Avenger of Rome

XLIII

Corbulo’s face betrayed no emotion as another shower of arrows fell on his bloodied cohorts, but inwardly he shuddered with revulsion. The Parthians had become braver and more confident, advancing to the very edge of the line of dead horses and dead men which were the only things now keeping the enemy at bay. Unlike the Romans below, the mountain troops on the crags were winning their battle and the signallers kept up a constant stream of information on Parthian movements which were otherwise invisible to their general. It seemed to Corbulo that Vologases’ growing frustration was written clearly in the steady build-up of troops just behind the front ranks of cavalry. Vast numbers now waited for the final order to advance less than two hundred paces from the fragile line of legionaries.

Corbulo could imagine, or believed he could imagine, the scene in the imperial pavilion. Vologases still had his tens of thousands of mounted archers, and eventually those archers could win him victory. But archers were ten to the as. It was the cataphracts which were the symbol of Parthian power. The armoured might of the nation. The warrior elite who kept the King of Kings upon his gilded throne. Now he had lost three hundred and fifty of those petty kings, warlords and clan chieftains and their most trusted retainers in a single afternoon, drawn in by a trick any basilica conjuror would have seen through. Not only had he lost his armoured spearhead, he had lost his key military and political advisers and the confidence of those who remained. The hierarchy which kept him in power had been fatally disturbed. There would be no talk of quick, bloodless victories now. Yet he still had a mighty army and given the right leadership that mighty army could smash its way through the thin Roman line. Already Corbulo could see infantry among the leading horsemen and he knew what would happen next. The archers would keep the embattled legionaries at bay while the foot soldiers manhandled the dead men and horses which barred the Parthian advance clear and filled in the pits. What would stop them then?

Tiberius watched the general as he deliberated, marvelling at the calm of the man. The Parthians had launched a second armoured attack midway through the morning, but it had been a half-hearted affair with few of the horses even attempting to charge the Roman cohorts directly. The arrow storm had been the worst torment and he knew he had been fortunate to survive after so long in the front rank. Now he was at Corbulo’s side, the most junior of aides, courtesy of an arrow fired with particular venom which had soared over the lines to impale his predecessor through the right eye. The sweetly sick scent of death was thick in his nostrils and nothing he had witnessed since daybreak had changed his opinion that his own decaying flesh would soon be adding to the stink of corruption. Until now.

He had to look twice before he realized what he was seeing. ‘General!’

Every eye turned to the far horizon.

Smoke.

A great dark swirling pall hanging in the still air behind and to the east of Vologases’ army.

Corbulo’s stern features were split by a grim smile and he sent up a prayer of thanks, asking the gods to aid the endeavours of Gaius Valerius Verrens. He had stopped Vologases in his tracks, he had bloodied him and now he had confused him. But that was nothing to the horror Corbulo was about to unleash on the hemmed-in Parthian army.

‘Gentlemen, take your positions.’

A ragged cheer went up from the Roman line. Tiberius could hear the shouts of the centurions demanding silence and he imagined the gnarled vine sticks cracking on backs. But the cheer had unsettled the Parthians and it was as if a collective shudder ran through that packed mass of humanity.

Corbulo saw it too. Now. Now was the time.

‘Loose the screens and deploy the artillery.’

On both sides of the valley, invisible to the Parthians because of their cunning construction, woven screens made from the long golden stems of dried grass that carpeted the valley had hidden Corbulo’s secret weapon: the siege artillery, carried at such great cost in time and manpower from Zeugma. Behind the screens Roman engineers had constructed two pairs of great catapults that now dominated the valley. Others had assembled the legion’s light artillery of stone-throwing ballistae and their cousins, the smaller but horribly effective scorpios, which fired giant arrows with the enormous power that gave them their well-earned nickname: shield-splitters. Each of the seventeen cohorts was equipped with a single ballista and ten scorpios and now the cohorts moved into open formation to allow the deadly machines to be positioned across the valley. Almost two hundred artillery pieces over a width of less than a mile. One every six or seven paces.

But it was the big siege catapults that Corbulo trusted would shatter the already cracking Parthian resolve. Designed to smash wood and stone and cow the inhabitants of great cities, the massive constructions of wood and iron could throw a stone weighing as much as a small ox for up to half a mile. It had taken patience and fortitude not to use them. To watch his soldiers die without fighting back. But now the destructive power that could destroy a city wall would be turned against flesh and bone.

The eighteen-foot throwing arm had been hauled back on its thick rope of twisted oxhide in preparation for the first throw. The projectile, a roughly carved rock the size and shape of a large cauldron, was in its sling.

‘Loose!’

Tiberius heard the order and his eye turned automatically to witness the launch. Released from the incredible tension that held it in place, the oak throwing arm lashed forward with a force that kicked through the wooden frame of the huge siege engine and would have thrown it into the air if the engineers hadn’t pegged it to the ground. With a gigantic whuuuup of released energy the arm collided with the padded buffer of hay-filled cloth sacks and sent its enormous projectile towards the Parthians. Unlike many of his peers, Tiberius had taken time to study the intricacies of his profession and he knew that the catapult was notoriously inaccurate. But with a target almost a mile wide and three miles deep accuracy didn’t matter.

A tremendous whooshing surge accompanied the low arcing flight of the stone and for a moment the whole battlefield seemed to fall silent. Tiberius followed the dark blur until it was absorbed into the mass of humanity below. The ground seemed to explode and men exploded with it. He imagined he could see the pink haze as Vologases’ soldiers were pulverized when the giant missile ploughed through them, robbing men of limbs and heads and swatting the big Parthian horses aside as if they were house flies. The power and the speed of the rock was so tremendous that men outwith the epicentre of the landing would be pierced by flying shards of bone and bludgeoned with lumps of still warm flesh. And that was just the first impact. Six times the stone skipped through the massed ranks, and each time it struck it caused carnage and consternation until at last it rolled to a halt in front of a pale and trembling Parthian princeling who looked down at the flesh-smeared lump of rock and fainted dead away.

The first missile was followed in quick succession by a second, a third and a fourth, and each missile killed fifty men and maimed a hundred more. But each of Corbulo’s giant death bringers took at least thirty minutes to reload, and in the interval the Parthian warlords urged their men forward in a desperate bid to break the Roman line before the next cast. There was no thought of strategy now, only of survival and revenge. Vologases had lost control of his army.

However, before they could reach Corbulo’s defences the Parthians had to get past the hundreds of dead horses and men from the earlier attacks. In the aftermath of the first Parthian charge the legionaries had used the lull to drag the big armoured horses together to create an almost unbroken barrier of dead flesh. The respite had also given the Romans time to collect the remaining caltrops and scatter them beyond the new line, and to recover the spent pila from the flesh of the dead and the battleground to their immediate front.

Vologases’ infantry, had they been brave, well led and disciplined, could have crossed the barricade of dead horses and men, but no horse would, and so, for the moment, it was the war bands of Parthian bowmen who were left to charge and countercharge, peppering the Roman line. But the hail of arrows had begun to thin as supplies from the camel trains dried up, and more and more Parthians looked fearfully to the rear where the smoke from their precious supplies wreathed the sky.

And as they wavered, the ballistae and the shield-splitters opened fire.

Twenty at a time, in steady, evenly spaced volleys, a hail of ten-pound stones and five-foot arrows raked the Parthian front line. The ballistae could fire a missile a quarter of a mile, but here they were being used at forty paces and the destruction they caused was terrible to behold. Archers were smashed from the saddle with their chests and skulls stove in. Horses shrieked in mortal agony as the heavy arrows of the scorpio s tore great gaping holes in ribs and chest. The devastating power was such that if the bolt missed the cavalry it would streak through to take the infantry behind, spearing not just one man but two, three and even four. Lack of arrows and the carnage they were suffering at the hands of Corbulo’s artillery persuaded the mounted bowmen to retire through the infantry. At last, Rome’s greatest general saw the opportunity he had been waiting for.

‘Signal the advance,’ Corbulo ordered. As the trumpet blared, he turned to Tiberius. ‘You may join your cohort, young man. It is swords which will bring victory now, not strategy. Tonight we will drink a toast to Victory. Lead them on. For Rome.’

Tiberius saluted with tears of joy in his eyes. He had never felt so proud to be a Roman. He had fought and he had endured and now he had no doubt at all that he would win. He sprinted the hundred yards to where his unit was forming line along with the men of the Fifteenth and the auxiliary cohorts who had made up the reserve.

‘Advance.’

They had begun the battle twelve thousand strong. Now they were closer to ten, but they started off down the valley at the relentless, measured tread that had made the legions feared from the windswept moors of northern Britain to the sun-scorched deserts of Arabia, and from Africa to the Danuvius. Still in their ranks they clambered across the stinking barricade of horse flesh that had kept the enemy at bay since morning and re-formed on the Parthian side.

Tiberius dressed his men’s ranks and the long line of big shields straightened. All along the line other officers did the same. Behind the shields the sweat-stained, dust-caked faces were fixed and unyielding. They had suffered and endured and watched their friends die. They were still outnumbered seven or eight to one, but now they were doing what they were trained to do. Not standing around as helpless targets. Attacking their enemy. For hour upon hour they had stood and died without complaint and now it was all they could do to stay in their ranks. They had made their sacrifice; now they demanded the blood price.

‘Forward, at the trot.’

Instantly, they moved into that steady-paced jog that they practised day in and day out. Tiberius drew his sword, but his men’s remained in their scabbards. Each of them carried a single pilum in his right hand.

A rush through the air above them heralded a new volley of boulders and arrows that tore gaps in the Parthian line ahead. At the same time, a great crash shook the earth and a terrible screaming to the front left announced the arrival of the latest missile from the catapults.

A hundred paces away the Parthian infantry waited in a great bustling crowd, uncertain which was the greatest danger they faced. Some looked fearfully to the skies, wondering when the next terrible bombardment would arrive. Their stomachs tightened at the thought of the missiles which were now relentlessly flailing their line, gutting, dismembering and smashing. Yet the most ominous sight was the implacable line of brightly painted shields that now rushed towards them. An hour earlier they had sat comfortably at the centre of a great army, listening to the clash of arms, awaiting victory and grumbling about being so far from home. Now they were in the front line and death was on every side.

Fifty paces. ‘Ready.’ A legionary learned to throw the pilum at the run almost as soon as he learned to march. A running man could throw further than a stationary one. The staggered ranks of cohorts and centuries stretched the width of the valley and each centurion would choose his moment to order the cast, when the enemy was close enough for the javelins to cause maximum casualties and far enough away to allow his men time to draw their swords before the two lines met.

Forty. Tiberius glanced nervously to his left, searching for the threat of a flanking movement by the now underemployed Parthian archers. Even if they had no arrows they still had their swords, and a legion was never more threatened than when it was attacked from the flank while forming up for an assault. But there would be no flank attack, because the front line of Parthian infantry jammed the valley from cliff to cliff and blocked off any opportunity for the cavalry to advance.

Thirty. ‘Throw!’ A hail of javelins slanted out from the Roman line and fresh screams rang out across the battlefield as the lethal iron spikes found throat and face and chest. The order was followed by the musical hiss of a thousand swords being drawn, and the sequence was repeated again and again by the ranks behind. Tiberius watched the pila arc through the warm air and plunge into the massed ranks ahead of him. He heard himself growling like a dog and his ears told him the sound was being repeated all along the line. Ahead, howls and screams, white terrified eyes; a feral combination of fear, determination and hate. A wall of spears, but spears that shook in their owners’ hands. His eyes focused on a group of five or six bearded men, but as he closed with the Parthian line every ounce of his concentration was bent on keeping his shield locked with the man on his right, just as the man on his left did with him. A man’s instinct was to either surge ahead and be a hero or hang back and survive, but in a Roman charge neither was possible, only discipline. Hold the line. Stay in rank. Shield to shield. Swords ready.

A glistening spear point clattered against the rim of his helmet, but he kept his head down and it glanced off and he knew he had won. The big wooden shield with its solid iron boss smashed into something yielding. At first he was surprised at the gentleness of the contact. Shield line meeting shield line meant a crash like thunder, a rippling and grinding of unstoppable force meeting unstoppable force. But the poorly armed Parthian foot soldiers, deserted by their cavalry, had no scutum. He punched the shield forward and heard a grunt of agony from beyond.

‘Now!’

At the command, every legionary angled his big scutum to his left, creating a narrow gap between his shield and his neighbour’s, and rammed his gladius into the gap. Tiberius felt the familiar thrill as the sword’s point pierced first cloth, then flesh, the muscle sucking on the blade as it dared to violate deeper and deeper into the body. He heard a man scream, but his mind was already on the withdrawal: the pull, the simultaneous twist of the wrist, the grip on the blade weakening and the stink of blood and torn bowels. He slammed the shield forward again, the rhythm of the battlefield taking over his mind.

‘Now!’

The Parthians smelled of blood and death and sweat and fear and strange spices he had never encountered before. From somewhere, a shower of arrows hailed down on the rear ranks of the Roman attack. It was not only the Parthians who were dying.

‘Now!’

A felled enemy clawed at his legs, but the legionary behind hacked at the clutching hand and it fell free with the fingers still twitching. For the first time Tiberius wondered about Valerius on his fine horse. Was he alive or dead? Perhaps they would cut their way through to each other and meet on the threshold of Vologases’ pavilion.

‘Now!’

His sandal slipped on something slimy and he glanced down. Below his feet was a red smear and a shattered skull with half a face and he remembered the pink haze as the great boulder from the catapult made its first impact. A certain cadence in the screaming told him that the boulders and the rocks and the great barbed arrows were still doing their work among the ranks ahead, but otherwise his whole being was concentrated on the weight behind the shield, the thrust of his arm and the threat from above and below.

‘Now!’

With every word of command, each man in the Roman line took a step forward as he pushed with his shield. And with every step the men in front of them howled and died. A Roman legion was a killing machine and this was the killing machine at its most efficient, against the unarmoured and the unled; warriors who individually might be champions but in the claustrophobic crush beyond the shields were reduced to mere cattle to be slaughtered. A tortured, bearded face appeared below Tiberius’s shield and he smashed his iron-shod caliga down on it, smashing the teeth, turning the nose to pulp and crossing the eyes. Yet the force beyond the shield was becoming stronger, each step more difficult to take, even with the weight of the men behind him. Tiberius guessed that somewhere beyond the Parthian infantry cavalry were being used to stiffen the line, the weight of the horses and the threat of death if a man took another step back bolstering the resistance of men who did not want to fight. If that continued, the Roman line would stall, and logic and experience said that eventually, when strength failed, a stalled line became a retreating line and then men died, in their hundreds and their thousands. Corbulo’s face came into his head, the features drooping with exhaustion, but the eyes hard and unyielding. The face created conflicting emotions inside him. He had come to the east with a very definite opinion of this man and a single-minded determination to do what needed to be done, yet proximity to greatness had eroded his certainty until he was confused and disorientated. He knew that somehow he must rediscover that certainty if he was to do what he had to do. The thought gave him a new surge of energy and he thrust forward and killed another man. How many? It did not matter, because Corbulo could not fail.

And suddenly it happened.

A drum beat a frantic rhythm. The weight behind the shield faded away. A horn sounded a familiar but unlikely call and the Roman line stopped, dazed and uncertain whether to hold their line or to charge after an enemy who had retreated a dozen steps and thrown down their spears.

An armoured warlord in a green cloak urged his horse through the centre of the gaping Parthians holding a green branch high.

Corbulo had won.