Sword of Rome

XLIII

Domitia Longina Corbulo looked out from the walls of Placentia with the flames of the city’s blazing amphitheatre dancing in her eyes.

‘You are not safe here.’

She had sensed his presence, so Valerius’s voice came as no surprise, but his words made her lips purse. Who was safe amid all this butchery? She had spent the day helping care for the wounded, tying bandages and trying to staunch wounds that would not be staunched. She had seen things that no human being had a right to see and held men as they died. When she had tried to wash the blood from her hands there always seemed to be traces left. Perhaps it would never leave her. Domitia turned to meet his gaze, hastily concealing her unease at the change a few hours had wrought. His eyes held the shadows of fresh sorrow, and exhaustion and strain had deepened the lines around them. The wound on his left cheek would leave a new scar on a face that might have been fashioned for war. ‘Were you safe today, Valerius?’

Today? Surely the moon said it had been yesterday, and the stink of blood and torn bowels answered her better than he ever could. ‘I am a soldier,’ he said simply.

The crackle of sparks drew them back to the arena. A moment passed as they watched the flames leap higher before she spoke again. ‘Will we be together?’

The change of direction momentarily confused him. Did she mean tonight, or tomorrow, or for the rest of their lives? ‘I think that is for the gods to decide.’

The angry hiss of her breath told him it was the wrong answer. ‘I have watched you, Valerius. I have seen you preserve life and I have seen you kill. You stood on these walls today like a god of old, yet you would allow them to dictate to you, to us?’

He wanted to argue, to be the man he had been when the sword was in his hand, but before he could reply Spurinna appeared with a shadowy figure at his elbow. Valerius took a step away from Domitia.

‘Lady.’ The general bowed. Domitia nodded gravely and directed a smile at the dark spectre, who turned out be Serpentius. She walked by Valerius on the way to the stairs. He watched her go and wished more than anything in this world that he could follow.

‘By the gods, if you had but been a Roman you would have had the Gold Crown today.’ Spurinna’s eyes held a glint of triumph as he commended the Spaniard. ‘It was a good plan, but it took a special man to turn it into reality. You have done the Emperor a great service and you may be assured he will hear of it.’

Serpentius spat into the darkness. He knew all too well that the gratitude of Emperors could be unreliable and short-lived. In the torchlight the gleam of his grim smile was a stark contrast to his soot-stained face, and he no longer had any eyebrows. He glared at Spurinna. ‘You said it would burn well,’ the general frowned, uncertain whether he was hearing a compliment or an accusation, ‘but you didn’t say how well. I was lucky to get out with only a singed arse …’ The gaunt Spaniard was interrupted by a great, grumbling roar from the amphitheatre. A flurry of sparks and flame shot hundreds of feet in the air as the floor of the burning arena collapsed beneath the weight of the giant siege catapults. ‘But at least they won’t be throwing rocks at us tomorrow.’

‘No.’ Valerius’s voice was deadly serious. ‘But they’ll be throwing everything else.’

‘Then we’d better be ready for them.’

The attack that began at daylight took on a new dimension. Valerius had been right. Caecina did throw everything he had at the south wall. While his auxiliaries hammered at the rampart in a repeat of the previous day’s tactics and with as much success, the men of the three legions, protected by portable wooden huts and screens they’d worked through the night to produce and hardened by years of digging forts and roads, worked to undermine the walls. Valerius tried to use fire arrows to destroy the thatched huts, but he discovered his countermeasure had been anticipated. The reeds the legionaries had used to roof the structures had been dampened and the burning shafts simply smouldered and died. Anyone who attempted to improvise an angle to loose an arrow or throw a spear at the occupants became the target of the dozens of archers placed to protect the diggers and enthusiasm for the tactic soon waned. The only victories were achieved where the piles of big stones happened to be stockpiled above the point where the legionaries were digging. A single small boulder would make little impact, but an avalanche of them smashed the shelters to splinters and crushed those inside. Juva witnessed one successful strike and later he came to Valerius during a lull in the fighting. ‘I have an idea, tribune.’

Valerius listened to what the Nubian had to say and grinned. ‘Take as many men as you need.’

Spurinna appeared on the wall an hour later. He was clean-shaven and as immaculate as usual in his legate’s polished armour and scarlet cloak, but the grey pallor on his cheeks was proof he had not slept for days and the snap in his voice reinforced the fact. ‘I’ve had a complaint from Antiochus, one of the city’s aediles, that some legionaries are demolishing his house.’

Valerius showed him the shelters and explained what Juva had in mind.

‘Well.’ The general’s lined face relaxed. ‘I’m sure the gentleman has other houses, and we all have to make sacrifices.’

The ‘house’ was a rich villa constructed of large blocks of cut sandstone that would take two normal men to lift. But the former oarsmen of the marine legion were no ordinary men. Broad as a pick handle at the shoulder, with necks like bulls, they had upper arms that, over the years, had developed to the thickness of a man’s thigh. Now a line of these giants struggled up the stairs to the parapet with their haul. Juva showed how it should be done. Bending low to avoid the arrows that were a constant threat to the defenders, he dragged his block to a point just above one of the wood and thatch huts. When he was in place, he waited patiently until the others reached their positions.

Every eye was on the big Nubian as he crouched over the massive stone, huge muscles taking the strain until the tendons stood out like tree roots and his neck looked as if it might explode. Just when it seemed he must admit defeat he straightened in a single smooth movement and heaved the block over the parapet. A heartbeat later the roof of the shelter exploded, followed by a long moment of silence before the screaming started. One of the diggers had taken the full force of the block and his blood and brains now coated the other occupants, who scuttled through a shower of arrows into the safety of the testudo where their comrades waited their turn to dig. A second man’s arm had been sheared off at the shoulder. Valerius watched as the exercise was repeated simultaneously all along the wall to similar satisfying effect.

A great cheer went up from the defenders, but the roar faded as the legionary ranks opened to allow a new set of shelters to be trotted forward into place, along with a fresh set of diggers.

‘It seems they’re not ready to give up,’ Valerius commented.

Juva’s eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion and his face was grey with dried sweat and mortar dust, but he managed a smile. ‘Neither are we.’ He waved a huge arm to take in the roofs of Placentia. ‘When this house is finished there are plenty more to choose from.’

Valerius always knew there would be a crisis and it came as the sun reached its height and the pressure on the walls threatened to overwhelm the exhausted defenders. Thousands of dead auxiliaries filled the ditch, lying on the already bloated carcasses of those who had been killed on the first day, but still they came. The shelters and diggers had been renewed several times. Juva had lost a dozen of his strongest in the cat-and-mouse game with the archers, and the survivors were close to collapse.

Serpentius noticed it first. ‘What in the name of the gods is that?’ he demanded through a throat choked with dust and thirst. That was a shelter four times the length of those the legionaries had used for their mining expeditions, and it appeared more sturdily constructed. Valerius followed his gaze and felt a thrill of genuine fear as he watched it carve a route through the legionary ranks.

‘To the gate!’ He ran in the direction of the flanking towers.

When they reached the walkway above the gate the curious structure was close enough for the foremost occupants to be visible. Its size was explained by the fact that, as well as the men who carried it, the interior had to be wide enough to accommodate two lines of legionaries and the massive tree trunk they struggled to carry between them. The clue was in the huge stone carved in the shape of a horned ram that tipped the trunk.

‘Juva? Brace the gates and concentrate the strongest of your men here with as many of the big blocks as they can find.’

By the time he heard the sound of the braces being knocked into position the battering ram was already being manoeuvred towards the gate through a storm of spears and arrows. But the roof of the shelter wasn’t thatched, rather plated with some kind of metal sheets, and the weapons simply bounced off. Sweat ran down Valerius’s back, but it had nothing to do with the warmth of a spring day.

The builders had set the gate back from the line of the wall, so that from above the overhang obscured the front of the shelter. A big legionary staggered up with a stone block, but before he could hurl it an enormous splintering crash froze everyone in place. ‘Jupiter save us,’ someone whispered. It wasn’t until he saw Serpentius staring at him that Valerius realized it had been he himself. Now it was the Vitellian forces who cheered, and they attacked the walls with renewed vigour as the battering ram’s rhythmic, ear-splitting crash echoed across the field.

‘I’ll show those bastards.’ With a roar, the legionary heaved the block up to the parapet and dropped it on to the shelter below with a mighty clatter. For a moment the battering stopped, but when Valerius risked a glance to inspect the damage he saw that although the metal roof had been badly dented, the occupants were untouched.

‘Try again,’ he snarled, but in his heart he knew the result would be the same.

‘How long?’ Serpentius asked.

Valerius shrugged. The gate was made of a double layer of seasoned oak and barred with three thick beams. It was strong, but unless the ram could be destroyed the result was inevitable. ‘An hour, maybe less.’

The Spaniard nodded solemnly. ‘In that case, we’ll slaughter the bastards when they come through the gate.’

Valerius smiled at his friend’s assurance, but they both knew that if the ram broke through, this would be their last fight.

When he inspected the gate, it was holding up reasonably well, with only a few white splinters showing the damage done so far. Yet every blow had an effect and men flinched with each strike of the ram and the wooden beams shivered at the strain placed on them. Valerius had ordered two centuries of Spurinna’s Praetorians to the gateway, ready for the breakthrough when it came. For the moment, they sat with their backs to the wall darting nervous glances at every thundering crash. The defenders on the walls above were still full of fight and Caecina would be lamenting the loss of his siege ballistae, but none of that would matter when the ram breached the gate.

Even as he watched, the pressure on the wooden beams grew, and when he looked closely Valerius saw the first cracks beginning to form in the central bar, which was taking the worst of the pounding. How much longer could it last?

He was still brooding on the question when he heard the sound of snarled orders and tramping feet. Puzzled, he turned to find Juva bearing down on him at the front of a stout pole being carried by six of the marine legionaries, every man cursing the great load they bore and their faces uniform masks of pain and effort. The pole was bent almost to breaking point by the weight of an enormous millstone from one of Placentia’s bakeries; four feet of black granite as broad as a glutton’s waist, transfixed by the pole through a hole at its centre.

Valerius realized in an instant what the big Nubian had in mind. ‘Clear the stairs,’ he shouted.

Grunting with effort and legs straining, Juva and his men hefted the massive stone one agonizing step at a time up the steep stairway to the parapet. Valerius wondered that the millstone didn’t slide back and crush the rearmost carriers until he noticed that someone had jammed cloth into the gap between stone and pole to hold it in place. Eventually the carrying party reached the wall above the gateway and thankfully lowered their burden to the flagstones before collapsing groaning beside it. Valerius looked over the parapet down to where the metal-plated shelter covered the ram. Would it be enough? They were about to find out.

‘You are not finished yet,’ Juva snarled at his comrades. ‘One more effort.’ He picked up one end of the pole and took the strain. Reluctantly, and easing their aching muscles, his tent mates returned to their places so that three men gripped the pole on either side of the great stone. ‘On the count of three. One, two …’

With one convulsive heave they lifted the pole to shoulder height and somehow managed to get the millstone on top of the parapet, where it teetered for a moment before a last effort sent it plunging down on the ram shelter. The massive block instantly caved in six or eight feet of roof, buckling the metal and shattering planks. Animal shrieks of pain and terror testified to the effect on those within. Only the bulk of the ram itself had stopped the roof being crushed to ground level. Inside would be a welter of smashed bodies and shattered limbs. Even those not in the immediate area where the millstone had fallen would not have escaped as the trunk was torn from their hands or the wooden frame battered to the ground. Eventually, a few figures started to crawl out, or were supported from the wreckage, to be scythed down by a merciless hail of arrows and spears, before two centuries of Caecina’s legionaries formed testudo to rescue the survivors. In the hours that followed, a few half-hearted attempts were made to salvage the smashed shelter and its ram, but eventually the young legate’s men gave up the unequal battle. In fact, the destruction of the ram had a curiously debilitating effect on the whole attack. The assault against the city walls lost its impetus and by nightfall the Vitellians were back in their camps, leaving only a few archers to harass the defenders with fire arrows.

That evening Spurinna joined Valerius on the parapet and stared into the darkness. ‘Your men did well today. You should get some sleep.’

‘They’re up to something.’

Spurinna nodded. It was impossible to see anything, but like Valerius he could sense some great effort out there in the darkness. ‘They’ll have some new trick to torment us with in the morning. Even more important that you get some rest.’

But when the sun rose the camps were empty and the only movement on the battlefield was the flapping of wings as the crows fought over the bloating corpses of the dead.