Valerius listened to what the Nubian had to say and grinned. ‘Take as many men as you need.’
Spurinna appeared on the wall an hour later. He was clean-shaven and as immaculate as usual in his legate’s polished armour and scarlet cloak, but the grey pallor on his cheeks was proof he had not slept for days and the snap in his voice reinforced the fact. ‘I’ve had a complaint from Antiochus, one of the city’s aediles, that some legionaries are demolishing his house.’
Valerius showed him the shelters and explained what Juva had in mind.
‘Well.’ The general’s lined face relaxed. ‘I’m sure the gentleman has other houses, and we all have to make sacrifices.’
The ‘house’ was a rich villa constructed of large blocks of cut sandstone that would take two normal men to lift. But the former oarsmen of the marine legion were no ordinary men. Broad as a pick handle at the shoulder, with necks like bulls, they had upper arms that, over the years, had developed to the thickness of a man’s thigh. Now a line of these giants struggled up the stairs to the parapet with their haul. Juva showed how it should be done. Bending low to avoid the arrows that were a constant threat to the defenders, he dragged his block to a point just above one of the wood and thatch huts. When he was in place, he waited patiently until the others reached their positions.
Every eye was on the big Nubian as he crouched over the massive stone, huge muscles taking the strain until the tendons stood out like tree roots and his neck looked as if it might explode. Just when it seemed he must admit defeat he straightened in a single smooth movement and heaved the block over the parapet. A heartbeat later the roof of the shelter exploded, followed by a long moment of silence before the screaming started. One of the diggers had taken the full force of the block and his blood and brains now coated the other occupants, who scuttled through a shower of arrows into the safety of the testudo where their comrades waited their turn to dig. A second man’s arm had been sheared off at the shoulder. Valerius watched as the exercise was repeated simultaneously all along the wall to similar satisfying effect.
A great cheer went up from the defenders, but the roar faded as the legionary ranks opened to allow a new set of shelters to be trotted forward into place, along with a fresh set of diggers.
‘It seems they’re not ready to give up,’ Valerius commented.
Juva’s eyes were red-rimmed with exhaustion and his face was grey with dried sweat and mortar dust, but he managed a smile. ‘Neither are we.’ He waved a huge arm to take in the roofs of Placentia. ‘When this house is finished there are plenty more to choose from.’
Valerius always knew there would be a crisis and it came as the sun reached its height and the pressure on the walls threatened to overwhelm the exhausted defenders. Thousands of dead auxiliaries filled the ditch, lying on the already bloated carcasses of those who had been killed on the first day, but still they came. The shelters and diggers had been renewed several times. Juva had lost a dozen of his strongest in the cat-and-mouse game with the archers, and the survivors were close to collapse.
Serpentius noticed it first. ‘What in the name of the gods is that?’ he demanded through a throat choked with dust and thirst. That was a shelter four times the length of those the legionaries had used for their mining expeditions, and it appeared more sturdily constructed. Valerius followed his gaze and felt a thrill of genuine fear as he watched it carve a route through the legionary ranks.
‘To the gate!’ He ran in the direction of the flanking towers.
When they reached the walkway above the gate the curious structure was close enough for the foremost occupants to be visible. Its size was explained by the fact that, as well as the men who carried it, the interior had to be wide enough to accommodate two lines of legionaries and the massive tree trunk they struggled to carry between them. The clue was in the huge stone carved in the shape of a horned ram that tipped the trunk.
‘Juva? Brace the gates and concentrate the strongest of your men here with as many of the big blocks as they can find.’
By the time he heard the sound of the braces being knocked into position the battering ram was already being manoeuvred towards the gate through a storm of spears and arrows. But the roof of the shelter wasn’t thatched, rather plated with some kind of metal sheets, and the weapons simply bounced off. Sweat ran down Valerius’s back, but it had nothing to do with the warmth of a spring day.
The builders had set the gate back from the line of the wall, so that from above the overhang obscured the front of the shelter. A big legionary staggered up with a stone block, but before he could hurl it an enormous splintering crash froze everyone in place. ‘Jupiter save us,’ someone whispered. It wasn’t until he saw Serpentius staring at him that Valerius realized it had been he himself. Now it was the Vitellian forces who cheered, and they attacked the walls with renewed vigour as the battering ram’s rhythmic, ear-splitting crash echoed across the field.