Knight of Rome Part II

by Malcolm Davies

  At that moment, the artillery tower crashed down spilling the heavy ballista it had carried onto the struggling men, indiscriminately smashing limbs and skulls.

  “Oh that’s the cherry on top, that is,” Titus muttered just as Corvo ran up. “Withdraw your men to the other side of the Via Praetoria and start shooting at those swine on the walkways. Be sure of your targets and don’t hit our own.”

  The massive First Spear Centurion strode forward. A warrior leaped at him with his axe raised. Titus thrust his vine-staff into the snarling face. He heard the satisfying crunch of breaking teeth and hit him on the temple as he recoiled. Titus stepped over him as he fell at his feet and shouted at the top of his parade ground volume.

  “Right lads. Sort yourselves out. Form up. Form up. Close ‘em in. Stop fannying about and knock that big bugger down. That’s it. Second rank into position….”

  With shouts, shoves and encouragement he managed to deploy his soldiers in a treble rank, enclosing the enemy between it and the walls. The arrows and sling bullets began to fly. A few warriors fell and tumbled down onto their comrades below but it was impossible for Corvo’s men to use volley fire with their own men so close..

  Otto had given Lucius half his men and armed him with a cavalry lance, a long sword and an oval shield. Lucius took the northern wall while Otto moved his men up onto the eastern walkway. They pushed through the legionaries, still fighting although hard-pressed, and faced the Marcomanni. They had no advantage now. They faced lances as long as their spears and swords as good for a swinging cut as a stabbing thrust. The walkway was only wide enough for three men to stand shoulder to shoulder so their numerical superiority meant nothing. After a minute or two, the invaders were no longer advancing and after a further short time, they took their first backward steps.

  All this while, the demolition works had continued out of sight. A total of fifty feet of wall was gone. The earth rampart had collapsed filling what had been the defensive ditch. The unsupported walkway sagged on top of the heap of sand and earth from which wall-posts protruded at all angles; many of them had been dragged yards away and hacked through with axes.

  The unbroken arc of Roman shields began to move forward squeezing the warriors tighter into the corner. The psychological tipping point was reached and a few began to scramble through the gap with the intention of flight. A horn from outside the camp sounded the recall. They were compelled to fight on the retreat. Some knew that there was no hope for them so they flung themselves on the legionaries intent on taking as many of them with them as they could. The last few minutes of the engagement were the bloodiest, on both sides.

  It was over; no more clashing of arms, just silence other than for the groans and screams of the wounded and dying but a sudden smell of smoke. Otto looked out over his side of the parapet. Men were loping up the hill into the forest but they had left a parting gift. Brushwood soaked in pine-pitch had been piled up around the base of the broken wall and set alight. When the big timbers caught, they hissed and sizzled as the resin boiled out of them before flaring up and adding to the conflagration.

  A weary band of legionaries was detailed to throw earth over the fire to starve it of air. After half an hour, they had managed to cover it but it was still smouldering underneath; whips of smoke and the odd flame broke through. An unfortune soldier climbed to the top of the heap to tip on another bucket of sand and was killed by a long, black hunting arrow. The enemy had left archers hidden behind the tree stumps ready to pick off any easy target.

  The wounded intruders were sent to hell with a boot-heel to the throat or a sword strike. The bodies were sorted into two groups; the Marcomanni in a grotesque heap which was quickly thrown over the walls, the Romans laid out in rows for cremation. The infirmary was overflowing and added a trickle to the number of the dead for the rest of the day and overnight as men succumbed to their wounds or were given the mercy of a quick cut from the medical officer’s scalpel.

  How different was the officers’ midday break than it had been the day before; no smiling faces now, no talk of marching out to give battle. They drank to the shade of Cestus Valens but his was not the only face missing. Soranus was sleeping in the infirmary under a draft of poppy juice. In the course of the fight, he had picked up a fallen shield to protect himself in the close-quarters butchery. Unfortunately it had already been weakened. A lance thrust went through and sheared off the thumb of his left hand. Had the injury been to his right hand, he would no longer have been able to hold a sword and his military career would probably have been over.

  Quadratus was making an attempt to show his usual calm face to the world but the strain showed. He looked drawn, the lines around his mouth deeper since last evening.

  “How many?” he asked Titus, bleakly.

  The First Spear Centurion consulted a wax tablet.

  “Four hundred and twenty legionaries and non-commissioned officers, ten centurions and eight optios, dead. Our valued artillerist and dear comrade Cestus Valens dead. One hundred and fifty wounded of whom one hundred are fit for duty or will be in a day or two. Of the others, the medical officer will make no comment, waiting for time to kill or cure. Tribune Rufus Vulso Soranus has a permanently damaged left hand. Of theirs, we have counted three hundred and seventy-five.”

  Tertius broke the long silence that followed Titus’ reading of the “butcher’s bill”.

  “We have lost a valuable senior officer and ten percent of our effective force in one engagement. We cannot sustain losses at this level for long.”

  “Indeed not,” Quadratus responded. “It would seem that Helmund has given up trying to out-think us and reverted to the usual tactics of his people. It would further seem that he has succeeded, probably beyond his expectations. What of the physical damage to our camp?”

  Titus looked at his notes and continued.

  “A twenty-foot length of the northern wall and thirty feet of the eastern are down. The ditch in that area is filled with soil off the rampart and they have lit fires in the gap. The walkway is now incomplete. The corner artillery tower is destroyed as is one ballista. We are weakened, there’s no denying it. We can’t march out in force to give battle with our defences incomplete. If we were outflanked, we should lose the camp. If we hold enough men in reserve to defend it, we do not have the numbers to take them on down by the river.”

  “We shall need carefully to consider our next move. Abandoning our position is not an option, even if we did have our full compliment of cavalry to screen our withdrawal. My orders are to hold this camp at all costs. We need to reflect. Boxer, study the broken-down wall and report to me with your ideas of the best engineering solution to rectify that problem. You do not have long to come up with something. Now, Titus, awards for this action?” Quadratus asked..

  “Principal Decurion Otto Longius and Tribune Lucius Longius for their spirited attack helping to clear the walkway. Tribune Rufus Soranus for fighting on with a wounded hand until he fainted due to loss of blood…” Titus began but the legate interrupted him.

  “… And First Spear Centurion Titus Attius for rallying the men, forming ranks and tactical awareness when all might have been lost.”

  “Those are the duties of my rank, sir.” Titus protested.

  “Oh, shut up and take another decoration Titus, you know you deserve it. Gentlemen, we must look to ourselves and anticipate another attack of a similar nature.”

  “But not at dawn tomorrow, sir,” Otto said. “Tonight there will be feasting and ale by the river and sore heads in the morning.”

  Accompanied by four legionaries to protect him against hidden archers and covered by Corvo’s men up on the walls, Lucius scrambled around the ruined section of wall taking measurements. Two of his bodyguard soon had arrows embedded in their shields. It was a mess and a massive problem but he had the theoretical knowledge and manpower to solve it. He examined the battering ram that still stood in the centre of the Via Praetoria then went to his room and began his calc
ulations.

  Otto had been correct about the Marcomanni. By noon the fire pits had been dug and glowed white hot with charcoal. Pigs and two oxen were suspended over them on spits. Their sizzling fat sent a delicious aroma along the riverbank. Men salivated at the smell as the ale horns began to be filled and knocked back although it was not yet late afternoon. By nightfall, drunken men with a hunk of roast meat in one hand and an ale horn in the other danced around the fires. “Hail Helmund!” they shouted, “Hail Helmund the Victor!” “Hail King Helmund!” Some waved pugio daggers, swords or helmets seized as booty. Others had more grisly trophies: hands and ears which they hurled into the flames as an offering to Tiw.

  Helmund sat on a high seat of honour raising his ale horn in acknowledgement of the praise being heaped on him with a fixed smile on his face. If he raised the horn, he drank little. His smile masked his contempt of the orgy of self-congratulation going on around him. As soon as most of his warriors were too drunk to notice his absence he slipped away and walked a little along the bank of the Rhine with Hulderic.

  “What victory is being celebrated? We have wounded the beast but he remains in his lair. When we go again to try to drive him out, he will turn and rend us,” Helmund said.

  Hulderic chuckled. “You are too intense. Let them drink and celebrate, it will give them courage in the next attack. Those who were not with us today have seen the fine swords and daggers their comrades have looted. They are jealous and will want to be with you next time. We have drawn blood, that is our victory; be content with what has been gained however little it may be.”

  “We needed to hit them again at first light tomorrow…”

  “That would have been better,” Hulderic conceded, “But it is not in the nature of our people to let a reason for feasting pass us by.”

  “You’re right but we must press them again and even harder…”

  “I know, I know…”

  The fast flying clouds let moonlight flood across the river. They pulled their cloaks tighter around them against the chill breeze. Helmund turned and saw a few torches flickering around the base of the corner of the Roman camp that his men had destroyed and laughed softly, imagining their panic.

  Chapter 6

  In spite of their orders to stay in position until nightfall, the Marcomanni archers drifted away during the hour that followed the end of the battle. They did not want to miss their share of glory and feasting. Lucius did not know that and began his exploratory repair works behind a screen of two heavy-infantry centuries overlapping their shields as a defence against in-coming arrows. The work party was set to clearing away the sand and earth half-covering the fallen wall-posts. Smoke began to rise as they dug down and fire broke out again when air reached the timbers which had been slowly smouldering since early morning under their blanket of soil. Water was thrown on the flames and the posts dragged clear for inspection. This was no easy task. Each of them was an eighteen-inch diameter tree-trunk striped of its branches. The wall had been built by dropping them upright side-by-side into a trench which was then back-filled with tamped-down gravel and sand. Each post was fixed to its neighbour with bindings and horizontal support timbers. They lasted longer if they were positioned upside down. Of the thirty-three that had been pulled free, twenty were reusable. The others were too hacked about by axes or severely charred. The useless ones were dragged away and flung into Boxer’s Canal where they sank into the mud and made it even more treacherous underfoot. The remainder were carried inside the walls through the gap.

  Lucius was busy making measurements using a knotted string and a wooden set square when Quadratus surged up behind him.

  “Well?” the legate asked sharply, his anxiety evident in the tone of his voice.

  “I cannot repair the wall….” Lucius began but then he was stopped short.

  “And I cannot accept that. You are the nearest thing to a military engineer we have. It’s up to you. Find a way…”

  It was Lucius turn to interrupt. “If I could finish speaking, sir?”

  Quadratus sighed. “Of course, my apologies, Boxer.”

  “I cannot repair the defences as they were because I do not have enough posts. Some are weakened by fire, others damaged by axes. I can, however, make a new wall straight across the gap in the existing one. We will no longer have a north- east corner. My wall will cross between the broken ends of the north and east walls diagonally.”

  “So I shall have a five-sided camp. Four long sides and your new, short side?”

  “That’s the best I can do sir.”

  “And not a bad best at that. What do you need?”

  “All the men who are delegated to assist in laying out a marching-camp, all the carpenters we have, the blacksmiths and as many men with spades and mattocks as First Spear Centurion Attius can spare.”

  “You have them. Can it be done by dawn tomorrow, working by torch light?”

  “Honestly, sir, I don’t know. I have never done anything like it before. We shall try, for all our sakes.”

  He stretched a pair of strings two feet apart and told the first party of legionaries Titus sent over to dig a trench between them three feet deep.

  “Get right up to the ends of the walls and keep the sides straight and unbroken,” he ordered.

  The second party were sent outside to dig a new ditch and rampart to meet up with the two undamaged ones. While the soldiers sweated in the warm afternoon and the earth from their spades was loaded into baskets and carried away, Lucius consulted the master carpenter.

  “A couple of posts on each side of the breech are weakened. They will need extra support. I had an idea but I don’t know if it’s practical, come and look at this.” He led him over to the battering-ram and slapped the massive log still suspended under the roof-beams. “Can we cut this to length and use it to reinforce the ends?”

  “’Course we can sir. I’ll get a couple of lads on it right away. Looks to me like we can get two lengths just short of fourteen feet. Got to cut the point off you see. While we’re sawing it up, can I suggest some of my men take down what’s left of the walkway and the artillery tower? Probably be able to re-use some of it…”

  “Can we build a new tower?

  “Not by tomorrow. Can make an artillery platform behind the parapet of the new wall if you like…”

  Lucius stood watching, temporarily without employment while legionaries and immunes swarmed over the worksite to cries of “Watch your head! Out the bloody way! Oi, mind what you’re doing!”. He went over to the artillery store. All the specialists were engrossed in trying to repair the ballista which had been thrown off the tower when it was cut down.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “We’re getting there sir, bit tricky, if you’d excuse me...”

  Which was a polite way of saying, “Get lost, we’re busy.”

  He went to the blacksmith’s forges.

  “I need some sort of ironwork to clench the uprights of the new wall that’s going up.”

  “Can we have a look sir?” the master smith asked.

  The ram was resting on the wedges on the ground now with two pairs of sweating men working on it with double-handed saws. Two other crews stood by to relieve them. The blacksmith asked the diameter of the timber.

  “Three-foot,” the chief sawyer told him.

  “And you want this clenched to another post, is that it sir?

  “Two other posts, actually, and they’re both eighteen inches diameter,” Lucius told him.

  “How many attachments do you want?”

  “Three each side.”

  “What you want is six-foot strips of iron pierced for spikes, and the spikes, of course. Easy enough to make. But they’ll cool down too much in the time it takes to get them over from the smithy. Won’t be soft enough to bend around tight. I’ll get them made and set up a field-forge over here near the work and we can heat ‘em up enough to bang ‘em round the woodwork when you’re ready.”

  Rop
es to be used for bindings were soaking in saltwater. It was better to coil them around the posts wet so that they would tighten even more as they dried. A little pitch would waterproof them against sagging in the rain.

  Felix hobbled over with bread and wine for Lucius “to keep his strength up” but really to take a look at the works. He approved. Titus kept hovering in the background asking if Lucius needed anymore men.

  “Not at the moment, but we will when we are ready to start construction,” Lucius told him.

  Because he could not bear to be standing idly by, the First Spear Centurion went over to the men digging out the trench and new ditch. “Put your backs into it you idle sods. Boxer will be reporting any man who doesn’t do his share to me. Gods help that man,” he yelled and nodded to Lucius as he walked away as if to say, “No need to thank me.”.

  The trench was dug and cut out wider at each end to accommodate the timbers which had previously been the battering ram. It was now neatly sawed into two equal lengths and had been smoothed with adzes. An hour before sundown, they were lifted into place using only manpower and foul language. They dropped into position with satisfactory thuds. The leather-aproned blacksmiths bent the hot iron around the posts and hammered in the spikes. The timber hissed and smoked sending up a sweet aroma of pine. The ends of the north and east walls were now secured and stabilized.

  Once the teams had established a rhythm, it took ten minutes for each intermediate post to be wrestled into place, bound and the trench backfilled with crushed stone and sand, well tamped down with heavy wooden mallets. Twenty posts took them past the natural light of the long northern evening and into working by torch-light but before midnight, the wall was complete. The new length of ditch and rampart had been completed before the last, low western rays of the sun had faded.

  Now it was the rime for the carpenters to prove their expertise. After lengthy discussions, Lucius vetoed the construction of a new ballista platform on the walkway.

  “The kick-back is too powerful,” he said.