Lupercus shrugged. "One gets a feeling for their moods."
Not all the signs were subtle. Beyond the river and behind the male tumult on this side, smoke curled past kettles and spits. Women and children of the region had come along to egg their men on to battle. Now again the keening had begun among them. It spread and strengthened while he listened, saw-edged, with an underlying beat, ha-ba-da ha-ba, ha-ba-da-da. More and more ears turned toward it, more and more of the chaos eddied its way.
"I shouldn't think Civilis would want action," said Aletus. Lupercus had detached the veteran centurion from the fragments of his command that survived, to be staff officer and counselor. Aletus gestured down the palisade topping the earthworks. "The last couple of attacks cost him plenty."
Corpses sprawled, bloated, discolored, amidst entrails and clotted blood, broken weapons, ruins of crude testudines under which the barbarians had tried to storm the gates. In places they filled the ditch. Mouths gaped around tongues that ants and beetles were eating. Crows had plucked out many of the eyes. Several birds still pecked away, tucking in a supper before nightfall. Noses had gotten used to the stench, except when a breeze bore it straight at them, and the eventide cooling had damped it.
"He has plenty to spare," Lupercus said.
"Still, sir, he's no fool, nor ignorant, is he?" the centurion persisted. "He marched with us twenty years or more, I've heard, clear down into Italy, and got as much rank as an auxiliary can get. He must know we're short of food and everything. Starving us out makes better sense than charging at regulars and their machines."
"True," Lupercus agreed. "I daresay that's been his intent since he failed to break in. But he hasn't got Roman control over those wild men, you know." Wryly: "Not that our legions haven't been known to kick over the traces of late, eh?"
His gaze sought a center of steadiness around which the enemy weltered. Metal gleamed in arrays where men rested beneath the standards of their units; horses, tethered, fed quietly on oats brought them; newly built, its wood raw but solidly carpentered, a two-story siege tower waited on its wheels. Yonder lay Claudius Civilis, who formerly served Rome, and the tribesmen who had campaigned and learned beside him.
"Something's set the Germans afire again," the legate went on. "Some news or inspiration or whim or . . . whatever. I'd like to know what. But I repeat, we've a busy time ahead of us. Let's make ready."
He led the way back down from the watchtower. It was almost a descent into peace. In the decades since its establishment, Old Camp had enlarged, become a kind of settlement, not everywhere in military gridiron fashion. At the moment it was choked with fugitives as well as the remnants of his expeditionary force. But he had gotten order imposed, soldiers properly quartered and posted, civilians assigned to useful work or at least out from underfoot.
Quietness dwelt in the shadows; for a moment he could close his ears to the savage chant. His mind flew free, across miles and years, over the Alps and south along blue, blue sea to the bay and majestic mountain, nestling town, house and its courtyard of roses, Julia, the children . . . Why, Publius must be shooting up toward manhood, Lupercilla quite the young lady, and had Marcus overcome those problems of his with reading? . . . Letters arrived so infrequently, so irregularly. How were they doing, how was it for them at this exact hour in Pompeii?
Dismiss them. I have my own business to handle. He went about it, inspecting, planning, issuing instructions.
Night fell. Fires leaped huge around the fort, where warriors sat at feast and drink. They had plundered countless amphorae of wine. Presently they started their hoarse war songs. In the background, their women shrilled like hawks.
One by one, gang by gang, they lumbered to their feet, took arms, and dashed themselves against the walls. In the dark, their spears, arrows, and throwing-axes clove only air. The Romans saw them plainly by the light of their fires. Javelin, sling, catapult picked them off, the gaudiest and bravest first. "An Egyptian bird hunt, by Hercules!" Aletus exulted.
"Civilis sees it too," Lupercus replied.
In fact, after a couple of hours sparks whirled high and blinked into nothing, rakes spread wood and coals apart, boots and blankets obliterated flames. The precaution seemed to madden the Germans further. The night was moonless and a haze had blurred stars. Fighting turned well-nigh blind, hand to hand, strike where you heard a noise and spied a deeper darkness coming at you. Still the legionaries kept their discipline. From the walls they tossed stones and iron-shod stakes as well as they could aim. Where the racket told them of a ladder brought up, they pushed it back with shields, and javelins followed. In those men who reached the top, they sheathed their swords.
Sometime after midnight, combat faded away. For a space there was near silence, not even the sounds that the dying make. The Germans had found and borne off their wounded, regardless of any danger, and the Romans' lay by lamplight under care of the surgeons. Lupercus remounted his observation post to listen. Soon he heard a voice haranguing, then shouts, then again the death chant. He shook his head. "They'll be back." He sighed.
First light showed him the siege tower rocking toward the praetorian gate. It went slowly, sweated along by a score or two of warriors while the rest milled impatient behind and Civilis's elite waited aside. Lupercus had ample time to study the situation, make his decisions, get his men positioned and his military engines deployed. He had kept both soldiers and refugee artisans at the task of building those.
The tower approached the gate. Fighters climbed into it, brandishing weapons, hurling missiles, poising to spring down from above. The legate spoke. Romans on the wall brought poles and beams to the entry point. Under cover of shields and their slingers, they shoved, battered, hacked. They beat the tower to a standstill and began smashing it apart. Meanwhile their companions sallied from both sides and attacked the surrounding enemy.
Civilis led his veterans in aid. Roman engineers extended a crane arm over the top of the wall. Iron jaws at the end of a chain swung through an arc, closed on a man, plucked him off his feet. Gleeful, the engineers shifted counterweights. The arm swiveled around, the jaws opened, the captive fell to earth inside the camp. A squad awaited him.
"Prisoners!" Lupercus shouted. "I want prisoners!"
The crane reached forth again, and yet again. That was a device slow and clumsy, but also new and weird, demoralizing. Lupercus never knew how much it did toward throwing dismay into the foe. Most likely nobody could say. The destruction of the tower and the assault by trained, coordinated infantry were amply bad.
Good troops would have stood their ground, enveloped the outnumbered men of the sortie, and cut them to pieces. In the packs of the barbarians, nobody had clear command save over his immediate followers, nor any way of knowing what went on anywhere else. Those who encountered deadliness got no reinforcement. They were weary after their long night, many had lost blood, neither comrades nor gods came to their help. The heart went from them and they ran. Avalanche-like, the rest of the horde tumbled after.
"Shouldn't we pursue, sir?" wondered the orderly.
"That would be fatal." A part of Lupercus wondered why he explained, why he didn't simply tell the boy to shut up. "They aren't in real panic. Look, they're coming to a halt by the river. Their chiefs will rally them and Civilis will bring them more or less to their senses. However, I don't expect he'll allow any further such attempts. He'll settle down to blockade us."
And try to seduce his countrymen among us, the legate's mind added. But at least now I can get some sleep. How tired he was. His skull felt full of sand, his tongue like a strip of leather.