“They can’t meet us in the field,” said the centurion, more sharply than he would have spoken had not his pride been touched.
“We’d eat ’em for breakfast,” Vibulenus agreed easily. He was watching now and thinking about the timber, suitable for a ship’s keel, as it inched up the ram under the labor of forty yoke of oxen. “But we don’t have anything like that fire of theirs, either.”
“We don’t need it,” insisted Clodius Afer, misunderstanding again. “They’ve built with stone, and they got the height besides. We could pour the stuff down the face a’ that wall all day and it wouldn’t bring down the tower. Hercules, they nigh did that when they, you know . . . . The other ramp.”
The works were lightly manned since the previous disaster. The Commander might not care about the legionaries as individuals, but he must have been telling the truth about their value to his precious guild. The irretrievable loss of twenty-seven men at a blow had shocked him as grievously as it had the survivors of the conflagration. He had agreed without hesitation when the tribunes and senior centurions insisted at the following staff meeting that it was better to risk a sally by the defenders than to risk the legion as a whole in a sudden firestorm.
From the Fourth Century, picketed to the immediate right of the section which Clodius’ century held, a non-com was scrambling along the guardwalk toward Vibulenus. It might be Niger, promoted to watch clerk when Clodius took the neighboring century. That would be a pleasure, because there was very little fraternization across the ranks when the legion was in the field — and they had been in the field an unexpected three months already, with victory more distant every day that brought no beneficial change . . . .
“Maybe they’ll run out of food,” Vibulenus said glumly. He drew his sword and held it so that on the polished flat of the blade could be seen the reflected tower, blurred and less substantial than the reality that was worth a man’s life to view from this close up. “Or water.”
Three crossbow bolts spat down, thumping the bulwark, the guardwalk near the sword’s shadow, and the communications ramp where the corduroy surface had been adzed smooth. “Or arrows, though there doesn’t seem much risk of that.”
Niger, who was proud of his new red-tufted crest but had better sense than to mark himself here with insignias of rank, squatted to a halt beside Vibulenus. “Third Century reports normal progress, sir. We have enough fascines filled to advance another row, as soon as it’s dark enough to set the anchor posts.”
Niger took a quick look over his shoulder, then rose on his haunches to be sure that no one save native auxiliaries were close enough to overhear anything he said to his immediate companions. “Hi, Gaius,” the young legionary resumed. “Gnaeus. Not much happening, is there?”
“How’s your mead coming, boy?” asked Clodius Afer in a tone so dry that the tribune was not sure whether the veteran was being sarcastic or just making conversation on a subject about which he was willing to be friendly.
The older veteran. Everyone in the legion had seen and survived at least five campaigns now.
“Well, you don’t find bees in a pine forest, you know,” Niger said, rightly doubtful as to whether Clodius did know what was to him obvious. “They nest in trees, but they need flowers to eat, and there wasn’t anything open around here before we came.”
Niger’s eyes scanned the slopes behind them deeply gouged by run-off from the brief storms which added to the legion’s misery — and replenished the defenders’ water supply. “You know, sir,” he went on, professionally respectful now that he was considering a professional problem, “I been thinking. If we build the ramp much nearer the walls, they’re gonna burn us out same as before.”
“You’ve got company in that opinion,” Vibulenus said in something between agreement and sarcasm himself.
A ballista, reloaded more quickly than its fellows, banged. The crashing disintegration of its missile was followed, for a wonder, by the vertical collapse of part of the tower’s facing. It left a patch of rock of a darker color across as great a width as a man could span with both arms. Perhaps in a hundred years. . . .