The Eagle of the Twelfth

Chapter Fourteen

Tigranocerta, capital city of Armenia

By crisp starlight and a low moon, our unit passed in single file through the postern gate and out across the river. Our horses’ bound feet scuffed on the wooden bridging boards, barely loud enough to cover the restless water sliding beneath.

The nights in Armenia were cool and dry and far more pleasant than the humid heat of day. Here, outside the city walls, the day’s dampness had fallen from the air and gathered over the river in thick platters of mist that rose before us, like the shed skin of some great, forgotten serpent. Pushing forward, we let the mist swallow us, praying that it might keep us invisible to the watching Parthians.

Tears rode ahead of me, mounted on a liver chestnut gelding that was my bay mare’s second foal. Its hide drew down the damp and grew so dark that it merged with the night and Tears became a half-man, birthed from the thick air. I set the mare to follow and felt the mist take me, and sent my thanks to the river gods for their gift of obscurity.

We left the bridge and crossed into open sward. Behind us, the rose-pale walls of Tigranocerta soared the height of fivemen and stretched, it seemed, from one side of the broad, fertile valley to the other.

This wasn’t true, of course; the illusion fell apart when the city was viewed from a greater distance. If, for instance, you stood on one of the ranges of mountains that bordered us on north and south, you would see that the Armenian capital was not a vast city, not the size of Rome, say, or even Damascus, but it was bigger than Raphana, and the walls more strongly fortified, and both had been enough to awe us to silence when we first marched in.

Since then, we had come to know its weak points as well as its strengths. As a first task, Cadus had ordered us to destroy the bridge that crossed the river from the postern gate so that the only egress was over boards that were thrown across and drawn back with ropes.

When this was done, we had set bulwarks within the walls at the points where the gates opened out, then built up the stores of oil cauldrons, and firewood to heat them; we had seen to the weapons, the pike-poles that pushed ladders away, the city’s swords, which had been left aside since the battle between Lucullus and Mithridates over a century before, the spears and axes and stocks of arrows for the archers.

Finally, over the course of a month, we had deepened the ditch that completed the circle started by the river, and set rusted iron spikes in the base, and thrown down dead mules and rotting pigs from the battlements and left them to fester, so that any man foolish enough to attempt a crossing might die fast, impaled on hidden points, or slowly of the blood-fever afterwards.

We saw off three attacks; messy, discordant affairs with much noise of men and horses and the stench of burning oil and flesh and enough clash of arms for our unit to be awarded silver medallions to hang on neck chains for courage in holding the walls. But none of it was real fighting and ifany of us killed the men who came at us, it was as much by accident as design.

They backed away after that, for it was clear that the only way to get in or out was when those inside threw down the boards across the river and we threw them down only when the units went out to forage, or to scout, or, as now, to escort in a mule-train sent by Corbulo with grain and fodder and bull’s hide to patch our shields.

By now, we despised the men set against us for their pitiful prosecution of the siege. A Roman legion would have encircled the town and not one man, not one child, not a cur nor a rat would have left or entered it alive. The Parthians, by contrast, kept themselves well back, dug in at the heel of the northern range of mountains, where thick forest masked their presence, and they could watch us unhindered as we crossed the open, fertile plain, unless we travelled under cover of night.

It was a sad place to be at war; never in all my life have I seen corn grow so fast, nor grass fatten beasts to such weight. The herders of Raphana would have sold their grandmothers for such bounty, although they might have claimed them back again as recompense for the floods that were said to assail the land in winter.

We never witnessed any flooding; we were not there when the snows crashed down the mountains to bury the land, nor when the river turned to torrent, claiming land and lives and livelihoods at the gods’ caprice. We met the river at its tamest, a fine silver thread spinning under the bridge and on down the valley. They tell me it joined the Tigris south of us, but I never saw that.

This night, what was left of it, we passed south and a little east, to where the mountains crowded dark against the sky. And what mountains! These were the southernmost Taurus ranges, that made our Hawks seem like wrinkles in the sand.

The passes through the peaks twisted like wool on a skein, but we knew the routes by then, and had no need of a local man as pathfinder. We felt safer without; one less chance of treachery, and one less man to guard if the Parthians came upon us, although we had only a passing fear of that; the scouts and spies said that Monobasus, who led the siege, was waiting for Vologases to come to his aid and there was no sign of that yet.

We reached the mountains just as Helios rode his blazing chariot to the horizon, and hurled his lance against the night. I cast a glance back over my shoulder, for the plain was at its most beautiful at sunrise, laid to emerald with beasts wrought as living jewels upon it.

Later, as we had found, the sun’s heat drew a torrid dampness to the air that left us all short of breath. To escape, even for a day, was a blessing and we welcomed the shadows of the pass that wound through between the two tallest peaks, and the sharp, dry mountain air that settled there.

Trees grew thickly on either side for the first half of the rise and shadows wove in their depths, watching us; four-legged hunters, not men, but no less lethal for that. We had lost scouts to wolves or boar or both in our time in Armenia, and we rode through that forest with our blades unsheathed.

Still, we saw nothing, only breathed the blessed cool of the trees, the easy, moss-scented air, and were sorry to see it go as the path took us higher, beyond the tree line, to where lime-grey lichens and stunted grasses were the only sward and we had only to lean out over the edge of a path to see hawks sway and circle on the gods’ breath below us.

Here, the air was thin and we breathed fast and did not push our mounts but let them pick their own route. They knew the way, the unexpected turns that seemed to lead over the edge of the mountain but in reality took us up and out on to another long, narrow path, with one side falling away tothe plain and the other solid rock. In this much, it was like the Mountains of the Hawk back in Syria, except that the fall was far further.

It was two hours after noon when finally we crested the rise and stood at the place where we could look back to the distant city, sitting pale as a shell on the river’s bank, or turn and look south down into the valley of the Khabur, which led to the Euphrates.

And there, moving towards us, was a string of flop-eared mules forging their way up to meet us, with a half-century of armoured men set about them as escort. They were led by a tall man on a blue roan gelding who wore a helmet in the old design, eschewing ear flaps.

I recognized the horse first, and then the man, for he was the last I expected to see here.

‘Aquila!’ Raising my hand, I pushed my bay mare forward, and he raised his hand in return, and sent his mount faster at the rise.

We met on a shelf of weathered rock. The lichens on this side of the hill were a pinkish grey that caught the morning light and softened it, gentling the stark blue sky.

‘Aquila!’ I was truly pleased to see him. ‘I thought you’d have a farm in Iberia by now, with your life passing in a haze of fruitful olive trees and grazing goats.’

‘And I thought you dead of a Parthian axe, or else driven to distraction in the bowels of the Twelfth. A year from now, you will be right. I trust that I will still be wrong.’

Grinning, I took the arm he gave and gripped it. His face was lined deep as oak bark by the Syrian winters, his hair the colour of the snowy rock about us, without any shade of grey. Even so, his eyes were still sharp enough to cut a man.

I said, ‘The Parthian axemen all fell in the war against Hyrcania and the Twelfth is… a brave legion. Worth fighting for.’

He rolled his tongue around his teeth and had the grace not to raise his brows. Instead, his gaze slid past to the men behind me: Syrion, Tears, Proclion, Horgias, Rufus, Sarapammon, the Rabbit. We were a unit in more than name, now, a union of hearts and minds and souls; where one went, we all went; what one felt, we all felt. A seasoned officer must have been able to read that. Aquila squinted at me, creasing his eyes against the sun. ‘Have you killed yet?’

I must have glowered and he let it pass with a shrug, and another question. ‘What’s Monobasus done to assault Tigranocerta?’

‘Nothing of note. He has archers and some cataphracts, but mostly light cavalry and a century or two of foot soldiers. None of them is suited for a siege. He’s waiting for Vologases to come with the heavy cavalry and the engines.’

‘Then he’ll wait until the sky falls. We’ — by that he meant the VIth — ‘have the King of Kings fully occupied in the south. He risks losing all of Parthia if he moves. He won’t do that for a walled city and a king he despises. The battle season will be over in another three months. You can go to your winter quarters then.’

A lift in his voice gave me a first clue as to why this man had come on escort duty, when he could have left it to someone half his age and a tenth of his rank. I felt my heart trip a beat, although whether it was for joy or grief I wasn’t sure.

‘We’re not going back to Raphana?’ I asked.

His smile was open, hiding nothing. ‘Not Raphana. You are to winter in Melitene, in Cappadocia, where we last met.’

Melitene of the beautiful mountains, of the cold-clean air, and rivers like diamonds. I let myself linger a little in the memory, but not for long. On its own, this was news enough to bring Aquila here, a man with the authority to order Cadus to new winter quarters, and the heart to do it gently. But I knew him better than he thought, certainly well enough tosee the shadow in his smile, and know there was more to come.

I peered at him, against the sun’s high, knifing glare. ‘What?’ I asked.

This time, he did not smile. ‘Corbulo has sent to Nero asking for a new commander for Armenia and Cappadocia.’

‘Why? Corbulo is more than capable-’

‘Stop.’ Aquila’s hand came up. ‘Think.’ His hand fell. ‘And listen. Corbulo has requested aid in the protection of the east. He has kept the governorship of Syria. A new governor has been appointed for Cappadocia. He will be your general.’ His face said I’m sorry, but his voice could not, even here on a mountain in the company of hawks and mules and seven men who would have given their lives rather than speak aloud any treason they heard. A company of the VIth was behind him and even here the emperor might have ears and the reports of those ears might lead a man to his death; it had happened before.

So I said only, ‘Who is the new commander?’ and gave no voice to the disappointment that curdled my guts.

To my shame, the name he gave was not one that conjured any feeling in me: not fear, nor revulsion, nor horror at a man who carried ill-luck with him wherever he went. On that bright summer day at the height of the world, I heard Aquila say ‘Lucius Caesennius Paetus’, and I shrugged and said, ‘He who was consul in Rome last year?’ and at Aquila’s nod, ‘So… Corbulo is making sure he doesn’t hold too much power in the east. Is that it?’

‘I have no idea.’ Aquila’s lined face was a mask of moderation. ‘And if it were, I would not say. Paetus will join you before winter. So make the most of this siege and then meet him in Melitene, and spend your winter getting to know him. He will lead you in war next year. Now,’ he clapped my arm, ‘how long before we make the city?’

‘Half a day. We aim to reach the plain as night falls, so that we may cross in darkness, unseen by the enemy. Once there, all that will hold us back is the speed of the mules. If you can push them, we’ll see the city before midnight.’

‘Oh, I can push the mules.’ Aquila was himself again, bright as a polished blade. ‘I’ve waited four years to see Cadus; this day cannot pass too soon. Let your unit lead us back over the path while we hold the rear guard; they say the route winds more than the bull-maze of Crete and this is not time to find ourselves lost.’