Lucan clambered upward himself, ascending via a trapdoor.
The first deck was divided into compartments, each enclosed with timber partitions but crammed with a scaffold of joists and supports to support its own fire-tube. In the first one he entered, loincloth-clad engineers were too busy to notice him, adding fresh ingredients to the mix bubbling in the great cauldron or hanging on the bellows. Above them, an officer swung in his harness, peering down the length of the tube. They were eight men in total, and four had died before they knew what was happening, dispatched with single sword strokes to their skulls and necks.
One of the remainder cast a ladle of scalding pitch in Lucan’s direction, spattering him and sizzling in his wolf-fur. Lucan cut the fellow’s legs from beneath him, and disembowelled him as he lay screaming. Another charged with a firebrand. Lucan severed the offending hand at the wrist with his sword, and drove his dagger into the fellow’s gullet. When he turned again the others had fled, including the operator. They would be seeking help, and it would be close at hand. In fact, at the rear of the compartment, a ladder led down to sunlight, and with much gruff shouting, an armoured legionary was already climbing, with another behind him, and a third behind that. With two blows of his sword, Lucan severed the ladder’s mooring, sending it crashing down amid the lowing, stamping oxen, the troopers falling with it.
Another ladder led up, and Lucan climbed it swiftly, emerging onto the upper deck. Its broad wooden surface was covered with a gluey resin, so that men could move about without sliding or falling as the engine rocked. Runnels had been cut in the deck, and filled with large stones and rocks to be used as missiles. There were also stockpiles of arrows, tied in bundles. On all sides, catapult and ballista crews — three men to each mechanism — worked feverishly, spokes banging and oily gears ratcheting as they loaded and shot repeatedly. Aside from these, there were fifteen archers, each armed with a double-curved composite bow. Thanks to Turold and his party, riding back and forth to the west as if seeking a way to approach, they had concentrated on that battlement, but Lucan wouldn’t have long.
The nearest machine was an arbalest — a great crossbow designed to discharge twelve cloth-yard bolts at the same time — and it had just been reloaded. Its crew remained unaware of Lucan even as he struck them, sheathing his dagger behind one’s ear, cleaving the nape of another’s neck, and tipping the third one over the parapet. The other Romans on the deck now discovered him, but not before he knocked loose the pivot-peg holding the arbalest in place, swung it around, took aim and unleashed all twelve bolts at the perfectly aligned row of archers, every one striking a target.
The remaining engineers came at Lucan with mauls and mattocks, but only a couple wore mail shirts or corselets, and none wore helmets. He hewed his way among them, lopping necks, slicing limbs. When Heaven’s Messenger was briefly knocked from his grasp, he snatched the mace from over his shoulder and dealt out skull-crushing impacts. Only two survived his onslaught; they fled down to the lower deck, yelling.
Lucan moved to the western battlement. He signalled to Turold, who, marshalling the rest of his men, charged courageously. Directly below Lucan, another fire-tube raised itself to meet them. He looked to his right, where an onager rested on a heavy frame. It was so bulky that most normal men would have trouble moving it on their own, let alone lifting it. But such minor issues had no place on a day like today. Throwing away his mace and sliding Heaven’s Messenger back into its scabbard, Lucan took the onager by its windlass, and with much scraping of wood and groaning of iron, dragged it out of position and shoved it against the west battlement. With every inch of strength in his body, he levered it up, bending his legs, straightening his back, the muscles in his arms, chest and shoulders screaming in agony, until he’d angled it fully upright. And then he pushed it.
It fell heavily, rolling, and struck the barrel of the fire-tube with a resounding clang, buckling it and bending it double — just as a massive gout of flame was about to be expelled at Turold. With an explosive whoosh, the white-hot payload back-drafted through the blocked tube, engulfing its entire crew, blazing up around the officer in his command chair, blooming through the entire interior of the Hell-Breather — accompanied by the shrieks of men and beasts.
Coughing on scorching smoke, the deck smouldering under his feet, Lucan vaulted over the battlement and hung full length by his fingers. It was still a drop of seven feet. The landing was difficult, the wind driven from Lucan’s body, but he had the strength to roll away. The next thing he was on his feet, tottering in the direction of his mesnie, who had reined up and were watching in astonishment as this machine, by which the Romans had many a time cleared paths through hordes of foes, ground to a standstill, flames blossoming from every aperture.
Lucan swung up into his saddle and noticed the wide spaces around them. It was almost as if there’d been a lull in the fighting. Stragglers from both sides staggered back and forth, some disoriented and battle-shocked, others dazed by the pain of wounds. But the majority of Arthur’s cavalry contingents appeared to be falling back en masse. Not so the Romans. There were still fragmented groups of them on the higher ground, but these were the remnants of larger companies, and now, cut off by the cavalry charge, had been unable to retreat. Some were still fighting, but most were marooned in no man’s land, awaiting the next Roman advance, which, given that Arthur’s cavalry had recoiled, looked imminent. In fact, javelins began to fall close by, and Lucan’s mesnie turned to see fresh cohorts of Romans marching towards them, men who had not yet been in the fight coming rank upon rank.
It seemed incredible to Alaric that they could have killed so many, and that such an uncountable number could remain, footmen and cavalry. Their arms and armour glinted, undimmed by dust or blood.
“No wonder everyone else has retreated,” Benedict said in a voice of woe.
“Don’t be fooled,” Wulfstan replied. “No-one’s retreated. This is merely a feint. A ploy to pull them forward, drag them onto the spearhead of our reserve.”
Lucan took a last look at the Hell-Breather, now a blackened, blazing framework, then he wheeled Nightshade around and headed back to the lines, calling his men to follow.
When Emperor Lucius saw Arthur’s cavalry withdrawing, he announced that he would personally lead the pursuit. His senior officers advised against this, but though Lucius knew full well that he had had suffered catastrophic losses, he only needed to look around to see that he still had more than enough warriors in harness to inundate the Britons’ position. He thus ordered the trumpets to sound, clanged his visor down, levelled his lance and galloped forward at such a tilt that it was all his officers could do to stay abreast. Company by company, the units of the Eighth and Fourteenth Legions fell in alongside him, creating a broad battle-line which bristled with lances and drawn sabres.