Scourge of Rome

XLII

Serpentius’s hand automatically touched the hilt of his sword as he glanced across at the general. He’d seen the light in his eyes often enough to know what it meant. The light of the hunter caught up in the chase. A light that would only be extinguished by the kill.

They’d watched the rams at work from just out of ballista range in the ruins of the city’s timber market. Titus, anonymous in a borrowed tribune’s armour and helmet, fidgeted on his horse through the long afternoon. As he waited, his engineers concentrated their efforts on either side of the second wall’s central tower, which had already taken a battering from the catapults.

As an additional precaution Titus had ordered the entire section of wall undermined. Protected by vineae and plutei shelters, engineers dug out the foundations and replaced them with timber props. Once the work was complete they set fire to the props and withdrew. Now, as they watched, the resulting collapse brought down the tower and a hundred paces of wall in a sullen roar of falling masonry.

Before the dust settled cohorts from the Fifth and the Fifteenth poured through the gap into the beleaguered city. If Zacharias’s information was correct they should be able to punch through as far as the Antonia fortress and, in conjunction with Lepidus’s Tenth, attack Jerusalem’s great stronghold from three sides.

‘Enough of this subterfuge.’ Titus showed no emotion at his stunning success. ‘Bring me my scarlet cloak so my soldiers can see I fight at their side.’

‘You intend to enter the city, lord?’ Cerealis and Phrygius exchanged a startled glance, but neither man was prepared to contradict his commander. Serpentius, a little apart and behind the command group, had no such misgivings.

‘Begging your lordship’s pardon,’ he grunted, ‘but street fighting’s no place for cavalry. Or generals.’

Titus stared at him as an aide fixed the legate’s cloak in place. ‘It seems I cannot escape your master’s scruples even when I send him elsewhere. When Jerusalem falls, my Spanish friend, men will say it was taken by Titus Flavius Vespasian, and none will be able to accuse me of standing back from the fray.’

‘He’s right, lord.’ Phrygius belatedly spoke up. ‘You shouldn’t put your life at risk.’

But the final cohorts were already pushing their way into the city and Titus was determined to join them. ‘I will send word when we reach the Antonia. Well, gentlemen,’ he turned to his aides, ‘what are we waiting for?’

Auxiliaries worked to widen the breach, using the rubble to flatten out the ditch, and Titus forced his way through the rear units still marching through the opening. Ahead, their comrades rampaged among the narrow streets. Jerusalem was his.

Titus’s elation was almost palpable as he studied the flat-roofed buildings and sturdily built temples. In contrast, his nervous escort edged closer around their commander and Serpentius heard the centurion in charge urging his soldiers to greater vigilance. The Spaniard decided the old soldier had good reason to be wary.

The gods only knew how many of the defenders remained trapped in the houses now being checked by squads of auxiliaries who’d followed the attacking cohorts. Certainly, not many had been killed on the battlements. A few smashed bodies lay like piles of bloodied rags as a testimony to the power of the Roman artillery, but most of the dead were civilians. Every roof and every window could hide a spearman or a slinger who would die happy if his last act was to kill Titus Flavius Vespasian. Serpentius couldn’t cover every threat, but he could stay close to Vespasian’s son. He edged his horse into the command group.

Titus felt his presence and turned in the saddle. ‘Ah, my nursemaid is still with us,’ he laughed as they turned a corner into a wide market place from which narrow streets radiated in every direction.

The Spaniard drew his sword. ‘You might yet have need of one.’

With every street choked with soldiers, the legionaries filled the open ground seeking an exit.

‘Why aren’t we moving?’ Titus forced his horse through the mass of men, calling for the praefectus castrorum who’d led the attack on the walls.

A centurion pointed to one of the streets, and the general pushed into the narrow entrance with two of his aides, shouting to the legionaries to stand aside. Serpentius managed to stay with him, but the escort struggled to keep up, hindered by hundreds of men whose only focus was joining their comrades.

‘You should wait for the escort, lord,’ the Spaniard insisted.

Titus shook his head. ‘I have to find out what’s happening.’ They heard a roar from away to their left, but it was impossible to tell whether it signalled a triumph or a setback. Titus ground his teeth in frustration. ‘I must know what’s happening,’ he repeated. ‘Where’s my messenger?’

‘Somewhere back there.’ Serpentius pointed with his sword.

‘Where is your commander?’ the general called out to the soldiers they passed, but no man knew. Serpentius noticed with alarm that every door and shuttered window around them was closed. There could be only one reason. These streets hadn’t yet been cleared.

‘We have to get out of here, lord.’ He grabbed Titus’s reins and tried to turn the horse, only to be hemmed in by the crowd and baulked by the reluctance of its rider. Titus fumed at this personal outrage, but he recognized the urgency in Serpentius’s voice.

‘The doors,’ the former gladiator shouted. ‘They’ve blocked the street. It’s an-’

A howl from the roofs finished his sentence and a hail of missiles rained down on the men packed into the streets below. A spear hurled from above pierced the neck of the tribune to Titus’s right and he slumped into the saddle, sheeting his horse’s neck with blood. Titus looked around in astonishment. Serpentius reacted instantly, reaching across to haul him bodily from his mount. As they fell he roared for the men around him to form testudo. The landing knocked the breath from him, but he picked himself up and covered Titus’s body with his own.

‘Testudo,’ he repeated. ‘Testudo to protect your general. Defend General Titus.’

At last the big painted shields of a dozen men came up to form the protective carapace Rome’s tacticians had evolved for just this type of situation. It would take a fortunate throw to penetrate the locked shields. Titus was shaken and bewildered but unhurt, and Serpentius helped him up to crouch beneath the shields. They had a chance. Around them some units had formed their own testudo. Others hammered at the doors and shuttered windows in a bid to get at the enemy, only to be cut down from the opposite side.

‘General? We have to go back.’ Serpentius urged the man crouching beside him in the crush of fear-tainted soldiers beneath the shields to face the unsavoury reality. ‘Our only chance is to get out of this street.’

‘Retreat?’ Titus sounded as if the word were an insult.

‘They have all the advantages-’ An extra loud crash interrupted Serpentius, followed by the screaming of men who would never be the same again. ‘They can sit up there and kill us a few at a time,’ he continued, unperturbed, ‘but it won’t be long before someone decides it’s a good idea to start throwing burning oil out of those windows. They didn’t do this to pen us here. They did it because they think they can slaughter us. That means someone out there has a plan. If we don’t want to prove him right we have to go back.’

Titus stared at him, but this time there was no argument. He nodded. ‘This is your general.’ His parade-ground roar pierced the clamour around them. ‘Pass the order that the cohort must withdraw to the market place.’ Perhaps fifty men heard the command, but they quickly passed it to those around them. The crush lessened as men took the first tentative steps backward. There was no way of warning those in the van, who Serpentius suspected were already fighting their own losing battle. They would have to fend for themselves. Foot by painful foot they made their way back, spears and rocks rattling on the shields above.

‘What the fuck’s he doing in the middle of this mess?’ Serpentius heard a man in an adjoining testudo protest. ‘This is no place for a fornicating general.’

The Spaniard met Titus’s eyes and Vespasian’s son grinned. ‘I think he’s right.’

They passed a felled horse, its eyes dull and two spears buried in its side. The commander of Titus’s escort lay crushed beneath it, his hands still twitching. Titus shook his head. ‘I failed them.’

‘No,’ Serpentius hissed, ‘you led them. Now you’ll have a chance to avenge them.’

By the time they reached the square other units were retreating from the adjoining streets. Men carried their wounded comrades. Out of the bedlam appeared Phrygius, legate of the Fifteenth, sweat-stained and haggard. He gasped with relief as he recognized Titus.

‘Thank the gods you’re alive. We walked into a trap. The rebels ambushed both legions before they could reach their objectives.’ He lifted a water skin to his mouth and Serpentius noticed his fingers trembling. ‘We’ve cleared a route back to the breach. We’ll get you out now and make another attempt tomorrow.’

‘No.’ Titus’s face flushed crimson with the strength of his anger. ‘We hold what we have. I want the second wall pulled down piece by piece and every building in our control demolished. We will construct our own siege wall encircling the entire city. If the Judaeans want to keep us out, so be it, we will make sure they stay in and starve. Not a loaf of bread or a jar of oil will pass. Not a woman or child will be allowed to leave. Let it be known I will kill anyone who makes the attempt. How many prisoners?’

‘Four hundred, perhaps five.’ Phrygius looked perplexed.

‘Then they will be the first barrier. The refugees have been escaping by the north-west route since we took the wall and our soldiers have been allowing them to pass out of pity. No more. You will crucify one prisoner for every ten paces and anyone who tries to pass will join them.’

‘But-’

‘Do you deny me the right?’ Titus snarled.

‘No, lord.’

‘Then have it done,’ Titus said more gently. ‘They have brought this upon themselves. What they sow, so shall they reap.’ He turned to Serpentius. ‘You saved my life, Spaniard. This is no time to talk of rewards, but know this. If ever Valerius Verrens no longer has need of you there is an honoured place in the household of Titus Flavius Vespasian as long as he is alive to provide it.’

Serpentius bowed his head in thanks, but said no words. It was a good offer. A man could live long and well with such patronage. But he doubted he would ever take it up. He would either die in the service of Valerius or, if the gods spared him, take the long road back to Hispania and the mountains of his youth and make old bones in the earth from which he had sprung. Such was the fate of Serpentius of Avala.