Avenger of Rome

XXXVI

The last scouts rode in at the gallop as the first light of dawn coated the eastern mountains pink and gold. The Cepha gap was a three-and-a-half-mile-long gorge that slashed through an otherwise unbroken range of saw-toothed peaks. The valley’s thousand-foot sheer flanks of fractured red sandstone were divided by a mile of dry grassland at its widest point, but in places it was much narrower. Valerius watched as a fast-moving squall of Parthian cavalry appeared from the dust behind his patrol, howling and yipping and loosing arrows from the saddle. With every eye on their prey it was a moment before the pursuers realized what they were seeing and drew their horses to a disbelieving halt in a shower of flying earth. From valley wall to valley wall a long line of Roman shields blocked their passage. An undernourished, patchy line, its ranks lacking the solidity that would be expected from the cream of Roman infantry, but the message carried by the big curved shields was clear: the legions were here and if King Vologases’ army wanted to reach Tigranocerta it must first destroy them.

Valerius had always known that the only way to hold the gap against a serious assault was on foot. That was why he had insisted the lightly armed cavalry exchange their regular round shields for proper legionary scuta begged and borrowed from the Tenth and the Fifteenth with Corbulo’s assistance. Now the emblems of the two elite eastern legions filled the valley with dismounted cavalry troopers behind them. At this point the gap measured a thousand paces wide as the engineer calculated it. Valerius had formed his men into five weakened cohorts in line abreast, each one hundred men wide and five deep, with a ten-pace division between each unit. To the riders watching from a few hundred paces away it must have appeared that an unbroken wall of shields had sprouted across the width of the valley. Yet it was a pitifully weak, poorly armed and unsupported line. He did not have enough men to both hold the ground and form a reserve. In time of danger each cohort must support its neighbour.

Two figures broke away from the group of riders and rode south. Couriers carrying the unwelcome news to Vologases, King of Kings, that a force of phantoms had materialized to bar his way. The remaining Parthian horse, perhaps a hundred strong, burst into movement, first circling, so that Valerius guessed they must be retreating to gather reinforcements, before advancing to ride across the face of the Roman line at a hundred paces distant. Unlike the earlier patrol Valerius had encountered this was composed entirely of archers; small men, unarmoured, on light horses and ideal for the hit and run tactics that Corbulo had warned him were the Parthian speciality. He waited for the inevitable flurry of arrows.

But the patrol’s commander must have sensed something in the line of shields that smelled of weakness. Without warning he wheeled his horse and led his men directly for the gap between the two left hand formations. If he could breach the Roman defences it would give him a deadly advantage when the main Parthian force arrived. Valerius knew that if the Parthians found their way to the auxiliary horse lines in a gully two hundred paces behind the lines, disadvantage could turn to disaster. A hail of arrows, fired at short range from the gallop, smacked into the shields of the front ranks of the two cohorts with the sound of a hundred branches snapping. Valerius heard the auxiliaries draw a collective breath, but thankfully there was no cry for the medical orderlies. Within two strides the Parthians reached the marker stones that identified optimum javelin range. The defending cohorts were a mix of bowmen and javelin throwers, and with a single shouted order a hundred javelins sailed out from the spearmen flanking the gap and converged on the galloping Parthians like a deadly summer shower. Men grunted, screamed and gasped as the light spears tore muscle and sinew, scraped bone and found heart or lung; a dozen horses crumpled in a single choreographed movement, impeding those not agile enough to avoid them. Two more strides and the survivors absorbed another perfectly timed cast. This time those left unscathed reeled away from the killing zone and turned back, accompanied by the jeers of the untouched Roman line.

‘Quiet,’ Valerius roared.

A single rider breached the gap. An archer in the final rank of the left hand cohort turned and loosed. His arrow took the Parthian in the base of the skull and the horse rode on with the rider dead in the saddle until it reached the pit line and went down in a cloud of dust screaming with the agony of a snapped foreleg.

Satisfied, Valerius waited until the surviving Parthians had gathered in a sullen group well out of bow range before he ordered the cleanup. Men from the second rank of the Roman line ran to where the Parthian injured lay stunned and groaning among the dead. The auxiliaries roamed among the carnage with brutal efficiency, cutting throats and providing the mercy stroke as they stripped men and horses of weapons and arrows and recovered bundles of javelins.

‘I want their coats and helmets, too,’ Valerius reminded them.

All through the long morning the men of Valerius’s little command stood in the burning heat and watched with growing dread the build-up of King Vologases’ forces. The Parthians were preceded by the sound of distant thunder that echoed from the valley walls, a deep, menacing throb that seemed to slowly work its way into a man’s soul. Gradually, the defeated survivors of the Parthian charge were absorbed into the mass of the army’s vanguard, the countless horde of light horse which swirled and flowed like the surface of a great river across Valerius’s front seeking some way to break the Roman dam. At first it was insubstantial, a veil of individual squadrons and regiments that lightly dotted the land, but gradually the veil became a blanket and the blanket thickened to become a great multicoloured swathe of humanity that blocked out the coarse grassland. The feeling of enormous pressure building up behind the vanguard grew, but they never ventured closer than four hundred paces.

‘Why don’t they come?’ Hanno demanded. ‘It would be the work of a moment to sweep us aside.’

Valerius nodded silently. Such a horde could turn the sky black with arrows and force the Romans into the tortoise formation — the testudo — that made them invulnerable to missile attack, but, conversely, would leave them open to a charge by the heavy armoured cavalry that were somewhere out there in that great mass. The answer came to him. His ruse had worked better than he had believed possible.

‘It is because they think we are a full Roman legion. Through his spies, Vologases will know that Corbulo has marched, if not exactly where. Perhaps he has informed his generals, perhaps not. But the tribal chiefs who lead those warrior bands have been told that Armenia is already won and they are but an escort to see Vologases to his throne. This was to be a progression. They might expect some opposition from roving bands of Armenian rebels, but not this. Whoever commands the vanguard will look at our shields and see the prospect of all-out war with Rome. He dare not make his move without consulting Vologases himself, and Vologases dare not move without gauging the strength which opposes him.’

‘Then we have won?’

‘If Corbulo comes.’

But the sun reached its zenith and still Corbulo did not come. Valerius ordered the last of the water distributed amongst the men behind the curved red shields and it was like nectar in their dust-caked throats. By now the cavalrymen were reeling on their feet and he wondered if they were even capable of meeting a Parthian charge, never mind repelling it. Yet when he marched along the ranks to inspect their dispositions they cheered him as if they had won a victory. He remembered Paulinus, the man he had to thank, for better or worse, for being here, and the stirring speech the then governor of Britain had made before Boudicca’s last battle. Valerius fervently wished he had the same words to say to his soldiers, but somehow they would not come. Not that it mattered. They knew the situation as well as he did. If Corbulo didn’t come, they were all dead.

Still Corbulo didn’t come. But the King of Kings did.

An ominous ripple ran through the ranks of the great army facing the Roman line and every man tensed to meet the attack. Valerius mounted Khamsin and took his place in the rear with Hanno and Serpentius at his side. From the centre of the Parthian horde a single figure emerged holding not a lance or a bow, but a branch of green leaves.

‘It seems the King of Kings wishes to talk,’ Hanno murmured.

‘Then let us not disappoint him.’ Valerius nudged his horse between the ranks and on to the plain, where he waited until Hanno joined him with an escort of mounted spearmen. Together they rode to greet the Parthian emissary.

They met midway between the two mismatched forces and Hanno spoke to the Parthian in his own tongue.

‘He says that Sasan, spear carrier to Vologases, King of Kings, overlord of Armenia, conqueror of Elam, protector of the Medes, and lord of Babylon, Sagartia and Margiania wishes to discuss the terms of your surrender.’

‘Tell him that we came here to fight, not to talk, but if this Sasan speaks with the authority of the King of Kings we are willing to hear what he has to say.’

Hanno spat out the translation and the warrior nodded. At a hidden signal the Parthian ranks opened and a dozen mounted men emerged at the trot, led by an astonishing figure who glittered with gold from the top of his helmeted head to the fringe of the chain mail trapper that covered his mount’s head, back and chest and extended to its knees. The rider was an enormous man wearing a long tunic of fish-scale armour, complemented by metal armlets and leggings. His gleaming helmet was topped by a plume of red horsehair and a mail curtain hung from the rear to protect his neck. This Parthian warlord had a face the gods had designed to project hatred. Dark eyes glared out from beneath beetle brows and the narrow, bitter mouth was topped by an enormous hooked nose and twisted in what might have been a smile or a sneer. Sasan wore his beard clubbed and plaited with brightly coloured ribbons and his broad moustaches fell below his cheeks. His escort carried spears twice the height of a man, but their commander’s only arms were a long sword hanging from a loop at his wrist and the curved dagger in his belt. Beside him rode a figure in an ornately embroidered tunic with a large drum hanging from either side of his saddle. Valerius remembered what he thought had been thunder earlier in the day and realized that the drums were the equivalent of the Roman trumpets which could carry signals across the noisiest battlefield. Vologases would know the outcome of the discussions before he and Hanno returned to the Roman lines. If they lived that long.

The leader’s horse stood a head taller than Khamsin, and Valerius studied his enemy carefully as Sasan brought the beasts nose to nose, making the Akhal-Teke quiver and shift. Tall, savage and as pitiless as the harsh landscape that surrounded them, the Parthian returned his stare with contempt.

‘For myself, I would cut off the arms and legs of every Roman who insults my people with their presence and impale them alive as examples of what awaits the next invader who passes this way, but the King of Kings graciously accepts your surrender.’ The words were in precise Greek-accented Latin and uttered in a tone of bored irritation. ‘He will allow you to leave this place unharmed and unmolested with your arms and your standards on condition that you go immediately and do not stop until you are beyond the Euphrates.’

Valerius frowned as if he was considering the offer.

‘Did I hear an ass bray, or was it the sound of an elephant farting?’ He directed the question at Hanno, but he noticed a glint of mild amusement in the Parthian’s eye. ‘We have travelled a long way and this legion is only one of many. They are weary and need rest. It would take several hours, perhaps days, to organize the march, so I must decline your king’s generous offer. Besides, the only invaders I see are the ones before me.’

Sasan sniffed and spat in Valerius’s general direction.

‘Do not think your pathetic little army frightens me, Roman. When I destroyed the legions of General Paetus at Rhandea I learned to read their strength by their standards. I see beyond your tricks. A wall of legionary shields with auxiliaries shitting themselves behind them. But it does not matter. The King of Kings could destroy you with a snap of his fingers. The only thing that prevents him is a desire for peaceful progress. What you see is but a fraction of the multitude which escorts the King of Kings to inspect his brother’s dominions. Do you deny him that right? You are like a mouse beneath a buffalo’s hooves. If you will not go, then move aside lest it squash you into the dust.’ His eyes noticed the walnut fist. ‘You have been careless, it seems. It would be unfortunate were you to lose any further extremities. Will they replace thy head with a wooden one when I take it for a trophy?’

‘My head will remain on my shoulders while your bones moulder in the dust, Parthian.’ Valerius matched the other man’s tone. ‘We are here at King Tiridates’ invitation and here we stay. Tell your King of Kings to go back the way he came and no harm will come to him. Tell him that if he attacks me, he attacks General Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, and if he attacks Corbulo he attacks Rome. Rome does not forget her enemies, but she remembers her friends. If your king is wise he will remain Rome’s friend.’

‘So the mouse squeaks defiance?’ Sasan laughed. ‘Good. It has been many a month since my spear tasted blood. I told Vologases he should have unleashed his hounds the moment our scouts reported you were blocking the valley. The next time you look at the sun, you will not see it for arrows. The next time you look at my face you will be screaming for mercy. Those who fight will be slaughtered. Those who yield will become beasts of burden carrying shit to my farmers’ fields. I will take your skull for a drinking bowl, your wooden hand for my dogs to chew and the fingers of the other to make a necklace for my wife.’ He turned his horse away. ‘You talk well, Roman. Now let us see how you fight.’

As they rode back to the Roman position Valerius exchanged glances with Hanno. ‘That went better than I expected.’

‘Aye,’ the Syrian said. ‘I suppose they might have cut our throats then and there instead of making us wait.’

‘How do you kill a man like Sasan?’

‘First you kill his horse.’

‘All I saw of his horse was its eyes and its hooves.’

Hanno nodded. ‘Fortunately, Sasan is one in ten thousand. The king’s spear carrier holds a high position in his court, almost a king in his own right. No ordinary man could afford such armour for warrior and horse. Most of the Parthian cataphracts wear body armour, but their horses are unprotected. It means the man is hard to kill, but the horse is not. But it is not the cataphracts we must fear. It is their archers who will kill us.’

‘How long?’

‘An hour, perhaps less.’

‘Then pray that Corbulo comes soon.’