Emerging as if from the very heart of destruction, there came again the low, monotonous beat of war. The witch Enkhtuya sitting cross-legged somewhere in the outer darkness, hammering a drumskin with a bone, murmuring low.
‘Weave the crimson web of war,
Raise the bloody banners high,
Make it as it was before,
All men must fight, all men must die.
‘Horror covers all the heath,
Clouds of carnage blot the sun,
Sisters, weave the web of death,
Sisters cease, the work is done.’
Sabinus nodded to his optio, gave orders for the standard-bearers to report, and returned to his principia to put on his armour, and to take one last look around.
One last look. The phrase echoed in his thoughts, but he preferred not to analyse it.
They marched swiftly through the small but elegantly colonnaded courtyard, into the atrium, past the triclinium. Strange to glimpse the comfortable couches still ranged about in there, as if waiting for the next modest banquet with local dignitaries. But the legate’s accommodation was no longer in the best repair. Starlings had made their nests under the eaves, and frogs had colonised the cellars. Soldierly duty kept the place clean and tidy, but its neglect could not be concealed. No fashionably attired dinner guests visited now, few inhabited the frontier towns. All had migrated south towards Constantinople to make themselves and their families rich with courtly patronage. Senatorial families dreamed of imperial donatives and sinecures, ignorantly at ease in their plush villas in Naissus, Marcianopolis, Adrianople, or the gleaming golden capital itself. The old provincial dutifulness was gone. Only the poor paid taxes, they joked. And how it showed. But the rich would pay for their selfishness in time. In a currency red as blood.
As Tatullus had said: ‘Storm coming.’
7
After his optio had strapped on his armour, Sabinus took his splendid helmet with its nodding plumes, then led his standard-bearers into the chapel. There stood the central shrine, the eagle, the bull ensign and the lesser centurial banners. Beneath the shrine, beneath the altar itself, lay the fort’s strongroom, packed with stamped gold ingots from the mines of Mons Aurea.
One of centurial banner-bearers shook so badly that he nearly dropped the staff as Sabinus handed it to him. A mere lad, sixteen or seventeen, a once-weekly shaver, scarce dry from the egg. His name was Julianus. Sabinus spoke to him gravely but not unkindly. ‘Hold it steady, lad,’ he said evenly. ‘Yes, we are cut off. Yes, there are a lot of them. But this is a still a legionary fort. It’s stood for four centuries now, against barbarians just as vile as these.’ He told the lad – he told all of them – to hate their enemies. ‘Think of your families. Think of what will become of them… and swear hatred of the barbarians,’ he said. ‘Your hatred will drive out fear, and then you will fight like lions.’
As the legionary bull standard was lowered and passed out of the door of the chapel into the night, he gave it a brief, idolatrous bow.
Alone he visited the hospital and saw that all was in good order. The medics stood to attention. Only four patients in there now, one clearly dying. Another with leg sores, being cleaned up nicely by hard-working maggots collected fresh from horse-dung. Poultices, bandages and dressings, copper pots steaming on the stoves, jars of grey-green willow-leaf infusion for wounds.
He resumed his place on the west tower beside Tatullus. The centurion did not stir. A fortress of a man.
The waiting was always the worst. Oh, let it begin soon.
But they were kept waiting. They waited all night until the dawnlight came up behind them.
A low morning mist, thickest over the silent river to the north. Smoke sitting heavily over the lost town, where it had once stood proud on the green summer plain. Smoke slowly drifting eastwards towards the fort, mingling with wraiths of mist in the cold shadows of the north wall.
All night long the stars had burned, and, out on the plain around, myriad campfires like a starry floor. Their enemy, of course, but a strange feeling of company. Then towards dawn, with the temperature still dropping sharply from the warm day, the mist had risen from the river and the marshy meadows round about and thickened towards sunrise. Now it lay dense and milk-white around them, Sabinus on the tower like the captain on the deck of some ghost ship abandoned in remote uncharted seas.
‘This visibility is bad,’ he said.
‘Bad for us,’ said Tatullus pointedly. ‘Not for our attackers. ’
The attack must come soon. The soldiers on the walls stamped their feet, blew into cupped hands. How their tensed bones ached in their chill coats of mail. The mist clung to them, beaded dewdrops on cold metal.
All wore their heavy helmets through the long night so that their necks ached. Leather straps cut into throats. Feet were white cold. The wall artillery was primed and loaded. The swords were ground sharp. The world was silent around them. No birds sang.
On the north-west tower, a legionary gazed out towards the river, trying to judge whether the mist was thinning in the rising sun, and how fast. Still no sight of the opposite bank. Then he frowned. Something was wrong. The mist was darkening, close to. Shadows moving within it. Over the tributary channel, just along the wall. Something was happening. Coming nearer.
The chain was across the entrance back by the river watchtowers, wasn’t it? They’d talked about the waterways last night. Apparently, the refugees had reported the invaders using horse-transporters of some sort: rafts. But if any bone-headed barbarians seriously tried attacking downriver they’d get in a right bloody mess. The emperor-chain would be across the Iron Gorge, with auxiliaries stationed on the cliffs above, and the marines of the Danube Fleet ready to row out of Ratiaria if necessary and finish them off. There was no chance there.
But presumably their plan, assuming they had a plan, was to take Viminacium and then head on south down the imperial trunk road to Naissus and the rich pickings of Sardica. Like they’d ever get that far. Not with a legionary fortress in the way, and their knowledge of missile technology extending as far as an arrow dipped in flaming tar. The walls of Viminacium should be able to withstand a few of those.
But now…
‘Sir?’ he said to his decurion.
‘Hm?’ The junior officer had his helmet off, resting it on the top of the battlements, polishing it with his woollen neckerchief, so that the first arrow punched straight into his head. His helmet rolled over the wall and fell silently and he slumped forwards across the wall.
The soldier opened his mouth to shout in terror but instead gargled blood as another arrow passed up through his throat and into his skull. Still scrabbling at his throat, he stumbled and rolled down the stone steps to the battlements.
The artillerymen stared around, bewildered.
Then one of them saw what was happening. Out of the mist were coming high-sided boats, drifting slowly down the tributary channel. No, not the Danube Fleet from Ratiaria, come to the rescue. These were other boats entirely, captured from God knows where, moving slow and serene as great swans in the white summer mist. Each one was filled with archers, ready to rain down arrows on the fortress walls.
‘Enemy at the north wall!’
But along the west wall they already had their own concerns.