The oncoming infantry’s ranks were already looking ragged, with less than half the distance to the makeshift defence that plugged the walls’ breach covered, but Julius stared dourly at the marching men.
‘We’re hurting them alright, but the rear ranks haven’t even started moving yet.’
Scaurus looked down at the hastily constructed wall that filled the gap between the two ends of the inner wall, and the marine infantry waiting in its shelter, invisible to the enemy soldiers. Prefect Ravilla looked up at the same time and saluted, nodding in silent thanks for Scaurus’s display of trust in putting his men into the front line.
The legatus gazed at the stolid marines’ ranks, arrayed along the wall’s fighting platform in the cover of the four feet of wall that was their main defence against the Parthians’ spears. Avidus had been unable to do much more than throw up a rough stone rampart eight feet tall, backed by a twenty-pace long ramp that rose from street level to allow a cohort of legionaries easy access to the broad flat surface that the African’s pioneers had constructed four feet up the wall’s rear surface. At the ramp’s end a fresh cohort was waiting for their turn in the line, successive units queued up along the length of the strip of pitted and lumpy ground that was what was left of the street into which the wall had toppled.
‘I suggest we have the waiting cohorts prepare to come under attack from the enemy archers, First Spear?’
Julius nodded, and at the prearranged trumpet call, each of the units behind the wall moved quickly to erect unbroken walls of shields across their fronts. Another volley of artillery bolts snapped down into the advancing infantry, the leading units slowing their pace to redress their lines and allow men from the following ranks to fill the gaps, men dropping with each step forward as the Hamians poured arrows into them in a deadly rain of iron. The rattle of metal on stone and the whirr of flight feathers whipping past the wall’s defenders announced the fact that the enemy archers had advanced sufficiently to loft arrows at the men lining the city’s walls to either side of the breach. A Hamian to the officers’ left turned with a shaft protruding from his throat before falling to the parapet, his body shaking violently as blood flowed out across the stone surface.
‘Get him away from those pots!’
Another Syrian dragged his comrade clear of the earthenware containers that had been placed in the parapet’s protection earlier that morning, making the warding gesture as he did so. Standing, he was struck by an arrow that pinned his hand to his thigh, tottered for a moment and then fell into the gap between the inner and outer walls with a shriek that was only silenced by his impact with the moat’s mud and debris-filled surface.
The screams of the enemy wounded were now loud enough to break through the rhythmic footfall of thousands of boots, as the enemy infantry came on with the clear purpose of getting to grips with the men sheltering behind the city’s last line of defence, taking advantage of the slackening in the Hamians’ shooting as the archers took cover from the arrows being launched at them from below. As the greasy mud thickened underfoot, the spear men started to throw bundles of brushwood onto the soft, yielding crust that lay over the liquid layer beneath, repeating the action as more improvised fascines were passed forward to them by the men behind. Slowly, inexorably, the Parthian infantry crept closer to the wall, their pace increasing as they grew more confident with the firmer footing under their boots.
With twenty paces left to march, the enemy horns blew and the marching men lowered their long spears to point at the wall before them.
‘Man the defences!’
The marines rose from cover, raising their shields and swinging their own long spears to point down at the oncoming enemy. The Parthians were suddenly struggling, their pace slowing abruptly as they reached the ground where Avidus’s men had laboured hardest over the previous evening, pouring buckets of water passed out to the walls by a human chain of the city’s inhabitants to soften the dried mud, saturating it to the point where a booted foot could sink a foot deep without gaining any purchase. Reaching the space between the outer and inner walls, the gaps on either side between the two plugged with rubble to prevent any attempt to get between them, the footing got even worse for the attackers as they floundered into the deeper mud that filled the now invisible moat. The braver Hamians were leaning out over the walls, ignoring the Parthian archers’ threat to pour arrows down into the struggling enemy infantry as they floundered forward, dropping more bundles of brushwood into the seemingly bottomless mire. As Scaurus watched aghast, an officer who had been urging his men forward paid the price for making himself too obvious a target and went down into the mud face first with a shaft sticking out of his back, blood staining the mud red as his men trampled him into the swampy ground, successive ranks stamping his struggling body deeper into the ooze until all that was visible were two hands, the fingers no longer clenched as he lost the fight for life.
With a clash of spearheads on shields, the Parthians staggered onto the Roman defences and the two armies collided at close quarters for the first time, the marines stabbing down into the mass of spear men, while the Parthians sought to fend off their iron blades, thrusting back up at the men on the wall above them. One of Ravilla’s men fell back from the wall with his throat open, and his comrades pushed him clear for the bandage carriers, working their spears with renewed anger to reap the attackers whenever an opening allowed them to thrust in their long spear blades, but where an enemy soldier fell another swiftly stepped forward. Successive ranks of infantry crowded up behind the leading men, shields raised over their heads in an attempt to fend off the arrows raining down on them. A horn sounded behind the marines and they exchanged positions, the rear rank moving forward to take up the positions vacated by the men staggering back, already exhausted by the first moments of fighting.
‘Look!’
Scaurus followed Julius’s pointing finger, peering over the parapet at the dismounted cataphracts following close behind the rear rank of the infantry with swords already drawn. As he watched, a lone Parthian infantryman turned to run, clearly unmanned by the screams of the men dying under the city’s walls, only to be cut down before he had taken the second step back.
‘Gods below.’
The first spear nodded grimly.
‘They’re going to herd those poor bastards forward to be butchered, partly to exhaust us and partly to carpet the mud with enough dead bodies to give them firmer footing.’
‘Can it work?’
Julius shook his head.
‘I have no idea. But if they pile up enough corpses and get enough men over the wall to allow the rest of them time to get into the city, they’ll hack us to pieces. Petronius, order your bolt throwers’ captains to concentrate their efforts on the cataphracts!’
He leaned over the parapet.
‘Rotate the cohorts!’
The horn sounded again, and the next cohort stamped forward up the debris ramp while the marines kept fighting, waiting until they were pulled away from the wall by their replacements, faces white with exhaustion, to take their place at the rear of the queue of cohorts that stretched deep into the city.
Tribune Varus saw Prefect Ravilla walking towards him, blood flecked across his face and chest, his eyes still wide from the combat he’d been pulled away from only a moment before.
‘How was it, Prefect?’
The equestrian officer looked at him blank-faced, white with the shock of battle.