Avenger of Rome

XXXI

The patrol had ridden less than a mile after they emerged from the gully when they discovered that Caladus didn’t have a monopoly on invisibility.

A desperate shout from the flank guard was choked off instantly by the arrow that skewered his throat. Parthian cavalry swarmed from a stream bed two hundred paces away and broke left and right in a movement that threatened to encircle the auxiliaries. Caladus roared at his men to form up and without looking to see who followed kicked his horse into a charge. Valerius was slower to react, and as the Thracian decurion passed to his front Caladus shouted a warning. ‘Get out of here. I haven’t enough men to protect you. Ride for it.’

For answer, Valerius nudged Khamsin so she spun on her hooves after the auxiliary commander. Within four strides they were flank to flank and Caladus turned to check who was with him.

‘Fool,’ he said, but his face split into a savage grin and the wild light of battle shone bright in his eyes.

Valerius matched his grin. ‘We fight together and we die together.’

‘Fuck dying.’ Caladus broke off to shout orders to his men. ‘They’ll be a mix of archers and spearmen. You and the boy take the spearmen. That way you’ll have a chance.’ Valerius looked up and for the first time was able to study the enemy horsemen. He saw immediately that Caladus was right. They might be outnumbered, but at least half of the force opposing them carried ten-foot-long, narrow-pointed spears which were only of use at close range. ‘Their archers will want to take as many of us with the first volley as they can, and then trade us shot for shot. We have to make it difficult for them. They’re here for information and plunder. They don’t like dying for nothing. The answer is to kill them. Kill them! ’ the Thracian screamed. ‘Kill every last one of the gutless bastards!’

In a confusion of dust raised by thundering hooves, Valerius hauled his sword clear of its scabbard and called out to Tiberius. A voice answered from his right and together they swerved towards a group of Parthians streaming across the flank who had been surprised by the speed of the Roman counter-attack. An arrow flicked off his pot-helmet with a metallic clatter and he instinctively hunched over Khamsin’s neck to make himself a smaller target. The next pair of shafts lodged in the ash shield fixed to his walnut fist. He glanced to his left and there was Hassan, grinning through his beard, with the short recurved bow strung and an arrow nocked and ready to fly. More blows on the shield before something slammed him high in the chest with enough force to knock him backwards. He almost fell, but the little mare adjusted her stride beneath him and he managed to stay in the saddle. He waited for the pain to come. The shock of the blow had numbed his body, but the arrow must have bitten deep, the needle point buried in the flesh of his breast. But when he dared to look down he saw the wooden shaft dangling from the ringed mail beneath his cloak. The point had penetrated the iron, but the heavy leather tunic beneath had saved him from serious injury. A man cried out to his god and Khamsin swerved to avoid the fallen body beneath her hooves, but Valerius concentrated on the half-dozen galloping figures ahead of him, picking out a spearman in a bright green tunic. He heard the ziiipp of an arrow as Hassan fired from his side and a horse in the centre of the Parthian line reared up screaming with a shaft buried to the feathers in its chest. Why weren’t the Parthian archers aiming for the horses? He remembered Hanno’s words at the bridge. A Parthian would sacrifice his wife before he would sacrifice his horse. Caladus had said they were here for plunder. Of course, they would want to capture the Roman mounts if they could. Valerius felt the battle madness fill him. He had no thought of victory or defeat. All he wanted to do was kill. If the spearmen charged, they might blunt the Roman attack, but they seemed reluctant to move, preferring to allow the archers to do the work for them. In a few strides it would be too late. Now, at last, they were moving. A sharp cry from his left and he glanced aside in time to see Tiberius’s look of astonishment as he was thrown clean over his mount’s shoulder as the beast went down in a welter of dust and flailing hooves. His mind registered the fact, but they were gone in an instant, and his focus stayed fixed on the rider he had picked out. In that odd symmetry of battle the Parthian also seemed to have chosen Valerius as his prey. He was accompanied by a second horseman and together their spears came down so that they were lined up on the Roman’s chest, wicked needle points gleaming in the dying light of the sun. Small details. Dark, glaring eyes and snarling mouths. A flash of gold on the right-hand rider’s wrist. The decorative scarlet plume on a horse’s forehead. Without conscious thought Valerius’s mind calculated speed and distance, the angle of attack, which had forced them slightly to their left. Less than twenty strides now. He saw the second man drop back a little. Two spears, one to Valerius’s right flank, the other to his left. The first to draw his shield and open up his defences. The second to skewer him. No amount of mail and leather would stop a point with the weight of man and horse behind it. He knew he was dead, but pride would not let him turn away. He was a soldier. This was how soldiers died. He screamed out loud, anticipating the moment. Counted the heartbeats. The second horse faltering, its rider catapulted from the saddle by an arrow that pierced his screaming mouth with such power that only the feathers were left visible. The merciless eyes of the first, unaware he was now alone, the spear held two-handed and angled across his body. Valerius took the point on his shield and forced it past his head, feeling the breath of the iron across his cheek. Safe inside the point, the long blade of Corbulo’s sword was already slashing upwards in a backhand cut that raked the spearman’s iron-clad chest before taking him below the chin in a terrible blow that split his face from bearded jaw to the rim of his iron helm, carving through bone and teeth and gristle and splitting his eye socket in two. Valerius had a momentary vision of horror and felt the splash of hot blood and then he was past, seeking out the archers who hadn’t joined the charge.

But the archers were no longer there. He hauled Khamsin round and had a moment of breathless clarity. Hassan and the Thracians who had accompanied him were circling, seeking targets, but never staying still long enough to be targets themselves. Within the dust cloud of the battle, riders of both sides darted in and out of the fray. Valerius noticed a horse standing over a still figure with its head bowed and he remembered Tiberius’s sickening fall. He started towards the little tableau, but the horse was a roan, and Tiberius had been riding a grey. Desperately, he searched the dust for his friend. A gust of dry wind cleared the murk for a second and at last he found him. Tiberius crouched behind his dead mount, with a shield in one hand and the jagged remnant of a sword in the other. The shield had been pierced by a dozen arrows, the points three inches through the layers of ash, and the body of the grey was thick with others. Parthians hovered like vultures to his front and flanks looking for the killer shot. Even as Valerius watched, Tiberius staggered and almost fell with an arrow through his right leg. But he was alive. For the moment.

‘Hassan!’ The Syrian turned at the shout and followed Valerius’s pointing finger. Taking in the situation with a glance, he nodded and galloped towards Tiberius, calling his comrades with him. The enemy archers saw the danger and prudently retired to seek easier prey.

Tiberius looked up as Valerius rode towards him and raised a weary hand in salute.

Valerius was still fifty feet away when he sensed movement at the outer edge of his vision. In the next second the image crystallized into a charging Parthian spearman with his lance couched and the point aimed at the centre of Tiberius’s back. He screamed a warning, but the young Roman either didn’t hear him or was too shocked to react.

Valerius kicked Khamsin into a gallop. He knew he had no chance of reaching Tiberius in time, but he had to try. In desperation, he altered course to intercept the enemy spear. The Parthian only had eyes for his victim and he could already taste the joy of an easy kill. His first indication of danger was a flash of iron to his left, but as he dragged his ten-foot ash spear round to meet it, he was already too late. Khamsin smashed into the Parthian’s flank, a thousand pounds of solid muscle at full gallop, sending horse and man tumbling with a crash fit to wake the gods. The impact threw Valerius from the saddle, the breath knocked out of him and his sword sent flying. He felt the skin of his right cheek tear as he skidded across the unyielding earth. Desperately, he struggled to his knees to find the Parthian staggering towards him. The man’s spear had snapped in the collision, but he had recovered the final four feet with its gleaming spiked tip and now he held it in front of him like a sword. A big man, with a heavy beard, his nose had been smashed almost flat when he landed. But he was determined and he was dangerous and he only had one aim as he advanced towards the unarmed Roman.

Valerius let him come. His eyes flickered between those of his opponent and the point of the spear, searching for the moment of decision. In many ways it was easier to face a man with a spear. A sword could come at you from any angle, but a spear had only one focus of attack. The question was: high or low? The throat or the guts? Which would he choose? A gutter fighter might feint with his eyes or the spear point, but the Parthian’s tentative approach suggested that he was more accustomed to fighting on horseback than man to man on foot. High or low? The eyes said low and the spear followed them. Valerius twisted in a desperate sidestep that allowed the point to crease his right side, then spun along the shaft to smash the spearman in front of the ear with a fist of solid walnut that had all his weight behind it. The impact should have crushed the weak point of his enemy’s skull, but the blow was high and the rim of the Parthian’s helmet sapped the force of it.

The big man roared like a bull elephant and his arms enveloped Valerius, who realized when a leg wrapped round his that he had underestimated his opponent. The Parthian might not be a gutter fighter, but someone had taught him to wrestle. Sensing his advantage, the spearman used his weight to unbalance Valerius and they fell, the Parthian’s bulk pinning the Roman to the ground. Valerius bucked and wriggled for all he was worth, lashing out with both hands and kicking with his iron-shod feet, but he could make no headway against the implacable solidity of the man whose only aim was to kill him. The Parthian had recovered his spear and now he stabbed the point down at Valerius’s face. Somehow, Valerius managed to get his left hand to the other man’s wrist in time to check the plunging iron. At the same time he smashed at his enemy’s face with the wooden fist, but the Parthian ignored the blows as if they came from a child. Slowly, a hair’s breadth at a time, the needle tip drew closer, aimed unerringly for Valerius’s right eyeball. Screaming with frustration and fear, the Roman used every desperate ounce of his strength to arrest the progress of that wicked iron spike. The Parthian’s lips curled back from his yellowing teeth and his hand shook as he maintained the pressure, but the movement was unrelenting and Valerius let out an involuntary cry as he felt the point touch his eyelid. The cry was echoed by the Parthian, but it was no yell of victory. His eyes bulged and the pressure on Valerius’s left hand eased at the same time as he heard an obscene crunching sound. With a last shuddering intake of breath the spearman fell to one side to reveal Tiberius, swaying on his feet and with the jagged stump of the sword bloody in his hand.

‘I think we are level now,’ the young tribune said, before his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed in a dead faint.