Fire in the East (37 page)

‘So, who was it we just killed?’ He spoke conversationally.

‘Prince Hamazasp the son of Hamazasp the King of Georgia.’ Strong but hard-to-read emotions played across Bagoas’s face. ‘If his spirit is not avenged it will forever more be a stain on the honour of the King of Kings. Now there can be no quarter.’

With a child-like spontaneity Ballista threw his helmet in the air and caught it. ‘That should concentrate the boys’ minds.’ Laughing, he turned to the soldiers on the gatehouse. ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy letting those
magi
get their hands on me.’ The men laughed in turn. By nightfall, the exchange, often altered and embellished, would have reached every corner of the city.

‘How long until their line comes into extreme artillery range?’

‘At least a quarter of an hour, maybe more.’ As was only right, Mamurra, the
praefectus fabrum,
the man who was meant to know siege machinery, answered his
Dux.

‘Then, Calgacus, can you find us some food? Trying to kill the despot of half the known world has made me very hungry.’

Demetrius watched his kyrios eating bread and cold pheasant, talking and joking with the other men: Mamurra, Turpio, Maximus, Antigonus, the crews of the artillery pieces. They were passing a jug from hand to hand. The young Greek had never admired Ballista more. Did the kyrios plan these things or did they just come to him in a divinely inspired flash? Did he always know what he was doing? However it was, it made no difference: it was an act of genius. The hideous actions of the
magi,
the death of the Georgian prince and the exchange with Bagoas came together to tell a story that anyone could follow. By nightfall every soldier in Arete would be stiffened by the knowledge of what would happen to him if he fell into the hands of the Sassanids: capitulation meant torture and death; better to die on one’s feet, weapon in hand.

Soon enough the Persians drew near the line of signs that marked 400 paces from the wall, maximum artillery range. The
Dux Ripae
had repeatedly stressed the need for these range markers, and those at 200 paces, to be inconspicuous. They were to be visible to the artillerymen but not to attract the attention of the besiegers. The majority of artillery crews had gone for carefully arranged, hopefully natural-looking low humps of dun-coloured rocks. There was not an artilleryman in the town who had not laughed, although only surreptitiously - never when the big man or his vicious-looking bodyguard were around - at the markers opposite the Palmyrene Gate chosen by the Dux himself: ‘well, brother, that is a northern barbarian’s idea of inconspicuous: two bloody great piles of stone followed by a bloody great wall, the whole lot painted white.’

The Persians were advancing sensibly, coming on in good order. The main body was advancing at the speed at which the
ballistae
could be moved. The mantlets, which could be transported considerably faster, were staying with the artillery to try to shield them. The three great siege towers were lagging quite some distance behind.

Ballista’s eyes were concentrated on the two white stones 400 paces away. He held a piece of bread and cheese in one hand and a jug in the other, both completely unconsidered. When the Persians passed the stones, they would have to advance for 200 paces into the teeth of the artillery on the town wall. Hauling their artillery forward, for those 200 paces the Sassanids would be unable to hit back. The northerner had ordered his artillery to concentrate exclusively on the enemy
ballistae
and the men moving them. Initially, little could be expected - the range was too great for any accuracy - but things should improve as the slow-moving targets came closer. Knock out
as many of them as we can before they can get at us.
With luck, the stone-throwers would wreck some enemy engines. The bolt-throwers could not damage the
ballistae
themselves, but they could kill and alarm the men moving them and this would slow down their progress, keep them longer unable to strike back, longer exposed to the stone-throwers on the town wall.

Ballista nodded to Antigonus. The standard-bearer raised the red flag. Twang - slide - thump, twang - slide - thump: up and down the wall the artillery opened up.

The first volley achieved nothing and after a couple of minutes there was no semblance of volley shooting. The crews of the artillery pieces worked at different speeds. Ballista was far from convinced that the quickest were necessarily the best - better to take a little extra time and aim well. It cost him some effort not to take over the laying of the big twenty-pounder next to him. The northerner went to scratch his nose, found a jug in one hand, food in the other. He drank and ate.

Cheers, loud cheers, from the wall off to the right. Ballista looked just in time to see a wheel spinning in the air like a tossed coin. A cloud of dust rose from the plain. Small, brightly clad figures staggered out of it. One of the stone-throwers towards the north of the wall had scored a direct hit. One Sassanid
ballista
down, nineteen to go.

More cheers, this time off to the left. Ballista could not see the cause. Maximus pointed. ‘There! There! Gods below, that’s fucked him.’ Ballista followed the direction of the Hibernian’s outstretched arm. Way, way out from the wall, way out behind the main body of the Persians, was the southernmost of the three siege towers. The great Sassanid City Taker was leaning drunkenly forward, its front wheels deep in the ground.

‘Tyche,’
said Mamurra. ‘I do not think that we dug any pits that far out. Its weight must have made it go through into one of the very furthest out of the old underground tombs. Anyway, they will not get that brute out again today.’

Any battle, like anything in nature, goes in phases. Now for a time the tide was with the defenders, and good news flowed in. As Ballista finished his bread and cheese two messengers treading on each other’s heels ran up the steps to the top of the gatehouse.

While the first spoke Ballista passed the jug from his own hand to the other waiting messenger.

The Sassanid attack on the north wall had come to nothing. A great mass of men - it was reckoned there were about 5,000 of them - had been drawing up on the plateau north of the ravine. They were still a very long way off, at the very limits of artillery range, when Centurion Pudens ordered the bolt-thrower on the postern tower to try a shot at them. The
ballistarius,
more in hope than expectation, had aimed at the leading rider, a richly clad man on a gloriously caparisoned horse. The bolt had taken the Sassanid off the horse easy as could be, left him pinned to the ground. Their leader dead, the reptiles had swarmed away.

Ballista thanked the messenger, and gave him some coins. The other handed the jug over to his colleague and told his news.

The Persians, from somewhere, had got together five boats and crammed about 200 men into them. Stupidly, they had followed the western bank of the river down to Arete. As soon as the boats came into range of the bolt-throwers on the two north-eastern towers, the boatmen, local men who had been pressed into service, dived over the sides, swam to shore and deserted. From then on the boats were in utter confusion. They were little better than drifting while being shot at from the elevation of the walls by bolt-throwers and bowmen. When eventually they tried to land near the fish market, they were easy targets for at least ten artillery pieces and no fewer than 500 archers from the
numerus
of Anamu. Three of the boats capsized; one foundered just short of the nearest island in the Euphrates; one drifted away downriver. Most of those not killed by missiles were drowned. Only about twenty seemed to have escaped downriver, and another twenty or so were stuck on the island.

As the tale ended, with the Sassanids on the island, Antigonus looked enquiringly at Ballista, who enigmatically said yes, adding, if they were all still around that night. The northerner thanked the messenger and again parted with some coins.

But the tide cannot flow one way for ever. All too soon, and at the cost of only one more
ballista,
the Sassanid artillery had crossed their zone of impotence. They had reached their intended shooting positions just within effective range. Persians swarmed about, dismounting the artillery from their rollers, setting up protective screens, putting the ammunition to hand, winching back the sliders, placing the missiles, aiming and releasing.

Ballista felt a slight tremor run through the gatehouse as a stone struck. The time of carefree observation was over. Now the air had become a thing of menace; everywhere the tearing, ripping noises of missiles. To the right a man screamed as a bolt shot him from the wall walk. To the left a short section of battlements exploded in stone splinters as a missile struck. A man lay in the middle of the debris moaning. Another lay silent. Passing the word for carpenters to erect a makeshift battlement, Ballista reflected that, other things being equal, the defenders should win this exchange of artillery. They had twenty-five
ballistae
to eighteen, and the advantages of a higher position, as well as stone, not wooden, walls for protection.

Yet other things were not equal. The two City Takers remaining mobile had crept forward into maximum artillery range. Just when the enemy would be shooting back, the northerner was going to have to order his
ballistarii
to change targets. As they came in range, the huge siege towers would be the sole targets. Now it would be the turn of the defending artillerymen to endure shot without being able to return it; there can be little worse for any soldier. About to send off the runners to give the order, Ballista added that any
ballistarius
who aimed at anything other than one of the siege towers once they were within range would be flogged to death.
Allfather, the exercise of power has corrupted my soul.

Leaving their
ballistae
200 paces from the wall, the main body of Persians huddled as close as possible behind the line of mobile shields. Men fell to traps underfoot and arrows slicing down from above. Yet to the defenders it seemed no time at all before the line of mantlets was established a mere fifty paces from the walls and the Persian bowmen were bending their bows. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand arrows; it was impossible to guess. Like a shadow passing over the face of the sun, they made the day grow darker.

All along the wall, and behind it, the arrows fell as thick as hail in the deep midwinter. On the wall, and in the streets and alleys behind, men fell. The archers on the wall shot back. The defenders had some advantages: they were higher up, well protected by stone crenellations and the stout shields of the legionaries; almost all their arrows found their mark - so vast was the number of Sassanids that they formed a dense target and the mantlets could not shelter them all. But it was an unequal contest: fewer than 650 bowmen against innumerable thousands.

Sassanid arrows were striking home. Defenders were falling - far too many. Ballista wondered if all his planning, his clever ruses, would prove in vain. Would sheer numbers prevail? Would sheer weight of missiles clear the walls and leave the city open?

Endurance. They just had to endure. Ballista knew that only discipline, old-fashioned Roman disciplina, could get them through. For nine nights and nine days the Allfather had hung on the tree of life. His side pierced by a spear, voluntarily the Allfather had endured on the tree to learn the secrets of the dead. The northerner smiled. So much for the
romanitas
of the
Dux Ripae.

The white draco hissing in the breeze attracted the full ferocity of the Sassanids. The air above the Palmyrene Gate was thick with missiles. Ballista was hunkered down behind the parapets in the midst of a makeshift shieldwall. It was hard to see or hear. Then, above the awful clamour of the storm of steel and stone rose the sound of cheering. Thin, half-swamped by the noise of battle, but exultant, came chanting:
‘Ro-ma! Ro-ma!’

Ballista peeked out around the crenellations. He jerked his head back into safety as an arrow snickered off the wall. He looked again. The northern half of the plain was enveloped in a great mushroom cloud of dust. Not wanting to tempt fate, Ballista retreated behind the parapet for a few moments. When he looked again the dust had cleared a little. He could see why his men were exulting. The northernmost City Taker was no more. In its place was a tortured tall frame of beams and girders. As Ballista watched, a man leapt from the top storey. The falling man, incongruously, looked as elegant as a pantomime dancer. Two, three, four more eastern men jumped to a certain death. Then, with a ponderous inevitability, the remains of the tower imploded.

A strange hush settled across the battlefield. The fighting slackened as both sides came to terms with the enormity of what had happened. The siege tower had been heading almost directly towards a tower housing one of the biggest pieces of artillery. The repeated impact of twenty-pound stones slamming in at a great pace must literally have shaken the City Taker apart.

Demetrius looked around. The fighting top of the Palmyrene Gate was littered, almost carpeted with spent missiles. As the fighting died down, defenders slumped down against the walls or the two enormous
ballistae.
Although he tried not to, the young Greek could not help repeatedly looking at the two corpses thrown in the corner. A slick pool of their mingled blood seeped out from under them. Demetrius both wanted and at the same time did not want to know their identity.

Was the fighting over? Zeus, Apollo, Athena and Artemis, please let it all be over, at least for today. Demetrius noticed some slaves carrying parcels and jars emerge from the trapdoor. They bent double as they moved. Stray missiles were still flying across the roof. For a moment the young Greek had no idea what the slaves were doing. Then, looking at the sky, he realized that it must already be towards the end of the fourth hour of daylight, the time that the
kyrios
had ordered the troops to take their early lunch. In one way the time had gone so quickly; in another, the screaming and the terror seemed to have lasted for days. Demetrius thought how Zeus, in the divine poetry of Homer, held back the day so that Odysseus and Penelope could enjoy their lovemaking and sleep. Today was nothing like that; Arete was nothing like Ithaka.