‘Pull back!’ Vespasian shouted at the auxiliaries and tugging on a couple of shoulders. ‘Pull back four paces and give them space.’
The auxiliaries obeyed his command, even though it ran contrary to their martial instincts to press forward onto the enemy, and stepped backwards. The sudden release of pressure freed the lolling corpses jammed up against the shield wall and they slithered to the ground leaving blood smears marking their passage down the emblazoning of combined moons and stars. The conscripts revealed by them cheered at their enemy’s retreat and then were pushed forward to trip over their slaughtered comrades, landing at the auxiliaries’ feet and falling prey immediately to the razor points of spathae that ripped necks and backs, slicing through vertebrae and muscle with sprays and slops of blood and agonised screams.
‘Now forward!’ Vespasian yelled, barging into the front rank, his eyes slitted and his lips drawn back in a bloodied-lipped snarl. ‘Magnus, follow us up with as many men as you can get and stop the gaps!’
Vespasian and his small command stepped over the dead and, with nothing between their blades and the living flesh of their foe penned as they were like the beasts they resembled, began to slaughter; this time taking care not to press forward so hard as to form an upright cadaver-barricade. Vespasian felt the joy once more of working his blade; reaping lives with every combined thrust, twist and pull, stamping his feet forward and punching with his shield boss as liquids and semi-solids splattered down his legs and onto his feet, warm and glutinous between his toes, emanating foul stenches and creating a dangerously slimy surface underfoot. On they pressed, forcing many of the Parthians to jump from the walkway and take their chances with fractured limbs in the street below rather than face the four blades that leapt, at groin height or at chest or belly, from between the solid, short wall of shields, blood-slicked and deadly. Magnus and the auxiliaries following up dealt with each of the crenels as they were cleared, throwing men back with ripped throats and eyeless sockets, howling their last down to a shattered death on the growing mounds of mortally wounded and lifeless bodies.
From the opposing direction the other auxiliaries took heart from the progress of their comrades and held their shields firm, eviscerated corpses pressed hard against them, making a solid barrier through which there was no retreat for the doomed conscripts who screamed to gods deaf to their plight as their lives were ripped from slashed bodies.
Vespasian’s breaths became ragged with exertion but he forced his muscles to power on, unwilling to forgo the joy of slaughter that had not been felt for so long as he had wallowed through the mire of imperial politics populated by men who could never live as intensely as he did at this moment. Iron-tanged blood, urine, faeces, sweat and fear cloyed his nose and the clash of weapons, the cries of the wounded and dying of both the victors and the vanquished alike rang shrill in his ears. But then a new odour penetrated his focused mind and a different sound accompanied it: acrid fumes and shattering impacts. Vespasian stepped back to let a second ranker take his place and glanced above to see an earthenware pot trailing fire and black smoke flash across the sky. He followed its trajectory and watched it smash onto the corner of a roof in the second level of the city, exploding into a maelstrom of flames that stuck to the tiles and walls as if they themselves were burning. He turned to see an auxiliary stare, transfixed in horror at the sky for an instant before the man’s head disintegrated with a puff of blood, flesh, brain and splintered bone, leaving his body standing, rigid, for a couple of gore-spouting heartbeats before crumpling to the ground still disgorging its contents.
The Parthian artillery had entered the fray and they were hurling both fire and stone.
‘What the fuck is that?’ Magnus puffed as yet another burning streak hissed overhead.
‘Naphtha!’ Vespasian shouted back, slamming the tip of his sword into the face of one of the last wounded conscripts left alive on the walkway; in each direction along the wall the fight to keep the cattle out continued in a brutal fashion that now seemed commonplace to Vespasian after so much violence. ‘Tryphaena warned me about it; she said it’s the spawn of an eastern god of fresh water.’
‘Bollocks, spawn can’t burn; it’s laid in water.’ Magnus ducked involuntarily as the wind of a solid shot passed overhead.
Vespasian finally saw the sight that he had been waiting for and turned to his friend; a grin split his blood-splattered face. ‘It’s a fire god that lives in water which doesn’t quench his flames so of course his spawn can burn.’
‘Oh, River-god fire,’ Magnus said, watching another smoking missile shoot by. ‘I know it; useful stuff it is too.’
Vespasian’s surprise at Magnus having heard of this weapon was tempered by a welcome sight. ‘But we’re now going to fight their fire with heat of our own.’ As he spoke, teams of auxiliaries from Fregallanus’ cohort, led by a centurion, jogged down the street with iron cauldrons on solid wooden stretchers insulated by soaked leather. They double-timed up the steps and the centurion saluted.
Vespasian did not wait for his report. ‘Is this all?’ he asked, counting a dozen pots.
‘No, sir, just the first batch; there’re at least six more batches of this size to come.’
‘Very good, centurion; we’ll start on this section.’ He pointed to a crenel at which two auxiliaries were crouching taking it in turns to repel a seemingly endless stream of conscripts; all along the wall similar scenarios were being played out as the defenders kept low through fear of losing their heads to well-aimed solid artillery shots. ‘Take that crenel, then every fifth one; that should give them pause for thought.’
With a perfunctory salute the centurion led his men off at a crouching lope as streaks of flame and black smoke passed overhead to explode as fireballs in the city beyond; heavy stones crashed into the parapet and skimmed through crenels with eruptions of human meat, of both attackers and defenders alike, spattering over the walkway.
Wishing to set an example, Vespasian stood erect, open to the artillery, and watched the first team lay down its stretcher; with dampened leather gloves two of them lifted the cauldron by a chain, attached to either side, onto the crenel as the auxiliaries defending it fell back after a flurry of lightning sword thrusts. They pushed the iron cauldron across the stone, steam issuing from their gloves, until it reached the lip and then the other two men lifted a wooden pole from the stretcher, placed it on the cauldron’s rim and pushed, tipping it forward as their comrades held the chains fast. The heated oil within it began to dribble down and then pour slowly out as the cauldron toppled forward until, with a sudden surge as it crashed onto its side, the oil gushed down onto the skin and into the eyes of those unfortunate enough to be on the ladder below.
The screams of freshly blinded men pierced the battle’s rage as the sirens’ calls cut through the wrath of a storm. The cauldron was dragged back and an auxiliary leant through the crenel to pull in the vacated ladder; below, the enemy were too intent on scraping the searing gelatinous fluid from their melting skin to notice. A torch was then flung down to ignite the oil; it flashed in an instant, raging with an intensity that almost matched the Naphtha conflagrations blazing within the city, but outdid them for murderous effect in the cramped conditions beneath the wall as men, already in torment, burst into flame. Another clutch of desolate shrieks tore through the din and then more and more as the rest of the cauldrons were emptied of their oil or superheated sand whose scalding grains inveigled their way into clothing and orifices to agonising effect. One cauldron, struck by a direct hit from a fist-sized stone projectile that shattered it, exploded its contents backwards, spattering the auxiliaries around it so that they shared the fate that was being meted out to so many of the human cattle threatening the southern wall.