Castus winced at the rush of shame twisting through him. When he opened his eyes, Probinus was staring directly at him. Worse, the emperor Constantine was staring up at him as well. It was a trick of the light, he thought… but, no, that was why they had been brought here, he and Brinno and Sallustius. Maximian wanted everyone to see that he had broken the oaths of Constantine’s own closest bodyguards.
Maximian stepped up onto the wall, standing between the merlons of the rampart so every man in the opposing army could see him clearly. A single archer, Castus thought, a single ballista and all of this could end now…
‘If Constantine wants to talk to me he can come and do it!’ Maximian shouted, raising his fist and jutting his black beard. ‘Let him prostrate himself in the dust and beg for my forgiveness! He calls himself an emperor? He dares to oppose me? He is not even a man!’
Probinus stared up at the golden figure poised above him. The purple banners stirred slightly, wrapping around their poles.
‘Two years,’ Maximian shouted, loud enough that every man on the wall could hear him, loud enough that his voice would carry to the front ranks of the opposing army. ‘Two years since that man married my daughter! And she is still a virgin!’
A sound of several thousand men drawing breath at once. Castus swallowed hard, feeling his guts clench. A yelp of laughter came from one of the soldiers on the ramparts.
‘How can he be an emperor,’ Maximian called, jutting out his finger to point at his son-in-law, ‘if he cannot even fuck his own wife like a man?’
Probinus was already turning his horse. The men around Constantine were beginning to turn as well, but the emperor himself remained still, staring up at the figure standing on the ramparts. His face looked hard and white with fury. Then he tugged sharply on the reins and galloped back towards his own lines. The mocking jeers of Maximian’s soldiers followed him as he retreated.
‘Well,’ Sallustius muttered under his breath, ‘that went excellently!’
Another dawn. Three days and three nights had passed since the conference at the gate, and the noose had steadily tightened around the city of Massilia. Now, Castus knew, they would see the first assault against the walls. Standing at the parapet of the third tower north of the Rome Gate, he stared eastwards at the dark horizon. The sky above was washed with delicate colour, and the morning star was clear and bright. Lucifer, the light-bringer, herald of the sun.
What am I doing here? He had asked himself that too many times. What trick of fate had led him to be standing on the wrong side of the coming battle? Often he had contemplated making an escape from the city – it would have been easy enough to slip from the palace by night, or to scramble down from the wall and make a run across the no man’s land between the lines. But he had hung back, hoping somehow that he might find a way to make a difference. Nothing had presented itself, and now the dawn of the assault had come.
Officially he was in command of this section of wall. Brinno had been stationed further to the north-west, near the Valley Gate. In truth, neither had any real authority; behind Castus on the roof of the tower were his two Praetorian minders, Glyco and Ursus, wrapped in their cloaks, stamping away the chill of morning. He was still under suspicion, his loyalties in doubt. The constant presence of the two soldiers had become familiar to Castus now, but he knew that they were growing restless in their duty. The prospect of an impending fight did not seem to excite them either.
‘They’ll come today, you think?’ Glyco said.
‘Yes,’ Castus told him. ‘They’ll come soon, while the sun’s still low in our faces. Spoil the aim of the archers.’
And now the sun appeared, sudden on the horizon like a burning coal upon the black hills. A few moments more, and the crests of the wall ramparts were lit with orange light. Castus felt the warmth on his face.
‘Unconquered Sun,’ he muttered, bowing his head and touching his brow in salute. ‘Lord of Daybreak, your light between us and evil…’
Despite his misgivings, he felt the gathering energy in his blood, the prospect of battle. Already he could hear the sound of the trumpets.
Squinting into the low glare, Castus made out the troops beginning to muster on the dusty denuded hillside on the far side of valley. Light caught their helmets and speartips, and the glitter of their mail; their banners stirred in the warm breeze. They were forming up in attack columns; too distant for Castus to accurately guess their numbers, but it was clear that this would be the main assault. Further to the left the walls stood on a slope, the ground falling away more steeply into the valley. But the Rome Gate faced a level strip of ground where the valley opened towards the silted-up inlet of an old dock basin just outside the walls. Once across that, the attackers could either assault the gate itself or move northwards along the line of the wall and find enough level ground to prop their ladders below the rampart. The ditch, and the low rubble wall outside it, would slow them, but it looked a feeble enough defence from where Castus was standing.
Dust rose as the attack columns moved forward and halted once more to dress their lines. He heard the massed shouts drifting across the valley, ‘Ready… Ready… READY!’ The traditional chorus, so familiar to him. He would have given anything to have been among their number now.
‘Let’s get down there,’ he said, motioning to the two Praetorians, then he dropped through the trapdoor into the chamber below. A section of Mauretanian archers were stationed here, under the command of an optio from the Seventh Legion. All of them straightened up as Castus came down the ladder, giving their salutes.
‘Dominus!’ the optio said, his Latin thick with the accent of Spain. ‘Looks like they’re really coming this time!’
Castus could only nod. Three slot windows faced out over the valley, and two archers stood ready at each one. Beside each man lay a thick sheaf of arrows. Castus shifted one of the archers aside and peered out trough the slot. The sun was higher now, the dust had settled, and he could see the assault parties forming into testudo, their shields locked around them. At the heart of each block were the men carrying the scaling ladders; no doubt behind them were the archers and slingers who would try and drive the defenders back from the ramparts.
From the open door of the chamber, Castus looked down the short flight of steps to the rampart walkway. All the way to the Rome Gate men stood ready, their armour burning in the sunlight. Every few paces there were heavy baskets filled with stones and rubble gathered from the demolished buildings outside the walls. A crude weapon, but effective. Braced in the doorway, Castus surveyed the defenders. Most of the men came from VII Gemina Maximiana, one of the two Spanish legions, with a few auxilia and Praetorians among them. Some had the smooth olive complexions of recent recruits; others were scarred and sunburnt veterans of the Mauretanian war. But they looked capable, soldierly. For one guilty moment Castus felt glad that he was among the defenders and not in the assault parties who would have to face them.
Strangely, several of the Spanish soldiers were wearing old-style cuirasses of segmented plate armour. Castus had seen a few rusting sets in a storeroom in one of the fortresses on the Danube years before, but as far as he knew all the other legions of Rome had abandoned the armour back in the days of their grandfathers. It gave the men of the Seventh an antique appearance, like figures from the frieze of a triumphal arch come to life.
Now a stir ran through the defenders on the rampart, and when he looked to his left Castus saw the assault columns break into motion, four of them moving towards the Rome Gate and the section of wall to the north of it. They came on slow and steady, keeping to their rigid testudo formations. Their discipline was impressive. As they marched they kicked up plumes of dust, which rose into the low sun and cloaked the advance in a golden fog. Along the walls, archers strung their bows and slingers began to whip their slings in low circles.