by Ian Ross
As the officers saluted and ran to muster their troops, Castus felt a last quick tremor of suppressed fear rise from his chest. Then he gritted his teeth, stuck out his jaw, and strode towards the northern breach.
Clambering across the fallen rubble, he pushed his way between the crowds of men already surging into the gap in the wall. As he reached the brink of the collapsed section, he climbed up onto a large square-cut stone that projected from the foundations and surveyed the damage. The collapse of the wall had gouged out a section of the bluffs above the riverbank, but the debris had filled the hole as it fell. Now a solid ramp of rubble and earth sloped from the broken foundations down into the muddy flowing water of the river. Rough-hewn timbers stuck up in places, carried downstream from the Persian dam.
In the fading light the water swirled and eddied around the mass of fallen rubble. The flood was ebbing fast, but the river still flowed outside its usual limits, lapping the far shore a hundred paces away. And beyond it, drawn up across the plain in the last glow of sunset, the Persian army waited. As Castus stared, they raised their banners and let out a vast rolling cry.
‘PER-OZ! SHA-PUR! PER-OZ! SHA-PUR!’
‘Watch yourself, general,’ a soldier said, stepping up smartly beside Castus and raising his shield. Only then did Castus notice the arrows arcing in out of the twilight. The Persian archers on the mounds across the river had begun shooting at the men gathering in the breach. A choked cry, and one of the legionaries staggered and toppled forward onto the rubble, an arrow jutting from his neck.
Jumping down from his perch on the broken wall, Castus heard the shields butting together, sealing the breach. It was a rough array, but a solid one, the front-rank men kneeling with shields grounded before them, the second and third ranks raising their own shields above them in a testudo formation. Barbatio and Gunthia were both there, giving orders to the centurions and the junior officers. They were pushing their best men forward to the front ranks, the veterans and campidoctores of the legions, all in full mail and scale armour.
Looking at the shields, Castus saw that the soldiers were all from different units. The yellow and dark blue shields with the radiate acanthus emblem of the Seventh and Tenth Gemina legions stood beside the red and white shields of Gunthia’s Gothic warriors; the sunburst blazon of the Armigeri troopers beside the golden caduceus of the Sixth Parthica. Castus watched them in the low light, and felt a thrill of pride running through him. These were true soldiers, men of the type he had known and fought beside all his life. If they could not hold the breach, nobody could.
‘Keep them solid,’ he told Barbatio, as he moved back through the ranks. ‘If anything comes over that river, throw them back. I’ll get observers onto the walls to give you good warning if the enemy start to move. And send runners to bring food and water too – it’s going to be a long night!’
Back across the rubble, stumbling in the gathering gloom, Castus found Vallio waiting with his shield and a flask of watered wine. There were fires burning at the edge of the demolished stretch of buildings, and flaming torches mounted on the line of buildings just behind the new rampart. The soldiers were working hard, forming lines to pass chunks of rubble and lengths of timber back to their comrades, but there were so few of them. Too few, Castus could see at once. At least now the breaches had opened he could tighten the new perimeter, shortening the line to where it was needed. A number of civilians were working with the soldiers already, but they would need many more hands if the new defence line was going to stand against a concerted attack. He felt his earlier flush of enthusiasm die inside him.
‘Father!’ a voice said, and Sabinus came striding from the darkness. He had a bandage around his head, covering one eye, and another strip of linen binding his left arm to his chest.
‘Why are you here?’ Castus snapped. ‘I ordered you to remain at the Strategion!’
‘I’m honouring my promise to my stepmother,’ Sabinus said gravely, and then grinned. ‘Somebody’s got to keep you out of trouble!’ Castus winced as he saw the burns and scars covering one side of his son’s face crease. ‘Besides,’ Sabinus went on, ‘I’ve been on my feet for days now, and there’s nothing I can do up at the citadel.’
‘Very well,’ Castus said grudgingly. ‘Stick close to me though, and don’t try anything heroic!’
Up on the wall rampart, a party of men were working with a makeshift block and tackle, lifting one of the big ballistae up into position. Castus could see the flicker of arrows passing above them; every now and again a shaft dropped behind the wall, and he heard the sharp clink of metal striking stone.
Vorodes appeared, with his son Barnaeus close behind him. The boy was still wearing his helmet, and gazing at the scenes around him as he gripped the hilt of his sword.
‘I have to thank your son, curator,’ Castus said. ‘He dragged me off the wall very promptly earlier!’
‘I told him to keep back,’ Vorodes replied stiffly. ‘You’d have done the same, I’m sure. But… I’m happy to see you survived.’
Castus noted the bitterness in the curator’s voice. The collapse of the wall seemed to have shaken the man’s confidence considerably.
‘You’d best try and round up as many people as you can to help with the construction,’ he said, nodding towards the new rubble rampart.
The curator was looking at it with a pained grimace, his top lip curled back from his teeth. ‘You really think that’ll stop them, when they come?’ he asked, almost swallowing the words.
‘It might,’ Castus said. ‘If we can build it high enough.’ He slapped Vorodes on the shoulder. ‘We’ve all got work to do before dawn.’
*
The night was dark, the young moon shedding only a faint light, and the air felt warm and thick with humidity. Insects hazed the fires and the torches set along the line of the new fortification. Steadily the barricade of rubble and timbers grew higher, but still the work was progressing too slowly.
Shortly after midnight, Castus scaled the surviving flight of steps to the top of the wall and picked his way along the rampart, feeling certain that the masonry beneath him would begin to shift at any moment. Right at the brink of the wide northern breach, a ballista had been erected inside a rough embrasure of piled bricks and sacks of sand. Sudden Death, the machine was called; there was another like it on the far side of the breach, and others stationed on rubble mounds just inside the line of the wall. Castus crouched beside the artillery crew, sighting along the bolt-groove of the ballista. The aim was good, angled down at the ramp of debris below the breach.
‘Should be able to pick them off nice from up here, dominus,’ the chief ballistarius said with a gap-toothed grin.
Castus grunted his agreement, then straightened and peered out across the cracked lintel of the embrasure. The dark water reflected a ghostly gleam of moonlight, but the plain beyond was lost in darkness. In the far distance, the sentry fires of the Persian encampments flickered along the horizon.
‘Something’s moving out there,’ one of the soldiers said in a hushed tone.
Edging over to join him, Castus followed his pointing finger. He squinted, but could make out nothing in the gloom.
‘There, again!’ the soldier said urgently. Others had joined them now, all staring out into the blackness.
‘Your eyes are better than mine…’ Castus said. But even as he spoke he caught the stir of movement near the edge of the water. He gestured for silence. All he could hear at first was the low mumble of voices from the soldiers in the breach below him. Then other sounds: a scrape of timber, the bright clink of metal.
Light burst suddenly from the mounds on the far riverbank, and Castus covered his eyes. When he looked again he saw fire blazing in the darkness; the flames seemed to dart upwards, rising as fluttering sparks into the night.
‘Burning arrows! Guard yourselves!’ the solder beside him shouted.
Castus flinched, but kept his eyes above the level of the parapet. The volley of flam
ing arrows filled the river with a dancing reflected flicker of orange. Then they fell, arcing down into the open breach in the wall. Castus heard men crying out, the clatter of shields, a scream of pain. But his gaze was still fixed on the far riverbank.
In the brief rushing glow of the fire arrows, he had seen the mass of men gathered along the water’s edge, and the burdens they carried.
‘Get a message down to Barbatio and the men in the breach,’ Castus yelled, grabbing one of the soldiers beside him. ‘Tell them the enemy are coming across on rafts!’
The ballista crew were already loading their machine, spinning the handles of the big windlass that drew back the slide. A second volley of burning arrows came spitting upwards from the darkness. Castus snatched another look over the parapet, and saw the enemy launching their rafts into the water. The vessels were built of bundled reeds lashed together, and the attackers were packed onto them, kneeling upright as they began to paddle. It would only take moments for them to cross.
‘Aim carefully,’ Castus told the chief artilleryman. ‘Don’t loose a shot until you get a clear target.’
‘Don’t worry about us, dominus,’ the ballistarius said. He patted the stock of his weapon. ‘We don’t miss!’
A snap from the far side of the breach as the other ballista loosed, then a louder crack as Sudden Death hurled a bolt out into the blackness. Screams from the river, and the ballista crew howled in triumph.
Another flight of burning arrows arced from the night; one struck the parapet near Castus’s head and spun away, trailing smoke. Dropping to his knees, Castus edged forward until he could look down over the brink of the broken wall into the breach below. He saw a mass of locked shields beneath him, some of them stuck with smouldering arrows. But the front ranks were solid, a wall of armoured men bristling with levelled spears.
From the river came the crashing noise of paddles in water and the high-pitched yells of the Persian attackers. Already the first of the rafts had grounded at the base of the rubble slope below the breach. As Castus watched, mastering his trepidation as he leaned over the brink, he saw men swarming from the raft and wading up onto the ramp of debris. In the half-darkness he saw raised spears and shouting faces; the attackers wore loose baggy tunics, breeches and round caps, and carried small square shields, hooked axes and spears. They looked like the same tribesmen that Shapur had sent to storm the outer wall during the tower attack. He pulled his head in as an arrow whistled close by him.
‘Sakastanis,’ the artilleryman said as he cranked back his ballista. ‘Fucking barbarians!’
Stifling a curse, Castus scrambled to his feet and ran, head lowered, back to the steps. As he dropped down to street level he met Sabinus coming in the other direction.
‘Where are you going?’ his son demanded.
Castus just gestured towards the breach, but Sabinus blocked him with a hand to his chest. ‘That isn’t your place!’ he said. ‘You need to keep back from the fighting!’
Castus growled, deep in his chest, then swatted his son’s hand aside. ‘Either come with me or get out of my way,’ he said.
Sabinus took a step back, startled, and Castus saw the anger creasing his brow. He grabbed his son by the nape of his neck and squeezed, managing a crooked smile. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But if you want to protect me, stay close!’
They ran together over the broken ground, pushing in through the rear ranks of the wedge of troops holding the breach. Some of the arrows were still burning – the tips were wrapped in rags, soaked with naphtha, Castus guessed – but the Persians were shooting further volleys out of the darkness. The sound of them striking the shields was a constant percussive thudding.
‘Get those flames doused,’ he shouted. ‘The enemy are using them as a mark to aim at!’
‘General!’ Barbatio said, saluting quickly as he recognised Castus in the darkness. ‘Any idea how many of them there are?’
‘Too many,’ Castus replied, low in his throat. His body was coursing with trapped energy, and his face ran with sweat. He longed to draw his sword, push forward to the front ranks and take a position in the fighting line. But Sabinus had been right – that was not his place now.
Instead he climbed up onto a chunk of the broken wall, a vantage point. From there he could see over the heads of the soldiers in the breach, but although he could hear the sounds of the Persian attackers scaling the rubble towards the Roman shield wall, he could see nothing of them.
‘Third rank,’ Barbatio yelled. ‘Ready darts...! Loose!’
At the command, the men in the centre of the formation hurled a volley of lethal iron-spiked darts over the heads of the men in front of them.
‘Fourth rank – ready darts!’
The Armenian archers behind the infantry lines were already shooting, lofting their arrows over the breach to hit the advancing attackers. Slingers whirled and flung their shot; it was impossible to aim, but Castus could hear the screams from out in the darkness. The Sakastani warriors must be packed so closely together that it was almost impossible to miss. A moment later, he heard the familiar clash of hand-to-hand combat. The Roman lines wavered, then surged forward again, and the night was filled with the roaring pulse of battle.
Iovinus stepped up beside Castus, lifting a shield to cover him. Just as he did so, an arrow darted from the blackness and struck him in the shoulder. The Protector let out a tight gasp, then dropped without another sound. At once Sabinus grabbed the shield with his good hand and raised it. Vallio was down on his knees beside the fallen man.
A shuddering crash from behind them, and something whirled through the air overhead. Water burst up from the river and sprayed back over the men in the breach. A catapult stone, Castus realised; one of the crews must have repositioned their big onager to hurl missiles straight through the gap in the wall and into the river. He grinned fiercely; the men in the Roman ranks were cheering.
But the noise of fighting was gathering in intensity now, and Castus saw bodies carried back from the front line, other men moving up to replace them. The Sakastanis were raising wild high war cries, and the Romans fought back in grim silence. None of them had shifted a single pace since the attack began.
Then, abruptly, it was over. Castus had not heard a trumpet or a shouted order, but he saw the ripple pass through the troops as their enemy fell back. Another catapult stone coursed overhead, raising a spout of water from the river.
‘Drove them back, dominus!’ Gunthia said, appearing from between the rear ranks. ‘We’re shooting them down as they flee, but I reckon half of them are drowned already!’
Castus gave a tight nod. Iovinus was sitting up as one of the surgeons tried to draw the arrow from his shoulder. Assuring himself that the man would live, Castus strode forward into the breach. The ground beneath his feet was uneven with rubble and crackled with broken arrows. Bodies too, those who could not be dragged back from the fighting line. The men parted to let him through, and he stood behind the forward row of shields and gazed down at the scene of slaughter.
The dead lay in a thick mound all across the breach. More of them were sprawled over the rubble that sloped down into the water, and more again in the shallows around the grounded and broken rafts. In the faint moonlight the blood spilt over the stones looked black. Some of the bodies still moved; some whined in agony or cried out in their own language. For several long heartbeats the men in the breach could only gulp breath and stare.
‘ROMA VICTRIX!’ somebody yelled. At once the same cry burst from a score of throats, then a hundred more. Spears banged against shield rims in a deafening volley of noise, echoing between the broken walls and across the dark waters.
*
The sky was lightening above the Persian encampment, and already the dust was stirring across the plain. In the dawn greyness Castus looked at the faces of the men around him and saw the fatigue on every one. Only a few hours had passed since the vicious battle in the darkness; none had slept, and the day promised further bloods
hed.
Climbing wearily to the rampart once more, Castus surveyed the enemy lines, trying to guess their movements. His head felt fogged and his eyes were blurred. Scrubbing at his face with the heel of his hand, he tried to shake himself into alertness, but he felt old. Far too old to be doing this.
‘You held them. Well done,’ Lycianus said, pacing along the rampart to join Castus. The scout commander had remained with his reserve cavalry force in the market district throughout the night, and appeared comparatively well rested.
‘They haven’t begun yet,’ Castus said, gesturing towards the far margins of the plain. As he watched, the first gleam of sun broke the eastern sky, illuminating the Persian banners and the glitter of armour and weaponry. Stepping back from the parapet, Castus closed his eyes and raised his hands in salute. Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. He breathed a quick prayer, almost instinctively.
‘River’s low,’ Lycianus said, peering over the parapet.
Castus could only agree. The level of the water had fallen rapidly in the night. He guessed that the Persians had built another dam to cut off the flow upstream, or diverted the river altogether. He could not fault their engineering, at least. Now the bed was almost fully exposed, only a few pools remaining between the rubble heaps. But the mud was thick down there too, all the sediment brought down by the flood filling the riverbed. It would be many hours yet before the enemy could hope to cross on foot.
‘Would you ever consider surrender?’ Lycianus asked with an odd tilt to his voice.
Castus glanced at him quickly. The scout commander was squinting in the sun, his weathered features drawn tight. ‘Would you?’ he replied.
Lycianus just shrugged, then shook his head. ‘That inner wall’s not getting built half quickly enough,’ he said.
Castus could not deny it. The men working on the new fortifications had raised a chest-high wall of packed rubble in the night, but it would still be a long time before it was strong or high enough to make a difference. In the slow tired greyness of dawn the defences seemed less sturdy than ever. With a long sigh, Castus followed Lycianus down off the wall.
