The Eagle of the Twelfth

Chapter Seventeen

Mud.

What I remember of Rhandaea on the northern bank of the Murad Su, before the ill omens and the chaos, before the sea of cataphracts and the light cavalry and the archers and the slaughter… before any of that, abiding and overwhelming, what I remember is mud.

We marched there from Melitene in the first rains of autumn, across ground that was no worse than damp before the leading ranks met it but had been churned to slurry by the time the last man of the first cohort had passed.

Two legions and two companies of archers later, the last five hundred men were wading knee high through sucking, suppurating glue, and the bullock carts got jammed so hard and so often that it was easier to raise them up on rails and have teams of sixteen men carry them, four to each corner.

Our clothes were wet, our tents were wet, the firewood was saturated beyond any hope of a flame; we slept in wet bedding and ate cold, uncooked food and our mail rusted on our backs and when we finally reached the south bank of the Murad Su, we found it a swollen, churning cataract far widerthan its tame little brother, which had so efficiently protected the city at Tigranocerta.

And so we spent our first half-day there hacking at wet trees with rusted axes to build the bridge that might give us access to the location that Paetus, in his insanity, had chosen for our winter quarters.

In summer, I’ll grant you, it would have been acceptable; a wide, flat basin with a small town nearby for trade and girls, and, more important, with the river behind to hold us safe from the south and west and a good distance between us and the mountains to the north and the east so that even Vologases’ fast light cavalry could not have come at us without half a day’s warning.

Here, now, at the end of the battle season, we were faced by a flood plain laid slick with the first silverings of water. We gathered the bullock wagons on to the only high land and stood about them, trying to see places we could set our tents that might keep them dry for the six months Paetus intended us to stay here.

Our general, of course, did not sleep in a tent; our first duty, even before we dug ditches for the ramparts, pitched the tents or set the palisades, was to cut more timber for his living quarters, float it across the river and help the engineers to erect a house fit for a senator and his family.

Yes, his family. You will not believe me when I tell you that his wife was there, but it is true. His wife, Antonia, who had spent her life learning how to manipulate the socialites of Rome, was there with his son, less than six months old. They sat together that first afternoon in nothing grander than a bullock wagon, stunned to insensibility by cold and mud and unimagined hardship.

We lost three days building quarters for them; three days in which our tents were pitched in a handspan of water, and we were not making dry our grain for the winter, or exploringthe land, except for a few scouts — Horgias was one — who were sent out to check the most likely routes Vologases would take when he came.

When, not if — for we were certain that the King of Kings knew we were here; how could he not when we had marched two legions across the Euphrates? And we knew we were not yet ready to face him.

We finished the ramparts in the second half of the month. I remember stopping at the end of the last ditch some time in the late morning and glancing up at the wide winter moon that hung white as a slug in the sky.

I jammed my mattock into the mud at my feet, spat away a mouthful of dirt and took a long drink of gritty water from the skin at my belt.

Blood smeared where my hands had been and, looking down, I saw that the blisters on both palms had burst, and long, deep cracks ran from each.

The pain was old and hot, and I had not so much forgotten it as lost it in the greater discomfort of the day. I risked a glance down at my feet and was glad they were lost in the mud for they made my hands look pretty by comparison. I was walking on soles turned to waterlogged sponge and dreaded the morning when I woke to find the skin peeled completely away, leaving raw flesh and bone beneath.

The sounds of iron hacking at soil slowed around me, and stopped. At our feet, the raw earth was open deep enough to swallow a man, and wide enough for me to lie inside with head and feet tight to each wall. Above the ditches, on the inner side, earth ramparts rose eight feet above the ground.

Syrion gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘The river’ll have to rise higher than a man to top that.’

‘And even if it does,’ said Rufus, ‘the egress channels will carry everything away. It’ll have to flood in here higher than our knees to reach the tents.’

‘Higher than your knees, maybe,’ Sarapammon said. ‘That’s barely past the ankles for the rest of us.’

That wasn’t true, or not all of it, but it didn’t matter; we were in jovial mood again, with the prospect of drier nights and a fire that might light and hold. I can’t begin to tell you the relief of that; winters on the Hawk mountains might have hardened us to cold and endurance, but we had never before gone without fire and cooked food and the last half-month had worn us down.

Now, we had a watertight quarter-stores packed with enough food to last us the winter, and a sheltered paddock for the horses with stalls to one side and even they had begun to fill out on good fodder so that their ribs did not stare so through their coats and their eyes were bright once again.

A thread of smoke rose from just beyond the horse paddocks. I smelled the scent of applewood amidst the oak, and the first savoury rush of cooking, and my mouth flooded with spit just as my stomach griped, and I turned and ‘Vologases is coming! The King of Kings! Parthia’s army!’

That was Horgias, riding my bay mare’s youngest son, who had been born chestnut and was turning a fine rose grey as he aged. I gave him as a gift after Proclion’s death, and wished I had given him sooner, only that he was not broken before that, and in truth I had considered giving him to Cadus.

Horgias had seemed grateful at the time, in so far as he ever seemed to enjoy anything these days. He had promised to take best care of him, and treat him as I might have done myself. Just now, he was riding him harder than I had ever seen a man drive a horse.

He hauled to a bloody halt by the standards and flung himself out of the saddle, calling the camp alarm.

We were already running; us and the rest of the legion. We got close enough to see the sweat running down man andhorse, so that both were slick, and steaming, and near to broken in wind.

Horgias was wilder than he had ever been; unshaved and unwashed, his hair bound back by a leather thong, he could have been a barbarian come amongst us, except that he wore the red tunic of our cohort and the mule’s tail was painted on the scabbard of his gladius, and in any case everybody in both legions knew Horgias by name and sight by now.

Everybody except Paetus, obviously. He emerged from his newly built house and stood on the top step, softly pink as from a hot bath, with his hair wet and his face half shaved, holding a towel in one hand and a pomegranate — a pomegranate! — in the other.

‘Who is this man?’

Cadus was there, one step ahead of trouble. ‘He’s a scout, lord. He was sent to watch the Taurus Mountains, whence any attack is most likely to come. It would appear one is coming, and he has seen it?’

This last, he directed to Horgias. I was next to him by then, acting as his groom, giving water to man and beast.

Horgias saluted first to Cadus, and then to Paetus, as he must. And then he gave his report there, in the open, in a voice that bounced from one rampart to the next, and never mind that Paetus was trying to invite him inside to give it in private.

‘Vologases, the King of Kings, rides at the head of his army. He has with him, I would estimate, ten thousand cataphracts, fifteen thousand light cavalry, five thousand infantry. They go slowly, held back by the pace of their marching men. In two days’ time, they will traverse the Taurus Mountains south and east of here. There is a place we could stop them. At a fast march, we could be there in half a day. A legion, perhaps, could hold them, allowing the rest to finish the defences here.’

He spoke into a hollow silence. We sucked his words in and drained them dry of meaning and still we did not fully comprehend the size of the army that came at us. Paetus understood least of all. His gaze flickered from Cadus to Horgias and back as if he suspected both of some kind of conspiracy to unman him.

At length, Cadus said, ‘Perhaps the senior centurions could meet with your excellency to discuss our strategy?’ and Paetus was persuaded inside.

Horgias was dismissed without a second glance. We led him away to find food and water and wine, and Syrion and the Rabbit stayed back in case there was anything we needed to hear.

Horgias said, ‘I’m sorry about your colt.’

Beneath the filth of four days living wild, his face was unreadable. He had never been an easy man to befriend, but since Proclion’s death he had become a blank slate with nothing to see, nothing to know, except on those few occasions when we faced the enemy, when he became a lethal, screaming demon. The rest of the time he didn’t talk much; the horse was his exception, he spoke about that.

I shrugged. ‘He’s fine. His tendons are whole; you didn’t break him. In a while, when he’s had fodder and water, I’ll stand him in the river and let him cool off properly. For now, we’ll light a fire and cook you something to eat.’

We reached our camp, the rows of tents with ours at the head of our cohort. We had firewood under a goatskin awning, and a fire pit that we had dug while he was away. I crouched and began to gather the tinder, and small twigs to start the fire. Horgias crouched with me, and caught my hand.

‘Let me,’ he said quietly. ‘I haven’t lit a fire in four days. I miss it.’

Even if it hadn’t been Horgias, I wouldn’t have argued with that; a man needs to light fires to keep his soul warm, or so my father taught me.

I let the twigs fall at the side of the pit, set down the bunch of fleece that I planned would hold the flame and set my fingers to my belt, where I kept the glow from the last fire in a pot.

‘Have you fire to light it? If not, I can-’

A horn split the air from the far side of the camp. Three notes, rising, and two falling; it was the call to witness a sacrifice, which all men must attend who do not wish to call ill luck on themselves.

It came from the lines of the IVth legion. Horgias cursed softly, viciously, and tilted his head to look up at me. What could I say? ‘We’re going to war. Best not to offend the gods, even for the lousy Fourth.’

‘Right.’ He set his fire-making things down with careful precision and rose and together we ambled over at our leisure, drinking in the late sun, the scent of smoke, the sound of corn cakes frying.

In time, we came to a trench dug twenty paces in front of the tent lines of the IVth; the foundation for their quarter-stores. They had decided to build them in stone, an affectation they brought from the Hawk mountains. We didn’t share it, but we failed entirely to talk them out of it, and it was, I think, a way for us each to show our differences, lest any man begin to think we were one unit.

Whatever the reason, they had dug foundations and someone had been into the town and bought a dark-fleeced shearling ram for the sacrifice. It was a fine, stout animal, with yellow eyes set with the vertical slit that makes them seem like demons, when in fact they are as terrified as any beast can be. Certainly this one was not being held with the calmness that is due an offering given to the gods. The young conscript who held it had evidently never done so before; inthe time it took for us to fall into ordered lines he kept losing his grip and reclutching in a way designed to induce panic in any creature’s breast.

The ram, for its part, had been dragged from the town to a place it did not know, amongst unfamiliar men who sharpened knives in its easy view; terrified, it fought its bonds fiercely. That could have been put to use if the priests and augurs had the sense to use its fighting spirit for our good, but these were small men with small minds and they were already drenched in fear at the size of Vologases’ army.

So when they caught it up, and cut its bonds, there was a moment when neither the conscript nor the chief priest was fully holding it, and it lunged out with feet and horns, thrust the former to the ground and the latter into the priest’s ribs and, with a kick and a butt, was free to leap out, over the foundations, past the tent lines, through eight ranks of men and away to freedom.

You could have heated the silence then, and beaten it flat to make a sword. Soon, though, the first mutterings rolled through, as men spelled out for each other the doom that was on us all. A failed sacrifice. Failed! We’re finished.

The idiot priest made an effort to read something good in the beast’s escape, but he was wasting his breath; every man in the empire knows that a failed sacrifice is the clearest statement the gods ever give that the endeavour — whatever it is that the sacrifice was for — is doomed.

So the IVth couldn’t build their quarter-stores on those foundations. And we were dead men if we tried to face Vologases’ army.

I turned, and found Horgias beside me. ‘Let’s go,’ I said tightly. ‘There’s no good to be had in staying here.’

Back at our own tent lines, we set to making our evening meal. For a while, I watched Horgias as he devoted himselfagain to the fire, laid the tinder and the wool and shaved peelings from a dry block around them.

He borrowed my glow-coal and nursed the infant spark it gave him, feeding it small twigs that he had kept in the breast of his tunic and dried with his own body’s heat. In time, he had a youthful, boisterous blaze that sent thin smoke spiralling to the sky.

He took wheat meal and water from his bag, spices, some dried rosemary, a little bead of lamb’s fat, rolled and rolled until it was hard as beeswax. Mixed, they made a mash that he squeezed between his hands until it made small, flat cakes.

He oiled his mess tin and set the cakes to roast and it had the ritual feel of a last meal, shared amongst friends, amongst brothers, amongst men who knew their lives to be short, and yet still cherished each other’s company. If anything, I thought Horgias looked at peace, and was glad for him.

I crouched beside him. ‘Do you think he waits for you?’ I meant Proclion, but did not have to say so.

‘I am sure of it. I dream him often, standing at the river’s edge, looking back at me as I live this half-life without him.’ Horgias flicked a glance at me sideways. ‘Don’t think I’m in a hurry to die. He’ll wait as long as it takes, and I will kill as many Parthians as I may before I join him.’

I shook my head. ‘If you were going to die soon after him, you would have done so by now. There’s been enough opportunity.’ Not more than a skirmish or two as we left Tigranocerta, but sufficient for him to have thrown himself on an enemy spear if he had wanted to. ‘I just wanted to know where he was.’

Other than my father, Proclion was the only man I knew well who had died, and I would have trusted him with my life in ways I would never have trusted my family. It was good to know he watched over Horgias.

I took out my own pack and set about mixing beans andcorn and dried mushrooms and garlic, taking the same care as had Horgias. As they did in battle, my senses became sharper, so that I heard Lupus’ footsteps long before I heard his voice and knew who came up behind me, and exactly when he drew breath to speak.

‘Tell me we’re not going to be stoking up the cook fires to build palisades through the night by their light.’ I stood, turning as I spoke.

Gravely, he said, ‘You’re not going to be stoking the cook fires and building palisades through the night by their light.’

Something was wrong with Lupus. He had never in his life made a joke, and his eyes were not laughing; quite the reverse.

‘What then?’ Horgias was holding his dagger ready to lift one of his meal cakes from the mess tin. He looked eager, ready to fight.

‘We are to sally out tonight, before dusk. Paetus will lead us. All except the first cohort of the Fourth, which is travelling to Arsamosata, with the care of the general’s wife and infant son as their only priority.’

‘ What? ’

‘He’s sending the first cohort away?’

‘But the palisades aren’t finished. They aren’t even begun. Is he completely mad?’

Syrion, Horgias and I spoke all together. Lupus affected a deafness which left him immune to the treachery spoken around him; then, in a voice so sharp, it would have cut through wood, he said, ‘Our governor’ — he spat the word — ‘is of the belief that he was given command of men to fight for him, not wooden walls; that Vologases’ army will be sleeping in their tents, so why should we not do the same? He would meet the Parthians at the Lizard Pass in the Taurus Mountains. He believes we can hold them there.’

‘So we will hold the Parthians until Corbulo can get here?’I said. ‘That, at least, makes sense.’ After a fashion, it did; we had crossed the mountains through that pass twice in the summer, going out, and coming in. We knew it as well as we knew anywhere here.

Lupus shut his eyes. ‘I have suggested,’ he said faintly, ‘that a message should be sent to General Corbulo requesting his aid. Cadus and the camp prefect added their voices. Paetus, however, is of the opinion that we will not need any man’s help to defeat the King of Kings.’

Nobody spoke then; there were limits to what we could say and not be flogged for it, and in any case Lupus was distressed enough. The reason was obvious: Paetus was afraid of Corbulo’s genius. To get himself into a crisis and then cry for help? It would ruin his political career.

To me, Lupus said, ‘It might be that you could send a message to your old commander, wishing him well before you march out to die?’

‘Aquila? But he’ll send any message straight to Corbulo!’

‘Who might choose to send us help. Or not. But at least he will know what has happened. I am sending a similar message to Hygienus, a centurion of the Tenth, and Cadus will write to a man he knows in the Third. We have need of a courier to deliver the messages. Would you-’

‘No.’ I faced him square on. ‘I fight with my unit. Anyway, you can’t send me away. I’m the signaller.’ I fixed his gaze with mine. ‘There are couriers enough in the other legion.’

He nodded, not surprised. ‘Tears?’ Tears had become our second courier, on the strength of my bay mare’s second foal.

‘The same,’ Tears said. ‘I’ll stay. We fight together, all of us.’ There were still only seven of us; they had not made up our unit after Proclion’s death. It made us weaker in the battle lines, but at the same time it made us stronger of spirit.

‘Right.’ Lupus nodded, rising. ‘You understand that I had to ask. We’ll find another courier. He won’t be as well mounted, but there are staging posts in Syria; he can find new horses on the way.’

He was turning away when Syrion said, ‘When do we leave?’

‘As soon as the tents are packed. Eat first. I said I would have none of my men march on an empty stomach. But be ready to move out by the next watch. He would have us march double time through the night if we have to.’

There are those in Rome who will tell you that the second of the day’s ill omens occurred as we marched out of the camp; that our javelins caught the late afternoon light and shone, all in a streaming ribbon as we marched, so that we had silver in front and behind, and flashes of gold among us.

The naysayers will tell you that this reflected Parthian greatness, for it was known that the cataphracts loved their spears above all other weapons and the gods were saying that spears would be our death. But for us it felt like a benediction, a spark of light in the dark road ahead, a sign that the gods had not abandoned us so completely after all.

We marched faster for it, and long into the night, pitching our tents by the light of the falling moon, as it hung vast and gold on the westerly horizon, throwing shadows all about.

The light kept the watch sentries alert, while the rest of us slept with the stupor of men who will store sleep against famine later, and begrudge every moment of waking.