King of Kings

IX

The army saw its first Persians at the Balissu River. There were three of them on the far bank. They sat on their horses, quietly watching the Roman army approach.

These were the first Persians that Gaius Acilius Glabrio had seen. Gods below, he had been waiting for this moment. Ever since that humiliating day in Caeciliana he had been waiting to see the Persians. Cold steel would show that bastard Ballista the difference between barbarian filth like him and a Roman patrician, the difference between mindless, brittle ferocity and virtus, the true, enduring courage of a Roman. What was it the Spartans had said in the old days? If you think your sword is too short, take a step closer.

And how long he had waited. First, seventeen interminable days training around Caeciliana, seventeen days of pointless drill and manoeuvres, the barbarian Dux Ripae fussing and fretting like an old woman. It was as if the northern barbarian were more interested in collecting boats and pack animals for the baggage than in fighting. It seemed that he was reluctant to march out and face the enemy. The young patrician had been only too aware of the sniggers and smiles behind his own back, of sordid plebs, barbarians even, laughing at a member of the Acilii Glabriones. In response, he had just trained his cavalrymen all the harder.

Finally, on the fifteenth day of February they had marched out. It was the day of the festival of the Lupercalia in Rome. Had he been in Rome, Gaius Acilius Glabrio would have been running with the other lupercali, everyone of them drawn from a leading family. He would have run naked except for a girdle cut from the skin of a freshly sacrificed goat, run through the streets striking out at passers-by with the goatskin thong. But he was not in Rome. He was hundreds of miles away on the Euphrates, desperate to meet the enemy, to prove himself in the terror of battle. They had marched out – and nothing had happened.

For fourteen days the army had crawled southward, the great Euphrates rolling along next to them. The army had been ordered by the timorous Dux Ripae into a ridiculous defensive formation, as if scared of meeting the Sassanid reptiles in open combat, and progress had been painfully slow. They had only marched in the mornings. By midday they would have halted and started to dig trenches and construct a fortified camp. At the well-fortified city of Soura, it had taken the army two days to cross the stone bridge to the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Two short days' march after that they had halted for three whole days at Leontopolis. And in all that time they had not seen a single Persian.

A few miles south-east of Leontopolis, the Balissu river ran into the Euphrates from the east. The Balissu was a small, insignificant watercourse, probably dry in the summer, but it was here that the first Persians showed themselves.

Acilius Glabrio, riding in the van of the army, as was only proper for a man of his status, peered intently at the three Persians on the other side of the stream. He could see them clearly. They were less than a hundred paces away. They sat on their horses placidly and watched the advancing Romans. They wore loose, brightly coloured, patterned tunics, baggy trousers, bushy beards and long hair. One wore a cap, the other two tied their black hair back with a band. They were slender men, dark-skinned. It was true what he had often been told: their eyebrows joined, and their eyes were like those of goats.

When the Romans had almost reached the Balissu, were little more than twenty paces away, the Persians languidly wheeled their horses and rode off. They saw no others for the rest of the day. The army forded the small stream and laboriously constructed its fortifications for the night.

At dawn the next day, as the Roman army, with Acilius Glabrio well to the fore, marched out of its camp, the Persians were back – or Persians who looked just the same as the ones of the previous day. For the rest of that day and the two that followed, as the army marched down in easy stages to Basileia, the Sassanid scouts hung about. Two or three at a time, never more than five or six, now always keeping well beyond bowshot, sometimes in the path of the army, sometimes off to the left flank. When the army was safely quartered for two days in the great fortress town of Basileia, the Persians could still be glimpsed here and there outside the walls, now down on the narrow ground by the river, sometimes up on the cliffs. Their constant presence incensed Acilius Glabrio. How he wanted to get at them. What he would do to them when he did. Their hanging about at a distance reinforced everything that he had ever learned about easterners – born cowards, they were simply too scared to come to close quarters. He began to worry that they would just melt away back to Persia, that the army would relieve Circesium without a blow struck, that he would never have a chance to strike at the reptiles. It was still quite dark as the army marched out of Basileia. Gaius Acilius Glabrio stretched and yawned until his jaw cracked. He was tired. He settled back into his saddle, the creak of leather and wood lost in the general sound of the slowly moving cavalry. He was very tired. The barbarian Dux had summoned the consilium to meet four hours before dawn. By lamplight, the officers had been treated to the usual injunctions: hold the formation; keep the men closed up; above all, no one was to break ranks or to charge without express permission. As for what else they had been told, Acilius Glabrio wondered which of the officers were so stupid that they could not have seen for themselves that the road south of Basileia ran through a narrow gap between the Euphrates on the right and high cliffs on the left. Apparently, not far south, the road forded a watercourse, which ran from the hills into the Euphrates. The locals called it the canal of Semiramis. There had been reports of dust clouds to the south. The barbarian Dux had said it might signify that the Sassanids intended to make a stand there. Nonsense, thought Acilius Glabrio. The cowardly little easterners did not intend to make a stand there or anywhere else. The chance would be a fine thing. As for Semiramis, every ditch, wall and hillock out here was credited to the ancient Assyrian queen.

Beyond its fringe of reeds, the river shone, as water sometimes does in the darkness before dawn. An arrowhead of ducks flighted past, splashing down somewhere towards the tail of the army. The sky was lightening. A handful of high clouds could be made out. They were moving north. Down where the army of the barbarian Dux Ripae marched, there was no wind.

Barbarian Dux Ripae – the words did not fit properly together. It was, thought Gaius Acilius Glabrio, like saying 'sedentary Scythian' or 'virtuous whore'. Lulled by the motion of his horse, his thoughts ran on: 'short-haired Gaul', 'vegetarian nomad', 'trustworthy Carthaginian', 'taciturn Greek'. A darker line running through the gloom, running across the path of the army, interrupted his paradoxical ethnographic musing. He raised himself in the saddle and peered ahead. The cliffs off to the left made the dark of night linger longer down on the floodplain. Distances and heights were hard to judge in the murk. The dark line appeared to be about a hundred paces away and somewhat taller than a man. It seemed to move, to waver or sway. Was it a line of tamarisks such as you often found out here, along watercourses, moving gently in the early morning breeze, or even poplars?

Then Acilius Glabrio remembered: there was no wind down on the floodplain. A large, pale shape moved along the dark line. On it something seemed to glint in the half-light. A horse. A horse and rider. A cavalryman. The line was a line of Sassanid cavalrymen.

'Form line, form line on me,' Acilius Glabrio shouted, his voice loud and slightly cracked. After a second or so, there was a rising swell of noise as junior officers barked orders, armour and weapons jingled and clashed, and horses snorted. The three hundred men of Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi began to manoeuvre from a column five abreast into a line five deep.

Whisp, whisp, whisp; something shot past his face. Something else struck the ground by his mount's near foreleg and skittered away. Arrows! The reptiles were shooing arrows out of the near-darkness. The bastards!

'Bucinator, prepare to sound the charge.' Acilius Glabrio was pleased that, this time, his voice sounded less ragged.

'Wait, Dominus.' Out of the body of men, Niger, the prefect of the unit, drew his horse up alongside that of Acilius Glabrio. He leant over, speaking softly to avoid being much overheard. 'The Dux ordered us to hold the formation, not to charge.' The prefect's voice was clipped and urgent. 'We must halt. Find out what is facing us. Send a messenger to fetch the Dux. He will give us our orders.'

Us, thought Acilius Glabrio. Us, indeed. Since when had plebeians like this prefect seen themselves as equals of a patrician? Wait like a slave for orders from a northern barbarian? Never. A sudden thunder of drums made the young nobleman physically jump. It was followed by the braying of Sassanid trumpets. He turned his back on Niger. He could feel his heart pounding. Carpe diem: seize the day.

'Bucinator, sound the charge.' Acilius Glabrio saw the musician look past him to the prefect. To Hades with all of them. He kicked in his heels savagely, and his mount jumped forward. He felt an arrow fly past. Behind him the charge rang out. When his horse reached a steady canter, he looked back. It was all right. There was no formed line, rather a mob of men on horses. But it was all right. They were following him. Carpe diem. This was going to be his day. This would show the barbarian bastard that had left his brother to die, and that Danubian peasant Aurelian. This would show them all.

'Are you ready for war?' The young patrician's words were lost, snatched away over his shoulder, drowned by the pounding hooves, the ringing of weapons and armour.

He caught sight of the canal a moment before they were on it. His horse seemed to disappear from beneath him. Only the high horns at the rear of his saddle stopped him being thrown. The horse found its feet. Acilius Glabrio slammed painfully down into the saddle. It knocked the breath out of him. They splashed across the watercourse. The bed of the watercourse was smooth, the water no more than hock high. Acilius Glabrio heard himself sob as, hunched over in agony, he forced air back into his lungs.

The far bank was in front of him. Thank the gods it was not too steep. As his mount gathered itself, Acilius Glabrio looked up. A fierce, bearded face was gazing down at him. The Persian yelled something in their incomprehensible tongue, his teeth very white in the midst of his black beard. A long Sassanid cavalry blade glittered. Acilius Glabrio remembered he had not drawn his own sword. One hand clinging to the saddle, he wrestled it out of its scabbard as they scrambled up the slope.

His horse hauled them over the top of the bank into bright sunshine. The Persian was gone. All the Persians were gone. The nearest was twenty paces away, his bowcase banging against the flank of his mount, puffs of dust rising from under its hooves. They were running. All the reptiles were running.

'After them. Don't let them get away.' Acilius Glabrio kicked on. The reassuring sound of his men at his heels. Carpe diem. He was laughing out loud.

The Persians were light cavalry. They were riding hard. Unencumbered by armour, their bright clothes shining in the morning sun, they were pulling clear of the Roman heavy cavalry. Off to his right, down by the Euphrates, Acilius Glabrio saw tethered horses, Sassanids on foot milling around. He glanced over his shoulder. The bucinator was nowhere to be seen. But the standard bearer of Equites Primi was close. He waved for the man to follow and steered towards the riverbank. He did not look back again. He knew the troopers would follow the standard.

Down by the bank, Persians were throwing away pickaxes, cutting the tethers of their horses, throwing themselves into the saddle, spurring away. The gap closed quickly. Acilius Glabrio picked his man: a tall, thin Persian some way from his mount, running desperately. His baggy trousers flapped as he ran. As Acilius Glabrio came up with him, the man looked round. Acilius Glabrio leant out from the saddle, swinging his long blade in an arc. The Persian threw up an arm, screaming, his goat eyes wild with terror. The blade bit home. The impact wrenched Acilius Glabrio's shoulder, almost pulled the hilt from his grasp. The Persian fell, and his horse carried Acilius Glabrio past.

'After them. Don't let them get away.' Leaning forward in the saddle, Acilius Glabrio urged his mount on. The Persian light horse were getting away. He pushed his horse harder. The sound of a Roman bucinator playing recall cut into his consciousness. How dare the bastard, without orders? Acilius Glabrio looked around. The widely scattered Roman catafractarii nearest to him were slowing down, reining in, coming to a stand. He stared after the Persians. Possibly it was for the best. The reptiles were outdistancing the pursuit. The south wind was blowing the dust of their passage into his face. He pulled up his own horse.

It was lame. He had not noticed. Now that he had, he did not care. He had another ten as good with the baggage train. He was sweating. His sword was slick with Sassanid blood. His heart was singing.

As the lame animal picked its way down to the riverbank, Acilius Glabrio counted six Persian corpses, the glorious colours of their clothes dimmed by dust and blood. One of them was his. He was not sure which. It did not matter. He had been the first to kill his man.

Puzzled, Acilius Glabrio looked at the pickaxes, shovels and other tools scattered by the riverbank. The Persians had been digging. Then he realized what they had been about. The shifty little easterners, too cowardly to face Roman steel, had been trying to enlist nature on their side. They had been digging through the embankment to flood the land between the Euphrates and the cliffs. Only a little longer and they would have succeeded. Well, he had put paid to that. Laughing out loud again, he kicked on his lame horse. Carpe diem. It was his day, his victory. A glorious victory. If your sword is too short, take a step closer.