It was unjust. The gods were unjust. They had fought all day and half the night like lions, and by the next dawn they would all lie dead. Yet how should you complain to the gods? You might as well try to reason with Etna. The world was as it was.
Tatullus glanced at him. And for some reason, at that moment, unutterably weary and foredefeated as they were, the two men smiled. As if to say, in concord with each other, Well, all men must die. We did our best – and our best was good.
The Armenian appeared. He did not wait for permission to speak. ‘I said you would not defeat them in open country.’
Tatullus turned a menacing eye on him. ‘He’s “sir” to you, soldier.’
Arapovian was apparently unaware of the glowering centurion’s presence. And he addressed no man as ‘sir’.
‘You know your only chance now: to fight them hand-to-hand and damage them. To hold them, to bloody them, to buy time until reinforcements come.’ He adjusted his sword-belt. ‘Of course, if they wish to overrun you here no matter what the cost, and no reinforcements come to your aid, we shall all die anyway.’
Another seismic onager strike.
‘A Roman legionary legate does not customarily take counsel from a common soldier,’ said Sabinus, aware even as he said it that Arapovian was no common soldier.
The Armenian continued, unabashed, ‘My ancestors fought the Huns before. Hepthalite Huns. On the high plains of Ararat, where the Euphrates rises from snowmelt off the mountains, flowing down to water the broad cornlands of Erzinjan and Erzerum, and the sweet orchards of-’
‘Forgive the interruption,’ said Sabinus, ‘but now is really not the time for poetry.’
Arapovian heard him with dignity. ‘My grandfather died fighting the Huns. They will always gallop faster than you, shoot further than you. You need to draw them in, separate them from their horses, as you did with the line of pikemen. That hurt them.’
‘Thank you for your sage military advice, my lord,’ growled the legate, one hand holding his side, one fist clenched on the wall. ‘And how do you suggest we do that, in your mysterious eastern wisdom? Send them a fucking dinner invitation?’
Another massive shock. The sound of collapsing masonry.
Arapovian inclined his head in that calamitous direction. ‘Let them into the fort. Stop reinforcing the wall and the tower, and let them fall. Meet them in the rubble, hand-to-hand, where their arrows and horsemanship are useless. That fellow Caestus, the boor, he will fight well enough face to face with them. Now he is wasted. Soon he will be shot.’
Sabinus reflected a moment. Then, ‘Get back below, soldier.’
He reflected some more. It insulted his pride to hear advice from a common soldier, Armenian naxarar of ancient lineage or no. It insulted his pride even more to put that advice into action. But…
The rumble of galloping hooves, a sudden shower of arrows out of the gathering gloom. Another cry from the battlements. Another fall.
The tower would collapse soon enough, anyway. They could ready themselves for it.
Along the wall, one young soldier had lost it. The boy Julianus, the one he’d tried to nerve with fine talk. But what could have prepared him for this? The boy was crawling around on his hands and knees, sobbing, howling like a dog. Another soldier dragged him off down below. He would not be back this time.
Sabinus held his breath a moment, slugged back a last mouthful of wine to kill the pain. Then he gave his runner the order.
‘Stop bagging up the south-west tower! Evacuate! Let it fall.’
The man hesitated. ‘Sir?’
He did not repeat himself. The soldier went.
Perhaps the Armenian was right. Over the chaos of rubble where the tower lay in ruins, they’d make their stand. The barbarian horsemen would find that a harder line to break. The Spartans used to boast that their walls were made of men, not stones.
It was as Sabinus had reckoned. The Hun artillerymen – the very phrase seemed an idiotic contradiction in terms for these know-nothing horse-warriors, but whoever they were, Huns or Vandals or other unknown easterners, they continued their steady onslaught into the night.
Sabinus ranged his last men with their pikes, Tatullus with his billhook, Knuckles with his club, facing the battered south-west tower and wall. It was dark. Behind them he had his auxiliaries light a row of big braziers.
Another massive hit. The walls trembled and stilled. Then as if in a dream, very slowly, reluctantly, the tower began to subside into itself, the neighbouring walls began to fold and fall. Sabinus hazed his men back. But the tower was so damaged below that it simply collapsed in on itself with a muffled subterranean music. It seemed to take for ever for the stones to reach the earth, or pile up one another at broken angles. The noise of collapse ebbed, and from far away they could hear rising cheers and ululations. The dust gradually diminished and they saw what faced them. A rupture in the walls about fifty feet wide, blocked by a mound of stones, rubble and projecting wooden beams, about half the height of the old walls: fifteen, twenty feet.
‘To the top!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Watch for incoming fire!’
The last of the legion climbed arduously towards the top of the rubble ridge and peered over.
An army of horsemen was galloping towards them. The Romans were seen, silhouetted against the light of the braziers, and the horsemen loosed their arrows. The defenders ducked down and the arrows clattered uselessly over them.
‘Come on, you pigeon-livered savages!’ roared Knuckles, the veins like cords in his neck. He smacked his club into his hand. ‘Come and get cosy!’
The savages barely reined in as they approached, seemingly intent on galloping up the rubble mound and straight on into the fort. But no one’s horsemanship was that good. One young hothead tried it. Arapovian stepped from the shadows and shot him.
‘Lose your bow, soldier!’ bellowed Tatullus angrily. ‘Draw your sword! This one’s hand-to-hand!’
For once, Arapovian obeyed.
The dead Hun’s horse twisted and fell, a foreleg caught between two broken stones, and rolled back screaming. Huns milled again at the foot of the mound, bewildered.
‘Yeah, horse-fuckers!’ roared Knuckles. ‘You’ll have to leave your girlfriends behind this time!’
But not yet. The Huns wheeled away again into the night, accustomed only to their warrior arts of archery and horsemanship. They loosed more volleys of arrows in retreat. The arrows came over the barricade and clattered uselessly into the yard beyond. They did the same again and again, feeling not a single arrow in returning fire. But their attack was useless. They struck nothing. Even the Huns couldn’t keep up this wastage.
‘They’ve got to engage soon,’ murmured Arapovian. ‘It’s a matter of pride.’
One last try. A fast gallop before them, a column of horse archers firing directly into the defensive line.
‘Heads!’
Step back, duck, shields up. The arrows thumped into the big oval shields or slid over the top, again to no avail. Not a Roman was hit. They galloped away.
Tired but jubilant legionaries set their shields down in the rubble again, lopped off the jutting arrow-shafts. Took deep breaths, wiped away the sweat.
‘We’re still here, you yellow-bellied horse-fuckers!’
Now the Hun generals understood. It would have to be hand-to-hand to finish this. Their warriors rode near in the darkness, slipped from their mounts, hooked their bows onto their saddlepoints, drew their swords, and came scrambling up the rubble.
The defenders took to the top of the ridge.
‘OK, boys!’ roared Sabinus. ‘Face to face at last! No quarter!’
The Huns came up in a mass surge, without discipline now, desperate to finish it, to squeeze into the fort and have the victory – they, too, had taken plenty of casualties today. But a thousand, two thousand, were trying to squeeze through a gap held by fifty men, and their greater numbers told against them. They barely left each other room to swing their swords. And now the burning amber light of the big braziers behind the defenders showed itself of use. The defenders fought dark and silhouetted, but the attackers had to face into it. Their eyes dazzled, coppery skin shiny with sweat, arms and shoulders rippling with muscles and tattoos and elaborate hennaed runes of
