‘I am of a mind that one swallow does not make a summer,’ said Maximus.
‘For once, I am inclined to agree with you.’ Hippothous had pushed the bronze helmet to the back of his head. His eyes glittered.
That is a man who enjoys killing, Ballista thought. ‘Hippothous, gather the bodyguard and round up about fifty of the regulars here. We need to get to the Lion Harbour.’
As the men were collected, Ballista briefly inspected the artillery. As he had suspected, one of them had broken on its second shot. He praised the men there, and told them not to relax; the Goths might come again.
They pounded down a dark street. At least the grid plan of the town made directions easy. After about three hundred paces they came to the south wall of the Bouleuterion. Ballista called a stop. He told them they needed to get closed up – who knew what they would find around the next corner? But, equally pressing, he had to get his wind back. Running in full armour was always exhausting, but he was far from campaign fit, and he was not so young any more. Forty winters were taking their toll.
Turning left, the tall, many-columned edifices of the agora opened up around them. All was empty and quiet where they were, but the north end was a very different case. Men were fighting and dying along the battlements of the hastily constructed wall which blocked the quay of the Lion Harbour. The bowelclenching sounds of steel on steel, of agonized screaming, washed down the colonnades towards them.
There were some two hundred paces to go. It was too far to run; they would arrive fragmented, out of breath.
‘Form up on me,’ Ballista said. ‘We walk until I give the order.’
Nearly one hundred armoured men, close packed, stepped forward. Ballista was at their head; Maximus on his left, Hippothous his right. Going to meet something very frightening, it was hard to walk slowly. Every instinct screamed: run, get it over and done. Twenty paces gone, thirty – just let it be over.
More Gothic warriors were appearing on the wall walk. A few had fought their way down some steps and were trying to cut their way to the gate. If they got that open, it was all over.
Sixty paces, seventy. Unconsciously, Ballista quickened the pace.
A knot of Roman auxiliaries was fighting with their backs to the inside of the gate. More Goths were pressing on them. Blades flashed, rising and falling in the eerie torchlight.
Ninety paces gone, a hundred.
The fight at the gate was nearly over, but a handful of Romans was still on their feet. They could not last more than moments.
‘Charge!’ Ballista drew his sword and launched himself forward.
The paving stones hard under the soles of his boots, scabbard banging against his left leg, Ballista forced his legs faster. The weight of his shield was dragging on his left arm. Faster, faster.
Ballista had pulled clear of the line; Maximus and Hippothous half a step behind. The charge was shaping itself into an arrowhead: the wedge or boar’s snout beloved of the northern sagas.
The last Roman had been chopped down. Only twenty paces to go. Four of the Goths moved to lift the bar of the gate. The others, twenty or thirty, turned to face the onslaught.
The warrior facing Ballista set himself, long braided hair and beard, eyes glaring above a red shield. Ballista, legs pumping, shield well out, crashed straight into him. The impact stopped Ballista. The Goth staggered a step or two back. Someone thumped into Ballista’s back. Knocked forward, the northerner’s shield dipped as he fought for balance. The Goth raised his blade for the killing blow. Dropping the shield, still off balance, Ballista side-stepped off his left leg. The Gothic blade thrummed just past his ankle. It rang, sparking on the stone. Feet slipping, still toppling forward, Ballista shot like a ferret between his opponent and the next warrior in line.
Not glancing back, a hand to the ground, Ballista regained his balance and let his momentum carry him on.
The Goths at the gate, their backs to Ballista, strained as one. The bar lifted a fraction. Ballista aimed at the nearest warrior. At the last moment, the Goth looked over his shoulder – too late. At a flat run, Ballista drove the point of his sword two-handed into the small of the man’s back. Mail rings snapped and the steel went deep. Ballista’s momentum crashed them both against the wooden boards.
Ballista wrenched his blade free. Some instinct made him spin to his right, wheeling the blade backhanded. It deflected the thrust inches from his nose. The impact ran through his arms. He dropped to one knee and brought his blade back, scything at his opponent’s knees. The Goth leapt backwards.
Ballista rose to his feet carefully. For what seemed an eternity, they watched each other, like fighting cocks after the first pass. Then a blow from behind took the Goth in the back of the neck. As he collapsed, Ballista heard the thump of the bar falling back into place.
Maximus grinned at Ballista. The Hibernian’s front was a bloody mess, none of it his own. Ballista smiled back and took the shield proffered by Hippothous. The Greek had pushed his archaic helmet back again. He was whooping with joy. So much for your Hellenic self-control, thought Ballista. He looked around the shambles. There was not a Goth still fighting inside the wall. Those that still moved, and some that did not, were being cut to pieces.
‘I am thinking it is still not safe,’ said Maximus.
From the top of the wall, Ballista looked out and recreated the events from what he saw. Just one longship was skewered and broken out in the standing. The stakes had failed. He remembered the men embedding them saying that while the Lion Harbour was shallow, its bottom was thick mud. The wretched stakes must have toppled or sunk.
Sixteen double-prowed ships were moored at the dock, a skeleton crew on each. The majority of the Goths were just in front. They never liked to venture too far from their boats. The warriors on land had formed a shieldburg. The first rank was kneeling, their shields planted on the ground; the second standing, the bases of their shields resting on the bosses of those in front; the ones behind holding their shields overhead. It was a daunting sight, as firm and unyielding as a rock, virtually arrow proof.
It was hard to count the Gothic warriors. There were some eighty shields overlapping in the front rank, but the shieldburg could be as many as ten or twelve deep. That was a lot of dangerous men.
The twenty or so paces of the quayside between the Goths and the wall were littered with the dead.
Nothing moved. It was one of those disconcerting calms that often punctuated a battle, when both sides, as if by mutual consent, drew back and waited. Seeing the Gothic corpses, Ballista knew it would take a lot to get them to assault the wall again. But if their reiks were determined, it would take a lot to stop them a second time.
The sky was lightening with the false dawn. The torches along the wall were paling. Away in the distance to the right, from behind buildings on a rise in the ground, smoke chuffed up. The northernmost flotilla of the Goths had not been idle. The stalemate in the Lion Harbour did not favour the defenders.
As he leant thinking, Ballista noticed that the battlement under his elbows was made from a block of carved marble. It depicted a triton holding a steering oar, his fishy tail long and impressive. It was ironic, the monument boasting of Pompey the Great sweeping pirates from the water smashed and reused for a makeshift defence against a new threat from the sea. All the deeds of men were transient. Ballista wondered if anyone in the future would see that stone and draw a similar conclusion.
There was a stir in the Gothic phalanx. Some of the overlapping shields drew apart, and a helmeted head poked out. The man called, his tone taunting. ‘And listen, Miletus, perpetrator of evil deeds; that is when Many will feed off you and take you as their gleaming prize.’
At the Greek verse, the Milesians on the wall muttered uneasily: Chrysogonus, the betrayer of Nicomedia. ‘Your wives will wash the feet of long-haired men, And others will have charge of my temple at Didyma.’
Ballista stood straight and shouted back. ‘The prophecy of Phoebus Apollo played out long ago when the Persians came. Your words are as false as your actions – the sophistry of a traitor.’
Ballista hoped he had identified the Delphic Oracle correctly. If he was wrong, doubtless Hippothous would put him right later. But it sufficed for now. The men on the wall jeered.
No sooner had the renegade Greek ducked down than another man stood forth.
‘I am Tharuaro, son of Gunteric, leader of the Tervingi in this hansa. And I know you: Dernhelm, disgrace to his father Isangrim, the war-leader of the Angles. No one knows treachery better than you – oath-breaker, murderer of the defenceless. You are the asneis the Romans call Ballista.’
On the wall, Ballista was silent, eating the insults and thinking Loki-like thoughts.
