Адриан Голдсуорти - The Fort

No one came. The archers were trading shots with the Romans on the tower, keeping them busy for the moment, but as he watched one of them was pitched over by the bolt of an engine.

‘My lord!’ One of his warriors was calling and pointing excitedly. There was the red of flames coming from a building ahead of them, which showed that the old man was doing his job. Then there was the thunder of horses and he saw a line of Roman cavalry charging into the score or so of warriors who had gone down the road. A Roman was shouting and he saw a big man with a centurion’s crest coming in against the flank of his men in a lone attack.

It would not be long now. There was no sign of any break-in from the front gate, and while he could not see the rear gate from here, surely there would have been some sign by this time if they had succeeded.

Brasus rested his falx on the ground and touched one of his warriors on the shoulder to attract his attention. The man carried an ox horn trumpet slung over his shoulder.

‘Blow the signal!’ Brasus told him. ‘We’re going!’ He could sense their disappointment, but knew that they would obey. If they waited much longer there would be no chance of escape and he wanted to win, so he would return and take this fort another day. ‘Don’t run straight. There is an engine up on the tower, so dodge as you go. All of you first, and I shall follow!’

The plan had failed in spite of all he had done, so Brasus ran.

FLAVIUS FEROX ACHED and was so tired that he knew that if he sat, let alone lay down, he would be asleep in moments. There was too much to be done while they had the chance and not enough time or pairs of hands to do it. Everyone was exhausted, so he had divided the fit men into four groups, and each would get two hours’ rest while the others worked. It was not much, and might even mean that they woke even more weary than before, but it was the best he could manage for the moment. He had to order the officers to try to sleep when their turn came, because as soon as they realised that he planned to keep going they were eager to do the same.

‘We did it, sir, we did it!’ Sabinus’ exhaustion manifested itself in an unceasing flow of chatter. This was the first time that he had been in any sort of serious fight, and all the fear and exhilaration combined with the sheer relief at still being alive left him elated. Ferox had allocated the centurion to sleep with the last group, the men he judged to be freshest because he doubted that the man would be able to sleep at the moment. So together they toured the fort, smiling, encouraging whenever they could, telling the men that they had fought well, and sometimes also yelling at them to work harder and faster.

‘We’ve won, sir!’ Sabinus repeated. ‘Well done, boys, well done!’ he added as they passed a group of soldiers carrying baskets full of stones picked up from outside the walls. They were one of several teams scouring the ditches and ground in front of the rampart, recovering any missile that could be used again.

‘We have won for the moment,’ Ferox said after the men had gone on back into the fort. ‘They’ll be back.’

‘Won’t be so keen next time though, will they, sir?’ Sabinus spread his arms to indicate the enemy dead. ‘Over two hundred of the beggars – apart from the ones we caught inside. Make ’em think twice, won’t it?’

Ferox reckoned that something like a thousand enemies had attacked them, which meant that, with the fifty-one corpses that had been picked up inside the walls and then carried out to where they would be burned, around a quarter of the Dacians were dead. That was a heavy price for a failed attack, but it had not been easy. The ones charged by Maximus and his cavalry died quickly even though they fought hard. One, a stocky bare-chested warrior with a falx, had sliced away the front legs of Ferox’s horse, as he was bearing down on him, pitching the centurion far and high and giving him his worst bruises of the night, He was lucky that nothing was broken, and luckier still that Maximus had appeared and hacked down before the staggering warrior recovered himself and came for Ferox.

Thirty more men had got inside the fort and they had died hard, fighting until each one had to be killed. They were Bastarnae, that odd, half-German, half-the-gods-knew-what race, with their hair tied into knots at the side of the heads, and their fondness for falxes and long spears. Ferox had almost forgotten the ferocity with which they fought, as they charged like wild animals. Dacians, especially the aristocrats following the code of their stern religion, fought as if they despised life and willingly sacrificed it, but they also fought with skill and cunning. Bastarnae fought as if violence itself was a joy to them and there was no tomorrow, no gods judging the deeds of men.

When Sabinus had seen what the thirty Bastarnae had done in the hospital he had vomited again and again until there was nothing left to come out. Plenty of others had done the same, for the warriors had not simply killed, but mutilated everyone they found. There had been thirty-seven patients in the rooms, a couple of them men just brought in from the ramparts. One had survived by hiding in a big box used to store blankets, but all of the others were dead, hacked into pieces where they lay, hands and arms severed as they tried to protect their heads. Most of the staff were dead as well, along with some slaves and two wives who had been visiting sick husbands. The women’s bodies were barely recognisable, just like the men’s, left in pools of their own blood with more spattered up on the walls.

‘I wonder if they…’ Sabinus could not finish the sentence as he started to gag.

‘There was no time,’ Ferox told him. He had not been sick, even when he saw this and the reek filled his nostrils, and wondered what this said about him, but was too tired to think and too frightened of what he might learn. Perhaps it was the nightmare thoughts of what could have happened if the Bastarnae had broken into the praetorium instead of the hospital and he had found Lepidina like this, or her son, or Philo and his wife or any of the others.

A thousand had attacked and a quarter died, with more wounded who had been able to walk or had been carried away. There were no prisoners, wounded or whole. Ferox had been stunned by his fall and it took a while for his wits to recover. By then word of what had happened in the hospital had spread and no one was in the mood to take captives. He did not blame his men for sparing not a single Dacian and finishing off even the direly wounded with a quick thrust. There did not seem to have been any other Bastarnae in the attacking force, but to most of his men all the attackers were simply a murderous enemy to be killed like a mad dog. Ferox might even have given the order to execute any prisoners they had taken and kill all the wounded because such men would be a burden, needing to be guarded and fed. Still, it would have been useful to interrogate a few beforehand.

One thing that puzzled him was why there had been so few attackers, given the force Maximus had seen. The Dacians must have had a pretty good idea of the size of his garrison, and known that the cavalry had ridden away, yet had attacked with barely double his strength. It made little sense for them to launch the attack on the west gate without anyone to exploit it. If they had had a couple of thousand, Ferox suspected that the fort would have fallen and he and all the rest of them would now be dead or captive. He had left the west gate too weakly defended, since it seemed least threatened, and the men he had sent there were not his best. By all accounts Bellicus had made a fool of himself and his men had hesitated for too long and then broken. There could not have been many more men attacking the gate and rampart than defending it, which meant the way that the Dacians had got in was even more remarkable. There was talk of a tall warrior with a great falx scything through men as if they were wheat as he charged along the wall. He did not seem to be among the dead.