Iron Winter

61

In Carthage, the cry of alarm went up before dawn.

Nelo, in the barracks he shared with a hundred soldiers just inside Carthage’s walls, heard it echo from watchtower to watchtower, and then within the city itself, along the streets and alleys, in the market squares and temple places. And he thought he heard shouts and screams.

Gisco was on his feet, fully armed. It was as if he never slept. ‘Up! Up, you buggerers, up you get, on with your boots and your scabbards.’

Suniatus rolled out of bed and belched, and from paces away Nelo could smell the stale wine on his breath. ‘Those Hatti ball-sacks sound like they’re having another go, Sergeant.’

‘So they are, lad.’

‘What’s our assignment?’

‘We’re going up one of the gate towers. The scouts have been here with the news. Lads, this time the Hatti have managed to get the gate itself open, and they’re already swarming in the city like maggots in a corpse.’

‘What? How? Those gates have stood all summer.’

Gisco laughed as the men hurried to piss in their night pots, to dress, to find their boots and helmets. ‘All summer! That’s what I like about you, Suni. A real sense of history, just as the general once said to you. Lad, those walls have stood a thousand years without being breached. Even the Muslims couldn’t knock them down when they came calling. And they haven’t fallen now. The problem is somebody has conveniently opened the gate. Just a crack, but that’s all that was needed.’

‘Who did it, Sergeant?’

‘Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the Hatti have to be stopped. And they’ll be stopped by us. You too, Nelo, get that coat of mail on, I’m sure your lord and master will want a scribble of what’s to be done today. And, you never know, you might decide you’d like to share in a bit of fighting after all. Right. All ready? To the gate — this way.’

Without looking back, he led the troops out of the barracks. The men, some still buckling armour or fixing their helmets, followed Gisco at a trot through crowded streets. Nelo ran with the rest.

They were at the south side of the sprawling suburb of Megara. Their barracks was actually an old warehouse, requisitioned when the army corps had had to abandon their camp and move inside the safety of the city walls, a transfer that had made Carthage even more crowded, even more tense, even more dangerous. It was barely dawn, and Nelo smelled the tang of desert sand in the air. Another dust storm must have blown over in the night, but at least it muffled the stink of the ever-burning funeral pyres.

The alarm had been raised. As they hurried to the gate they had to push through crowds running the other way: men and women, mothers carrying infants, old folk, the ill and feeble being helped or carried along, and in a city riddled with disease and hunger there were plenty of them. Gisco’s troop had to push their way through the fleeing mob.

Then they turned a corner — and Nelo was confronted with the sight of enemy troops, inside the city, standing and fighting before the half-open gate. But they weren’t Hatti. These towering men, fighting knots of hastily assembled Carthaginian troops, were Rus or Scand, with long tunics over baggy trousers and leather boots, and caps and coats lined with fur. They wore their red hair, beards and moustaches long, and any exposed skin was dense with tattoos, intricate scribbles over faces, hands, bare arms. Some of them fought with barbed stabbing spears, some threw javelins. But the most ferocious of all used axes, each longer than a man’s arm and fitted with a single crescent-shaped blade tapered to widen back from the edge, a design that made it horribly efficient in its function. Nelo, staring, saw one man get in a clean blow at his Carthaginian opponent, a single downward swipe that cut through the man’s mail coat and tunic and splayed open his breastbone and ribs, lodging in a mass of intestines before he fell forward.

Before such warriors, wave after wave of Carthaginian troops pressed forward only to fall in their turn, and the cobbles already ran with their blood. A horrific battle, taking place within the walls of Carthage itself. Was the city lost already?

Suniatus and some of the others would have dashed straight into the fray, but Gisco roared commands. ‘Not here! Not yet! You’ll do no good to be cut down like these poor lads. Follow me, and we’ll win the day. This way, this way!’

The gatehouse was one of a pair of massive stone towers that sat on either side of the gate itself. Gisco led a dozen men up a stone staircase; soon they were panting with the exertion. Through slit windows Nelo saw the battle opening out beneath him, a pool of struggling, fighting, dying men before the open gate, and a greater Hatti force outside the wall, pressing to enter. At the top of the tower was a small chamber with glassless windows that looked out at the plain beyond the city, where the fires of the Hatti sparked, as innumerable as the stars in the sky.

Nelo was bewildered by what he saw in this crowded room. On the stone flags stood massive wooden barrels, brimming with what smelled like pitch. Under the command of an army officer two harassed-looking slaves were using buckets to transfer this sticky slop to a smaller container set in the middle of the room. This container was connected to what looked like a two-handled pump, a lever fixed over a single pivot; Nelo had seen similar gadgets used to clear minor floods in Northland. And from the container ran a kind of hose, with its nozzle dangling out of the window over the Rus and Scand and their foe.

Gisco nodded to the officer in command. ‘Here’s the muscle you asked for, Sili.’

‘You took your time!’

Gisco hastily dumped his helmet and weapons. ‘Get these slaves out of the way. You two!’ He pointed to Suniatus and another man. ‘Work this pump. See?’ He grabbed the handle and, with an effort, raised and lowered it. Nelo heard the pitch gurgle in the hose. ‘And you-’ he picked two more, ‘-get the hose. Hold it out of that window so you can get the stuff all over the Hatti and their Rus attack dogs. Understand?’

‘No, Sergeant.’

‘Just do it. The rest of you stand by. Watch that door, the stairs — don’t let anybody in until this is over. Got that? And be ready to replace the others at the pumps and the hose. And you, Northlander. Watch. Listen. Draw. Show your Roman master how clever we Carthaginians are.’

The man Sili muttered, ‘Or at least the Syrians from whom we long ago stole this trick.’

‘Shut up, Sili. Just have the wick lit and ready. All set, lads? Get pumping. Hold up that hose. Hold it up!’

Soon black liquid was squirting fitfully out of the hose. Nelo saw it rain down on Carthaginians and the Hatti and their colleagues alike. It was just mucky, oily sludge, and none of the fighters even looked up from the work of slaughter as it fell on them.

But Gisco called down in his own tongue, ‘Fall back! Down there — fall back!’ To the blank astonishment of the Hatti, the Carthaginian soldiers broke and ran, as if leaving the way into the city clear.

Sili brought forward a lit taper. At arm’s length, cautiously, he applied it to the sludge as it emerged from the nozzle.

And the stream turned into a jet of fire, liquid, dense, brilliant, yellow-white, that poured from the hose and rained down over the Hatti and their allies below. Where it touched a man it burned furiously, and though the men rolled on the ground and beat at the flames with their bare hands, it would not be doused. One man hurled himself into a horse trough, but even water would not quench the flaming liquid, which clung and scorched and blazed.

The men holding the hose had been terrified when this fiery breath had leapt from the nozzle. They would have abandoned their place if not for Gisco’s roar. Now they yelled in triumph, as the Hatti below screamed. But then the hose burst, just behind the nozzle, showering the men’s hands and arms with burning stuff. They fell back howling, burning.

Gisco pushed them aside and ordered two more men forward. ‘Bring that fresh hose! Bring it now!’

Nelo stared, at the carnage outside by the gate where screaming men were turning to human torches, and inside this gatehouse where soldiers he had barracked with just last night rolled and writhed in agony, and Suniatus and the other man pumped, terrified, and he drew and drew.