‘Brace for a fight,’ Fronto said. ‘They mean business.’
‘They’ll get a bloody shock, sir,’ grinned the centurion. ‘Watch this.’
Fronto nodded, watching carefully. There was little he could do to help at this point. He would not be able to reach the enemy to fight until they had all but succeeded, reaching the top of the inner wall. He would be ready for that, but if they got that far with this small probing force, then the Roman defences were done for anyway. Until then it would be down to the ingenuity of the engineers and the skill of men with missiles, and Fronto was realistic enough to accept that there were sheep that could throw a missile more accurately than he.
As the mass approached the open area, the centurion blew a whistle and the signallers picked it up. The few ranged missiles upon which they could call began to loose. The legions had brought a few scorpion bolt throwers with them aboard the ships, and the legionaries had claimed four more in the city. These precious weapons had been positioned around the defences at the places that were most vulnerable and with the best arc of targeting, which meant that here two could train upon the enemy. Moreover, the few bows that had been found in the palace region had been distributed among the soldiers, granted to any man who could claim competence with the weapon, and these few archers now nocked arrows.
The second signal went up as the enemy flooded into the killing zone. Officers yelled out the command for shooting at will, and the men on the wall top marked their targets, trained the weapons carefully, and loosed. Missiles were in short enough supply that the defenders had been granted the right to loose slowly at their whim, in order to best achieve a kill. The result was not a cloud of stinging death falling like rain upon the force, but more carefully selected and almost surgical damage. Each of the men had marked someone they considered important, and Fronto had to concede that the archers had been well chosen for their skill.
All along the front few ranks of the enemy the missiles hit home, few failing to make their mark. Those that did strike had been very carefully selected. Enemy officers, marked out by their lavish equipment, fell with cries, as did standard bearers and musicians. All men who could direct and control an attack. Other missiles targeted those men carrying ladders or leading the carts or ramps, causing them to falter and jam the advance until other men stepped in to take their place.
‘What’s next?’ Fronto asked the centurion.
‘And spoil the surprise, sir?’ the man chuckled, and Fronto rolled his eyes before turning them back to the advancing mob. Across a wide ground of rubble they moved, their carts and wheeled ramps encountering constant obstacles and requiring adjustment and aid, sometimes dozens of men flooding to them to help lift them across the worst hindrances. The first line of defence lay perhaps ten feet from the lowest outer wall – a heap of rubble and wooden beams and sticks gathered in a line around the defences. It would take some clearing for the vehicles, certainly.
‘Is it in reach of missiles?’ he mused. The centurion grinned.
Watching, tense, Fronto saw the first lines of men reaching the makeshift barrier. They slowed as they neared it.
‘Give ‘em shit, lads,’ the centurion laughed.
Once more, the few archers and scorpion crews launched their missiles into those men, and soldiers along the wall carefully chose rocks, weighing them and moving to the parapet. As the enemy slowed to negotiate the barrier, the defenders let loose with a barrage of missiles, both crafted and makeshift. The enemy cried out as the rocks and arrows fell among them, and those men who now knew they were within range and in danger started to run forwards, clambering over the barrier as fast as they could.
Fronto almost laughed.
Whoever had set that barrier out had a wicked sense of humour. Far from being a gathered pile of rubble and sticks as it appeared, it was a much nastier idea in truth. The engineers had jammed sharpened stakes into the ground, angled alternately outwards, straight up, and inwards, and then carefully laid detritus atop them, disguising the wicked points as a simple rubble heap.
Men screamed and wailed, fell forwards and back as the sharpened timber points tore through shins, calves, feet and thighs, and when men fell they were impaled further on the spikes. The attack slowed in an instant, faltering, and a fresh wave of missiles fell upon them, accompanied by jeers from the wall top.
The attack might well have failed right there, the enemy pulling back out of danger. Certainly their morale collapsed, these troops the weakest among Achillas’ army. Fronto had to hand it to the enemy officers. They might not have quite the discipline of the legions, but their control over their men was powerful, the bulk of the army seemingly more fearful of their own commanders than of the enemy. Words of anger and command poured from the Aegyptian officers and the enemy force, after a brief falter, pressed on.
Men endured the hail of missiles as they worked to remove the barriers in sections wide enough to admit a dozen men, or the carts or ramps among them. In fact they had little to worry about, for the ammunition supplies on the wall top were not plentiful, and gradually the missiles thinned out to occasional releases. Soldiers were even now ferrying fresh supplies of rocks from the harbour in heavy baskets that were then raised to the wall walk on ropes.
Gradually, Fronto watched the tide overcome the rubble and spike obstacle. However, they no longer chanted, no longer rushing ahead with enthusiasm and the belief of an easy victory. Now they came on slowly, carefully, sullenly, only moving forwards because of the vicious officers in their midst, some of whom wielded whips or staves, using them to beat or lash any man who baulked at the advance.
Now, the mobile ramps were brought forward, and Fronto realised that they had been designed for this specific attack. This whole probe had been designed to overcome the triple walls. As the ramps were rolled forth by desperate men, he realised the ladders were just the size to pass the second wall, the tower tall enough for the inner, third rampart.
Some of those ramps failed at the start, the better shots on the wall picking off the men moving them into position with their few remaining arrows, waiting until other men took their place and then pulverising their heads with sea-smoothed cobbles in turn. Still, the ramps came on, wheeled up against the outer wall, which was perhaps eight feet high. The ramps were slammed against the upper edge of the wall, wedges jammed under the wheels to prevent them rolling back. The enemy bellowed triumphantly, though there was still enough uncertainty and nervousness that no one rushed up them until a number of ramps were in place.
Finally, content that there was sufficient access for a large number, Achillas’ soldiers, exhorted by their vicious officers, clambered up the ramps and over the first wall, dropping into the eight foot gap between it and the second, waiting nervously well within missile range as their comrades brought forward the scaling ladders that would take them over the second wall.
‘They will still have to dismantle a wide enough section of both walls to get the tower close,’ Galronus noted.
‘And all the time within missile range,’ Fronto agreed.
‘They might not get that far, sir,’ the centurion noted, and blew four short blasts on his whistle. All along the wall, every fifteen paces or so, soldiers stepped forwards in pairs. As the enemy poured into that narrow space between the outer and middle walls, one of each pair hefted a pitch-soaked torch in a strong arm, while the other struck flints and sparked until the torches caught, all below the line of the walls, invisible to the enemy.
Fronto gritted his teeth, anticipating what was coming next. War or no war, this was no way for a man to die. Gradually the torches along the wall burst into life and still the centurion waited. Fronto peered down and watched with hushed anticipation as the enemy began to bring their ladders across the outer defence and into the central gap. The moment the officer thought they had the optimal enemy force in line, he blasted his whistle again and all along the rampart men cast blazing torches down into the gap between outer and middle wall.
All along the line the torches landed, instantly igniting the pitch-soaked and sawdust-covered ground. The land between the central and outer wall became a deadly fire pit in moments, roaring flames filling the entire trap, frying hundreds of men and burning their siege ladders. They panicked and screamed, floundering, desperate to escape but trapped by the eight foot wall they had already scaled.
The attack broke. Many of those driven officers had given up hope of further advance and were calling their men back, preserving their remaining carts and ladders, and that tower they had no hope of bringing close enough to be effective. Even had the officers maintained their aggressive pushing of their men, they would now have failed, for the spirit of the Aegyptians had been totally broken by the sounds of their compatriots burning to death in the tightly packed space between walls. The army fled back across the open space and up that wide street, accompanied by victorious cries from the wall.
Fronto laughed as the centurion bellowed invective at a legionary who had turned on the wall’s parapet and bent over, baring his buttocks at the fleeing enemy.
Galronus looked down at the corpses strewn across that wide space, trying not to look too closely at the continually burning nightmare that lay between the walls, where few still lived, most already charring and twisting, blackened and roasted in the conflagration.
‘That should make them think twice,’ he said.
Fronto nodded. ‘But only for a few days. You saw their officers. Achillas is determined, and that’s driving his commanders to push their men. He will not allow too much delay. They will think on this and find new ways. The next attack will not be repulsed so readily. And I would be willing to wager that the palace’s supplies of pitch are thin. Replacing that against a similar push might well be difficult. Every attack we drive back lowers our supply levels and reduces our capability to do so next time.’
‘Your wife is right, you know,’ Galronus snorted. ‘No cup for you is ever half full is it?’
Fronto sighed.
‘We had best pray that reinforcements and supplies are coming on those ships.’
* * *
Fronto watched Galronus depart as his friend turned and strolled off wearily towards the room in the palace set aside for the Remi nobleman. Continuing on to his own chamber, he was surprised to see the figure of Gaius Cassius Longinus leaning beside the door.
He’d not spent much time in Cassius’ company since they had met at the Hellespont earlier that year, or at least not without the entire cadre of other staff officers being present. He eyed the man warily. As yet he remained unable to weigh Cassius up.
The man was from an old Roman family, as noble as Fronto’s own. His mother-in-law had been rumoured to be a lover of Caesar’s, though that had been years earlier. He had a reputation as a staunch republican and a hater of despotism, which had likely been part of the reason he had thrown in his lot with those senators opposing Caesar. He had been an enemy throughout this bitter civil war, and had only given his oath to Caesar recently, under duress and after the victory over Pompey at Pharsalus. There were voices in the staff that suggested he may not be trustworthy, and certainly he had no clear reason to support Caesar.
Yet he was also a man with a good, noble reputation. A clever and experienced military mind, Cassius had been the only senior officer to survive the field at Carrhae, which had seen the demise of Crassus and his army. His was a name spoken of with respect, and even awe in some circles.
To Fronto he represented the ultimate in inscrutability.
‘Cassius?’
‘Fronto. I’ve come to pick your brains, if I might.’
Fronto frowned, but opened his door and gestured inside. Cassius joined him and wandered over to the window with its beautiful view of the Palace Harbour and the theatre, allowing the fresh sea breeze into the stifling warmth of the room.
‘You have served with Caesar most of your career,’ he said. Fronto searched the tone for a hint of accusation, but found none. In the end, he shrugged.
‘Most of it.’
‘It is no secret that he’s always been ambitious,’ Cassius said quietly. ‘Lucky, brave, clever and all sorts of things a Roman proconsul should be, but more ambitious than most. A Sulla in the making, some might say.’
Fronto sighed. He hated it when people started this sort of conversation. It was a subject that broke friendships more surely even than adultery. He and Balbus had often had to agree to avoid the subject.
‘We live in an age of tyrants, and would-be tyrants, Cassius.’
‘No, Fronto. We live in the great age of Rome’s republic. It is simply endangered by despots.’ He huffed and swept his hand around, as though brushing things from a table. ‘But it is not despots and the danger Caesar poses to our government of which I wished to speak.’
Fronto heaved another sigh, this time of relief.
‘Good. What is it then?’
‘I understand that there have been times when you have walked away from the general because of your personal grievances, yet you came back. More than once, if I am not misinformed.’
Fronto nodded uneasily.
‘I worry about him,’ Cassius said quietly. ‘I worry that Rome should be settling after all this war. That we should be defeating the last few who stand for Pompey’s flag, or for preference negotiating with them and drawing them back into the fold. Only when that happens can the republic begin to mend. Then Caesar will have to put aside his imperium and become part of Rome’s good.’
‘I think we all agree that’s what needs to happen,’ Fronto agreed.
‘Yet instead we are here, doing this.’
‘Aegyptus needs to be settled before we move on.’
Cassius shook his head. ‘That’s blindness, Fronto. If the general simply wanted a settled Aegyptus so we could move on, he could confirm Ptolemy’s authority on the throne, hand the queen to her enemies, and leave. Ptolemy would grant him almost any concession. Rome would prosper on it, the land would be settled, and we could move on. To me it is clear that we tarry against all sense. We endanger ourselves and face warfare every day entirely unnecessarily.’
Fronto remained silent. It was, at the bare bones, truth. Admittedly there were subtleties at play here. Rome’s support of Cleopatra’s father and the commitment of the senate to maintain their joint rule was at the nominal heart of what Caesar was doing, and on some levels it was clearly the right thing to do. Whether it was expedient, and whether the senate would see it as right was another thing entirely.
Cassius turned. ‘I am sure we are doing the wrong thing here, Fronto. What I cannot decide is whether we are doing it because Caesar is under the spell of that harpy queen, or whether it is because of the general’s deep-seated need to control, and his unwillingness to pass an opportunity to increase his imperium. Is this an effort to avoid finishing the war and laying down his power, Fronto?’
The older legate sighed and leaned back against the wall. ‘I struggled long and hard, more than once, with what I think about Caesar. Did you know Pompey well?’
Cassius shook his head. ‘I knew Crassus well, Pompey peripherally.’
‘Then you probably still know enough. You know that Crassus was greed incarnate, that acquisition was at the heart of everything he did. You will know equally that anger and violence raged in Pompey’s blood. Had he no war to fight he would have ended up tearing himself apart.
I’m a practical man, Cassius. I would love to believe that the best the republic can hope for is still to come, but I see it half-mouldering in its tomb already. It started long before even Sulla and Marius, but they hastened things. If the republic has a hope of survival, Caesar is it. I have watched every other man of power rise and fall, and they all displayed cankers in their soul at the end. Caesar might be ambitious. Dangerous, even. But he does care about Rome, and he is the best of what the gods offer us. That is why I serve him, and that is why I keep coming back.’
‘None of that answered my question, Fronto.’
‘I know. I am becoming aware of the influence the queen has over him, but I’m confident it’s temporary. The general attracts women like clients. Wives? Cornelia, Pompeia and Calpurnia. Lovers? Well, let’s not talk about that, given his connection with your wife’s mother. But none of them have lasted. Calpurnia too will surely end in divorce, and this queen will fall by the wayside like all the others. He might be influenced by her, but no woman will get between him and duty.’
‘So power is all.’
‘Certainly he will not want to leave Aegyptus until he has achieved all he set out to do. He wins often. He loses occasionally. But he never backs down.’
‘And you think he will give up his power when this is over?’
‘I hope so,’ Fronto said. ‘I will follow him into the maw of Cerberus, but the day he stands against the republic, I will turn my back on him. I think he knows that.’
Cassius nodded, an odd sparkle in his eye.
‘You are a good man, Fronto. And one with principles, I think. When all this is over, I see you and I becoming fast friends.’
Sands of Egypt Page 8
