‘I’ll show those bastards.’ With a roar, the legionary heaved the block up to the parapet and dropped it on to the shelter below with a mighty clatter. For a moment the battering stopped, but when Valerius risked a glance to inspect the damage he saw that although the metal roof had been badly dented, the occupants were untouched.
‘Try again,’ he snarled, but in his heart he knew the result would be the same.
‘How long?’ Serpentius asked.
Valerius shrugged. The gate was made of a double layer of seasoned oak and barred with three thick beams. It was strong, but unless the ram could be destroyed the result was inevitable. ‘An hour, maybe less.’
The Spaniard nodded solemnly. ‘In that case, we’ll slaughter the bastards when they come through the gate.’
Valerius smiled at his friend’s assurance, but they both knew that if the ram broke through, this would be their last fight.
When he inspected the gate, it was holding up reasonably well, with only a few white splinters showing the damage done so far. Yet every blow had an effect and men flinched with each strike of the ram and the wooden beams shivered at the strain placed on them. Valerius had ordered two centuries of Spurinna’s Praetorians to the gateway, ready for the breakthrough when it came. For the moment, they sat with their backs to the wall darting nervous glances at every thundering crash. The defenders on the walls above were still full of fight and Caecina would be lamenting the loss of his siege ballistae, but none of that would matter when the ram breached the gate.
Even as he watched, the pressure on the wooden beams grew, and when he looked closely Valerius saw the first cracks beginning to form in the central bar, which was taking the worst of the pounding. How much longer could it last?
He was still brooding on the question when he heard the sound of snarled orders and tramping feet. Puzzled, he turned to find Juva bearing down on him at the front of a stout pole being carried by six of the marine legionaries, every man cursing the great load they bore and their faces uniform masks of pain and effort. The pole was bent almost to breaking point by the weight of an enormous millstone from one of Placentia’s bakeries; four feet of black granite as broad as a glutton’s waist, transfixed by the pole through a hole at its centre.
Valerius realized in an instant what the big Nubian had in mind. ‘Clear the stairs,’ he shouted.
Grunting with effort and legs straining, Juva and his men hefted the massive stone one agonizing step at a time up the steep stairway to the parapet. Valerius wondered that the millstone didn’t slide back and crush the rearmost carriers until he noticed that someone had jammed cloth into the gap between stone and pole to hold it in place. Eventually the carrying party reached the wall above the gateway and thankfully lowered their burden to the flagstones before collapsing groaning beside it. Valerius looked over the parapet down to where the metal-plated shelter covered the ram. Would it be enough? They were about to find out.
‘You are not finished yet,’ Juva snarled at his comrades. ‘One more effort.’ He picked up one end of the pole and took the strain. Reluctantly, and easing their aching muscles, his tent mates returned to their places so that three men gripped the pole on either side of the great stone. ‘On the count of three. One, two …’
With one convulsive heave they lifted the pole to shoulder height and somehow managed to get the millstone on top of the parapet, where it teetered for a moment before a last effort sent it plunging down on the ram shelter. The massive block instantly caved in six or eight feet of roof, buckling the metal and shattering planks. Animal shrieks of pain and terror testified to the effect on those within. Only the bulk of the ram itself had stopped the roof being crushed to ground level. Inside would be a welter of smashed bodies and shattered limbs. Even those not in the immediate area where the millstone had fallen would not have escaped as the trunk was torn from their hands or the wooden frame battered to the ground. Eventually, a few figures started to crawl out, or were supported from the wreckage, to be scythed down by a merciless hail of arrows and spears, before two centuries of Caecina’s legionaries formed testudo to rescue the survivors. In the hours that followed, a few half-hearted attempts were made to salvage the smashed shelter and its ram, but eventually the young legate’s men gave up the unequal battle. In fact, the destruction of the ram had a curiously debilitating effect on the whole attack. The assault against the city walls lost its impetus and by nightfall the Vitellians were back in their camps, leaving only a few archers to harass the defenders with fire arrows.