More Huns milled frustratedly, dismounting and remounting aimlessly, seeing the gates standing open just before them, some even screaming insults at each other as if unable to believe that, after all the day’s punishment, this handful of dusty, dogged men were still able to hold them back, thousands of them. Truly, these Romans were no women.
Sabinus stood unsteadily on the south wall above, marshalling what remaining crossbowmen he could. So much for their limitless supplies. The store of crossbow bolts was at last running low. They had never reckoned on an assault of this magnitude. In the distance he could hear a harsh, grating, goading voice above the melee, and guessed that it was the implacable Hun warlord ordering his men on, telling them to finish it. Sabinus grunted. Let ’em try.
He raised his hand. His last crossbowmen stepped up to the battlements. His hand dropped, and a last, terrific volley of iron-tipped bolts sliced mercilessly into the front rank of the milling and frustrated Huns. Instantly, Tatullus turned and drove his men back inside the fort, and the gates were slammed together. Even as the gatekeepers set the first oak crossbar in the huge holding-braces, a great weight slammed into the other side. The soldiers dropped their pikes and shields in the chaos and threw themselves against the gate.
‘Get the second bar in now!’ ordered Tatullus. Not loudly, but they heard him.
From the wall came a second Roman volley. The gate was now almost blocked by the heaps of the Hun dead. Yet another slamming assault on the other side, though, until the second, higher crossbar was in, and then the gate settled together, rock solid. The Huns broke against it like waves at the foot of a cliff.
Up on the walls the crossbowmen cranked their bows for one last volley, set the bolts in the grooves, held the stocks to their eyes and took aim into the clouds of dust below. But as the dust slowly settled they saw that the enemy had gone.
Arm muscles shaking and burning, they lowered their weapons and bowed their heads. Sweat ran down their filthy faces. Not one had the strength to wipe it away.
Sabinus turned from them so as to control his voice. ‘Well done, men,’ he said quietly.
But they could not go on.
He ordered a head-count.
Tatullus came up the stairs and saluted. He glanced briefly at Sabinus’ wadded side, then looked him straight in the eye. A momentary pause.
‘Sir.’
Sabinus nodded. ‘Centurion.’
‘Fit: twenty-four. Wounded: as many as two hundred. Walking wounded: perhaps fifty.’
And slain? Sabinus could do the sums. Half the legion. More.
‘How many auxiliaries still with us?’
Tatullus looked out over the fort. The auxiliaries were busy helping the limping wounded, hauling the dead, taking round water, bringing up the last of any missiles they could find. He looked back. ‘All of them, sir. None has abandoned us. Not one.’
At those words, it seemed to Sabinus that even his centurion’s hard eyes shone bright with emotion.
Wiping his bespattered club clean beside a water-butt, Knuckles came upon the cavalry captain, Malchus.
He had refused medical aid, and was sewing, swabbing and bandaging himself from a little wooden box by his side. Knuckles watched in fascination. Malchus smeared a whitish paste over his stitched wounds. Knuckles could smell it was garlic, and maybe oxide of zinc. The captain threw back his head and closed his eyes and clenched his teeth a while. Must have stung a bit. Then he bandaged his shallower cuts. There were a lot of them: on his arms, his legs, a nasty one on his thigh, and a nastier one still across his chest. One of his ears didn’t look much like an ear any more, either. Then he took out a squat bottle of watery red liquid and poured it in a thin trickle over his bandages, letting the linen soak it up.
‘Red meat, wine, garlic,’ muttered Knuckles. ‘What you doin’, makin’ a fuckin’ casserole of yourself?’
Malchus looked up and grinned painfully. ‘Very tasty dish I’d be, too.’
Knuckles grunted. ‘Ladies first.’
Across the plain, if any cared to watch, the slain cavalrymen were being stripped of their armour. And a more mysterious figure was moving against the sinking sun. A vulture seemed to keep watch over her, circling high above. She wore long dark robes, an elaborate head-dress, and seemed to hold a twisting snake in her hands. Occasionally she knelt down beside one of the fallen Roman cavalrymen like a ministering angel. Arapovian watched from the walls with his deep-set hawk-eyes, and thought he saw one of the cavalrymen stir and try to scrabble desperately out of her long shadow. The Armenian gripped his bow more tightly as he watched, but he was helpless. They were all helpless. The woman knelt beside the cavalryman, and when she rose again he moved no more.
She would be ministering to them all soon enough, if no help came.
10
Sabinus visited the wounded and exhausted men seated around the whitewashed walls of the little hospital. The pallets within had all long since been filled. The air echoed with soft groans. The men, their bare skin, their clothing, their armour, all seemed only a coat of dark dust and shining redness. About them the stench of sweat and blood. A few auxiliaries tried their best to keep away the tormenting flies. Oh God for reinforcements. There would be none left to reinforce soon. Abject rescue, then. But still from the east and Ratiaria… nothing. They were as alone as ever.
‘Sir,’ said his last standing decurion. ‘Hun deputation at the west gate again.’
It took him time to walk back up to the gate-tower, treading very carefully, hand on his side.
Below the tower sat the stone-faced warlord, ringed by his finest, freshest warriors, a hundred of them, arrows nocked to the bow.
The warlord raised his face to him. ‘You have fought well,’ he said. ‘Almost like Huns. So much for the decadence of the West.’ He smiled a brief smile, as if at some private joke. ‘Nevertheless, your cowards of cavalrymen who rode against my innocent people are all destroyed. As are you. Now I will grant you amnesty. Those of you who still live may walk free from this fort and leave us to raze it flat. You may walk to the next frontier fort eastwards. It is called Ratiaria – you know it well enough. The Legio III Pannonia is stationed there, a full six thousand men. The legate’s name is Posthumus. He shares his bed with a whore called Statina.’ Another smile. ‘Do not think we are entirely ignorant savages, Roman. Do not underestimate us.’
‘I do not underestimate you,’ said Sabinus.
‘Very well, then,’ said the warlord. ‘Lead your survivors east to Ratiaria, and tell them there of your destruction.’
Sabinus looked around. A single exhausted legionary sat nearby in the deepening shadow of the battlements, bow resting on his knees. They exchanged looks. The legionary was too tired even to speak, but he shook his head.
Further along, one of his comrades growled, ‘Tell him to go fuck himself. Pardoning my language.’
Sabinus’ grim smile did not reflect the tangle and stir of his emotions. He looked back down at the warlord. ‘What is the name of your god?’
The Hun scowled ferociously. He had not come to bandy words, but to give orders. ‘No Roman dog speaks that holy name.’
‘Their god is called Astur,’ said another voice nearby. It was Arapovian. ‘Astur, the All-Father, Great Eagle of the Eternal Blue Sky.’
Sabinus gazed down very steadily at the warlord and said, ‘May Astur curse you. May you and all your tribe vanish from the earth.’
At those words, a shadow of preternatural darkness passed over the warlord’s face. Sabinus kept steady. A hundred arrowheads were aimed at him. Then the warlord wrenched his pony round and tore away across the plain, his men following.