XV

Piroboridava
The Kalends of May

THE DAY BEGAN with excitement, Ephippus almost bouncing as he supervised the trial. This was the culmination of many long days of work since he had first rushed into the principia shouting, ‘I’ve worked it out, I’ve worked it out!’

Ferox had never seen the man so animated before, or indeed so ready to chatter. Sabinus and Dionysius had exchanged glances, while the nearby soldiers had adopted the wooden expressions that suggested they were trying not to laugh.

‘It’s a monâkon,’ the Syracusan had shouted so loud that his voice echoed round the courtyard. Heads appeared at several windows. ‘A monâkon! Just think of that.’

‘One-armed?’ Dionysius at least reassured Ferox that his guess was right. ‘I fear that I am still at a loss, my dear fellow.’

Ephippus regained some control as he realised that he was now the centre of attention and his nervousness tried to reassert itself. ‘My apologies. It is an engine. Philon of Byzantium writes of them, as do others, though no one for hundreds of years. I’ve never seen one, nor even a picture, but that is surely what it is. Thank you once again for the loan of Philon’s book.’

‘Did not even know I had it,’ Sabinus assured him. ‘Did you notice, sir?’

‘Geometry has always given me a headache,’ Ferox replied. He had read a fair few of the scrolls from Sabinus’ little library, but had struggled with anything talking about measures and ratios and set those aside. Thankfully it seemed that Ephippus had discovered something useful – or at least that was what he must hope, while he waited for the engineer to get to the point.

‘Geometry.’ The Syracusan was shaking his head. ‘Not geometry, my lord…’ He seemed genuinely puzzled to encounter someone so lacking in basic understanding and yet given a post of authority. ‘You must come and see!’ he shouted again and scurried away.

Ferox chuckled. ‘Well, I suppose if we must, we must.’

They followed the engineer to the granaries. In the best traditions of the army, the shells of the two that had burned and the remnants of the third had been thoroughly demolished, leaving an odd patch of open ground in the fort. Ephippus’ wonder was in the remaining building given over to Dacian engines. Ferox had not been there for some time, and was impressed at how much more space there was. Naso and his men had done well, aided since he arrived by Ephippus, and had managed to get a fair few of the ballistae working again. The Sicilian was now standing with great pride by one of the tall cranes.

‘So that’s what it is,’ Sabinus said, voicing the words before Ferox had a chance.

‘You see it is really a lot like one of the old staff slings. A one-arm engine rather than a two-armed like all the others. Isis knows how the Dacians knew how to make it. Advice from one of the cities on the inner sea, I suppose. I really wonder who and what plans they used. As you can see, this cranks down and is held under tension of the sinew and ropes, and you can adjust the washers so that it lobs high or low. Of course, it is not easy to aim, for you have to move the whole frame and cannot pivot at all, but then the force produced…’ It was a while before Ephippus realised that his audience had ceased to follow him.

‘Apart from its historical interest, I take it there is a reason for bringing us here,’ Ferox asked as patiently as he could.

Ephippus blinked at him, mouth hanging open and giving his face a fish-like quality. ‘You told me that you wanted something that could shoot as far as the bridge. I think that this may be the answer.’ He smiled as he saw their renewed interest. ‘That is if I can get them to work. They are in a bit of a state.’

That had been ten days ago and since then they had been busy. On several nights it had taken a direct order to send the engineer to his bed, for if he was not in the workshops, he was outside measuring and surveying, or indoors with the beads of his abacus clicking back and forth and his stylus scratching away on writing tablets. One of the machines was in a dreadful state, the other only a little better, and it was soon decided to strip all that was useful from the first. Other parts had to be made, which in turn required exact measurement and more than a little guesswork for the manual was vague on many points. After a few days Sabinus took charge of a work party building a platform extending back from the rampart about twenty paces to the left of the porta praetoria, because Ephippus informed them that the machine would need to be raised up.

‘How about a tower?’ Dionysius had suggested.

Ephippus dismissed the idea. ‘No. We could not build one that was high enough and strong enough.’

When the machine was pronounced ready, Ferox could understand why. It was bulkier than any ballista he had ever seen, with a rectangular frame of big, squared off beams as its base. About a third of a way back from the front was a solid upright, heavily padded and with supports joining on to the front of the frame to give it more strength, and just behind it the great metal washers. Now that he had looked – and had it explained to him plenty of times – Ferox could see that this was like one side of an ordinary ballista, whether a light scorpio or one of the big stone throwers. The only difference was that this was on its side, running between the two long sides of the frame. From it sprouted the high beam to which Ephippus had fitted what for all the world was just like a giant sling. A heavy rope hooked onto a catch on the beam, allowing it to be cranked down and held by a second cross-beam near the back, turned by a big wooden windlass worked by levers. A rachet prevented this from spinning back as the levers were lifted out and moved to the next socket.

‘You really wouldn’t want that lot going off without warning,’ Naso assured him. Like many others he had taken more and more interest in the machine as the days passed.

‘Some men just like machines,’ Ferox told Claudia when she asked why so many kept wandering down to see what was happening and whether they could help. ‘Machines are straightforward and do not get mad at you.’

‘Huh!’

Eventually Ephippus tested the mechanism under a low tension and was satisfied, so that they could begin the major task of moving the monâkon to the rampart. The engineer had designed a cart with a wide, flat platform, and cranes to help lift the engine onto it, but even so fifty men were needed to haul on the ropes. ‘I wondered about fitting the thing with wheels of its own, but am worried that it might roll back when we shoot.’

Five pairs of oxen pulled the cart, and men pushed and made sure that the wheels did not bog down as the weight pushed them into the packed grit on the road surface. Sabinus sighed at the sight of the deep trails ruining the previously flat surface. ‘I guess we have another task for a work party,’ Ferox told him.

‘The men will be delighted,’ Sabinus replied with heavy sarcasm. ‘Let’s just hope this demonic device actually works.’

‘We’ll soon see.’

Ephippus had ordered that the platform end in a ramp, and had made the slope as gentle as was possible while still permitting people to pass this section of the intervallum. Ferox had refused the engineer’s eager request to knock down a couple of barrack blocks to make more room. Posts were driven deep into the rampart so that an array of blocks, ropes and pulleys could be secured, with rollers prepared to ease the catapult as it was drawn upwards.

It took half a day to get the monâkon to the base of the ramp, and night had fallen by the time that they were done, so that men with torches lit the way. Ferox had been surprised at how slowly the engineer raised the great machine, inching it up the slope, then stopping and having men thrust in levers as brakes to hold it in place while pulleys were adjusted. He did not stay to watch the whole thing, because he wanted to show trust and also had a lot of other things to do. Yet he made sure to pass by every half hour or so and sometimes the thing had barely moved.

‘Sure this is a good idea?’ Vindex asked time after time.

‘No,’ Ferox replied, prompting Claudia Enica to shake her head in dismay. She was dressed in high Thracian boots, a short, belted tunic under a mail shirt, with a sica, a curved sword of the type common in this area and used by Thracian gladiators on one hip and a gladius on the other. Today she was not wearing a helmet, and her long hair was braided and coiled on top of her head. This had been her garb each day, sometimes with a different cuirass, sometimes with a plumed helmet, and very occasionally adding a cloak if the morning was cold.

‘I am queen,’ she had told him when she appeared at morning orders the first time. ‘These are my warriors, so I must lead them.’

Sabinus had gulped nervously, for the skirt of the queen’s tunic showed most of her legs and he was not accustomed to seeing an equestrian lady display herself in this way, let alone such an attractive one. However, the army was the army and things ought to be done properly. ‘The numerus is under the care of your husband.’ He swallowed again, for like everyone else he knew that the marriage between Ferox and Claudia was scarcely orthodox. ‘That is Flavius Ferox. It is not the Roman custom to let ladies serve as soldiers.’

Claudia gave him a look of the sort Ferox had always felt she reserved for him alone, mingling disappointment with weary contempt at the stubborn idiocy of a small boy. Having already had this conversation with her, and realised that she was absolutely determined and quite possibly right, he let it play out.

‘I am queen, and we are Brigantes.’

‘You are Roman, my lady,’ Sabinus said, surprising Ferox by his determination. ‘This is not proper.’ Then he made a huge mistake as his lips curled into a smile. ‘I admire your bravery, but war is grim work and best left to men.’

Enica nodded thoughtfully as if seeing the wisdom, prompting Sabinus to smile, but before he could say another word she started to turn. Her hand gripped the sica, which slid from the scabbard in one fluid motion and flicked up, the curved edge stopping a whisker short of the centurion’s throat. It was all so sudden, but then Dionysius jumped back in surprise and a guard was shouting, hefting his pilum to use as a spear.

Ferox waved at the man to stand fast. ‘You will discover that the queen has considerable skill at arms,’ he said gently. Sabinus was gulping again and again, eyes wide, still struggling to believe what was happening. ‘And the Brigantes will fight all the better – if the time comes – for the queen’s presence. But,’ Ferox raised his voice. ‘This is a principia of the army, and more than that the principia where I command and not some tavern suited for brawls. You will sheath your sword, your highness, and do it now.’

Enica glanced at him, then did as she was told. Then she gave Sabinus a flirtatious smile that was pure Claudia, leaving the centurion even more confused than before.

Ferox stood up behind his desk. ‘I command here. If anyone draws a weapon here again, they will be in chains before the day is out. Is that understood?’ He saw that his wife was fighting the urge to make a lewd joke – or at least a statement easy to interpret more than one way – and was pleased that she controlled it. This was not the time.

‘You command and I will lead my people to serve you,’ she said.

‘Good enough,’ he replied. ‘Have it added to today’s orders that the queen is to command the Brigantes, second only to me, and that she is to be treated by all with the respect due to a centurion and an eques.’

So from then on the queen attended morning orders, and did the rounds with Ferox and the others, openly supervising the training of the Brigantes and riding out once or twice with patrols, when she added silk Parthian trousers to her attire. As the days passed the officers all became used to it, not least because she was attractive and charming and very positive when she gave orders. The contingent of Brigantes she had brought to the fort came equipped with a vexillum standard, the blue flag painted with what most Romans must have assumed was the figure of Victory. To the tribesmen the woman was Brigantia, the goddess of their people, who lived on earth in the women of the royal line. Ferox had not been surprised to see that the painted figure had red hair and a short tunic. Some of the legionaries and auxiliaries had scoffed when they saw it installed in the aedes, the shrine for the standards in the principia. This was almost empty for a fort this size, for none of the men at the fort had brought a signa, and otherwise there were just two other vexilla, one for I Minervia and one for cohors I Hispanorum veterana.

The Brigantes showed no surprise as their queen took charge of them.

‘She’s the queen,’ Vindex explained to Sabinus. ‘And they don’t hate her like they do Ferox.’

The rest of the garrison displayed shock, amusement, and then surprisingly swiftly became used to the sight of a woman wearing armour and giving orders. That was the charm again, and helped because this was a fort full of men largely deprived of the sight, let alone the company of women, so that such a pretty one was a treat. Ferox quickly noticed that there were always more men around than usual whenever they were carrying out an inspection and began to climb one of the towers. Even when he tried to vary the route, there they were, off-duty soldiers and sentries arriving early or lingering late for this shift, talking among themselves or apparently busy, but ready to cluster as close to the bottom of each ladder as they dared when it came time for the queen to climb.

‘I wish you would wear a cloak, at the very least,’ he whispered to her as she followed him up onto the top platform at the porta decumana at the back of the fort.

Claudia Enica’s expression was one of supreme innocence. ‘Some of the men have no breeches under their tunics.’

‘It’s not the same,’ he hissed, as Sabinus appeared through the open trap door, his face somewhat red.

After that Ferox made sure that she went first up any ladder in front of him and came down last. There would still be plenty of interested bystanders, but at least he spared his senior staff both embarrassment and enjoyment. Vindex was not impressed whenever he joined the party.

‘Jealous, eh?’ he leered. ‘Or just desperate?’

Ferox ignored him, for in truth the repeated views up his wife’s tunic as she climbed were reminders of his failure as a husband and his surging desire. Having her here, but still unreachable, was a lot harder to bear than when she had been so far away, especially when he tried and failed to stop himself from staring up at her wondrous rear and the little pants she favoured. She knew it too, and Ferox was sure that she was deliberately stopping part way up and even wriggling more than necessary each time she got onto a platform. Yet still he slept alone, in one of the smallest rooms in the praetorium.

Sulpicia Lepidina was sympathetic, at least to a point. ‘Claudia will come around. Be patient and play her games. It is all your fault in the first place for losing her. Sometimes you are too much the barbarian, aren’t you?’ Her face had a wistful look, and he wondered whether she was thinking back to their own affair. ‘I would like you both to be happy,’ she said. ‘And while I wonder about Claudia’s talk of magic and fate, I do suspect that you are meant for each other, while also guessing that it will be the rockiest of roads.’

Although she had been disappointed when the letter arrived from Cerialis telling her to stay at Piroboridava for the moment, Sulpicia Lepidina had got on with things as she always did, running the household since Claudia had little interest in such matters when there were warriors to supervise. Remarkably, she took over without making Philo resent the new, far tighter oversight. The praetorium bustled, and often echoed to the cries of the children. Ferox remembered reading that Cicero felt his new villa had gained a soul when a library was created, but nothing made a place a home faster than children. It was all so comfortable that he wondered whether he was ready for a quiet life, even a dull life, if only Claudia would take him back. Then he would remember where they were, and think of Dacians swarming over the ramparts of the fort. They were ruthless in war and could be cruel to captives. He had heard too many stories of what the local women had done to captured Romans in past wars to doubt that there was a lot of truth in them, and the allies in any Dacian army could be even less predictable. If his fears were right then that meant captivity or death for everyone here, perhaps with many cruelties along the way and such thoughts chilled him to the very bone.

On the morning when all was ready to test the monâkon, it was easier to live with such fears. The day was glorious, with the sky an almost unbroken field of pale blue and hardly a breath of wind. Almost the entire fort was watching, with the ramparts lined wherever there was a decent view of the canabae and bridge beyond. On top of the right-hand tower of the porta praetoria was a place reserved for the ladies and the children, the latter especially eager when told that this mighty machine flung vast rocks to smash all in its path. To Ferox’s relief, Claudia Enica was as elegant and proper in her attire as Sulpicia Lepidina, both adding broad-brimmed felt hats to guard against the sun. They still attracted plenty of sidelong glances, as did their maids, both of whom were pretty. A man would struggle to peek up a long dress when they climbed or through the gaps in the planking, but Ferox knew that plenty would still try.

The mood of celebration was helped because this was genuinely a festival day for the Brigantes, and later several cows were to be sacrificed and form the basis for a feast.

‘Is it safe, do you think?’ Vindex said with great suspicion.

‘Bet it doesn’t work,’ Sabinus told Dionysius.

‘I reckon it’ll either tear itself apart or work so well that it knocks the bridge down,’ the auxiliary centurion replied.

‘No, it’ll hit the tavern,’ Vindex suggested. ‘Accidents always happen to the most important things.’

Ferox had thought the same thoughts, which was one reason why he had ensured that the ladies and the children would watch from this tower, rather than the left one which was closer to the catapult. They should all be well out of reach of any unexpected event up here. He walked over to the rear of the tower. Below him, Naso stood with a cornicen.

‘Signal that we are ready,’ he shouted.

‘Sir!’ Naso replied and a moment later the trumpeter sounded a deep note on his curved cornu.

Ephippus waved, but was still making final adjustments. Ferox stayed at the rear of the tower, for he felt that luck was more likely to be with them if he did not watch the first shot land. Apart from that, only from here could he see the machine properly. Two men loaded the stone into the sling which had already been cranked down. Ephippus was confident that the engine would be capable of hurling something twice the weight, but had agreed that a cautious approach was best. The men stepped back, the engineer checked that all were safely away from the frame and then took the cord ready to pull. Ferox wondered which gods the Greek prayed to as he hesitated, and then yanked it free, releasing the arm. Even at this distance Ferox flinched at the force as the arm sprang forward, banging into the padded upright with more noise than he had expected, and at its tip the sling whipped over the top and released the stone. The whole frame shook with the action, and he knew that it was at a pretty low tension.

‘Bugger me, it works.’ That was Vindex, but anything else was lost in a great gasp from the crowd that turned into a cheer. He pushed his way back to the front. There was a faint puff of dust where the stone had landed and broken apart. It was still well short of the bridge by a good hundred paces, but about the longest range for any of their other engines.

The second shot bounced thirty paces nearer, the stone cracking into two big pieces, one of which kept going straight. They were using soft limestone for the trials. Partly that was to avoid smashing the bridge or – if it went wild, a building – and partly because Ephippus had suggested that the fall of each missile would be that much more obvious and easier to measure afterwards. The third was closer still, the thump as it was loosed the loudest by far. After that Ephippus began to adjust the tension on the main washers, lobbing the missile higher if slower. Within a few shots, a stone splashed into the river beside the bridge.

‘Tell him if he breaks it, then he’ll have to pay for it,’ Sabinus said cheerfully.

‘Riders!’ Vindex interrupted, pointing to the south, where three horsemen were coming up the track.

Claudia Enica pulled the brim of her hat down as she stared for a long moment. ‘They’re mine. We must warn them.’

‘I am sure they will work out the danger for themselves, dear lady,’ Sabinus suggested.

‘Depends how daft they are,’ Vindex muttered.

Claudia turned to Ferox. ‘Either send someone to ride out and warn them or I will do it.’

He glanced down, taking in her long dress.

‘I can ride in this,’ she said, and he hoped there was more amusement than anger in her eyes, ‘or take it off.’

Ferox went to the rear of the tower and shouted down to Naso. Before the cornu sounded there was another dull thump. He heard the murmur of the crowd, softer now than at the start, but still excited and then it turned into shouting.

‘Oh bugger,’ Vindex said. By the time Ferox could see there was a plume of dust beyond the bridge and the three horses were bolting in all directions. Two of the riders stayed on, while the third was down and not moving.

‘I hope that is not Bran,’ Claudia Enica said quietly.

‘Bran?’ Ferox had almost forgotten the boy he had not seen for six years, and struggled to accept that the lad – a man now presumably – was over there.

Claudia nodded.

‘Oh shit,’ Vindex muttered.

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