Iron and Rust

CHAPTER 18

Africa Proconsularis

Beyond the Frontier,

Two Days before the Ides of January, AD236

As the last outpost of civilization, Tisavar was unimpressive. Sited on a low rise, the irregular stones of its walls were the same colour as the surrounding sand dunes. It was more a blockhouse than a fortress. As Gordian rode up, he judged it not bigger than forty paces by thirty. Nevertheless, the column would find the rest welcome.

Gordian had ridden down from Carthage with the Quaestor Menophilus and the legates Sabinianus and Arrian. Each had brought just the one servant. The hostage prince Mirzi was accompanied by six of his father’s warriors. At Tacape on the coast, Aemilius Severinus had been waiting with two hundred troopers of the speculatores. A day’s march south, they had rendezvoused with a hundred men of 3rd Legion Augusta under a centurion called Verittus at the small town of Martae. From there, for three days, they had followed a white track winding through the ochre mountains to the west. Descending, they had turned south-east across a flat, stony plain. Two days later, at Cententarium Tibubuci, a small outpost in the middle of nowhere, they had met two hundred auxiliaries from 2nd Cohort Flavia Afrorum. As instructed, their Prefect, Lydus, had brought provisions, grappling hooks and ropes, materials to make scaling ladders and light baggage carts to carry them. Two more days, bearing south then west, had brought them to Tisavar.

It had been a hard march over unmade roads, but possibly nothing compared with what lay ahead. There were no roads where they were going. Gordian liaised with the centurion in charge of Tisavar. He wanted to make the men as comfortable as possible. There were twenty-eight small rooms backing on to the walls of the fort. These were crammed with soldiers, as was the diminutive headquarters building in the courtyard. The officers would bed down together in the shrine. The stables that stood outside the defences were emptied of animals, mucked out, and more men billeted there. Even so, more than half the expedition would have to camp in the open.

They brought out food, wine and firewood. Gordian made sure the troops had a hot meal and ordered a double ration of wine. Of course, the men would drink more than the official allowance — they always had their own supplies — but they would sweat out any ill-effects the following day.

To get some privacy, Gordian and his officers walked out into the desert night. It was very cold, the stars very bright.

‘The men of 2nd Cohort are grumbling.’ Menophilus’ breath plumed in the frigid air. ‘They do not like turning out of their winter quarters, not to march nine days in a huge circle. They say the village is only two days, three at most, from their base at Tillibari.’

‘I explained it would have alerted the enemy,’ Lydus said. ‘The brigands would never expect an attack from out of the desert from the west. And winter is when we will catch all of them in their lair with their plunder.’

‘Soldiers grumble,’ Gordian said. ‘It means nothing. It is their way.’

They were silent for a time. A fox barked somewhere in the desert.

‘A Persian army once went into the desert,’ Menophilus said. ‘The sands covered them while they slept. Not one of them was seen again.’

Gordian smiled. ‘Words of ill omen, if ever I heard them.’

‘An Epicurean such as yourself should not care,’ Sabinianus said.

‘We make allowances for those still mired in superstition, especially gloomy Stoics like Menophilus.’

They laughed, passing a flask of wine around.

‘Mind you-’ Sabinianus spoke to Gordian, ‘-we have more than drifting sand to worry about. We are going into the desert led by a young tribesman you maimed. If it were me, I would bear a grudge. This youth’s father recently murdered his way across the province. You are far too trusting. It is asking to be betrayed. A small force, lost in the unknown, surrounded by barbarians … when the water runs out, we will have to do each other the final kindness.’

‘That,’ Gordian said, ‘was almost poetry.’

‘You may well laugh,’ Sabinianus said, ‘but I have a lot to live for. It would be a tragedy if talents such as mine were cut off before their time. I want to live. Do not expect me to sacrifice myself in a doomed cause.’

‘Young Mirzi will not betray us,’ Gordian said. ‘He has been treated well as a hostage. His father has sworn friendship.’

‘Your philosophy claims the gods do not listen to such oaths,’ Menophilus said.

‘On the whole, I find it unlikely that Nuffuzi chief of the Cinithii is a follower of Epicurus. Besides, we have promised him a share of the plunder.’

They moved out before first light. When the sun came up it revealed the great rocky plain they traversed. Off to the right were the first sands of the true desert; to the left the foothills of the grey uplands. The day grew warmer. Even in this wilderness there were signs of life. Lizards scuttled out of their way with surprising speed. Gordian saw larks, wheatears and shrikes in the sky.

Mirzi told them about the men they had come to kill. ‘Canartha is a man of much evil. No stranger who has entered his lair at Esuba has ever left. The fortunate he asks to join him; the rest die. When he raids, he tortures his captives not to discover their hidden wealth but for his own enjoyment. He ruins the looks of attractive women and boys. Afterwards, they are no good for pleasure, and are worth little.’ The young tribesman shook his head at such profligacy. ‘Those who follow him are little better. Most are from the Augilae tribe. They worship only the infernal gods. Like the Garamantes, they hold their women in common. They are very dirty, the women foully soiled.’

‘In the West,’ Sabinianus said, ‘the Atlantes curse the rising and setting sun. Alone among men, they have no names, no dreams.’

Mirzi looked at him, puzzled.

‘Take no notice,’ Gordian said. ‘It is from a book. For us, the desert is a mysterious place.’

Gordian was tracking a flight of sandgrouse when Aemelius Severinus motioned him to pull his horse aside.

‘We are being watched.’

‘Where?’

‘My men have seen movement in the hills to the left.’

‘Not goatherds?’

‘They are following us.’

‘How many?’

‘Not many.’

‘Your men should not tell the others.’

Aemilius Severinus wheeled his horse and cantered away.

Gordian rejoined the head of the column.

‘What was that?’ Arrian asked.

‘Nothing.’

Gordian had faith in the report of the speculatores. Aemilius Severus’ Frontier Wolves knew the desert. He would tell Arrian and the other officers in camp that night, when they could not be overheard. He had trusted Mirzi. Now, he was not so sure. Perhaps the cynicism of Sabinianus was not misplaced.

It rained that night. A cold, hard rain. Mirzi was delighted. It showed their expedition was blessed by one of his seven gods. Neither the Roman officers nor the men were convinced. They ate cold rations. Gordian had ordered no fires — although, by now, everyone knew they were observed.

In the morning, they turned east and entered the hills by what should have been the dry bed of a watercourse. The rain had turned its surface to mud. Men and horses sunk to their knees. The going was particularly bad for those towards the rear. The carts got stuck. Soldiers cursed as they laboured to free them. After an hour, progress was so slow Gordian decided to leave the carts. The water and food were strapped on to the baggage animals. The infantry would have to carry the timber to make the siege ladders.

By midday, those following them had abandoned all pretence of secrecy. Small groups of horsemen sat on the heights and regarded the column’s laboured advance.

Gordian moved up and down the line, assuring the men that it made no difference. ‘They know we are coming. They will be all the more afraid. A rabble of barbarians cannot stand against us.’

They sighted the village late in the afternoon. It was built on a spur of rock jutting out from the hills like the ram of a warship. Mirzi led them around up into the hills behind, where they camped. As the bare rock prevented entrenching, they made the best perimeter they could with thorn bushes. The men gathering and arranging these took many nicks and cuts. It did nothing to improve their mood.

The only blessing was that the natives did not intervene. In fact, their scouts had disappeared.

The sun was arcing down towards the horizon when Gordian and his officers rode forward with Mirzi to inspect the enemy position. Not tempting fate, they were screened by a party of speculatores.

There was only one approach, along the causeway from the hills. It was flat and wide enough for twenty men abreast in close order. Some time long ago much effort had been expended to dig a ditch in front of the village. Although its banks did not look too sheer, it was about six feet deep. A pace or two behind it was a wall of unmortared stones, perhaps twelve feet high, with rough battlements. There was one solid-looking gate. There were no other fortifications. On all other sides the slopes were as precipitous as if they had been deliberately cut to make them so. The settlement itself consisted of close-packed, flat-roofed stone huts. There was no citadel, but if the dwellings were defended, it would be hard to fight through the narrow alleys between them.

The Romans had no siege engines. Artillery would have been useful, playing on the wall and the village from the higher slopes of the range. But the trouble of getting them to this place would be prohibitive. As for rams and towers, even if you hauled them all the way here, a sally by the defenders might easily topple them over the edge of the causeway. Mining was out of the question. It would have to be the ladders and a frontal assault, with all the heavy casualties that entailed. Send in the auxiliaries first. If they did not take the place, their attack would kill some barbarians, tire the others, and then the legionaries would have to storm the wall. The Frontier Wolves could provide some support by shooting over their heads. This was going to be a bloody business.

‘There is another way,’ Mirzi said.

‘You have waited until now to tell us.’ Gordian tried to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

‘The cliff at the far end can be climbed. It is dangerous, but possible.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I saw a child climb down to collect snails.’

Sabinianus rounded on the youth. ‘You said no one left Canartha’s village unless they joined him.’

‘My father talked to Canartha before he knew the evil of his nature. I came with my father.’

Gordian intervened. ‘Could armed men climb this cliff?’

Mirzi fiddled with the bandage on his right wrist as he thought. ‘Not with shields and spears. Not with helmets or in armour. It would be best if they were barefoot.’

‘If they were seen from the top, they would not stand a chance,’ Menophilus said.

‘They would have to climb at night,’ Mirzi agreed.

‘If I took fifty of the Frontier Wolves,’ Menophilus said, ‘we could make the ascent tonight. When you attack the wall just before dawn, we could take them in the rear.’

‘Why you?’ Arrian asked.

‘I am a great deal younger than the rest of you,’ Menophilus said with a straight face.

‘This is madness!’ Sabinianus exclaimed. ‘We are miles from anywhere, deep in tribal territory. To divide our forces, send some off almost unarmed into the night, is the final idiocy. The barbarians knew we were coming. We have been led into a trap.’

The damaged hand of Mirzi automatically went to his hilt. ‘You doubt my word?’

Gordian stepped between them. ‘Sabinianus doubts everything.’ He turned to Menophilus. ‘What do you think?’

The Quaestor toyed with the ornament in the form of a skeleton on his belt, considering slowly. ‘Rather than assign men from the speculatores, we should ask for volunteers. Offer good money for those who get to the top, and the same for the dependents of those who fall. No armour, helmets, shields or spears. But we must have boots. Our men are not used to marching without them. The rocks would cut their feet to shreds. Also, we will take iron tent pegs and ropes, as many as we can carry.’ Menophilus paused. ‘If we have some of the light shields the Frontier Wolves use and some javelins, we may be able to haul them up when we have made the climb.’

‘Have you done much climbing?’ Sabinianus asked.

‘It is not one of my favourite pastimes.’ Menophilus’ line was funnier for being delivered with his customary Stoic earnestness.

After nightfall, no campfires were lit until Menophilus and his volunteers had left. Gordian found that sleep eluded him. In the middle watch, he got up and walked the perimeter. Snatches of music and songs drifted from the village. Lights flickered as the barbarians came and went from their huts.

All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals. Gordian had grown fond of Menophilus. He did not want to be responsible for his death, did not want his friend to die. With a horrible clarity, he knew that he did not want to die himself. No, that was not how it should be. As so often, he summoned up the tenets of his philosophy. There was no pleasure or pain after death, just as there was none before birth. There was nothing to be scared of. Death is nothing to us. But there was a tightness in him that his words did nothing to loosen. After a time, he went back and rolled himself in his blanket, watched the stars wheel, and settled to wait for the night to end.

A hand shook his shoulder, and Gordian surfaced from the deepest of sleeps.

‘Two hours before dawn,’ Sabinianus said quietly.

Somewhere in the back of Gordian’s mind, wisps of a dream twisted out of his grasp; his father … Parthenope and Chione weeping … some lines of Homer: ‘There will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish’.

In the darkness, Lydus drew up the auxiliaries of the 2nd Cohort with as little noise as possible. Even so, the rattle of their arms and the scrape of the hobnails seemed loud enough to wake the dead. Gordian moved among them, a word here, a pat on the shoulder there. It was never easy to send men into combat.

No sounds or lights could be detected in the village.

The sky lightened in the east, enough to reveal the dark bulk of the phalanx of men, twenty wide and ten deep. No trumpets rang out. A murmur ran through the ranks and they began to edge forward.

Still no shouts of alarm from the barbarians.

Gordian and his officers mounted up and rode back through the lines of the speculatores and the men from the 3rd Legion. They went a little uphill, far enough to hope to view the fighting.

Half-glimpsed movements along the wall. The unmistakable twang of bows.

‘Testudo!’ Lydus’ shout echoed among the rocks. A crash as the shields of the auxiliaries swung up and locked together over their heads. Moments later, the thunk of arrows into leather and wood. Wild barbarian yells, but as yet no screams of pain from the Romans.

‘Loose!’ The voice of Aemilius Severinus carried well. The first volley of Roman arrows vanished into the gloom. The archers, shooting blind, had been ordered to aim long. Most likely, the majority of the arrowheads would embed themselves harmlessly in the flat roofs of the village, but their passage overhead would remind the men making the assault that they were not alone.

There was a fast rattling, like the tambourines of the followers of Cybele greatly amplified. The defenders were throwing stones. They were bouncing off the shields. Gordian noticed that the light had strengthened enough to let him take in the whole scene.

Descending the ditch broke the cohesion of the testudo. Arrows and stones were finding their mark. Men were falling. The ladders were adding to the confusion. As the auxiliaries went up the far side, the first casualties were being helped to the rear. Gordian sent Arrian to usher the unwounded back into the fight.

The 2nd Cohort had reached the foot of the wall. Ladders reared up. The barbarians were well prepared. The battlements were thick with warriors. Poles and pitchforks levered the ladders sideways, sent them crashing down. The barrage of missiles intensified. At the extreme left a soldier got on to the wall, then another. Both were surrounded, cut down. The ladder was pushed away. At two other places a few attackers achieved the wall walk. Both inroads were swamped by sheer numbers.

Gordian gazed beyond the fighting. All was quiet in the village. There was no sign of Menophilus and his volunteers.

The retreat began with a few men at the rear. Soon, all the auxiliaries were backing away. They did not break and run but edged backwards, dragging their injured and the ladders.

‘Aim for the wall!’

Aemilius Severinus acknowledged Gordian’s shouted order. The defenders ducked down behind the parapet. For the first time, they had to cower beneath their shields. It allowed the 2nd Cohort to withdraw and re-form behind the other two units virtually unmolested.

‘Third Legion, advance!’

The legionaries took up the scaling ladders. Again twenty men wide, this column was only five deep. They roofed themselves with their shields and trudged forward. Centurion Verittus had them in good order.

The barbarians showed restraint. Only the occasional individual popped up and wasted an arrow on the testudo. Gordian thought this Canartha had a remarkable grip on his men.

When the legionaries reached the ditch, the speculatores had to switch back to aiming for the village for risk of hitting their own men. The defenders reappeared. The storm of arrows and stones resumed; if anything, more intense than before. Perhaps the natives were encouraged by the repulse of the previous attack. With luck, they might soon run short of missiles.

Beyond the noise, still nothing moved in the village.

Legionaries clambered up the ladders. Some went sprawling back to the ground. Others, in the face of sharp steel, hauled themselves over the parapet. Fighting became general along the wall. The day hung in the balance. Again, numbers began to tell. One by one, the legionaries on the wall were cut down. Below, the first men began to retreat.

Gordian dug in his spurs, calling for Sabinianus. They rode through the lines of the 2nd Cohort, through the speculatores. At the ditch, Gordian jumped down, turned his horse free. It clattered away.

Gordian snatched up a discarded auxiliary shield. The grip was wet with blood. He slipped as he went down into the ditch. A jagged rock skinned the back of his legs. By the time Gordian had cleared the obstacle, all the ladders were down. No attackers were left on the wall. The legionaries were pulling back. Gordian shouldered his way to the standard-bearer, ordered him forward. The man looked blankly at him. Gordian seized him by the shoulder, pushed him towards the wall.

‘With me!’ Gordian grabbed one end of a ladder. Sabinianus helped him swing it up. The men hung back.

Covered by his shield, Gordian climbed one-handed. A rock thumped into the shield. Another dinged off his helmet. The wound Mirzi had given him ached. Blades hacked down at him. He thrust the shield over the parapet. A wide sweep of his sword cleared a space. He scrambled off the ladder, one foot on the parapet, and jumped down on to the wall walk.

A barbarian came at him from the right. He blocked the blow with his blade, smashed the edge of his shield into the bearded face. The man staggered, getting in the way of his companions. Gordian checked over his shoulder. Sabinianus had his back.

Seeing their officers alone on the battlements, the legionaries surged towards the wall. Men fought to get on the ladder.

Two more warriors jabbed at Gordian. He took one blow on his shield, parried the other. He shaped to cut left, but thrust right. Both natives gave ground. There was a throng behind them.

A crack of wood, sharp over the sounds of battle, then shouts of pain and fury. The ladder had broken under the weight of men. The barbarians roared, triumphant and mocking. The pair facing Gordian rushed forward. A lifetime of training took over. Gordian stepped inside one blow, took the other on the rim of his shield. Turning, he used his weight to force one off the battlements, then chopped down into the knee of the other, finished him with a neat backhand.

High shouts, obviously orders in some barbaric tongue. The enemy shuffled away. A man down in the village, pointing up at the isolated Romans. A hideous sound as an arrow tore past Gordian’s ear. It felt to Gordian as if he had been here before: trapped on the wall, the ladders broken. It was Alexander the Great in some Indian town. The Macedonian had jumped down.

‘Sabinianus with me.’

Gordian charged the barbarians to his right. Its very unexpectedness made them shy away. Hacking and cutting, he drove them back past the head of some steps. Without pause, he plunged down.

The steps protected their right. They huddled together, crouching low behind their battered shields. Arrows thudded into the wooden boards, struck splinters out of the stonework. Gordian was gasping. His chest hollow and empty. Death is nothing to us. An impact jarred up into his shoulder. Something smashed into the side of his helmet. Blood ran hot down his neck. Death is nothing.

The hail of missiles slackened. A confusion of competing noises. The clash of steel behind and above. High-pitched yells of surprise and horror in front. Gordian’s head was ringing. He peeked around the rim of his shield. The barbarians were milling, their heads turning in all directions.

‘Menophilus!’ Sabinianus shouted. ‘Rescuing us is becoming a habit.’

A wedge of men was fighting its way down one of the alleys from the village. The enormity of the surprise robbed the barbarians of their senses. Some were fighting back; some stood and let themselves be cut down. The majority were running, this way and that, wildly seeking an illusory safety.

Hobnailed boots clattered down the steps. A knot of legionaries covered Gordian and Sabinianus with their shields.

‘Are you hurt?’

Gordian did not reply. He was trying to clear his head, think what needed to be done.

‘The gate — we have to get the gate open.’

A legionary helped Gordian to his feet. He was surprised that he was staggering. His thigh ached; his head hurt.

Groups of legionaries were appearing all along the wall. Up there, resistance was sporadic, still fierce in some places. The legionaries with Gordian overran those who stood between them and the gate.

It was the work of moments to lift the bar and open the gate. Legionaries flooded in, the Frontier Wolves hard on their heels. The auxiliaries of the 2nd Cohort would not be far behind. They had friends to avenge and would have no intention of missing out on the raping and plunder.

Gordian leant on his shield. Doing the same next to him, Sabinianus looked as white as a man who had stepped barefoot on a snake. Gordian thought that someone ought to keep some troops together, in case there was further opposition or other barbarians lurking in the hills. He was too tired. Gingerly, he explored the cut on his scalp. It had largely stopped bleeding, probably was not too serious. The lines of poetry from his dream came to him:

For I know this thing well in my heart, and my mind knows it:

There will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish,

And Priam, and the people of Priam of the strong ash spear.