As the horde reached one hundred paces out the cataphract cavalry started crossing the siege lines and fanning out behind the conscripts with the light cavalry forming up behind them. Vespasian comprehended with a jolt what they were to be used for and why. ‘They’re to prevent the infantry from retreating.’
Magnus squinted his one eye. ‘What? Are they going to drive them into the wall and hope they push it over?’
‘No, I can see ladders; they’re going to try an escalade.’
Paelignus yelped and twisted from Vespasian’s grip to hurtle back down the steps.
Magnus moved to fetch him back but then thought better of it. ‘Just against this wall?’
‘Yes; Babak is trying to draw away the troops on the other walls.’
‘He must think you’re stupid.’
Vespasian slipped his gladius from its scabbard, enjoying the weight of it in his hand. ‘No, he thinks Paelignus is in command.’
A young auxiliary scuttled up with three shields. ‘We only need two now, lad,’ Magnus said, taking one for himself and handing another to Vespasian. ‘The procurator has just remembered some urgent paperwork that needs his immediate attention.’
Vespasian looked out again as the speed of the advance, fifty paces out, increased to a run and the war cry was now more of a hysterical scream than a martial challenge; the ladders were now very much in evidence but the shooting had tailed off. He tensed, preparing for what he knew would follow, and offered a prayer to Mars that he would hold his hands over him and see him safely through his first combat since he left Britannia five years before. He had been sadly aware of the tightness of his back- and breastplates as he fastened them on that morning and fervently hoped that his extra weight would not slow him down too—
‘Release!’ Mannius’ cry brought Vespasian out of his introspection. As the command was echoed each way along the wall by centurions and their optiones, the eight hundred auxiliaries of the I Bosporanorum rose to their feet and, in one fleet movement, hurled their first javelins towards the packed oncoming mass of unarmoured conscripts protected only by the flimsiest wicker shields. Sleek iron-tipped projectiles hurtled down into an unmissable target, slamming into the exposed chests and faces of men whom, just a couple of months earlier, had been forced from their farms and workshops to fight for a cause that they did not understand against a people they did not know. And down they went, their terrified war cries little different from the screams of pain and anguish that they became as the blood exploded from ghastly punctures punched through torsos, necks, limbs and heads by tearing iron. Arms were flung high over pierced bodies bent back as if attempting some macabre tumbling act; gore sprayed in mimicry of the movement and faces distorted with pain into wide-eyed, bared-toothed rictus snarls as they crumpled to the ground to disappear, trampled beneath the feet of those behind who, however much they would have wanted to, were unable to halt because of the momentum of the terrified horde jabbed and whipped into following them. Feet tangled with the thrashing, writhing limbs of the wounded or the shafts of the weapons impaling them, bringing down men so far unscathed to share the crushed death of their howling comrades as, an instant or so later, the auxiliaries of the I Bosporanorum pulled back their right arms for a second time, all brandishing a fresh javelin.
But it was not with impunity that they killed; feathered shafts appeared, as if conjured out of nothing, in eyes and throats of more than a score of auxiliaries as their arms powered forward again. More shafts juddered into shields, vibrating with the impact, as others rebounded off chain mail to leave vivid bruising on the unbroken skin beneath; the horse archers had entered the fray and, with a lifetime of experience with their beasts and weapons, their aim was good. But still well over seven hundred javelins hurtled into the human cattle now less than fifteen paces from the wall so that the terror in their eyes was visible for all the defenders to see. And see it they did and they took heart as more of their foes were pummelled to the ground into which their lives would seep away as they turned it to mud with their blood and urine. With the joy of battle rising within them, the men of the I Bosporanorum took up their third and final javelins.
However, the horse archers were fast and closer now and numerous auxiliaries flew back as if yanked from behind to crumple on the walkway or tumble to the street, their uncast weapons clattering to the ground. But most of their comrades drew their straight spathae from their sheaths having reaped the final long-range batch of lives before the close-quarters slaughter began. And then ladders, scores of them, swung up and slapped down onto the walls to be pushed back by the defenders; but each one that fell seemed to be replaced by two others, such was their number. The horse archers kept their aim, almost unerringly, at head height above the wall as the auxiliaries hacked and pushed at the ladder tops in attempts to topple as many as possible before the weight of bodies on them made the task impossible. More defenders went down screaming, dead, dying or wounded as the feathered shafts flicked amongst them. Vespasian and Magnus joined the frantic attempt to ward off the escalade, heaving at the ladders that kept on arcing up from below, for although the auxiliaries had hurled nigh on two thousand javelins into the mass, most of which had struck a target, thousands more of the human cattle came on, knotting at the foot of the walls, pushed on by a new terror behind them: the terror of a solid wall of mounted metal, punctuated by lance points. Those cattle closest to the cataphracts shoved and kicked their way forward to escape the deadly shafts and trampling hoofs so that those nearest the defences were forced to choose between a certain crushed death compressed against the wall, or a probable pierced death on the blades of the defenders, twenty feet above them.