dead. The emperor and his bishops had declared it so, and the Altar of Victory no longer stood in the Senate House. From now on, men must fight on their own, with only a symbolic fish or a wooden cross for succour.
There were six thousand men under arms at Ratiaria. Another thirty or forty thousand at Marcianopolis: the Eastern Field Army in all its glory. But the horizon all around was empty and still.
The summer sun burned down. In the blue sky overhead, swifts and martins wheeled and hawked through the mild air as if this was a day like any other. From the river the men on the walls could hear the distant cry of a heron. Here they died, while life went dumbly on.
The Romans drank water with a dash of vinegary wine, gnawed barley-flour biscuits and salt-pork, rested in the shade of the towers or barrack blocks. Tatullus paced around tirelessly, inspecting weapons and wounds, giving quiet orders. He made sure his men’s shields were properly stowed with a full complement of mattiobarbuli, lead- weighted darts which were the perfect weapon for defending heights against attackers below. He paused to watch one young slinger carefully carving insults onto his slingballs, one by one, sitting cross-legged, tongue out between his teeth, concentrating like the finest goldsmith on his craft.
Tatullus peered over his shoulder. ‘ Hoc ede, equifutuor,’ read the lyrical inscription. ‘ Eat this, horse- fucker.’
‘Very witty, soldier,’ growled the centurion. The slinger jumped to his feet and saluted. ‘And if you come out of this in one piece, I’m sure you could get a nice job as a stonemason inscribing fancy headstones with lies for rich dead people. But until then, do some useful fucking work!’
‘Sir!’
The next soldier to arouse his centurion’s wrath owned a shield that was all wrong. Tatullus plucked it out of the man’s hand and twirled it round to stare at the back.
‘A Roman shield has a sturdy central handgrip behind the boss,’ he said. ‘So what’s this? An armstrap, with a handgrip near the edge. What use is that, shit-for-brains?’
The soldier stared dumbly.
‘Is your shield offensive or defensive?’
‘Defensive, sir.’
‘Balls! It’s both. Take incoming arrow-fire, sure, and then close in and knock your man off the battlements with a good blow from the boss. But what are you going to do to a man with a feeble side-swipe? Tickle him? Strip that armstrap off right now, soldier. Refix the handgrip alone, right behind the boss. Decurion! See to it that none of the other men have shields with armstraps. They’re for pansies. You get tired holding it, you rest the rim on the ground and squat. Look to it.’
He reported back to Sabinus, showing a sympathy for his men he’d never dream of showing to their faces.
‘They’re dog-tired. Only mortal. No man can fight for ever. They’ve fought for five, six hours already now, after a night without sleep.’
Sabinus knew what he was suggesting, his iron-hearted centurion: rest for half, duty for half. But the walls could not be manned with just two hundred men. Even four hundred was ludicrously inadequate. And in truth, his primus pilus knew it as well as he. All four hundred must rise to fight again. The legate’s anger and weariness made him brutal.
‘They can kip on Charon’s ferry.’
Some of them were almost asleep with exhaustion, when there came a distant thunk and, two or three seconds later, another terrific shudder from the south-west tower. Bang on target yet again.
‘To your stations, on the double!’
Dry, sleepless, dust-filled eyes once more flared wide. Men once more dragged grimy, exhausted limbs up stone steps and along battlemented walls to their places of thankless duty.
9
This time, the Hun warlord was in cold control. He held his numberless horsemen back out of range and did not use them. For half an hour or more, there was merely the screech and ratchet of the gigantic torsion springs, the juddering release of beam against padded crossbeam, and the south-west tower and its surrounding walls, weakened if not brought down by the ram, continued their slow-motion fall.
Thus began the long afternoon of attrition.
The VII Legion had triumphed over the siege-towers and the ram, yes. Helped by the fact that the Huns had started wrong, attacking piecemeal instead of along a single, concerted front. Had they brought up the siege-towers and ram together, against different walls, while giving the machines full, coordinated covering fire from horseback, Viminacium might have already fallen, and the legionaries would all be on Charon’s ferry across the Styx by now. But over the onagers the VIIth could not triumph. They were hopelessly out of range. Even the Romans’ best ballistas and sling-machines were nothing like the size and power of the besiegers’.
The tension of waiting could drive a man mad.
‘Pennants!’ a young voice screamed. ‘I see pennants! Windsocks and dragon banners!’
It was a signifer, the young boy Sabinus had tried to steady in the legionary chapel. He sat astride the battlements like a sunstruck fool, gesticulating wildly. ‘I think it might be the Ioviani Seniores. Or the Cornuti. Look, to the east! From Ratiaria!’
The boy had imagination, certainly.
Tatullus strode over, dragged him back from the battlements, looked into his eyes and saw the frantic, burning light in them. The boy continued to gibber, so he cuffed him senseless and ordered him lugged down to the hospital.
The centurion scanned the eastern horizon.
There were no pennants.
Whumpff. Another hundredweight ball hit the south-west tower. Plumes of dust rose high into the still summer air.
And then out of the west, the tide of horse-warriors came surging in.
Knuckles came slouching by, a stubby little crossbow clutched in his huge paw.
‘You look like a bear trying to peel a grape,’ said Sabinus.
Knuckles stopped and wiped his brow. ‘If only I could get at ’em with me club, sir, I could do a power of good for Rome and the Lord Jesus Christ, sir.’
‘You’ll have your chance for a bit of face-to-face yet, soldier. Don’t doubt it.’
There came a blizzard of arrows arcing in high.
‘Take cover!’
‘You need to get off the wall, sir, under the canopy.’
Sabinus moved. Around him, cries of stricken men. The clatter of arrows, sometimes the soft thock as they hit flesh. Outlandish screams. They couldn’t afford to lose any. But they were. The walls had to be manned.
They couldn’t just wait and be picked off by those lethal arrow-storms. Somehow they would have to attack.
He gave the order to pull the men back off the east wall, manning only the south and west. The attack remained concentrated there, and Sabinus reckoned it would stay that way.
They must counter-attack soon. They must do something.
Down in the yard, the heavy cavalry stirred.
From the artillery units still working on the southern gate-towers, ballista bolts cut through Hunnish warriors and their horses alike. A perpendicular hit could go through three men in a line, it was said. Sabinus called up every last crossbow unit to the battlements. Densely packed volleys proved murderous to the ranks of the unarmoured horse-warriors, however loosely spaced and fast. They died by the dozen. Eventually they pulled back out range again.
‘They’re not invincible,’ said Tatullus quietly.
