whip. Malchus and Tatullus managed to prise off a couple of the big iron plates from the crest of the tortoise and send them slithering to the ground. Then they followed, rolling down the steep side away from the oncoming Hun horsemen, protected from incoming fire by the tortoise itself. They hit the earth oblivious of bruises and came up again like cats. The Hun commander promptly lashed out with his whip and caught Tatullus round the neck. The centurion simply gripped the rawhide, slashed it through with his sword, unwrapped it from his throat and tossed it back. The Hun warrior gave a strange howl.
Arapovian was at the end of the ridge, crouched down, gripping the edge of the planking and rolling over. He landed on the rump of a Hun driver’s horse. The Hun felt his horse buckle, wondered what had hit him. Then someone grasped his hair from behind and pulled his head back, and he felt the warm gush of blood down his bare chest as his throat gaped open. Arapovian rolled off the horse, ducked under a wild blow from another warrior, and brought his dagger up hard into the Hun horse’s belly. The agonised creature reared up, screaming. Tatullus appeared at the back of the tortoise, then Malchus, too, swords slashing, and all hell broke loose.
Out on the plain, the stone-faced leader himself was coming, with a couple of hundred warriors bristling with lances and swords. The three defenders had about half a minute to finish the job before they were as good as dead. And that was impossible.
‘Crossbow volley at the main body coming in, on my command,’ said Sabinus, his eye steady on the approaching horsemen. ‘And any man who takes out the warlord with the fancy sword gets an extra biscuit for his dinner.’
He waited. Sweat beaded on furrowed brows, dripped down noses. Clenched knuckles whitened. They were almost at the ram. Sabinus stood immobile. Sweat dripped onto oiled bowstocks, gleamed there like dew.
‘Steady your aim,’ said Sabinus. ‘And… fire!’
Eight bolts raked into the close-packed horsemen and each one found a target. Sabinus kept his eyes so closely fixed on the grey-haired warlord that he thought he saw him bare his teeth like a wolf. Then the warlord raised a brazen arm and hazed his men back out of range again. He even seemed momentarily nonplussed. Behind their retreating hooves they left eight of their comrades stone dead in the dust.
Sabinus grunted with satisfaction.
The savages were indeed learning.
Then screaming started inside the tortoise.
Sabinus saw with approval that the three had managed to loosen some of the iron plates, and so gave the order, ‘Fire it up.’ The pedites began rolling small flaming tar barrels over the battlements onto the ridge of the tortoise, trying to hit it where the iron plates had gone. A barrel smashed down onto the ridge and broke open. Spars scattered, and flaming tar spattered down the sides.
It was a start.
Sabinus turned his crossbow unit back to the drivers behind the ram. ‘Take ’em when you can.’
In the melee, two Hun warriors broke cover, then arched back, crying out, their backs stuck with bolts. Their horses reared and panicked.
‘Reload and aim.’
‘Sir,’ nodded his optio.
They had dropped a net over the wall above the ram so that the three comrades could scramble back to safety once they had done their work. If they were still alive. Now a Hun warrior came galloping in between the tortoise and the wall, ducking down low and flat along his pony’s back, and with a circus rider’s skill vaulted from his horse onto the net. He scrambled towards the top, a knife in his teeth.
Sabinus nodded. ‘Take him.’
The fancy rider dropped back, dead.
Across the plain, the formation of riders had gone very wide, and there were a lot more of them. A thousand were coming in now. Open-spaced, galloping, circling, determined not to let their ram fail in its task.
‘Tubernator, call our three back.’
The bugle went to his lips.
‘Sir,’ said the optio, ‘the rope’s still not cut.’
‘Shit.’
Inside the tent-shaped tortoise, which was beginning to fill with smoke, Arapovian was astraddle the beam itself, hacking alternately at a big Hun horseman coming at him from below and at the thick suspension ropes of the ram. The point of the Hun’s lance pierced the Armenian’s thigh and he cried out. He slipped his leg back and took cover behind the ram, hanging by one arm, still hacking wildly at the rope. The thing was fraying slightly but no more. In the distance, the faltering note of a bugle, and the thundering of hooves. A lot of hooves.
‘Fire the fucking thing!’ bellowed Sabinus at his pedites in frustration. He was going to lose three good men for nothing. Three very good men. Those thousand horsemen would be here in seconds. Already the first, wild arrows were clattering against the walls. Sabinus ran from the guardroom to the battlements. One of his men offered him his shield but he brushed it aside. Another arrow clattered nearby. Absent-mindedly he picked it up and snapped it across a burly thigh. ‘Fire it now!
‘Pedites, get more tar barrels up here. I don’t give a fuck if there’s arrows, man! Of course there’s arrows, we’re in the middle of a fucking siege. Now get ’em up here! Crossbow squadron, to me.’ He ducked down, the low battlements barely sufficient to shield his bulk.
The eight men crouched likewise.
‘I want everything that moves in and around that tortoise, except our three men, stretched out in the dirt. You hear me?’
Bows were cranked. They stood, aimed, fired, and crouched again in one clean, swift movement.
‘Now you, pedites! Get those tar barrels fired up and over the side.’
The arrows thickened to an iron rain. One of his crossbowmen lost a cheek. Another started to help him down the steps.
‘He hasn’t lost his eyes, and you’re needed here on the wall, soldier! Let go of his hand!’ He said to the wounded man, more gently, ‘Good work, soldier. Now get to the hospital and have that stitched. The whores will go crazy for the scar.’
The deserted south-west tower shivered again.
‘Load up.’
He was like a rock, this legionary legate who swore like a common trooper. Nothing seemed to make him afraid. The men cranked back their bows.
A good thing they thought him a rock. Sabinus knew well enough he was as scared as any of them. But a better actor. That’s why he kept his hands gripped into fists: to stop them shaking. He grinned and punched a man on the shoulder. ‘Kill ’em all.’
He stood up again, hitching back the straps of his bronze cuirass on his bullish shoulders, impervious to arrows.
‘Loose the rest of the tar barrels! There’s got to be more than that!’
The pedites sweated blood. Fire-arrows ignited more tar. The off-side of the shell was burning steadily.
He turned and watched the wild long-haired rider down below, screaming barbaric verses.
‘I want him dead. That one, the poet.’ He hawked and spat. ‘No fucking poet besieges my fortress.’
Again in a swift and perfect rank they stood, stepped forwards, clocked their target through the lethal oncoming arrow shower, fired, and dropped back. None of them was hit.
Sabinus squinnied through the embrasure. ‘Biscuits all round,’ he grunted.
Three bolts missed. One hit the Hun’s horse. Three hit the warrior in the thigh, one in the side, one in his shoulder. He and his horse screamed in unison, a hellish duet, horse rearing, forelegs paddling in the air. The warrior wrenched it savagely down, blood running in a thin trickle from the bolt-tail in its muscular haunch. He pulled round and shouted, flailing his whip left-handed, his right arm across his chest, hand clamped over his shoulder, fingers reddening. But the bolt had already broken in and leaked blood into his lungs, and his voice was wild and weak and desperate.
‘Kill them! Draw back the ram! Astur will utterly destroy all the earth in the day of his fierce anger! Work, slaves!’
But he was mad. There were no slaves left to obey him.
‘Second volley,’ said Sabinus. ‘Take him this time.’
