‘Oh no,’ he muttered, then turned towards Macro. ‘Sir! Look there!’

Macro looked down just in time to see another, larger, tongue of flame hungrily flicker through the walkway. The gate was on fire. Some of the straw must have landed too near the wall. ‘That’s just fucking great! So much for German fire.’ He glared at Cato.

‘We could try to put it out.’

‘Shut up! It’s too late for that.’ The centurion’s mind raced. All three fires on the wall had a firm hold and were burning ever more fiercely even as he watched. There was nothing they could do to put them out now. And if they stayed on the wall they would be burned as well as providing nicely lit targets for the German archers. There was nothing for it. They must give ground until the fire died and they could move back up to defend the wall. But, with the gate already well ablaze and two more openings burning through the wall, in a matter of an hour’s time the Sixth century’s defence of this side of the village would collapse like a cheap tenement block. And that would be long before dawn and any hope of relief from Vespasian.

‘Stand back!’ he roared out so that all his men would hear him above the raging crack and roar of the flames. ‘Off the wall!’

He waited until the last man had descended the gate ramps and then he took a final look towards the palisade, where sharpened stakes of wood hissed and steamed in the withering heat. Beyond the wall, the front ranks of the Germans were illuminated brilliantly and their triumphant faces wavered and shimmered through the heat-distorted air. Then he ran down to his men and formed the main body up in the street inside the gate, with two smaller sections fronting the stretches of wall ignited by the Germans.

‘What do we do now, sir?’ Cato asked.

‘We have to wait — and pray that the fire lasts.’

Under The Eagle

Chapter Ten

The fire not only lasted, it raged, sending swirling streams of sparks high up into the night sky where they mingled and melted the falling snowflakes. Most of the sparks slowly glowered into nothingness, but some fell back to earth — landing on the angled thatch roofs of the village. Even as Macro was cursing himself for deciding to burn the ram, and thereby the gate he was intending to save from the ram, Cato drew his attention to the nearest huts. Smoke curled up from the roofs, and here and mere an orange twinkle gleamed, then rippled into flames. Macro glanced round anxiously and saw that the huts as far back as fifty paces from the wall were catching fire. Unless they moved they would soon be trapped right in the centre of the blazing inferno to come. A sudden crashing sound drew his gaze to the front, where the entire gateway was collapsing into the roaring flames.