Harry Sidebottom - Iron and Rust

Gordian stepped between them. ‘Sabinianus doubts everything.’ He turned to Menophilus. ‘What do you think?’

The Quaestor toyed with the ornament in the form of a skeleton on his belt, considering slowly. ‘Rather than assign men from the speculatores , we should ask for volunteers. Offer good money for those who get to the top, and the same for the dependents of those who fall. No armour, helmets, shields or spears. But we must have boots. Our men are not used to marching without them. The rocks would cut their feet to shreds. Also, we will take iron tent pegs and ropes, as many as we can carry.’ Menophilus paused. ‘If we have some of the light shields the Frontier Wolves use and some javelins, we may be able to haul them up when we have made the climb.’

‘Have you done much climbing?’ Sabinianus asked.

‘It is not one of my favourite pastimes.’ Menophilus’ line was funnier for being delivered with his customary Stoic earnestness.

After nightfall, no campfires were lit until Menophilus and his volunteers had left. Gordian found that sleep eluded him. In the middle watch, he got up and walked the perimeter. Snatches of music and songs drifted from the village. Lights flickered as the barbarians came and went from their huts.

All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals . Gordian had grown fond of Menophilus. He did not want to be responsible for his death, did not want his friend to die. With a horrible clarity, he knew that he did not want to die himself. No, that was not how it should be. As so often, he summoned up the tenets of his philosophy. There was no pleasure or pain after death, just as there was none before birth. There was nothing to be scared of. Death is nothing to us. But there was a tightness in him that his words did nothing to loosen. After a time, he went back and rolled himself in his blanket, watched the stars wheel, and settled to wait for the night to end.

A hand shook his shoulder, and Gordian surfaced from the deepest of sleeps.

‘Two hours before dawn,’ Sabinianus said quietly.

Somewhere in the back of Gordian’s mind, wisps of a dream twisted out of his grasp; his father … Parthenope and Chione weeping … some lines of Homer: ‘There will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish’.

In the darkness, Lydus drew up the auxiliaries of the 2nd Cohort with as little noise as possible. Even so, the rattle of their arms and the scrape of the hobnails seemed loud enough to wake the dead. Gordian moved among them, a word here, a pat on the shoulder there. It was never easy to send men into combat.

No sounds or lights could be detected in the village.

The sky lightened in the east, enough to reveal the dark bulk of the phalanx of men, twenty wide and ten deep. No trumpets rang out. A murmur ran through the ranks and they began to edge forward.

Still no shouts of alarm from the barbarians.

Gordian and his officers mounted up and rode back through the lines of the speculatores and the men from the 3rd Legion. They went a little uphill, far enough to hope to view the fighting.

Half-glimpsed movements along the wall. The unmistakable twang of bows.

‘ Testudo! ’ Lydus’ shout echoed among the rocks. A crash as the shields of the auxiliaries swung up and locked together over their heads. Moments later, the thunk of arrows into leather and wood. Wild barbarian yells, but as yet no screams of pain from the Romans.

‘Loose!’ The voice of Aemilius Severinus carried well. The first volley of Roman arrows vanished into the gloom. The archers, shooting blind, had been ordered to aim long. Most likely, the majority of the arrowheads would embed themselves harmlessly in the flat roofs of the village, but their passage overhead would remind the men making the assault that they were not alone.

There was a fast rattling, like the tambourines of the followers of Cybele greatly amplified. The defenders were throwing stones. They were bouncing off the shields. Gordian noticed that the light had strengthened enough to let him take in the whole scene.

Descending the ditch broke the cohesion of the testudo . Arrows and stones were finding their mark. Men were falling. The ladders were adding to the confusion. As the auxiliaries went up the far side, the first casualties were being helped to the rear. Gordian sent Arrian to usher the unwounded back into the fight.

The 2nd Cohort had reached the foot of the wall. Ladders reared up. The barbarians were well prepared. The battlements were thick with warriors. Poles and pitchforks levered the ladders sideways, sent them crashing down. The barrage of missiles intensified. At the extreme left a soldier got on to the wall, then another. Both were surrounded, cut down. The ladder was pushed away. At two other places a few attackers achieved the wall walk. Both inroads were swamped by sheer numbers.

Gordian gazed beyond the fighting. All was quiet in the village. There was no sign of Menophilus and his volunteers.

The retreat began with a few men at the rear. Soon, all the auxiliaries were backing away. They did not break and run but edged backwards, dragging their injured and the ladders.

‘Aim for the wall!’

Aemilius Severinus acknowledged Gordian’s shouted order. The defenders ducked down behind the parapet. For the first time, they had to cower beneath their shields. It allowed the 2nd Cohort to withdraw and re-form behind the other two units virtually unmolested.

‘Third Legion, advance!’

The legionaries took up the scaling ladders. Again twenty men wide, this column was only five deep. They roofed themselves with their shields and trudged forward. Centurion Verittus had them in good order.

The barbarians showed restraint. Only the occasional individual popped up and wasted an arrow on the testudo . Gordian thought this Canartha had a remarkable grip on his men.

When the legionaries reached the ditch, the speculatores had to switch back to aiming for the village for risk of hitting their own men. The defenders reappeared. The storm of arrows and stones resumed; if anything, more intense than before. Perhaps the natives were encouraged by the repulse of the previous attack. With luck, they might soon run short of missiles.

Beyond the noise, still nothing moved in the village.

Legionaries clambered up the ladders. Some went sprawling back to the ground. Others, in the face of sharp steel, hauled themselves over the parapet. Fighting became general along the wall. The day hung in the balance. Again, numbers began to tell. One by one, the legionaries on the wall were cut down. Below, the first men began to retreat.

Gordian dug in his spurs, calling for Sabinianus. They rode through the lines of the 2nd Cohort, through the speculatores . At the ditch, Gordian jumped down, turned his horse free. It clattered away.

Gordian snatched up a discarded auxiliary shield. The grip was wet with blood. He slipped as he went down into the ditch. A jagged rock skinned the back of his legs. By the time Gordian had cleared the obstacle, all the ladders were down. No attackers were left on the wall. The legionaries were pulling back. Gordian shouldered his way to the standard-bearer, ordered him forward. The man looked blankly at him. Gordian seized him by the shoulder, pushed him towards the wall.

‘With me!’ Gordian grabbed one end of a ladder. Sabinianus helped him swing it up. The men hung back.

Covered by his shield, Gordian climbed one-handed. A rock thumped into the shield. Another dinged off his helmet. The wound Mirzi had given him ached. Blades hacked down at him. He thrust the shield over the parapet. A wide sweep of his sword cleared a space. He scrambled off the ladder, one foot on the parapet, and jumped down on to the wall walk.