Nobody was listening to him. A broken horn lay to my left, waiting for one of the smiths to have time to weld the handle back on. I hauled it out of the clutter of other broken kit, hitched it over my shoulder and blew the retreat as loudly as I knew how.
It wasn’t pitch perfect by any means, but it was a rhythm every man knew second only to the order to advance. I wasn’t sure anyone would hear me over the screams of dying men, and was thinking to run in and haul them out bodily when Horgias and Tears emerged — alive! Both alive! — bellowing orders at the survivors that sent them running like hares for the safety of the tent lines.
‘That’s it,’ Lupus said, as the senior centurions gathered at the flags; only twelve of us were left. It felt like a repeat of Rhandaea, only that we had not yet surrendered.
Lupus, though, thought we were close to abandoning the fight, which was the next worst thing. ‘We’re finished,’ he said. ‘Gallus had little enough heart for this at the start, but he’s lost it all now, and more. He’ll have us marching out in the morning.’
Everyone but me seemed to have been expecting this; but then everyone else had seen Gallus dither over the assault in the first place. I stared at Lupus. ‘I thought you were worried about the weather closing in.’
‘That too.’ He turned away. I turned him back.
‘Then we have to break through the gate today,’ I said.
Eleven of my fellow officers looked at me and laughed. Allexcept Lupus, who was the only one who counted.
To him, I said, ‘Fire. All we need is fire. They’ve just turned the ram to matchwood. If we can pile it against the gate and set fire to it, we can still weaken it enough to get through. We know how well a ram burns now; trust me, they make a good fire. Nothing will stand against it if we can make it hot enough.’
Lupus blinked once, slowly, then nodded. ‘Do it.’
I asked for volunteers, and then had to turn half of them away. My century came, what was left of it; we had lost thirty-two men to the missiles at the gate, of whom at least half were dead. So that I might not seem to be favouring my own, I made up the numbers with men from the first cohort and brought along the first century of the VIth as well.
I set signallers on the rise by the palace with particular instructions to watch for missiles and let us know as soon as they saw them. We arranged different calls for stones and catapult bolts and a brief, easy system to let us know roughly where they were aimed. I set the archers to keep men from the temple heights while we worked, so that they might not attempt to put the blaze out too early, and while I did that Taurus led his engineers in gathering every bit of flammable material that could be found, plus the tallow, lamp oil and tinder to start a fire and keep it going.
The sun was a glowing orb behind Herod’s palace by the time we were ready. Taurus brought me a small green-enamelled ember pot with ties to fix it to my belt.
‘There are twenty of these,’ he said. ‘We found them in the king’s palace. As long as even one of us lives, we’ll get the fire going.’
I clapped Taurus on the shoulder. ‘Stay safe,’ I said simply. ‘And keep Horgias safe for me.’
I’m not one for speeches, but something was needed for themen and I could not address them all singly. To that end, I climbed halfway up the steps to the palace and turned to look down on them. They gathered in good order, effortlessly, even now when they were burdened with bags of wool and straw and the cloaks of dead men.
I raised my hand to speak to them, as Corbulo had done once, and if that was hubris I apologize, but it did not feel like it then: I was shaking with the battle-fear that I always felt, but pride, too, that we had come this far, that we had grown to be a fighting unit against such bitter odds, that these men — each of them — believed in me enough to follow me back to the carnage at the gate.
‘We have suffered enough at the hands of this rabble. Now is our chance to give them back the fire they gave us. And to rescue our wounded. Each man has his task. You know what to do. Do it well, and we will win this city before sundown.’
They cheered a little, but it was not a time for cheering. I jumped down from the steps, found the head of my small force, raised my right hand, and stabbed it forward.
‘ Go! ’
I carried a proper shield this time. Running in its shade, I saw only the churned ground beneath my feet. I jumped ballista stones that lay like hail in the dirt, and soon after jumped dead and living men, and splintered lengths of wood.
The air around the ram stank of blood and entrails and fractured timber. I pushed through until I reached the iron-capped head, where the great tree that Taurus had found and felled lay cracked on the ground in a mess of broken beams. Four men sheltered me with their shields as I dragged and threw and kicked fragments of wood, some of them longer than a man’s arm, into place around the ram.
‘Fleece,’ I called, and men passed me what they had carried bundled up under their shields, and soon, from the back, came jars of lamp oil taken from the palace, and then tallow, and behind me others and others were doing the same, so that soon enough we had the whole thing padded and wadded and ready to burn.
Horgias’ face grinned up near my own. ‘Have you the ember pot?’ he asked.
He was one of the twenty flame-holders — I had seen Taurus give him a red-coloured pot — but he was giving me first fire and I was not about to turn him down.
I unhooked the pot from my belt, and blew on it, and saw the charcoal glow to cherry red and blew again and it was the colour of fired apricots, and again and it was the noonday sun. Surrounded by the smells of tallow and oil, I fisted a hole in the wadding and leaned in and tipped the brilliant fragments on the bed there, and blew as on the face of a sleeping lover and saw a flame rise and dance and leap and catch.
‘Hold. Hold the cover. Don’t let them put it out yet.’
I nursed that flame as if it were my only son, and all round the ram nineteen other men did likewise. My small group leaned in over it with their shields against a volley of missiles that blasted down on us, for our archers were running short of arrows and saving their last for the time when the flames needed the greatest help. Men fell at the edges, but for every one that fell, another stepped in to take his place until the fire was no longer dancing but roaring, sucking in air, giving out heat that made my sore heart heal again.
And then, cutting over the havoc, a long, high note from the signallers on the palace rise ‘ Run! ’ I screamed it, or Horgias did, or someone else back down the ranks who knew the calls we had arranged. ‘Hot sand!’
Before the threat of sand heated almost to melting point, we scattered like sheep before a wolf, like hares before hounds, only faster, and came to a stop at the tent lines, where Lupushad the archers shooting long, endless volleys until their fingers bled and their arms were strained out of their sockets.
I snatched up the pale Parthian war bow and joined them and, together, we killed men by the dozen, by the hundred, but there were tens of thousands in the city of Jerusalem and we had only twenty arrows left apiece.
They came to an end, as they must, and after that we could only wait and watch as the flames of our creation, the beautiful, vast, roaring fire that we had built, was quenched first by sand and then, later, by water.
I watched the final embers blink to darkness. ‘We’ve weakened it,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t take another day of the ram.’ And then, remembering, ‘Did Tears get all the wounded away?’
‘Before you ever lit the fire,’ Lupus said. ‘That was well done.’
‘But not the fire.’
‘It was well done,’ he said, woodenly, and then with more feeling. ‘It was well done. We’re fighting against men with talent in there, and we are led by one with none.’
Lupus stayed with us a long time, watching the smoke die to damp ashes before he bade us good night and took himself to Cestius Gallus’ tent, where our commander waited with our new orders.