gate in the west wall at its junction with the south wall; it was a formidable refuge. Great walls, three hundred paces square and twenty feet high, surrounded an inner keep on the northeast corner, which towered over the river. In its heyday catapults would have been mounted on its wide, flat roof that would have been able to sink enemy shipping without receiving any return fire; but now the roof was empty, the catapults having rotted away long ago, as the Getae’s power to the south of the Danuvius faded after the Gallic invasion and they withdrew across the river, making way for more primitive tribes without the technology to repair them. When the Romans, under the general Marcus Crassus, grandson of the triumvir of the same name, had conquered Moesia in the early years of Augustus’ reign they had found the fortress in a dilapidated state and had easily overcome the remnants of the Saci tribe sheltering within it. They made a few repairs to its fortifications but, because its strategic significance had been overshadowed by the great Lysimachid fortress at Axiopolis a few miles downstream, they had since garrisoned it only with a nominal force of low-grade auxiliaries who had been no match for the Getic horde that had descended upon them.
Vespasian and his comrades paused a mile from the Roman lines on the crest of a hill, stripped of trees by the besieging army to build the siege wall, and looked down upon the bustling hive of activity that was a siege in progress. A two-mile-long horseshoe-shaped wooden wall, with each end abutting the river, enclosed the castle and a fortified settlement that had grown up next to it, in the lee of the other ridge to its west; between these hundreds of horses milled aimlessly.
Three gates had been built into the siege wall, close together, at its central point; behind each stood a massive, newly constructed, wheeled siege tower, thirty feet wide at their base, tapering to ten feet at their summit. Each had a long ramp attached to their top levels; the ramps had been hauled vertical by pulley systems in readiness for the slow, manhandled journey across no-man’s-land which would end with them crashing down upon the walls of their objective and disgorging hundreds of assault troops from the bellies of the towers.
Behind the Roman lines, set back just far enough to be able to shoot over the wall when the order to attack came, dozens of stone-throwing onagers and bolt-shooting ballistae were being assembled. They, along with the Cretan auxiliary archers advancing with the towers, would provide the covering fire, peppering the walls of the fortress — just within range over four hundred paces away — with lethal missiles in an effort to prevent the Getic bowmen from causing too many Roman casualties.
In amongst all the siege apparatus scurried thousands of legionaries working as carpenters on the towers, as navvies levelling the ground for the artillery pieces, as smiths in the mobile forges, hammering out iron bolts to feed the hungry ballistae, or as masons chipping away at chunks of rock, rounding them off so that they would fit snugly into the slings of the onagers. The sound of their ceaseless labour blended with the shouts of their officers in a cacophony so loud that it was plainly audible from where Vespasian and his group sat on their horses.
‘Ain’t that just typical of the army,’ Magnus said with a wry grin. ‘They’ve got the whole of Moesia to run about in but they decide to cram as many people as possible into one small corner.’
‘But I don’t think that they’ll be here that much longer,’ Sabinus observed. ‘To my eye they look to be almost ready. Pomponius’ guess was right, they’ll be going in tomorrow.’
‘We’d better get on with it, then,’ Vespasian said, kicking his horse forward. ‘We need to find Faustus in amongst all that.’
Faustus was easier to find than expected. The first cohort was stationed at the middle gate, putting the finishing touches to the huge siege tower parked a few paces behind it. The din of scores of legionaries working wood with hammers, saws and chisels, constructing the staircases and staging platforms in the bowels of the tower, was intense but not quite loud enough to drown a familiar voice.
‘It just has to be fit for purpose, not a fucking work of art; you’re not going to live in it with your sweethearts, no, you lucky sods are going to fight from it. Now get a move on. If the Fifth Macedonica finish their tower before we do I’ll lose ten denarii to their primus pilus and I’ll be forced to send every tenth one of you back home to your mothers without any balls.’
The noise of construction intensified as Faustus stepped out of one of the tower’s entrances, brushing sawdust off his shoulder.
‘Centurion Faustus,’ Vespasian called as he dismounted.
Faustus looked up and immediately snapped a rigid salute. ‘Tribune Vespasian,’ he said, grinning all over his face, ‘and Magnus, you old dog, have you come to join our little war? Thracia must be very boring if you’ve been forced to travel all this way to see a bit of action.’
‘Thracia is indeed boring,’ Vespasian replied, clasping the centurion’s heavily muscled forearm, ‘but we haven’t come to help you enjoy your war, we’ve got a little battle of our own to fight before you go killing every Geta that you can find. This is my brother Sabinus and this’ — he indicated Artebudz and the Thracians — ‘is our army.’
‘Ah, now let me guess, you’re on the hunt for that weasel-faced priest. I won’t ask why but I assume that you want to find him before Poppaeus does; in which case you’ll have to get him tonight as it’s an open secret here that we attack tomorrow night.’
‘Very astute, Faustus. Now we need your help to get some Getic clothes and a boat.’
Faustus looked hesitant. ‘Poppaeus has started to make things very difficult for me since his return; I can turn a blind eye to what you’re up to but as to-’
He was interrupted by a shout from the centurion of the century stationed on the walkway along the wall. ‘Incoming! About five hundred of them. Get down, lads. Pila ready.’
His men up on the walkway immediately crouched down, hefting their spears into a throwing position.
‘Shields,’ Faustus shouted, ‘then get yourselves under the wall.’
All around the legionaries dropped their tools, grabbed their shields and ran for safety in the lee of the wall.
‘Get your men and horses to the wall, sir, you’ll be safe enough there. The stinking horse-botherers do this once an hour or so, trying to set fire to one of the towers; it seems that it’s our turn again, although I wish they’d pick on the Fifth Macedonica more often as I’m desperate to win a bet.’
Shrill, ululating war cries filled the air and the sound of hundreds of hooves pounding the earth drew closer as Vespasian and his comrades reached the wall. Moments later came the sharp hiss of multitudes of flaming arrows streaking over it, leaving trails of thin smoke in their wake; they thumped into the tower with a seemingly never- ending staccato beat. The sudden impact caused a lot of the burning rags attached to the arrows to come off and fall, like flaming rain, to the ground, but more than a few remained intact and the tower started to burn in dozens of places.
A century waiting with a pump and water-filled buckets beneath the tower reacted immediately to douse the flames on the lower parts of the tower; but further up, out of reach of their efforts, the fire started to spread as another huge volley of fire arrows careered in, augmenting the damage already done.
‘Get that fucking pump working properly, you come-stains; that fire is not sacred to Mithras, it’s the sort that needs to be put out,’ Faustus hollered, waving his vine cane threateningly at the group of legionaries desperately pushing and pulling the see-saw pump handle up and down in an effort to get the device up to a high enough pressure to reach the top of the tower. The threat of their primus pilus bearing down on them in all his wrath worked wonders for the pumping legionaries and the stream of water from the nozzle of the hose, held by two men, burst into a jet that reached up to the flames beyond the range of their bucket-wielding comrades.
A new threat came flying over the wall; the Getae had got close enough to hurl the resin-soaked torches some of their number carried to light their comrades’ arrows. Dozens thundered on to the tower, scraping flaming resin down its side that carried on burning despite the water being flung at it. The firefighters renewed their efforts as, from above, Vespasian heard the centurion shout the order to release pila at the now in-range Getae. The war cries from the other side of the wall turned into screams as eighty pila slammed into what Vespasian imagined would be by now a tightly bunched body of cavalry. A scream from above him caused him to look up as a legionary came tumbling, head first, off the walkway to fall at his feet. Even if the arrow embedded in his jaw had not killed him, the fall on to his head certainly had; his necked lolled at an unnatural angle, indicating a severe break. Young but lifeless eyes stared up at Vespasian; the lad could not have been more than seventeen.
‘Poor bugger,’ Magnus said from beside him. ‘He just learnt the hard way that you don’t stick around to see whether you’ve hit anything once you’ve chucked your pilum.’
Vespasian nodded in rueful agreement as another volley of pila was ordered above. This time the Getae were ready for it and another couple of legionaries, with arrows protruding from their necks or faces, crashed to the
