The ground rang under the drumming hooves of the Alani ponies. The nomads had accelerated into a fast canter. They were shooting as they came. The arrows whistled full of menace through the air. But the trees on both banks and the reinforced zereba rendered them ineffective.
Ballista and his men, steady on their own two feet, and presented with a large, dense target, released fast and accurate. Three, four horses crashed to the ground, riders thrown tumbling into the dirt. When the Alani reached the opposite tree line and reined in, there were five riderless horses turning and boring amongst them, causing confusion.
The majority of the Alani swung down, throwing their reins to the few who remained on horseback. The latter wheeled and kicked back towards their camp, four or five ponies galloping behind each on lead reins.
Ballista kept shooting: pluck arrow from ground, nock, draw, aim, release. Nomads continued to fall. Ballista half noted one staggering with an arrow protruding from his eye.
A shaft ricocheted off the lime next to Ballista’s face. It left a weeping, sappy scar on the bough. Ballista drew and released again. The incoming arrows were getting closer. About half the dismounted Alani had remained on the far bank. Scattered among the trees and undergrowth, they were pouring arrows into the defences.
The other nomads — twenty, twenty-five of them? — were rushing down the bank.
A nomad suddenly collapsed, clutching his leg. Another tripped, tumbling face first down into the water. Further along, off to the left, one seemed to half sink into the earth and screamed a terrible scream as if some chthonic deity were dragging him down to the underworld. Others shied away from those areas of the bank. The pits dug by Hippothous and Wulfstan were channelling the Alani, making them bunch up, making them yet better targets.
‘Shoot the ones in the water.’ Ballista doubted if all would obey his order. It is almost impossible to shoot at someone else and not the men shooting at you. Fighting the urge to target the embroidered coat of a bowman pulling an arrow from his gorytus on the bank directly across from him, Ballista closed one eye, allowed for the man’s movement and sent an arrow smack into the chest of a man splashing through the river.
The attacking party reached the southern bank. Two nomads climbed over the top. Both toppled back, skewered by shafts from Ballista and Wulfstan. Ballista’s vision of the world shrank to just those few feet of muddy riverbank. Three more nomads hurled themselves over. Ballista missed. Wulfstan hit another. Four more followed over. They were at the zereba; wielding their long swords, trying to hack a way through the thorns. Ballista shot one in the shoulder; higher than he had intended.
Two of the Alani crouched to hoist one of their kin over the zereba. Ballista shot the one on the right in the side. He collapsed, dropping the nomad half in the air. The man screamed as he landed amid the sharp, tangled thorn bushes. He thrashed around, becoming more embedded. Red gashes of blood blossomed where his clothes were torn. Ballista drew his spatha and brought it down on the man’s head. The long, heavy blade crumpled the skull like an eggshell.
The Alani who had survived the ill-fated attack were scrambling back across the riverbed, up the opposite bank and into the shelter of the trees and undergrowth. The ones who had remained there were still shooting. They continued to pose a threat. It was best to keep your head down. Yet the intensity had gone. An Alan would pop out, shoot a wildly aimed missile and duck back. Given Ballista and his men were helmeted and armoured, to come to serious harm they would have to be either unlucky, slow or stupid.
Ballista leant his back against the sticky bark of the lime tree. There was a gash on his left forearm. Not serious, but he had no idea how it had got there. Now he had noticed it, the thing stung abominably. He wiped something else sticky off his face. A mess of blood and brains came away on his hand; from the man he had killed with his sword. It tasted as if some were in his mouth. He took a drink of wine, rinsed his mouth and spat. He stoppered the flask and checked on the enemy. Nothing new. He nocked an arrow. With more incoming than outgoing, there was no need to conserve arrows. He scanned for a target, found one, waited and shot. He missed, but it was good to keep their heads down.
‘Keep shooting,’ he called.
One of the messengers puffed up to Ballista and sketched a Roman salute. He was a slave of the military and had a sword in one hand. ‘ Dominus, Andonnoballus asks for help. The Alani have got into the laager. They have taken the wagon at the eastern end. They are throwing in men. They will roll up the whole line.’
Now that the fighting on his own front was not so pressing, Ballista could hear clearly the din of battle behind him. Some of it was hand to hand. Thinking, he released another arrow. It shaved past the head of an Alan in the bushes opposite.
‘ Dominus? ’ The messenger was shifting on his feet in his impatience for an answer.
Ballista stood, turning it over in his mind. Could he make a difference with but a few men? And if he did strip his own defences, would the Alani recover their spirit and overrun the zereba?
The interpreter, the one who had done well in the fighting in the original ambush, came from the opposite direction. He skidded to a halt, doubling up. He was very out of breath. He had a blade in his left hand and his right forearm was heavily bandaged.
Ballista could not remember the man’s name. ‘What is it?’ He could wait no longer. It was not going to be good news.
‘The Alani have dismounted.’ The interpreter’s chest was heaving. It was not that far to run; he must have been fighting. ‘They are assaulting the wagon of the gudja. The Goth needs more men.’
‘Fuck.’ Ballista swore monotonously as his mind raced. The Alani over the river had taken casualties. They had been held by the zereba. Perhaps it would be fine if he went with some men. And — the thought struck him — the Alani had taken riders from over the river last night. Perhaps the river was never anything but a diversion. He would take Maximus, Tarchon, the injured Calgacus and young Wulfstan with him. It would leave only Castricius and Hippothous. Two men to hold off forty or more. Ridiculous.
Ballista looked at the expectant faces of the messenger and the interpreter. Fuck! Where to go? To the gudja? To Andonnoballus? He turned to the interpreter — Biomasos, that was his name.
‘Had the Alani actually got through the defences when you left?’
The interpreter shook his head. ‘But they were…’
Ballista motioned him to silence. A plan fully formed — as in some improbable, queasy-making Greek myth of the birth of a divinity from a parent’s head — had appeared.
Ballista turned to the interpreter, and pointed west. ‘Biomasos, you see the last of the limes, where Tarchon and Calgacus are fighting? Go and send them both to me here. You will take their place; use Tarchon’s bow.’
‘But Dominus, I am a poor shot, and my arm is wounded.’
‘No matter, just show yourself now and then, take the odd shot, let them know there are still men defending the zereba.’
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’ It was good the interpreter had done a great deal of work for the military.
As Ballista waited, he took another arrow and aimed very carefully at an Alan lurking in a thick patch of brambles across the stream. He took his time. He dismissed from his mind a nomad arrow that came from nowhere and crashed through the foliage not far from the right of his head. Gently, he released. The arrow sped away. Like a striking hawk, it flashed over the water. A foot or two from the chest of its prey, a briar deflected it. The tribesman yelped, and dropped hurriedly out of sight.