them. One thing that every man had was a short, thrusting sword at his hip and a dagger at the back of his belt as a backup weapon.

What made the difference between the Band and the others, though, was the fact that they were a professional company. The Rangers of the city, men and women who projected the power of Arx Bellum throughout the area, were drawn largely from their ranks and the ranks of companies like them, with other men standing watch on the wall of Arx Bellum in peacetime. Not so for the Red Suns, nor the White Trees. They were militia, drawn up in time of great need to protect the city and punish wrongdoers.

Another stone sailed overhead, as large as a man, and with a crack embedded itself deeply in the base of the wall. An ominous creak and crack was heard from within the wall, and quite suddenly, in a roar of falling masonry, a section of the wall fell. At first, it was quite narrow...only ten or so feet wide, but by some miracle of chance another two stones flew by overhead, striking twenty feet to either side of the first hit within a heartbeat of each other. The wall was weak already, and with their force as well the wall fell inward in a fifty foot length. The screams of men both atop the wall and those that were behind it waiting to repulse attackers was staggering, and cut off when the stones fell. Dust rose from the shattered wall, and for the moment all stood still.

Michael glanced back toward the siege engines, nodding to himself as he saw two red flags waving back and forth. It was a signal, pre-arranged, that said the attack would cease so as to not crush their men beneath the flying stones. Already the trebuchets were being wheeled to one side, to attack a different section of wall. One man started to climb over the edge, and Michael rounded on him. "Stay down, you damn fool. We'll get our chance to give 'em hell, just..."

He got no chance to finish. Behind him, there was a great TUUNNNG! as the ballista released their cargoes. Normally, they were loaded with great darts as tall as a man that could pierce three men like a kebab at a street market vendor, but this time they were loaded with something different. Glass balls, the size of a man's head, flew over their heads to crash into the neat formation waiting for them behind the wall, those men who had not been crushed quickly reforming, knowing that they still outnumbered their attackers by a good margin. Alone, they would not do much damage, but their contents were what was truly dangerous. Gasoline, mixed with benzene and soap flakes made a good, home made napalm, and they had plenty of it on hand from various small gas stations around the city proper. Small, trailing fuses followed the balls into battle, some snuffed by wind, but enough still lit to suddenly engulf a good third of the waiting men in fire.

Screaming shapes that might have once been men ran from within the fire as a second and third volley of hell fire lashed the waiting men, and it was at this point that Michael stood, drawing his sword and pointing it toward the city in a dramatic gesture, his voice ringing out over the battlefield. "Attack!" he cried, suiting his words with action as he crawled over the top of the Ha-ha, sprinting toward the city. He did not look back, knowing that his men were behind him. He dashed through the fire, jumping a puddle of burning fluid and emerging to face the front ranks of the defenders. His great shield's boss took one man in the nose, shattering it, even as his short stabbing sword came up to gut another man, sharp steel piercing the boiled leather breastplate he wore as if it were not there. He would have been overrun, though, had it not been for his men arriving.

Within five seconds of that first attack, with the discipline of men long accustomed to it, the band of the Black Hand was lined up on either side of him, shields locked together with a three inch gap between them, their swords plying in the gap. Thighs, stomach, and head were their target, the three targets taught in the close in formation sword fighting. Here and there, a defender fell with a plumbata dart through the throat, or pierced by a pilum, but by and large they died to the sword, their bodies falling beneath the hobnailed boots of the men of Arx Bellum.

Further and further the Band pushed, with the Red Suns and the White Trees falling out to either flank, preventing them from being attacked by stragglers coming from the wall or the perimeter of the city. The defenders fought and died, but mostly they just died, their crude blades unable to dent the armor of the warriors that faced them, and their wicker shields offering no protection at all. Michael sensed them wavering, and in that moment, he cried out, a wordless roar. His men took him up, their steps double timing as they struck into the heart of the enemy formation. The defenders had seen too much...the invincible city wall falling, their brothers buried, engulfed in fire, knifed down by the relentless shield wall, and split, spattering like water on a hot skillet into the city.

The shield wall broke at that moment, men haring off after individuals. One thing that you learned in this brutal, hand to hand fighting, was that you couldn't run and defend yourself, but you could certainly chase someone and kill them. Relatively few men reached the defenses of the city alleyways, but it wouldn't matter now. More companies were entering the city, quickly starting to establish a secure perimeter within the city. As Michael looked around, he saw a man on horseback approaching them, and was shocked to see one of his fellow founders, and current Macto, Justin, riding it. He nodded to the man, and spoke. "I think we've broken them, here at least. My men need rest, and a chance to poke around."

The older man, the macto, nodded as he heard Michael. He was dressed in a lightweight version of their armor, but his blue eyes still held the fire that Michael had seen four years ago when they had first joined forces with the other ten men to found the city. Justin had been leading the largest band, and the one who by and large introduced the Roman method of fighting to the men as a winning strategy. He deferred to the man as a war leader, but they largely saw themselves as equals. "As you wish. We're still pushing forward here...I'd very much like to reach the senate district before nightfall, and put this damnable abomination of a city to the torch shortly after that." Suddenly, the old man grinned, visible by a crinkling of the corner of his eyes. "Don't let a girl stab you, Michael. We will need you after all this is done." Without a further word, the Macto turned, and started after the main thrust of the army, his bodyguard trailing behind, also mounted.

Michael laughed as he heard him, and shook his head as he watched the man go. Rape and Rapine were expected pleasures of the men in the army, now, with the pay adequate but minimal, differences made up for by ready loot when they attacked a city such as this. He turned to his men. "Alright, gentlemen, split up into groups of five and we'll do a bit of exploring, eh? Don't go anywhere alone, and remember to bring back your loot to the tents so we can distribute it evenly at the Hailing." The men saluted him, fist to chest, and then split into their pre-arranged half squads, disappearing into the city. Michael turned toward his, the newest men of the Band, and spoke with a grin. "Well, gentlemen, shall we?"

He did not wait for an answer, disappearing into the labyrinth of rich city streets in search of treasure. There were a few brief scuffles, men attacking them from ambush, but the heavy armor and excellent training of the men meant that they just left a trail of bodies behind them. Most of the houses they broke into were empty, though, people long ago left them. Any men they found who were older than twelve, the age at which men began to train to fight in Hartwell, were killed out of hand, but women were told to wait just outside the city for their fates to be decided, or they would perish within the walls as the city was set to the torch. At least, the ones who were not so pretty were told that. The prettier ones were taken into other rooms by this man or that, and used to celebrate the fact that they had survived the attack. Typically, they stumbled out naked and dazed, a firm slap on their ass used to send them toward the waiting group outside. Some were given tokens of the man who took them, giving them his protection against further attacks and giving him first rights to them when all was said and done. Michael did not partake, watching to make sure none of the men were ambushed during their little escapades.

By the time they finished with the first street, they had loaded up two wheelbarrows of gold ingots, silverware, and various bits of jewelry. They were, after all, among the richest section of town, and the haul the Band brought in would make all of them quite wealthy. Michael glanced at the house on the end of the street, a large, fortress like mansion with one sally door left open, and sent a grin toward his men. "One last one, gentlemen, and then we'll be on our way." He said, leaving one man outside to guard their loot as he led the other four within, little expecting what he would find...