away from the walls. Then I and Julia, our hands wrapped in cloth, hoisted the black pot off the hearth fire, staggered with it to the window, and poured. It was clumsy, a gallon or two of good food splashing inside our chamber, but most of the hot liquid gushed outward as planned and hissed downward in a plume of steam to strike the Huns entangled in the wreckage. Now there were screams as well as curses.
The Huns broke, running, and the aim of their companions faltered as the barbarians came streaming back. Now we Romans filled the windows to shoot or throw, and two enemies were hit in the back and fell, skidding, as they tried to flee. Two more lay insensible or dead in the roof wreckage, and a few more were limping or staggering.
The odds were beginning to even.
We cheered until smoke began ominously rising up the face of the tower. I risked ducking out the window to look, jerking back just in time as an arrow bounced by my ear.
“A fire has started in the wreckage and it’s against the door,” I reported. “We need water to put it out.”
“No water!” Silas countermanded. “We barely have enough for a day, let alone a siege.”
“But if the door burns—”
“We pray it doesn’t, or kill them on the stairs. We need to be able to wait for help.”
“What help?”
“Your little friend’s signal fire. Let’s pray that your Aetius, or God, is watching.”
The Huns were beginning to shout and howl in excitement at the sight of the flames burning outside the tower door. One suddenly darted across the courtyard with an arm-ful of hay and wood and hurled it into the makeshift bonfire, then dashed back before any Roman could successfully hit him. A second pulled the same trick, and then a third.
The fourth who tried it was killed, but by that time the fire was roaring. Smoke made it hard to see from the tower windows. Silas and I ran to the ground level to see the effect.
The cows penned inside the tower were lowing in panic, their eyes rolling as they pulled on their stable bridles.
Smoke was filtering through every joint in the door and drifting upward, and I could hear the Roman soldiers above us beginning to cough. We could feel the heat.
There was a howl above. Another Roman had been hit with an arrow.
“Let me go!” cried Eudoxius from the post where he was tied. “It’s me they want! If you give me to them, I’ll tell them to spare your wretched lives!”
“Don’t listen to him!” I shouted to no one in particular.
“When they rush us we’ll use the cattle,” Silas muttered to me. “Julius and Lucius will be waiting with crossbows.
We have to kill enough to make them tire of this game.”
“Aim for their leader if you can,” I told the crossbowmen.
“He’s the one who won’t give up.”
The Huns were chanting now, singing a death song for us. A third of each side had been killed or wounded.
Skilla let the fire eat at the door for a full hour while he busied his warriors with dislodging a heavy beam from the kitchen. The Huns used cleavers to sharpen a blunt point.
Holes were drilled and handles hammered into each side, giving the nomads an air of industry I’d never seen before.
This would be their battering ram. They were as energetic at war as they were indifferent to farming.
Finally the fire began to die. The door was still standing, but it was a sagging, blackened hulk. A new flock of arrows soared skyward, providing cover, and the Huns charged under its shelter, holding the ram. In a rush they were across the courtyard and the beam hit the door with a crash. It burst inward.
“Yes!” Skilla cried. The Huns hurled the beam in with it and drew swords.
Yet suddenly the doorway filled with horn and hoof. We were beating the flanks of our cows, and cattle crashed into the grouping of surging Huns like Carthaginian elephants, knocking them askew. The Huns tried to drive them back the other way, but the momentum was ours. Horns twisted, gor-ing, and hooves trampled any Hun who fell. In the moment of confusion more stones and spears rained down, and two more Huns fell in the maw of wreckage. Finally the attackers had the sense to let the cows burst outward, but all their speed had been lost. When the surviving attackers crowded through the doorway once again, determined to end things once and for all, we were ready.
Two crossbow bolts sang and two more Huns fell, tripping those pushing behind. I cursed that Skilla wasn’t at the forefront. All the advantages the horse warriors had in normal battle had been lost in this close-quarter contest, and I knew the casualties were maddening to the enemy. If we lost, there would be no mercy.
Silas’s soldiers were furiously cranking to recock their crossbows, backing up the stairs as they did so. But the Huns with bows pulled and shot.
Lucius and Julius came tumbling down the stairs.
Another charge upward and now our iron soup pot was hurled down at the Huns, knocking them backward. Spears stabbed out, one striking home and another grabbed and jerked away. The fighting on the stairs was desperate; and Skilla could see me among the Romans blocking the way, chopping with a sword in grim determination. I saw it in his eyes.
Suddenly someone
Eudoxius!
“How did he get loose?” I shouted in outrage.
“A fool soldier cut the man free, thinking he could parley,” Julia answered from behind me, passing javelins we could throw. “The Greek stabbed his benefactor through the throat and leaped out the window.”
“Burn the base beams and the tower will fall!” Eudoxius advised.
“Another crossbow!” Silas demanded, clubbing a Hun backward with a shield. He was bleeding from wounds, and no one answered.
Step by step, grunting as they pushed us upward, the Huns climbed. There were too few of us left. I hurled down the bench we’d used for the soup and they knocked it aside with a snarl. We gave them the first floor and tried to use furniture to block the entry to the second. Arrows thudded into it.
“Burn them, burn them!” Eudoxius was screaming.
And then far above I heard the dwarf’s high, piping voice. “Cavalry! Cavalry!”
There was a distant, distinct call of a Roman lituus; and the Huns milling below us looked at one another in consternation. Reinforcements? Our survivors, recognizing the sound, began to cheer.
Skilla was using a small trestle table to shield himself from whatever we hurled at him. Now I saw him hesitate in an agony of indecision. His enemy and Attila’s sword were so close! Yet if the Huns were penned inside this fort by a fresh force of Roman cavalry, all would be lost.
One last attack!
“Tatos! What’s happening!” he called anxiously.
“Romans are coming! Many of them, on horses!”
“We still have time to kill them!” Skilla lifted the table.
I took a crossbow and shot. The bolt punched through its surface, narrowly missing his nose, and his head jerked backward.
With his face turned, he saw that his men were melting.
“We have to flee!”
“The sword! The sword!” Eudoxius was pleading.
Skilla still hesitated.
I was cranking desperately.
Finally he leaped downward as I fired again, the bolt missing him by inches. Then he was running out of the shattered doorway, hurtling the bloody mess. The badly wounded Huns were left to Roman justice while the rest ran for their ponies that had been picketed outside the wall.
Skilla jumped from the parapet and landed neatly on his horse’s back, slashing to cut its tether. Even as we hooted in triumph, the Huns were getting away.
