Ballista ducked behind the tree. He doubled up, fighting air into his lungs. Wulfstan and the others were already shooting. The range was still long, shifting branches in the way. They would not hit many yet. But there were plenty of arrows. Let them carry on. It gave them something to do in the face of the charge, made them feel better.
‘Fuck me, have you annoyed them!’ Maximus shouted. He was laughing now. ‘You did not kill him, mind, just nailed his leg to his saddle.’
The Alani were whooping, shooting as they rode. Their arrows were falling thick, like winter snow. But the spreading lime trees gave cover overhead and, lower, the shrubs took some.
Ballista steadied his breathing, put an arrow on the string and leant out, looking for a target. The Alani were almost at the tree line. Off to the right, a pony bucked, an arrow in its foreleg. Ballista chose and shot. Without looking, he reached for another arrow, drew and shot again.
The nomads were driving their mounts through the thorny undergrowth. Scratched and bleeding, the ponies were jibbing and refusing. They were getting in each other’s way. Their very numbers were against them. The Roman arrows were adding to the confusion.
Ballista sent a shaft deep into the neck of a pony. It stood for a moment, then fell, as if sacrificed. Its rider jumped off its back. The pony behind ran into him, sending him spinning. The pony stumbled, its rider half up its neck. Ballista put an arrow in its haunch. It spun, kicking out. Its hooves caught another animal in the barrel. This leapt sideways, and went crashing — legs scrabbling — over the bank and down into the river.
All along the lip, among the sharp brambles, nomad ponies were barging into each other, tripping, falling, their riders powerless against the elemental confusion. Only a few animals had got down the bank on their own feet and with a rider still on their back. Ballista dedicated his arrows to these. Without the need of an order, so did the other bowmen of the familia. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. In the riverbed, the ponies made big, unprotected, almost stationary targets. Once one or two were hit, they thrashed around, hopelessly impeding the rest. A river running red was not merely a poetic fancy.
One of the Alani — surely a hero among his people — had negotiated all the disarray. Like a centaur, he and his mount breasted the Roman side of the bank. As hooves scrabbled over the top, and the rider was motionless against the sky, Ballista shot him in the chest. He toppled back. The pony ran on into the wagon-laager. It almost seemed a pity to snuff out such extravagant courage.
Another of the Alani reached up over the bank. This one was on foot. Ballista shot him. The arrow hit him in the left shoulder. He spun around. Then he straightened, drew his sword with his right hand, and came on. Ballista shot him in the stomach. He doubled up, left hand around the shaft. He was on his knees. Somehow, he forced himself up again, took another shaky step forward. He had not dropped his sword. Ballista shot him again. In the chest, this time. Finally, the warrior went down.
On the far side of the carnage, a horn sounded a clean note that cut through the sounds of exertion and pain. The Alani snagged among the undergrowth began to hack and fight their way out. The few alive in the river rushed back up their own bank. Dispassionately, Ballista shot a couple more in the back as they fled. They made no odds. In a fight like this, it was not about the number of attackers killed, but about their will to fight. In a sense, it was always like that.
Wulfstan was exhausted but, still, hours later, his excitement kept him going. He was a warrior. He had killed a man. And not just one man, but three, maybe four. He would never forget the sheer, untarnished pleasure of his first kill. The Alani pony had refused at the lip of the far bank. The nomad was kicking in his heels, urging it down towards the water. The steep, untrustworthy-looking slope, the smell of blood, the squealing of others of its kind in pain and distress, all combined to make the pony reluctant. The Alan was silhouetted. Wulfstan drew the bow. And something happened; something very strange. His hands were guided. It was as if he had done this before, many times before. It was as if Aluith were alive, guiding his hands. Wulfstan released. The arrow shot straight and true. There was never any doubt it would take the Alan full in the chest. The nomad fell, a look of indignant surprise on his face.
That Alan was just the first. The others were easier still. Wulfstan wielded Aluith’s bow as if he had the strength of a grown man, as if the bow had been made for him. Wulfstan was a warrior now. Killing a man was a greater deed than killing a boar or a bear. If he had belonged to the Taifali, all the unclean things he had submitted to would have been washed away in the blood of the men he had killed that afternoon. He was not of the Taifali. He was an Angle; maybe destined to become a Herul. But now he was a warrior, a man-killer. Now, he had the skills to exact his revenge, to wash himself clean in the blood of many, many men.
When the horn sounded, the Alani had pulled back from the river. Soon after, they had broken off their assault on the wagon line. It was mid-afternoon. They had asked for no truce to reclaim their dead but had ridden off in silence. They had established a main camp some three or four miles away to the south. Ballista had been right, both nomad man and beast had been tired from hard travel.
Yet not all the Alani — and there had to be around three hundred or more of them — had retired to their camp. A large troop — a hundred or so led by the noble with the tamga standard from earlier — camped out half a mile to the north. And while the Alani made no more all-out assaults in the rest of the day, small parties kept feinting attacks all along the perimeters. Sometimes, they carried fire pots with them, from which they would kindle flaming arrows. With the wagon-laager by a stream, there was little danger of serious conflagration. But it all added to the strain.
There was no rest between the feints. Under the joint direction of Andonnoballus and Ballista, the defenders were kept very busy. Every member of the caravan, even the slaves and staff found cowering in the bottom of the carts, even the old Gothic witch, was put to work. Ropes were dug out, and the wagons tied tight together. As an added precaution, each was staked down in place. Furs, skins and felt were stretched and tacked between wheels and across gaps to keep out arrows and hinder attackers. The whole assemblage was doused from the stream, and butts and cauldrons brimming with water were placed along the inside of the line. All the baggage was laboriously hauled out. Sacks, boxes and barrels were piled up to complete the barricade. Bales of delicate silks, diplomatic presents from the Roman emperor to the King of the Heruli, were piled with amphorae of pickled fish.
It was no more peaceful to the north, by the river. Ballista had them tie ropes from one lime tree to another. He then showed them how to construct a barrier of entwined thorn bushes, like the zereba the tribes of North Africa built. This zereba was reinforced with assorted belongings and ran along the front of the fighting position.
When released from improvising field fortifications, the defenders scurried about collecting undamaged arrows. Some might find an ironic pleasure in sending the Alani shafts back.
Darkness brought no relief. Bands of Alani continued every so often to canter up to the defences. There was a big moon, and few clouds. The nomads were perfectly visible, their shadows sliding across the Steppe like black souls escaped from Niflheim. Some again brought fire pots, lit flaming arrows and sent them arcing into wagons. The others who did not were the more frightening. Shot at a high trajectory, the swift black shafts fell nearly vertical inside the laager; hard to see at all, and almost impossible to judge where they would strike. Some of the Alani used special hollow arrowheads which whistled or screeched as they fell.