William Napier - The Judgement

Yet Sabinus had hope now. The ratio of his men to the enemy was ridiculous, but what did that matter? Rome had always been outnumbered by her enemies, and never dismayed by it. They were winning so far. No barbarian had ever taken a legionary fortress, and he was damned if his was going to be the first.

As for their siegecraft, it was there, but wanting. Tatullus suggested they had formed an alliance with a bunch of Alan mercenaries, some wandering Iranian or Sarmatian people. Or perhaps renegade Vandals, a motley crowd of deserters. There had even been talk of the Huns forming a dark confederacy with King Genseric and his people in North Africa, who had learned so quickly the arts of both sailing and siegecraft from their own enemies.

Perhaps. Well, let ’em come. The VII Legion was ready for the next wave, all five hundred of them – perhaps down to four eighty or four sixty now. The army of an entire people was besieging the fort – an entire nomad empire. And fate, or the gods, or whoever, had appointed the VIIth to fight them off on its own.

He called for another glass of wine, well-watered.

Tatullus drank nothing.

The great shorn trunk of fir with its crude but doubtless brutally effective bronze head – no more than a lump of dully shining metal – reminded Sabinus of Knuckles’ club. No elaborate carving of real rams’ heads for this army on the move.

He ordered a first volley. The Roman arrows clattered uselessly off the iron plates of the tortoise – what else, at this angle? – and Sabinus raised a thick forearm to hold fire again. The ram came on.

The Hun onagers thunked again. This time the south-west tower took a huge hit near the base. The entire west wall shivered at the shock. Hell.

‘Decurion! Gimme damage and bag it up!’

The second onager wasn’t far off target, either, now.

Time to reply.

He ordered a couple of the sling-machines to lob a few missiles in a high trajectory and drop them on the waiting Hun cavalry quarter of a mile off, just to keep them on their toes. The slingballs flew up and over in rainbow arcs, and the horsemen watched them coming and skittered aside. Some of the slingballs were painted pale blue so they wouldn’t be so easily seen against the sky as they came, but the keen-eyed steppe warriors still followed them all. The slingballs fell to earth. He told the men to fire again.

What would a heavy cavalry charge do to those light, unarmoured horsemen, though? An iron wedge punching into them at full gallop? Seeing what it did to the drivers behind the siege-towers…

Here was the gang of Hun horsemen driving forward the ram-tortoise. Their leader was a snake-haired, wild-eyed young fellow on a white gelding. He encouraged the captives with song, and a whip. Those dragging the ram against the fortress that had once been their greatest protection were, once again, the enslaved and expendable captives of Viminacium town, panting at the drive poles, bloody under the flail.

Arapovian stepped near. ‘You need to take that out.’

‘I know it.’ Sabinus eyed him. ‘You fit, man?’

‘I breathe.’

‘Still draw a bow?’

‘Never better. Pain concentrates the mind wonderfully. ’

Sabinus grimaced.

‘I take their leader?’

Sabinus shook his head. ‘Wait. Bring ’em in close. We will have them at the gates. They’ve got no chance there.’

And for the enslaved captives, alas, it would be another bad day.

But the tortoise was changing tack again, pulled round from the inside. Away from the massively baulked west gate. The cunning swine. Sabinus was momentarily nonplussed.

‘Crossbow unit III only,’ he roared. ‘Pick off what you can. Whichever way they go, keep at ’em.’

He had few men, but plenty of arrows. Storehouses full of ’em.

‘And pedites, I want to see you sweat!’

Poor buggers looked exhausted already. But they’d look a whole lot worse if that ram came though the gates, followed by ten thousand tattooed horsemen.

The tortoise shifted slowly and clumsily to the right, towards the trajectory of one of the Hun’s own onagers, smacking boulders into the south-west tower. Idiot barbarians. They’d smash their own ram at this rate.

But no. As Arapovian had cautioned, they weren’t fools.

The tortoise straightened up again and the ram was aimed dead centre at the bottom of the fortress wall, only twenty yards or so from where the onager was hitting. They were indeed damnably confident in the accuracy of their own artillery, and they knew about rams and stone walls.

During the Persian wars against that hard nut Shapur, the Eastern Army had quickly discovered, to their surprise, that the walls of fortresses on the Euphrates, like Nisibis, held well against rams. Built of no more than cheap bricks of mud and straw, baked hard in the Mesopotamian sun, they gave off clouds of red dust, but they absorbed the shock. Whereas beautifully laid walls of finely dressed stone shivered and shattered: far more expensive, a lot better looking – and vulnerable.

Like the walls of Viminacium. Finest dressed Illyrian limestone facing a rubble hardcore. As soon as the facing was gone, the core would collapse, leaking out of the ruptured stonework like grey gore. But how did they know? That scarred and tattooed leader. He knew too damn much.

So they were concentrating their attack on the corner. Not bad strategy. The onager missiles were coming into the south-west tower at a steady rate, fifty or sixty pounds of missile every minute or two, from maybe four hundred yards. As the ram came closer, Sabinus could see how well built it was. Even the brutish great lump of ram’s-head was protected by a projecting roof. A common mistake to forget that feature. The Goths always used to get it wrong. Bring a ram up to the enemies’ walls, all beautifully shaped and slung, beneath a steep, sloping roof – and with the ram’s head sticking out the front. It comes in close, ready for the first swing, and your men roll a big rock over the wall. It smashes down onto the protruding ram’s-head, the head drops down, the rest of the beam flips up, probably kills a couple of the team with it, slams upwards into its own protecting roof, often half demolishes it. Or snaps its own ropes, or gets tangled coming down again – all sorts of trouble. But not this time. The ram was perfectly protected. They were already swinging her back on good long suspension ropes, all very expert. Sabinus could almost have cursed the grandstand view he had from this damn west gate-tower.

A sharp thud, distant trembling, cries from down below. The stones held for now. But not for long. He sent what pedites he could spare. The wall needed baulking up behind – rubble, sandbags, anything. They were running out of materials, so he told them to take sledgehammers to the nearest barrack blocks and use what materials they could get from the ruins. He reckoned his men would sleep well enough under the open stars after this was over.

Soon, another thud. A lot of dust. The stones were going.

An onager missile sliced over the top of the south-west tower. There was a terrible crash and unearthly screams. Not one of the crossbowmen so much as glanced to the left. With the ram still hitting and that concentrated onager assault, that whole corner of the fort was going to go soon. And then they would be in.

Time to reply.

If only he had a squad of superventores – special forces, ‘over-comers’ – but they were all with the field army nowadays. Or a few cohorts of Aetius’ superb, reformed Palatine Legion from the West. The frontier legions were expected to look after themselves. And so they would.

But it was looking bad. The arrow-machines on the south-west tower had both been smashed by that onager strike. The planking sagged. Most of the men had been smashed, too. It was carnage up there. He looked away. The north-west tower was charcoal. What fire-arrows the archers could get in were too few, and the tortoise well protected with iron plates.