protection, which did nothing to protect them from those severe, pragmatical Roman pikes. Up close, the legionaries saw the barbarous magnificence of their enemies at last, magnified in the flaming darkness. Like warriors out of Homer or an even deeper past: the deep, unwritten Scythian past. The untamed warriors looked almost beautiful to them as they cut them down.
Knuckles clapped his bronze-studded forearms together round a warrior’s shaven head and split it open like a raw egg. He turned and kicked a heavy boot into another Hun. The Hun staggered and swiped at him with his dagger. Knuckles twisted, more agile than he looked. The desperate struggle was too tight-packed for him to swing his club, so he drove it into the Hun’s face like a ram. The big easterner fell back and knocked his comrade behind him flying. Arapovian leapt forward and with two sharp thrusts skewered them both where they lay stunned amid the tumbled masonry, then fell back into line.
Huns howled with fury, came on relentlessly. Tatullus worked like Knuckles, thusting his billhook in long, low stabs. Arapovian’s swordsmanship was as good as his bowmanship. Another wiry little Hun nearly had him with a swipe of his yatagan but Arapovian squatted down just in time and drove his sword into the man’s naked belly. He immediately stood again, kicked the corpse off the end of his blade, and drew back ready for the next one, who came on at once.
The Hun warriors hated this fight. Too fetid and enclosed, without space to manoeuvre, with no room for the sudden spurting gallop, the extravagant caracole, the graceful arc of lethal, streamlined arrow. This was furious and filthy stuff, bloody pummelling in the shadows of ruined and alien walls, the clean air of the steppes a thousand miles away. Their horses milled behind them, uncertain. If their father Astur should cry to them out of the night sky, they would not hear him.
Their loss of confidence showed in their expressions, their movements, and the defenders punished it without pity. Knuckles’ mastery of the blunt arts of bludgeon and punch, those straps of bull’s-hide wound round his ape-like forearms, took a terrible toll. So, too, did his quick, surprising agility, like a big cat, the way a lion can be nimble for brief bursts when hunting. He gave himself a moment of space, his huge club slewed sideways, men’s brains shot from their ruptured skulls as if spat out, grey roe slithering down their comrades’ shoulders. Stumbling in the blood and slime, the Huns were filled with enfeebling disgust, panic, even claustrophobia. Where now was the glorious Parthian flight upon the open plains, wind in your hair?
Tatullus killed two attackers with two hard thrusts, only moments apart. Knuckles cracked open another skull. A smaller Hun tried to dive in sideways and thrust his yatagan into his flank, but again Knuckles swivelled, dodged the thrust, swept his arm back and with a mighty swashing blow caught the warrior across the side of his head. The dull bronze studs thunked, the fellow saw red and dropped senseless. Knuckles moved his foot and broke his neck.
The steep and jagged outward slope of the rubble ridge was slippery with blood, and worse. Sabinus moved carefully along behind and below his men, shouting words of encouragement. Not one of the line was down yet. My God, it’s like old times, thought Sabinus: Roman soldiers doing what they do best, standing shoulder to shoulder, pitiless, immoveable, the steel mincing-machine. Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the ridge, the Hun bodies were piling up like swine in an abattoir.
Arapovian’s plan had been a good one; or the best they could come up with as things stood. Stab, thrust, slash. The defenders were beyond exhaustion, but drawing some infernal gallows energy from the terrible attrition suffered by their bewildered enemy. The Huns could not make headway, and their fury made them foolish. Wave after wave came up against the line of pikes ranged against them, cold as moonlight. And wave after wave fell back again, ruptured or slain. Even for these adamantine steppe warriors, this night was turning into nightmare.
Sabinus saw Arapovian pause and look away.
The Armenian turned back to the line, defended himself against another attack, lopped off an arm, planted his foot in the man’s chest and kicked him back down the slope. Turned his head and listened again.
Sabinus’ heart leaped. The Armenian’s sharp ears had heard… trumpets! The legate turned to listen to that sweet sound. A pause. And then…
He closed his eyes. It was not trumpets. It was a massive weight hitting the south gates.
One last time he struggled up the steps to the battlements.
They had brought one of the onagers up. It was fifty yards off, loosing boulders into the oaken south gates on a low, flat, brutal trajectory.
He went down again, tightening his bronze cuirass about his big belly as tight as he could bear. Like dying in harness. He went steadily over to the south gates. Whumpff. The gates rocked back, the big crossbeams rattled in their braces, splinters flew. The Armenian’s idea had been a good one, for a desperate last stand. But it, too, had failed.
But they, the VIIth Legion, how well they had failed! Could any legion have failed as gloriously as they had? Oh that one or two should survive, to tell their story to posterity. Such a story would live for generations. A night and a day they had stood firm against a whole army. And still they fought. That wasn’t bad. That must count as a kind of heroes’ death.
The gates beside him reeled again under impact, and unmanly tears came to his eyes as he watched the last of his men fighting and dying there upon the dark, discoloured rubble of the ruptured tower. They had still not heard the onager. Part-timers, farmers, married with wives and children. He knew what they were fighting for, with ferocity born of desperation. Not for Rome, either old or new, nor for the emperor on his gilded throne. They were fighting for the wives and children left on their farmsteads and smallholdings, or trembling down in the dungeons. The gates beside him splintered further. God have mercy on those trapped wretches down below. Only two fates possible for them now, the better of which was a life in chains amid barbarian tents.
For him, there would be no Thracian vineyard, nor sharp-tongued, ardent-hearted Domitilla. Three months to go. The luck of Cassandra. For these barbarians, who had destroyed his life and his peaceful old age, he let his hatred well up. Felt its coursing power burn in his veins. Hefted his sword, a short, old-style gladius. The fury and the mire of human veins. The distant fury of battle. But coming close now, in this last act, last scene of his battered old life. His own death was already in the past, written in the old book of the gods. He tightened his belt another notch around his bleeding belly. It wasn’t true that you felt no fear. Even old soldiers felt fear. But all men must die. The gates were nearly done. He looked up one last time. Make it glorious, my brave legionaries. Make it cost them dear.
He leaned down painfully to take the shield from one of his own dead, gently unloosing the man’s stiffened fingers from the wooden grip. Stood again. When those gates finally gave way, the Huns would find one still in their path.
The attack in the corner had slowed briefly, leaving his men standing down, stoop-shouldered with exhaustion. Ungainly stick figures lit from below by the orange brazier light. Heroes all. Beyond, the enemy had pulled back yet again, heavily bloodied, sullen, furious. And now in the stillness, the last legionaries heard what Arapovian had heard. The sound of the accursed onager hurling its rocks, and the south gates going. Soon, very soon now, they would be surrounded. Attacked from before and behind, the fort overrun through the south gate, however hard they fought here. They looked at each other, barely able to raise their heads on their shoulders. Their eyes shone. They nodded. Heroes all.
They looked back to their commander below by the wall. He could not climb up to them any more. They knew it. He leaned close to the south wall, shield on his shoulder, short-sword drawn, face plastered with cold sweat, looking up at them.
Only one of his men still had the spirit to speak. ‘It has been an honour serving with you, sir!’
Sabinus raised his hand to him. To all of them. A salute to equals. The rest of the men saluted him in reply. Some of them almost smiled.
And then the gates flew in.
11
The last of the defenders instantly lost all formation, and broke and ran. Within moments the neat grid-
