The Eagle of the Twelfth

Chapter Twenty-Four

The sun was in our faces, not quite low enough to be difficult. In front, the Hebrew army was a ripe pestilence spread across the perfect land ahead of us; rank upon ragged rank of men marching in no particular order.

Some wore mail and helmets, some bore shields and swords and spears exactly as if they were just another legion, but the bulk of them were barely armoured, and bore the long-hafted spears of the sort whose heads littered the dry soil of Gabao, and short shields, and arrows with piebald fletchings. They looked like no army I had ever seen, and even at this distance, with more than an arrow’s flight between us, they howled with a hatred we had not yet met in Judaea.

A proper fight. My hands were wet with sweat. I flexed my fingers on the grip of my shield and was glad of the soft leather there and the moss padded tight underneath it. My gladius was in my hand and I didn’t know I’d drawn it.

To my left, I saw Tears wet his lips and raise the horn, ready to sound the advance. But not yet. We were the third rank and for now we had to stand firm, hold our place and watch the lines in front of us step forward into battle. Which they did, shouting.

The two sides met in a clamour of flesh and blood and armour. Men screamed in pain and fury. Horns brayed commands, sweeping great blocks of fighting men left or right or forward, to hold a line or pull it back.

Legion, cohort and century banners dipped and swayed, sending out orders that stitched together those parts of the lines where the din was too loud for the horns to be heard, and in the thick of it men died, and their killers were killed, and those killers died in their turn, some swiftly, spraying blood from wide wounds, some more slowly, of crueller strokes. Some lost their balance and died underfoot, which is the worst way to go in this kind of fight, lying in the dark, clawing for breath, seeing the nails come at your face.

Our men fought well. Even the second and fourth cohorts, which had been ranged in a thin line in front of the main battle ranks, had thrown themselves at the foe with a fervour I wouldn’t have believed they owned, so that the first clash of men and iron had sent the carrion crows crying into the air, flapping raggedly off to less dangerous shelter in the trees that ranged the pass, there to await the evening’s bounty of dead and dying men.

From the first clash of shields, the Hebrews came at us with a screaming mania that was both more and less than battle-madness: more, because not one of them cared whether he lived or died; less, because not one of them truly knew how to link his shield with his neighbours’ to make the sum of their line greater than its parts.

Even so, I watched them tear our front rank apart, shoving the valiant youths of the second and fourth back into the spaces made for them in the row behind. I saw the second rank, the first, third and fifth cohorts, take them in and step forward in a solid line, saw that line waver and hold and step forward again, but it was hard going, as if they pushed against the gods themselves.

I saw the signals sent and acted on, saw the enemy rally and reverse each gain we’d made, and through it all I knelt on one knee on the valley floor, gouging my shield into the dirt, biting my lip, reminding myself to breathe, to blink, to swill a mouthful of tepid water every thousand heartbeats, and above all to keep my gaze fixed on Lupus’ standard so that I might see the moment when it sent us into action.

Now! And now! And now! But not now. A caught breath and a half-rise, and each time the crossed thunderbolts dipped left or right once or twice but never thrice and I must subside, dry of mouth and clenched of sphincter, to breathe again and drink again and wait.

The first two lines were spent. Even the good men of the first cohort who had stood directly in front of us at the start were tiring under the onslaught, but I could not move to help them for I had not Lupus’ view of the action and could not see the whole field, only the small square in front of me, where the Hebrews had massed for a new attack, had formed themselves into a block, just as we would have done, and were charging now at the line of men who stood twenty paces in front of me, like bulls at a wall.

The line of shields wavered under the impact; men who had survived Raphana and the Parthian cataphracts fell now, screaming, and were lost.

‘ Hold that line!’ Half rising, I shouted into a sound so thick that mere words bounced off it.

But the god heard me; from far to my left where Lupus held his stance, a flag dipped and rose three times. The high pipe of the cornet soared over it. Beside me, Tears reached for his own horn and bent his head to the mouthpiece. I let go the breath I had been holding, and sent out the words that had been crowding my teeth since the battle’s start.

‘ On your feet! Shields up! Third rank forward on my step! ’

The roar ripped my throat; I had no idea I could shout thatloud. The wave of it tore across the body of the sixth cohort. My cohort. Mine to lead into true battle, to bring to victory, to wash clean of shame.

Horgias dipped and raised our standard. Tears took my words and wove them into brazen notes. A rising trip of three higher tones stripped away our fear and flung us into battle.

We surged forward, shields welded at the edges, swords spitting between; we were a storm wave sent at a shore. Four years of waiting went into those steps. Nothing could have stood against us. In the first moments, nothing did.

As the bronze music shimmered overhead, I opened my mouth and found a new sound coming out, deeper than before, louder, and matched by Tears and Horgias. And like this, roaring the songs of our hearts, we crashed our shields into the enemy and our battle began.

But the Hebrews had brought new weapons against us. A lead slingshot skimmed past my cheek, drawing blood. Others slammed into my shield. I saw the first flash of spears and had time to shout ‘Shields up!’ and every second man stepped back from the line and swung his shield over his own head and that of his neighbour to the right.

They did it smoothly, free of the sullen rigidity of the past. To my left, Tears kept his horn ready and Macer the Mournful matched him step for step with his shield held high protecting them both, so that I knew that Tears was safe with him, at least for this fight.

To my right, Horgias looked past a screaming Taurus and caught my eye and grinned and lifted the standard higher just as the hard rain of spears pattered to silence. I had time to call ‘Drop shields! Forward!’ before the Hebrews were on us.

I took a running step to stab at a black-headed, rot-mouthed Hebrew who was striking at Taurus. Taurus, in turn, killed the man who was striking at Horgias. I struck down a prodding spear with my shield and sent my gladiusspiking up at the eyes of the one who had sent it. He jerked back. I left him and let the strike skid sideways into another face, barely seen, just eyes that flared white and black — and then red, and closed and falling.

Another took his place, and then another and another and the part of me that was not simply fighting to stay alive was in awe of their ferocity, and not surprised any more that Lupus had held us back so long.

I batted down a spear with my gladius, stepped into the gap it left and, as no neighbouring shield came to block my way, stabbed in high, overhand, into the bared neck of the man in front of me. He fell, drowning in his own blood. I kicked him down, crushed his skull under my foot — no thought now for the horror of that death — sensed a space on either side of me, and stepped forward again, forcing the gap, and felt the wind of a slingshot where I had been, and then another so close that it grazed my cheekbone, and — I ducked — another.

Three, from the right, high. I looked up. ‘They’re flanking us. Slingers with lead shot high and right. Fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries wheel right! Form testudo! Forward!’

The three named centuries were moving almost before Tears got the signals out, making the square, with the outer men holding their shields around us and those on the inside raising theirs to make the shell of the tortoise, advancing up the rise at the slingers, who stopped using me for target practice and instead tried to kill the men behind the shields.

They failed.

We killed a dozen at the front, and saw the rest break and run back to form a ragged line a hundred long strung between one rocky bluff and another with bare mountain behind.

From somewhere in the block of men behind me, Taurus said, ‘We can take them.’

‘No.’ I shook my head and my cross-wise plume multipliedthe movement. ‘It’s a trap. See how they’re looking behind them? Someone else is waiting behind those rocks.’

I watched a moment longer, studying the terrain and the scuffed earth beyond the bluffs, and then, more softly, said, ‘Tears, signal to Lupus. Ask for cavalry.’

We had cavalry… by heaven, did we have cavalry.

When the Hebrews had fallen into revolt, petty kings all over Judaea suddenly found they had a need to show their loyalty to Rome. We had two thousand light horse from Antiochus Epiphanes alone, and a thousand more from Agrippa, the deposed king of Judaea, whose rank cowardice in abandoning his city had started the whole messy war. All of them were led by Cadus, who bore his command as if born to it.

Tears sounded a spray of notes that were not for our men. I couldn’t see Lupus — the lines were too crushed and close for that now — but soon his signaller called out the fast, tripping beat that summoned our cavalry to action.

I heard the horses but did not see them, for just then the press of Hebrews in front was rallied by their commanders and for a few moments we were fighting for our lives, locked in the sweat-rimed embrace of battle, where each small fight mattered only to the men engaged in it, who had no sense of the greater whole.

I parried, I hacked, I grunted, I dodged, I thrust my shield forward and killed the man in front of me with a stab to the groin and a second to the neck and found a moment’s respite when no one stepped in to take his place — and looked up to see if Cadus had cleared the open slopes above us.

To our right and coming closer, I saw his pennant cleave the harsh blue sky: a red pennant with the crossed thunderbolts of the XIIth in the centre and below them his personal mark of the white horse.

He had his men held in a solid line, sweeping across the fallof the slope. Spears flashed silver and red through the dust they made. Men fell before them and did not rise again after they had gone. The slope ran to mud-slurry with blood and urine and the soft parts of entrails that leaked out into the autumn dust. The churning wind brought us the iron-sweet scent of blood, and the sharper smells of death. That same wind carried a flicker of blue, a shade deeper than the sky, with ‘ Demalion! ’

Tears’ voice. A blade coming at my face. I threw my shield up, put my shoulder behind it, heaved forward, and felt face bones crack on the boss. I thrust my blade in on instinct and felt it skitter off armour, and then bite in skin and flesh. A man screamed and the pressure on my shield grew less. I looked around it, saw a helmet, falling, and kicked the flat of my foot at where the face must be… and all the time my head kept trying to turn to the side, to look up the slope at the flicker of blue I had seen that was not the sky.

At the next chance, I looked back, and that was when I saw it — the blue tern against a white ground that had haunted my dreams since my days in Hyrcania.

Shock held me still and only Tears’ fast action saved me. But then he saw what I had seen: that the peril was far greater than we had thought, for Cadus was fighting cataphracts. Here, eight miles north of Jerusalem. C ataphracts! Led by Monobasus of Adiabene. I threw back my head and yelled over the havoc.

‘Horgias! Monobasus is here! Adiabene has sided with the Hebrews!’

The cry ran through the ranks like fire through straw. ‘Monobasus! Adiabene! He’s brought his heavy cavalry!’

The news spread like floodwater and reached Lupus faster than if we had signalled it. As my cry died away, we heard the blare of his horn and, acting on each signal as puppetsto a master’s pull, found ourselves faced about, with new centuries taking our place on the battle’s front, so that we might lock shields and advance against the new-old enemy, filling the gap in Cadus’ left flank, letting him move out and round, higher up the hill, to come down on them from above, which is what cavalry does best.

The horn guided us uphill and right to a place Lupus must have scouted out beforehand, where we found ourselves formed into a wedge.

Alexander used this formation in his battles, only his wedges were of cavalry. We were foot men, and I was at the apex, with five hundred men behind me, ready to widen any gap I could force with my shield and my body. This is one reason why centurions die more readily and in greater numbers than any other men on the battlefield: they lead the wedges.

I felt a flash of terror so fast, so fierce, so overwhelming that it was indistinguishable from joy. My body thrilled to it and drank it in, even as I knew that death waited for me in a dozen paces.

‘ Charge! ’

The horn blared it, but I had shouted before the notes came, so clear was our moment of chance. Sunlight flashed on weapons and armour all around, blinding me to everything but the flash of a blue banner in the centre of the cavalry block, and the black horse that bore it and the fox-faced rider to its left, leaner than I remembered, but swinging his sword with the same savage carelessness, laughing as we came at him.

And then not laughing, as our javelins flew; we who had held them until the last, which was now. And not laughing as his horse stumbled, hit in the one place where it was vulnerable, on the loins, where no armour hung; we knew that, who had fought him before.

And not laughing at all, but shouting for order, trying to hold his men in line, as we ploughed on through their lines, and I did not die but let the force of the men behind me push me on, crushing on to horseflesh and manflesh alike, breaking bones and toppling riders by the sheer force of the wedge.

And then that force withered and we were left trying to reform a battle line in the midst of an enemy whose own line was fractured beyond repair.

By the gods’ will, I found myself still alive, and fighting opposite the blue-bannered king who led his men in battle.

The air was drenched with horse-sweat, thick with blood and fear, and fury. I saw a black hide and stabbed at it, twisted and pulled free; I saw a flash of a pale unarmoured wrist, and stabbed for that, and felt the blade turned aside, and felt a hand grasp at my wrist, pulling me forward, and a gap where Tears was not with me. I saw a wall of horseflesh, rising, and iron within it, falling, and was spinning, trying to find my balance, when something more silver than iron was in the way, and I heard a horse’s feet hit solid bull’s hide and saw the blue tern banner of Adiabene fall at my feet, and the dead king beside it.

And then Tears was there, sliding in to my side, and I was safe in the shelter of his shield, with Macer to his left and Horgias and Taurus on my right with the silver of our standard between them, blistering in the sun.

Our shields made a new line and we took the long steps of a forward wall and heard-felt the smack of the bosses on armour.

I heard the enemy try to rally, but without their commander they failed, and within ten paces they were backing their horses away from us, step by bloody step, and I had time to pause and look to my left and found Macer grinning at me — grinning! — holding a stolen Parthian shield with silverworked thick on the boss and edges. So he was the one who had saved me, not Tears or Horgias.

‘All right?’ He hefted the shield, as if pleased with its weight.

I had flogged him five times with my own hand and tied him to the cartwheel for two nights as one of the worst thorns in my side. And he had saved my life in battle.

‘All right,’ I said, and smiled back.

We came to a halt at the edge of the bluff. With the retreat of Monobasus’ cataphracts, the line of Hebrews facing us had fallen back and Lupus was not fool enough to send us after them. In the valley beyond us the Hebrews were retreating, as if their cavalry’s defeat had knocked the fight out of them.

I signalled Tears to halt our men and we stopped where we stood while the slaves ran from the supply lines with water.

My arms were shaking. My whole body, in fact, was shuddering like a horse at the end of a race. My shoulders felt bruised; my knuckles bled where I had smashed my shield boss too often and too hard. My bladder was full and my bowels loose, and I wanted more than anything to find the blue banner that had fallen near the place where Macer had saved my life.

Horgias was there before me, standing over the still-warm body of the black horse. Its rider lay on his back, his eyes wide open. His armour was silvered, with gems on his gloves. His eyes were black. His face was fox-like, but a young fox. Horgias had kicked off his helmet. His hair shone sleek in the noonday sun — and it was red.

I said, ‘Monobasus had black hair. Black going grey. It’s not him.’ I tilted the face back with my foot and we both looked down at a man younger than either of us.

Horgias said nothing. I didn’t push him. Taurus stood nearby, watching with a new closeness.

Tears came to join us. He had a ragged cut on his cheek just below one eye. He saw me looking and shook his head. ‘Later.’He nodded over to Horgias. ‘He killed Monobasus. You took the horse, but Horgias took the rider.’

‘It isn’t Monobasus,’ Horgias said woodenly.

‘His son, then?’ Tears said.

‘Does he have sons?’ Taurus asked.

‘Bound to have,’ I said. ‘The way they are in Adiabene, he probably has half a village of sons sired on a dozen different women.’

A slave passed with a crate of water skins. Grabbing one, I tipped my head back and tipped half the contents down my throat and over my face.

‘Well, anyway,’ Taurus said, ‘they’re going. We beat them.’

I was halfway to agreeing with him when a scurry of wind caught my ear, and what I heard within it made me cough up the water. ‘No… listen.’ I held up my hand. ‘Someone’s still fighting.’

I turned, seeking the uncertain breeze, and heard again the sounds it carried so very faintly down the long pass from its western end half a day’s march away, where three cohorts of the IVth held the rear guard.

Tears said, ‘Is that smoke?’

It was: a sudden black belch billowing to the sky. I swung round. ‘Tears, signal Lupus that the Fourth legion is under attack. Tell him we’re going to their aid.’

Four notes, then three, then two, rising, and with them our standard swung back and forth towards the valley’s other end. And on that, we of the sixth cohort of the XIIth re-formed, grabbed what water we could and, taking a collective breath, threw ourselves into the open mouth of the Beth Horon pass, leaving our allies behind to keep the pass closed against rabid men who might regroup for a second attack.