Avenger of Rome

XL

Under the dull light of an ochre moon, Valerius allowed himself to be pulled up the track holding tight to the tail of the horse in front while he led Khamsin by her harness. The path was so narrow and hemmed in by rocks that they had been forced into single file, but the engineer assured him that when they reached the top of the steep slope the column would be able to disperse. Valerius prayed that was true, because the last thing he needed was a fighting force scattered across ten miles of mountains. For the hundredth time he told himself that this was no place for horses and that Corbulo’s plan was madness.

He was grateful for the moon, because no man liked darkness and a soldier’s superstitions were multiplied by the night. Before the march his cavalrymen had hurriedly made their sacrifices to Mars or Mithras, but the gods, Roman or Syrian, could only placate the dead, not banish them, and their ghosts undoubtedly inhabited these fearsome hills. Valerius had learned not to fear the dead in Britain, where he had once spent the night surrounded by three thousand gutted corpses from the Ninth legion. The memory was with him still, but it was a memory of courage and sacrifice and a fight to the death with no thought of surrender. He tried to focus on Domitia, but her face was distorted as if he was seeing it through shattered green glass and only her eyes were distinct; eyes that did not carry the message he expected or hoped for. A stumble forced him to concentrate on the path. It followed the contours of the hills, which loomed above like broad-shouldered giants, and the men allowed the horses to pick their own way on cloth-wrapped hooves through gullies and across precipitous slopes where the track had been gouged from the earth. Often, Valerius found himself walking in dense blackness with a sense of an immense void a few feet to his right, but he had trusted in Khamsin and she never let him down.

He walked behind the engineer near the head of the snaking, endless line of men and horses and Petronius told him how he came to know this inaccessible wilderness.

‘It was at the end of the second campaign, while Corbulo was negotiating the peace. He had heard of the Cepha gap and immediately recognized its strategic importance — he is like that, no detail is too unimportant to be ignored — and asked me to survey it and the surrounding area. I was here for two months dressed in Armenian rags in the dead of winter. I marked out the site for a fort, if ever one were needed, but I wanted to know if the fort could be outflanked to the east, and if truth be told these mountains have a certain fascination. Men have lived here for thousands of years. There are cave cities close to our route that I would like to have visited again, but I fear we will have other priorities…’

A ragged scream cut the darkness from somewhere behind, followed by the muted thunder of crashing rocks. Horse or man or both? Petronius hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing anyone could do. The gods only knew how many more had been lost among the forces behind. For a few oppressive moments they waited for the sound of violent reaction that would signal the column’s discovery, but Valerius knew he could depend on the scouts who ranged ahead seeking any sign of a Parthian presence. The two men carried on until they reached a broad basin, almost a huge natural amphitheatre, and Valerius ordered the lead elements to halt and allow the tail of the column to catch up.

‘Make the most of the next two or three miles,’ Petronius advised. ‘The worst comes when we leave the road and begin our descent towards the Tigris.’

‘Road?’ Serpentius laughed. ‘Even in Asturia this wouldn’t be called a road.’

‘Well,’ the engineer said, offended. ‘You will see just how good a road this is before dawn.’

It was past midnight now. They had been in the hills for four hours and Petronius reckoned they had only covered half the distance they needed before dawn. The route had taken them in a great flanking arc from the Cepha gap, first to the east and then south, on a perilous, little-used smugglers’ track. ‘There is a dried-up watercourse to the west, below the road,’ the engineer explained. ‘I will know it when I see it, but that is difficult enough in daylight. It leads to a broad gully that will bring us to the river downstream of the Tigris crossing point. If we can gather there undetected and form up on the open plain north of the river we have a chance.’

He didn’t have to say it was only a slim chance and that at the first shout of warning Valerius and his ten thousand would be facing the bulk of the King of Kings’ seventy-thousand-strong army. But that was for the future. What mattered now was that they reach the gully before dawn.

Despite their slow progress, Petronius insisted it could be done, and done in time, but that was before the patrol returned and reported the lights. The scout was a wiry, dark-skinned Numidian and he made his report in the slang-ridden dog Latin that was the common tongue of auxiliary units across the Empire.

‘We saw fires in the ground, lord…’

‘He must mean the caves,’ Petronius interrupted.

‘We obeyed your order not to attack, only look. They were hid in the ground, so I had to go closer to count their numbers, lord.’

‘How many were they?’ Valerius asked.

The man raised his open hands twice in answer, then showed four fingers.

‘And where?’

He gave a long complicated explanation and Petronius groaned aloud.

‘I know this place. A mile ahead. Caves set into the base of a cliff wall in the next valley.’

His face gave Valerius his answer before he asked the question. ‘Can we bypass them?’

Petronius shook his head. ‘We need to go through the valley to reach the riverbed. We could never slip past unnoticed with this many men.’

Valerius could feel the weight of the cavalry units backing up behind. There could only be one decision. He called for Hanno. ‘A hundred of your best. This man will guide you. Make it quick, but be sure none escapes.’

‘I’ll go,’ Serpentius volunteered. Valerius opened his mouth to refuse, but Serpentius was like a ghost in the dark and as good a man with a knife as he’d ever known. The Spaniard had also acquired a pair of Sarmatian throwing axes with which he was now as proficient as their previous owner. Valerius nodded and Serpentius grinned in the darkness and started removing his armour and anything else that might make a noise that would alert the enemy.

Hanno clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Caladus will lead, but he will be happy to have you with him.’

He called his men together and gave them their instructions.

Caladus and Serpentius stared down the valley at the almost imperceptible orange glow the Numidian had pointed out at the base of the cliff. It was so faint that only someone passing close by — or one with eyes that could see like the desert falcon of his Berber homelands — would have noticed it.

‘They have been here all night and seen nothing,’ Caladus guessed. ‘Perhaps they have been here several nights. Their commander has allowed them a fire in an inner room where he believes it is well enough hidden.’

‘Careless,’ Serpentius said.

‘So careless it will cost him his life,’ Caladus agreed.

‘But not so careless that they have not set guards,’ the Numidian whispered. ‘Do you see them?’

The Thracian and the Spaniard peered into the darkness, but they could see nothing but shadows and rocks.

‘To the left of the entrance. A tall man who stinks like a houri and then, across the valley where he thinks he is hidden, a second, fat as a pig, though he moves lightly. And the third, hardly more than a boy, but more alert than the others, stands by the horses in a hollow beyond the next bend. The others are all in the caves, sleeping or talking.’

Caladus pondered his options. ‘The boy with the horses is the greatest danger. One shout and he will be gone. Serpentius? Do you think you can get past the guards to the horses without being seen?’

‘Keep to the centre of the valley,’ the Numidian advised. ‘There is the shadow of an ancient stream bed. Stay low and silent as the hunting leopard, and you will do it easily. I will take the guard on the far side.’

Serpentius nodded.

‘I’ll give you to the count of two hundred. A single arrow will deal with the third sentry. Then we’ll surround the caves and kill the rest.’ Almost before Caladus had finished speaking, Serpentius was gone, disappearing into the darkness with the Numidian at his heels.

The Spaniard slithered down the valley on his belly like the snake he was named for, ignoring the dry stalks and sharp stones that stabbed his flesh and tore his tunic. He kept his face low to the ground and trusted to the Numidian’s instinct that the slight fold in the sweet-smelling earth would cover his movements from the watchers on either side of the valley. Despite the dangers, his breathing was slow and easy. This was nothing new for Serpentius. It reminded him of the night raids of his youth against neighbouring villages. But that was before the Romans came, with their lust for gold, their lists and their order. Before they took him for a slave and turned him into an animal in a cage to be exhibited before the scum and the degenerates in the arena. For a moment his mind was consumed with a familiar hatred, and it was not hatred for the Parthian warrior he stalked. This was not his fight and the Romans were not his people. But he had pledged his life to Valerius and Valerius was the closest thing to a friend he had. So he would kill. He would kill with regret, but the Parthian was already in his grave.

He made swift progress along the shallow depression and he neither saw nor heard the guards as he passed the pale light among the rocks. A minute later he smelled the horses.

A mile away to the north, Valerius willed himself to stay calm. Every minute was precious. Every minute they wasted here was another minute when the men of Corbulo’s army must suffer the agony of the Parthian arrows. It would take time to get the column in motion again. Time to negotiate the gully that would bring them to the river. And time to form up his men for the attack. Too much time. All around him men and horses waited impatiently for the order to move.

A gentle whisper reached Serpentius as he lay face down in the rough grass ten paces from the tethered Parthian mounts. The count of two hundred had long come and gone, but he could not afford to hurry. He would have the chance for one strike and one only. The knife or the axe? The knife: quicker, cleaner and surer. The unwary Parthian sentry was talking quietly to his horses as they snickered nervously in their halters. They were upwind, if the gentle movement of the air could be called a wind, of the Roman column, but some instinct had alerted them to the presence of others of their kind. Their nervousness should have alerted the guard, but Serpentius guessed there would have been many such false alarms in hills roamed by the lion, the leopard and the wolf. If anything, it increased his chances of success. Even if the animals became aware of him, the sentry was unlikely to react swiftly enough.

Drawing his long knife, he crawled through the grass until he was on the edge of the group of horses: small, light-limbed beasts favoured by the Parthian archers. He raised his hand so the closest would catch his scent and the animal snickered gently, wary, but not frightened of this new human presence. Shielded by the herd, Serpentius rose smoothly to his feet and reassessed his situation. The Parthian had stopped whispering and it was impossible to see because the cliff above shielded the moon, but Serpentius searched the darkness until he found what he was looking for. Not a man shape, just something that might have been a rock, but wasn’t. When the rock moved, he was certain.

No man could approach an armed warrior in the dark without feeling fear, but Serpentius had long since learned how to channel his fear and turn it into ice cold, iron hard resolution. Another man would have rushed the sentry, depending on the element of surprise, but all it would take was the glint of the knife or the sound of footsteps to turn surprise into disaster. Instead, Serpentius dropped to his stomach again and slid through the jungle of moving legs and fresh horseshit until he was within touching distance of his target. Still shielded by the shifting horses, he waited for his moment.

The sentry was little more than a boy, unblooded and on his first campaign, and he was angry that he had to spend another night with the horses. Part of his mind was on the older men who had laughed at him when he had warned against lighting the fire. The other chewed on the battle he was missing and the brothers who were gaining all the glory. The last thing he saw was a slim shadow that stepped from among the horses. The last thing he felt was the sting of the knife that sliced across his throat severing tendon and windpipe to leave him drowning in his own blood. But he managed to cry out, and that one cry was enough. The second guard had been sitting to his left and now he launched himself, not at Serpentius, but at the nearest horse, loosing the knot that held it as he went. He was in the saddle and moving before Serpentius could stop him. The Spaniard reached for the axe at his belt…

Valerius waited impatiently as Caladus led the patrol back. He had to be certain before he made his next move. One by one the Thracians came to him and laid a round object at his feet. He counted the bearded, snarling heads until he reached twenty-three.

‘Your Numidian said twenty-four.’

Caladus shrugged. ‘The Spaniard never came back.’

‘We don’t have time for this…’

He was interrupted as a silent figure stepped from the dark. Serpentius dropped the two heads he carried with the others.

‘Twenty-five.’ He turned to Caladus. ‘I would have word with the Numidian.’

The Thracian laughed. ‘You could count yourself fortunate, indeed, for then you would be in Elysium. He was always too cocky for his own good. You can never underestimate a Parthian.’

Three men dead, an hour lost. But the way was clear.

The sun was well up when they reached the river and Valerius despaired of discovery by some wandering patrol or foraging party. Corbulo had said time was his enemy’s enemy, but now it was Valerius’s. He had promised the general he would be in position at dawn on the second day. Instead, his ten thousand cavalry were still straggling across two miles of path and he didn’t dare move out on to the narrow strip of floodplain that separated the mountains from the river until he was ready.

Petronius explained their position. ‘Yonder you see the river.’ He pointed to a deep gorge half a mile distant. ‘It is only crossable at one place in this area, and that is at Cepha a mile upstream. From Cepha it is another four miles to the gap. Vologases will undoubtedly have left a guard on the crossing place, but beyond it all that will be between you and his army is the baggage train. The plain below us is hidden from the bridge by rising ground, but it is possible we will be seen forming up from the far bank, so there is no time to lose.’

‘Pass the word to put on the tunics.’

Every man had carried a rolled-up bundle behind his saddle as well as his weapons and rations. Now they unwrapped them to reveal the Armenian tunics Corbulo had ordered his quartermaster to requisition on the long march from Zeugma. Short and woven of light cloth, they had intricately embroidered facings of gold and blue and red, similar to those of the Parthians. The tunics were loose enough to be worn over mail and Valerius gambled that any observer who saw them from a distance would be lulled into thinking it was one of his own formations.

‘It may seem unnecessary, even foolish,’ Corbulo had told him. ‘You may not convince them, but even if you confuse them for only a second, that could be the second that makes the difference between victory and defeat.’

A courier forced his way past the riders behind Valerius and announced that the rearguard was ready.

With his heart pounding, Valerius gave the order to advance out on to the plain. After the long hours in the mountains it felt very open and vulnerable. There was no turning back now. In truth, for all his doubts and fears on the long night march there had never been any turning back. Corbulo had chosen his man well. They had outflanked the Parthians.

Yet the mountain crossing had merely been the first hurdle. Now he must attack Vologases’ army of seventy thousand men with barely a tenth that number. His cavalry troopers were exhausted and hungry. There was no hope of support if the attack faltered and no place to retreat if the Parthians prevailed. If he failed, every man here would die, along with the thousands of Romans fighting for their lives a bare five miles away.

They were late to the fight, but they were here. The only thing in their favour was surprise, but as the cavalry wings began to form up behind him, with Hanno and his Third Thracians in the centre, Valerius felt the first rising of that glorious sense of invulnerability that preceded battle and he sent a silent prayer to Fortuna, the goddess of good fortune.

‘At the walk… advance.’