The defenders had waited until the face of the ramp had advanced within ten feet of the fortress and the log-corduroyed upper surface of the Roman construction was nearly on a level with the battlements of the wall proper. Then, despite arrows showered by the trading guild’s local auxiliaries, they had thrust spouts through the crenellations of the tower defending the vulnerable angle on which the Roman attack was centered.
From the spouts, dispersed and carried outward by gravity, came the fluid which clung and blazed and could not be extinguished. Water only spread the flames and made them burn the harder by igniting the quicklime. Even dirt and sand, shovelled desperately onto the fires by some of the quicker-thinking legionaries, rekindled only minutes later when the hell-brew soaked to the surface.
There was an hour of havoc and terror, men lost and equipment destroyed — tools, battering rams, and the galleries which were meant to protect them. But, as the defenders continued to spew fluid on the ramp from which every living thing had been driven, the framing timbers themselves caught fire. The flames continued to spread until the entire quarter-mile width of the siege ramp had become involved.
The flames rose higher than the granite tower which had spawned them, and the smoke lifted a thousand feet before spreading into a pall that hid the sun for three days and wrapped the corpse of the legion’s expectations. Artillery on platforms a furlong back from the nearest flames was ignited by the radiant heat, and the ramp’s filling of earth and rubble turned to coarse glass which crumbled and gouged when the legion finally began the task of rebuilding.
The defenders’ artillery was light, catapults which shot arrows from ordinary bows instead of using the power of springs twisted from the neck sinews of oxen. As a result, they could not hurl firepots against their besiegers and spread their yellow flames along the teams of men and oxen dragging fresh material up the ramp. Few of the legionaries doubted, however, that this attempt would end in as complete a disaster as the first, once the siegeworks advanced to within ten or so feet of the tower’s face.
“The trouble is,” said Vibulenus, “these little furry wogs know what they’re doing.”
He was on a needless tour of the advanced works, to inspect them and report back to the Commander. The tribune could by now have figured within a foot how closely the ramp approached the fortress, calculating from the amount of material that had been carried forward since the most recent tour of inspection. Timber was the limiting factor since the nearer slopes had been denuded to form the initial works. The legionaries were stretching the available wood this time by using fascines of rolled wickerwork to bind each advance of the siege ramp; but even so, heavy logs were needed as pilings to anchor the fascines against the weight of the fill behind them.
The unsteady ruin of the former ramp was more detriment than gain as a foundation, and Vibulenus was not alone in dreading the way the wicker underpinning would burn, despite the layers of sod intended this time to cover the works on the final approach.
“Too right,” Clodius agreed, giving the trembling arrow a nod which showed that he mistook the tribune’s meaning. “I don’t think much of their bows — they’re quick, sure, but they’re no problem with armor the way the Parthians, they shot us t’ dogmeat. But some of ’em could shoot out a crow’s eye, looks like.”
“I mean . . . ,” Vibulenus said, focusing on a great timber, an entire treetrunk over a hundred feet long, being dragged up the approach. The teamsters, locals driving the draft animals which looked very similar to the way the tribune remembered oxen looking, would halt out of arrow range until darkness.
“I mean,” the younger man continued now that he thought he could phrase his statement so as not to seem to rebuke Clodius, “They’re too good all over. Good with their bows —” one of the auxiliaries chose that moment to rise and pump three arrows smoothly toward the tower, ducking back before an answering shot “—good on their fortifications, good on everything. We’ve been fighting dumb barbs too long.”