She could already see that it was a hopeless battle. The siege engines remained out of bowshot for the minute, allowing the front ranks of the dead to advance unprotected. With nothing to shelter behind they were easy targets. They fell in droves, some still writhing, pinned to the ground by javelins through their chest, others truly motionless after arrows had pierced their heads.
But there were always more of them and they were fighting back. Some held bows, and though their aim was poor the defenders couldn't afford to lose a single man. Others flung head-sized rocks at the wall with inhuman strength and Boda saw several men brought down by them.
One rock flew towards her with terrifying speed. She flung herself to the ground and it missed her head by less than an inch. The man behind wasn't so lucky. She saw his skull caved in by the impact as he fell, limp, to the ground.
She couldn't spare him any attention. More dead were flocking to the walls and she grimly picked up her bow and prepared to thin their ranks. The focus of her attention narrowed to the corpses below, and there was none left over for the rock headed straight towards her. It caught her a glancing blow on the side of the head, momentarily stunning her. Her knees began to buckle and she saw that she was falling forward, towards the battlements and the lethal drop beneath. Her arms flailed but she couldn't seem to regain her balance and her vision was slowly fading to black.
Vali's arm grabbed hers and yanked her away from the precipice, and the pain in her injured shoulder shocked her back to full consciousness. She turned to thank him - and saw, a second before it struck, the sword that was heading for his back. He gasped in shock as she flung herself on top of him and the sword swung high over his head to clang against the ramparts.
She realised with a cold shock that the man attacking them was the same one who'd been felled by the earlier rock. In the moment of his death he'd left their side and joined their enemies. When she caught his eye he swung his sword again, but the spirit inside him was still clumsy in its new body, and it was an easy matter to evade the blow. One slash of her own weapon severed his head from its body. She tried not to look at the familiar face as she tossed it over the battlements.
And then the next wave came. They'd been hidden behind the main front, rows of undead carrying ladders between them. She could see a group approaching the section of wall she and Vali were guarding. Her bow sang as she picked off first one and then another. Beside her, Vali accounted for two more, but then they were at the wall.
The ladder thumped onto the parapet beside her and a hail of rocks accompanied it. She was forced to take shelter, cowering beneath the overhang as the lethal rain continued above. She could see the top of the ladder, only two paces from her head. It was shaking, and she knew that meant the dead were climbing it. How long before they reached the top?
She drew her sword, using the tip to prod at the top rung of the ladder. The metal pierced the wood but didn't shift it.
"It's too heavy," Vali said. "You'll break your sword."
She grimaced. "But they'll have to stop throwing rocks when their people reach the top."
She was half right. The rocks stopped but the arrows continued. She guessed the dead were unafraid of the damage the arrows could do to their brethren, or judged it trivial compared to the harm it would inflict on the defenders. Her heart raced, knowing it would take only one lucky shot to finish her off. But when she saw a skeletal hand grasp the top of the ladder, she knew she had no choice.
"Now," she mouthed to Vali, and didn't wait for his nod before launching herself to her feet, arms braced to lift the ladder. For a moment she strained alone, fighting hopelessly to push the wood away from the wall. It was crawling with dead, twenty of them at least and more waiting beneath to follow after those. Then Vali put his shoulder to the other side, and suddenly the weight was bearable and the ladder was tipping out and away, some of the dead still clinging, others plummeting to the ground below.
The day wore on, the sun climbing steadily higher to beat down mercilessly on the living and rot the flesh of the dead. Another ladder clanged against the wall and then another, and each time it grew harder to push it away and there were fewer men to do it. The ranks of the defenders were thinning alarmingly fast, and when the sun reached its zenith the attackers launched their final wave.
Boda heard the thump of the elephants' great round feet across the ground and the unearthly trumpeting when they raised their trunks skyward. The siege engines rattled behind them, and when they drew closer she could see that they were filled with the dead. When they reached the walls, it would be over.
She felt Vali standing beside her, shoulder-to-shoulder, and when she turned to look at him she saw that he'd been watching her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "If we'd run away... You said it was hopeless and you were right."
To her surprise, he grinned. Under his sharp nose and red hair, the expression was startlingly vulpine. "No, you were right. The dead aren't indestructible and they haven't broken through yet."
She looked at the siege engines, within arrow-shot now, but utterly impervious to them. "They will. There's nothing that can stop those things." She flung one of the last of their javelins at the approaching wall of flesh. It flew true and hit its target, striking the nearest elephant through its eye and sinking in almost to the grip.
The beast didn't even pause, just continued its lumbering, inexorable march onwards.
"Not the creatures," Vali said. "The engines themselves - and all the dead inside."
"But the walls are too thick too pierce."
His smile broadened. He flicked his fingers, and she couldn't see it but there must have been a flint hidden in his palm, because a flame sparked to life between them. "Fire," he said. "Wood burns - and so do the bodies of the dead. We'll give these Romans a proper northman's funeral."
He grunted in surprise when she flung her arms around him. A moment later, his arms met behind her back and squeezed briefly. His expression was strange when she released him but she didn't waste time puzzling it out.
"Silvius!" she yelled to the nearest battlement commander. "We need fire arrows, rags. Raid the nearby houses for their cooking oil if we need to - anything that burns."
She saw the white flash of his smile before he turned to his men. The soldiers he barked orders to scurried to obey, making a pile of everything usable within reach - a small stock of fire arrows as well as pots of oil made for throwing. But even as Vali fitted the first flaming arrow to his bow and sent it into the nearest siege engine, she knew it wasn't enough.
"We need more!" she called to Silvius. "They can douse single flames - we need to start too many fires for them to extinguish."
He shook his head, expression grave. "I can't spare the men. If I send them for supplies the walls will have fallen by the time they return."
He was right. Beside the siege engines, more ladders were approaching, and there were fewer and fewer defenders to push them away. Vali's plan had come just too late to save them. She shrugged and flung a pot of flaming oil at the monstrous engine. At least this way they'd go down fighting. They'd take some of the dead with them, and when the end approached she'd throw her own body on the fire so that it could never rise again.
The oil she'd thrown hit the siege engine at the apex of its tower. The flames caught and spread before any of those inside could scale the heights to douse them. She smelt the stench of burning flesh and, for the first time, heard the dead cry out in fear.
"The flames will consume the beetles as well as the flesh that holds them," Vali said beside her. "They dread a final return to the realm of darkness."
He was right. As the flames spread downwards, red and gold and bright even against the midday sun, a sudden brown cloud burst from the heart of them, hovering a moment in the sky above before diffusing to spread over the battlements.
"The rats leave a sinking ship," Vali said.
The tower was close enough to allow Boda to see what had happened to the dead insid
e. Without the beetles to animate them, the corpses were just corpses. Some of them crumpled and stayed where they were, slumped on the ladders and platforms inside the engine. Others toppled from the side to be crushed beneath the feet of the advancing army, careless of their own casualties.
The whole tower was aflame now, a beacon that belched an evil thick black smoke. The flames licked forward and the elephant too began to burn. The fat fried beneath its skin as the fine grey hairs singed and lit. The creature reared, a terrifying sight, its curved tusks gouging the air. And then it fell back to earth with an impact that shook the ground, and turned and ran. Its path took it sideways into another elephant and another engine that was not yet burning. Both toppled to the ground, and the ones behind were halted, hopelessly mired in the mess.
For one moment, Boda thought it might be enough. She sent another arrow into the engine to her left, and Vali joined her, but the dead quickly pounced to put out the flames and the engine trundled on. It was only forty paces from the walls now, and behind and beside it there were scores more, far too many for the defenders to burn. Soon the dead would come swarming over, and too few of the living remained to stop them.
And then, a sound she hadn't hoped to hear - the marching feet of reinforcements. The siege engine was thirty paces away and drawing closer and she didn't dare a look behind to see how many had come, whether it would be enough. She flung a pot of oil, then another - and when she flung a third a hail of arrows accompanied it, burning through the sky from behind her.
The dead screamed and the nearest engine caught, a thousand embers sparking a conflagration that they'd never put out. It spread too quickly even for the beetles to escape it. She saw a few of them try, but they were sparks of light, already burning, and then the whole structure sank in on itself, a blackened wreck.
Finally, Boda lowered her bow and looked behind her.
There were more men than she could have hoped for - it looked to be as many as a thousand. Some were in the uniform of the Praetorian Guard, others in civilian clothes. Claudius stood at their head, a slight, stooped figure with a new air of command.
Beside him stood Petronius, curling black hair plastered to his scalp with sweat. He grinned at her expression. "So," he said, "did you miss me?"
The dead retreated when they saw the new force arrayed against them. They'd lost at least a third of their siege engines and the walls were now too heavily manned to overpower.
Petronius looked over the field of battle below and marvelled that so few had held the walls for so long. Then he looked at Boda. There was a bloody graze along one side of her head, the red bright against her pale hair. She stank of stale sweat and ash and she looked on the point of collapse. She was absolutely beautiful.
He'd told her what happened at the Temple of Isis, how he'd failed to stop the ceremony. He'd been expecting anger but she'd just nodded and when she saw his expression, told him: "You did everything you could." She was right, but he'd needed to hear someone else say it.
When it was certain the dead weren't merely regrouping for another attack, Claudius gathered a council of war. At Petronius's suggestion he included Boda and Vali as well as Marcus and two Senators - Flavius and Justinian - who'd joined them on the march to the walls.
The little boy Boda had rescued clung to Petronius's leg as if he never intended to let go. She'd said that he was Nero, Caligula's nephew, but no one among Claudius's party seemed to want to claim responsibility for him, including the new Emperor himself, and for want of anyone else to care for him he seemed to have attached himself to Petronius.
"We can arm the citizens," Claudius said. "Many have served in the legions. And those that haven't can still carry equipment, act as look-outs..."
Petronius realised that Claudius hadn't stuttered once since the Praetorian Guard had declared him Emperor. He seemed like a different man, confident and commanding for all his fragile body.
"But what about the dead inside the city?" Boda asked.
Nero whimpered, burying his head against Petronius's thigh. No doubt he'd seen his share of horror on the way to safety. Petronius picked him up and held him securely on his lap.
"There are very few dead inside the walls of Rome - only the ones Caligula killed and those guarding the gateway to the underworld." Petronius told Boda. "Our burials always take place outside the city gates."
She nodded. "Then we can hold the walls with the men we have."
"Don't be a fool," Vali said. "The walls will never hold."
Boda's head jerked to face him. "How can you say that? Less than an hour ago you told me I was right to fight."
"But this isn't an ordinary war," Vali said. "In battles soldiers fall and no one but their families mourns their loss. Here every man we lose is a defector to the other side."
"Yes," Claudius said. "I see. Their ranks swell as ours thin, making time their friend and our enemy."
Vali bowed his head in acknowledgement. "It's a battle we can't win."
Boda glared at him and Petronius had to suppress a smile at the other man's expression. He knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that glare. "You're counselling surrender, then?" she asked.
Vali held up his hands, placating. "No. I'm saying we should fight a battle we can win."
"We can't defeat the dead," Petronius said. "But the beetles that carry their spirits are easily crushed. Is that what you mean?"
Vali shook his head and Claudius said: "No. I believe his ambition is greater. You mean that we should try to shut the gateway itself, don't you? Close off the source of the infection rather than fight its symptoms."
"The dead will be guarding the gate," Boda said. "They won't be foolish enough to leave it undefended." But Petronius could see a spark of excitement in her eyes.
"That's the least of our problems," Vali said. "More importantly, the gates of death open outward - and close inward."
It took Petronius a second to understand what he meant. "You mean they can only be closed from the inside?"
The red-haired barbarian nodded, and the group erupted as everyone tried to talk at once. Petronius saw Vali lean back, a half smile on his lips as if the chaos he'd caused amused him.
Boda turned to him. "How do you know this?"
"The Book of the Dead," Petronius guessed.
Vali nodded - a little too quickly, as if latching on to a convenient lie.
Boda frowned. "You went there, didn't you? You entered the gateway in Alexandria. If we went back there..."
But Vali shook his head. "That gateway wasn't the same as this, it's not meant to be crossed. You saw the guardians who followed us through - they'll be alert now, and ready to stop another incursion by the living. Besides, Alexandria is the centre of the Cult's power. They're still much weaker here in Rome, especially inside the city, where there are only a few of the dead."
"You think we should return to the Temple then?" Petronius said, and shivered. He still remembered, all too clearly, the terrible light that had shone from the gateway to the other world. The thought of passing through it horrified him.
But Boda nodded grimly. "It seems that we have no other choice."
It was decided that half the Praetorian Guard would remain to protect the walls and half accompany Boda and Vali to the Temple of Isis. Claudius had told Boda and Vali that they needn't go, that they'd already done enough for a city not their own. Boda knew the mission had little chance of succeeding, but she preferred to contemplate death in a near-impossible attack than a futile defence. And Vali had said that the underworld could hold little fear now that its worst denizens had entered the land of the living.
Petronius had also insisted on accompanying them. She could see him ineptly buckling on a sword he barely knew how to use. The little boy, Nero, was trying to help him. He seemed to have taken a liking to the young man, a relief to Boda, who hadn't known what to do with the clinging, demanding infant.
Petronius seemed to sense her eyes on him. He looked up and
smiled, but the expression looked strained. He didn't seem such a youth any more. The last few days had aged him in indefinable but definite ways.
Was Vali right that Petronius loved her? It seemed absurd, but when she'd seen Petronius's face as he realised she was still alive, she thought he might be right. And here he was, voluntarily putting himself in danger, when he'd always seemed to devote most of his energies to avoiding it.
She didn't love him - how could she? He was a Roman, and her master. He was ten years her junior and, until last week, had lived a life of unmitigated self-indulgence. The Boda who had first arrived in Rome would have thought him worthless. But she didn't, not now. The world was a more light-hearted place with him in it. And she couldn't bear the thought that he would die for her sake.
His smile widened when she approached him. Nero smiled too, holding out his arms to be hugged. She lifted the little boy, an awkward lump in her arms, but after a moment he wriggled to be free, and she released him to return to Petronius.
"He likes you," she told him.
Petronius shrugged. "Children and animals always do. It's adults who seem to find me objectionable."
"Claudius tells me his mother's in exile," she said. "He was travelling to Rome with his aunt and cousin, but..." She looked at Nero, happily playing at Petronius's feet.
"Yes," Petronius said. "He's seen too much for such a little one."
"He needs looking after."
Petronius nodded, stooping to stroke Nero's wispy blond hair.
"He needs you to look after him," Boda said.
Petronius's eyes snapped up to hers. "What are you saying?"
She rested her hand against his shoulder. "Stay here, Petronius. Keep him out of danger."
His shrugged her away angrily. "Don't treat me like a child. If you think I'll be a liability, just say so."
She sighed. "You're not a liability. If it wasn't for you, I'd be dead three-times over. But I can't... Listen to me, we're accepting death, all of us who enter that gateway. And I know you're prepared to face it too. But I have no one here, nothing in Rome I care about - except you."
Anno Mortis Page 22
