Pride was dangerous for the pure, so perhaps it was his fault, but almost at once it all began to fall apart. Brasus was leading his own column and he got lost early in the night. He still could not understand how this had happened, but somehow they arrived at the river where the banks were steep and hard to cross. He knew the spot at once and that it was a mile or more from where he was supposed to be. Men stared at him, wondering, and then before he could make up his mind the first scrambled down the banks and waded across. It took a lot longer than it would have done at the ford, and left them all soaking and muddy, with more than a few lost shoes, but they were across and he tried to judge as best as he could the right direction to take him where they were supposed to go. The moon had not yet risen and clouds were low and getting lower, with thin tendrils of mist so close a man could almost think that he could grab them.
Brasus was walking near the front, with just a few of his own band of warriors a little ahead as scouts. Suddenly they stopped and word came hissing back that there were people ahead of them. Cautiously, Brasus went forward just in time to see one of the guides coming back towards him. He was at the head of the second column and they were hopelessly lost, which meant shouts and anger and trying to sort everyone out. Eventually they started going once again, and he kept the other column moving within bowshot of his men and parallel to them. Soon after that they all walked into a mist that became a thick fog and the true chaos began.
By the end of the night Brasus felt that he had walked three or four times as far as the distance he was supposed to have travelled, even allowing for his earlier mistake. Men got lost and confused and now and again there were shouts as they tried to find each other. Then as suddenly as all the other surprises he found that he was walking on the planks of the bridge below the fort and had no real idea of how he had got there. There were barely fifty men with him and he guessed that it was two hours before dawn, long after he had meant to attack.
Brasus told his men to wait and walked to where the others were supposed to be. There were a couple of dozen men from the first column sheltering behind the building where the Romans performed their ritual bathing, but as yet no sign of the second or fourth columns. The fifth was to threaten the east gate and there were more than a hundred of them where they should be, joined by a score or so more almost as soon as he turned up. Resisting the temptation to take some of these to reinforce the rest, Brasus trusted to faith and the guidance of the Lord Zalmoxis and told the chieftain in charge here to wait for the signal for the attack would still go ahead before dawn. By the time that he was back by the river things were more encouraging. More than two hundred men from the first column had arrived and a few score men for his own force, including thirty Bastarnae, wild folk as cruel as they were brave and unpredictable since they were either loyal to the death or lightly treacherous.
Brasus waited and more men came in, and if all were weary at least they were here. Three-quarters of the first column were just where they should be, although barely a third of his own men. Then a panting runner arrived to say that the second column was on its way and ought to be in place before very long with a good half of their numbers. Brasus stood on the bridge, hearing the water flow underneath and stared at where he knew the fort was, even though he could not see it. Fate was strange, and the guidance of Zalmoxis a mystery for now the fog that had confused them was in their favour because it would hide them from the Romans just as well as the veil of night. There was still time.
Dawn was close when the horns blew and Brasus realised that the chieftain must have thought that he wanted the east gate attacked whatever else happened. His own men were on their way to the west of the fort, with, as far as he knew, no sign of the men who were supposed to lead the way. No matter, the plan was still sound and the faithful would prevail over the unclean. Brasus jogged over to the chieftains in charge of the first column.
‘Go!’ he shouted. It was enough for they knew what to do. As Brasus ran to join his own men he heard a great shout challenging the night and his blood thrilled to the sound. Before he reached his own men there were more trumpets and cries from the far side of the fort.
‘My lord!’ a voice called from out of the white mist. ‘We are here!’
Brasus took his time because this was the key to it all. The attacks on the two main gates would keep the enemy busy, but unless the god was truly kind to them they would not break through, not on their own. The west gate was the key, because he reckoned that it was the least vulnerable to be rushed and that because of this the Romans would not watch it as carefully.
Brasus chose fifty men to make a charge at the west gate, with the Bastarnae and a dozen others to follow them. Of the remainder, sixteen were to start crawling across the field, their backs covered in dark cloaks, and the other five came with him. They also had drab clothes and cloaks, although the black paste they had smeared on their faces was of less use now. They began by crawling until they reached the outer ditch, where they headed to the left, towards the corner of the fort. No arrows came and no sentries shouted. Brasus was trusting to the darkness and fog, and most of all to the instinct of the Romans in the corner tower and on the rampart to watch the big attack unfolding and pay little heed to quiet and empty fields. They went slowly, and one by one slipped out of the first ditch and into the second.
The noise of battle ebbed and flowed and the light slowly grew, although the mist did not thin or rise and made it hard to tell which direction sounds came from. His own men attacking the west gate were close enough to be sure and he heard them shout and then scream as they were hit by arrows or javelins. There had been no ladders left over for them to use, which meant that the assault was little more than a sham, but it sounded as if they were giving their lives willingly by pressing close.
Brasus slid over the edge of the ditch, saw no one on the rampart above when he glanced up and dashed to reach the foot. Another warrior followed him, then another, while the next man was stringing the bow he had carried on his back. Brasus had his falx, the great curved sword that took skill and strength to use, in a scabbard slung on his back, along with a coil of rope, and two straight daggers in his hands. One of the men crouched down so that Brasus could stand on his back and start to climb, thrusting the knives into the piled earth to help.
A shout from above, then the twang of a bow and the Roman dropped back from the parapet with an arrow in his face. Another Roman appeared, then gasped as the men who had been crawling forward sprang up, hurling aside their cloaks. The pause gave the chance for the archer to string and lose another arrow, which hit this Roman in the throat. Brasus was almost at the top and jabbed the knives in just below the wooden parapet so that he could stand on them as he hauled himself up.
There was no one in front of him and he got onto the top of the parapet and then jumped onto the walkway. A man was coming at him, but the archer loosed again and the Roman hissed as the arrowhead punched through the palm of his hand. Brasus crouched, drawing his blade two-handed and slicing a chunk out of the plume on his captured Roman helmet with the same fluid motion.