‘You see, no sense in worrying, was there?’

The ram struck again.

‘Why do they hit the walls and not try for the gate?’ Ferox asked, not because he did not know, but because he felt Rufus would enjoy telling him.

‘Too hard to approach and too strongly defended. If we smashed them down, we probably wouldn’t be able to get inside afterwards. There is plenty of wall so we can choose our spot. It’s good that they’re stone. Mud brick is softer, so the ram dents it rather than breaks it. Here we can try to loosen the individual stones, and break or prise them out.’

‘How long will that take?’ Arrian wondered.

‘No idea until we try. Days probably.’

The ram struck again, the tone different this time, and the sound went on, hour after hour, pausing only when the crew was relieved and replaced by another. On and on it went, not stopping when the sun set, and throughout the night it went on, the creak of rope and wood and the crack or thump as the ram’s head struck the stone. Team replaced team, and the relieved men ate, drank and rested until all the others had done their shift and it was their turn again.

Nicopolis

The next day
The twenty-seventh day of the siege

DOMITIUS HAD BEEN working on a catapult when he heard the ram striking the wall for the first time. That was it then, the true assault had begun.

‘Never thought that I’d hear that again in my life,’ John said. The old man had taken to sitting in the workshops now, and keeping him company.

‘If they have any sense, they will lower bags of flax and try to block the blows,’ Domitius said, for he had known that this was bound to happen and had combed his memory for tricks to help the defence. That was not something the legions thought about very much. As far as they were concerned, the Romans always did the attacking, and defending anywhere was a problem only for their enemies.

‘I once saw a man hurl rocks at the shaft of the ram and break it off just behind the head,’ John said. ‘He was a big man. Brave too, for he jumped over the wall and grabbed the iron head before the Romans could retrieve it and brought it back to us. They shot him then, clear through the back so that the point came out of his belly in front. Took him a couple of hours to die and it wasn’t pretty.’

‘You volunteering, old man?’ one of the craftsmen asked.

‘No, I thought I’d shout encouragement as you do it.’

‘I bet that grey hair is just a wig and you’re really nineteen!’

John spread his hands apologetically. ‘My secret’s out at last!’ The door opened and Simon appeared, his face and armour covered in dust. ‘Hullo, reckon you are wanted.’

Simon nodded to Domitius. ‘They’d like your opinion.’

There were four guards with him, two of them strangers rather than his own men, and these ones did not smile or say anything as they wove their way through the streets. The route seemed unnecessarily long and tortuous, and he was surprised when he was taken not to the tower closest to the Roman ramp, but the next one to it. They went up to the open top, because otherwise it would have been hard to see. Everything suggested that his captors did not trust him at all, even if Domitius was baffled as to what they thought he might do.