‘Bollocks, spawn can’t burn; it’s laid in water.’ Magnus ducked involuntarily as the wind of a solid shot passed overhead.
Vespasian finally saw the sight that he had been waiting for and turned to his friend; a grin split his blood-splattered face. ‘It’s a fire god that lives in water which doesn’t quench his flames so of course his spawn can burn.’
‘Oh, River-god fire,’ Magnus said, watching another smoking missile shoot by. ‘I know it; useful stuff it is too.’
Vespasian’s surprise at Magnus having heard of this weapon was tempered by a welcome sight. ‘But we’re now going to fight their fire with heat of our own.’ As he spoke, teams of auxiliaries from Fregallanus’ cohort, led by a centurion, jogged down the street with iron cauldrons on solid wooden stretchers insulated by soaked leather. They double-timed up the steps and the centurion saluted.
Vespasian did not wait for his report. ‘Is this all?’ he asked, counting a dozen pots.
‘No, sir, just the first batch; there’re at least six more batches of this size to come.’
‘Very good, centurion; we’ll start on this section.’ He pointed to a crenel at which two auxiliaries were crouching taking it in turns to repel a seemingly endless stream of conscripts; all along the wall similar scenarios were being played out as the defenders kept low through fear of losing their heads to well-aimed solid artillery shots. ‘Take that crenel, then every fifth one; that should give them pause for thought.’
With a perfunctory salute the centurion led his men off at a crouching lope as streaks of flame and black smoke passed overhead to explode as fireballs in the city beyond; heavy stones crashed into the parapet and skimmed through crenels with eruptions of human meat, of both attackers and defenders alike, spattering over the walkway.
Wishing to set an example, Vespasian stood erect, open to the artillery, and watched the first team lay down its stretcher; with dampened leather gloves two of them lifted the cauldron by a chain, attached to either side, onto the crenel as the auxiliaries defending it fell back after a flurry of lightning sword thrusts. They pushed the iron cauldron across the stone, steam issuing from their gloves, until it reached the lip and then the other two men lifted a wooden pole from the stretcher, placed it on the cauldron’s rim and pushed, tipping it forward as their comrades held the chains fast. The heated oil within it began to dribble down and then pour slowly out as the cauldron toppled forward until, with a sudden surge as it crashed onto its side, the oil gushed down onto the skin and into the eyes of those unfortunate enough to be on the ladder below.
The screams of freshly blinded men pierced the battle’s rage as the sirens’ calls cut through the wrath of a storm. The cauldron was dragged back and an auxiliary leant through the crenel to pull in the vacated ladder; below, the enemy were too intent on scraping the searing gelatinous fluid from their melting skin to notice. A torch was then flung down to ignite the oil; it flashed in an instant, raging with an intensity that almost matched the Naphtha conflagrations blazing within the city, but outdid them for murderous effect in the cramped conditions beneath the wall as men, already in torment, burst into flame. Another clutch of desolate shrieks tore through the din and then more and more as the rest of the cauldrons were emptied of their oil or superheated sand whose scalding grains inveigled their way into clothing and orifices to agonising effect. One cauldron, struck by a direct hit from a fist-sized stone projectile that shattered it, exploded its contents backwards, spattering the auxiliaries around it so that they shared the fate that was being meted out to so many of the human cattle threatening the southern wall.
And then the second load of steaming cauldrons arrived, followed by a third and then a fourth. With each delivery of broiling agony the pressure on Vespasian’s section of the wall eased as ladders were drawn up and not replaced from below, so that the defenders could concentrate on fewer escalade points with more brutal efficiency.
With the sixth and penultimate downpouring of blistering death the will of the Parthians snapped and their terror of immolation exceeded that for their tormentors behind them. They turned and ran, as if by common consent, leaving their dead and dying stacked and smouldering against the base of the wall and littered across the field as they tried to break through the formation of cataphract cavalry, four deep, knee to knee, that hemmed them in.
The auxiliaries, too exhausted to do much more than give a cursory cheer, hunkered back down behind the parapet as the artillery continued shooting stone at the walls and lobbing fire into the city.