Ferox stood for a moment, listening.

‘Poor bastards,’ Vindex said, for there was no more shouting or any sound of fighting. ‘Couldn’t hold that many.’

‘There’s nothing coming from the assault either,’ Bran whispered. From up here they could see the line of the outer wall and its towers, much further away than they would have expected. The leaning tower next to the breach was stark in the moonlight, and they could just see where the breach began.

‘Reckon we’d know if they’d got in,’ Vindex said.

‘We’d know.’ Ferox had seen stormings before, when men half wild with fear and rage spilled out into the streets.

‘So what do we do?’

‘Hey! Who are you?’ The challenge came in Greek, from a tall man in armour down in the street.

‘Back!’ Ferox led them over the roof again. They vaulted across the alley, sped across the next roof, and jumped to another house. Ahead of them the sky was growing red, the sun about to rise. There were no stairs, so Ferox swung himself over, clung to the wall as he let himself slide down and then dropped, rolling as he landed. The others followed, Vindex cursing. There was no one in this narrow street, but torchlight flickered from a junction up ahead and they heard singing. They went the other way, around a corner. Hopefully any pursuers would have lost the trail, but that did not help them with what to do next.

‘Come here!’ The hissed command was in Latin and from the shadows. Ferox hesitated.

‘Come here, you daft sods!’

‘He’s talking to you two,’ Vindex told them.

‘Quick.’ There was a vague figure in the shadows ahead of them. ‘Now or never. Follow me!’ The shadows moved as a man ran off down an alley so narrow that a loaded mule would struggle to fit.

‘I know that voice.’ Bran’s tone was bitter.

‘We haven’t got much choice.’ Ferox said, and followed.

XXVI

Outside Nicopolis

Seventeenth day before the Kalends of June
The thirty-seventh day of the siege

CRISPINUS HAD READ the reports, but each time he saw the breach and the debris of the failed assault, the sheer scale of their losses horrified him. The dead were everywhere, already swelling in the heat. When the Romans had tried to recover them, and see how many were wounded, the Nicopolitans shot them down. When the defenders started to roll bodies down the slope and into the ditch, the Roman artillery and archers had killed them until they gave up. There were so many flies that you could hear a deep humming in the air, as the corpses rotted and stank.

There was not any good news this morning. They still had their breach, even if the Nicopolitans were working hard to strengthen the rampart behind it. His own men had nearly finished raising some platforms that ought to allow some of the heavier ballistae to strike at these new defences. With luck they might knock some of it down, since surely earth and timber would prove flimsier than stone. At the very least it would make the enemy’s work harder. Rufus was cautious, still shocked because with Caecilius gone missing, he was seen as the most knowledgeable engineer they had. The man was nervous, embarrassed because the remounting of the battering ram was proving harder than expected and would take at least another day. Worse still, the roof of the mine had fallen in, hundreds of paces back from the wall, and not stretching up to it as far as they could tell, which meant that it was not likely to do them any good. A dozen workers were buried, perhaps dead or trapped on the far side waiting for the evil spirits of the mine to take their lives. An attempt to reach them only brought down more of the roof, and it was clear that they needed far more supports to make the tunnel safe. Rufus was not sure whether they could make the mine work at all, and at the very least the job would take many days.