of the magi unhooked the pot from the tripod, lifted it free of the fire.
'Gods below, the barbarian bastards.' Maximus looked away.
The priest stepped over to the first of the prisoners. Two magi held the man's head. The priest tipped the pot. The man screamed.
'What is it?' Ballista tried to keep his voice level. 'What are they doing to them?'
'Olive oil.' Bagoas answered very quietly. 'They are blinding them with boiling olive oil.'
A single trumpet call was picked up by innumerable others. The vast Sassanid horde stirred itself and began to form up for its slow advance.
Gangs of men began to push the ballistae, mounted on squat carts or moved on rollers forward, to within effective range, about 200 paces of the walls. From there the stone-throwers would aim to destroy the defenders' artillery and knock down the battlements while the bolt-throwers swept Roman soldiers from the wall walks.
The mantlets were pushed to the fore. These would travel to within effective bow shot, about fifty paces from the town. Forming an unbroken line of reinforced wood, the mantlets were intended to shield both the Persian archers and the storming parties as they assembled.
Most ponderously of all, hauled by hundreds of men each, the three City Takers began to inch forward. These monstrous wheeled siege towers were made of wood but entirely clad in plates of metal and damp skins. Water was frequently poured down their sides from the top to try to prevent the enemy setting fire to them. They had ballistae on their upper levels, but these were only secondary to their main purpose. The City Takers were designed to creep up to and overtop the walls of the town, let down a drawbridge and release on to the battlements a mass of screaming warriors. As the drawbridges came down, a host of storming parties carrying ladders would burst forth in support from the line of mantlets.
Ballista looked at them. They were the key to the assault. Everything else would revolve around them. They were quite far apart. One was on the road, heading straight for the gate where Ballista stood. The others were aimed to hit the wall beyond, three towers away north and south. Travelling at about one mile an hour, in theory they could strike the wall in about half an hour. Ballista knew that was not going to happen. The City Takers would make many stops, to change the crews of men hauling them, to test, smooth and reinforce the ground ahead, as well as to fill in Ballista's traps – if, of course, the latter were detected.
Ballista judged that the assault would probably not come until midday. Unfortunately, that would be good for the attackers in several ways. The morning sun would no longer be directly in their eyes as it was now. It would give plenty of time for the City Takers to reach the walls and for subsidiary attacks to be ready to go in on the other walls.
Clouds of horsemen had been spotted the day before on the other sides of the northern and southern ravines. Ballista had altered his order of battle, ordering 300 men, 100 mercenaries from each of the numeri of the caravan protectors, to join the defence of the dangerously undermanned north wall. It was odd that this weakness had been spotted by his accensus, the completely unmilitary Demetrius, not by himself nor any of his army officers. Sometimes one got too close to things. As Ballista's people said: you could not see the wood for the trees.
Midday. The northerner turned the timing over in his mind. Midday. The time when Romans ate their first substantial meal of the day. Bagoas had told him that Persians ate later, towards late afternoon. At midday the Persians would not be hungry, but the Romans would. Ballista was about to issue orders to bring forward the time of the soldiers' lunch when he saw something that might prove to be terribly important.
The distinctive figure clad in purple riding a white horse was on the move. Although now accompanied by a glittering entourage of the high nobility and client kings, there was no mistaking the high, domed golden helmet, the long purple and white streamers that indicated the King of Kings.
Ballista had been waiting for this moment, had been praying that it would come. In the Roman army, at the start of a siege it was customary for the commander to ride forward into range of the defenders' artillery. It was a tradition that served two goals. At a purely pragmatic level, it gave the commander a fine chance to observe the state of the defences. At an altogether more intangible but possibly far more significant level, it allowed the general to rouse the spirits of his troops by demonstrating his studied contempt for the weapons of their enemies. A fine tradition, one which killed two birds with one stone. The only problem was that it sometimes killed the besieging general as well.
Until this moment Ballista had not known if the Sassanids held to a similar practice. Asking Bagoas had produced no useful answer – 'Of course, Shapur, the beloved of Mazda, has no fear of the weapons of his foes.' More and more the northerner wondered just how much or how little the Persian boy knew about war. Bagoas clearly came from the Persian elite, but was it becoming ever more likely that he was from a family of scribes or priests than one of warriors?
Shapur and his men reined in just outside artillery range. Animated conversation could be seen. The King of Kings was doing most of the talking. Informing his high-status audience of his view of the direction the assault should take, Shapur made wide arcs and sweeps with his arms, the streamers flying behind him.
Ballista stared intently not at Shapur but at two distinctive humps of stone left on either side of the road. The sides facing the wall were painted white. They marked 400 paces, the maximum range of his artillery. Come on, you cowardly eastern bastard. Come on, just have the balls to get within range.
Forcing his mind away, Ballista issued orders for the men to take their lunch no less than two hours earlier than usual. As the messengers moved away, the northerner realized with a nasty lurch that he had not issued the far more pressing orders for every piece of artillery to aim at the Persian king but not to shoot until the Dux Ripae gave the command. As the next batch of messengers moved away, Ballista was slightly reassured by the thought that their message most likely was redundant – it would be a very poor ballistarius indeed who had not already trained the weapon on the man on the white horse.
The trick of turning the washers, slackening the torsion and decreasing the apparent range of the weapons was an old trick, an obvious one. Had it worked? And even if it had, would the traitor have betrayed it? Was the Sassanid mocking him?
Shapur kicked on, and the white horse moved down the road towards the Palmyrene Gate. Past the whitewashed piles of stone, with his meteor trail of the powerful, Shapur came on. Allfather, Deceitful One, Death-Bringer, deliver this man to me.
Ballista was painfully aware of the expectation surrounding him. The dead silence on the battlements was broken only by the small noises of well-oiled machinery being subtly adjusted as the ballistae tracked their target. Wait until he stops moving. Do not snatch at this. Wait until the right moment.
Nearer and nearer came Shapur; closer and closer to the white-painted section of wall at 200 paces.
He stopped.
Ballista spoke.
Antigonus hoisted the looked-for red flag.
Twang – slide – thump: the great twenty-pounder by Ballista hurled its carefully rounded stone. A moment later it was joined by its twin on the gatehouse roof. Then, twang – slide – thump, twang – slide – thump: all the artillery along the western battlements joined in. For a couple of seconds the northerner admired the geometry of it all – the fixed line of the wall, the moving triangle of missiles all converging on the fixed point of the man on the white horse.
The rider in fur next to Shapur was plucked from his horse. Arms wide, the empty sleeves of his coat flapping, the man looked like a large six-limbed insect as the bolt threw him backwards. Towards the rear of the entourage two, maybe three horses and riders went down as a stone reduced them to a bloody shambles.
After the strike there was a shocked near-silence. Only muted sounds could be heard: the click of ratchets, the groan of wood and sinew under gathering pressure, and the grunting of men working frantically. The near-peace was broken by a rising roar of outrage from the horror-struck Sassanid horde.
Shapur took both sides by surprise. Putting spurs to his mount, he kicked it into a gallop straight ahead. Thundering towards the Palmyrene Gate, he pulled his bow from its case, took an arrow from his quiver and notched it. About 150 paces from the gate he skidded to a halt, drew and released the arrow.
Ballista watched its flight. With a superstitious dread he felt that it was coming straight for him. As they always do, it seemed to gain pace as it grew nearer. It fell just short and to the right of the northerner, clattering off the stone of the wall.
Shapur's mouth was moving. He was yelling his outrage, his anger, but the words could not be made out on the wall. Two horsemen drew up on either side of the king. They were shouting. One went so far as to try to grab
