Marcus nodded grimly as the attacking force came to a halt in front of the massive wooden gates.
‘Archers, ready…’
He glanced back, seeing the century of Syrian archers arrayed behind their small force taking up positions from which to shower the ramparts with arrows if the defenders were sufficiently unwise to show themselves. The legion centurion commanding the ram’s conscripted bearers pointed at the gates, bellowing the command for them to start their assault. With a collective grunt of effort the ram-bearers swung the tree trunk backwards, then heaved it forward with a collective lunge, the iron head’s arc ending against the gates’ timbers with a rending crash, sending a shower of dust cascading down on to the leading Tungrian soldiers waiting alongside them. A tribesman popped up from behind the wall and lifted his arms to hurl a rock down on to the ram’s bearers, but fell back with an arrow in his neck and a dozen more studding the palisade’s wooden wall before the missile even left his hands. Twice more the ram swung back and hammered into the gate’s creaking timbers, and with the fourth blow the left-hand gate sagged tiredly on to the ground, ready to fall. Julius barked an order back into the expectant silence.
‘Tungrians, wait for my command…’
The ram’s fifth collision with the fort’s defences ripped away the left-hand door; its shattered remnants fell back into the gap between the fort’s first and second palisades in a cloud of dust and splinters. Without the strength of its support, the right-hand gate surrendered after another two blows of the ram’s massive iron head, leaving the gateway open and empty. The waiting legionary guards tossed keys to the barbarians’ chains to the shackled men, waiting behind their shields with drawn swords as the prisoners freed themselves from the ram. Some of the barbarians gathered their chains to use as crude weapons, while others simply looked about them at the Roman troops gathered to all sides in a combination of hatred and simple terror. With the last of them freed, the centurion pointed his sword at the gateway.