I saw the capricorn of the VIth legion and the vine leaves on yellow of King Agrippa’s auxiliaries amongst the units gathered at its foot. The siege tower itself was bigger than any I had seen before, but the Antonia still dwarfed it, and even the walls of the temple were as high as its roof.
Beside me, Tears said, ‘It took less than a day to subduethe outer city, but the hard nut is here. Our ballistas have loosed all their shot, our catapults are out of bolts and still we haven’t touched them. Taurus and his men are breaking up bits of the houses so at least we’ll have something to fire tomorrow. But you should take a look at this.’ He turned me gently by the shoulders until I was facing the other way.
‘What in the god’s name is that?’
‘That,’ Tears said cheerfully, ‘is the king of Judaea’s palace. It was built by Herod the Great who wanted it to outmatch anything in Rome. It does. There are baths in there. We have use of them.’
I should think there were baths in a place like that; public baths and private baths and small individual baths for the king and his wives. Or wife. I was never very sure with the Hebrews how many wives they took. Whatever it was, the palace was quite easily the largest, most opulent building I had seen in my life.
Four storeys high, faced in unblemished white stone, it had guards set at the foot of its marble steps and an oak palisade stretching beyond one wall, from behind which came the sounds of ‘Is that a beast garden?’
‘Well done.’ Tears was grinning widely enough to split his face in half. ‘They have Berber horses in there, and hounds from Egypt. Horgias says…’
Berber horses! I felt my jaw grow slack. My father would have given his right arm even to see one of those. And to have a foal sired by one… I tried to remember where the bay mare was; I had left her with the cavalry, so Cadus must have brought her ‘Demalion?’
‘Sorry.’ I was swaying like a tree in a storm. I caught Tears’ arm and made myself stand upright. ‘What was it that Horgias said?’
Tears was already moving me back towards the tent. ‘He said that until very recently there was a cheetah in a cage in the beast garden, but it’s gone now. He plans to find who’s taken it. Look… you need to lie down.’
‘No, I-’
‘Yes.’
He took me back to the cot, laid me down and pulled the sheepskin over me for warmth.
‘I’m glad you’re alive. We’ll get you well now you’re awake. And when you can stand for the count of a thousand without falling over, Lupus has a gift for you that’ll make it all worth while.’
‘A spear?’
It lay across Lupus’ hands, living silver in the sunlight, its shaft of dark walnut smooth as the skin of a newborn foal and pearled with grain marks. About the neck was tied a scarf of scarlet silk that rippled in the wind.
I tore my eyes from it to look at Lupus. ‘I don’t understand.’
He didn’t sigh. He didn’t smile, not even his ghost-smile with the half-raised eyebrow, but then there were twenty-three thousand men standing behind us, arrayed in front of the king’s palace in Jerusalem, and we had little time before Gallus wanted all of us at the walls for a fifth day of assault.
‘It’s a spear.’ Lupus drew out each word, slowly. ‘Strictly speaking, the Ancient Unadorned Spear granted for extreme valour in the face of the enemy, that valour having been displayed in a battle or skirmish that the recipient was not ordered to undertake. I have adorned it a little.’ He tilted it so the red scarf flickered. ‘I believe the gods of maniple and century will not be overly offended.’
‘Not ordered?’ I wasn’t thinking clearly; that was obvious to both of us.
‘I didn’t order you back through the Beth Horon pass. Youwent of your own volition and then, I am told, single-handedly attacked the ben Giora cousins. You have won honour for yourself, your century, your cohort and your legion.’
There was a gap, when I was supposed to speak, and could think of nothing to say. My gaze drifted to the Hebrew temple, which remained intact, unstormed, impervious to everything we had thrown at it.
For two days I had lain still, listening to Taurus and his engineers telling the centurions how to do their jobs, for the command post was less than ten paces away from my sick tent.
The conversations had become sharper, shorter and less amicable as the days went on, and still there were Hebrews on the temple’s heights and nothing we could do to them. Our ballistas were hurling Taurus’ reclaimed pieces of masonry, but the wall had not so much as shown a crack.
With the ram we had brought with us, the one that had burned at the end of the Beth Horon pass, we could have ‘Centurion?’ Lupus sighed and scowled together, both of which were surprisingly unfrightening. ‘Just take the spear. I will assume your extreme slowness is as a result of your injuries and excuse you from the assault on the walls today.’
That got my attention as nothing else had. My head still ached, I vomited at unpredictable intervals and the cut on my calf, which was an inch deep along its length, had opened at its lower end and was oozing a clear, straw-coloured fluid, but now that I could stand unaided I had no intention at all of leaving the sixth cohort to assault the wall alone.
I held out my hands to receive the spear.
The whole XIIth legion cheered, and all the auxiliaries. Three days before, when first I woke, the thunderous noise they made would have driven me to my knees, weeping. But time is a great healer and the sight of a spear such as this, the chance to hold it, were worth even more.
I ran my hand down the haft, feeling the beauty, and tilted the head to catch the shimmer sheen of true silver. By accident, I caught sight of my own reflection there, a wedge of dark-hollowed eye and nose and the corner of my mouth with lines of pain and tension all round it.
‘Thank you.’ I glanced sideways at Lupus.
He smiled a rare, real smile. ‘You earned it. Now go back to your tent and drink some water, and if you can hold it down you can lead your cohort into the assault.’
I drank water. I kept it down for first time since waking. Horgias, who held the water jug before and after, said, ‘Amazing what a bit of silver can do for a man’s health.’
‘A bit?’ I hefted the spear. ‘This is solid silver. Melted down, it’s worth a small farm in…’ I drifted to silence. ‘Not anywhere you’d want to live.’
I had been going to say Hyrcania, but I was talking to Horgias, and anywhere in the Parthian empire was anathema to him.
So we left the spear in the wagon and I dressed and still was not sick and together we walked to the head of the century. Tears had been ready to lead them. Macer was there, holding his horn. I saw them both shrug and get ready to swap Tears’ shield for the horn.
‘No, stay as you are,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t hurt to have someone else learning the signals. Tears can stay as Macer’s shield-man. Taurus, stay with Horgias.’
‘And you?’ someone asked.
‘Don’t worry about me.’ I grinned, careless of the listening gods. ‘I’m indestructible. I’ll outlive you all.’
I remember very little of the assault on the walls of Jerusalem that day. The men of the VIth who had been at the left flank in the battle at Gabao were still taking the brunt of it; theyhad a dozen centurions all wanting to earn a crown that would trump my silver spear.
The first attack was competent enough; we had Taurus’ siege tower and any number of ladders, and engineers on hand to make sure the latter were the right height so that they were tall enough to reach the top of the walls, but not so high that they overlapped and so were easy to push down.