this much battle, this much loss – let us not die now. Let rescue come soon. Let justice be done.
A loose Roman horse was ambling back from the scene of the cavalry’s carnage, nodding its big head sleepily, as if returning from no more than a day in the haymeadows. As it passed a tangle of slain Hun warriors lying close to the fort, one of the dead rose up from among them, black with old blood, seized hold of the horse’s reins and saddle, and hauled himself up onto the peaceable beast. Together they rode on serenely towards the south gate.
It was Malchus! The man was indestructible. Multiply wounded, ridden down by a horde of a thousand, taking refuge out there among the middens of the slain. Through the mask of black blood gleamed the white teeth of his smile.
Behind him rolled a dust-cloud of numberless horsemen.
‘Every other unit off the walls and to the south gate!’ bellowed Sabinus.
Men scrambled, some nearly laughing with tiredness.
The legate clutched his side. He sent one of the few pedites still standing down to Tatullus.
The centurion understood. For their own sake, Malchus must be saved. Such small miracles were everything now; now everything else was lost.
‘Take your pikes! Holding pattern at the gate – and I mean hold them!’
Tatullus himself had taken up his beloved billhook, a fearsome weapon which combined a broad curved pike- blade and a long, thin side-spike. He would never ask his men to do what he would not. He stood out before the gate unshielded. An experimental arrow flew close by. He appeared not to notice it, settling his close-fitting helmet more firmly on his head, his deep-set eyes looking out unblinking and unafraid.
Malchus was still a hundred yards off, trotting calmly, though a little unsteady in the saddle. And then the thundering hooves.
‘I want him in! Do not close the gate.’
The exhausted and the walking wounded men formed a semi-circular pike line about the south gate, thick ashwood pike-butts jammed in the hard ground, blades ranged outwards at chest level. On their left arms, propped forward, their big oval infantry shields. No horse would charge a line of standing pikes. Only mortal men indulged in the heroics of suicide.
The black and bloody chimera that was Malchus brushed between two parted pikes, saying never a word. But he was indeed grinning. He vanished into the courtyard and the pikes closed up. They managed to take a couple of steps backwards for the safety of the gate. Then the Huns were on them.
Curved sabres flashed in the air. One or two horsemen, vainglorious and young, tried to hurl themselves from their saddles over the line of pikes, knives clutched in their fists, only to be battered down by embossed shields, or impaled in the air as they leaped. A pike sank down to the earth with the dead weight, and another horseman rode in close and lashed out with his bullhide whip, pulling the pikeman after him. The wretched man fell forwards, stumbling over his own shield, and a third Hun lopped his head off.
‘Pull back in formation! Gatekeepers, stand ready.’
It was desperate.
Other Huns were dismounting, comprehending quickly that horses were an encumbrance now, and instead running at the line of lowered pikes, aiming to slip between them and knife the defenders. The shields tilted further forward, the only gap between them for the pikestaffs. A billhook slashed sideways. It was Tatullus, standing at the very front of his men, as implacable as a bronze statue. A Hun warrior’s stomach opened and he sprawled in his own guts. Two of his comrades leaped back, hissing, one of them only just in time to avoid another lethal side- swipe from that billhook.
In the very shadow of the gate-tower, a big fellow swung a club. It was Knuckles. The club was already dove-grey with spilled brains.
‘Hold them!’ yelled Tatullus again, stepping slowly backwards, the circle of pikemen shrinking behind him. He prayed there were crossbowmen left on the wall above. They were finished without a good volley.
Suddenly the Huns fell back again and in another instant, from behind them, arrows came arcing down on the isolated pikemen in short, high trajectories. Shields were hauled up but often too late, the arrows whistling down cruelly on exposed heads and sagging shoulders. Angry shouts, screams, men clutching and staggering and falling back, losing formation.
Yet even as those still standing stepped backwards over their fallen comrades, they lowered their pikes again and locked shields, and took another stand, now in the very arch of the gateway. Their discipline was magnificent. A Hun horseman who had blindfolded his horse rode at them screaming in fury and crashed into the immoveable shield-wall. Pikes finished him.
More Huns milled frustratedly, dismounting and remounting aimlessly, seeing the gates standing open just before them, some even screaming insults at each other as if unable to believe that, after all the day’s punishment, this handful of dusty, dogged men were still able to hold them back, thousands of them. Truly, these Romans were no women.
Sabinus stood unsteadily on the south wall above, marshalling what remaining crossbowmen he could. So much for their limitless supplies. The store of crossbow bolts was at last running low. They had never reckoned on an assault of this magnitude. In the distance he could hear a harsh, grating, goading voice above the melee, and guessed that it was the implacable Hun warlord ordering his men on, telling them to finish it. Sabinus grunted. Let ’em try.
He raised his hand. His last crossbowmen stepped up to the battlements. His hand dropped, and a last, terrific volley of iron-tipped bolts sliced mercilessly into the front rank of the milling and frustrated Huns. Instantly, Tatullus turned and drove his men back inside the fort, and the gates were slammed together. Even as the gatekeepers set the first oak crossbar in the huge holding-braces, a great weight slammed into the other side. The soldiers dropped their pikes and shields in the chaos and threw themselves against the gate.
‘Get the second bar in now!’ ordered Tatullus. Not loudly, but they heard him.
From the wall came a second Roman volley. The gate was now almost blocked by the heaps of the Hun dead. Yet another slamming assault on the other side, though, until the second, higher crossbar was in, and then the gate settled together, rock solid. The Huns broke against it like waves at the foot of a cliff.
Up on the walls the crossbowmen cranked their bows for one last volley, set the bolts in the grooves, held the stocks to their eyes and took aim into the clouds of dust below. But as the dust slowly settled they saw that the enemy had gone.
Arm muscles shaking and burning, they lowered their weapons and bowed their heads. Sweat ran down their filthy faces. Not one had the strength to wipe it away.
Sabinus turned from them so as to control his voice. ‘Well done, men,’ he said quietly.
But they could not go on.
He ordered a head-count.
Tatullus came up the stairs and saluted. He glanced briefly at Sabinus’ wadded side, then looked him straight in the eye. A momentary pause.
‘Sir.’
Sabinus nodded. ‘Centurion.’
‘Fit: twenty-four. Wounded: as many as two hundred. Walking wounded: perhaps fifty.’
And slain? Sabinus could do the sums. Half the legion. More.
‘How many auxiliaries still with us?’
Tatullus looked out over the fort. The auxiliaries were busy helping the limping wounded, hauling the dead, taking round water, bringing up the last of any missiles they could find. He looked back. ‘All of them, sir. None has abandoned us. Not one.’
At those words, it seemed to Sabinus that even his centurion’s hard eyes shone bright with emotion.
Wiping his bespattered club clean beside a water-butt, Knuckles came upon the cavalry captain, Malchus.
He had refused medical aid, and was sewing, swabbing and bandaging himself from a little wooden box by his side. Knuckles watched in fascination. Malchus smeared a whitish paste over his stitched wounds. Knuckles could smell it was garlic, and maybe oxide of zinc. The captain threw back his head and closed his eyes and clenched his teeth a while. Must have stung a bit. Then he bandaged his shallower cuts. There were a lot of them: on his arms, his legs, a nasty one on his thigh, and a nastier one still across his chest. One of his ears didn’t look much like an
