“Is that a ramp there?”
I pointed to the spot I was looking, nottrusting my eyes. It was Masala who confirmed that it looked verymuch like there was a ramp leading up to the rampart. I closed myeyes, willing myself not to show my disappointment and frustrationin front of the others. Aside from the gates, the front wall lookedlike the southern wall we had just examined in every respect. UntilLucullus pointed something out.
“Is that a crack?”
Lucullus, with his young eyes, had spottedthe fatal flaw in the fortress, for there was indeed a crack in thewestern wall. Starting just to the side of the right hand gate,then radiating upward almost to the parapet was a dark streak,zigzagging around the odd-sized rocks making up the front wall.
“That mortar is definitely newer than therest,” Flavianus said, his voice excited despite the fact that hewas still scowling. “You have good eyes, Tribune.”
Lucullus flushed with pride, but I had morepressing concerns than bolstering his pride.
“What does it mean?” I asked Flavianus.
He examined the fault for several momentsbefore answering.
“It means that if we could somehow get ourartillery up here, we may have found our way in.”
Despite being heartened to hear this, Istill had severe doubts.
“We have no way of knowing if that crackgoes all the way through the wall, though. If it’s just on thesurface, as thick as those walls are, it won’t make muchdifference, will it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Flavianus saidconfidently, pointing in the direction of the gateway. “See wherethe crack starts, then turns up above the corner of the gate?”
I told him that I did.
“That’s where we need to apply thepressure,” he continued. “First, you see the wall tapers towardsthe top, so it’s thinner. And if you notice, the gateway is framedwith timber, not finished stone, and it’s not an arch, it’s flat.That means that that wood is bearing a lot of weight. All we haveto do is knock some of the rock around the crack out, and the wallwill collapse onto the timber lintel. Those gates look strong, butthey’re not strong enough to support all of that wall crushing downon it.”
“And when the gate collapses, we have ourway in,” I finished, seeing it now in my mind’s eye.
We would chip away at that weak point, and Icould see the mortar and chips of rock flying with every strike ofour own stone missiles. Little by little, we would knock smallchunks of that wall out, weakening the corner of the gate, wherethe new mortar was just inches above the timber lintel, passing atthe diagonal on its way up, patching whatever damage had been donebefore. Then, the moment would come when the upper wall and rampartcould no longer support its own weight, suddenly crashing down ontothe timber lintel. Even as strong as the gate itself was, made ofhewn timbers that undoubtedly started as tree trunks, brought infrom some other place and reinforced with bands of three ironplates holding them together, it would not be able to withstand thedownward force exerted on it by the wall above. I wasn’t sure, butI believed that it was possible that the gate would splinter intopieces, the iron bands being popped or twisted off. Anyone who wasstanding above on the rampart, or in the vicinity of the gate whenthat happened would undoubtedly be killed, some falling to theirdeaths, others being crushed, while still others being killed bythe pieces of the gate. At least, that was what I hoped wouldhappen. However, despite this good news, our problems were far fromover, and in many ways had just begun. Now that I had seen what waspossible as far as attacking the fort, we now had to determine away to make that happen.
“How many artillery pieces will you need?” Iasked Flavianus, who doubled as the master of the artillery, likemost engineering officers.
He rubbed his chin, then said, “Ideally,every one of them.”
“And where would you place them?”
Again, I had a fairly good idea, but Iwanted to see if my eye and Flavianus’ were seeing the same thing.From where we were standing at that moment, we were perhaps twohundred paces short of what would be a range where theballistae could be reasonably expected to inflict seriousdamage. The engineering officer surveyed the ground before hepointed, and it was nowhere near the position I had been lookingat.
“There?”
I was surprised, to say the least. The spothe was pointing to was in a slight depression of the slope almostdirectly in front of the fortress, just a short distance away fromwhere the narrow roadway reversed itself to head in the oppositedirection. My choice had been on a slight bump, at a more obliqueangle to the fortress, and despite being farther away thanFlavianus’ choice, I thought it was well within range. That, ofcourse, works both ways, and was why I liked the small rise,thinking to place the artillery directly downslope at the bottom ofthis rise. I believed it would provide the men working theballistae with protection, but it would have to be augmentedin some manner.
“You probably wanted to put it over there,didn’t you?” Flavianus asked, pointing to the exact spot I hadchosen.
I replied that I did, and he gave a derisivesnort.
“Thinking like a typical
