Thunder of the Gods

9

Exhausted, the legion’s men had needed no encouragement to sleep on the hard ground in their blankets, rather than taking the time and effort required to erect the leather tents that could only encumber them in the event of an attack. Julius found himself accompanied by Varus as he walked the perimeter wall with a tent party of Tungrians, having disdained sleep once again in order to ensure that the legion was ready to defend itself against the attack he believed to be inevitable. The young patrician stopped, looking up and down the wall’s length at the sentries patrolling their allotted sections of the defence, then turned to the senior centurion with as close to an apologetic expression as he was likely ever to get.

‘I have to admit, First Spear, that I may have misjudged you. When the legatus first took command I was of the opinion that you were nothing better than a northern lunatic. When you had the entire legion sleep overnight without tents I called you a sadist, and then when you had the trumpets blown in the middle of the night I cursed you for a maniac …’

He paused, smiling wryly.

‘I can only apologise. Clearly you had just such a situation as this in mind.’

Julius nodded at him, accepting the hard-earned respect with a straight face.

‘It’s not that hard, Tribune. Once you’ve seen a campaign or two, you find it natural to place yourself in the enemy’s boots, so to speak, and ask yourself what he might do, if he’s desperate enough. It’s simple experience.’

The younger man took a moment to stretch his back before resuming their walk towards the lone sentry standing at the point where the northern and eastern sides of the camp met.

‘That may be true, but nonetheless, First Spear, you’ve become the heartbeat of the Third Gallic. If we survive this insane expedition on which the emperor has sent us, it will be entirely due to the legatus’s cunning tactics and your iron control of the men that enables him to even consider them.’

He looked at Julius with unabashed admiration, something the first spear was ill-accustomed to receiving from the legion’s senior officers.

‘You won’t have any problems from any of the young gentlemen either, not since that remarkable vic-’

Turning back to their path around the wall he stopped, frowning at something barely visible in the shadow of one of the camp’s entrances.

‘Is that a man lying down?’

Julius started and strode forward, putting a foot under the supine body and kicking the man onto his front. A dark, wet stain covered his neck and chest, and his weapons and helmet were missing. Another dead sentry was lying in the shadow of the earth wall, and, looking up, he realised that the lone figure they had seen patrolling the wall a moment before was nowhere to be seen. The first spear spun to face his superior, pulling the sword from his left hip.

‘We’re being fucked! Air your iron, Tribune, and stay close to me! You!’

He pointed to his trumpeter.

‘Sound the stand to!’

The first notes of the summons to action broke the camp’s silence with the power of a thunderclap, and before the first echoes had died away the legion was struggling to its collective feet, soldiers shrugging off their blankets and reflexively reaching for their weapons.

‘Stand to! Prepare to defend the camp!’

The closest centurions heard Julius’s bellowed command and repeated it in their own parade-ground roars, each successive cohort springing into action as the order rippled across the camp’s expanse. Rushing forward to the walls, each century took its place in the wall of iron that was rapidly building behind the earth wall, soldiers swiftly arraying themselves into solid ranks despite the near darkness and settling into place as they had practised so many times before with a solid line of shields facing out into the darkness and another held overhead to protect against lofted arrows, their glinting swords held ready to fight. Julius looked about him, pride in the speed of his command’s response tempered by a nagging sense that something was not as it should be.

‘No arrows.’

Varus looked at him uncertainly.

‘No arrows, First Spear? Isn’t that a good thing?’

The Tungrian shook his head.

‘No arrows, no attack.’

‘And that’s a bad thing?’

‘They’re not attacking. They managed to fool the sentries, which means they must have looked familiar, but having made their opening there’s no follow-up.’

Understanding hit the two men simultaneously, and Varus gasped at the audacity of the Parthian plan.

‘The prisoners!’

‘Fuck the prisoners! They’re after the king!’

The first spear spun, shouting an order at the closest centurion.

‘You! With me, and bring your men!’

The infiltrators broke on the men guarding the prisoners in a wave of iron and muscle, their captured armour buying them precious time while the men who stood in their path wasted their chances to defend themselves, fooled by the sight of Romans running towards them. Drawing their swords at the last possible moment, the dozen-strong raiding party tore into the guards with the abandoned ferocity of men who knew that they were already dead. At the cost of four of their number, they left ten men dead and dying on the thin grass, hurdling the fallen with desperate haste.

‘Intruders! Stand and fight!’

Marcus, standing by Osroes with an ear cocked for the sounds of battle from the camp’s perimeter, started as he heard the screams and shouts of closer combat. Realising what was happening, he pulled the dagger from his belt and handed it to Gurgen, who stared back at him in amazement.

‘Free your warriors.’

Marcus waved his good hand to indicate the men about them, then turned away, drawing the gladius from his left hip.

‘And be ready to defend your king. This is a suicide mission, and it can only have one purpose.’

Stalking forward with the sword held low, he watched as the fast-moving attackers stormed into the tent party of legionaries who stood between them and their quarry. Alerted, and with their blades drawn and shields set, the Romans advanced to meet them in a solid line, but from the moment that the two forces clashed it was evident that the fight was one-sided. While the legionaries fought in the way they had been drilled for years, their attackers, each of them bigger and better trained than the soldiers, and with the joy of battle surging in their veins, gave battle with unmatchable speed and purpose. Hacking their way into the guards without regard for their own danger, they wrought swirling, lethal chaos, killing two of the defenders for each one of them that fell.

As the last few men under his command fought for their lives, their centurion took one of the enemy down with a perfect shield punch and brutal sword stroke, disembowelling the Parthian despite his borrowed plate armour, then died in his turn with a sword blade rammed through his neck. The last two men turned to run, falling to the attackers’ swords as those of the raiding party still on their feet stormed through them, and came face-to-face with the gathered prisoners. Freed by Gurgen with swift strokes of the dagger Marcus had thrust upon him, they had been marshalled into a line that stood squarely in the path to the tent within which Osroes lay. Their leader limped forward, his sword arm red with the blood of the legionaries he had killed, his right leg a bloody ruin barely strong enough to keep him erect.

‘The king! Where is the king?!’

The newly freed men looked at the noble in silence, only Gurgen having the authority to challenge him.

‘Do you come to free him, or to kill him?’

Another man took a step forward, raising his gore-slathered blade.

‘They’ll kill him anyway, once they reach Nisibis! Stand aside!’

Gurgen shook his head, raising a hand.

‘They’ve promised to free us all! The king needs-’

Osroes could be seen in the tent’s doorway behind his protector, and the raiding party’s leader looked down his sword at the red-headed warrior, his face white with blood loss and fury.

‘I haven’t sold my life this night to buy your lies, Gurgen! Get out of my path, the king must die!’

Gurgen pointed at the would-be assassins, bellowing an order at the freed prisoners.

‘Defend the king!’

They stormed forward, the bravest of them dying on their amazed countrymen’s swords before the remainder overwhelmed the infiltrators in a flurry of fists and boots. Marcus turned away, a flicker of motion at the edge of his vision the only warning he got before the last of them was upon him. The man must have lagged behind, waiting for the opportunity to strike in case the assassins lacked the nerve to carry through their grisly task. Raising his sword the Roman barely managed to parry the first blow, and was still turning back to face the threat when a swift fist to the face staggered him for an instant, long enough for the assailant to hook his ankle and send him sprawling and momentarily unfocused, laying him wide open to the death stroke.

He tensed, knowing that his stunned wits were no match for the man looming over him with a shining bar of razor-sharp metal in his hand, but the attacker was already past him with the sword raised, ready to kill and closing in on Osroes with clear intent. As the assassin ran the last few steps, drawing the blade back to strike, a legion-issue javelin hit him squarely between the shoulder blades, dropping him onto his knees with a foot of iron protruding from his chest.

Pulled backwards by the weight of the spear’s wooden shaft he struggled forward a step, inching closer to the king, and Marcus rolled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his wounded arm to put the spatha’s blade at his throat. Shaking his head to regain his sense, he lifted the sword’s point, forcing the dying man back from his intended victim.

‘Give it up. You’re a dead man, with nothing left but go to your grave with dignity.’

The assassin’s head turned with painful slowness until he could see the Roman standing over him. Blood was running down the spear’s shaft and pooling at the base.

‘Should have … killed you.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘I didn’t throw the spear. He did.’

Gurgen stepped forward.

‘No one kills my king, not while I have the breath to resist.’

He stared at the stricken killer.

‘I know you. You’re Narsai’s man.’

The killer shrugged.

‘Tell them … how close … I came …’

He snatched at Marcus’s blade with quivering fingers, forcing it into his throat with a lunge that cut his palms to the bone and ripped through the veins in his neck. Bubbling an inaudible curse he sagged back onto the spear, ruined hands falling from the blade to hang on either side.

‘That was a good throw.’

The bidaxs shrugged.

‘I didn’t see anyone else in a position to stop him. And there’s your proof – Narsai wanted the king dead so that he could kill you all.’

‘Us all.’

They turned to find Julius and Scaurus behind them, both men holding their swords ready to use, and the legatus strolled forward with a grimace at the assassin’s corpse.

‘We’ll have the prisoners bound again shall we, First Spear? And I’d be altogether happier if that dagger you’re holding was to find its way back into the tribune’s sheath.’

Gurgen handed the weapon back to Marcus and held out his hands for the rope.

‘Not you. Tribune Corvus here needs someone to help with the king, and you’ve certainly proven your dedication to the man. We march at dawn.’

The enemy horse archers were waiting when the legion broke camp in the morning, and Julius stared at them with a grim expression as his soldiers prepared for the day’s march.

‘So now we get to find out just how much power Narsai has over Osroes’ nobles. If they’re willing to sacrifice their king, they’ll start loosing arrows at us the moment we’re out of camp.’

Scaurus cocked an eyebrow at the king.

‘What do you think, Your Highness? Do your nobles love you enough to resist Narsai’s pressure?’

Osroes shook his head, still perpetually weary.

‘Of course not. I’ve been their king for little more than two years, and the previous ruler was a much loved man. He may have died in his bed peacefully enough, but I suspect that his death was too well timed for some of them to accept as being without some other cause.’

‘And everyone loves the idea of a conspiracy, especially where the possibility of what they fear holds some credibility.’

‘Indeed. So in this case, Legatus, there are three factors in play.’

Scaurus frowned.

‘Three? I can see the balance between their fear of what Narsai might do to them if they don’t obey him and attack today, set against their fear of what your father might do to them if they do – what’s the third factor in play?’

The king smiled tiredly.

‘It isn’t. Yet.’

Having tarried over his breakfast, calculating the likelihood of swaying the Median nobles to his side, Narsai rode through his army towards the Roman camp to be greeted by an unexpected sight when he reached the host’s front ranks. His momentary look of bemusement darkened to one of anger as he realised who it was that the knot of armoured cavalry men were gathered around fifty paces from the army’s ranks, a figure at once familiar by his rich blue tunic and proud stance.

‘It’s the king’s bidaxs, Your Highness.’

Kicking his horse forward, the king cantered across the gap between his army and the small group of nobles, taking in at a glance which of the Median nobles had ridden forward to meet Osroes’ man. A dozen or so faces turned to regard him as he approached, none of them kindly, several of them hostile. He noted the latter, half promising himself to have the more powerful of them meet with accidents before he remembered that his assassin had failed to return from the Roman camp.

‘I warn you, my lords, you’d do as well not to listen to this man. His master has had his wits bludgeoned from his skull by the Romans, and this one wants nothing more than to pretend that the problem does not exist.’

Gurgen shook his head in disgust.

‘I will repeat myself for those of you who may be hard of hearing, or who lack the old-fashioned virtue to arrive on the field of battle in a timely manner. Your king sends you his regards, and his regrets that he is unable to greet you in person. He wishes you to know that he is of sound mind, if still a little dazed from the way in which he was unhorsed in the battle during which he was taken. And he expressed his disappointment that you should have decided to seek his death, and sent the cream of our Median army into the Roman camp last night with orders to find and kill their own king.’

The reason for their hostility was at once apparent, and Narsai shook his head in a manner he hoped would emphatically give the lie to the bodyguard’s words.

‘I know of no such attempt on the king’s life. If our warriors, being realists in all things, decided to take matters into their own hands, I can only applaud their determination to bring this enemy to-’

‘They’re all dead. They fought their way to the king’s tent with the greatest of bravery and skill at arms, but in the end their sacrifice was without fruit. I speared the last of them myself, as he stood before my king with a drawn sword.’

Narsai swelled with genuine rage.

‘You prevented your own people from removing a hostage from Roman hands!’

Gurgen shook his head, his lip curling.

‘I killed an assassin who threatened the man to whom I have sworn lifelong loyalty, nothing more. And not all of the men who sought their king’s life were pure in their intentions.’

He emptied the bag onto the rough grass, watching Narsai’s face as the head of his killer rolled to a halt on the sandy ground, the dead man’s eyes staring sightlessly up at him.

‘You see this king’s face when confronted with the head of his tame murderer, my lords? You see him recognise his man? A dozen of your finest fought their way to the king’s side last night, determined to kill him only as a last resort, when they realised that they were surrounded. We restrained them with our empty hands, my lords, for love of our brothers and their ideal of their sacrifice, and several of my fellow captives paid for that fealty with their lives. But this man, this scorpion, lurked in the shadows behind them and sought to bring a dishonourable death to your king!’

Narsai snarled at him, turning his horse away.

‘It was the only way I could see to prevent this legion from escaping our vengeance for the men we lost, back there on that bloody hillside! And I still see it as the only answer! If you fools lack the guts, then I will have to show you how it’s done with my own archers!’

Gurgen smiled at his back, looking to the men gathered around him.

‘A choice presents itself, my brothers.’

Scaurus watched the small group of nobles intently, waiting until Gurgen turned away and strode back towards the Roman camp, proudly heedless of the risk that he might find an arrow between his shoulder blades at any moment.

‘So now we’ll see how dearly the king’s men value his life. And whether it’s born of love of the man or fear of his father, whether that value can outweigh Narsai’s need to see him dead.’

He turned to Julius with a nod.

‘We’ll march the legion now, if you will First Spear? Let’s not give them any time to think it through.’

The First Cohort went out through the hastily demolished eastern gateway at the double march, the Romans clearly intending to make the most of the morning’s cool, the soldiers’ heads thrown back to suck in the air while their centurions barked commands and struck out with real venom at any man not displaying sufficient vigour.

‘You’ve turned them into Tungrians, brother.’

Dubnus grinned at Julius as the Second Cohort lurched into motion, the air abruptly filled with the sound of Aramaic curses and imprecations that the Tungrians had quickly come to recognise.

‘Listen to that! I swear I just heard that centurion call his front rankers a useless shower of cock suckers!’

Julius smiled quietly.

‘They’re not Tungrians. But they’re something close enough that I’m starting to get quite fond of them, the dirty, idle bastards. And as for you, Your Highness, don’t you have a cohort to be beasting?’

Dubnus turned away with a smug grin.

‘No need. All my centurions know their duty well enough, as you’d expect given they’re the best soldiers in their cohort. My lads will have had them lined up and ready to run before the rest of the legion had put their cocks away. It’s discipline, that and the relief of not having to suffer under their former first spear …’

Julius waved him away, turning back to Scaurus to find the legatus still watching the legion’s cohorts as they formed for the day’s march.

‘Today’s the day, Julius. Today we’ll discover if we’re fated to die here, unlamented on a featureless plain, or survive to face death by starvation in Nisibis instead.’

The first spear raised an eyebrow.

‘You don’t believe that the city has food enough for us?’

‘I might be wrong – but if they’ve been under siege for as long as I suspect, then they’ll already be low on supplies before another five thousand mouths arrive.’

‘But if we’re marching into a death trap …?’

‘Not that we have much choice. But yes, if we’re marching into a trap, then your next question is a valid enquiry. How do I plan to get us out again, given that if Narsai doesn’t manage to turn the Medes loose on us, all he’s going to do is ring the town with peasant soldiers and try to starve us out?’

Julius waited expectantly, and the legatus shook his head with a faint smile.

‘The truth is, First Spear, that I really hadn’t thought much beyond getting in there. That, I’m afraid, will be a matter for Our Lord Mithras to arrange.’

‘There’s still no sign of any pursuit!’

Felix looked back over his shoulder reflexively, finding the western horizon still free of any indication of pursuit. He grinned at Marcus, patting Hades’ neck as the big stallion trotted effortlessly across the flat ground laid out before them, raising his voice to be heard over the thunder of his cohort’s horses.

‘With any luck the men watching Nisibis won’t realise who we are until it’s too late.’

Walking their horses across the plain until dawn’s first light allowed them to mount, they had prevented their horses from alerting the enemy by the simple expedient of muffling their hoofs with rags and strapping on nosebags full of fodder while the beasts were walked out of the camp’s southern side. Felix’s cavalrymen had already covered two-thirds of the distance to their objective. Looking out to either side, Marcus saw only the empty plain running away in all directions as far as the eye could see.

‘What do you think we’ll find when we get to the city?’

Felix looked out over Hades’ head to the east.

‘I talked it through with the legatus. His expectation is that Osroes brought every horseman with him that he could, and most of his infantry too. There will probably only be two or three thousand of them, left behind to ensure that no supplies can reach the defenders.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘That’s still a lot of spears.’

‘If they’re levelled at us, then yes it is. If they’re levelled at us …’

‘They’re just going to watch us?’

Julius looked to his left, at the mass of cavalry tracking the legion across the empty land towards Nisibis, the cohorts’ every pace to the east reducing the amount of time available to Narsai if he sought to bring the marching soldiers to bay.

‘It looks like it. Those that can keep up or who haven’t already buggered off chasing our donkey wallopers.’

Dubnus coughed, pulled down his scarf and spat a mouthful of grit into the roadside dust, then replaced the flimsy protection and looked back down the legion’s marching column. Far behind, almost lost in the dust that was being stirred up by the wind blowing across the plain, the Parthian infantry seemed to have given up attempting to maintain the pace that Scaurus was setting. To their left rode the cataphracts, their horses carefully positioned between the horse archers and the legion, their swords and maces on open display. Narsai had ridden ahead with his own men an hour earlier, hurrying away to the west in pursuit of the Phrygians with a thousand horse archers once it had become apparent that the Roman cavalry had ridden for the city under cover of the night.

‘It’s getting worse.’

Julius tightened his own scarf, shouting over the wind’s keening, mournful note.

‘The scout says it’s not unusual to get dust storms at this time of year! I’m going to drop down the column and warn the officers to be ready for a surprise attack! We’d be on top of a blocking force before we knew they were there in this muck!’

The salar commanding the infantry that had been left to maintain the siege of Nisibis followed his deputy’s pointing hand.

‘Horsemen!’

A pair of riders were galloping towards them, the advance party of a much larger force whose strength was lost in the clouds of dust blowing across the plain that surrounded the city, their swords raised in salute as they reined in a dozen paces from the general.

‘Peroz!’

The officers looked at each other.

‘Victory!’

A soldier behind them had caught the riders’ triumphant shouts and turned to his fellows, shouting the single word again loudly enough for hundreds of his fellows to hear, and with a roar the thousands of infantry men saluted the oncoming riders as their figures seemed to solidify out of the dust.

‘What …’

The salar’s deputy was quicker on the uptake than his commander, the first to realise that the cavalry trotting towards them were not what they seemed. As he turned to shout a warning, the advance riders peeled away to one side, and with a blare of horns the men behind them kicked their mounts into a canter, spreading out from their column of march into an arrowhead formation as they came across the open ground. The horn blew again, the horsemen pulling their bows from their gorytos cases and reaching for arrows.

‘Spears! Present your spears!’

Turning to the men behind him, intent on gaining the safety of their ranks, the salar’s stomach lurched as he found only terror in their eyes. Disordered and thrown off balance by the enemy’s sudden appearance, their formation shivered, clearly on the verge of disaster.

‘Present your-’

An arrow struck him squarely in the back, dropping him to his knees with the sudden agonising pain of its cold, iron intrusion. His deputy was already dead, sprawled across the ground with two arrows protruding from his armour, and dozens of the men in front of him were staggering with similar wounds. As he watched, a second volley of missiles whipped into his men, the regiment’s ranks dissolving into chaos as yet more men fell under the deadly iron sleet.

‘Hold … your …’

His voice reduced to no better than a whisper, the salar raised an imploring hand to the closest men, but their eyes were fixed on the oncoming enemy. With a sudden collective loss of will, the regiment broke, the ordered ranks reduced to a terrified mob in a single heartbeat as each man realised that those to either side were turning to flee. The noise of the Romans’ oncoming horses was now loud enough to outweigh even the screams of his panicked soldiers, trampling their wounded comrades underfoot as they frantically sought an escape from the implacable enemy, and turning his head to look back, the salar realised numbly what it was that had inspired such terror. A line of horsemen was upon him, barely a dozen paces distant, each of them pushing his bow into the case on his right hip and drawing a long sword. But it wasn’t the imminent onslaught that dismayed him, rather the fearsome aspect of their silvered cavalry helmets, rank upon rank of identical and cruelly emotionless metal faces offering their enemy no hint of fear or pity.

With another peal of the horn the riders came on with their swords raised, ready to kill those who failed to run or whose flight was too slow to evade their blades. The salar spread his arms, ready for the merciful blow that would end his agony and shame.

The last of the legion’s cohorts marched into the fortress in good order, the massive wooden drawbridge that spanned the deep moat between inner and outer walls raising slowly to leave the city completely isolated from the Parthian forces now flooding onto the level ground surrounding Nisibis. The flat plain before the watching Romans was still scattered with the bloodied corpses of the spear men who had been routed and then slaughtered by Felix’s cavalry as they fled, a trail of dead and dying men that ran away from the city to the north until it petered out in the foothills two miles distant. By the time Narsai had arrived with his own horsemen, the one-sided battle was already over, and the Phrygians were safely ensconced inside the massive walls encircling the fortress that had once been part of his kingdom.

‘So, First Spear, what do you think?’

Julius looked out over the fortress, still struggling to come to terms with the scale of the city’s defences.

‘It’s hard to take in, Prefect Petronius.’

‘I understand only too well.’

The prefect commanding the city’s garrison waved a hand at the scene laid out before them from their vantage point over the western gate.

‘I was equally amazed the first time I laid eyes on it. A man gets used to the grandeur of the place after a time, but it really is quite surprising to find fortifications this strong out here in the middle of nowhere. I mean to say, there’s nothing worth taking as far as the eye can see, and yet look at all this …’

Julius looked out across Nisibis, marvelling again at the tall brick walls that encompassed the city in two concentric rings, a deep dry moat having been dug between them.

‘Not much use mining against these walls, I’d imagine.’

‘No indeed! You might damage the outer wall, but to what end? The inner wall’s at least as thick again, and both walls are buttressed, so mining would be more likely to make the outer wall slump, rather than collapsing it. And even if an attacker managed to take the outer wall, with the bridges over the moat destroyed it would be almost impossible to take the inner wall and force a way into the city, under constant attack and without any solid ground to work with.’

Petronius shook his head with a smile.

‘I’d say the place is more or less impregnable, unless an attacker manages to starve the garrison out. I asked one of the elders why the place had been made so strong when there’s nothing here worth having …’

He shook his head at the memory, and Scaurus tilted his head in question.

‘The cheeky old bugger looked me up and down with a pitying expression, then folded his arms and gave me an ancient history lecture. He was a damned sight more interesting than my old tutor, I can assure you of that! Apparently, once we’d got past his repeated assertion that Rome was just another empire, and would one day surely fall, he pointed out to me that the city has been besieged at one time or another by all manner of people. Mesopotamians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Parthians, and of course ourselves, all wanting the wealth to be had from possession of the only decent spring for a hundred miles. Everyone’s had a go at the place at one time or another, and so, he told me with more than a hint of pride, they’ve got rather good at the whole fortification thing. And he has a point. After all, all we’ve ever done since the Parthians ceded the place to Avidius Cassius is keep the brickwork in good order, because the place was this strong when we took control of it.’

‘Defences are all very well, but what about supplies?’

‘If you’re worried about feeding your men, First Spear, then put your mind at ease. Since the city sits right astride a major trade route, money isn’t overly hard to come by and therefore neither are the staples of life. There’s enough spare grain in the stores to feed your legion for a year, and those men out there will have vanished off to their homelands long before that. Besides, the first decent storm of next winter would clear them away even if they had the staying power to sit out there for the entire summer.’

He frowned.

‘Exactly what it is that this Narsai hopes to achieve isn’t clear to me, or for that matter why King Osroes thought it would be a good idea to sit watching a fortress that he’s got no hope of breaking into. Surely they’ve both got better things to be doing than banging their heads against these walls?’

Scaurus shrugged.

‘An interesting potted history, thank you Prefect Petronius. And I see your point as to the futility of whatever it is that the kings thought they might achieve by besieging the city, but to be frank I’m too relieved to have fought my way through to you to be giving much thought to what their aims might have been. My only concern now is to how we’re going to get Osroes back to his father in Ctesiphon.’

Petronius raised an eyebrow.

‘You’re going to return the King of Kings’ son to him, having taken him fairly in battle? What’s the ransom?’

The legatus shook his head.

‘The arrangement wasn’t financial. I used him as a means of keeping Narsai from attacking us on the march, promising his nobles that I would return him to his father if he lived to see Nisibis. But the fact remains, getting him to Ctesiphon isn’t going to be easy.’

The prefect raised an eyebrow.

‘Your generosity amazes me, Legatus. After all, the payment that you could have demanded simply to let him walk from these gates would be enough to make you among the richest men in Rome.’

He pondered the thought for a moment.

‘But never mind, we don’t all want to be wealthy. And if all you need is a way out of the city that will set you on your way to the Parthian capital, I think I have something that might just work …’

‘You’re sure this is wise, Legatus? Sending a Roman officer to the Parthian capital might just be a very good way of getting him killed.’

Scaurus sat back in his chair, nodding in the face of his first spear’s disapproval. Petronius had cheerfully vacated his office in the city’s headquarters building in favour of the legatus, and from the windows on each side of the generously sized room it was possible to see the entire length of the fortress walls.

‘I know, I’m asking a lot of him. If he manages to get Osroes away from here by means of this trick that Petronius has in mind, there will still be a long journey in front of them. And at the far end …’

‘He’ll be at the mercy of this King of Kings.’

Scaurus nodded again.

‘Indeed. Although you shouldn’t look at our enemy as simple barbarians. It’s not as if they’re Germans. The king claims direct descent from the men who ruled the first Persian empire, and the Parthian nobility have always prided themselves on being Greek in outlook. Since Tribune Corvus will also be an emissary of Rome, and as Parthia has no formal quarrel with the empire of which we are aware, bringing the Great King his wounded son by the most direct method can only count in his favour, so I’d be surprised if he were to be mistreated. He can take that monster Lugos with him, that will provide the Parthians with some entertainment, and perhaps Martos? The novelty of meeting a king from the far north will be something new, even for a man of Arsaces’ age and experience.’

Julius bowed his head in acquiescence to his superior’s command.

‘I can see you’re set on this, Legatus. I’ve got rounds to make, with your leave, sir?’

Scaurus leaned back in his chair.

‘I’ll consume a moment more of your time, if I may, First Spear?’

He waited until the older man had retaken his seat before speaking again.

‘I know you don’t want Tribune Corvus to carry out this task, and I understand why. You believe that his place is here with the legion, and that the risks he’ll be taking are unnecessary. But you miss my point, partly because you’re concerned for his safety and partly because you don’t have my wider responsibilities. Your role is to provide this legion with leadership, to manage it in battle and to ensure as many of the enemy are killed for as few of our own as possible. It is a role you play as well as any man I’ve met, and better than most of them. I, however, am a legatus. That does not simply mean that I am a legion commander, but also, whether I hold the social rank or not, that I am effectively a senator of Rome. I have a duty to the empire that goes beyond simply leading her legionaries, but which also encompasses diplomacy. Diplomats prevent wars as often as soldiers win them, and it’s clear to me that our one legion isn’t going to snuff out the flame that Osroes and Narsai have lit here. One man with the right ear, however, might just manage it.’

He stood, walking to the office’s window and looking out at the city.

‘I have a greater need for the tribune’s skills than yours, First Spear. You’d have him stand on those walls, looking out at Narsai’s army and waiting for his arm to heal. I, on the other hand, need both his intelligence and the wit that his father made sure was developed by his education. Any other man I can send will simply be a soldier, whereas in Marcus Valerius Aquila I can present the Great King with as close to an old-fashioned Roman gentleman as the empire can manage here and now.’

He shook his head in amusement.

‘In days gone by I would have elbowed him aside to have made such a journey. To meet the King of Kings? To set eyes on a man who rules a dozen kingdoms solely by force of personality and his ability to set one man against another, and thereby set them both to his will, a role so difficult that I doubt our own emperor would see out the week? Such a chance will never come again, be sure of that. The tribune’s friends will be safe enough behind these walls, safe and bored beyond measure, whereas that young man will have the opportunity to visit a city that few Romans have seen in any other circumstance than from behind a sword.’

He stood, gesturing to the door and releasing the first spear to his duties.

‘He’ll thank me, when he returns.’

‘This makes a pleasant change from the temperature up above, doesn’t it? Standing guard duty down here is one of the most sought after places to be during the day, although I don’t think the soldiers are quite so keen once the sun’s below the horizon! How are you liking the tour, Centurion Avidus?’

Petronius’s words echoed back from the bare stone walls, more tunnel than passage. The air was cool deep within the fortress walls, a draught at the party’s backs making the flaming torches set in wall scones every twenty paces flutter and dance as they walked at a steady pace down into the fortress’s lower depths behind the prefect, Gurgen and Martos taking one of Osroes’ arms apiece to keep him steady on his feet. Avidus had tagged along with the party on hearing that they would be visiting the fortress’s lower depths, and his reply to the prefect’s question was wistful in tone.

‘The men that built this place certainly knew what they were doing, Prefect. Although I can’t say I’ve been surprised by anything just yet.’

Petronius laughed.

‘Don’t worry, I think you’re going to find what I have to show you entertaining. One of my brighter officers discovered it a few weeks after we arrived for our tour of guard duty. He felt a slight breeze blowing through a gap in the bricks and had the wall pulled down to reveal this rather unprepossessing passageway, running straight down to …’

He chuckled.

‘Well, you’ll see soon enough.’

After another fifty paces he stopped in front of a thick black curtain.

‘Safe to enter?’

The material was pulled back, and the prefect stepped forward into a gloomy near darkness, beckoning them forward with a ghostly pale hand.

‘Step forward five paces, then stop and allow your eyes to adapt to the light.’

A rumbling laugh from behind Marcus spoke for all of them as Lugos shook his head, invisible in the darkness.

‘What light?’

‘Ah, wait a moment and you’ll see. There are lamps in this place, just not very bright.’

Staring around himself in the gloom, Marcus realised that the prefect spoke accurately, for on either wall of whatever chamber it was that they had entered were tiny flickering sparks of light, their minuscule illumination barely enough to provide the meanest level of light to the open space, even once his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. Julius was the first to realise what he meant.

‘The floor. It’s moving.’

Petronius laughed softly.

‘It’s moving, First Spear, but it’s not floor.’

Scaurus bent carefully, touching a hand to the glinting surface.

‘Water?’

‘Water. It’s the Mygdonius, what the locals call the Fruit River. A couple of hundred years ago some bright lad realised that the river ran so close to the city walls that they might as well do more than take water out of it. Look carefully and you’ll see how I intend to get you all out of here.’

After a moment of staring into the gloom, Martos was the first to speak.

‘Cocidius’s hairy ball sack! It’s a boat!’

‘Indeed it is, Briton. You see well in the darkness for a man with only one eye.’

The vessel was painted black, its forty-foot length filling two thirds of the chamber’s stone dock, a short mast lying flat against the planks that formed a series of rowing benches. Petronius waved a hand at it, his teeth a slash of white in the gloom as he grinned at them.

‘This is the Night Witch, gentlemen. It is an invisible boat, or at least exceptionally difficult to spot on a night like this, as I can assure from my own experience while her crew were practising with her on the river at night. I’ve stood on the riverbank and not seen her pass within twenty paces, given the right conditions.’

With a flash of insight, Marcus understood the reason why they had been delayed in leaving the fortress for three days.

‘The cloud …’

‘Exactly. There is no moon, nor any starlight. On the river you will be a black hole, visible only to the keenest of eyes set to look for such a thing. And trust me, I doubt that there’s going to be a single man looking at the river when you pass the enemy defences, given what I have planned. And now you all need to keep very quiet, we’re about to open the river gate.’

He called out a soft command, and with a slow, low-pitched rumble, a section of wall began to slide across the chamber’s face to reveal a gradually expanding rectangle of blackness. Avidus whistled softly, the professional envy evident in his voice.

‘Building this must have been some undertaking. That piece of stone has to weigh tons …’

‘It’s a deception, Centurion. The door is no thicker than the deck of this boat, but it has been coated with thin stone tiles carefully crafted to resemble the walls to either side. When you consider that it can only be seen through the branches of the thorn bushes that surround the fortress, and that it is less than ten feet high, you’ll understand why it’s almost invisible from the river’s other bank, and utterly undetectable from the distance at which our bolt throwers have kept the enemy lines.’

A dozen men in black tunics filed into the chamber through a low arched doorway and climbed carefully aboard the boat. At a signal from the prefect, a soldier handed each of the party a dark leather hide.

‘As I said, you will be a dark hole in the river, but only if you take the right precautions. Once you are out of the fortress you must keep low in the boat, and keep those hides over you. One flash of pale skin will betray you to the watchers.’

Martos leaned forward, his disfigured face barely less than terrifying in the half-darkness.

‘Watchers?’

Petronius shrugged.

‘Of course. No besieging force is going to ignore the risk that the defenders might attempt to send a messenger out by means of the river, especially as this is the one time of the year that it’s sufficiently full to be navigable. There will be men on either bank of the Mygdonius, set to watch for such an attempt, I’m sure of that. And if they spot you then your mission will be doomed, because even if you get past them, you will be hunted down by the enemy cavalry once the sun rises. The river takes many turns on its way south to the Euphrates and you will never outrun a swift horse even with the flow at your back.’

The Briton frowned.

‘If I were set to watch a river in the darkness, my first thought would be to light a fire and illuminate the river. How can we pass unnoticed if the water is lit from either side?’

Petronius grinned back at him, quite unperturbed by the prince’s scars.

‘Ordinarily it would be impossible. But I think that they’ll have more important matters on their minds than looking for boats when you pass.’

He nodded to the boat’s master, a villainous-looking soldier with a face that rivalled Martos’s for scars.

‘On your way, Thracius, and remember to wait until the entertainment starts before attempting to pass the siege line.’

The party stepped down into the boat, the dozen-strong crew muttering curses when Lugos boarded, his every movement causing the boat to rock until he was seated, with the express order from the boat’s commander not to move until they touched shore again. With their passengers aboard, the crew eased their vessel away from the stone quay, pushing gently with their oars to launch the boat slowly out into the short channel that connected the hidden chamber with the river.

‘Lie down. And remain silent!’

Marcus obeyed the master’s hissed command, flattening himself against the wooden planks as they slid into the shelter of the massed thorn bushes that covered the hidden waterway. Jerking as the first thorn stabbed at the skin of his leg, his muffled grunt of pain drew a glare and a fierce whisper from the closest of the crew, already sheltering from the bushes’ fierce assault under his own hide.

‘Use your leather!’

Diving under the heavy sheet of cow skin he felt the myriad tugs at the thick hide’s surface as the boat eased through the heart of the thorny camouflage, then there was a pirouette by the boat’s bow as it emerged into the river’s swift-flowing stream. Lifting the leather to peek out from beneath it, he found himself staring out across the plain to the east of the fortress, on the river’s far side, at the distant light of picket fires that marked the Parthian line stretching around the fortress city.

Walking back up the tunnel with Julius and Avidus behind him, Scaurus asked the question he knew Petronius was eager to answer.

‘So Prefect, just how are they going to get past the men Narsai’s general will have set to watch the river?’

He could practically see the smug smile on the other man’s face.

‘It’s a simple question of expectations, Legatus. One of the secrets of a successful siege defence, or so I’ve come to believe, is to persuade the enemy to trust their own expectations of any situation where doing so might give us an advantage. This is the moment when we show them that at least one of those expectations is not well founded.’

The boat was moving more swiftly now, drifting silently with

the Mygdonius’s flow as the waters that rose far to the north in the mountains rushed southward, their noisy burble disguising the occasional slap of water against the Night Witch’s side. The river curved briefly to the west, hugging the walls, then turned south again, and Marcus’s view steadied as the boat master eased the boat through the bend without so much as a ripple to betray its presence before steering for the western bank. The vessel’s bow kissed the rough earth for long enough that the crew were able to lean out and wield spikes, driving the iron deep into the soft earth where land and water met, then pulling on them to drag the craft into the shadow of the river’s lip. Looking down the shimmering line of water to the south, Marcus realised with dismay that there were indeed watch fires burning to either side of the river, at the point where the Parthian siege lines ran down to the water.

‘How are we going to get past those sentries?’

Thracius spat over the side, looking over the Roman’s shoulder at the waiting sentries and considering the question before answering in a hoarse whisper.

‘By means of a right nasty shock, Tribune.’

He looked back at the fortress with a grimace.

‘When the prefect gives the order, there’s going to be a few of them Parthian bastards wishing they’d not sat quite so close to the fire.’

The three senior officers emerged into the torch-lit street, Petronius leading them to a doorway that opened onto a spiral stair, climbing vigorously up towards the top of the city walls.

‘Ever since your legion marched in here with that motley collection of soldiers at your heels, the Parthians have been busy digging siege trenches, and of course we’ve been equally busy trying to disrupt them.’

Emerging from the stairs onto the walls’ broad fighting platform, he strolled across the flat stones to the nearest of the city’s bolt throwers, larger versions of the legion’s Scorpions, deadly engines of wood, metal and sinew. The weapon and its crew were lit from behind by a pair of torches whose flames guttered and spat in the gentle breeze.

‘This beauty can hurl one of these …’

He took a bolt from the leader of the weapon’s crew and handed it to Scaurus, an evil iron-tipped length of dense, hard wood with metal flights pinned to its tail to provide stability in the air.

‘What’s the slot for?’

Petronius glanced down at the bolt’s metal nose, and the long rectangular hole that had been drilled through the iron spike. He took the missile back and passed it to the crew’s leader, a keen-eyed chosen man.

‘Demonstrate to the centurion how our night shooting works, would you?’

Deft fingers threaded a folded length of cloth through the slot, the material hanging out on either side.

‘We soak the cloth into lamp oil, First Spear. Then we put a light to it, so that when we loose the bolt you can see it fly all the way to the target, which lets us adjust our aim just as long as we can see something to shoot at.’

The prefect patted the man on the shoulder.

‘We’ll get out of your way. Things are going to get busy very shortly.’

He led them away to stand by the parapet, looking out over the sea of camp fires that marked the Parthians army’s closest approach to the fortress walls.

‘You see gentlemen, we’ve been shooting the occasional bolt at them over the last few days, but the bastards have been delighted to see that we could only land the blasted things within twenty or thirty paces of their lines. Seems that some bright lad noted our initial shots and used them to set the siege line at a safe distance. We got lucky the other day and bounced a bolt off a piece of rock, and some poor unsuspecting soldier walking through their camp stopped it between his shoulders, but apart from that all we’ve done is waste good iron …’

He paused, grinning conspiratorially.

‘That, and convinced them they’re out of range of course. Which, as you might have guessed, isn’t strictly true, not given that all those shots were taken with the springs only wound back to three-quarters of their full torsion. If, however, we wind them back until they’re creaking …’

He turned to his first spear.

‘I think it’s time to provide our messengers with a little distraction. Shall we begin?’

The senior centurion saluted and turned away, raising his voice to a stentorian below.

‘All bolt throwers – load!’

The crews leapt into action as the order was repeated by their officers in a chorus of equally loud roars, the command rippling round the city walls as each crew in turn leapt to their task, their swift and precise response to the order testimony to long hours of drill. Loaders laboured to wind back their weapons’ thick strings with straining muscles while the crew commanders waited, cloth-tipped bolts in hand. Watching the nearest machine, Scaurus smiled quietly as the chosen man gingerly fitted the missile to the waiting machine’s taut bowstring.

‘Ready!’

A chorus of similar shouts rang out as the crews stepped away from their labour, each commander taking a burning taper and standing ready to light the waiting missile’s incendiary cargo while the last fine adjustments were made to the weapon’s point of aim.

‘Shoot!’

The tapers dipped in unison to set light to the waiting bolts, and then, with a whip crack of unleashed power, the weapons spat their deadly missiles out over the space between city and besieging army, the bolts’ flaming path describing a gentle arc down towards the unsuspecting Parthian siege line.

‘Reload!’

The air above the waiting boat’s crew was suddenly alive with screaming missiles, a dozen fiery streaks shrieking down into the Parthian lines to impact with audible thuds. Somewhere in the darkness a man was suddenly screaming, pausing only to draw breath before howling more helpless outrage at whatever it was that had happened to him. The sound stopped suddenly, silenced by a merciful sword stroke, Marcus surmised, and the sound of voices raised in fear and anger reached their ears.

After a short wait another volley of bolts whistled into the Parthian line, their aim adjusted to concentrate on the only available points of aim, given the lack of either moon or stars to illuminate the battlefield. More than one shot hit the target at which it had been aimed, sending showers of sparks and chunks of burning wood flying as the heavy bolts smashed into the enemy watch fires. Half a dozen missiles landed around the watch posts on either bank of the river, at least one finding a human target to judge by the wet, crackling sound of impact, and the chorus of imprecations and shouts from the hapless Parthians redoubled. A commanding voice was raised over the furore, bellowing a single repeated command. The boat master laughed, calling to his crew.

‘Hah! He shouts to extinguish the fires! Cast off, but use your oars to back water and keep us from drifting. We must be ready, but the time is not yet.’

‘See? That will teach these blasted easterners some manners!’

Another salvo of bolts arced out from the city’s walls, slamming down into the Parthian lines in a random scattering of terror and death. Somewhere out in the darkness beyond the fires’ light, a horse was screaming in its death throes, and Scaurus decided that it was the most horrendous noise he had heard in a military career that had contained more than its fair share of unpleasantness.

All along the siege line the enemy were struggling back from ground they had previously believed safe. Some of the enemy soldiers were running to kick sand onto the fires that were providing the Romans with such a convenient point of aim, others taking refuge from their deadly light by huddling in the darkness between the fire pits.

‘Switch point of aim!’

Another volley of bolts was hurled from the city’s walls, this time plunging down into the spaces between the fires where the press of men seeking the darkness’s protective embrace would be at its thickest. A fresh chorus of screams and enraged bellows erupted as each of the heavy missiles killed and maimed with arbitrary brutality, redoubling the enemy soldiers’ panic in the face of such impersonal and unpredictable murder. Petronius looked out over the Parthian line, more and more of the fires being extinguished as the besiegers hurled handfuls of sand to quench their flames.

‘Two more bolts apiece and then I think we’ll call it a night, shall we First Spear? I think we have the desired result.’

The watch fires overlooking the Mygdonius were suddenly dimmed, the ruddy pools of illumination they had cast over the waters masked by the dozens of men who had run at the command of their officers to snuff out the flames.

‘Go!’

With the unhurried speed born of long practice, the crew flashed out their oars and bent their backs with a will, digging into the black water with swift, coordinated strokes that took the loitering boat from standstill to a swift marching pace in a dozen heartbeats. The master called out another command in the same harsh whisper.

‘Ship oars!’

Ceasing their rowing and pulling in their wooden blades, the oarsmen slid under their hides as the Night Witch hissed through the water towards the river’s gap in the Parthian line. With his night-adjusted vision, Marcus could see the scene on both banks with perfect clarity, dozens of Parthian soldiers still milling about around the glowing embers of the dying fires.

‘They will still see only the fire. Cover yourself!’

The Roman slid under his own hide, leaving the narrowest of openings between deck and leather and watching with helpless fascination as the boat swept swiftly towards the point where their fates would be decided by the night-blinded eyes of the men gathered on either bank. A single Parthian was standing on the right bank and staring at the water, perhaps more aware than his comrades, perhaps simply fascinated by the Mygdonius’s dark ribbon. With one last twitch of the rudder, the boat master eased her course towards the eastern bank, aware of the lone watcher, and then they were upon the point of maximum danger. To their left the Parthians were unheeding, still focused on completely extinguishing the fire’s last glow, but on the right the soldier still seemed to be following their progress intently, as if, despite the fact that his eyes could not yet have fully adapted to the darkness, he suspected that there was something on the water that ought not to be present, a hint of foam at the vessel’s bow, or the faintest gleam from her wet timbers.

Another volley of bolts whipped in, plunging down into the Parthian line with the remorseless terror of shots launched blindly into the dark, one last shake of the dice cup, chancing a few dozen wood and iron missiles against the possibility of killing a man on whom the battle for Nisibis might yet hinge. A soldier standing within a few paces of the watcher was caught squarely, his body burst by the horrific impact, blood and shattered bone spraying across the men around him. The soldier recoiled, his attention wrenched from the river before him by the stinging impacts of bone fragments, and, in the moment that it took for him to regain his equilibrium, the moment in which he might have realised what it was that he was looking at, was lost. As the boat slipped away into the night’s deeper darkness, he shook his head and turned away, wiping the dead man’s blood away from his neck and hair in obvious disgust.

‘Oars.’

The crew rolled out from beneath their hides at the master’s command, rolling up the thick skins and placing them at their feet as Thracius stared back at the fortress.

‘Now we run.’

Petronius turned away from the wall, drawing a finger across his throat as a signal for his first spear, the officers watching in silence as the bolt thrower crews stood down and trooped away to their barracks with a general air of quiet satisfaction.

‘Our men got away cleanly, from the look of it.’

Scaurus nodded.

‘I think there would have been a good deal more excitement if they’d been detected. Well done, Prefect, that was a masterly piece of deception.’

He turned to the north, pointing at a spot low on the horizon where a flicker of light had caught his eye a moment before.

‘That looks ominous though.’

The prefect followed his gaze, and as the two men watched, the lightning flickered again, so distant that the rumble that eventually followed it was almost imperceptible.

‘Possibly. I’ll issue an order for the night watch to wake me if it looks like coming this way.’