Fire in the East

by Harry Sidebottom

  Practice was improving the skills of the artillerymen of Arete. By the time the Sassanid line reached the section of white-painted wall, three of their ballistae had been squashed by high-velocity missiles. As the ram, mantlets and bowmen carried on to cross the last 200 paces to the city wall, the Sassanid artillery unlimbered and began to shoot back. Honours were even: two of the defenders’ and two of the attackers’ ballistae were rendered inoperable. The Dux Ripae was happy enough. This was the only area of the siege where he would win a battle of attrition. Then another thought came to his mind: Disgraceful. Men are dying - my men as well as the enemy - and I am just calculating the numbers of machines destroyed and damaged, the effects on the rate of shooting. Disgraceful. Thank the gods that war can never be reduced to this impersonal machine-against-machine battle alone. If it could, what an inhuman business it would become.

  The Sassanid officers had an admirable control over their troops. The archers held their fire until the mantlets were fixed in position just fifty paces from the walls. Not an arrow was loosed until the command. When it came, the sky darkened again. As, with a terrible whistling, the arrow storm hit, Ballista once more marvelled at the almost unbelievable enormity of the thing. The defenders hunkered down behind the battlements and below their shields to weather the storm. Shouts and cries showed that not all had done so unscathed. In the pause before the next wave the bowmen of Arete leapt to their feet and sent back an answering volley.

  Crouched behind the parapet, shields held all around him, Ballista knew he had to ignore the arrow storm. It was an irrelevance. Stoic philosophers held that everything that did not touch a man’s moral purpose was an irrelevance. For them, death was an irrelevance: fucking fools. Ballista’s only purpose was to destroy the great ram, the Khosro-Shapur.

  Judging by the tortoise, the ram was about sixty feet long. The head which emerged was capped with a metal sheath, fittingly enough in the shape of a ram’s head. It was bound to the shaft with nailed-down strips of metal. The wooden shaft itself looked to be about two feet thick. Like the tortoise it was covered in dampened rawhides.

  With suicidal courage, eastern warriors ran ahead to tear away the remains of the burnt siege tower and tip rubble to fill in the pit in which it had been trapped. The labourers were just twenty yards from the gate. It was hard for the Roman archers to miss. There was something deeply unnerving about the fanaticism with which the Sassanids leapt forward to replace men who had fallen - leapt forward to certain death. Were they drunk? Were they drugged?

  The tortoise edged forward. The rubble in the pit shifted but took its weight. The ram neared the gate.

  ‘Everyone, ready. Here they come. Now!’ On Ballista’s word legionaries stood up in the face of the arrow storm. Two near the northerner were punched backwards. Without a pause the survivors, grunting with effort, manhandled the huge, dripping-wet bags stitched together from uncured hides and stuffed with chaff over the battlement. The bags fell like massive soggy mattresses. The restraining ropes tied to the parapet snapped taut. The bags slapped wetly against the gate, held in place. Peering over, Ballista saw that he had calculated the length of the ropes exactly. The wood of the Palmyrene Gate was cushioned from the force of the ram. The sodden bags would not burn. Ballista had bought some time. Above the heads of the defenders, the arms of the three cranes swung out.

  After only the briefest pause Sassanid warriors poured from the rear of the tortoise. They carried scythes tied to long poles. Through his disappointment Ballista felt a grudging admiration for Shapur and his men. They had been ready for this device. No wonder Antioch, Seleuceia and so many other towns had fallen to them in the time of troubles. These easterners were better at sieges than any barbarians Ballista had ever encountered.

  Out in the open at the foot of the gate the Persians dropped like flies. As men fell others sprang out to snatch up the fallen scythes. Bloody fanatics, thought Ballista. One by one the ropes were cut. The bags began to sway and sag. He cursed himself for not thinking to use chains. Too late to worry about that now.

  One by one the sodden stuffed hides fell ponderously to the ground. The wooden outer gate of Arete stood unprotected. The great ram surged forward, the horns of its head closing on the gate.

  The northerner rose to his feet. He was met by a hail of missiles. With his right arm above his head, he began to guide the grapple of one of the cranes to its target; right a bit, a little more, stop, back a little, down, down, close the claws. Missiles whirled past him. An arrow embedded itself in his shield, making him stagger. Another hit the parapet and ricocheted past his face. The grapple caught the ram just behind its metal head. Ballista signalled for the crane to lift. The chains clanged rigid. The arm of the crane groaned. The grapple slipped a fraction, then held its grip. The head of the ram began to lift slowly, to point impotently towards the sky.

  For a moment it looked as if it would work. Then suddenly the claws lost their grip. The grapple slid off. The head of the ram fell free. Again it pointed at the gate. Again the tortoise moved forward until it almost touched the gatehouse. There was no longer any room for a grapple between the two: the opportunity had passed; the device had failed. Ballista dropped back down behind the battlements.

  The metal head of the ram drew back under the tortoise, then shot out. The whole gatehouse trembled. The crash echoed down the walls. The gate still stood. The ram drew back, then struck again. Another deafening crash. Again the gatehouse reverberated. The gate still held, but a strange tortured creaking indicated that it could not last long.

  With his back to the parapet, Ballista watched Antigonus and another soldier guiding the other two cranes to their target. The massive boulders swung ominously at the end of the chains as they were traversed over the tortoise. A glance at each other and the two men signalled for the boulders to be dropped. As one, the grapples released their load. After a heartbeat there was an appalling crash.

  Ducking out from behind cover, Ballista saw at a glance that the tortoise still stood. The boulders had bounced off. The arms of the two cranes were already swinging back over the wall to collect their next load. A Sassanid artillery stone took Antigonus’s head off. Without even a fractional pause another soldier stood up to take his place.

  The great ram struck again. The tremor came up through Ballista’s boots. There was a terrible sound of rending wood. Khosro-Shapur had triumphed again: the outer Palmyrene Gate was reduced to firewood. A cheer started up from the Sassanids working the Fame of Shapur. It faltered and died. They had expected, they had been told, they would be looking down a corridor to another less strong wooden gate. They were not. They were looking at a closely cemented stone wall.

  The arms of all three cranes, boulders swinging, arched back out over the gatehouse. Again Ballista stepped into the maelstrom to guide one - right, right, a bit further - Maximus and two of the equites singulares trying to cover him with their shields. An arrow caught one of the guardsmen in the throat. He fell back and his blood splashed over the group. It stung Ballista’s eyes. The three grapples released their burden. A thunderous, splintering impact, and two of the boulders smashed through the roof of the tortoise, exposing its soft innards and the men below. Ballista dropped back into cover. There was no point in playing the hero unnecessarily. Maximus and the remaining guardsman landed half on top of him.

  There was no need for further orders. Ballista could smell the pitch and the tar. Everything combustible that could be shot or thrown from the walls was being aimed at the yawning hole in the roof of the tortoise. Wishing they had some naptha left to make sure, Ballista closed his eyes, tried to steady his breathing and hands.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Opening his eyes, Ballista saw Maximus peering round the stone crenellations. The Hibernian was punching the air. ‘It’s burning - burning like a Christian in Nero’s garden.’

  Ballista looked up at his draco flying above the gatehouse. With the south wind hissing into its metal jaws, its white windsock body was writh
ing and snapping like a serpent. The incoming missiles had slackened. Maximus had been joined by Mamurra and they were looking over the battlements. Demetrius and Bagoas were huddled on the floor. The Greek boy was very pale. Ballista patted him, as if he were soothing a dog.

  ‘They have had enough. They are running’. Maximus and Mamurra rose to their feet. Ballista stayed where he was.

  Inexplicably, a group of girls appeared on the roof of the gatehouse. They were wearing very short tunics and a lot of cheap jewellery. There were no more incoming missiles. Ballista watched the girls walk to the battlements. They stood in a line giggling. All together they lifted their tunics around their waists. Baffled, Ballista stared at a row of fifteen naked girls’ bottoms.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  Mamurra’s slab-sided face cracked into a great grin. ‘It is the third of May.’ Seeing complete incomprehension on Ballista’s face, the praefectus fabrum went on, ‘the last day of the festival of the Ludi Florales, when traditionally the prostitutes of the town perform a striptease.’ He jerked his thumb in the direction the girls were facing. ‘These girls are honouring the gods and at the same time showing the Sassanids what they won’t be enjoying.’

  All the men on the gatehouse were laughing. Only Bagoas did not join in.

  ‘Come on,’ said Maximus, ‘don’t be prudish. Even a Persian like you must fancy a girl now and then, if only when he runs out of boys.’

  Bagoas ignored him and turned to Ballista. ‘Showing the bits that it is not proper to see is an omen. Any mobad could tell you. It portends the fall of this town of the unrighteous. As these women disclose their secret and hidden places to the Sassanids, so shall the city of Arete.’

  For a day and a night a column of black oily smoke streamed away to the north as the Khosro-Shapur, the Fame of Shapur, burnt. The flames from the great ram and its tortoise lit the dark.

  For seven days the Sassanids gave themselves over to their grief. Day and night the men feasted, drank, sang dirges and danced their sad dances, lines of men slowly turning, arms around each other. The women wailed, rent their clothes and beat their breasts. The sounds carried clear across the plain.

  Then, for two months, the Persians did nothing _ at least nothing very active in the prosecution of the siege. They did dig a ditch and heap a low bank around their camp; there was no wood to build a palisade. They stationed mounted pickets beyond the north and south ravines and on the far side of the river. Parties of cavalry rode out presumably to reconnoitre or forage. On occasional moonless nights, small groups would creep on foot close to the city and of a sudden release a volley of arrows, hoping to catch an unwary guard or two on the city wall or some pedestrians in the streets beyond. Yet, for two months, the Sassanids ventured no more assaults, undertook no new siege works. Throughout the rest of May, all of June and into July, it was as if the easterners were waiting for something.

  What am I doing here? The thoughts of Legionary Castricius were not content. It is the twenty-fourth of May, the anniversary of the birthday of the long-dead imperial prince Germanicus - to the memory of Germanicus Caesar a supplication. It is my birthday. It is the middle of the night, and I am hiding in some damp undergrowth.

  A cool breeze blowing across the Euphrates from the north-east rustled the reeds. There was no other sound but the great river rolling past, gurgling, sucking at the banks. There was a strong smell of damp earth and rotting vegetation. Up above, tattered clouds no more covered the moon than a beggar’s cloak. Just in front of Castricius’s face a spider’s web was silvered in the moonlight.

  It is my birthday, and I am cold, tired, scared. And it is all my own fault. Castricius shifted slightly, lifting one wet buttock from the ground, and was shushed by the man behind him. Fuck you, brother, he thought, settling down again. Why? Why am always such a fool? A keen little optio like Prosper asks for volunteers - could be a bit dangerous, boys - and my hand goes up like a whore’s tunic. Why do I never learn? Why do I always have to prove that I am the big man, up for anything, scared of nothing? Castricius thought back across the years and the many miles to his school-teacher in Nemausus. You will end on a cross, the paedagogus had often said. So far he was wrong. But Castricius had been sent to the mines. He suppressed a shudder thinking about it. If I can survive the mines, I can survive anything. Moonlight or no moonlight, tonight will be a walk in a Persian paradise compared with the mines.

  The soldier in front turned and, with a gesture, indicated that it was time to go. Castricius got stiffly to his feet. Crouching, they moved south through the reed beds. They tried to move quietly, but there were thirty of them: mud squelched under their boots, metal belt fittings chinked, a duck, disturbed by their passage, took off in an explosion of beating wings. And the wind is at our backs, carrying the noise down to the Persians, thought Castricius. Moonlight, noise and an inexperienced officer _ this has all the makings of a disaster.

  Eventually they reached the rockface. The young optio Gaius Licinius Prosper gestured for them to start climbing. If I die to satisfy your ambitions, I will come back and haunt you, thought Castricius as he slung his shield on his back and began to ascend. Since the young optio had foiled the plot to burn the granaries he had made little secret of his ambition. Down by the river the far cliff face of the southern ravine was quite steep. It was this that had attracted the attention of Prosper: ‘The Sassanids will never expect a night raid from that quarter.’ Well, we will soon find out if you are right, young man.

  Castricius was one of the first to the top. Heights held no fears for him and he was good at climbing. He peered over the lip of the ravine. About fifty paces away was the first of the Persian campfires. Around it he could see the huddled shapes of men wrapped in cloaks sleeping. There was no sign of any sentries. From some distance came the sounds of talking, laughter, snatches of song. Nearby, there was no sign of anyone awake.

  When the majority had caught up, Prosper just said, ‘Now’. There were an undignified few moments as everyone scrambled over the edge of the ravine, rose to their feet, slid their shields off their backs, drew their swords. Miraculously, the Sassanids slept on.

  With no further word of command, the ragged line of volunteers set off across the fifty moon-washed paces to the campfire. Maybe, just maybe, this is going to work, thought Castricius. Along with the others, he accelerated into a run. He chose his man: a red cloak, hat pulled down over face, still not stirring. He swung his spatha.

  As the blade bit, Castricius knew that it was all about to go horribly wrong: they were in a trap, and he was very likely to die. The blade sliced through the man-shaped bundle of straw. Automatically, Castricius sank into a very low crouch, shield well up - and not a moment too soon, as the first volley of arrows tore through the Roman ranks. Arrowheads thumped into wooden shields, clanged off chainmail coats and metal helmets, punched into flesh. Men screamed.

  A blow to his left temple sent Castricius sprawling. It took him a moment or two as he retrieved his sword and got back to his feet to realize that it was an arrow, that they were caught in a crossfire.

  ‘Testudo, form testudo,’ shouted Prosper. Bent very low, Castricius shuffled towards the optio. An arrow whipped past his nose. Near him a man was sobbing and calling in Latin for his mother.

  A trumpet sounded, clear and confident in the confusion of the night. The arrows stopped. The Romans looked around. There were about twenty of them left, in a loose knot rather than a parade-ground testudo.

  The trumpet sounded again. It was followed by a rising chant: ‘Per-oz, Per-oz, Victory, Victory.’ Out of the darkness swept a wave of Sassanid warriors. The firelight glittered on the easterners’ armour, on the long, long blades of their swords, and in the murderous look in their eyes.

  ‘Fuck me, there are hundreds of them,’ said a voice.

  Like a wave crashing on a shore, the Persians were on them. Castricius parried the first blow with his shield. He swung his spatha low, palm up in from his right. It swung under h
is opponent’s guard, biting into the man’s ankle. The impact jarred back up Castricius’s arm. The Sassanid fell. Another took his place.

  The new enemy swung overhead. As Castricius took the blow on his shield, he felt and heard it splinter. From his left a Roman sword darted forward and tried to take the Persian in the armpit. Sparks flew and the point of the blade glanced off the easterner’s mail. Before Prosper could pull back from the blow, another Sassanid blade flashed in and severed his right hand. Castricius watched horrified as the young optio spun round and sank to his knees, his left hand holding the stump of his right arm, his mouth open in a soundless scream. There was blood everywhere. The two Sassanids moved to finish the officer. Castricius turned and ran.

  Boots stamping on the rock, Castricius flew back towards the edge of the cliff. He threw away his shield, dropped his sword. As he neared the lip of the ravine he threw himself sideways and down, sliding the last few yards, swinging his legs out first into space, twisting his body, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. For a moment he thought he had misjudged it, that he would slip backwards clear over the edge. The cliff had a hundred-foot drop here. If he fell he was dead. Sharp strong pain as his fingernails tore, but he had a grip. Sliding, scrabbling, boots missing toeholds, legs often dangling, he shinned down the face of the ravine.

  High on the south-west tower of Arete, although he was at least 400 paces away, Ballista saw the trap close quicker than some of those caught in its jaws; the twang of bowstrings, the screams of men, the two clear trumpet blasts.

  ‘Bugger,’ he said succinctly.