flying high then being whipped dangerously away towards the town. Turpio was organizing a work party to clear a fire break and douse the houses to the south-west. Mamurra had a chain of legionaries passing material out of the doomed magazine. To encourage the men, he was conspicuously running the same risks they were, darting in and out of the southern door.
Ballista knew he could not expect his officers and men to do what he would not. He followed Mamurra into the building. It was so hot the plaster was peeling from the walls and; on the beams above their heads, the paint seemed to be bubbling and boiling. Scalding droplets fell on the men below. There was little smoke in the room, but that was probably deceptive. The fire was surreptitiously outflanking them, creeping high, unseen, and into the cavities of the walls. At any moment the beams could give, the roof come crashing down, trapping them, choking them, burning them alive.
Ballista ordered everyone out, shouting above the inhuman roar of the fire. He and Mamurra fled only when the last legionary reached the threshold.
Outside, all busied themselves moving the rescued stores to a position of safety upwind. Then they watched the fire rage. The building did not collapse immediately. Sometimes the fire appeared to be dying down, before bursting forth into ever more destructive life. At last, with a strange groan and a terrible crash, the roof gave way.
Ballista woke to a beautiful morning, clear and crisp. Wrapped in a sheepskin, he watched the sun rise over Mesopotamia. The vast bowl of the sky turned a delicate pink; the few tattered shreds of clouds were silvered. Pursued by Skoll the wolf, as it would be until the end of time, the sun appeared on the horizon. The first wash of gold splashed over the terrace of the palace of the Dux Ripae and the battlements of Arete. At the foot of the cliff the wharves and whispering reedbeds remained in deep blue shadow.
Ballista had had only a very few hours' sleep but, surprisingly, they had been deep and restful. He felt fresh and invigorated. It was impossible not to be full of well-being on such a morning – even after the disaster of the previous evening.
Behind him, Ballista could hear Calgacus approaching across the terrace. It was not just the uninhibited wheezing and coughing, there was also some very audible muttering. Unshakably loyal, in public the aged Caledonian was silent to the point of being monosyllabic about his dominus. Yet when they were alone he presumed on a lifetime's acquaintance to say what he pleased, as if he were thinking aloud – usually a string of criticism and complaint: 'Wrapped up in a sheepskin… watching the sunrise… probably start quoting fucking poetry next.' Then, at the same volume but in a different tone, 'Good morning, Dominus. I have brought your sword.'
'Thank you. What did you say?'
'Your sword.'
'No, before that.'
'Nothing.'
'Beautiful morning. Puts me in mind of Bagoas's poetry. Let me try some in Latin: 'Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! The Hunter of the East has caught The Great King's Turret in a Noose of Light.
What do you think?' Ballista grinned.
'Very nice.' Calgacus's mouth pursed thinner, more shrewish, than ever. 'Give me that sheepskin. They are waiting for you at the gate.' His mutterings – 'time and place… not find your father spouting poetry at the sunrise like a lovesick girl…' – diminished in volume as he retreated into the palace.
Ballista walked with Maximus and Demetrius to the burnt-out shell of the magazine. Mamurra was already there. Possibly he had been there all night.
'We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.' The praefectus fabrum saluted smartly. His face and forearms were black with soot.
'How does it look?'
'Not good, but could be worse. The building will have to be demolished. Almost all the artillery bolts are burnt. All the spare fittings for the ballistae – washers, ratchets and the like – are buried under that lot.' He ran a hand across his face, the gesture of a tired man. 'But all the shaped stones for the ballistae were stored outside, so they are all fine. I am going to have ropes rigged to try and pull the walls down outward. We may be able to salvage some of the metal fittings, some of the metal tips of the bolts – depends how hot the fire got in there.' Mamurra paused, took a long drink of water and tipped some over his head. The soot ran, leaving strange black streaks. 'Anyway, not quite the total disaster someone wanted.'
'You are sure that it was arson?'
'Come with me.' Mamurra led them to the north-east corner of the building. 'Don't get too close to the walls. They could come down at any moment. But have a smell.'
Ballista did, and his stomach turned. He saw again the pole slowly beginning to turn, the amphora above his head start to tip, remembered the screams, and the other smell – the smell of burning flesh.
'Naptha.'
'Yes, once you have smelt it you never forget. Not if you have seen it in action.' Mamurra pointed to a small, blackened ventilation louvre high up in the wall. 'I think they poured it in there. Then probably threw a lamp in.'
Ballista looked around, trying to picture the attack in his mind: Last hour of daylight; no one around. One man, or more? And would he have run or tried to mingle with the gathering crowd?
'There are witnesses. Two of them.' Mamurra pointed to two men sitting unhappily on the ground, guarded by two legionaries. 'They both saw a man in the street of the sickle-makers running away to the south-east.'
'A good description?'
Mamurra laughed. 'Yes, both excellent. One saw a short man with black hair wearing a rough cloak, and the other saw a tall man with no cloak, bald as a coot.'
'Thank you, Mamurra. You have done very well. Carry on and I will be back when I have talked to the witnesses.'
The two men looked cowed and resentful. One had a black eye. Ballista well knew the mutual antipathy between Roman soldiers and civilians, but he was surprised by the stupidity of the troops. These two men had come forward to volunteer information. By some misplaced process of guilt by association, they had been bullied, possibly beaten up. There was no way they would help in the future.
Ballista, having asked Maximus to go and fetch him some fresh water, spoke gently to the civilians. Their stories were as Mamurra had said. It was just possible they had seen two different men. There was some uncertainty about timing. But it was equally likely that they just remembered things differently. Neither had recognized the man. The questioning was leading nowhere. Ballista thanked them and asked Demetrius to give them a couple of antoniniani each.
Ballista returned to Mamurra. 'Right, here is what is going to happen.' He spoke quickly, confidently. 'Mamurra, have this building torn down and rebuilt about twice the size, with a wall round it and plenty of guards. There is nothing like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.' Mamurra smiled dutifully. 'You are also going to form and command an independent unit of ballistarii.The twenty-four specialist ballistarii already in Legio IIII will be transferred to you, as will another ninety-six ordinary legionaries. Each ballistarius will be responsible for training four legionaries. By the spring I expect a unit of 120 specialist ballistarii.' Mamurra started to say something, but Ballista cut him short.
'Also by then I expect your men to have built, tested and sited another twenty-one bolt-throwers – there is room for two bolt-throwers on every tower that now contains just one. You can requisition any civilian labour, carpenters, blacksmiths that you need. Select the legionaries yourself. Don't let Acilius Glabrio pass off his worst cases on you.'
A slow grin spread across Mamurra's square face.
As Ballista walked away, Maximus spoke quietly to him in Celtic. 'If your young patrician did not hate you before, he sure will now.'
The telones, seeing them coming down the main street, knew that this was no time for jocular anecdotes, about philosophers or anything else. Certainly it was no time for officiousness, let alone extortion. The boukolos straight away started to herd a family of tent-dwellers and their donkeys out of the way, roughly pushing animal
