Avenger of Rome

XXVII

For a frontier town, Zeugma, a sprawling community of mud brick and marble built across a low hill which sloped gently down to the Euphrates, was a surprisingly sophisticated place. Or perhaps not so surprisingly. Hanno, who had proved a wellspring of knowledge and experience during the six-day march from Antioch, informed Valerius that the city was another creation of Alexander’s general Seleucus. It had been built more than three centuries earlier, and until it had been conquered by Pompey the Great it had been known, like Antioch’s port, by his name.

‘Now it is Zeugma, the place of the bridge.’ The Syrian gestured towards the crossing, which was of a construction the Roman had never seen before. A bridge of perhaps twenty stone-built arches stretched two thirds of the way across the river and ended a hundred paces from the near bank. The gap between was filled by ten or twelve sturdy boats which carried a jointed wooden platform to complete the link to the bank. Hanno noticed his interest. ‘For two reasons,’ he said, holding up scarred fingers. ‘First, when the river floods the prefect in charge of the bridge will order the pontoons to be detached. If he is fortunate, they will swing back to the bank and he will recover them. If he is unfortunate, the river will wash them away. But he will only have lost part of the bridge and they are easily replaced, whereas if it was entirely of stone he would lose much more and it would be a major project to rebuild. Second, in time of war the pontoons can be removed and any invasion force from the east must find another place to cross.’

‘But we are at war now,’ Valerius pointed out.

‘Yes,’ Hanno grinned, his white teeth shining in the dark face. ‘But we are the invading force. The pontoons will remain in place until we return, either in triumph or, may Mars preserve us, pursued, as the lion sees off the jackal, by King Vologases’ cataphracts, his armoured cavalry.’

Valerius felt a shiver of unease as he looked down at the narrow structure and imagined a defeated army packed on to the narrow crossing with the Parthian army pressing it on every side. Arrows sheeting the sky. Carnage and chaos. Men fighting and dying. Bodies in the river and the sparkling grey-green waters running red with Roman blood. He shrugged off the unhappy thought.

‘I’m sure that will not happen, prefect. Everyone has complete confidence in the general. You said so yourself.’

‘Of course,’ the Syrian said. ‘But they will be many and we are so few. Thousands of cataphracts — armoured lords on great horses, swathed in iron so our arrows cannot kill them. Swarms of mounted archers who live, eat and sleep in the saddle. Horses are their currency and their passion. A Parthian would sacrifice his wife before he would sacrifice his horse.’ His eyes ranged over the legionary camps on the near and far banks, their scale almost equalled by the tented towns which had grown up since Corbulo had closed the busy crossing to civilian traffic. ‘Much will depend on the enemy’s mood. Sometimes, he is like the jackal. He prefers to bark rather than fight. But then he can be like the leopards which once roamed here. He will come fast and silent, and he will come for the throat. Beware of Vologases the leopard, tribune.’

On Corbulo’s instructions Valerius had divided his cavalry between the east and west banks of the great river. Hanno’s Thracian Third Augusta was camped with two other thousand-strong alae and two of the smaller five-hundred-strong wings alongside the permanent fortress now occupied by the Fifteenth legion Apollinaris. The rest of the units had orders to range the eastern bank of the Euphrates and harry or destroy any enemy forces they found there. The Tenth Fretensis had already crossed, and the Fifteenth, minus the three cohorts who would have to hold the bridge in their absence, would cross tomorrow, along with the rest of the auxiliaries, cavalry and infantry. All around them the tent lines buzzed with activity as units and individual soldiers frantically made their last-minute preparations for the advance into enemy territory. The air was heavy with the scent of burning charcoal as the armourers of the Fifteenth sweated to repair swords and plate armour, the ceaseless clatter of hammer on anvil punctuating their efforts. Hundreds of carts had been requisitioned to carry the supplies essential to feed more than twenty thousand men and as many horses, mules and camels, in a land that would yield barely a tenth of what was needed to keep them alive. Now those carts must be checked to ensure their wheels were sound and the base and walls undamaged. A single axle break could mean a century going hungry. Valerius was surprised to see the legion’s carpenters dismantling the unit’s siege weapons ready for transportation. It seemed an extravagance for an expedition that was otherwise designed to travel light and had no plans to invade town or city.

When Hanno left to join his men for the evening meal, Valerius stood for a while at the edge of the camp and contemplated the distant mountains on the other side of the river; just a dusty line on the far horizon that shimmered in the dry heat of the late afternoon. He found that the very land oppressed him. Once they had left the fertile strip by the sea they had marched fifteen miles a day over a bleak patchwork of dirty brown and scorched ochre, the monotony only broken by the occasional barren height where eagles and vultures soared, or some blessed river valley where they were able to water themselves and their horses in the cool of the stream. The experience had left him longing for the lush green plains, swampy moors and damp valleys of Britain, where he had once cursed the mud and the rain, or even the shady, ordered olive groves of the estate at Fidenae. After six days, they had found relief at Zeugma, where the Euphrates ran like a broad ribbon of grey and emerald through the sun-blasted rocks, spreading its bounty a mile and more to each side of the fast-flowing waters. Beyond the river lay a true wilderness where the midday sun burned hot enough to crack rocks and a man could ride for days on end before finding water. Yet Corbulo had not only taken his army all the way to Tigranocerta and Artaxata, but fought there and won. Won against incredible odds. Now he was going back, and Valerius would journey every last step with him.

He flinched at the old familiar pain in the bones of a hand that lay among the burned-out ruins of a town two thousand miles away — a pain he knew would never leave him — and walked towards the walls of the city and his nightly lesson from the general.

Surprisingly, what had begun as a trial had quickly become a pleasure. Valerius amazed himself by becoming proficient at the governor’s version of Caesar, though the game was mind-numbingly complex and he was certain he would never become as skilled as his tutor. His proximity to Corbulo inspired jealousy and he was forced to ignore the stares of his fellow officers of the general’s staff who believed him a spy or worse. In time he understood that suspicion of an outsider was too entrenched to break. If they didn’t quite hate him, they resented and feared his presence in equal measure.

Corbulo had set up his headquarters in a villa overlooking the river, owned by the leader of the ordo, Zeugma’s council of a hundred leading citizens. The man had been only too happy to give up his home, one of the finest in the city, to his old friend the governor.

Valerius found him hunched over the mass of reports his officers and their agents brought him every day. From here he dictated the orders for tomorrow’s movements: miles to be covered, rations to be replenished, waterholes’ positions and the forces that would be needed to secure them. His voice rose in irritation at the news of a shortage of mules — this in a land where every second animal was a mule — when it was too late to requisition more from Damascus or Antioch. He ordered that every transport animal in Zeugma and for ten miles around be rounded up, but it still meant the legionaries would have to carry an extra two days’ rations on their backs.

Valerius passed the time studying the mosaic floor, which depicted a marine scene featuring a heavily bearded man with lobster claws for horns looking soulfully at a woman with long dark hair and wings growing from her forehead.

‘Enough. Leave us and order some food and drink.’ He looked up as Corbulo dismissed his clerks and rubbed his hands across his eyes. Despite his concentration on military problems the general had observed Valerius’s interest in his surroundings. ‘It is a depiction of Oceanus, the Greek god of the rivers, and his wife Tethys. Nikolos, who owns this house, is very proud of it. A little rustic and not quite the quality you would find in a villa at home, but pleasing enough in its own way.’

Valerius nodded his agreement. It wasn’t the standard of the mosaic or even the subject that caught his attention. It was the glowing pink figure of Eros, the god of love, who sat cheerfully in the top corner riding a dolphin across a sea of Aegean blue, and reminded him of the day on the galley when he had stood with Domitia with the dolphins playing beneath their feet.

A servant entered with a jug of wine and food on two individual platters. Valerius watched as the Syrian broke off a piece of bread on one of the plates and dipped it into the spiced goat stew, then stood back before swallowing it. Corbulo nodded. When the man left the room, the governor noticed Valerius’s puzzlement.

‘My aides insist that my food is tasted.’ He smiled. ‘After the incident with the snake, it seems they fear I might suffer the same fate as Germanicus, he who might have partaken of the wrong type of mushroom.’

Valerius picked up the wine jug and poured two cups. Very deliberately, he lifted one of the cups and put it to his lips. Corbulo laughed. ‘Your sacrifice does you credit, but the wine was tested earlier.’ He beckoned Valerius across the room to where Caesar’s Tower had been set up with the pieces exactly as they’d left them on the previous evening.

‘You see where you went wrong?’

Valerius nodded. ‘I allowed you to dominate my flanks and I did not have the strength to hold you back. The vertical movements weakened me at the moment I needed to be strong. I think I should have reinforced from the centre, but even then I suspect you would have prevented me. I still do not think in the third dimension.’

‘Good. You have made another step forward.’ Corbulo began moving the pieces back to their starting positions. ‘I think this game is beyond recovery, but we will begin another.’ He settled down on a chair on one side of the board and waved Valerius to the other. The evenings always started this way, with the game taking up the commander’s attention, but Valerius had noticed a subtle change as they had gradually become more relaxed in each other’s company. The breakthrough had come on the third night, when they had played in the governor’s pavilion beneath a stony outcrop midway between the Orontes and the Euphrates.

‘Do you understand why my officers resent you?’ Corbulo had asked, pinning the younger man with his uncompromising gaze.

Valerius held his stare. ‘Because they think I am here to kill you?’

‘No, because they think you are here to replace me. Are you?’

Valerius laughed at the thought. ‘The truth is that I have no idea why I was sent here apart from to prepare a report I wanted nothing to do with.’ He didn’t reveal that he had already decided what the report would say. The eastern command of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo was as efficient, well trained and disciplined as any in the Empire. Its soldiers and officers were loyal to its general and its general loyal to Rome. He would have done his duty, Olivia would be safe and Paulinus could do with it what he would. ‘I have some experience of command, but not enough to justify appointing me your deputy. You, of course, already know that, which is why you have given me command of the auxiliary cavalry, a position which is largely meaningless because of the experience of my subordinates. It also, conveniently, keeps me away from your headquarters until I am summoned, unarmed and always watched by the two guards who are never more than ten paces from your side. If I am not qualified for the job I have been sent to do, what makes you believe I would want to take on a command which will always be beyond my capability and my rank?’

Corbulo sat back and gradually a smile broke the harsh lines of his face. ‘I have been asking myself the same question. Perhaps together we can come up with an answer?’

But the question was never raised again and gradually Valerius felt he was being taken into Corbulo’s trust. Now he would be asked his thoughts on the day’s dispositions, his opinions on the qualities of the commanders of his cavalry alae, the tactics he would use in this situation or that.

One night the subject of Khamsin came up. ‘It was against my better judgement to give you such a horse, but…’ He didn’t finish the sentence and Valerius now knew for certain that the Akhal-Teke mare had been Domitia’s gift, not her father’s. ‘I might as well have tied a millstone round your neck and ordered you to swim the river out there.’ Valerius opened his mouth to protest, but Corbulo insisted on finishing his argument. ‘Let me explain. On the one hand, a cavalryman without his horse is nothing, and your Khamsin makes you a formidable warrior against any enemy, even the Parthians, who ride as if they have sucked a mare’s tit since birth. Yet there is a paradox, because a cavalry trooper’s horse should mean nothing to him. It is his transport into the fight, a platform for his weapons, even his last meal if need be. He must be prepared to ride it to death, or ride it on to the very spear points of his foe, as long as it advances his commander’s strategy. I have seen you look at her, and unless you are a man without a soul you will hesitate when the time comes. And when you hesitate, you may cost a man’s life, perhaps cost your commander a battle.’

At first Valerius was uncertain how to reply, but then it came to him. He said: ‘ There will be a day when your soldiers are mere coins to be spent. What will you do then, when you know you must order them into the abyss? ’ Corbulo raised an imperious eyebrow. ‘Marcus Livius Drusus, legate of the Twentieth legion, asked me that in the September of the consulship of Titus Sextius Africanus,’ Valerius explained. ‘By the following July, Britain was in flames and as Boudicca of the Iceni turned her warriors on Colonia I had to ask myself the same question.’

‘And?’

‘I did not hesitate to sacrifice my friends. I will not hesitate to sacrifice my horse, or myself, if the need arises.’

Corbulo had nodded and Valerius understood that their relationship had altered once more. No, not altered — developed.