When the ladders made no impact and nobody had yet won anything but a blade or a slingstone shot at his face, then, exactly as I had heard done on the last two days, we rolled forward our three ballistas and hurled bits of masonry from the broken parts of the city at the walls, and when that made no discernible impact we hurled them over the walls at the defenders.
At last, when nothing else was working, we turned our attention on the gate to the northern end of the temple wall, which was at least made of wood, even if that wood was half an oak thick, studded with iron and solidly barred from the inside.
One look told us that it needed a proper ram to open it, which was one reason, I have no doubt, why the Hebrews had destroyed the one we’d brought with us.
In default of that, an enterprising centurion in the VIth had found some roof beams and lashed them together to make something almost as thick as a tree. Three times I saw him and his men try to get it near enough the door to ram it; three times they were forced back by the sheer number of stones, spears, arrows and — after we used the ballistas — great pieces of masonry that were rained on their heads.
We abandoned the assault at dusk and spent a frustrated night barely sleeping, with whole centuries of men set on watch in case the Hebrews tried to sally out of the gate and destroy our one remaining siege tower.
Lupus was outside my tent when I woke in the morning, before I had time even to walk to the latrines. He was carrying a length of dark brown, rough-woven wool, and what looked like a spear jutting beneath, and joined me as I threaded my way through the tents, talking as we went.
The morning was warm and cloyingly damp with a crimson tint to the clouds on the eastern horizon. I looked at them and made the sign against evil, for, more than anything, we wanted this to be over before the winter rains came.
Seeing me, Lupus nodded, tight-lipped. ‘Taurus and his engineers have been building us a new ram, a proper one on slings with a good thick roof over it, not the twig the Sixth were prodding away with yesterday. Gallus has given permission for a full-out assault on the gate at the northern end of the wall. He’ll deploy archers on either side to give us a chance at least to bring the ram within reach of it.’
It was what I would have done, only I would have done it five days previously. I pushed past a tent-load of auxiliaries to reach the latrine ditch and stood on its edge, pissing into the lime-dusted depths. Beside me, Lupus did the same.
‘Who takes the ram?’ I asked.
Lupus stretched a tight grin. ‘The Twelfth. The Sixth had their chance the past four days and failed: it’s our turn now. The first cohort will take the left side. Your men of the sixth will take the right, both sides in testudo. Horgias will lead them. Tears will take the standard and Macer the horn.’
I stared at him. My head ached as if someone had tied iron round it and was tightening the screw. ‘I’m well enough, I swear to you. I can-’
‘I’m sure you can. If you’re finished, come with me.’
I wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to squat at the latrine’s edge with Lupus standing over me frowning. I settled my tunic and followed him to the place behind the tents where the mules were tethered.
He turned abruptly to me. ‘Cadus says you can shoot a bow.’ And when I stared at him, ‘Apparently a spy called Pantera told him so when you were in Hyrcania.’
I frowned. Pantera hadn’t seen me shoot once. But Lupus wasn’t interested in my past; he was too busy enjoying my reaction to his own sleight of hand as he dropped the scruffy cloth he had been holding and revealed that what he held under it was not a spear, but a Parthian cavalry bow.
It was made of honey-coloured ashwood, deeply curved and sprung back at the ends, with a full, rounded belly wrapped in ramskin for a hand-hold and luck-marks of gods and heroes poker-burned all along the inner length of the pale, perfect wood. The string was horse sinew, rubbed with beeswax that sweetened the air between us.
It was alive with power and the promise of death; a weapon to die for, or at least to kill for.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.
Lupus’ grin had a satisfied air. ‘I won it in a game of dice from a centurion of the first cohort. He found it on the battlefield after Cadus had decimated the cataphracts. You were occupied at the other end of the pass at the time or I’m sure you’d have had the chance to win it in fair play. Here.’ He passed it to me. ‘Try it.’
Nobody had asked if I was an archer when I first joined the XIIth and I had been too sullen to volunteer the information. Later, when I might have offered, we had our own companies of Pannonian archers who were jealous of their lines in battle. In any case, it had been over ten years since I last held any bow, still less one as good as this, and I had no idea if I could hit a horse at ten paces.
I was going to say so, but my body knew better than my mind. Just looking at it made my arms itch as if I had shot it yesterday and must do so again to stay sane. I braced my hand against the ramskin on the belly and felt the paddingunder it, which had moulded to a hand larger than mine, begin to ease to my shape. I flexed the string and let so much honey into the air that I heard bees dance in my head. I eased it back to stillness.
Perfect. As good as Uncle Dorios’ bow had ever been.
‘Cadus said you learned the skill in your youth?’ Lupus ventured.
‘Did he?’ I was fumbling in my belt pouch for a spare thong to wrap round my wrist as a makeshift guard, not paying attention to Lupus, or what Cadus might have said, or to anything that wasn’t the bow.
Wordless, Lupus handed me an arrow. It was goose-fletched with a small, unbarbed point, not enough to stop a boar or a bear — or a son who had usurped his father’s throne — but enough to test out the bow’s strength and my skill.
I licked my finger and held it up and found there was almost no wind, just a gentle, tugging breeze blowing east to west that could easily be managed. I looked about for a target.
‘The goat hide, perhaps?’ Lupus waved a vague hand at a skin draped over a sack of straw about thirty paces away; the kind of thing men set up to shoot at of an evening, when the dice games have grown cold. I didn’t ask if he had put it there; his expression was so bland as to be an admission.
Hissing wearily through my teeth, I nocked the arrow, drew and loosed all in one movement and was barely aware of the sting on my arm as the string snapped back; I was too busy watching the arrow’s flight, how it bucked a little because I had jerked the loose, and so flew wider than it should have done.
I hit the goatskin a hand’s breadth high and a foot to the right of the centre. I lowered the bow, slowly. ‘Not good enough to kill a man.’
‘Good enough to keep him from killing us, though,’ Lupus said. ‘The bow’s yours if you will use it. We have fifty arrowsper man. Use them wisely, but don’t be miserly. If we don’t get through on this assault…’ He looked at the horizon, at the gathering rain, and didn’t have to finish that thought.
‘Who will I lead?’ I asked.
‘Syrians. We have two complete companies of archers, more or less. They’re mostly from King Antiochus’ personal troop. They know nothing of how we make war, and even if they did, they lost their commander to a thrown spear at the mouth of the Beth Horon pass. That’s why I want you to lead them today. Stay alive, and while you’re at it, do what you can to make sure we can ram that gate. It matters.’
‘Testudo… shields up! Raise the ram!’
Horgias’ voice rebounded off the walls. Ahead, the temple wall reared high as a cliff above us, and on its height men stood with spears and bows, slingshots and piles of rubble, just as they had before.
Until now, they had not faced archers in a solid block, but men scattered through the legions, King Antiochus of Syria not having wished to put his archers in the line of fire until specifically requested. Now that he had been made to understand the urgency, I had one hundred bowmen with fifty arrows apiece placed under my orders. At my request, I had a part-century of the VIth in attendance as shield-men, chafing under a strange command, and sour because their assault had failed and ours might succeed.