The Judgement

7

After his optio had strapped on his armour, Sabinus took his splendid helmet with its nodding plumes, then led his standard-bearers into the chapel. There stood the central shrine, the eagle, the bull ensign and the lesser centurial banners. Beneath the shrine, beneath the altar itself, lay the fort’s strongroom, packed with stamped gold ingots from the mines of Mons Aurea.

One of centurial banner-bearers shook so badly that he nearly dropped the staff as Sabinus handed it to him. A mere lad, sixteen or seventeen, a once-weekly shaver, scarce dry from the egg. His name was Julianus. Sabinus spoke to him gravely but not unkindly. ‘Hold it steady, lad,’ he said evenly. ‘Yes, we are cut off. Yes, there are a lot of them. But this is a still a legionary fort. It’s stood for four centuries now, against barbarians just as vile as these.’ He told the lad – he told all of them – to hate their enemies. ‘Think of your families. Think of what will become of them… and swear hatred of the barbarians,’ he said. ‘Your hatred will drive out fear, and then you will fight like lions.’

As the legionary bull standard was lowered and passed out of the door of the chapel into the night, he gave it a brief, idolatrous bow.

Alone he visited the hospital and saw that all was in good order. The medics stood to attention. Only four patients in there now, one clearly dying. Another with leg sores, being cleaned up nicely by hard-working maggots collected fresh from horse-dung. Poultices, bandages and dressings, copper pots steaming on the stoves, jars of grey-green willow-leaf infusion for wounds.

He resumed his place on the west tower beside Tatullus. The centurion did not stir. A fortress of a man.

The waiting was always the worst. Oh, let it begin soon.

But they were kept waiting. They waited all night until the dawnlight came up behind them.

A low morning mist, thickest over the silent river to the north. Smoke sitting heavily over the lost town, where it had once stood proud on the green summer plain. Smoke slowly drifting eastwards towards the fort, mingling with wraiths of mist in the cold shadows of the north wall.

All night long the stars had burned, and, out on the plain around, myriad campfires like a starry floor. Their enemy, of course, but a strange feeling of company. Then towards dawn, with the temperature still dropping sharply from the warm day, the mist had risen from the river and the marshy meadows round about and thickened towards sunrise. Now it lay dense and milk-white around them, Sabinus on the tower like the captain on the deck of some ghost ship abandoned in remote uncharted seas.

‘This visibility is bad,’ he said.

‘Bad for us,’ said Tatullus pointedly. ‘Not for our attackers. ’

The attack must come soon. The soldiers on the walls stamped their feet, blew into cupped hands. How their tensed bones ached in their chill coats of mail. The mist clung to them, beaded dewdrops on cold metal.

All wore their heavy helmets through the long night so that their necks ached. Leather straps cut into throats. Feet were white cold. The wall artillery was primed and loaded. The swords were ground sharp. The world was silent around them. No birds sang.

On the north-west tower, a legionary gazed out towards the river, trying to judge whether the mist was thinning in the rising sun, and how fast. Still no sight of the opposite bank. Then he frowned. Something was wrong. The mist was darkening, close to. Shadows moving within it. Over the tributary channel, just along the wall. Something was happening. Coming nearer.

The chain was across the entrance back by the river watchtowers, wasn’t it? They’d talked about the waterways last night. Apparently, the refugees had reported the invaders using horse-transporters of some sort: rafts. But if any bone-headed barbarians seriously tried attacking downriver they’d get in a right bloody mess. The emperor-chain would be across the Iron Gorge, with auxiliaries stationed on the cliffs above, and the marines of the Danube Fleet ready to row out of Ratiaria if necessary and finish them off. There was no chance there.

But presumably their plan, assuming they had a plan, was to take Viminacium and then head on south down the imperial trunk road to Naissus and the rich pickings of Sardica. Like they’d ever get that far. Not with a legionary fortress in the way, and their knowledge of missile technology extending as far as an arrow dipped in flaming tar. The walls of Viminacium should be able to withstand a few of those.

But now…

‘Sir?’ he said to his decurion.

‘Hm?’ The junior officer had his helmet off, resting it on the top of the battlements, polishing it with his woollen neckerchief, so that the first arrow punched straight into his head. His helmet rolled over the wall and fell silently and he slumped forwards across the wall.

The soldier opened his mouth to shout in terror but instead gargled blood as another arrow passed up through his throat and into his skull. Still scrabbling at his throat, he stumbled and rolled down the stone steps to the battlements.

The artillerymen stared around, bewildered.

Then one of them saw what was happening. Out of the mist were coming high-sided boats, drifting slowly down the tributary channel. No, not the Danube Fleet from Ratiaria, come to the rescue. These were other boats entirely, captured from God knows where, moving slow and serene as great swans in the white summer mist. Each one was filled with archers, ready to rain down arrows on the fortress walls.

‘Enemy at the north wall!’

But along the west wall they already had their own concerns.

Sabinus heard his centurion grunt. He himself took a step forward in fascinated horror, his whole body trembling. He saw but did not immediately understand. He reached out to steady himself.

The barbarians had no siegecraft. He said it to himself again. The barbarians had no siegecraft.

Tatullus spoke for him. ‘What the hell is this, civil war?’ Then ducked and took cover as a single arrow clattered into the stone beside him. Covering fire for the Sabinus did not duck. He stamped his heavy sandals, the hobnails thudding on the thick wooden planks. This was no dream.

This was real. And this was the day he would die.

The mist cleared a little more. There was the lone horseman’s spear from last night, decorated with the single black feather, still stuck in the ground before the west gate. A cool, light wind blew, a very light wind, and the mist drifted away off the wet meadows towards the river. Except they could not see the wet meadows. They were covered in horsemen.

At their head sat a group of long-haired, half-naked, tattooed Hun noblemen, generals, perhaps, gold gleaming around their arms and necks; and another man of different race, fair with close-cropped or thinning hair. At the head of them in turn, gazing up at the walls of Viminacium, smiling cheerfully, sword dangling loosely in his right hand as if ready to ride up and attack the fortress with bare steel, was their leader. The one from the night before. Attila.

‘Sir, boats passing along the north wall. Men taking fire.’

Sabinus ignored him. What was emerging before their horror-stricken eyes out of the mist to the west was everything now. For it was not the vast horde of savagely armed and decorated horse-warriors standing before them that chilled the blood, so much as the weaponry they brought with them. Against all intelligence and expectation. Among the horde, still half veiled in thin mist, stood two huge wooden siege-towers on great solid wheels, two mighty torsion-spring onagers with boulders already set back in their basins, a bronze-headed battering ram expertly protected under a moveable steep-sided tortoise of strong wooden planks and iron plates, and, scattered among the horsemen, a number of other smaller artillery pieces, sling-machines and ballistas. Things that barbarians should not have.

Around the onagers was a busy commerce of men and oxen and wagons, and the distant creaking of ropes and winches and leather slings. Soon would come the nerve-shredding, ascending screech of twisted torsion springs tuned to screaming pitch, and then the snap and thud of release, the loosed beam flying up and hitting the padded crossbeam, and the boulder hurtling through the air towards the walls of Viminacium.

‘Now we’ve got a fight on our hands,’ murmured Tatullus.

Sabinus shook off his trance of horror. ‘Turn the catapults! ’ he roared. ‘Wall artillery! Every unit on the towers. Do it now!’

Suddenly the U-shaped bastions were alive with panic and the noise of the light wall-artillery, the ballistas and the crossbow machines, being scraped round on their solid iron frames and ranged for the initial shots. Windlasses winding up a ferocious amount of energy in the thick reels of sinew, cranked back with mighty force on a long wooden lever and ratchet, men’s arms bulging, the sinew stretching tighter and tighter still, the high-pitched creak as it was wound back and back more, the bowstring drawn back and a heavy iron-headed bolt laid in the groove before it. When the trigger was released, all that pent-up energy discharged the bolt with lethal force. One bolt was good, but a whole bank of such machines discharging their bolts in a volley could bring down an entire line of cavalry, dragging down those in the rear in a bewildered jumble. The Huns would not have encountered such a thing before.

‘Long fire-bolts loaded! Buckets of tar on every bastion. Light ’em up!’

The pedites, the military runners, ran.

‘And bales, rocks, overturned wagons, anything, stacked up inside the west gate. We won’t be using it for a while.’

There weren’t enough men.

‘The question is,’ said Sabinus, looking out again, ‘those onagers: do they know how to use them?’

And then out of the mist, unrangeable, unreachable, the onagers started firing. They heard the muffled shock of massive beam clunking up into padded crossbeam, and the eerie, almost inaudibly low hum of the great missiles gliding in low, expertly aimed for the foundation stones of the fort. Each of the two machines required precisely one ranging shot. A big boulder fell short and slewed to a halt in the dust, its weight and force such that the ground creased up in wavelets before it. Sabinus waited, barely breathing. The second boulder hit the south-west tower a minute later. The sound seemed to come out of the bowels of the earth, like subterranean thunder. Men staggered atop, clutching their spears.

‘Question answered,’ said Tatullus stonily. ‘Yes, they know how to use them.’

The onagers halted. Out on the plain the vast Hun war-machine was beginning to roll forward again. And the Huns, ignorant and unlettered barbarians though they were, their very language no more than a series of unwriteable growls and grunts, knew better than to try and use onagers at the same time as their own lines were advancing in front of them. Yes, they knew exactly what they were doing. They must have formed an alliance with some power skilled in siegecraft. Who? Could it be treachery? Master-General Aetius had been close to the Huns as a boy. Could he have allied with his old friends, to conquer the Eastern Empire for himself?

But no. Not Aetius. Then who?

Huge solid wooden wheels creaked and groaned under the inertia of their giant loads. Oxen were lashed beneath their wooden canopies. Squeals and rumbles of animal, man and machine horribly commingled. And coming to the fore the two siege-towers. The braying of war trumpets, thunderous mounted kettle-drums, each blow with a bone drumstick like a punch in the guts, the crashing of Hunnish zils or cymbals, the earth itself trembling.

Sabinus bellowed another order: ‘All non-combatants to the dungeons, all current prisoners to the execution dungeon.’

A soldier blanched. ‘Families, sir? Children?’

Sabinus looked at him. ‘You have family?’

‘A sister, sir, in VI Barrack, and her two young ones.’

‘Then believe me, man, you’ll thank me soon enough.’ He looked back over the plain. ‘The dungeons are the best place for them.’

On the battlements just below, an archer drew back his bowstring, though the oncoming horde were still far out of range. It was Arapovian again, the impossible, indefatigable Armenian, his self-possession absolute amid the noise and panic of the artillery. His left arm, his bow-arm, had been tightly bandaged by the medics, but there still showed through on his forearm a small circle of deep dark blood. The man’s olive-skinned aquiline face was beaded with droplets of sweat but expressionless. No order had been given to fire, but Arapovian was clearly a kind of free-lance in his own estimation, and not subject to the orders of ordinary mortals. Sabinus watched, intrigued despite himself. Even as Arapovian pulled back his bowstring, Sabinus thought he could see that small circle of blood spreading. What it must have cost him. His biceps bunched as he drew back the sinew string of that lethal eastern bow, sinuously curved and then recurved at each end. The arrowhead was ablaze with a blob of pitch. He sighted along the arrow and fired.

Other soldiers turned in surprise to watch its arc.

The arrow struck the ground at the foot of the Hunnish spear, which still stood like an insult and a judgement before the west gate, its black feather bobbing in the light breeze. Then it went out. There was wisp of smoke, then nothing. He had fired too hard, the burning arrowhead had buried itself in the dusty ground and been snuffed out. An unfortunate omen. But there came another wisp of smoke and the pitch blazed again. A lean tongue of flame licked up the Hun spearshaft and it began to burn.

On the towers, the relentless activity of the ballistas and sling-machines faltered as men paused to watch. Let ’em, thought Sabinus. Moments like this were worth an extra cohort.

It was an astonishing shot, first time.

Now arrow-shaft and spearshaft burned together. After only a few seconds the tar-fuelled flames reached the long black feather dancing on top and reduced it to a few motes of ash. What had seemed like so powerful a symbol of intimidation had vanished in a lick of flame, a puff of wind.

He was an impossible one, this Armenian. But not altogether stupid. A great cheer went up from the ramparts. Arapovian neither turned, acknowledged it nor reacted in any way.

‘Stuck-up son of a bitch,’ growled Knuckles nearby.

He deserved a decoration for that flamboyant act. Sabinus called over to him, ‘When this is over, you’ll walk away with a corona obsidionalis.’

‘When this is over,’ said Arapovian, never shifting his gaze from the approaching horde, ‘I’ll be glad to walk away with my life.’

He nocked another arrow to his bow and rested his injured arm on the battlements and waited.

The enemy rolled nearer.

They could see now that the Hun siege-towers were serious constructions, frontages padded with huge sewn bolsters of rawhide, stuffed with riverweed and horsehair and thoroughly soaked against fire-arrows. They rolled in unison towards the west wall, one to the left and one to the right. Good dispositon. The supporting lines of horse-warriors slowed and stopped, still out of effective range.

Sabinus bellowed to his artillery, ‘Concentrate on the towers!’

To the north, report came of the drifting boats on the slow-moving tributary laying down a deadly rain of arrows. Anchoring themselves there with supreme confidence for the long stay. So Sabinus gave the order to clear the north walls and abandon them. The water would save them there.

From the eastern gate, the Porta Praetoria, leading down the Via Lederatea to Ratiaria, only the empty road. No dust-cloud. Shadows of buzzards in the morning sky. No help coming.

The two men on the west gate-tower, the legate and his primus pilus, regarded the approaching towers steadily. Then, ‘You see what I see?’ said Tatullus softly.

‘I do,’ said Sabinus, and he gave a faint smile. ‘Amateurs.’

Though the massive towers looked impressive enough, the Huns, or their enslaved builders and carpenters, perhaps deliberately, had failed to give them a low enough skirt. The four big wooden wheels on which each tower rolled forward were hopelessly exposed.

‘Let’s get ’em in close first,’ said the legate. ‘False shooting to start.’

He quit the west gate-tower and made for the south-west. ‘Unit III, get your slingshots down! Decurion, lower the trajectory. I want flat slings hitting the head of the tower. Slingshots on the level. I want the towers under bombardment at two hundred yards. What angle’s that?’

‘Around twelve degrees from the horizontal, sir.’

‘Then give the order.’

‘I could do you five degrees, sir, hit ’em at only a hundred yards, but harder still.’

Sabinus shook his head. ‘Too damn near. Give it ten degrees, then.’

The machines were ratcheted.

‘And never mind the whole tower, just take out the head. We’ll fire up the rest.’

He ordered the same for the north-west tower, giving the unit there a rapid inspection. They had two big crossbow machines and two iron-frame slings. He gave calm words of advice to the young unit commander, then returned to take his stand in the western gate-tower. Face on to the enemy.

At two hundred yards the first slingshots and bolts were loosed against the towers. There was a satisfyingly curt brutality to the flight. Long-distance shots might look impressive as they arced up high and fell over half a mile away, but most of the impulsive power was lost by then, and the missile travelled so slowly – as much as ten seconds from shot to landfall – that there was ample time for the enemy to see it coming and dodge it. But under Sabinus’ orders there was the low, vibrating twang of horsehair rope, the snap of torsion springs, the smack of sling-beam, and only a second or two later the weighty lead and stone slingshots flew out almost horizontal from the machines and thumped violently into the flanks of the approaching towers. The well-trained artillerymen bent down and adjusted the ratchets a fraction more. The nerve-shredding creak of torsion springs, further shots. Satisfyingly loud claps of impact, the cracking report as balls and bolts hit their target. Not much damage to the great towers yet, though, until a lucky strike passed straight through one of the narrow slits in the tower and a scream from within suggested a direct hit.

The towers weren’t going to be brought down, nor even knocked headless. Already the great wickerwork drawbridges were being lowered, like dark and hungry jaws opening upon the battlements of the fort.

Sabinus waited a little longer, judging the moment, hands clenched on the wall. Then, finally, ‘Now! Lower units, hit the wheels!’

With instant discipline, the artillery units on the first level of the towers set up a punishing crossfire, hitting the wheels of the siege-engines at the widest angle they could. Medium-weight slingballs and heavy iron-tipped ballista bolts cut across each other’s trajectories from the corner towers before slamming in low. Almost immediately one good shot chipped off the edge of a front wheel.

Tatullus nodded and murmured, ‘It’s deliberate, a bad build. Cunning. But pity the poor sods when their Hun masters realise it.’

Sabinus said nothing. There would be too many dead to pity by today’s end.

He ordered a single eight-man unit of his heavy cavalry to stand ready inside the south gate with all but one of the braces drawn back ready. Tatullus glanced at him.

More careful adjustments to the arc. The pounding was relentless. Within the towers the slave-driven captives moaned, sweating and heaving at the drive-posts. And there came a deeper moaning too. A bellowing…

‘ Amateurs!’ said Sabinus again, smacking a fist into his palm. ‘Listen to that!’

He was right. Against all the rules, the Huns had roped up oxen inside the siege-towers to provide the drive power. It might have seemed a good idea in the cool, rational calm before the battle started, but battles didn’t stay that way. And roped-up oxen could start causing no end of trouble to their own side once the missiles started piling in, men started screaming, noxious tar-fires started burning out of control…

Sabinus gave the order at once. ‘Fire and tar, get some flames around them! That’ll soon have the brutes breaking free.’

The tower coming in on the right stubbornly refused to burn, but curls of smoke soon told a different story from the other. And as soon as they smelled the smoke, sure enough, the oxen within began to bellow and panic and heave themselves sideways in their yokes. Terrible studded flails fell across the creatures’ bony backs, but the maddened pair, one already feeling the heat of the flames on its tawny flank, only wrenched away the harder, their fear of fire far greater than any whip. Both of them giving a simultaneous lurch in chance harmony was enough to break one of the yoke straps so that they staggered awkwardly and one tripped to its knees where it could no longer move. The entire tower was wrenched round to one side, the captives inside heaving desperately at the drive poles, naked and blinded with their own sweat, their backs beribboned by the long whips wielded by the small team of Hun warriors walking their horses close behind them in the shelter of the tower. But to no avail. The unbalanced tower, one wheel-rim already chipped and dragging down in the earth, was pulled further out of kilter by the miscreant oxen and suddenly the unprotected flank of the great tower and the two huge, uncurtained wooden wheels were exposed to direct Roman attack.

‘OK!’ roared Sabinus, the infectious note of victory in his voice. ‘Artillery units: both towers – take ’em out and fire ’em up! I want the wheels in splinters and the towers in cinders! Go! ’

Pedites communicated the order to the corner towers. A further flurry of resolute activity and soon all eight machines on the bastions were venting their missiles in low, short flights against the unprotected wheels. A sling-ball or a bolt was hitting the nearest every five seconds in a ruthless rhythm. Splinters flew from the rim, one of the centreboards split, the axle-boss itself gave off a fine spray of sparks as an iron-tipped bolt clanged off it.

‘Bull’s-eye!’ yelled the artillerymen, guffawing.

‘Waste of time!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Split the boards!’

In came more shots. In the shelter of the faltering tower, the Hun horsemen in their fury had just whipped one captive to death, hanging still shackled from the drive pole shiny with his own blood.

But still more ruthlessness was called for. If they were going to beat off this horde, no quarter could be given. Not for a second.

Sabinus brought a crossbow squadron up close. Pedites dragged up more chests of bolts behind.

‘There’s a gang of ’em behind, driving it forward. Draw a line on the back of the tower. Any glimpse of one of those naked bastards and you take him out. But not until you see him. I want a dead shot off every bolt you fire.’

The crossbowmen crouched at the battlements, squat bows of chestnut and ash cranked back and tight with explosive power. One Hun pony stepped back from the shelter of the siege-tower a little too far and promptly lost the use of a rear leg. It fell back and tilted, the rider rolled in the dust. Three more bolts from the battlements hit him instantly. The other Hun horsemen now crammed together for shelter in the lea of the creaking and damaged tower.

All the while Sabinus kept one eye long-range on the Hunnish cavalry. They were approaching again, slow and orderly but still a long way off. For some reason that stone-faced warlord – he could pick him out clearly enough still amid the dust-clouds of twenty thousand tramping hooves – was letting the towers do what they could alone. Maybe he had no great faith in them. Not yet. He was prepared to let them be destroyed, so that he could watch from a distance, and learn.

The towers might be done for, but the battle was far from won. Those ten thousand horsemen with their murderous rain of arrows would come soon enough.

Finally a slingshot, or possibly a lucky double shot striking simultaneously, hit the already splintered wheel and one of the central planks was knocked out completely, hanging free. The entire tower seemed to hesitate for a moment, gave a slow, creaking lurch, the axletree craning and trembling. Then the damaged wheel collapsed abruptly into its constituent planks, shattered back to the boss, and the clumsy structure shuddered, leaned at a precipitous angle, and came to uncertain rest on the corner where the wheel had been. Within, one of the tormented oxen was almost strangled in its yoke as it was lifted off the ground by the counterpull. It roared and kicked out, and the rest of the broad leather yoke straps finally tore asunder. The terrified beast managed to squeeze itself round in its narrow stall and erupted, bellowing, out of the back of the tower into the melee of livid and bewildered Hun horsemen. The ox charged through them, oblivious of a last few whiplashes, and stumbled away. The men milled back and broke, and immediately a further ruthless volley of crossbow bolts from the battlements drove into them. At least half were hit. The tattered remainder turned and fled back to their own ranks in disgrace. Slow flames licked up the side of the broken tower, and, up above, the light wickerwork drawbridge roared. Within, the shackled captives were too exhausted to scream.

‘Now the other one!’ roared Sabinus, banging his fists victoriously on the wall. ‘No slacking. Get those ballistas loaded up afresh. Pedites, keep running. I want to see you sweat blood!’

He gave it a short while, then halted the artillery again with a downward slice of his hand. ‘Crossbowmen, stay trained. Anyone comes down from the tower, take ’em. Guards, open the gate! Cavalry’ – he grinned and swung his big, meaty arm forward through the air – ‘it’s all yours.’

The last brace was drawn, the heavy twin gates swung back easily on their huge greased hinges and the eight heavy cavalrymen drove their big mounts forward furiously, from stationary into canter and then flat gallop in the blink of an eye.

The rear pair of lancers split off and disappeared behind the back of the burning siege-tower. Now they really would be clibanarii, ‘boiler boys’, their long mailcoats and solid bronze helms as hot as ovens. But they did their stuff, hacking and levering at the shackles in the gloom, gagging on the dense smoke, fighting off the clawing and blinded captives even as they worked so hard for their release.

At last the wretched, beaten, slave-driven creatures staggered free and stumbled, still half blinded, back towards the open gate.

All the while Sabinus kept up his double vision. At any moment that stone-faced warlord might release a company of his lethal archers to gallop across the plain and descend on the little pack of heavy cavalry. But he still stayed his hand. In fact, the Hun lines seemed to have halted altogether, still a good half a mile off, maybe more. Not necessarily good news, in the long term. They were watching. Learning.

The second tower to their right, barely scathed yet, lightly smouldering, was still rolling forwards when the Hun horsemen behind it suddenly realised what was happening. Eight of them, armed with flails and lassos, bows still across their backs, heard the approaching thunder and looked around to see six, then eight, iron-mailed, bronze-helmeted lancers at full gallop almost upon them, long ashen lances couched low. It was the first time these Hun warriors had ever encountered anything like a Roman heavy cavalry charge, and they were powerless. They pulled their mounts round, heeled them into a rearing gallop, spurted forward – and the iron wave slammed into their flank. The light Hun ponies were punched sideways and thrown clear of the ground, their hooves scrabbling in the air, before crashing back winded and half broken. Riders were flung free, one in a spectacular arc through the dusty air, back concave, until he fell to earth again and was immediately despatched by single thrust of a long cavalry sword.

Not one Hun arrow was fired, not one curved yatagan was drawn, not a single battle-cry was given. The shock and force of the charge flattened them like a stormwind. The iron soldiers wielded their swords in silence, and eight warriors soon lay dead. The commander, a captain called Malchus, reined in and pushed back his helmet and scanned the middle distance, sweat coursing, raven hair plastered to his brow, his vision blurred. He blinked hard. At any moment, the savages would ride down in vengeance… but no, the Hun lines hadn’t moved. So they roped up the surviving ponies, freed the shackled captives, slew the two ungovernable oxen where they roared in their yokes and then tethered the cadavers behind them, and smashed the rear axle-tree of the tower. Malchus kicked his horse back and sliced his arm down towards the ruined tower. Let the fire come down.

They rode back at a strong trot, dragging the dead beasts, leaving the flames to finish the work of destruction.

Riotous cheers went up from the battlements.

‘Roast ox tonight!’

‘Let’s hear it for the Boiler Boys!’

The south gate was safely slammed shut and bolted, and Malchus bounded up the steps to the legate’s platform, helmet couched beneath his arm.

‘Second tower out of action, sir!’

The Hun line did not stir. A gentle breeze, black banners, no movement. Stone-faced thousands. A terrifying enemy, so silent and disciplined.

But Sabinus felt good. A stir of hope. Now the enemy had seen how Romans could still fight.

They waited.

On the tower to Sabinus’ right, one of the tar barrels used to set fire to the siege-tower started burning out of control, guffing up big clouds of black, oily smoke and then, without warning, roaring into flame. Men fell back from the intense heat, shielding their eyes.

‘Damp that fucking thing down now!’ roared Tatullus, striding over. ‘Pedites, get buckets of water up here!’

It blazed furiously. The water arrived too slowly. Tatullus sent more men, including Knuckles, to bring up two massive iron-bound pails on a wooden yoke. But it got worse. Flames licked up, flourished, shook off any buckets of water thrown at them, spat them back in clouds of burning steam, and then suddenly engulfed the open-sided wooden roof, the only protection the men there had from falling arrows.

Sabinus roared further orders. And then, with his double vision still working, he saw a stir. On the plain below, the warlord with the eyes of a hawk, and the heart of a hawk, too, turned his head. If Sabinus had been any closer, he’d have seen his yellow eyes gleam. But he saw his signal well enough. His copper-banded arm stretched out, and a little band of horse-warriors began to gallop in.

‘What in the name of Light…?’

There was another surprise. Two of them dragged a little piece of field artillery. The rest broke into their lethal circling gallop and began to fire arrows onto the burning tower, through the flames. The men up there, choking on smoke and blinded by the rebellious flames, starting taking hits as well. The protective wooden roof began to sag and collapse.

A second group of warriors reined in some hundred yards off, set up their field-machine with unbelievable speed and efficiency, and started sending in hard, fist-sized rocks at the wall of the burning tower. They re-angled the beam and the next shot came curving in leanly over the wall and smacked straight into the side of the flaming tar barrel. They were trying to demolish it. Molten tar would run all over the place, the wooden boards burn, and that tower, that essential corner bastion, would be as good as finished.

The crossbow units started taking them out one by one, but every time they scored a hit, another tattooed warrior came galloping in and took his place.

Damn that warlord and his ruthless cunning. Every stumble, every weakness or misfortune, would be exploited.

Two, three more auxiliaries trying to damp out the flames were shot through. One fell forwards into the burning tar itself. He was dragged out by the legs, dead. Two more still tried to damp it. One fell back choking on foul smoke, lungs scorched. The situation was getting desperate. Even Tatullus seemed momentarily lost.

‘Fuck this,’ rumbled Knuckles, shoving his way through. ‘I’m gettin’ a headache. That barrel’s gotta go.’

He squatted down and put his shoulder to the edge of the blazing barrel, tipped it so it leaned against the low stone wall, slid his meaty hands beneath the rim and then, slowly, unbelievably, began to stand straight again. The barrel scraped up the wall. He peered blearily through the pitchy smoke to the ground below.

‘Right, which one of you bloody hooligans wants this on his head?’

He gave one final, terrific heave, and the barrel, blazing more furiously than ever, the very spars beginning to darken into charcoal from within and disintegrate, was sent over the side. No direct hit – that would have been too lucky – but it crashed to the earth with the force of an explosion, spitting burning splinters and flecks of blazing tar into the rumps of two or three terrified horses, which reared and then rolled to the ground, screaming, to extinguish their burning hides. The stench of singed horsehair filled the air. The Hun riders slipped free, staggered to their feet in a daze, looked around – and one, then two were struck through with arrows. They pitched forward and died. The third had begun to run, a fellow warrior galloping in close to scoop him up onto the back of his own sturdy little mount. But another arrow hit him square in the back and he dropped down dead. His would-be rescuer wheeled dismissively and galloped out of range again.

It was Arapovian, shooting without mercy from the battlements. He ducked as a riposte of Hun arrows clattered around him. Then the horsemen below galloped into a full retreat. The little field-machine was dragged away behind.

‘Now douse the roof, what’s left of it!’ shouted Sabinus. ‘Clean up that tower and get it back in order. Jump to it!’

Auxiliaries ran.

Knuckles shambled over to the Armenian and hit him on the back.

‘Not bad, that,’ he growled.

Arapovian turned to look at him, saying nothing. His eyes widened a little. Knuckles’s complexion was charcoal. Half an eyebrow was burned away. His shaggy fringe was noticeably shorter than before, and his hair appeared to be smouldering. The Armenian glanced down and saw worse: those giant, spade-like hands were badly blistered and seeping blood. He silently produced a little bottle from within his robes and passed it to him.

‘One mouthful,’ he said. ‘Armenian brandy. The finest.’

Knuckles grunted and obediently took the delicate little bottle, looking like a giant holding a lady’s thimble. Sipped delicately. It was good.

‘That’s it, is it?’

Arapovian took the bottle back. ‘That’s it.’ He pushed the cork in and stowed the bottle back in his robes. ‘We’re going to need more later.’

‘“We”, is it now?’

Arapovian looked back over the plains of war. Perhaps the shadow of a smile passed over his aquiline features. He cranked his injured left arm up and down, blood oozing through the bandages again, but his face betraying no hint of pain. Then he nocked another arrow to the bow and waited.

Knuckles made his way back along the battlements, until Tatullus stood in his way.

The centurion regarded him. ‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘for a deserter.’

‘Thank you kindly, Your Honour.’

‘Show me your hands.’

Knuckles showed him, with commentary. ‘I don’t need medical attention, sir, really I don’t. I got a bit of a problem with doctors, the truth be told, ever since that time back in Colonia, when I caught a nasty dose off of a certain young lady of nevertheless very obligin’ disposition, and the doctor there made me-’

‘To the hospital,’ said Tatullus. ‘That’s an order.’

Looking anxious for the first time that day, Knuckles made his slow and reluctant way down to the hospital.

He needn’t have worried. The legionary doctor, a young and apparently diffident fellow from Thessaly, knew his stuff. He larded Knuckles’ hands with goose fat infused with garlic to prevent the blisters becoming putrid. Stung like hell at first, but then, he had to admit, felt not so bad. Less like his palms were about to split open to the bone at any moment. Altogether very different from that unfortunate experience back in Colonia.

There was little time for self-congratulation.

Sabinus called Tatullus over and they watched as the Hun lines began to move forward again. The front ranks broke out into two huge loops, revolving circles of galloping archers spiralling in closer.

‘Very pretty,’ muttered Tatullus.

Light cavalry? Arrows? Sabinus was puzzled. ‘What are they up to? You don’t take a Roman fort with horsemen. ’

The Huns came wheeling in, and then as one body loosed a volley of arrows. They flew in high arcs, none of them aimed for anything in particular, just the fort in general. But there were thousands of them, darkening the sky like strange birds. The air was filled with iron sleet.

‘Take cover!’

They came arcing down onto the wooden roofs of the towers, the exposed battlements, the scrambling men. Cries rang out. An unlucky crossbowman rolled down the narrow stone steps.

‘Medics!’

‘Another volley coming in!’

Some dashed for the towers, others huddled tight in against the low wall, shields pulled over heads and shoulders. Safe enough, for now, but rendered useless: pinned down, unable to return fire or lob so much as a rock. The artillery were as good as spayed, too. The south-west unit tried to fire heavy bolts into the whirlwind of horse-warriors, but were immediately picked off over the low battlements. Hun archers were able to take careful aim, even at full gallop, and fire flat shots straight through the narrow niches of the towers. There were distant screams. Christ, they were good. Sabinus had heard that a Hun warrior loosed his arrow only in the moment all four hooves of his horse were off the ground, to fly smooth and straight. Absurd, of course. But now he saw them in action…

Another soldier, an artilleryman, fell forwards over the wall. A Hun horseman immediately rode in and lassoed him, and dragged him away across the plain, yowling, the body swerving and flayed in the dust. Hector before the walls of Troy. Sabinus saw even the brute Knuckles cross himself at the sight, and prayed the soldier was dead already. He gave the order for the artillery to cease firing.

The iron sleet did not cease, and those who sent it into the air and over the walls did not cease moving. They made an impossible target. It was an appalling revelation. Two vast, galloping circles, well spaced, gracefully avoiding the twin obstacles of the ruined, still-smouldering siege-towers. The Roman crossbow units crouched below in the guard towers, protected better at their narrow niches, did their professional best, but too few of their bolts struck anything but whirling dust. And there was a limit to how many bolts they had in store. Sabinus gave them the ceasefire, too, and pondered. No, you don’t take a Roman fort with cavalry. But you clear its walls and neuter its defenders with arrow-fire this intense.

Then the next stage of the battle became clear. The galloping horde below the walls had them immobilised, unlike previously with the towers. They stopped firing and galloped three or four hundred yards off again, out of effective range. They could be back in a flash once they’d reloaded their quivers from the wagons. If any of the defenders stood, tried to fire back, he would be stuck with a dozen arrows. With only five hundred good men to lose, that was bad maths. Meanwhile, there was still another machine to come. And it was coming now.

They had a ram.

Sabinus thanked the stars the west gate was well bagged up. He ordered the pedites to bag up the south gate too, in case they switched direction. The east gate they must keep free for their own cavalry.

As the pedites ran across to the gate, a detachment of horsemen came galloping in fast by the wall, and another slew of arrows went up and came down almost vertically. How did they know? The very ground of the fortress was studded with feathered barbarian arrows. So too were several pedites, struck down or screaming. Too many. Sabinus winced. The poor runners dragged bags and lumber into the shadow of the south gate as best they could, but still the arrows fell. Finally he gave the order for them to run for cover again. Of the twenty who had gone out, eight came back. He ground his teeth in anger.

The horsemen turned and wheeled away as one, like a flock of starlings, before they could take any damage. They vanished into the last of the morning mist, shot through with eastern sunlight.