Final Campaign

road leading to Serdica. Their orders were simple:they were to thoroughly scout the northern face of the fortressand, most importantly, determine what kind of support could beoffered from the city. I had been hesitant to send two relativelyinexperienced men, yet I could not spare Flavianus from his duties,and neither could I go myself in case the Thracians made a sortie.To accomplish their mission, Flavianus and I had given them veryspecific instruction on what to look for, each of them carrying awax tablet on which they were to sketch the ground, making notes ofanything we needed to know about. Although I did not believe thatthe wall would come down that first day, I still brought the army,minus two Cohorts left to guard the camp, the Tenth of the13^th that had suffered so badly, and a Cohort of the8^th though I do not remember which one. Those men weredown on the valley floor at the base of the finger of land thatadjoined the slope the fortress sat on, just around the side of it,keeping them out of sight. They were sitting, waiting for the wordto move up, meaning that the dice were out, with the betting onwhen the wall would come down going strong. Once the pluteiwere in place, the real work of dragging the ballistae intoposition began. Four men could carry the parts and assemble ascorpion, but a ballistae, especially one capable ofthrowing a ten-pound ball, was another matter. Naturally, ourheaviest pieces, created from the ruins of the Greek merchant’shouse, were exceptionally bulky. Now that we knew they had archers,we also had to devise a way to protect the men at work, both whenthey were emplacing the artillery and once it was ready to fire.The hope was that the scorpions would scour the ramparts to driveoff the archers. First, however, we had to get the weapons set up.Deciding to change the plan, I ordered the scorpions to be put intoplace first, and to protect those weapons we had to create somefascines. Fortunately, we had a good number of large wickerbaskets that a Legion carries with them, both for this purpose andto use to gather crops or forage on the march, and these werebroken out. These baskets are much larger than the ones the mencarry with them, and are kept on wagons. Putting the men to work,we soon had a few dozen of these filled, then dragged up the hill,all while under fire from the archers once the men got into range.Two men carried one wicker basket between them and, after somediscussion with the Primi Pili, it was decided that four pairs ofmen would be surrounded by a half-Century in testudo, and this washow they marched up the hill. It was slow going; by the time eachgroup had performed its job, several men had one or even morearrows protruding from their shields, leading to the inevitablecomplaining because the cost to repair it would come out of theirpay.

The sun moved inexorably across the sky aswe prepared the position, and I began to worry that we would runout of daylight before we could send out our scouting party.Potentially, this could be a devastating blow to our plans; theassault on the fortress was no longer a secret, and if there wassupport coming from Serdica, they could do so before we knew thatit was even a possibility. I was particularly worried that theSerdi would send more archers, since at that moment they were moreof a nuisance than a real threat. However, if their numberssubstantially increased, we would have to march to the breach intestudo, and the two weaknesses of that formation are to cavalryand artillery. Even though the Thracian heavy artillery was notenough to puncture the protection of the plutei, it was morethan enough to create massive carnage in a testudo. That meant thatmantlets would have to be created; it also meant there would be noway that Marcus Primus would be happy. These were my thoughts whileeating a light lunch, more out of boredom than hunger, stillwatching the men at work moving the fascines into spots oneither side of the plutei. We had a dozen scorpions, andwould need every one of them to pin the Thracians back from therampart. Finally, after midday, the position was ready, and Iordered the scorpions into place. Again, under the protection of atestudo, the crew of each scorpion was moved into position, thenonce behind the protection of the fascines¸ began assemblingtheir weapons. The enemy archers seemed to understand what wastaking place and what it meant, because they stepped up theirefforts; arrows streaking up into the air before plummeting downalmost faster than the eye could track it. Most of the time, menwere able to drop what they were doing to dodge out of the way, butnot always. Usually, an arrow is not fatal; however, in this case,the angle was so extreme that they were dropping down onto men’sheads, with more than enough impetus to pierce a helmet, unless itstruck a glancing blow. Occasionally, we would hear a sharpclanging sound that signaled a man had escaped certain death. Thosethat struck square made a different, more solid sound when themetal point punched through the man’s helmet to bury itself intohis skull. Most of the time, the man struck in this manner wouldtopple over without making a sound, or at most giving a short,sharp cry, but one case in particular sticks in my memory. TheLegionary did not fall over, and indeed continued to work, despitethe fact that an arrow was protruding more than a foot out of hishead. His comrades had to grab him, shouting at him to let him knowthat he was hurt, and at first, he refused to believe them. Then, Isaw his hands reach up to gingerly feel around on his helmet untilhis fingers found the shaft of the arrow. I expected him to makesome sort of reaction, or even to fall over dead, but instead, hemerely turned about to go walking down the hill while his comrades,and everyone else watching, gaped in amazement. Once he drewcloser, I could see blood streaming