Fire in the East wor-1

by Harry Sidebottom

  Arete was the epicentre of a conflict of cosmic proportions; a never-ending clash of civilizations, an eternal clash of gods. The full might of the east was hurled against the west, and here eternal Rome – humanitas itself as some would have it, all of its arts and philosophy – was defended by three barbarians eating bread and cheese. Demetrius's stream of consciousness was broken by the sudden arrival of a soldier.

  The messenger also trampled into Maximus's excellent reverie. The Hibernian had lost interest in the finer points of depressing artillery some time ago. His mind was running over the new girl at The Krater: nipples like a blind cobbler's thumbs, trim little delta, willing as you like. It was funny with girls – no matter what sort of nipples they had, they always wanted different ones. The girl from The Krater with her big brown aureoles like dinner plates said she would rather have small, neat little nipples. The girl from the bar at the north end of town, who had tiny, delicate pink nipples, wished hers were bigger. Maximus did not care; the girls were both lively well-built blondes. Certainly they would look good together.

  The messenger was attempting to salute while bent double. Ballista and Antigonus saluted back without getting up. As a slave rather than a soldier, Maximus took pleasure in not feeling the need to join in.

  'Good news, Dominus.' The soldier sat down with relief when Ballista indicated. 'The barbarian attack on the south wall has been driven off. There were about 5,000 of them. The reptiles formed up out of range on the plateau. But by the time they were descending into the ravine we had ten ballistae on them. The bastards were looking shaken when they started to climb our side of the ravine. When the bowmen of larhai and Ogelos started shooting and we rolled those bloody great stones you had us put out down among them the Sassanids ran like the true easterners they are – no stomach for it, no balls.'

  Living in the moment, almost like a child, Maximus had actually forgotten all about the threat to the southern wall. But the news was welcome: things on the desert wall were bad enough on their own.

  Ballista thanked the messenger and sent him back with an order for Iarhai to bring 300 of his archers round on to the desert wall.

  Trumpets rang and drums boomed across the plain. Sassanid commanders shouted themselves hoarse trying to put the enthusiasm back into their men, to lift the tempo of the attack. The stream of incoming missiles picked up. Demetrius cowered closer to the floor. Wearily, Ballista, Maximus and Antigonus got to their feet and huddled behind the parapets, now and then looking out.

  A terrible crash came from the tower to the north of the gate. Again a cloud of ominous dun-coloured dust billowed into the sky. It was followed by a rhythmic shout of pain like an animal bellowing. A Sassanid stone-thrower had scored a direct hit on one of the two Roman ballistae on the tower; the resulting jagged, fast-flying splinters of wood had reduced the platform of the tower to a charnelhouse.

  Before Ballista could issue any orders, Mamurra had appeared on the stricken tower. The praefectus fabrum was organizing a work gang to throw the shattered remains of the bolt-thrower off the tower and sending men to drag a spare piece of artillery from the magazine. The corpses joined the remnants of the machine on the ground and the living were pushed into getting the remaining ballista working.

  For the moment the defenders' main problem lay in the one Sassanid City Taker remaining operative. It had resumed its painful advance on the Palmyrene Gate. While it stood and was capable of movement, all the artillery of the defenders that could get an aim on it had no other choice. Only the towers at the extreme north of the desert wall were able to hit back at the Sassanid artillery tormenting them.

  The last City Taker was taking a dreadful pounding. Again and again smooth round artillery stones, six-pounders and twenty-pounders, smashed at terrible speed into the tower. Bolts from ballistae and arrows caused havoc among the myriad men hauling the behemoth. The City Taker shook, seemed to stagger, but then, with new men on the ropes and with the terrible squealing of thousands of joints of wood under intense pressure, it advanced again.

  Twice, work crews raced ahead of the siege tower to deal with Ballista's traps. The carefully concealed pits at one hundred and at fifty paces from the gate were filled in, but at frightful cost. The crews ran into an almost solid wall of tipped steel. The pits were partly filled with their bodies.

  Inexorably the City Taker rolled on. If it reached the gate, if its drawbridge crashed down on the roof of the gatehouse, the siege was over, the town would fall. Ballista knew that now there was just one hope of stopping the siege engine reaching the gate. Did the Persians know that there was one more pit hidden a mere twenty paces from the gate? The Suren had not come that close. As far as Ballista knew, no Persian had come that close. But had the traitor warned them?

  Nearer and nearer came the skin-clad tower. The smell of uncured hides, wood and the sweat of men preceded it to the gatehouse. Thirty paces, twenty-five: no work crew racing ahead. Twenty paces. Nothing. Had Ballista miscalculated? Were the beams too strong? Would the City Taker cross unhindered over the trap?

  There was a deep, deep groan. The surface of the road moved, the hidden boards over the pit began to buckle under the weight of the tower. A distinctive smell wafted up. One by one the boards snapped. The tower lurched forward. Men screamed.

  Ballista snatched up a bow and arrow. The smell of pitch was strong in his nostrils. He touched the combustible material to a brazier. The arrowhead flared. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out from the shelter of the crenellations. He flinched as a Persian arrow shot past his face. He exhaled, and forced himself to lean out over the wall, to ignore the dangers, to concentrate on what had to be done. Dimly he was aware of missiles nicking off the stone around him. There was the dark opening of the trap. He filled his lungs, drew the bow and released. The arrow seemed to accelerate away, a smoke trail curling after it.

  Other fire arrows darted into the pit, into the mouth of the large terracotta storage jar which had been hidden there. With a roar the naptha ignited. The flames shot up, curling and licking around the siege tower, darting up its companionways and the ladders inside. Men screamed. Ballista smelt something like roast pork.

  'Ball-is-ta, Ball-is-ta.' The chants rang out from the walls. 'Ball-is-ta, Ball-is-ta.'

  But the ordeal of the town of Arete was not yet over for the day. The sight of their tower and their men burning goaded the Sassanids. Trumpets called and drums thundered. Noblemen roared commands.

  'Per-oz, Per-oz, Victory, Victory.' A proud chant came from the desert. 'Per-oz, Per-oz.'

  Like a great wave driven against the shore by the frenzy of the sea, the easterners came out from behind their line of mantlets and set on towards the wall. The storming party was several thousand strong, each man clad in armour. The Sassanid knights, the clibanarii, had dismounted. The noblemen were even carrying their own siege ladders.

  The human wave had fifty paces to cross, fifty, long, long paces. From the first step men fell, smashed backwards by the bolt from a ballista, curling round the shaft of an arrow, clutching a foot lacerated by a caltrop, screaming piteously as the stake concealed in its pit penetrated soft tissue, scraped down bone. Men fell in droves – as they crossed the open space, as they descended into the ditch, as they climbed out again. The Sassanids left lines of their dead and dying, but they reached the earth bank against the wall of Arete, they swung the siege ladders up against the battlements, and the first of them began to climb.

  Now the simple but vicious devices honed by generation after generation of wicked, heartless human ingenuity were unleashed against the Sassanids. As the ladders banged against the wall defenders sprang forward with rustic pitchforks. Catching the uprights between the tines, the soldiers pushed the ladders sideways. Despite the arrows whistling past their ears, more defenders joined in; pushing, pushing ever harder. As one man fell another took his place. Those siege ladders not well secured at the base slid sideways, gathering momentum, shedding men, some crashing into neighbouri
ng ladders. Sassanid warriors went spinning head over heels down to the unforgiving ground.

  Great rocks, barely to be lifted by three or four men, were manhandled on to the parapet. They teetered for a second then tipped. Brushing men off the ladders, smashing the rungs, pushing the uprights irreparably apart, the stones plummeted to earth.

  High out over the battlements soared the arms of Ballista's three new giant cranes. Levers were pulled and the great chains released their immense boulders. Where they struck, in the blink of an eye ladders became kindling, men were reduced to a pulp.

  All along the wall walk were flurries of activity. Teams of four legionaries thrust well-wrapped metal poles through the handles of the big metal cauldrons hung over the fires. With haste, but carefully, they lifted the glowing bowls clear of the intense heat. Delicately they manoeuvred their spitting, crackling burdens to the edge. Grunting with effort, they hoisted the poles on to their shoulders then, most dangerous of all, they carefully, so very carefully, tipped the contents over the parapet.

  Men screamed. The white-hot sand flowed down the face of the wall, down the earth bank. The sand set fire to hair and clothes. The tiny grains penetrated the gaps in armour, the eye sockets in helmets, burning and blinding. Men ran, screaming, ripping off their armour, which had turned traitor, trapping the agonizing, scalding sand. Men rolled on the ground, beat at themselves, all unconscious of the arrows of the defenders, which continued to rain down.

  The carnage below the walls was immense. Yet not all the Sassanid ladders were pushed aside or shattered. Still, gaily clad warriors, silk surcoats and streamers floating around steel armour, climbed unbroken ladders. There was no chanting now. They were saving their breath for climbing, for what was waiting for them at the top.

  It is hard to climb a ladder and fight at the same time. For most of those Sassanids who reached the top all that awaited them was a series of blows from a Roman spatha which sent them crashing back down again. But in a few places warriors made it over the parapet and on to the battlements. Most of these footholds were overrun almost immediately, swamped while the numbers still overwhelmingly favoured the defenders.

  'Look, Kyrios, over there.' Demetrius pointed to the wall walk just south of the gatehouse. A knot of four Sassanid clibanarii had made it over the crenellations. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, their backs to the ladder. Five or six bodies, Persian and Roman, lay at their feet. A ring of defenders had drawn slightly back from them. As the Greek youth watched, another eastern warrior scrambled over the parapet, then another.

  'With me. Maximus, Antigonus, equites singulares, with me.' Without waiting to see if his order was being obeyed, Ballista drew his spatha and hurled himself through the trapdoor and down the stairs.

  As the press of men on the roof thinned out Demetrius dithered. He drew his sword. Should he follow his kyrios? He felt foolish holding the gladius that Maximus had given him. If he went down there he would just get himself killed, would get in the way and get the others killed.

  Demetrius saw his kyrios emerge from the tower on to the wall walk below. The northerner set off at a run. With his left hand he – unbuckled and tossed aside his black cloak. It fluttered and rolled down the inner earth ramp. Maximus and Antigonus were with him, six equites singulares right behind. The Dux Ripae was yelling some war cry in his native tongue.

  There were eight Sassanids in the group by the time Ballista reached them. The nearest one swung overhand at the northerner's head. Ballista brought his sword across his body, rolling his wrist, forcing the blade of his opponent outward then, seemingly in the one motion, launched a backhanded cut which landed heavily in the Persian's face. As the first Sassanid fell sideways Ballista aimed a series of heavy blows at the next man, who covered up and cowered behind his shield.

  Demetrius watched, heart in mouth; so much going on at once. Maximus killed a Persian. Then Antigonus another. One of the equites singulares went down. More Sassanids were falling than Romans. More Sassanids were falling than were getting off the ladder and on to the battlements. A group of Iarhai's mercenaries was attacking from the far side. Ballista unleashed a barrage of savage cuts which drove an easterner to his knees, battered his shield aside, thrust the spatha sickeningly into his face. As the kyrios put his boot on the man's chest to pull his sword out he half slipped. The walkway was slick with blood. A Sassanid seized the opportunity to lunge forward, catching Ballista's helmet a glancing blow. With his left hand the northerner swept off the damaged helmet. With his right he parried the next blow. One of Iarhai's mercenaries drove a sword into the Persian's back.

  It was done. As if at a signal the three Sassanids still standing turned and scrambled for the elusive safety of the ladder. All three were cut down from behind.

  Ballista rubbed the sweat from his eyes. He looked up and down the wall. There were no easterners still on the wall walk. Still taking care, crouching behind the battered crenellations, he looked over the wall. It was done. Panic was spreading through the Sassanid ranks. Where before individuals, the wounded, real or pretend, had been making their way back to the camp, now there were small groups. As Ballista watched, whole bodies of warriors turned and fled. The trickle had become a flood. Shapur's assault had failed.

  'Ball-is-ta, Ball-is-ta.' The chants rang across the plain, taunting the retreating Sassanids. 'Ball-is-ta, Ball-is-ta.' Some of the legionaries howled like wolves, the story of the Dux's father Isangrim turning from something to mock into a source of strange pride.

  Ballista waved to his men, shook hands with or hugged those around him. As he was released from Maximus's bear hug, the northerner recognized the leader of the group of Iarhai's mercenaries.

  'What the fuck are you doing here?' His voice was harsh. His concern for her was making him angry.

  'My father was… indisposed. So I brought the men you asked for.' Bathshiba met his gaze. One of her sleeves was torn, a smear of blood showing.

  'Allfather, but this is no place for a girl.'

  'You did not object to my help just now.' She stared up at him defiantly.

  'That was you?'

  'Yes, that was me.'

  Ballista mastered his anger. 'Then I must thank you.'

  XIV

  The stricken plain beyond the western wall of Arete was a ghastly sight.

  From the roof of the gatehouse there was a panoramic view of the horror. Like flotsam thrown up on the shore after the storm has spent its fury, the Sassanid dead lay in distinct waves across the plain. The furthest wave was some 400 to 200 paces from the wall. Here the dead lay as individuals; crushed by a stone, skewered by a bolt, grotesquely half sunken in the ground in the trap which had killed them. The next wave ran almost to the wall. Here the dead at least had company, lots of company. They lay in lines, groups, even low hillocks. Here they had found another way of dying. The often brightly dyed feathers of arrows fluttered in the fresh southerly breeze. Bright, gay, like bunting at a festival, they added an inappropriate, macabre touch to the scene of devastation. Finally, there was the horror below the wall. Piled on top of each other, three, four, five high, they concealed the earth. Smashed, twisted and broken, the corpses here were almost all burnt.

  For eighteen years, more than half his life, Ballista had had a particular horror of being burnt alive. Since the siege of Aquileia, everywhere he had served he had seen men die in flames. The High Atlas Mountains, the green meadows of Hibernia, the plains of Novae by the Danube, all had brought forth their crop of the burnt ones and here they were again at the foot of the wall of Arete; hundreds, possibly thousands of Sassanids burnt by naptha and white-hot sand, their thick black hair and tightly curled beards reduced to charred wisps, their skin, turned orange, peeling away like singed papyrus, obscene pink flesh showing raw underneath.

  Although there was the continuous low buzz of innumerable flies, the bodies looked strangely uncorrupted. It had been thirteen days since the assault. On comparable bloody fields in the west, Ballista knew that aft
er four days the corpses would have begun to rot, fall apart, become unrecognizable. Here, the corpses of the Sassanids seemed to be drying up like dead tree trunks, without putrefaction. Turpio, boasting his local knowledge, put it all down to diet and climate; the easterners ate more frugally and were anyway desiccated by the dry heat of their native lands.

  The Sassanids had not gathered their dead. Possibly they thought it would be interpreted as a sign of weakness if they asked for a truce to collect them. Maybe it was just unimportant, given that they would then expose the corpses to the birds of the air and the beasts of the fields. Ballista noted that religious scruples had not held them back from looting the dead. No one could leave the city of Arete; all the locals were refugees, in the town or elsewhere or – the gods have mercy on them – prisoners of the Persians – yet every morning more of the corpses were naked; armour, clothes and boots gone. The scavengers could only come from the Sassanid camp.

  Thousand upon thousand of dead Persians; it was impossible to estimate their numbers. Demetrius told how the Persian king calculated casualties. According to Herodotus, before a campaign 10,000 men would stand packed as closely as possible together. A line would be drawn around them. They would be dismissed. A fence, about navel-high, would be constructed on the line. Ten thousand men at a time, the army would be marched into the paddock until all had been counted. At the end of the campaign the procedure would be repeated, and the King of Kings could find out how many men he had lost.

  Bagoas laughed a bitter laugh. He claimed to know nothing of this Herodotus, but clearly the man was a liar or a fool. What good would it do to know casualties to the nearest IO,OOO? In reality, before Shapur, the beloved of Mazda, went forth to chastise the unrighteous, he had each warrior march past and drop an arrow. When the Mazda-worshipping King of Kings returned freighted down with fame and plunder from the lands of the non-Aryans he had each warrior pick up an arrow. Those arrows remaining gave the number of the blessed who had gone to heaven.