The onagers stood impassively, a hundred yards off still, thickly surrounded by Hun horsemen, arrows nocked. He spurred his horse forward with a last fury. Crazy. To take out those onagers and do any lasting damage, many men would be needed, with leisure time to spare. Not like this.
One blood-boltered fool flailing his sword in the air. It seemed to him now, out on his own, with his men trailing wounded or dead behind him, that the Huns were waiting for him, with a true warrior curiosity as to how profound his courage might be. How would he die? Like a man, after all?
Andronicus galloped on, sword stretched out before him, arm shaking, the sun in his eyes. If it is with all dying men as they say, he saw his own family before him when he died, arms outstretched to embrace him, and not the searing sun.
The Huns said among themselves that he died bravely, that leader of the iron horsemen. Later that night, stripped of his armour, they would lay him on a pyre with their own dead, and send him to the otherworld in the care of his gods whose names they did not even know.
A long way back, a single Roman lancer had obeyed the recall and broken free of the Hun circle uninjured. Sabinus ordered the south gates open. But the Huns’ murderous impudence knew no bounds. A single copper-skinned warrior, clad in nothing but fur and feathers, came galloping in fast and low on a filthy little piebald, slewed in hard virtually under the heavy charger’s thundering hooves, drew his bowstring back into his chest and loosed an arrow. Travelling all of five yards, it smacked into the lancer’s face, punched through and came out the back of his helmet. The heavy horse continued to canter forwards, its dead rider lolling. The little horse warrior of the steppes pulled up to inspect his handiwork, and from his fellows an admiring cheer went up at this deed of battlefield daring. As if it was mere sport to them, even as many of their own tribe lay dead around the walls of the fort. All men must die. Why not die gloriously, in battle? War was much like a hunt over the steppes, and the best hunters always make the finest soldiers.
Tatullus bestrode the battlements, ordering his crossbowmen to take the Hun rider out, but they couldn’t hit him. They were few now, and very tired. Their crossbows trembled in sweaty hands, their arm muscles ached atrociously, their tired eyes blurred. The rider kept galloping, turning. He even punched his fist at them. Obscenely the dead rider, the arrow stuck through his head, still lolled in his wooden saddle when his horse trotted in through the gates.
‘Get him down,’ said Tatullus, ‘and close up.’
‘Sir?’
Tatullus glared at him. No, there would be no more coming back.
The gates began to close.
‘Another man coming in!’ came a call from the walls.
Hell.
But not one should be lost out of fear. The gates would stand open for any who came. Tatullus sent a runner to the guard-tower.
Sabinus was hit, but he would not have anyone know it. His side was heavily padded with linen bandages, which he hoped would soak up the blood. But every time he shouted an order, he bled more. He could feel his face whiten and sweat. His ears rang as his blood pressure dropped. Let me not faint, he prayed. He pleaded. Not for himself but for his men and the honour of Rome. Let those of us who still live and breathe, heroes every one – after this much battle, this much loss – let us not die now. Let rescue come soon. Let justice be done.
A loose Roman horse was ambling back from the scene of the cavalry’s carnage, nodding its big head sleepily, as if returning from no more than a day in the haymeadows. As it passed a tangle of slain Hun warriors lying close to the fort, one of the dead rose up from among them, black with old blood, seized hold of the horse’s reins and saddle, and hauled himself up onto the peaceable beast. Together they rode on serenely towards the south gate.
It was Malchus! The man was indestructible. Multiply wounded, ridden down by a horde of a thousand, taking refuge out there among the middens of the slain. Through the mask of black blood gleamed the white teeth of his smile.
Behind him rolled a dust-cloud of numberless horsemen.
‘Every other unit off the walls and to the south gate!’ bellowed Sabinus.
Men scrambled, some nearly laughing with tiredness.
The legate clutched his side. He sent one of the few pedites still standing down to Tatullus.
The centurion understood. For their own sake, Malchus must be saved. Such small miracles were everything now; now everything else was lost.
‘Take your pikes! Holding pattern at the gate – and I mean hold them!’
Tatullus himself had taken up his beloved billhook, a fearsome weapon which combined a broad curved pike-blade and a long, thin side-spike. He would never ask his men to do what he would not. He stood out before the gate unshielded. An experimental arrow flew close by. He appeared not to notice it, settling his close-fitting helmet more firmly on his head, his deep-set eyes looking out unblinking and unafraid.
Malchus was still a hundred yards off, trotting calmly, though a little unsteady in the saddle. And then the thundering hooves.
‘I want him in! Do not close the gate.’
The exhausted and the walking wounded men formed a semi-circular pike line about the south gate, thick ashwood pike-butts jammed in the hard ground, blades ranged outwards at chest level. On their left arms, propped forward, their big oval infantry shields. No horse would charge a line of standing pikes. Only mortal men indulged in the heroics of suicide.
The black and bloody chimera that was Malchus brushed between two parted pikes, saying never a word. But he was indeed grinning. He vanished into the courtyard and the pikes closed up. They managed to take a couple of steps backwards for the safety of the gate. Then the Huns were on them.
Curved sabres flashed in the air. One or two horsemen, vainglorious and young, tried to hurl themselves from their saddles over the line of pikes, knives clutched in their fists, only to be battered down by embossed shields, or impaled in the air as they leaped. A pike sank down to the earth with the dead weight, and another horseman rode in close and lashed out with his bullhide whip, pulling the pikeman after him. The wretched man fell forwards, stumbling over his own shield, and a third Hun lopped his head off.
‘Pull back in formation! Gatekeepers, stand ready.’
It was desperate.
Other Huns were dismounting, comprehending quickly that horses were an encumbrance now, and instead running at the line of lowered pikes, aiming to slip between them and knife the defenders. The shields tilted further forward, the only gap between them for the pikestaffs. A billhook slashed sideways. It was Tatullus, standing at the very front of his men, as implacable as a bronze statue. A Hun warrior’s stomach opened and he sprawled in his own guts. Two of his comrades leaped back, hissing, one of them only just in time to avoid another lethal side-swipe from that billhook.
In the very shadow of the gate-tower, a big fellow swung a club. It was Knuckles. The club was already dove-grey with spilled brains.
‘Hold them!’ yelled Tatullus again, stepping slowly backwards, the circle of pikemen shrinking behind him. He prayed there were crossbowmen left on the wall above. They were finished without a good volley.
Suddenly the Huns fell back again and in another instant, from behind them, arrows came arcing down on the isolated pikemen in short, high trajectories. Shields were hauled up but often too late, the arrows whistling down cruelly on exposed heads and sagging shoulders. Angry shouts, screams, men clutching and staggering and falling back, losing formation.
Yet even as those still standing stepped backwards over their fallen comrades, they lowered their pikes again and locked shields, and took another stand, now in the very arch of the gateway. Their discipline was magnificent. A Hun horseman who had blindfolded his horse rode at them screaming in fury and crashed into the immoveable shield-wall. Pikes finished him.