Fire in the East

by Harry Sidebottom

  On the battlement Bagoas gave a small whimper of pleasure. ‘The sure sign. When the charger of the King of King’s does thus before the walls of a town, that place will surely fall.’

  ‘Silence, boy.’ Ballista would not have his slave spreading despondency. ‘It is an easy enough omen to create.’

  ‘What are they doing now?’ Maximus asked. A line of seven roped men were being driven towards the priests, magi, around the Drafsh-i-Kavyan. ‘This does not look good.’

  Bagoas said nothing. He cast his eyes down. For once he looked rather shamefaced.

  The men were wearing Roman uniforms. They were struggling, but being beaten forward. One fell. He was kicked back to his feet. They were driven to where a small fire was burning. A pot was hanging on a tripod, heating over the fire. The Romans were forced to their knees and held tightly. Their heads were forced back. One of the magi unhooked the pot from the tripod, lifted it free of the fire.

  ‘Gods below, the barbarian bastards.’ Maximus looked away.

  The priest stepped over to the first of the prisoners. Two magi held the man’s head. The priest tipped the pot. The man screamed.

  ‘What is it?’ Ballista tried to keep his voice level. ‘What are they doing to them?’

  ‘Olive oil.’ Bagoas answered very quietly. ‘They are blinding them with boiling olive oil.’

  A single trumpet call was picked up by innumerable others. The vast Sassanid horde stirred itself and began to form up for its slow advance.

  Gangs of men began to push the ballistae, mounted on squat carts or moved on rollers forward, to within effective range, about 200 paces of the walls. From there the stone-throwers would aim to destroy the defenders’ artillery and knock down the battlements while the bolt-throwers swept Roman soldiers from the wall walks.

  The mantlets were pushed to the fore. These would travel to within effective bow shot, about fifty paces from the town. Forming an unbroken line of reinforced wood, the mantlets were intended to shield both the Persian archers and the storming parties as they assembled.

  Most ponderously of all, hauled by hundreds of men each, the three City Takers began to inch forward. These monstrous wheeled siege towers were made of wood but entirely clad in plates of metal and damp skins. Water was frequently poured down their sides from the top to try to prevent the enemy setting fire to them. They had ballistae on their upper levels, but these were only secondary to their main purpose. The City Takers were designed to creep up to and overtop the walls of the town, let down a drawbridge and release on to the battlements a mass of screaming warriors. As the drawbridges came down, a host of storming parties carrying ladders would burst forth in support from the line of mantlets.

  Ballista looked at them. They were the key to the assault. Everything else would revolve around them. They were quite far apart. One was on the road, heading straight for the gate where Ballista stood. The others were aimed to hit the wall beyond, three towers away north and south. Travelling at about one mile an hour, in theory they could strike the wall in about half an hour. Ballista knew that was not going to happen. The City Takers would make many stops, to change the crews of men hauling them, to test, smooth and reinforce the ground ahead, as well as to fill in Ballista’s traps - if, of course, the latter were detected.

  Ballista judged that the assault would probably not come until midday. Unfortunately, that would be good for the attackers in several ways. The morning sun would no longer be directly in their eyes as it was now. It would give plenty of time for the City Takers to reach the walls and for subsidiary attacks to be ready to go in on the other walls.

  Clouds of horsemen had been spotted the day before on the other sides of the northern and southern ravines. Ballista had altered his order of battle, ordering 300 men, 100 mercenaries from each of the numeri of the caravan protectors, to join the defence of the dangerously undermanned north wall. It was odd that this weakness had been spotted by his accensus, the completely unmilitary Demetrius, not by himself nor any of his army officers. Sometimes one got too close to things. As Ballista’s people said: you could not see the wood for the trees.

  Midday. The northerner turned the timing over in his mind. Midday. The time when Romans ate their first substantial meal of the day. Bagoas had told him that Persians ate later, towards late afternoon. At midday the Persians would not be hungry, but the Romans would. Ballista was about to issue orders to bring forward the time of the soldiers’ lunch when he saw something that might prove to be terribly important.

  The distinctive figure clad in purple riding a white horse was on the move. Although now accompanied by a glittering entourage of the high nobility and client kings, there was no mistaking the high, domed golden helmet, the long purple and white streamers that indicated the King of Kings.

  Ballista had been waiting for this moment, had been praying that it would come. In the Roman army, at the start of a siege it was customary for the commander to ride forward into range of the defenders’ artillery. It was a tradition that served two goals. At a purely pragmatic level, it gave the commander a fine chance to observe the state of the defences. At an altogether more intangible but possibly far more significant level, it allowed the general to rouse the spirits of his troops by demonstrating his studied contempt for the weapons of their enemies. A fine tradition, one which killed two birds with one stone. The only problem was that it sometimes killed the besieging general as well.

  Until this moment Ballista had not known if the Sassanids held to a similar practice. Asking Bagoas had produced no useful answer - ‘Of course, Shapur, the beloved of Mazda, has no fear of the weapons of his foes.’ More and more the northerner wondered just how much or how little the Persian boy knew about war. Bagoas clearly came from the Persian elite, but was it becoming ever more likely that he was from a family of scribes or priests than one of warriors?

  Shapur and his men reined in just outside artillery range. Animated conversation could be seen. The King of Kings was doing most of the talking. Informing his high-status audience of his view of the direction the assault should take, Shapur made wide arcs and sweeps with his arms, the streamers flying behind him.

  Ballista stared intently not at Shapur but at two distinctive humps of stone left on either side of the road. The sides facing the wall were painted white. They marked 400 paces, the maximum range of his artillery. Come on, you cowardly eastern bastard. Come on, just have the balls to get within range.

  Forcing his mind away, Ballista issued orders for the men to take their lunch no less than two hours earlier than usual. As the messengers moved away, the northerner realized with a nasty lurch that he had not issued the far more pressing orders for every piece of artillery to aim at the Persian king but not to shoot until the Dux Ripae gave the command. As the next batch of messengers moved away, Ballista was slightly reassured by the thought that their message most likely was redundant - it would be a very poor ballistarius indeed who had not already trained the weapon on the man on the white horse.

  The trick of turning the washers, slackening the torsion and decreasing the apparent range of the weapons was an old trick, an obvious one. Had it worked? And even if it had, would the traitor have betrayed it? Was the Sassanid mocking him?

  Shapur kicked on, and the white horse moved down the road towards the Palmyrene Gate. Past the whitewashed piles of stone, with his meteor trail of the powerful, Shapur came on. Allfather, Deceitful One, Death-Bringer, deliver this man to me.

  Ballista was painfully aware of the expectation surrounding him. The dead silence on the battlements was broken only by the small noises of well-oiled machinery being subtly adjusted as the ballistae tracked their target. Wait until he stops moving. Do not snatch at this. Wait until the right moment.

  Nearer and nearer came Shapur; closer and closer to the white-painted section of wall at 200 paces.

  He stopped.

  Ballista spoke.

  Antigonus hoisted the looked-for red flag.

  Twang -
slide - thump: the great twenty-pounder by Ballista hurled its carefully rounded stone. A moment later it was joined by its twin on the gatehouse roof. Then, twang - slide - thump, twang - slide - thump: all the artillery along the western battlements joined in. For a couple of seconds the northerner admired the geometry of it all - the fixed line of the wall, the moving triangle of missiles all converging on the fixed point of the man on the white horse.

  The rider in fur next to Shapur was plucked from his horse. Arms wide, the empty sleeves of his coat flapping, the man looked like a large six-limbed insect as the bolt threw him backwards. Towards the rear of the entourage two, maybe three horses and riders went down as a stone reduced them to a bloody shambles.

  After the strike there was a shocked near-silence. Only muted sounds could be heard: the click of ratchets, the groan of wood and sinew under gathering pressure, and the grunting of men working frantically. The near-peace was broken by a rising roar of outrage from the horror-struck Sassanid horde.

  Shapur took both sides by surprise. Putting spurs to his mount, he kicked it into a gallop straight ahead. Thundering towards the Palmyrene Gate, he pulled his bow from its case, took an arrow from his quiver and notched it. About 150 paces from the gate he skidded to a halt, drew and released the arrow.

  Ballista watched its flight. With a superstitious dread he felt that it was coming straight for him. As they always do, it seemed to gain pace as it grew nearer. It fell just short and to the right of the northerner, clattering off the stone of the wall.

  Shapur’s mouth was moving. He was yelling his outrage, his anger, but the words could not be made out on the wall. Two horsemen drew up on either side of the king. They were shouting. One went so far as to try to grab his reins. Shapur used his bow as a whip to knock the hands aside. The white horse was spun around and, with a shake of his fist, the King of Kings was racing back towards safety.

  Twang - slide - thump: the artillery pieces started to speak again. At this distance, against a fast-moving target, Ballista knew there was next to no chance of a projectile finding its mark.

  Back in safety, Shapur could be seen riding along the front of the line haranguing his men. They began to chant: ‘Sha-pur, Sha-pur.’ Along the walls of Arete spread a counter chant: ‘Ball-is-ta, Ball-is-ta.’

  The Dux Ripae took off his helmet. The south wind caught his long fair hair and blew it out behind him. He waved to his men. ‘Ball-is-ta, Ball-is-ta.’

  ‘So, who was it we just killed?’ He spoke conversationally.

  ‘Prince Hamazasp the son of Hamazasp the King of Georgia.’ Strong but hard-to-read emotions played across Bagoas’s face. ‘If his spirit is not avenged it will forever more be a stain on the honour of the King of Kings. Now there can be no quarter.’

  With a child-like spontaneity Ballista threw his helmet in the air and caught it. ‘That should concentrate the boys’ minds.’ Laughing, he turned to the soldiers on the gatehouse. ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy letting those magi get their hands on me.’ The men laughed in turn. By nightfall, the exchange, often altered and embellished, would have reached every corner of the city.

  ‘How long until their line comes into extreme artillery range?’

  ‘At least a quarter of an hour, maybe more.’ As was only right, Mamurra, the praefectus fabrum, the man who was meant to know siege machinery, answered his Dux.

  ‘Then, Calgacus, can you find us some food? Trying to kill the despot of half the known world has made me very hungry.’

  Demetrius watched his kyrios eating bread and cold pheasant, talking and joking with the other men: Mamurra, Turpio, Maximus, Antigonus, the crews of the artillery pieces. They were passing a jug from hand to hand. The young Greek had never admired Ballista more. Did the kyrios plan these things or did they just come to him in a divinely inspired flash? Did he always know what he was doing? However it was, it made no difference: it was an act of genius. The hideous actions of the magi, the death of the Georgian prince and the exchange with Bagoas came together to tell a story that anyone could follow. By nightfall every soldier in Arete would be stiffened by the knowledge of what would happen to him if he fell into the hands of the Sassanids: capitulation meant torture and death; better to die on one’s feet, weapon in hand.

  Soon enough the Persians drew near the line of signs that marked 400 paces from the wall, maximum artillery range. The Dux Ripae had repeatedly stressed the need for these range markers, and those at 200 paces, to be inconspicuous. They were to be visible to the artillerymen but not to attract the attention of the besiegers. The majority of artillery crews had gone for carefully arranged, hopefully natural-looking low humps of dun-coloured rocks. There was not an artilleryman in the town who had not laughed, although only surreptitiously - never when the big man or his vicious-looking bodyguard were around - at the markers opposite the Palmyrene Gate chosen by the Dux himself: ‘well, brother, that is a northern barbarian’s idea of inconspicuous: two bloody great piles of stone followed by a bloody great wall, the whole lot painted white.’

  The Persians were advancing sensibly, coming on in good order. The main body was advancing at the speed at which the ballistae could be moved. The mantlets, which could be transported considerably faster, were staying with the artillery to try to shield them. The three great siege towers were lagging quite some distance behind.

  Ballista’s eyes were concentrated on the two white stones 400 paces away. He held a piece of bread and cheese in one hand and a jug in the other, both completely unconsidered. When the Persians passed the stones, they would have to advance for 200 paces into the teeth of the artillery on the town wall. Hauling their artillery forward, for those 200 paces the Sassanids would be unable to hit back. The northerner had ordered his artillery to concentrate exclusively on the enemy ballistae and the men moving them. Initially, little could be expected - the range was too great for any accuracy - but things should improve as the slow-moving targets came closer. Knock out as many of them as we can before they can get at us. With luck, the stone-throwers would wreck some enemy engines. The bolt-throwers could not damage the ballistae themselves, but they could kill and alarm the men moving them and this would slow down their progress, keep them longer unable to strike back, longer exposed to the stone-throwers on the town wall.

  Ballista nodded to Antigonus. The standard-bearer raised the red flag. Twang - slide - thump, twang - slide - thump: up and down the wall the artillery opened up.

  The first volley achieved nothing and after a couple of minutes there was no semblance of volley shooting. The crews of the artillery pieces worked at different speeds. Ballista was far from convinced that the quickest were necessarily the best - better to take a little extra time and aim well. It cost him some effort not to take over the laying of the big twenty-pounder next to him. The northerner went to scratch his nose, found a jug in one hand, food in the other. He drank and ate.

  Cheers, loud cheers, from the wall off to the right. Ballista looked just in time to see a wheel spinning in the air like a tossed coin. A cloud of dust rose from the plain. Small, brightly clad figures staggered out of it. One of the stone-throwers towards the north of the wall had scored a direct hit. One Sassanid ballista down, nineteen to go.

  More cheers, this time off to the left. Ballista could not see the cause. Maximus pointed. ‘There! There! Gods below, that’s fucked him.’ Ballista followed the direction of the Hibernian’s outstretched arm. Way, way out from the wall, way out behind the main body of the Persians, was the southernmost of the three siege towers. The great Sassanid City Taker was leaning drunkenly forward, its front wheels deep in the ground.

  ‘Tyche,’ said Mamurra. ‘I do not think that we dug any pits that far out. Its weight must have made it go through into one of the very furthest out of the old underground tombs. Anyway, they will not get that brute out again today.’

  Any battle, like anything in nature, goes in phases. Now for a time the tide was with the defenders, and good news f
lowed in. As Ballista finished his bread and cheese two messengers treading on each other’s heels ran up the steps to the top of the gatehouse.

  While the first spoke Ballista passed the jug from his own hand to the other waiting messenger.

  The Sassanid attack on the north wall had come to nothing. A great mass of men - it was reckoned there were about 5,000 of them - had been drawing up on the plateau north of the ravine. They were still a very long way off, at the very limits of artillery range, when Centurion Pudens ordered the bolt-thrower on the postern tower to try a shot at them. The ballistarius, more in hope than expectation, had aimed at the leading rider, a richly clad man on a gloriously caparisoned horse. The bolt had taken the Sassanid off the horse easy as could be, left him pinned to the ground. Their leader dead, the reptiles had swarmed away.

  Ballista thanked the messenger, and gave him some coins. The other handed the jug over to his colleague and told his news.

  The Persians, from somewhere, had got together five boats and crammed about 200 men into them. Stupidly, they had followed the western bank of the river down to Arete. As soon as the boats came into range of the bolt-throwers on the two north-eastern towers, the boatmen, local men who had been pressed into service, dived over the sides, swam to shore and deserted. From then on the boats were in utter confusion. They were little better than drifting while being shot at from the elevation of the walls by bolt-throwers and bowmen. When eventually they tried to land near the fish market, they were easy targets for at least ten artillery pieces and no fewer than 500 archers from the numerus of Anamu. Three of the boats capsized; one foundered just short of the nearest island in the Euphrates; one drifted away downriver. Most of those not killed by missiles were drowned. Only about twenty seemed to have escaped downriver, and another twenty or so were stuck on the island.