The Judgement

8

The legate took a quick tour of the north wall. Out there on the river, not far from the shore, lay the stolen ships manned by Hun archers. He kept low. His north wall was secure. No need to man it. They couldn’t get out that way, and flee downriver to Ratiaria. Nor could the Huns get in. He’d done the right thing to neglect it. The battle would take place at the south and west walls, and out on the flat plain. They didn’t like water. And, he reflected, they wouldn’t like mountain warfare, either.

Now here came the ram – an altogether more threatening proposition than the tall, unwieldy towers. It was a low-slung beam shaped from a single fir, with a brutish bronze head, and sheltered under what looked, from this distance, like an expertly shaped and crafted iron-plated tortoise. Already, Sabinus could see that this time the big wheels were entirely sheltered. Then he could see that they weren’t wheels at all this time, but solid rollers made from single trunks of fir. Unbreakable.

No one came in support. He guessed that the Hun way was to force a breach in the gate, and then the cavalry, having waited safely out of range until then, would come zigzagging in like lightning.

The great engine turned and the monstrous ram under its armoured shelter began to trundle towards them. The west gate was strong but not that strong, even with its double oak bars. Bagged up though it was, it needed more. Sabinus looked around in desperation.

‘Every auxiliary off the walls. Stack up the west gate as much as you can, low-angled. Find column drums, barrels of sand, anything. I want that gate rock-solid. Move it!’

Without the auxiliaries, the legionaries ranged around the walls looked sparse indeed.

Tatullus grimaced. ‘We can’t afford to lose any more.’

On the tower roofs, one scorched and blackened but the other still intact for now, the artillery units worked tirelessly. Fat hanks of twisted skein were cranked back on mighty torsion springs. Barrels of tar burned low – carefully supervised. The long bow-arms of the arrow-firing machines were taut in readiness. An iron-tipped bolt from one of those sleek machines could go through armour plate, if it struck at a right-angle.

Then, to Sabinus’ surprise, came the distant, dull clunk as the two Hun onagers kicked back and spewed forth their titanic loads again. The long, low hum of their missiles. And twin thunks into the dust. Activity out there, as they ranged again, shooting as their own men advanced. They must be damnably confident of their accuracy.

‘Skilled?’ he muttered. ‘Or stupid?’

Arapovian nearby interrupted. ‘The Huns have never been stupid. Ask King Chorsabian.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Quite,’ said Arapovian, tight-lipped. ‘He had a kingdom once, in the Zagros Mountains. And then the Huns came.’

Yet Sabinus had hope now. The ratio of his men to the enemy was ridiculous, but what did that matter? Rome had always been outnumbered by her enemies, and never dismayed by it. They were winning so far. No barbarian had ever taken a legionary fortress, and he was damned if his was going to be the first.

As for their siegecraft, it was there, but wanting. Tatullus suggested they had formed an alliance with a bunch of Alan mercenaries, some wandering Iranian or Sarmatian people. Or perhaps renegade Vandals, a motley crowd of deserters. There had even been talk of the Huns forming a dark confederacy with King Genseric and his people in North Africa, who had learned so quickly the arts of both sailing and siegecraft from their own enemies.

Perhaps. Well, let ’em come. The VII Legion was ready for the next wave, all five hundred of them – perhaps down to four eighty or four sixty now. The army of an entire people was besieging the fort – an entire nomad empire. And fate, or the gods, or whoever, had appointed the VIIth to fight them off on its own.

He called for another glass of wine, well-watered.

Tatullus drank nothing.

The great shorn trunk of fir with its crude but doubtless brutally effective bronze head – no more than a lump of dully shining metal – reminded Sabinus of Knuckles’ club. No elaborate carving of real rams’ heads for this army on the move.

He ordered a first volley. The Roman arrows clattered uselessly off the iron plates of the tortoise – what else, at this angle? – and Sabinus raised a thick forearm to hold fire again. The ram came on.

The Hun onagers thunked again. This time the south-west tower took a huge hit near the base. The entire west wall shivered at the shock. Hell.

‘Decurion! Gimme damage and bag it up!’

The second onager wasn’t far off target, either, now.

Time to reply.

He ordered a couple of the sling-machines to lob a few missiles in a high trajectory and drop them on the waiting Hun cavalry quarter of a mile off, just to keep them on their toes. The slingballs flew up and over in rainbow arcs, and the horsemen watched them coming and skittered aside. Some of the slingballs were painted pale blue so they wouldn’t be so easily seen against the sky as they came, but the keen-eyed steppe warriors still followed them all. The slingballs fell to earth. He told the men to fire again.

What would a heavy cavalry charge do to those light, unarmoured horsemen, though? An iron wedge punching into them at full gallop? Seeing what it did to the drivers behind the siege-towers…

Here was the gang of Hun horsemen driving forward the ram-tortoise. Their leader was a snake-haired, wild-eyed young fellow on a white gelding. He encouraged the captives with song, and a whip. Those dragging the ram against the fortress that had once been their greatest protection were, once again, the enslaved and expendable captives of Viminacium town, panting at the drive poles, bloody under the flail.

Arapovian stepped near. ‘You need to take that out.’

‘I know it.’ Sabinus eyed him. ‘You fit, man?’

‘I breathe.’

‘Still draw a bow?’

‘Never better. Pain concentrates the mind wonderfully. ’

Sabinus grimaced.

‘I take their leader?’

Sabinus shook his head. ‘Wait. Bring ’em in close. We will have them at the gates. They’ve got no chance there.’

And for the enslaved captives, alas, it would be another bad day.

But the tortoise was changing tack again, pulled round from the inside. Away from the massively baulked west gate. The cunning swine. Sabinus was momentarily nonplussed.

‘Crossbow unit III only,’ he roared. ‘Pick off what you can. Whichever way they go, keep at ’em.’

He had few men, but plenty of arrows. Storehouses full of ’em.

‘And pedites, I want to see you sweat!’

Poor buggers looked exhausted already. But they’d look a whole lot worse if that ram came though the gates, followed by ten thousand tattooed horsemen.

The tortoise shifted slowly and clumsily to the right, towards the trajectory of one of the Hun’s own onagers, smacking boulders into the south-west tower. Idiot barbarians. They’d smash their own ram at this rate.

But no. As Arapovian had cautioned, they weren’t fools.

The tortoise straightened up again and the ram was aimed dead centre at the bottom of the fortress wall, only twenty yards or so from where the onager was hitting. They were indeed damnably confident in the accuracy of their own artillery, and they knew about rams and stone walls.

During the Persian wars against that hard nut Shapur, the Eastern Army had quickly discovered, to their surprise, that the walls of fortresses on the Euphrates, like Nisibis, held well against rams. Built of no more than cheap bricks of mud and straw, baked hard in the Mesopotamian sun, they gave off clouds of red dust, but they absorbed the shock. Whereas beautifully laid walls of finely dressed stone shivered and shattered: far more expensive, a lot better looking – and vulnerable.

Like the walls of Viminacium. Finest dressed Illyrian limestone facing a rubble hardcore. As soon as the facing was gone, the core would collapse, leaking out of the ruptured stonework like grey gore. But how did they know? That scarred and tattooed leader. He knew too damn much.

So they were concentrating their attack on the corner. Not bad strategy. The onager missiles were coming into the south-west tower at a steady rate, fifty or sixty pounds of missile every minute or two, from maybe four hundred yards. As the ram came closer, Sabinus could see how well built it was. Even the brutish great lump of ram’s-head was protected by a projecting roof. A common mistake to forget that feature. The Goths always used to get it wrong. Bring a ram up to the enemies’ walls, all beautifully shaped and slung, beneath a steep, sloping roof – and with the ram’s head sticking out the front. It comes in close, ready for the first swing, and your men roll a big rock over the wall. It smashes down onto the protruding ram’s-head, the head drops down, the rest of the beam flips up, probably kills a couple of the team with it, slams upwards into its own protecting roof, often half demolishes it. Or snaps its own ropes, or gets tangled coming down again – all sorts of trouble. But not this time. The ram was perfectly protected. They were already swinging her back on good long suspension ropes, all very expert. Sabinus could almost have cursed the grandstand view he had from this damn west gate-tower.

A sharp thud, distant trembling, cries from down below. The stones held for now. But not for long. He sent what pedites he could spare. The wall needed baulking up behind – rubble, sandbags, anything. They were running out of materials, so he told them to take sledgehammers to the nearest barrack blocks and use what materials they could get from the ruins. He reckoned his men would sleep well enough under the open stars after this was over.

Soon, another thud. A lot of dust. The stones were going.

An onager missile sliced over the top of the south-west tower. There was a terrible crash and unearthly screams. Not one of the crossbowmen so much as glanced to the left. With the ram still hitting and that concentrated onager assault, that whole corner of the fort was going to go soon. And then they would be in.

Time to reply.

If only he had a squad of superventores – special forces, ‘over-comers’ – but they were all with the field army nowadays. Or a few cohorts of Aetius’ superb, reformed Palatine Legion from the West. The frontier legions were expected to look after themselves. And so they would.

But it was looking bad. The arrow-machines on the south-west tower had both been smashed by that onager strike. The planking sagged. Most of the men had been smashed, too. It was carnage up there. He looked away. The north-west tower was charcoal. What fire-arrows the archers could get in were too few, and the tortoise well protected with iron plates.

Below galloped the commander of the ram, flailing his whip, oblivious of stray arrows. Still ordering his captives to draw back the ram and slam into the walls again, even as they were under attack.

Sabinus would have to send men down.

Tatullus read his mind. ‘The bear with the club will be no good. You need fast movers.’

Sabinus nodded.

‘I will go,’ said a voice behind. ‘I have experience.’

It was the Armenian again.

‘You have?’

Arapovian did not deign to repeat himself.

Malchus was desperate to volunteer, too. It seemed mad to send his best cavalry officer, but Sabinus had seen the man’s joyful ruthlessness in a fight. He loved fighting, that one. The more men he slew, the more of his own blood he shed, the more he loved it. He was a pure, grinning predator.

One more.

Tatullus stepped forward.

Sabinus nodded. ‘Coronas and medals for all of you, whether you come back or not.’ He glared at them. ‘But you better fucking had. I’m short of men.’

Small gangs of Hun horsemen were darting in towards the walls in lethal forays, letting off light, unpredictable little showers of arrows over the exposed battlements, covering fire for the ram. The three defenders bowed their heads low and ran. They didn’t need to speak. It was obvious what they had to do, and that was keep low, move fast, and do as much damage as they could. The last thing Arapovian did was unsling his beloved eastern bow and shove it into Knuckles’ bandaged hands. Then they were in close behind the low battlements, just above the tortoise, the narrow wall shivering beneath their hobnailed boots at the shocks of the ram, yells from below, and rising clouds of powdery dust. Another titanic thud as an onager bowled another long-range rock into the tower to their left, and another spray of feathered arrows clattered around them. They’d been spotted. There was the briefest pause in the iron-tipped shower, a single breath, and then they were up and rolling over the battlements and gone. The distant Hun horsemen were already galloping towards them. They would have to move at blinding speed.

‘Crossbow units, hit the horsemen!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Forget the ram! Take out any horsemen coming!’

The finely trained crossbowmen, bows already primed, knelt swiftly at their niches and let fly. The bolts cut through the air and hit the approaching horsemen hard. Several tumbled. The others pulled up in dismay. One or two trained their arrows on the battlements but it was useless. They were already learning. No one shot that well, not from that distance. They began backing off. Another volley of bolts ploughed into them. A rider’s head lolled, half severed, and his horse fled.

‘Keep at it,’ said Sabinus. ‘Don’t let ’em get close.’

Malchus, Tatullus and Arapovian had dropped down onto the ridge of the tortoise on their hands and feet, knives between their teeth. The Hun commander spotted them immediately and came galloping round, flailing his whip. Malchus and Tatullus managed to prise off a couple of the big iron plates from the crest of the tortoise and send them slithering to the ground. Then they followed, rolling down the steep side away from the oncoming Hun horsemen, protected from incoming fire by the tortoise itself. They hit the earth oblivious of bruises and came up again like cats. The Hun commander promptly lashed out with his whip and caught Tatullus round the neck. The centurion simply gripped the rawhide, slashed it through with his sword, unwrapped it from his throat and tossed it back. The Hun warrior gave a strange howl.

Arapovian was at the end of the ridge, crouched down, gripping the edge of the planking and rolling over. He landed on the rump of a Hun driver’s horse. The Hun felt his horse buckle, wondered what had hit him. Then someone grasped his hair from behind and pulled his head back, and he felt the warm gush of blood down his bare chest as his throat gaped open. Arapovian rolled off the horse, ducked under a wild blow from another warrior, and brought his dagger up hard into the Hun horse’s belly. The agonised creature reared up, screaming. Tatullus appeared at the back of the tortoise, then Malchus, too, swords slashing, and all hell broke loose.

Out on the plain, the stone-faced leader himself was coming, with a couple of hundred warriors bristling with lances and swords. The three defenders had about half a minute to finish the job before they were as good as dead. And that was impossible.

‘Crossbow volley at the main body coming in, on my command,’ said Sabinus, his eye steady on the approaching horsemen. ‘And any man who takes out the warlord with the fancy sword gets an extra biscuit for his dinner.’

He waited. Sweat beaded on furrowed brows, dripped down noses. Clenched knuckles whitened. They were almost at the ram. Sabinus stood immobile. Sweat dripped onto oiled bowstocks, gleamed there like dew.

‘Steady your aim,’ said Sabinus. ‘And… fire!’

Eight bolts raked into the close-packed horsemen and each one found a target. Sabinus kept his eyes so closely fixed on the grey-haired warlord that he thought he saw him bare his teeth like a wolf. Then the warlord raised a brazen arm and hazed his men back out of range again. He even seemed momentarily nonplussed. Behind their retreating hooves they left eight of their comrades stone dead in the dust.

Sabinus grunted with satisfaction.

The savages were indeed learning.

Then screaming started inside the tortoise.

Sabinus saw with approval that the three had managed to loosen some of the iron plates, and so gave the order, ‘Fire it up.’ The pedites began rolling small flaming tar barrels over the battlements onto the ridge of the tortoise, trying to hit it where the iron plates had gone. A barrel smashed down onto the ridge and broke open. Spars scattered, and flaming tar spattered down the sides.

It was a start.

Sabinus turned his crossbow unit back to the drivers behind the ram. ‘Take ’em when you can.’

In the melee, two Hun warriors broke cover, then arched back, crying out, their backs stuck with bolts. Their horses reared and panicked.

‘Reload and aim.’

‘Sir,’ nodded his optio.

They had dropped a net over the wall above the ram so that the three comrades could scramble back to safety once they had done their work. If they were still alive. Now a Hun warrior came galloping in between the tortoise and the wall, ducking down low and flat along his pony’s back, and with a circus rider’s skill vaulted from his horse onto the net. He scrambled towards the top, a knife in his teeth.

Sabinus nodded. ‘Take him.’

The fancy rider dropped back, dead.

Across the plain, the formation of riders had gone very wide, and there were a lot more of them. A thousand were coming in now. Open-spaced, galloping, circling, determined not to let their ram fail in its task.

‘Tubernator, call our three back.’

The bugle went to his lips.

‘Sir,’ said the optio, ‘the rope’s still not cut.’

‘Shit.’

Inside the tent-shaped tortoise, which was beginning to fill with smoke, Arapovian was astraddle the beam itself, hacking alternately at a big Hun horseman coming at him from below and at the thick suspension ropes of the ram. The point of the Hun’s lance pierced the Armenian’s thigh and he cried out. He slipped his leg back and took cover behind the ram, hanging by one arm, still hacking wildly at the rope. The thing was fraying slightly but no more. In the distance, the faltering note of a bugle, and the thundering of hooves. A lot of hooves.

‘Fire the fucking thing!’ bellowed Sabinus at his pedites in frustration. He was going to lose three good men for nothing. Three very good men. Those thousand horsemen would be here in seconds. Already the first, wild arrows were clattering against the walls. Sabinus ran from the guardroom to the battlements. One of his men offered him his shield but he brushed it aside. Another arrow clattered nearby. Absent-mindedly he picked it up and snapped it across a burly thigh. ‘Fire it now!

‘Pedites, get more tar barrels up here. I don’t give a fuck if there’s arrows, man! Of course there’s arrows, we’re in the middle of a fucking siege. Now get ’em up here! Crossbow squadron, to me.’ He ducked down, the low battlements barely sufficient to shield his bulk.

The eight men crouched likewise.

‘I want everything that moves in and around that tortoise, except our three men, stretched out in the dirt. You hear me?’

Bows were cranked. They stood, aimed, fired, and crouched again in one clean, swift movement.

‘Now you, pedites! Get those tar barrels fired up and over the side.’

The arrows thickened to an iron rain. One of his crossbowmen lost a cheek. Another started to help him down the steps.

‘He hasn’t lost his eyes, and you’re needed here on the wall, soldier! Let go of his hand!’ He said to the wounded man, more gently, ‘Good work, soldier. Now get to the hospital and have that stitched. The whores will go crazy for the scar.’

The deserted south-west tower shivered again.

‘Load up.’

He was like a rock, this legionary legate who swore like a common trooper. Nothing seemed to make him afraid. The men cranked back their bows.

A good thing they thought him a rock. Sabinus knew well enough he was as scared as any of them. But a better actor. That’s why he kept his hands gripped into fists: to stop them shaking. He grinned and punched a man on the shoulder. ‘Kill ’em all.’

He stood up again, hitching back the straps of his bronze cuirass on his bullish shoulders, impervious to arrows.

‘Loose the rest of the tar barrels! There’s got to be more than that!’

The pedites sweated blood. Fire-arrows ignited more tar. The off-side of the shell was burning steadily.

He turned and watched the wild long-haired rider down below, screaming barbaric verses.

‘I want him dead. That one, the poet.’ He hawked and spat. ‘No fucking poet besieges my fortress.’

Again in a swift and perfect rank they stood, stepped forwards, clocked their target through the lethal oncoming arrow shower, fired, and dropped back. None of them was hit.

Sabinus squinnied through the embrasure. ‘Biscuits all round,’ he grunted.

Three bolts missed. One hit the Hun’s horse. Three hit the warrior in the thigh, one in the side, one in his shoulder. He and his horse screamed in unison, a hellish duet, horse rearing, forelegs paddling in the air. The warrior wrenched it savagely down, blood running in a thin trickle from the bolt-tail in its muscular haunch. He pulled round and shouted, flailing his whip left-handed, his right arm across his chest, hand clamped over his shoulder, fingers reddening. But the bolt had already broken in and leaked blood into his lungs, and his voice was wild and weak and desperate.

‘Kill them! Draw back the ram! Astur will utterly destroy all the earth in the day of his fierce anger! Work, slaves!’

But he was mad. There were no slaves left to obey him.

‘Second volley,’ said Sabinus. ‘Take him this time.’

The deranged rider was stuck by two more bolts, his horse likewise. He was a madman. One bolt glanced off his round iron helmet. He shook his head. His long black hair flew and scattered drops of bright red blood – Sabinus thought of Medusa. Then he flung down his whip and drew his long curved sabre. To the horror of the watchers on the wall, in his blood-madness he rode in and began to slaughter the captives tethered beneath the now-blazing tortoise. They fell apart, crying, hands held over their sliced heads. Arapovian found himself trapped between the captives roped to the ram and the insane Hun, trying to protect them as the rider tried to kill them. Arapovian cut free what captives he could who were still alive, only for the warrior to wheel round and scythe through them as they fled, riding them down. Arapovian gritted his teeth in a white fury and launched himself at another Hun driver, driving his blade straight through him. Then he was up on the beam again, slashing at the suspension ropes. At last one of the great ropes frayed and twisted and snapped, and the ram thumped down into the dust, the heavy ramshead half buried where it hit. Arapovian was thrown off the end as from an unbroken horse. He rolled smoothly, picked himself up and grimaced.

‘It’s done!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Tubernator, get the men back! Blow your guts out, man!’

He turned the other way. ‘Every tar barrel over the wall. I want to see that tortoise melt down!’

The Hun warrior was maddened still further by the defeat, dying, flailing his sabre. He rode into the walls, spurring his bloody horse. The creature turned alongside, the warrior slashed at the stonework, rode through his own shower of sparks. Someone dropped a stone on him. He reeled and stared upwards sightlessly through a mask of blood, eyes rolling back to the whites. He tottered forwards again, still in the high-fronted wooden saddle, and spurred and pulled away. An adolescent boy emerged, blackened, from under the tortoise: the last of the enslaved captives, hoping to make his escape. The warrior cut him down as he passed by without a second thought, and galloped away across the plain back to his army, still alive somehow, his body lolling, his head to one side, sabre hanging down from his left hand.

The men on the walls fell silent.

‘God’s teeth,’ growled Sabinus.

‘By St Peter’s holy Jewish foreskin,’ agreed Knuckles.

Tatullus and Arapovian were back on the walls by the time the tortoise, smouldering and half wrecked, tottered and sank down useless into the dust. The ram beneath it blazed. Then they realised to their horror that Malchus had not followed them. Tatullus roared an order to the young cavalry officer, who stood dazed and bloodied near the smoking wreckage, but he appeared not to hear.

The horsemen came galloping in. Malchus had left it too late. He could barely walk. He grinned. He had lost too much blood to climb past the savaged remnants of the tortoise and vault back over the battlements.

Arapovian reached down a futile arm, crying out to him, his face angry and already sorrowful. ‘Move yourself, man!’

Malchus turned his head and smiled dimly up at him through a mist of blood. He raised a red forearm, and touched the flat of his sword to his bare forehead. He turned away from them and looked out across the plain.

A barked order sounded in Arapovian’s ears, the voice of the legate, but he did not hear or understand. He was up over the wall and down the net like a cat. Malchus was oblivious. He stood alone before the fortress. No, he walked away from it. Tottering, he walked towards the oncoming horde of thousands, barely able to lift his sword.

Arapovian dodged round the ruined tortoise and ran to him, but the horsemen were coming in faster. It was impossible.

Malchus settled his helmet more firmly on his head and waited. He would have liked to end by running towards them. Even walking purposefully would be something. But he was too tired, so he simply stood his ground. At least he was still on his feet. He took a deep breath and raised his sword above his head one last time. Then the horde came down upon him and he was gone.

Arapovian skidded to a halt. Another few breaths and they would be on him, too, but incredibly, he seemed to pause and consider for a moment or two. He hefted his sword in his right hand, and with his left drew his fine dagger with its jewelled handle. Eyed the horde. Then he re-sheathed both, turned and dashed for the wall. The instant he did so, some of the horsemen sheathed their swords and swept their bows from their shoulders, nocked arrows and fired, faster than the eye could see. Arrows clattered into the stonework. Arapovian crawled up the net as best he could with his lanced leg. The crossbowmen above stepped forward and hit the nearest horsemen. Men howled with rage and pain, horses tumbled.

Arapovian, clinging to the top of the net with one arm, stopped and looked back. He was as crazed as that Hun poet, this Armenian. More orders roared in his ears. He drew his dagger from its sheath again, and hazed the bright little blade out over the army of horseman until he found his target. He pointed the point of the dagger straight at the stone-faced warlord and smiled a rare smile. Then he clamped his teeth on the blade again and was up and over the battlements, pulling the weighty hemp net up behind him. Knuckles seized the other end, then more men came to help. One acrobatic Hun vaulted and clung to it, so they hauled him up to the top, where Knuckles leaned over and cuffed him off again with a massive blow to the head, as you might swipe away a fly. The warrior cartwheeled back to the ground. The net came safely up over the battlements, and the rest of the horsemen faced blank fortress walls again.

In a surge of victorious energy, arrows, ballista bolts, slingballs, even rocks hurled by hand, struck the Hun horsemen in a single, brutal volley. From the unit again operating at full capacity on the half-burned north-west tower, there came a pummelling onslaught from the well-drilled artillerymen. Two big ballista bolts and two medium-weight slingshots were fired hard and almost horizontal, arcing down fast into the fleeing horsemen. The four missiles took out four riders, sending them tumbling to the earth at breakneck speed. You could hear the vertebrae snap. The riders behind tumbled into them, and more fell. Some lay stunned beneath their whinnying horses or entangled in their reins. Arrows sang from the battlements, and each arrow told. The rest of the horsemen fled.

Arapovian sank down behind the low wall and sheathed his dagger. He removed his helmet, swept back the long black hair plastered to his brow and bowed his head in grief for a brave lost comrade.

Knuckles handed him back his bow. ‘Nutter,’ he said.

‘Hero, surely?’ said Arapovian bitterly.

‘Same thing,’ said Knuckles.

Below them, the great structure of the burning tortoise gave one last groan, like some primeval animal in its last throes, then leaned, tottered, and collapsed in a huge eruption of soot and sparks. Hot iron plates clanged down on each other, and amid the smoke and flame, and the acrid stench of burning rope, was the worse stench of bodies roasting. The bronze head of the great ram, half buried, shone dimly up through the flames. One last wounded warrior crawled out of the chaos, arms flailing as if he was trying to swim through sand. He got to his knees and made a grab for a riderless horse which milled around and snorted with surprise.

‘Finish it,’ said Tatullus irritably.

A bolt stilled him. The dust settled. The men breathed again.

It was not yet noon. The pedites brought round water.

Sabinus was coming along the battlements. Arapovian got to his feet.

Tatullus saluted. ‘Sir. Ram out of action.’

Sabinus would have smiled, but Malchus was gone, and he couldn’t afford to lose men like that. He nodded and went back to the west tower.

There was a brief respite in the Hun onslaught. The horsemen were pulled way back against the crest of hills to the west. Their onagers fell silent. A feeling of temporary hesitation. This undermanned and isolated fortress wouldn’t be so easy a nut to crack after all. But Sabinus and his officers remembered well enough the demeanour of that grim-faced, tattooed warlord on his grubby little skewbald pony. He would be back. Any respite would be short.

He ordered Tatullus to make a discreet head-count, and the answer was a shock. They were down to fewer than four hundred front-rank soldiers: already a fifth of his men were casualties, wounded or slain. The pedites and medical orderlies had taken it even worse. There was no shelter from those bitter arrow-storms, and the Huns would soon come again. Many thousands of them.

If the gods were just, and rewarded ordinary men who fought like heroes, then surely reinforcements must come soon. Or perhaps some goddess, the grey-eyed Pallas Athena, as she came down from Olympus to the windy plains of Troy to protect her beloved Odysseus. Sabinus’ lip curled sardonically. Fat chance. The old gods were dead. The emperor and his bishops had declared it so, and the Altar of Victory no longer stood in the Senate House. From now on, men must fight on their own, with only a symbolic fish or a wooden cross for succour.

There were six thousand men under arms at Ratiaria. Another thirty or forty thousand at Marcianopolis: the Eastern Field Army in all its glory. But the horizon all around was empty and still.

The summer sun burned down. In the blue sky overhead, swifts and martins wheeled and hawked through the mild air as if this was a day like any other. From the river the men on the walls could hear the distant cry of a heron. Here they died, while life went dumbly on.

The Romans drank water with a dash of vinegary wine, gnawed barley-flour biscuits and salt-pork, rested in the shade of the towers or barrack blocks. Tatullus paced around tirelessly, inspecting weapons and wounds, giving quiet orders. He made sure his men’s shields were properly stowed with a full complement of mattiobarbuli, lead-weighted darts which were the perfect weapon for defending heights against attackers below. He paused to watch one young slinger carefully carving insults onto his slingballs, one by one, sitting cross-legged, tongue out between his teeth, concentrating like the finest goldsmith on his craft.

Tatullus peered over his shoulder. ‘ Hoc ede, equifutuor,’ read the lyrical inscription. ‘ Eat this, horse-fucker.’

‘Very witty, soldier,’ growled the centurion. The slinger jumped to his feet and saluted. ‘And if you come out of this in one piece, I’m sure you could get a nice job as a stonemason inscribing fancy headstones with lies for rich dead people. But until then, do some useful fucking work!’

‘Sir!’

The next soldier to arouse his centurion’s wrath owned a shield that was all wrong. Tatullus plucked it out of the man’s hand and twirled it round to stare at the back.

‘A Roman shield has a sturdy central handgrip behind the boss,’ he said. ‘So what’s this? An armstrap, with a handgrip near the edge. What use is that, shit-for-brains?’

The soldier stared dumbly.

‘Is your shield offensive or defensive?’

‘Defensive, sir.’

‘Balls! It’s both. Take incoming arrow-fire, sure, and then close in and knock your man off the battlements with a good blow from the boss. But what are you going to do to a man with a feeble side-swipe? Tickle him? Strip that armstrap off right now, soldier. Refix the handgrip alone, right behind the boss. Decurion! See to it that none of the other men have shields with armstraps. They’re for pansies. You get tired holding it, you rest the rim on the ground and squat. Look to it.’

He reported back to Sabinus, showing a sympathy for his men he’d never dream of showing to their faces.

‘They’re dog-tired. Only mortal. No man can fight for ever. They’ve fought for five, six hours already now, after a night without sleep.’

Sabinus knew what he was suggesting, his iron-hearted centurion: rest for half, duty for half. But the walls could not be manned with just two hundred men. Even four hundred was ludicrously inadequate. And in truth, his primus pilus knew it as well as he. All four hundred must rise to fight again. The legate’s anger and weariness made him brutal.

‘They can kip on Charon’s ferry.’

Some of them were almost asleep with exhaustion, when there came a distant thunk and, two or three seconds later, another terrific shudder from the south-west tower. Bang on target yet again.

‘To your stations, on the double!’

Dry, sleepless, dust-filled eyes once more flared wide. Men once more dragged grimy, exhausted limbs up stone steps and along battlemented walls to their places of thankless duty.