Fabianus said, “What are the orders, sir?”
“Hold this fort till I signal you to retire. Then fight your way out and make for the camp on the road. If you can’t hold the town walls then pull your men back on this fort and burn the city. Leave them nothing that they can use; neither food nor fuel nor shelter.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Did you get that garrison established on the broken bridge?”
“Yes, sir, Barbatio is there with fifty men and two ballistae. They will have a job getting at him unless they try to burn him out from underneath.”
“Good. Quintus, it is time for you to go. I will join you shortly. If I don’t, then you command.”
He saluted and left and I watched his escort follow him out of the gates.
“How did they get so far north with Goar’s men on the watch?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps Goar has played us false. Perhaps they are only Burgundians opposite Bingium. Perhaps he couldn’t help it. I just don’t know.”
An hour later the sky paled a little and the whiteness of the snow merged with the grey of the horizon. Trees and woods came slowly into focus and the hills to the north seemed to stand up suddenly, like ghosts new risen from the dead. Behind me, in the fort, the last waggons were rumbling out of the gate, loaded with equipment and stores that Fabianus would not need; and trudging alongside the mules I recognised Fredbal, wearing armour now, a short sword buckled at his side. A signal glowed from the old camp behind the town where Marius commanded, to show that all was in order; while patrols tramped through the empty town, making a last check to see that everyone had left.
A centurion touched me on the arm. “They are coming,” he said quietly. The mist had lifted at last; the sun was rising in the east; and we could see.
I looked. The plain, that desolate waste of dead ground between their camp and the foothills, was alive with men, as an anthill is alive with ants. I had never seen such a host before. There were so many that they darkened the ground and the snow was blotted out. One column was making its way steadily across the plain at an angle so that it would reach the river opposite the lower island. Two more columns were moving directly for the upper island, and a fourth column was heading straight towards the broken bridge. Each column was spread over a front of at least four hundred yards, while behind, in the distance, could be seen waggons, mules, ponies and still more people. It was not an army on the move: it was an entire nation.
Fabianus said, “We shall never stop them.”
“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “They are weak with starvation, and desperate too. We can stop them if we fight hard enough. They’ve never fought a legion before.”
It was an incredible sight. I knew now why the Huns—so it was said—struck such terror into the hearts of their foes. It was the sheer, massive weight of the numbers; the appalling sight of that remorseless advance, as though the whole world had gathered together in one place, and by the simple act of walking forward, threatened to overwhelm it. The columns came on steadily and without haste. It seemed as though nothing would be able to stop them. On the river’s edge they paused for a fraction of time and then came out slowly onto the ice, onto the surface of that infernal river that had for so long been our friend and which had now betrayed us. The going was difficult for them, men slipped and stumbled and fell, scrambling awkwardly from one frozen patch to the next; and, by straining my eyes, I could see the banners they carried in their advance, long poles to which were fixed the bleached and grinning skulls of their enemies; our own dead, no doubt, from the fight on the east bank.
They were a third of the way across now and the columns facing the islands were flattening out, like the heads of mushrooms, very close to the banks where my legionaries crouched in concealment.
I raised my sword above my head and then dropped it. A ballista fired and its flaming ball was the signal for which my men waited.
The garrisons on the islands opened fire. Balls of glowing flame arched through the air and crashed, one after one, into the massed ranks of the enemy. The arrow hail flew and men dropped with choking grunts, or cowered, screaming, their hands over their heads as the unquenchable fire hit them. The bolts from the carroballistae hammered gaps in the line and men died at the rate of one every three seconds. Our men had the range to a yard and they fired not only at those directly advancing, but at those behind them and at those upon the banks in their rear. It was impossible to miss. It appeared to be equally impossible to check their advance. For every man that died another filled his place, and if the front ranks checked or tried to take cover, they were pressed upon by the weight of men from behind.
For over five hundred days we had halted their march, checked their ambitions, forced them into hunger, made them watch their wives starve and their children die. Every death in that camp of every man, of every woman, and of every child, no matter what the cause might have been, was blamed on us. We were the enemy and they would destroy us out of fear and out of hatred and out of revenge. They were a christian people, and it must be so, though only a pagan, perhaps, could understand.
The south island, closer to the east bank than the others, was quickly surrounded and the worst of the early fighting took place there. It was completely protected by a high palisade and wooden towers, from which our archers shot them down while they beat at the wooden defences with their axes. They reached for it over the piled bodies of their dead, and I knew it would not be long before we were over-run. They had ladders and poles and ballistae of their own, crude affairs, but effective enough, and I could see that these were already in action, from the fireballs that came from the east bank. The northern island was under fire now, and the column advancing on the bridge had been checked by Barbatio and his ballistae. They tried to spread out and encircle him but the fire power of the defenders was too great, and the tribesmen wavered and then broke back to the protection of their own bank.
By midday the garrison of the south island were in difficulties. They were completely surrounded; our fireballs were neutralised by the snow and ice, and all our efforts to dislodge them proved a failure. I nodded to a waiting man and a trumpet sounded; and the garrison, who had not lost a man, fired the positions they had held so well and turned and cut their way out and retreated grimly, in testudo formation, back across the ice to the harbour area. Had it been summer, or even a normal winter, the island would have been a furnace, a wall of fire they could not penetrate, but the snow again neutralised the effects of the fire, and though some damage was caused, it was not great. When the flames had died down the tribesmen crowded on to the island and used our broken defences for cover while our ballistae from the camp fired on them without pause.
“Shorten the range,” I said. “The ice is hummocked badly on this side. It will slow them up considerably.”
“We shall never stop them,” said a soldier, panic in his voice.
“Pull yourself together,” I said. “These are only men, not gods.”
The lower island was in difficulties now and the enemy’s losses were enormous.
“Fire,” shouted Fabianus, and the arrow hail flew from the walls at the column climbing the ice ridges once more towards the broken bridge. Even when they reached the bank they would have an outer palisade, a triple row of sunken stakes with iron hard points, between them and the ditches. They would have to climb their own dead to reach the fort at all. I did not think that their ration of courage would last that long.
All afternoon the fighting continued. The enemy were held in check in their efforts to take both the harbour and lower islands. They had failed to storm the positions and crouched behind their own dead, flicking arrows at our men whenever they showed themselves, and waited for their chiefs to make a decision. Their waggons lined the east bank now and groups of horsemen were plunging down the slope onto the ice, while there was a constant movement to and fro, of men carrying arms and bundles of arrows. By now, however, Barbatio was in difficulties. He had been half encircled by the enemy, and the Vandals were moving across the river to his right, keeping out of range and probing the defensive power of the town walls. It would not be long before they outflanked the town altogether.