Sabinus saw Arapovian pause and look away.
The Armenian turned back to the line, defended himself against another attack, lopped off an arm, planted his foot in the man’s chest and kicked him back down the slope. Turned his head and listened again.
Sabinus’ heart leaped. The Armenian’s sharp ears had heard… trumpets! The legate turned to listen to that sweet sound. A pause. And then…
He closed his eyes. It was not trumpets. It was a massive weight hitting the south gates.
One last time he struggled up the steps to the battlements.
They had brought one of the onagers up. It was fifty yards off, loosing boulders into the oaken south gates on a low, flat, brutal trajectory.
He went down again, tightening his bronze cuirass about his big belly as tight as he could bear. Like dying in harness. He went steadily over to the south gates. Whumpff. The gates rocked back, the big crossbeams rattled in their braces, splinters flew. The Armenian’s idea had been a good one, for a desperate last stand. But it, too, had failed.
But they, the VIIth Legion, how well they had failed! Could any legion have failed as gloriously as they had? Oh that one or two should survive, to tell their story to posterity. Such a story would live for generations. A night and a day they had stood firm against a whole army. And still they fought. That wasn’t bad. That must count as a kind of heroes’ death.
The gates beside him reeled again under impact, and unmanly tears came to his eyes as he watched the last of his men fighting and dying there upon the dark, discoloured rubble of the ruptured tower. They had still not heard the onager. Part-timers, farmers, married with wives and children. He knew what they were fighting for, with ferocity born of desperation. Not for Rome, either old or new, nor for the emperor on his gilded throne. They were fighting for the wives and children left on their farmsteads and smallholdings, or trembling down in the dungeons. The gates beside him splintered further. God have mercy on those trapped wretches down below. Only two fates possible for them now, the better of which was a life in chains amid barbarian tents.
For him, there would be no Thracian vineyard, nor sharp-tongued, ardent-hearted Domitilla. Three months to go. The luck of Cassandra. For these barbarians, who had destroyed his life and his peaceful old age, he let his hatred well up. Felt its coursing power burn in his veins. Hefted his sword, a short, old-style gladius. The fury and the mire of human veins. The distant fury of battle. But coming close now, in this last act, last scene of his battered old life. His own death was already in the past, written in the old book of the gods. He tightened his belt another notch around his bleeding belly. It wasn’t true that you felt no fear. Even old soldiers felt fear. But all men must die. The gates were nearly done. He looked up one last time. Make it glorious, my brave legionaries. Make it cost them dear.
He leaned down painfully to take the shield from one of his own dead, gently unloosing the man’s stiffened fingers from the wooden grip. Stood again. When those gates finally gave way, the Huns would find one still in their path.
The attack in the corner had slowed briefly, leaving his men standing down, stoop-shouldered with exhaustion. Ungainly stick figures lit from below by the orange brazier light. Heroes all. Beyond, the enemy had pulled back yet again, heavily bloodied, sullen, furious. And now in the stillness, the last legionaries heard what Arapovian had heard. The sound of the accursed onager hurling its rocks, and the south gates going. Soon, very soon now, they would be surrounded. Attacked from before and behind, the fort overrun through the south gate, however hard they fought here. They looked at each other, barely able to raise their heads on their shoulders. Their eyes shone. They nodded. Heroes all.
They looked back to their commander below by the wall. He could not climb up to them any more. They knew it. He leaned close to the south wall, shield on his shoulder, short-sword drawn, face plastered with cold sweat, looking up at them.
Only one of his men still had the spirit to speak. ‘It has been an honour serving with you, sir!’
Sabinus raised his hand to him. To all of them. A salute to equals. The rest of the men saluted him in reply. Some of them almost smiled.
And then the gates flew in.
11
The last of the defenders instantly lost all formation, and broke and ran. Within moments the neat grid-pattern streets and alleyways of the fortress were overrun with screaming horsemen. They galloped in triumph, racing each other to set each barrack building alight. Cutting down any last stragglers of the destroyed legion, or lassoing them as they fled, and dragging them along behind in the dust as tortured trophies. Fires blazed up in the night, sparks and stars. The appetite for destruction seemed inexhaustible. Soon they clustered around the legionary principia. They ransacked the elegant rooms, smashed vases and glassware, dragged out tables and couches, made a huge bonfire in the centre of the colonnaded courtyard. Others roped together teams of horses to drag down the pillars and roofbeams and crash the whole building. Word had gone out from the Great Tanjou. Not a stone should be left standing. The very name of Viminacium would denote eloquent desolation for an entire empire.
Warriors still on horseback, inseparable from their mounts, some wearing embroidered Roman curtains for cloaks around their naked shoulders, rode into the chapel and collected the last of the legionary standards to add to the fire. Then word came from the leader that there was gold beneath the altar.
Behind VII Barrack stood the long, low punishment block, comprising a row of dank, evil-smelling cells without windows, and a narrow corridor with one doorway at the end. The building was heavily tiled, not thatched, for greater security. As if by instinct, Knuckles and Arapovian found themselves backing into it side by side, peering out for oncoming Huns.
‘Christ. No getting away from some people,’ said Knuckles.
‘The families,’ said Arapovian, jerking his head back.
Knuckles glanced round. Aside from four or five corpses already strewn across the stoneflagged floor behind him, in the gloom at the other end of the corridor he saw a heavy iron-bound trapdoor set into the flagstones. It must lead down to the dungeons. They could still ‘Jesus!’ Arapovian rarely swore, but suddenly the doorway was shadowed by a Hun horseman. He brought him down with single arrow and Knuckles finished him with his club. They stepped back into the shadows.
‘Brilliant,’ said Knuckles. ‘That’ll bring ’em in like flies.’
‘Bag up the trapdoor at the end,’ gasped Arapovian. ‘With those bodies.’
Knuckles scowled. ‘I don’t take orders from you, you Parsee bastard.’
Arapovian ignored him. There was a group of plumed and feathered warriors coming down the alley, stained bloody in the torchlight. They had seen the riderless horse, the dark shape on the ground.
‘Do it now. Hide the trapdoor. When they come stampeding in over our corpses, they might not find it – the families might yet survive. The dead and the living both walk free in their own way from these unbelieving savages.’
‘Christ in a crib,’ growled Knuckles. But, grumbling about being no slaughterhouse slave, he began to haul the bodies down the passageway, the flagstones slathered in gore, and stacked them over the iron door like saltfish. Thump, thump of meat. He wondered about the families, women and children and toothless ancients, down in the pitch darkness of those foul dungeons. The airless terror, the unknowing. Yet they might survive.