Адриан Голдсуорти - The Fort

The scorpio shot again, killing an archer. One of the rear rank men took the place of the one who had fallen, breaking a warrior’s nose as he punched with the boss of his shield. Bran and Minura were on the bridge behind them, dodging or catching the few arrows still coming down, and the others doing their best to scramble up. Ferox’s gladius at last yanked free and the corpse fell. He stamped onto the body, nearly tripped, and the lurch meant that the warrior in front mistimed his slash and overbalanced. Ferox punched forward, then twisted round, using the shield to tip the Dacian off the bridge. Behind the man, another lifted his falx one-handed, but the tip caught on the roof as he swung and before he realised, the centurion had recovered and slashed his neck open to the bone.

Suddenly the floor of the tower was empty, save for the dying, and Ferox just saw a head bob away as a man went down the ladder to the next level. They had a moment.

‘Come on!’ Ferox said to the remaining veterans and they went to the trapdoor to stop anyone from coming back up. The enemy were bound to recover soon, but it would be hard for them to fight their way up.

‘You two!’ he called in the language of the tribes. ‘Up top.’ There must have been half a dozen archers or even more up top and three or four at least must still be alive, so Ferox sent Bran and Minura to deal with them. It was hard not to lead them, but the aim was to destroy the tower and he had to make sure that they held on until that was done. The boy led up the ladder and his ‘sister’ followed, but none of the veterans paid attention as the pretty girl showed her long legs. A spear came jabbing up the trapdoor, but the veteran closest had greaves and the point threw off a spark without doing any damage. Another legionary slashed at the shaft, breaking it.

There were cries from the upper level, feet stamping on the floor and the clash of weapons. The two men brought the oil and Ferox pointed them to the left-hand side. ‘There,’ he told them, and they piled the rags against the solid side wall and then emptied the pots of oil all over them. Something thick and warm dripped onto Ferox and he realised that it was blood, coming from cracks in the ceiling.

‘Time to go!’ he shouted in Latin and then switched to the tongue of Britannia. ‘Time to go!’ Bran came down the ladder, face flushed and smeared with blood, but grinning from ear to ear. Minura’s boots appeared after him.

‘There were five,’ Bran said. ‘ Thetatus ,’ he added using army slang for dead. Vindex had taken to the word and the boy must have picked it up from him.

‘Quick.’ Ferox pointed his sword back towards the rampart. ‘Go! Go!’ The men who had prepared the fire ran. One stumbled as an arrow drove through the scales of his armour and almost tumbled off the bridge until the other caught him. Bran and Minura went next, leaping nimbly down onto the parapet.

One of the veterans hissed as a sica slashed up into the tip of his boot. ‘Bastard!’ He jabbed down, but could not reach his enemy.

‘Get him out of here!’ Ferox shouted to the others. ‘I’ll hold ’em back!’

The wounded veteran shrugged off the others and limped away.

‘You sure, sir?’ one asked.

‘Yes, go!’ Ferox glanced back at the men with the torches. ‘Light it!’ a Dacian yelled as he came up the ladder, sica ready. Ferox pushed the blade aside with the edge of his scutum and kicked the man in the face, stamping down again as he staggered. The warrior fell.

Already Ferox could feel the heat from the spreading flames. Everyone else had gone, so he ran back over the bridge and tried to vault across the parapet. His foot caught and he went sprawling headlong, shield and sword flying away before slamming onto the far edge of the walkway and sliding half way down the slope, his breath knocked out of him.

‘Very pretty,’ one of the veterans said. ‘Like a salmon.’

Minura was beside him, helping him up as he panted. Her face was pitying, and then Bran appeared, still excited.

‘It’s burning!’ he shouted, ‘it’s burning!’ The wood inside must have been dry or the shape of the tower acted like a chimney because the fire was shooting upwards and black smoke rising high. Dacians were trying to beat at the flames with cloaks, but it was too late. Some ran across the bridge towards the wall, and the veterans stood up to meet them, striking at their legs. They fell and the ten men behind had nowhere to go because the tower itself was an inferno. Some burned and some jumped and the rest came forward only to be killed. The ropes burned through and the veterans managed to lever the edge of the bridge off the parapet with their swords until it flapped down against the front of the blazing tower.

The attack was not over, and many more men died before the Dacians gave in. They had plenty of ladders and a great deal of courage, and time and again men fought their way onto the parapet. Ferox led charge after charge to clear them off, and took a blow to the side that did not pierce his mail, but made a great bruise. Bran and Minura were always with him, and they worked as a pair, moving like dancers, each covering the other, dodging and cutting. The boy lost his helmet, took little cuts to arms and legs, but kept going until he was covered in the blood of the men he killed. The woman was untouched, and more than once she parried a blow that would have cut him down.

There was a moment when Ferox thought that the fort had fallen, and then his wife appeared at the head of her Brigantes, surging up the bank behind the rampart and killing all the Dacians who had broken through. He had not seen her fight for a long while and had forgotten her deadly grace, so that he marvelled even as he feared for her. Yet though tall and strong warriors fell on either side of her – several dying willingly as they used their bodies to protect her – she passed through unscathed, although her shield was left as little more than fragments by the end of the day.

The Dacians gave in just when he thought that the Romans could take no more, but the cost was dreadful. Sabinus was beheaded by a falx, Dionysius, returned to duty with a bandage over his ruined eye, lost his right leg and bled to death before he could be helped. Ephippus had his head torn off by a thrashing cable when the monâkon suddenly ripped itself apart as they were preparing to lob another stone into the mass of attacking warriors. Ferox did not know whether the repairs to the old machine had simply proved too weak or whether someone had tampered with it.

Thirty-nine more soldiers were dead, three times that so badly wounded that they might die and would certainly not walk for some time. There were hundreds more Dacians dead outside the walls and dozens inside to be tipped out when enough men had the strength to do the task. Piso was pale when he came down from the tower and for once said little and did not even leer at Claudia Enica when she passed. She was whole, and Ferox rejoiced because of that, but even she was subdued. Although she had fought and killed men many times, he knew that she had only ever been in one real battle before she came to the fort, and this was slaughter upon slaughter. The enemy were losing many more than the garrison, but since there were so many more of them still to attack it did not really matter. Ferox doubted that they could repulse another assault on that scale, because there were no longer enough men to man the walls and plug the gaps. Half of him wondered whether to let the Dacians know that the monâkon was ruined, so that they could go on their way. It probably did not matter anymore. After so much killing the enemy were bound to want revenge.

Ferox had less than two hundred and fifty men reasonably whole, and a few dozen more who could help if they were not required to move too much. That was far too few to hold walls as long as this against any real attack, especially as there were few missiles left. Apart from the hospital many of the rooms in the principia and praetorium were filled with wounded, mainly lying on the floor, on straw where it was available and on nothing where it was not. Ephippus had almost finished his acropolis and there ought just to be room for them all to squeeze in. He had already moved half the remaining food there. They might last a day or two more or they might not, depending on how determined the Dacians were to kill them. The trick was to delay the Dacians, hold the ramparts as long as they could and then pull back to the stronghold with as little loss as they could manage.