aqueduct was pitch dark, no moon as yet. Trees and walls and the shacks of the poor gave cover. He had no doubt the enemy were waiting there for their break out. Shef started to husk out his instructions.
As the wounded were assembled, walking or on stretchers, the sentries watching the other sides of the camp called back, Cwicca's catapult teams set to work. No need for silence, but little wish to talk. The twist-shooters were set up in a rough arc facing downslope and angled right, towards the sea. Behind them Steffi had set up his pull-throwers. On the word his men began to lob the prepared fireballs down the hill, down the hill and to the right. On Shef's instructions, only every third missile was a fireball, the other two rocks from the supply train or from the villa's rock garden.
“We won't hit anyone except by accident,” Steffi protested.
“They don't know that.”
“We'll have none left to throw later.”
“We're leaving them behind in any case.”
Steffi protested no longer. His teams hurled the stones out into the blackness, to crash and clatter away down the hill. Amongst them the fireballs made no noise, emitting just the faint red streak of the glowing fuse as they flew away. As the barrage continued and nothing happened, no response from the dark, no cries or orders or counter-missiles, the watching crossbowmen began to mutter nervously.
Behind a wall Agilulf listened to the stones whistling down around him. None had so far come within twenty yards of where he stood. He did not understand what was happening. That, he knew now, was the dangerous time. What were those glints of light through the air? Fireflies? He could face steel, but not flame again. The Emperor should have remembered that.
Steffi nudged Shef and indicated a sudden crackle of fire a hundred yards off. The first fuse had reached the fireball-core. In the light of the flames a tree sprang out, looking as if it were leaning over to the blaze. A branch caught, fire beginning to run back from its twigs to the main trunk. There were more sparkles of fire here and there in the dark now, and they were springing up faster than they could be counted. Such wind as there was was blowing up the valley. Anyone between the fire and the Waymen would have to retreat in their direction.
Suddenly a black shape moved, the first time they had seen a sign of life out there. His
To the crackle of flame and the noise of the crickets were added the sharp snap of crossbow releases, the heavier twang of the torsion dart-throwers shooting off their heavy missiles at what was for them point-blank range. Shef could see men falling now, or writhing, but some trick of the air kept him from hearing any human noise above the increasing roar of flame. The men dying and twisting were like a shadow play on the walls of a hut.
Shef tapped Brand sharply on the shoulder, jerked a thumb. Move now. Brand led his sixty men, two ships' crews, sharply and directly down the hill. A squad of crossbows followed immediately, then another body of Vikings, all the contingents told off to follow in set order. It was tempting to angle left, away from the flames. Shef had ordered them not to do it. Head into the flames as near as you can. The ones who should stop you will have moved and been shot or fled. Get downhill as fast as you can before you too are silhouetted against the fire.
The men were pouring down slope now, even the stretcher bearers moving at a jolting run over the uneven ground. It was the thought of water, Shef realized, more than any new obedience. Steffi's men had shot off their missiles, stood uncertainly by their catapults.
“Take them apart and carry them?” Steffi pleaded. “Just two of them?”
Shef shoved him on his way. “Leave the catapults. Carry your fire-gear if you can. Move.”
The twist-shooters were still keeping up good practice, as the flames lit up a wider and wider area. The easy targets had gone, fallen to the crossbows, but there were still men moving. Did they think they were out of range? They were trying to help their own wounded, Shef realized, running to them to drag them out of the path of the spreading fires. Shef stepped to a machine, pointed to a man trying to crawl out of a tangle of scrub already alight. Sure enough, two men ran in to help him, he could see white faces turning towards him. They were not losing many men down there, Shef thought, but they were being hit out of the dark by men they could not see. A slight movement of the trail, another thick twang, one of the rescuers was hurled aside as if by a giant's finger, the other stumbled grotesquely and turned sideways for an instant. The watchers could see the giant dart driven clean through both thighs. The would-be rescuer fell back into the blaze just as it reached the man he had been trying to rescue.
Shef felt a fierce joy. He slapped Cwicca on the back, jerked a thumb to say “Move.” No time to harness up the mules, but the wheeled twist-shooters were easier to handle than Steffi's machines. Without orders Cwicca's gangs seized them by the trails, ran them jolting and bouncing down the hill. With them ran the last squad of crossbows and halberdiers assigned as rearguard. All of them running at full pelt down the slope, Shef in their midst, weapons ready for someone to try to spring the ambush. The ambush that had already been sprung.
A clash of blows in the dark as a few
As he pulled his face up at long last, Shef saw Brand looming over him. “Which way?” he said curtly.
Shef looked for the first time at the aqueduct. The stream itself, built to supply the rich merchants' villas along the Ostia road with purer water than the polluted Tiber, was no more than six feet broad, much of it roofed over with slabs of stone to cut evaporation in the heat. Not all of it, though. He could not take the wheeled machines along it. There was a walkway either side, but barely wide enough for two men, no room again for carts or machines. What Shef wanted above all was to get back to his ships, abandon this failed attack.
Something told him that would not work, the same fighting instinct that had made him keep them shooting down wounded men. This fight would be to a finish now. If he fell back they would pursue him and destroy him. One end of the aqueduct led to Rome, about the other he had no idea. The god had told him—what was it? He would find his peace in Rome. Peace in death, maybe. So be it.
“That way,” he said, pointing left. “Get them moving fast. Cwicca, ditch those machines.”
Cwicca had nursed his machines over a thousand miles of travel. The machines were what had raised him from slavery. He began automatically to argue with his master, as he had done, to the astonishment of King Alfred, so many times before. This time Shef was past the point of tolerance. As the gap-toothed man began to expostulate, Shef, afraid and overstrained, stepped forward and hit him squarely in the mouth.
“Move,” he shouted. “Or I'll have you back in a collar like you were before.” His old comrade spat blood, pulled loose another tooth, gaped at it incredulously. Turned to obey the order.
“All masters are the same in the end,” remarked one of his mates, hacking at the ropes to make the dart- thrower at least temporarily useless. Cwicca did not reply. In the darkness Tolman and the three boys with him hesitated over their bundles of cloth and canes and rope. Light enough for boys to carry, but a burden just the same. Cwicca seized two bundles from them, slung one over each shoulder.
“I'll carry thothe,” he said, lisping badly. Tolman eyed the tears rolling down his face, said nothing.
Hours later the weary column struggled up the aqueduct to the walls of the Eternal City itself. They had run through the night like travelers chased by wolves. Their long thin column had been attacked again and again by men coming in from either side, men who had ridden ahead of them and then swerved in to a line which could not be missed. The crossbows had taken heavy toll of the attackers, but several times the column had been cut in two and there had been fierce work with blades in the dark before it could be reunited. Every time men had been left behind, lost or crippled or unconscious. Their comrades threw the dead into the running water, and as time went on threw in those they were not sure of as well. Few of the wounded were being carried now. In the hot night death by drowning seemed a delight to the sweating and exhausted men who were left. Shef was aware several times of Hund raging and struggling in the darkness as his charges were abandoned or given the warrior's death. He had no time or strength to intervene.
The light was beginning to show in the east as Shef led the rearguard up the final gentle slope to the lodgement that the advance guard had made on the walls of Rome itself, on the very slopes of the Aventine Hill.
