Free Steam Legion by Evan Currie

“Escort Master Heron to a safe location.”
    “Dyna!” Heron blurted out as the two burly soldiers picked him up bodily and carried him back and away from the coming fight.
    She looked around, an air of satisfaction clear on her face a she nodded to the remaining eighteen men. “Tie the rest of those off, then get out of sight. Aelia.”
    The Immune looked up. “Yes, my Lady?”
    “Signal the cannons. Have them stand to the ready,” she ordered.
    He saluted, his fist slapping over his chest. She turned away as the Immune grabbed a torch from the side of the alley, stepped out into the middle of the street, and waved it. On the rooftop down the street, another torch appeared, waving in place. Immune Aelia stepped over to a barrel of water they’d filled from the aqueduct and signaled to the man beside it.
    He swept the torch down, hiding it from sight, and the man pulled a plug from the barrel. The water slowly drained, sinking a float in the barrel that had messages written on it at different levels. He waited until it reached the first message and then lifted his torch again.
    Stand by for battle.
    On the distant rooftop, he knew that a man was reading an identical message off an identical float drifting in a matching barrel. Satisfied, the signals Immune extinguished his torch in the barrel while pocketing the float.
    “Time to go,” he told Pedes Juranus.
    The Pedes nodded and they packed up their things quickly, retreating out of the back street and heading for a position on a neighboring building.
    Dyna noted them leaving but was focused on last-minute details of the rig designed for Heron’s play. It was ingenious, as was nearly everything the man did, but she had already spotted a few places it could be tweaked.
    The Master was planning a spectacle, a magnificent play, she noted as she adjusted some of the knotted ropes and weights. I have another spectacle in mind entirely.
    She moved without hurry, yet faster than any of the Legion conscripts had managed under Master Heron’s direction. She was making small changes, altering the Master’s play on the fly. She had the greatest respect for her mentor, but for all the weapons he had designed, he was an academic and not a warrior.
    When she finished with the work, Dyna dropped back down to the street level and jogged to the building directly across from her. She took the steps inside two at a time, heading for the roof, and burst out into the dawn air in just seconds.
    “Are we ready?” she demanded, walking briskly to where Immune Aelia was still laying out his tools.
    “Almost,” the Immune replied, not looking up as he focused intently on his task.
    Aelia specialized in battle signals, the sending of messages vital to maintaining the plans of battles for the Legion. Unlike most Immunes with his specialty, however, he’d always worked with systems designed primarily for pre-battle work: light signals, disguised sounds, other non-obvious methods that weren’t as well-known and glory-filled as the horns.
    At night his list of tricks was limited, generally to the torch and water barrel or some variation on waving flame around. In Alexandria, however, Aelia had access to a few things that the Legion would kill for in the field. Had killed for in some cases, often for much less, in fact.
    They were close enough to the Library to use the smaller lighthouse tower there as a relay to send messages via the Great Pharos itself, as they had earlier. Once the battle began, it would not be of great value. People would be too distracted with watching the lights, but in preparation for the clash, he was almost giddy at the opportunity to use it a second time in the same night.
    With his and Juranus’s scutums propped up to block the light from unfriendly eyes, he struck his blade along a flint striker, sending sparks to an oil-soaked torch. Once it caught, he kindled the flames until they were burning brightly, and then he waved it vigorously from cover. A moment