Fragments of adobe brick and headsized chunks of the stone battlements tumbled with as much as seventy feet in which to accumulate momentum. Legionaries raised shields if they had warning, but this was little protection against the heaviest pieces. One legionary bounced to the ground screaming, his left forearm broken in a dozen places and the thick plywood of his shield in splinters held together only by its felt backing.
For all the injuries, at least one of them fatal, the scatter of debris was probably the best thing that could have happened to the men at the base of the tower.
Nothing the tribune could have said — no command, even if all the signallers in the legion had delivered it — could have so effectively gotten the attention of those most at risk.
In the pause that followed the crashing impacts, Vibulenus shouted, “Run or you’ll die, boys! Run!” He thrust the men he held in the direction he wanted the whole force to go.
That pair moved, the centurion first glancing upward and then braying, “Mithras save us, she’s comin’ over!”
A full-sized block, tumbling and as big as any in the lower part of the wall, plunged down with just enough outward momentum to keep it clear of the tower’s batter. It struck a pile of stones dragged from the base of the tower with a crash like the world splitting. Neither the block which fell nor the one it hit broke up to absorb the impact.
The block sprang outward in an elastic rebound that gave it virtually the same velocity it had at the climax of its seventy foot drop. It caromed through the legs of the centurion with the energy of a builder’s dray, scarcely slowing in its crazy, corner-bobbling course into the fascines of the siege ramp which caught it harmlessly.
The man turned a truncated cartwheel, his arms flung wide by the weight of shield and spear. The stubs of his legs, both amputated at midthigh, spurted arcs of arterial blood as they described their own courses around the center of motion. When the centurion crumpled in a pile, his helmet fell off as if in benediction.
The upper face of the tower swayed like a curtain in a breeze, rippling toward either edge from where the hollow log leaned against it. More bits fell from the top, tiny until their velocity swelled then into blocks as big as a man and heavier than a dozen men.
Whether by instinct or from the tribune’s warning, legionaries had already abandoned the ground on which the missiles were falling. Many of the troops were trying to climb back the way they had come, up the face of the siege ramp. They were safe enough from plunging debris, but the whole artificial valley would be covered by rubble from the total collapse of the tower. The men who had sense enough to throw down their shields and equipment would probably be able to scramble clear that way, but the others were seriously at risk.
As was Gaius Vibulenus himself. His job was done and he was a human being again with no duty except his own salvation.
There was a cataclysmic tearing sound from within the tower, shaking the ground and sending up sparks in dazzling traceries rather than balls of flame as before. The inner stonework of the wall was collapsing and dragging with it the upper portion of the rubble core. The facing was still momentarily in place despite the way the legionaries had weakened the base of it, but that could not last much longer.
“Help me,” moaned the legless centurion.
The mangled soldier’s eyes were staring in the direction of Vibulenus, but his words seemed instinctive rather than voiced in hope of a response. The eyes did not focus. The mind behind them was as droolingly slack as the lips.
Moments before, while the tribune was an intellect dissociated from every factor save the pieces he moved on the game board, he would have seen the sprawling amputee as a factor interchangeable with fifty-nine others in the legion. Now he had returned to being Gaius Vibulenus Caper, who had been a boy of eighteen and who recognized the centurion as the grizzled man who had punched him in the Main Gallery of the vessel that brought them — here.