badly as to defy recognition. But the worst terror was in the city itself.
Screams arose from the towers opposite us, and scarcely had the dust of the initial impact cleared when Julian's thousand archers, at a command, dipped the tips of their arrows into the pots of flaming pitch that had been placed at their feet and filled the air with a black cloud of smoking, stinking missiles, aimed high over the heads of the defenders on the ramparts to land in the roofs and hayricks of the city behind them. More screams of pain and terror rose into the air, this time from women behind the walls, and as the archers and artillery filled the sky with their whizzing, shattering hell, a pall of thick smoke rose from a dozen points within the walls and obscured our view.
At the first, massive eruption of artillery, the infantry troops at the sacrifice were shocked into silence and awe. Within seconds, however, a huge cheer welled up and the men broke out of the parade ground like water bursting through a dam, racing to their cohorts' assigned positions behind the artillery, prepared to leap forward at Julian's command to storm the city as soon as it had been softened by the barrage. The sun rose higher in the sky, the smoke behind the walls thickened, and the stench it carried to our lines carried the smell of death, of roasting meat, of excrement and vomit and all the unspeakable carnage and suffering of a city under siege. For hours the artillery attack continued, relentless, pounding, each stone driving into the granite-hard walls, forcing open fissures and cracks, toppling battlements — yet still the walls held, still the massive gates remained closed. The defiant defenders, during the occasional lulls in our hails of missiles, let fly taunts and obscene insults to our parentage or genitals, in ancient and crudely inflected Greek.
At first our troops, out of sheer nervous energy and anticipation of the pillage to come, were unable to remain still; when their offers to assist with the engines were rebuffed by the methodical artillery engineers, they put themselves to use hauling boulders and other ammunition for the machines to fire. Even so, the growing heat of the day under the blazing sun, and the thickness and stink of the black air began taking their toll. Frustrated and angry at the delay, the men collapsed in the dirt, tugging at their stifling armor and helmets, shading their heads under shields hastily propped on lances embedded in the ground. Shortly after noon, after a sustained artillery attack of such force that it would have leveled the walls of Rome itself, Julian rode through the ranks, furious and dripping with sweat, and issued the order to cease fire. The engineering companies collapsed exhausted on the ground, calling for water and food, and the support staff came running to assist them. Julian stood a moment watching the men eat and drink greedily but silently, and then, dismounting, he stalked wrathfully into his field tent, where he remained for the rest of the day.
Things fared no better the next morning, when our troops again watched in resentment and rage as the Roman engines and artillery poured a withering hail of missiles and boulders on the benighted city, still without fatal effect. Julian was almost crazed with impatience and fury. Five bulls he had sacrificed that morning to Ares, magnificent beasts that the haruspices argued the army could not spare for merely one offering, and for a minor city at that. He knew, for his whole life he must have known, that such offerings to false gods were of no more effect than a man's footsteps on the shifting sands, yet still he persisted in his folly. That whole day he refused to meet my eyes, the eyes of a man who would not have hesitated in calling him to task for his damnable obstinacy. He paced up and down the lines angrily, raging at the impregnable walls as a wolf prowling round a sheepfold howls at the gates, jaws thirsting for blood while lambs and ewes huddle fearfully within. He brutally abused the hapless engineers as they struggled to keep up the rate of firing he demanded, calling down the gods' curses on the steadfast Persians in their hellhole of a stronghold, refusing the entreaties of his advisers to drink water or to rest. Fear was developing in him that he would be unable to take the city without a protracted effort. What was worse: the first, early rumors had been received by his scouts that King Sapor was approaching with his massive army.
His mood broke when a short, slightly built legionary trotted up to him late in the afternoon, his hair not merely matted but encrusted with sweat and grime, flakes of drying dirt covering his torso like a skin disease, his eyes red and squinting in the bright sunlight. The watchful guard of suspicious Gauls at first refused to let him pass to address the Emperor, until Julian glanced over and spied the commotion the small man was beginning to make as he raised his voice indignantly. The Emperor smiled as he called the guards back.
'Suffer the little ones to come unto me,' he said calmly, with a sly look my way, which I ignored. 'Even the filthy little ones. In fact — especially the filthy ones, if the news this man bears is what I hope.'
The trooper approached, his face still flushed in anger at the guards, and there was no indication of obeisance in his posture or voice as he stood before the Emperor. 'It is ready,' he said simply.
'Good man,' replied Julian, clapping him on his dirt-laden shoulder without hesitation. 'What is your name, soldier?'
'Exsuperius, my lord.'
'Exsuperius. 'The overpowering one.' Your name is a good omen, soldier, for this very night the Persians will receive their comeuppance from one who is indeed overpowering. 'Exsuperius' will be our password this night, and you, soldier, will personally open the gates of this foul city to the Roman army.'
Exsuperius nodded, slowly and with a great dignity utterly at odds with his ditchdigger's appearance. Without another word he turned and walked sedately past Julian's fidgety guards and disappeared into the bowels of the vast Roman camp.
It was once believed that the Romans were aided in their struggle against the Lucanians in the Pyrrhic War by Ares himself, though far be it from me to understand why such a god, even if he did exist, would compromise his majesty by consorting with mortals in such a way. The story was that in the very heat of battle an armed soldier of tremendous stature was seen carrying a huge scaling ladder and leading an impossible charge up the city walls to ultimate victory. The next day, during review, no such soldier could be found, though rewards and honor would have been his to receive — hence the belief that he must have been a god.
No such problem confronted Julian, however, for Exsuperius lived up to all the Emperor's expectations of him, and happily received a laurel crown for his efforts. Long into the night, after the enemy's still-enthusiastic catcalls and jeering had finally subsided, the little miner led fifteen hundred picked troops slithering on their bellies through a tight, sandy tunnel a hundred yards long that had been hastily braced with bridging timbers carried by the river fleet. Shortly before they were expected to arrive at the end of the tunnel, trumpets sounded the attack and the entire army rushed to arms, throwing up simultaneous assaults on three sides of the city and raising a terrifying clamor to distract the wary inhabitants from the clinking of metal tools beneath their feet.
The ruse was successful. As the Persian garrison leaped to the walls to repel the night attack, the mine was opened, and Exsuperius and his band sprang out to find themselves in the bedroom of an elderly woman so fragile, or so weary, that she failed even to wake up at the sound of her floor bursting open and three cohorts of armed Romans storming through. They made their way into the streets, which were empty, as every able-bodied inhabitant of the city was fighting at the walls or cowering in their houses. After finding their bearings, the invaders raced to the main gate, slew the sentries from behind without difficulty, and threw open the doors.
The Persians stood shocked on their battlements, forgetting even to fling their missiles, as the Romans rushed into the city in a frenzy. Julian himself was in the front ranks, shouting his demands for the enemy to surrender, but his words were drowned by the screaming of women and children and the clamor raised by his troops as they destroyed everything and killed everyone in their path without regard to age or sex. He sat his horse in the middle of the tumult the remainder of the night, coldly surveying the destruction, watching expressionless as Persian soldiers on the high battlements drew their daggers and slew themselves, stabbing their own throats or hurling themselves to the ground.
Nabdates, the governor of the city, was brought in the morning with eighty of the King's soldiers, all of them badly mauled and beaten by their captors, some with eyes already put out or ears lopped off. They had been found cowering in a hidden cellar, hoping to survive the carnage above them until the Romans departed, when they would be able to emerge in safety. Julian put his face up close to Nabdates, who averted his swollen and blackened eyes, and then he turned back to Sallustius, his lip curled in a disdainful sneer.
'Turn them loose,' he said.
Sallustius stared. 'My lord?'
'You heard me. Turn them loose. Give them horses and a day's rations and let them go. They will bring to Ctesiphon news of the Emperor's strength and the fury of the Roman gods. And their very survival will be a permanent testimony to their cowardice.'
At this Nabdates himself spoke up.
'No, mighty Augustus,' he pleaded in courtly Greek. 'Kill me now.'
