Free The Silver Branch [book II] by Rosemary Sutcliff

the Wall. What can you expect from a mob of Auxiliaries, the sweepings of every breed and colour in the Empire?’
    ‘The Eighth happens to be a legionary Cohort,’ Flavius said.
    ‘Aye, and here come you straight from your fine new fortress at Rutupiae, under the Emperor’s eye, and think all legionary Cohorts are the same,’ said Centurion Posides. ‘Well, there was a time when I thought the like. You’ll mend your ideas in time.’
    ‘Either that, or the garrison of Magnis will mend its ideas,’ Flavius said, standing with his feet apart and his hands behind his back. ‘I rather think that it will be the garrison, Centurion Posides.’
    But at first it seemed that he was mistaken in that. Everything that could be wrong with Magnis, was wrong with Magnis. Fort and garrison alike were dirty and unkempt, the bath-house smelt, the cooks were stealing the rations and selling them outside the walls. Even the catapults and skeins of the battery covering the North Gate were in ill repair.
    ‘How often do you have catapult practice?’ Flavius demanded when he came to the battery on his first inspection.
    ‘Oh, not for a good while past,’ said Posides carelessly.
    ‘So I should judge. If you loosed off Number Three she’d fly to pieces, by the look of her.’
    Posides grinned. ‘So long as they look all right to the little painted devils. We don’t need to use them these days, with the Emperor’s fine treaty holding the Picts down.’
    ‘That is no reason why we should not be able to use them if need arises,’ Flavius said sharply. ‘Look at this thing! The wood is rotten here, and the collar eaten up with rust.—Have Number Three taken down to the workshop for major repairs, Centurion, and let me know when the job is finished.’
    ‘The work could be carried out just as well up here, without dismounting the thing.’
    ‘And have every native hunter who passes Magnis see to what a shameful state our armament has fallen?’ Flavius snapped. ‘No, Centurion, we’ll have her down to the repair shop.’
    Number Three Catapult went down to the repair shop, the bath-house was scrubbed, and the fear of the gods put into the thieving cooks; and after the first three days the men no longer slouched on parade with their tunics dirty and their belts undone. But it was all no more than an unwilling gloss of saluting and heel-clicking under which the spirit of Magnis was not changed at all, and the new Commander said wearily to his Cohort Surgeon at the end of the first week, ‘I can make them stand up straight on parade, but that alone won’t make them into a decent Cohort. If only I could reach them. There must be a way but I can’t find it.’
    Oddly enough, it was Number Three Catapult that was to find the way for him, a few days later.
    Justin saw the whole thing happen. He was clearing up after morning Sick Parade when he heard a creaking and trundling outside, and strolling to the door of the little hospital block, saw that they were bringing the catapult back from the repair shop. From where he stood, he could see the battery by the North Gate, and he lingered a few moments, watching the great weapon being urged that way, trundling and lurching along on its rollers with its sweating team of legionaries hauling in front and pushing behind. He saw Flavius appear from the doorway of the Praetorium and walk forward to join the group about it, as it reached the foot of the temporary ramp that led up to the shoulder-high battery platform; saw the thing lurch like a ship in a gale as it began to climb. Its straining team were all around it, hauling, pushing, handling the rollers from either side. He heard the hollow rumble of it on the ramp, the orders of the Centurion in charge, ‘Heave!—heave!—Once more—he-eave!’
    It was almost at the top when something happened; he never saw quite what, but he heard the creak of slipping timbers and a warning cry. There was a swift movement among the men, an order