Thunder of the Gods

7

Julius nodded slowly as the loudest of the three cheers from the Parthian ranks echoed across the hillside.

‘That’s them ready to come up here then, I presume?’

Scaurus nodded.

‘It does appear that way. And I see they have their archers following up behind to harass our line. I think we’ll greet this attack in the way we agree, First Spear.’

The older man nodded brusquely, beckoning his trumpeter.

‘Sound the Stand Fast.’

On the hill above the Tungrians a horn sounded, and Marcus stepped out of the shield wall to look up and down the line at the senior centurions on either side before raising his sword and shouting the first of the three commands that had been drilled into the legion over the previous weeks.

‘Cohort! Ground and cover!’

The line of soldiers seemed to sink into the ground, each man kneeling to hug the hillside behind his shield, allowing the bolt throwers behind them to shoot with a flatter trajectory as the enemy cavalry drew closer. Turning back to face the oncoming horsemen and dropping into the cover of his shield, Marcus was struck by the sudden silence that had gripped the battlefield, the distant rumble of hoofs no more than a rumour of war compared with the sudden rattle of arrowheads on the line’s shields as the enemy’s first volley scattered across the defenders.

The Parthian cataphracts were moving, their horses striding easily across the last of the plain’s flat surface as it slowly began to angle up towards the waiting legionaries.

‘Archers! Hard targets – loose!’

As the enemy cavalry reached the two-hundred-pace marker, the legion’s archers let fly from their positions behind the line of Scorpions, stringing and loosing arrows at their fastest possible rate. No longer consciously aiming, they were flinging their pointed armour-piercing arrows at the oncoming mass of horsemen as fast as they could, lofting the missiles high into the blue sky to let them fall onto the armoured cavalrymen and their mounts. The purpose-designed spiked arrowheads would strike with enough power to rock a man backwards and, if the missile’s point of impact was favourable, to pierce the armour worn by their targets. Only a few of the oncoming horsemen were affected, but where a mount staggered at the shock of an arrow punching hard at its facial protection, the beasts following it were momentarily slowed, and where a man slid from his saddle with a shaft protruding from a chink in his armour, the chaos was that much greater.

With a massed snap of heavy bowstrings the Scorpions spat their deadly loads over the recumbent line of soldiers with almost horizontal trajectories, every one of the heavy bolts finding a target and piercing the layered armour plates that protected man and beast. All along the advancing line of gleaming iron, riders and their mounts died in searing agony, their bodies smashed by the catastrophic wounds inflicted by bolts as thick as a man’s thumb, each one tipped with a pointed iron head that punched through their armour with ease. Horses simply died as they ran, ploughing head first into the dirt and throwing their masters onto the ground before them, too stunned to react before their fellows were upon them, trampling them into the battlefield’s earth to die under a merciless succession of iron-shod hoofs. Where a rider was hit, the effect was less catastrophic, some of the dead merely lolling lifelessly in their saddles. Others were thrown from their mounts if the bolts that had taken their lives failed to penetrate the armour across their backs and instead spent their remaining energy lifting their victims bodily from their saddles, and pitching them into the equine maelstrom.

The legionaries watching from beneath their shields cheered loudly at the sudden carnage, their shouted abuse continuing as volley after volley of arrows arched down into the advancing mass of horsemen. One chance shot in a thousand caught a horse in the front rank squarely in the face, piercing the perforated eye cover that had been set in the lavishly gilded chamfron that covered the beast’s face and skewering deep into the socket, sending the hapless creature into paroxysms of agonised, aimless rage. The legionaries cheered again as the beast gyrated out into the open in front of the advancing line, bucking and kicking in pain and shock as its helpless rider, unable to do anything more than cling on with his legs as his mount gyrated uncontrollably, was flung back and forth like a rag doll until his grip failed, then was catapulted into the path of his comrades. An instant after he struck the ground, the advancing mass of horsemen was on him, stamping him helplessly into the dirt to the loud enjoyment of the Tungrians. The noise was swelling as the armoured mass came on up the hill, the words that the soldiers were yelling at their foes indistinguishable from more than half a dozen paces, almost lost in the swelling roar of the cataphracts’ approach.

Julius watched anxiously as the advancing cavalry swept imperiously past the one-hundred-pace marker, their progress perceptibly slowing as the effort of hauling five hundred pounds of rider and the armour that protected both man and beast up the long slope began to tell on the horses, massively built as they were. Knuckles white, as his fists clenched around his vine stick, he looked down at the bolt throwers as the exhausted Tungrians stepped back to allow the archers to load their final bolts.

‘Come on …’

Scaurus grinned at him lopsidedly.

‘Careful, First Spear. You don’t want to go breaking that stick after all you’ve been through together. This is where all those drills bear fruit.’

The Scorpions spat death again, the range now so short that the collective snap of their release and the screams of dying men and horses were almost simultaneous. Julius swung to point his stick at the waiting trumpeter.

‘Ready!’

Raising his head and peering back over the line’s shields, Marcus saw the axemen step away from their Scorpions as the last volley whipped over his men’s heads and hammered into the oncoming Parthians. The enemy arrows had stopped falling, and he stood, shouting at the soldiers staring out from beneath their shields as the legion’s trumpets began to shriek again, unsheathing the eagle-pommelled gladius and raising it above his head, gesturing for his men to rise and reform their line.

‘Ready, Third Legion!’

The oncoming mass of cavalry was close enough that Marcus, still standing half a dozen paces in front of his men, waiting for the command that he knew either had to be given swiftly now or not at all, could see their full, terrible glory rushing towards him. A horse’s length ahead of his men rode the Parthian king, and the young tribune nodded quietly to himself as his noted the man’s glittering armour and ornate helmet. Raising his lance high into the air, Osroes swept the tip down to point at the Roman line, and with marvellously disciplined precision, the advancing horsemen copied the move a heartbeat later. Their collective war cry reached his ears through the thunder of hoofs that was now shaking the very ground beneath his feet as they levelled their lances to form a shining line of polished iron rolling inexorably towards him. The noise of their passage over the ground was now an incessant grinding phenomenon the like of which he had never heard, almost suffocating in its intensity, its violence making his body tremble involuntarily, whether by vibration or simple primal fear, not clear even to Marcus himself.

‘Now!’

The trumpeter took a swift breath and blew with all of his might, the peal taken up an instant later up and down the line by each cohort. Their collective single note split the air, the most basic and recognisable of signals, and legatus and first spear looked at each other wordlessly, unable to do anything more than wait for the legion to obey its command to do battle.

The harsh bray of trumpets sounded through the cavalry’s tumult, and Marcus gathered his wits, sweeping his sword forward and bellowing a command that was lost in the all-consuming thunder of the oncoming host.

‘Throw!’

A glittering shower arced out from the legion’s line as the soldiers hurled the three precious objects that each of them had carried with them from Antioch, and Marcus grinned with anticipation as the riders bored in towards them without any clue as to the nature of the deadly seed with which the ground before them had been sown.

‘Got you!’

Julius clenched his fist as the Parthian line abruptly disintegrated into chaos, dozens of horses suddenly pulling up in a cacophony of high-pitched screams as their horses’ hoofs found the caltrops that had been thrown into their path a moment before. Riders with uninjured mounts swerved around their helpless comrades, bunching unavoidably and presenting the Hamian archers standing behind the legion’s line with the targets they had been waiting for. While the advance faltered, they raised their bows and shot into the struggling horsemen at a range close enough for their arrows to fly almost horizontally across the short gap between the two lines of warriors, each impact marked by the thump of lethal pointed iron striking thick armour, snapping the horsemen back in their saddles and killing the unfortunate men whose layered scales failed to repel the arrows’ brutal power.

Looking at his trumpeter once more, he raised a hand and, with a warning look that made clear what would befall the man if he blew too soon, waited as the oncoming wave of armoured horseflesh struggled through the chaos caused by their comrades’ crippled mounts, brushing aside those men who had fallen from their beasts with the chilling, bloody reality of the battlefield. The Parthian line gradually reformed, presenting a solid face to the Romans once more, their lances now only fifty paces from the solid line of infantrymen waiting to receive their charge.

The thunder that had shaken the hillside was stilled within half a dozen breaths as the Parthian charge faltered on the sharp iron teeth of ten thousand caltrops. Marcus stood and watched as the horsemen fought to regain some semblance of order, as the unlucky men among them fought to control animals driven wild with pain, or slid from their saddles as their mounts staggered and fell. Their king was shouting again, some encouragement or other, Marcus supposed, and while the man goaded his riders with harsh words whose purpose rang clearly across the narrow gap separating the two armies, a fresh onslaught of arrows shrieked out from the Roman line in a cruel horizontal sleet of iron. Glancing back at the legionaries behind him he was met by expressions of astonishment for the most part, his soldiers clearly daunted as never before by the line of enormous armoured horses and their shining riders, looming huge in their vision even at fifty paces. He turned to face them, putting his back to the enemy.

‘Tungrians!’

A thousand pairs of eyes snapped onto him, recognising in his shouted challenge the urge to kill that had his body taut with the need to fight.

‘Do you see that man?!’

Pointing with his sword, he watched as the king realised that he was the subject of the Roman’s ire.

‘That man is mine! The soldier who kills him will face me when this is done with, when whatever’s left of these donkey fuckers has ridden away with their pride in tatters! He’s mine!’

He turned back, knowing that the eyes hidden in the shadow of the man’s helmet beneath the slim gold crown that encircled his armoured head were locked on him, the presence in their invisible stare almost palpable, and with a kick at his mount’s flanks the king spurred his beast forward, lowering his lance to charge the lone figure waiting for him in front of the legion’s line. With a roar his men followed his example and rode at the Romans with renewed purpose, spending the last of their war horses’ wind in a trotting advance towards the waiting Romans.

The trumpets screamed for the last time, and with one final glance at the Parthian king, Marcus turned his back to the oncoming enemy, almost insolent in his leisure, casting the shield aside and raising both arms to point to the line’s rear, ordering the cohort to carry out the manoeuvre that had so infuriated them with its incessant repetition over the previous days.

‘Fall back!’

Obeying with unconscious skill, the legion stepped backwards up the gentle slope in one perfectly coordinated movement, washing back up the hill like a retreating tide to reveal the gifts that they had left for their enemy in their wake. Emerging from the receding line of legionaries was a row of iron-tipped wooden teeth, the stakes that had been set in place while the soldiers had waited for combat, each one three feet from the next. Jutting forward to face the oncoming Parthians in a mile-long rampart, they would offer an enemy on foot no more resistance than a moment’s delay, but to a body of charging cavalry they represented a deadly threat. On the beat of the sixth pace, Marcus turned his hands outwards to display his palms, and the Tungrians before him halted their retreat. With the long spears still pointing to the rear over their shoulders, they stared over their tribune’s shoulder at the oncoming Parthians, now barely twenty paces distant, as he strolled nonchalantly between a pair of stakes and turned to watch the enemy’s final approach. A hand snaked out and gripped the collar of his bronze armour, gently but firmly pulling him back through the line of spear men as Dubnus’s familiar voice chuckled in his ear.

‘No you fucking don’t. I saw you eyeing up their king, and you can just wait your turn with the rest of us!’

The trumpet blew for the last time, and Marcus bellowed the last of the commands that had been drilled to the point of perfection.

‘Spears!’

As one man the legionaries swung their spears up and over in a ripple of movement that spanned the line’s entire length, sharp iron flashing as the front two ranks levelled weapons twice the length of a man’s body at the charging cavalry. Watching the king’s oncoming horse intently, Marcus saw the man stiffen as he realised the nature of the trap into which he had led the pride of his kingdom’s nobility.

‘Brace!’

The horses were already starting to baulk at the solid line of men before them when the first rank of horsemen saw the deadly peril laid out before them. Reining in their mounts, they shouted warnings that the real threat wasn’t the retreating Roman line but rather the iron-shod points of thousands of wooden stakes revealed by the legion’s short retreat, but the men following up behind them neither heard nor heeded the warning. The simple remorseless weight of their continued advance was unstoppable, forcing the gesticulating riders in front of them inexorably onto the unforgiving barrier, behind which a glittering hedge of iron spearheads waited in their turn. Fighting to hold their mounts off the deadly iron spikes, the Parthian front rank ground to a halt, several horses being pushed onto the defences in a chorus of agonised screams as the waiting iron punched inexorably through their barding and tore into their bellies.

‘Forward!’

The cohort’s line advanced a single step, the front two ranks thrusting their spears out with a brutal lunge that brought the stranded riders face-to-face with their doom.

‘Forward! Faces, armpits and balls!’

The men to either side of him advanced another pace and repeated the thrust, each man aiming for the points they had been instructed to seek out with their spear blades, and the screams of horrifically wounded men were added to the thrashing death throes of the stricken mounts. Marcus saw the Parthian king slide from the saddle of his maimed beast, tossing away his lance and pulling a heavy mace from its place on the transfixed animal’s saddle. Half turning, Marcus nudged Dubnus, raising his gladius and staring at its eagle-headed pommel for a brief moment.

‘Are you coming?’

‘We have them! Now we close the back door before they realise they’re dead men if they don’t turn and run!’

Julius nodded at his legatus’s command, gesturing to the big man waiting behind him.

‘The black flag!’

Sprinting up the short stretch of hillside that separated them from the summit, the bull-like soldier wielded the flag with all of his strength, a nine-foot square of black linen snapping in the breeze of its passage through the air. A moment later an answering peal of trumpets signalled that the order had been received, and Scaurus nodded his satisfaction.

‘That’s going to come as a nasty surprise.’

On both flanks of the mass of horsemen, three centuries of tunic-clad slingers slipped through the legion’s line, shaking out into a loose formation that gave them the space to swing their slings. Their lead bullets were innocuous enough in appearance, but when released from the whirling weapons they struck with sufficient power to punch through armour plate. As men and horses began to take casualties on either side of the cataphract’s formation, riders turned their beasts and went after the lightly equipped skirmishers, only to watch in frustration as they scurried back into the legion’s line, leaving their would be assailants dangerously exposed to the archers who were loosing arrows at them at no more than twenty paces. Julius nodded in satisfaction as the slingers darted out to loose their deadly missiles again, taunting the cumbersome cavalrymen as they pecked lethally at the Parthian flanks.

‘And if that’s bothering them then what’s coming next will tear the arse right out of their day.’

Marcus stepped forward from the Tungrian cohort’s line, smiling as the long spears to either side of him angled away to make room for his advance. Dubnus turned away from the press of battle for a moment, cupping his hands to bellow the only order he would need to issue to his men.

‘Tenth Century, to me! For the Bear!’

Spurred by the reference to their former centurion’s memory, his men were up and running from their places beside the Scorpions in an instant, each with his axe gripped in one hand and the other clenched into a fist, pumping their legs to cover the hillside at their best speed. Turning back and hefting his own weapon, he stepped in behind Marcus as the tribune crabbed forward towards the Parthian king with his gladius ready to parry, the longer spatha’s lethally sharp blade waiting behind it.

‘Osroes! Face me!’

The king’s head snapped round at the sound of his name, his eyes visible in his gold-chased helmet’s eye slits, locking stares with the Roman as he strode forward. Clad from head to foot in heavy armour, each scale edged with gold or silver in a glorious display of wealth, he paused for no more than a heartbeat before giving combat, raising his shield to match the threat from Marcus’s gladius while the mace’s many bladed head hovered at his shoulder, ready to strike. A sleet of arrows flew at the horsemen around him as the Hamian archers sought to protect their tribune, a rider behind Osroes falling backwards from his saddle as a well-aimed shot found the heavy chain mail that hung from his helmet to protect his face, brutally smashing the rings into the back of his throat.

‘Media!’

The armoured figure stepped in quickly, dispensing with any subtlety with his first sweeping strike, the mace’s viciously sharpened ridges whistling through the air over Marcus’s head as he flexed his knees to evade the strike. Lightning-fast despite the weight of his armour, Osroes snapped a foot out to catch the Roman while he was off balance, only to stagger as his intended victim sprang to one side, hammering the flat of his gladius at the outstretched leg hard enough to break the extended knee had it not been protected by overlapping iron scales. The Parthian staggered backwards, his eyes wide with the pain, then reeled as his attacker broke the blade of his spatha against the magnificent helmet with a brutal blow, sending the golden crown flying into the mud. Tossing the weapon’s hilt aside he snatched up the king’s fallen mace as a pair of unhorsed cataphracts struggled through the press, desperate to rescue their king.

The first of them had drawn his sword, but as he swung the blade back to strike Dubnus stepped in swiftly, hammering the heavy spike that backed his axe’s blade hard into the Parthian’s scaled chest and dropping him, writhing in agony. He stepped back as half a dozen lances stabbed out at him from the second and third ranks, but Marcus advanced to attack, parrying the other warrior’s first sword stroke and then backhanding him with a sweeping mace strike that deformed his helmet, and bounced him off the armoured flank of a dying horse to fall limply into the blood-stained dust. With a savage cry, a rider in the second rank took his chance, jabbing his lance at the Roman while his attention was on the fallen man, catching him unawares and sinking the long spear’s leaf-shaped head deep into his right bicep. His face contorting with the pain, Marcus wrenched his arm free, stepping back with his sword hanging limply from nerveless fingers, and the rider spurred his horse forward a precious foot, driving it into the mass of dead and dying animals as he raised the spear overarm, ready for the death stroke.

‘For the Bear!’

The first of Dubnus’s men to reach the scene thrust his way through the Roman line and leapt forward with utter disregard for his own safety, hacking his blade down into the horse’s long face, the force of the blow sending armour scales flying as he killed the animal with a single blow. Collapsing into the churned and bloody dirt, the beast spilt its rider forward at the soldier’s feet, and with a brutal economy of effort, the Tungrian wrenched his weapon’s blade free, reversing his grip on the axe’s handle as he raised it to strike before sinking the thick iron pick deep into the stunned Parthian’s face through the mail that hung from his helmet, screaming the cohort’s battlecry in his moment of triumph.

‘Tungriaaaaa!’

More of Dubnus’s Tenth Century were flooding into the fight, each man swinging his axe with a wide-eyed ferocity that had those cataphracts still in control of their mounts frantically seeking to back them out of the fray, knowing that their long lances were too unwieldy and their swords and maces too short to prevent the slaughter of their horses and their own inevitable defeat.

‘Forward. Support them!’

With a roar the cohort stepped forward again, their long spears stabbing out at the riders stranded on their immobile horses.

Looking out to the legion’s flanks, Scaurus saw the distant silhouettes of horsemen riding around the ends of his legion’s line.

‘Any moment now …’

With a sudden blare of horns the cataphracts were starting to disengage, those men who were able, turning their horses away from the fight and riding back down the hill, their mounts capable of little more than an exhausted trot after the exertion of their charge up the slope only moments before.

‘Too late, I’m afraid. Far too late.’

The Roman cavalry bored in from either side of the legion’s line, riders bent over their mount’s necks to encourage them to their greatest speed as they raced across the hillside in pursuit of their shattered enemy. At their head the legatus could see Felix, his spear held high as he closed on the first of the fleeing cataphracts, Hades seeming to float across the ground such was the speed of his gallop. With a swift adjustment in his saddle, the young prefect lowered his weapon, leaning gracefully out of his saddle to thrust the long blade deep into the unarmoured anus of his target’s mount. The horse went down in a flurry of limbs, throwing its rider heavily to the ground as Felix ripped the bloodied spear free and went after his next victim, while a man on his flank reined his horse in and jumped nimbly from the saddle, drawing his sword and standing over the fallen horseman.

Julius shook his head in horrified amazement.

‘Is that usual?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘Hardly. But when your enemy has a weakness it’s wise to exploit it, I feel. If we allow that many armoured cavalry to escape they’ll soon enough regain their wits and come at us again. And all of those surprises we’ve sprung on them today won’t catch them off guard the next time. Let’s hope that our men remember that each of the enemy knights they take alive is worth his weight in gold.’

As the cataphractoi retreat quickened to a rout, a single man defied the tide of horseflesh washing back from the Roman line, stepping off his horse and striding forward to the place where his king lay stunned, drawing a long sword with his right hand even as he batted away an axe blade with the mace held in his left. Pivoting to kill the Tungrian behind the blade so quickly that the long sword was free in a shower of blood before his victim’s lifeless body could slump into the gore-foamed mud beneath him, he planted his feet firmly over his ruler, snarling defiance at the Romans before him, ready to die in Osroes’ defence.

‘Hold!’

Marcus stepped forward, his gladius ready to fight but with the empty hand that had held his spatha half raised and covered in the blood running from his wound, the palm wide open. He bellowed at the warrior in Greek.

‘Hold! Surrender and the king will live! Look around you!’

The cataphractoi were in full-scale retreat now, harried down the hillside by Phrygian cavalrymen who were taking a savage advantage of their unexpected vulnerability when attacked from the rear.

‘You’re alone! Throw down your sword, and live to protect your king in captivity!’

The nobleman looked about him again, seeing the spears levelled at him from all sides, then stared back at the tribune before him, clearly reckoning the odds. Marcus shook his head and sheathed his gladius, stepping forward with his right hand dripping blood from the wound to his arm. Face-to-face with the man, close enough to see the hatred in his eyes, he shrugged.

‘You can kill me now. But you’ll die here beside me, and what will become of your king without you to stand over him?’

The eyes held his own for a long moment before the helmeted head shook in brusque disgust. Sheathing his weapons, the warrior raised his arms and waited in silence for the inevitable. An axe man stepped in behind him, kicking hard at the back of the armoured giant’s knee to drop him beside his king. Marcus nodded down at him, reaching down to pick up the king’s mace and bellowing a challenge at the soldiers around him.

‘Alive! The man that harms him pays the price with me!’

Narsai reached the safety of the Parthian infantry waiting at the slope’s base with the dozen men who remained of his bodyguard trotting on either side.

‘Gundsalar!’

The general hurried forward, looking to either side of the king with an expression of hope, but his only answer was a brusque head shake as Narsai pulled the helmet from his head.

‘Osroes is fallen. Dead or captured, it makes little difference. Those honourless scum fought us from behind a wall of wood and iron!’

The older man looked up the hill with a calculating expression.

‘We have suffered grievously, Your Highness …’

He looked at Narsai for guidance, but the king’s gaze was locked on the ground.

‘Your orders, Highness? In the absence of my king, your word is the army’s command.’

The black-armoured monarch looked up.

‘So it is …’

He sat straighter in his saddle, looking across the ranks of infantry waiting in silence, their faces set hard at the sight of so many dead men and horses scattered down the hill’s bloody slope.

‘Send our foot to dislodge them from their roost, Gundsalar.’

The general bowed.

‘As you wish, Highness.’

He turned away, issuing a volley of orders to the waiting officers, and Narsai turned in his saddle to look back up at the Roman line with a calculating expression.

Scaurus walked across to the line of wooden stakes, shaking his head at the scene of devastation. The corpses of over a hundred magnificent horses were strewn in bloodied heaps across the churned, gore-covered ground, scores more studding the slope where the survivors had been harried back down the hill by Felix’s cavalrymen. They were told to take prisoners.

‘It worked. There was a part of me that wondered whether the histories were just so much nonsense made up to make the old generals look good, but it actually worked …’

He shook his head in bemused regret.

‘If only we hadn’t been forced to kill so many of these magnificent creatures.’

Julius shrugged.

‘I would have been happy to have had a choice in the matter. I’ve given orders for them to be butchered. We’ve little enough food, if those bastards decide to keep us penned up here.’

Scaurus winced at the prospect, but gave no sign of countermanding his senior centurion’s orders.

‘As you decide, First Spear. But I doubt there’s much risk of the Parthians trying to stop us leaving.’

He fell silent, and Julius looked up to find him staring down the hill.

‘Well now …’

The Parthian infantry was marching forward, marshalling to attack at the slope’s foot, densely packed formations of spear men forming a fighting front barely half the width of the defenders’ line. Julius stared down at them for a moment before voicing an opinion.

‘Really? Are they mad?’

Scaurus shrugged.

‘Probably not, but they seem brave enough to follow the orders some fool has given them.’

The two men watched the infantry’s slow advance for a moment before Julius turned away, gesturing to his trumpeter.

‘Sound the Stand To!’

Marcus had stood a close guard over the Parthian king as half a dozen Tungrians lifted the supine figure onto their shoulders and carried him with appropriate dignity to a spot high on the hill above the line of bolt throwers. The nobleman who had dismounted to protect Osroes had insisted on accompanying his ruler, surrendering his sword to Marcus with a flourish, holding the ornately decorated hilt out to the Roman while the Tungrians around him waited with their own blades ready to strike.

‘This is the finest weapon in the whole of my gund …’ He’d searched for the right Greek word for a moment. ‘The word means speira.’

‘Cohort?’

‘Close enough. It has been edged with steel from the far south, and will cut cleanly through a silken scarf that is dropped upon the blade. A single blow will cleave an armoured man from his collarbone to his balls, if wielded by an expert.’

Marcus lifted the scabbard with a questioning expression.

‘May I?’

The other man nodded, and the sword floated from the leather and gold sheath, perfectly balanced and as light as air.

‘A fine weapon.’

Marcus handed the sword to Varus, who had joined him in the fight’s aftermath, smiling as the younger man made a single hesitant cut with the weapon under its owner’s disapproving eye before returning it to the scabbard. Marcus took the sword back, placing it beside the unconscious king.

‘It will be kept safe until the time comes for your release, as will the crown your king was wearing.’

A sudden bray of trumpets pulled their attention back to the legion. The legionaries were hurrying for their positions, and three men looked down the hill over their heads while the Tungrian line reformed in front of them, centurions and chosen men pushing the exhausted soldiers back into their places with shouts and swift, urgent strikes with their sticks.

‘An infantry attack. Perhaps your leaders would have done well to combine your foot soldiers with the cavalry, but to throw them in separately seems … unwise?’

The Parthian followed his captor’s gaze.

‘It is not the finest day for the empire, I’ll grant you that.’

Marcus bowed.

‘I’ll leave you here with a few men to keep you safe from interference. My duty lies down there …’

He turned to find Dubnus striding up the hill with a forbidding look on his face.

‘Orders from the legatus. He said to tell you that this fight’s going to be no place for a man with one arm, and he’s right. It’ll be swords and shields that win this one, and you’ll be no use to anyone face down in six inches of piss-foamed mud. Your orders, Tribune, are to stay here and make sure nobody takes a dagger to the king there while we’re busy. Tribune Varus is ordered to take your place.’

Varus’s face went pale as he absorbed the order. After a moment he looked at Marcus with an almost questioning expression, and the tribune nodded reluctantly, wearily waving his friends away.

‘Go and do your duty. I’ll watch over our guest. And you, Vibius Varus …’

His colleague turned back to look up at Marcus.

‘No stupidity, Tribune. If you’re going to sacrifice yourself then at least go to meet your ancestors with some style, not fighting a mob of half-trained peasants.’

The younger man nodded and was away down the slope, leaving Marcus staring at Dubnus with a raised eyebrow.

‘Will you watch him for me?’

The big man nodded, his lips twisting in a mocking smile.

‘Cocidius knows I’ve had enough practice.’

He winked at his friend and turned away down the slope to his men, shouting orders and spitting bombast as he strode back into their midst.

‘Now there’s a man who could give me a fight …’

The tribune turned to find the big Parthian at his shoulder, staring after Dubnus with a wistful look in his eye and unconsciously stroking his pointed beard.

‘I could have taken you with one good arm.’

His prisoner guffawed at the suggestion.

‘I would have bested you in a dozen heartbeats if you had three arms, but you had already earned your hunar by the time I faced you.’

He turned a level gaze on Marcus.

‘The warrior, my friend, is the only member of society willing to sacrifice himself for the good of those men who sit at ease among their wives and children, and thus he learns to respect the hunar displayed by his brothers and those against whom he fights. And no true warrior could have shamed himself by taking his iron to a man who stopped fighting to preserve the life of a fallen king.’

‘Hunar?’

The noble laughed curtly.

‘You Romans may have heard of it, although your ways of fighting show little evidence of such a familiarity. Hunar is a man’s most noble ornament, not simply his skill at arms but his willingness to use it, to risk a fitting death. His manliness, his-’

‘Virtus. What you call “hunar”, we call virtus.’

‘Vir-toos.’

The big man rolled the word in his mouth.

‘Well you, Roman, have vir-toos. I saw you challenge my king to single combat, and I saw you put him down as easily as if you were simply sparring on the training ground. And your men fight like uncaged beasts in your presence, each of them seeking to outdo your prowess.’

Marcus laughed.

‘The Tungrians? That’s just how they are. Experience has taught them that they are more likely to stay intact going forward than if they were to show an enemy their backs.’

The other man nodded sagely.

‘Your words have the power to wound, given my men’s defeat.’

He held out a hand.

‘I am Gurgen, my king’s bidaxs, first among his nobles, the fastest sword, the best saddle and the man with more vir-toos than any other knight of my king’s court.’

Marcus made the clasp with him.

‘And I am Marcus, a tribune of the Third Legion. Shall we watch the battle together and see which of our armies has the better of it?’

Sanga and Saratos obeyed the order to stand to with little more enthusiasm than their comrades, taking their places in the Ninth Century’s front line beside each other and staring down the slope at the enemy infantry as they manoeuvred from column to line, spreading along the legion’s frontage. The Dacian nudged Sanga, inclining his head to indicate the young tribune who had been keeping company with Marcus. Shorn of his friend, Varus was standing out before the cohort and watching the oncoming enemy infantry, one hand unconsciously fretting at the hilt of his sword.

‘He looking for a fight to jump into, eh?’

Sanga shrugged, muttering a reply under his breath.

‘Better him than me. And since that’s the one who stood and watched the goat fuckers slaughter his cohort I won’t be in any hurry to pull his nuts out of the fire …’

They watched the Parthian infantry for a moment, grinning at the distant shouts and screams of the enemy officers as they pushed and kicked their men into line. Sanga shook his head, his practised eye having already spotted a weakness in the formation facing them.

‘Whoever ordered that lot to attack must be fucking insane. They’re going to have open flanks on both sides.’

Saratos nodded at the observation. There were probably as many men facing the Third Legion as there were in the Roman line, but the spear men were arrayed four men deep.

‘Why the fuck they have so short a line?’

Sanga shrugged, but the young tribune in front of them answered the question without turning.

‘I saw them fight, on the day I stood and watched the goat fuckers slaughter my cohort…’

Sanga’s ears reddened with embarrassment.

‘They present four spearheads to every man facing them, the front ranker stabbing at any target in front of him. The men behind him use their spear in support, attacking any man who looks like presenting him with a threat.’

‘Present with threat, Tribune?’

Varus turned to look at Saratos with a half-smile.

‘If you look dangerous, Soldier, they will point their spears at you to keep their comrade safe. Wait until we’re face-to-face with them, and then see if you fancy going in with your sword against that many long spears. It should be interesting.’

He turned back to his consideration of the Parthian line which, now more or less formed, had lurched into action to the sound of horns.

‘Although I don’t think they have any idea the size of the hornet’s nest they’re about to stick their spears into.’

Marcus and Gurgen watched in silence as the spear men advanced in near silence towards the legion waiting for them.

‘Your men are battle hardened?’

The Roman shook his head.

‘Not for the most part. My Tungrians though …’

The Parthian nodded.

‘They are clearly used to the horror. The way they attacked us was magnificent. But those spears coming for your men have all seen battle.’

Marcus frowned.

‘Who have they fought against? Not Rome. Surely you can’t believe that rolling over a single weakened cohort doesn’t count for much experience?’

Gurgen grinned at him wolfishly.

‘You will be aware that Armenia has recently allied itself with the King of Kings?’

‘Of course. King Sohaemus was an old man, and when he …’

He fell silent, looking at the Parthian intently for a moment.

‘Sohaemus didn’t die of natural causes, did he?’

The big man shrugged.

‘He was indeed an old man, at least as old as the King of Kings. My master Osroes was gifted the throne of Media in order to raise an army strong enough to invade Armenia and remove that old man from his throne. His brother Arsakes now rules Armenia.’

‘And the threat of an Armenian invasion of Parthia in support of Rome is wiped from the board.’

Marcus nodded.

‘A sound strategy, and one which explains why King Osroes’ army is so strong in infantry.’

Gurgen nodded, smoothing his heavy moustache.

‘Cavalry alone could never take a mountainous kingdom such as Armenia. And in the process of that swift subjugation the men behind those spears saw battle on more than one occasion. Those are well-trained men, hardened by their harsh way of life in the hills and mountains of Media. Men who have been blooded. Perhaps you will be my captive before the sun touches the horizon?’

The Roman shrugged in his turn.

‘Perhaps. Either way we’ll know soon enough.’

The enemy spear men advanced until they were fifty paces from the legion’s line, halting at the sounding of a long horn blast to dress their ranks, made ragged by stepping over and around the dead men and horses strewn across their path. Silence fell across the battlefield, the only noise the isolated shouts and imprecations of individual officers on both sides of the space between the two armies as they corrected real or imagined faults in their men’s positioning. Sanga looked across the gap between the two armies, seeing in the enemies’ faces the same mix of fear, determination and pure bloody anticipation that he knew they would be seeing as they stared back at the Roman line. A voice was raised from somewhere close by, the shout drawing a chorus of dry chuckles from the men around him.

‘Come on then, you fagots! We don’t have all day for you to paint your fucking faces!’

The horn blew again, and with a collective battle cry the Parthians started forward at a fast walk, their spears still held aloft as they closed the gap between them and the waiting legionaries.

‘Ready …’

Sanga nodded dourly at Varus’s warning, his knuckles white around the shaft of his spear. The oncoming Parthians were forty paces distant, then thirty, their pace increasing as if they knew they were vulnerable in the last few moments before impact with the legion’s line. The horn sounded again, and with perfect coordination, the oncoming Parthians swung their weapons down to point at the Romans, repeating the booming battle cry.

‘Ready …’

The veteran soldier shot a quick glance at his tribune, but Varus’s attention was utterly consumed by the Parthians. Looking back at the enemy, Sanga was just in time to see them reach the point where the fallen cavalry horses lay scattered in front of heavy wooden stakes, their immobile bulk forcing the spear men to break ranks to negotiate the twin barriers. A trumpet sounded from the hill’s crest, and Varus bellowed the command every man in the cohort knew was coming.

‘Front rank – throw!’

The cohort’s front rank took a single step forward and launched their spears at the struggling Parthians, dropping to one knee to make room for the men behind them. Their weapons, deliberately thrown high to loft them over the enemy shields, arced down into the infantrymen to kill the unwary, and force those men who saw them coming to raise their shields in self-defence, and while they were still reeling from the first volley, Varus barked a fresh command.

‘Second rank – throw!’

The rear rankers slung their spears with a flatter trajectory, razor-sharp iron heads flying into the enemy line with all the power they were capable of putting into the throw. Fresh carnage erupted along the Parthian line, as men with shields still raised against the initial attack received a volley delivered at waist height. Dozens of the men facing the Third Cohort fell in agony, clutching at their wounds as blood sprayed onto ground already soaked in the gore left by the previous attack.

‘Swords!’

Varus had his own gladius free of its scabbard, and raised it over his head as he started forward, bellowing an incoherent battle cry.

‘Fuck me!’

Sanga gaped at the sight of the lone tribune striding forward quickly at the enemy line, his pace accelerating to a trot. Suddenly Sanga was running in the officer’s wake, his thighs pounding with the effort to overtake the younger man, knowing from the sound of running footsteps in the battlefield’s blood- and urine-soaked mud that Saratos was a half-pace behind him. Behind them, barely audible over the screaming of the Parthian wounded, he heard Dubnus’s gruff voice bark a harsh command from behind the cohort’s line.

‘Tungrians! Advance!’

A swift rearward glance confirmed the command. With a collective roar that seemed to pick the veteran soldier up and throw him headlong at the Parthian line, the cohort was on the attack, striding purposefully towards the halted enemy in a line of shields through which the blades of their swords flickered with every stride like shining iron teeth. The veteran soldier sprinted towards the ranks of spear men in the tribune’s wake, leaping to hurdle a dead horse as Varus ran headlong into the enemy line. Using his shield more as a battering ram than for protection, the tribune burst through the first rank who were still struggling to reform from the impact of the Roman spears, scattering men in all directions, then took his sword to the Parthians with berserk fury. Curling his lips in an animal snarl, he buried the gladius’s blade deep in a reeling spear man’s neck, twisting the blade and tearing it free with a bestial howl of triumph before swinging to find a new target, the dying man’s blood speckled across his face and chest.

The Parthians were trying to fight back, but their long spears were suddenly worse than unwieldy against a gore-spattered berserker within their own ranks. A desperate lunge by one of the rear rankers went wide of its target as the shaft was battered aside by the press of men recoiling from the sudden threat, spitting a front ranker through the back and leaving him tottering, staring in disbelief at the long blade protruding from his belly. Throwing down their spears, the men around Varus reached for their long knives, flashing the blades with a sudden yellow gleam of afternoon sunlight on polished metal, closing around the Roman with murderous intent.

Sanga smashed into the Parthian line’s chaos, shield first, sending men preoccupied with killing Varus sprawling in all directions, while Saratos strode into the fight an instant later, systematically setting about the nearest of the enemy soldiers as they reeled from the fresh attack. The two men struck swiftly, both knowing that to stand still among so many of the enemy was to die, thrusting with fast, brutal stabbing stokes that sent them reeling back with blood spraying from their wounds, whipping their blades back to strike again. Sanga stepped forward to block a knife thrust aimed at his comrade’s back with his shield, then killed the Parthian behind the blade with a swing of his sword that almost decapitated him, while Saratos, trusting his friend to guard his back, took his iron to a pair of men threatening Varus in his blood-soaked rampage. Hamstringing the first, dropping him screaming into the bloody filth underfoot, he punched the point of his sword through the other’s spine, kicking the nerveless corpse off the blade and turning to bellow his defiance at the men backing away from the bloody trio. As the rest of the Tungrians stormed into the Parthians, the lines of men staring in horror at the blood-soaked tribune and the two soldiers who had hacked their way to his side shivered and then scattered, hurling away their long spears and taking to their heels in the face of the ferocious Roman attack.

Staggering with exhaustion, Varus raised his sword at their fleeing backs, shaking his head in disgusted frustration before throwing the weapon blade first into the battlefield’s foaming mud.

‘Come back you cowards! You gutless bastards! Will none of you give me a proper fight?’

His own legs shaking with reaction to the sudden, bloody fight, Sanga grabbed at Saratos’s arm to stop himself from falling, while the Dacian just stood and stared at the blood-soaked tribune as Varus bent, grasping his knees and vomiting into the battlefield’s reeking mud.

Gurgen spat on the ground and turned away in disgust.

‘This day will long be remembered in our history as a day of margazan …’ He paused for a moment, looking at the ground. ‘A day of infamy, marked by defeat and cowardice that has blackened the name of Media. To flee from the enemy twice in the same battle …’

‘Your men were poorly used.’

The noble shrugged away Marcus’s attempt to comfort him.

‘It is true. And it matters little. For warriors, men sworn to die in the name of their king, to then run from the face of that death when it is before them? To die fulfilling the oath is to be blessed beyond compare, the finest fate a warrior of the empire can seek! Every man dies, Roman, from the greatest of kings to the meanest of beggars. The only true measure of a man is the way in which he dies. Or fails to live true to his word.’

He turned to face Marcus.

‘You have taken prisoners.’

The Roman nodded.

‘Then I ask you to take us to them. Let the men who have surrendered their warrior’s virtue look upon the face of the king to whom they swore their oath of victory or death.’

Dubnus walked the bloodied tribune back up the hill to where Marcus had watched the battle, his face grim and a pair of blood-spattered soldiers following him, shaking his head at Varus’s back as the young aristocrat stood staring blankly down at what remained of the Parthian infantry’s failed assault.

‘This young gentleman seems to have taken up where you left off, Tribune Corvus. He stormed the Parthian line single-handed, threw himself onto their spears and generally behaved more like a man seeking death than a senior officer.’

Marcus raised a wry eyebrow.

‘I saw the whole thing. Who were the men who went in after him?’

‘The usual suspects.’

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the soldiers waiting in silence behind him, and Marcus nodded his understanding.

‘I see. To be expected, I suppose. Did they do so without being ordered?’

Dubnus nodded grimly.

‘Half of their fucking century went in after them, which meant that the rest of the cohort was about two paces behind.’

‘Which made the rest of the legion follow them in. It could have been a disaster.’

‘So, what do you want me to do with them?’

Marcus stared hard at the two men, his face set hard.

‘You two might have been responsible for the death of every man on this hillside, you do realise that? If the Parthians had managed to set themselves up properly and take their spears to you, the whole thing would have ended in a bloodbath.’

He walked away, gesturing for Dubnus to join him. His friend turned a hard stare on the two soldiers, gesturing at them with his vine stick.

‘Wait here, you pair of cocksuckers. And I don’t remember telling you to stand easy Sanga, so get your fucking chin tucked back in!’

Tribune and first spear shared a moment of silence for a moment, looking out over the battlefield’s ruined terrain. Dozens of legionaries were carrying the dead and wounded into the legion’s perimeter, stacking the Parthian and Roman dead in two separate rows.

‘What were your casualties this time?’

The big man pulled a tablet from his belt pouch.

‘Less than I’d expected. Thirteen dead and twice as many wounded.’

‘Officers?

‘None of the centurions, Cocidius be praised. One chosen man stopped a spear with his thigh, so he’ll be out of action for a while.’

‘You’ll be promoting a watch officer to replace him?’

Dubnus looked at him for a moment.

‘Really? You want to reward that act of idiocy with promotion?’

His friend shrugged.

‘The man to blame here is Varus, and don’t think that I won’t be making that clear to him, once I think there’s a chance he might actually hear what I’ve got to say. All those two did was exactly the same thing that other men have done for me on more than one occasion, when the blood rage has overcome me. And besides …’

The two men walked back to where Sanga and Saratos stood waiting to attention, Dubnus stopping in front of them with less than a foot between his face and Sanga’s.

‘You’re a pair of lucky men. Left to my own judgement, I’d just have had you both beaten half to death, but my superior officer here has a different idea. And since, as we all know, superior officers exist for the sole purpose of never being wrong in any matter, his suggestion is my command. You will transfer to the Fourth Century, under Centurion Otho, as watch officers.’

He waited for the words to sink in, smirking as Sanga’s eyes widened.

‘That’s right, no good deed goes unpunished. You pair of idiots can pay for this example of selfless heroism by helping Otho to keep a tight lead on his boys, not that he needs much help given that he put the last man to go against him in hospital with a broken jaw. I’d say you’ll be less worried about keeping order and more concerned with making sure he doesn’t have an excuse to do the same to you. Dismissed.’

Sanga opened his mouth to comment, closing it again as his first spear’s eyes narrowed threateningly.

‘Yes Centurion!’

The veteran frowned at his friend’s prompt salute, then followed Saratos’s example before they turned away down the hill. When the two men were out of earshot he whispered a furious protest, clenching his fist in anger.

‘Cunt! Of all the bastards to end up soldiering for, it had to be that old fucker Otho!’

The big Dacian shrugged.

‘You and me, we get more money, we get to say who clean out latrine. Is good for me.’

His comrade shook his head in disbelief.

‘En’t you been listening when the stories get told about our new centurion? He’s-’

‘Bastard fucker of mother, I know this. But I also know that me and you hard enough to make him happy. And me? I going to be centurion, you wait and see. You be my chosen, no?’

Sanga laughed despite himself.

‘Fuck you! You can be my chosen!’

Saratos smiled inwardly as his friend shook his head and pointed at a section of the Tungrian line.

‘Come on, let’s go and present ourselves to the crusty old bastard.’

A party of Tungrians carried Osroes’ unconscious body over the hill’s shallow crest with Marcus and Gurgen following behind, the blood-spattered Varus walking quietly in their wake. The Parthian prisoners had been herded into a square encampment whose edges were delineated by a shallow ditch that had been hastily excavated by the century guarding them. As the two men watched, a fresh group of disarmed spear men were ushered in to join their fellows under the watchful spears of the sentries posted around them.

‘We should be grateful that our prisoners have not been slaughtered on the spot? This is the usual Roman way of things, I believe?’

Marcus inclined his head in acceptance of the implied rebuke.

‘It has happened. I have seen badly wounded captives given the mercy stroke to spare their suffering, and doubtless there have been occasions between our two peoples where men have been killed where they might have been made prisoner. The events that followed the battle of Carrhae are still a raw memory for many Romans.’

Gurgen nodded sombrely in turn.

‘It is true. And the presence of so many disarmed men shames me further, for if we had fought with more conviction, perhaps more of these cowards would have been killed on the battlefield, rather than finding themselves stripped of their manhood.’

Marcus led the men carrying the king down the slope and through the ring of guards, greeting their centurion’s crisp salute with a raised left hand.

‘What state are these men in, Centurion?’

The older man grimaced, looking out over the prisoners, whose numbers had swollen to over five hundred with the additional infantrymen captured during their rout.

‘Not good, Tribune. There are thirty or so we think are going to die, given the nature of their wounds, about a hundred who’ll probably survive, for the most part, if they get some treatment, and the rest …’

‘Yes?’

‘The rest of them, Tribune, are just plain pissed off. Badly pissed off.’

Marcus looked at him, taking his gauge of the man and finding him both steady enough and at the same time clearly worried by the situation.

‘Not the time to lighten the guard on them then?’

The centurion smiled wryly.

‘Not unless we fancy five hundred angry warriors rampaging through the field hospital.’

He tipped his head at the medical tents beyond his men’s cordon.

‘I’d recommend that another century join us, but then I would, wouldn’t I.’

‘I see. And have they been given water?’

The centurion had the good grace to look sheepish.

‘I thought not. Very well, send a runner to First Spear Julius, with the message that we need water and rations here, and quickly. Give them food and it’ll give them something else to think about. And ask for another century to join the guard.’

The officer saluted with a look of relief and went about his instructions, and Dubnus took a hold of Marcus’s wrist as he turned towards the Parthians.

‘You can’t go in there. What if they take you prisoner? Or just tear you limb from limb?’

The younger man grinned wolfishly at his friend.

‘Why do you think I didn’t send you to Julius with that message?’

He tapped the handle of the massive axe slung over his friend’s shoulder.

‘This is all the protection I need.’

He strode out into the space where the Parthians had been herded, knowing that every able-bodied man inside the ring of spears would kill a Roman tribune in an instant given the chance. Dubnus walked close behind him, muttering quietly under his breath.

‘Walks into a pack of wolves and then tells me I’m responsible for his safety …’

Stopping in the middle of the impromptu encampment, Marcus stared around him, met on every side by hostile stares. Raising his voice to be heard by the prisoners, he called out in Greek to be sure that he was understood.

‘You have been left without water! I apologise for that oversight! Water and food are being fetched! You will receive medical attention shortly! And to show our good intentions towards you, here is your king!’

He waited until his words had been translated into Pahlavi, then beckoned the party carrying Osroes forward, and the eyes of every man shifted from the Roman to the supine body of their king, many of them looking away as they met Gurgen’s ferocious stare.

‘You!’

A man in cavalry dress stepped out at the noble’s barked command, his armour stripped away to reveal a padded tunic and leggings.

‘Your king lives! Prostrate yourself before your king!’

The warrior fell to his knees, throwing himself full length in the act of proskynesis.

‘All of you! The king lives!’

Marcus watched as every man within the ring of sentries repeated the gesture, nodding at the noble’s brutal but effective tactic to take a grip of the situation.

‘You seem to have this under control. I’m going to find some medical assistance.’

Gurgen inclined his head in thanks, then turned away barking out a string of orders at the captives while Marcus and Dubnus backed quietly out of the enclosure.

‘Medical assistance? Where are you going to get that from?’

The young tribune smiled, peeling back the rough bandage that covered his wounded arm.

‘Watch and learn. Come along Vibius Varus, we’ll have you checked out as well.’

Nodding respectfully to the soldier being treated by the legion’s senior doctor, Marcus squatted down to watch as the medicus extracted a barbed arrowhead from the soldier’s leg with the aid of a pair of curved bronze blades, using the blunt metal probes to shield the flesh from the wicked iron barbs while he carefully extricated it from the sweating legionary’s wounded limb.

‘Neat work.’

Dubnus leaned in close, drawing an irritated glance from the doctor.

‘I don’t think your wife could have done it very much better.’

The soldier closed his eyes with relief as his thigh was bandaged tightly, a spoonful of honey having been coaxed into the bloody pocket in his flesh to the general approval of the men watching. Choosing to target his ire on the largest but most junior of the three officers, the harassed-looking medicus poked a finger into the Briton’s chest, much to the bearded centurion’s amusement.

‘Are you two here to take the piss, or does he want that treating? Because if he does you can just-’

‘Neither. What I want, doctor, is a doctor. For them.’

Raising his bandaged arm with a wince, he pointed at the enemy prisoners, now grouped together under the spears of two full centuries of legionaries. The doctor shook his head.

‘Out of the question. We’ve still got hours of work to do to get our own men treated.’

He turned back to the next soldier in the queue, only to discover that Marcus had stepped in closer to him.

‘You know as well as I do that there isn’t any hurry to get most of these men treated. We won’t be marching east any time before tomorrow morning. But half of those prisoners over there are likely to die if they go a night without treatment …’

He paused for a moment to allow the point to sink in.

‘And believe me, they will recall very clearly the treatment they receive from us. If we allow their wounded to die untreated, then I doubt they’ll handle us any better, should our luck run out between here and Nisibis. And let’s face the facts here, Medicus, in the event that they do manage to roll over us, you’re not likely to enjoy the luxury of a good death in combat, are you? I hear the Parthians aren’t above skinning and salting men who arouse their particular enmity.’

The youngest of the legion’s doctors stepped into the ring of sentries set to guard the prisoners, followed by half a dozen bandage carriers. Marcus looked behind him, but the medicus shook his head with a grimace.

‘I’m all you’re getting, I’m afraid. I’ll sort out the treatable casualties from those whose time to greet their ancestors is upon them, and these gentlemen can visit their skills upon the least badly wounded. The rest of them we’ll treat in the order of the likelihood of their recovery, shall we?’

Marcus nodded, turning away and speaking over his shoulder.

‘Do the best you can with what you have.’

He strode deeper into the captives, Dubnus and Varus close behind.

‘We have a doctor, and bandage carriers to stop the bleeding for those of you who look likely to live!’

An unarmoured cavalryman called out, his voice torn by anguish.

‘And what if they look likely to die?’

The Roman paused, then turned and walked over to the bearded warrior. At his feet a younger man lay still, his breathing little better than a series of shallow panting gasps so slight that he seemed barely alive.

‘This man behind me speaks no Greek, but he reads a man’s face and body as well as anyone I know. Move swiftly at your peril.’

The Parthian nodded grimly.

‘My son’s wound … he will die, but slowly.’

‘I see. This is a painful moment for you then. Do you wish to ease his death?’

The warrior nodded, swallowing painfully as his enemy became his confessor.

‘Yes. If I can do so with honour.’

Without hesitation Marcus drew his dagger, passing it to the other man haft first, looking his enemy in the eye.

‘Ease your son’s path to the underworld. The blade has honour.’

The other man nodded, then bent to perform the mercy stroke, holding his son as the man’s life left him. When there was nothing left in his arms but a corpse, he gently lowered the body to the bloodied grass, then stood, handing the weapon back to his captor.

‘You are indeed a man of honour, Tribune Corvus … for a Roman.’

He turned to find Gurgen standing beside Dubnus.

‘It was done well, and since the boy was one of my own, you have my thanks again, for that and for bringing your doctors to care for our wounded. The king is awake, although I doubt he knows very much of his whereabouts. His eyes are open, but he cannot speak and his body is limp.’

The Roman made his way to where Osroes lay, touching his head where the hair was matted with blood. The flesh beneath was taut, swollen with fluid, and hot; the king stiffened at the touch, his body shuddering with pain. Marcus stood, gesturing to the men clustered around their ruler.

‘Bring him. He needs to be treated now.’

Looking at Gurgen, the warriors waited until he nodded his approval, then lifted their king’s body from the ground with delicate care. The medicus took one look at their burden and pointed to the strip of ground where those men unlikely to survive were being placed to meet their fate.

‘Put him over there. There are men here with more pressing needs.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘Not unless any of them happen to be the king of a bigger kingdom than Media there aren’t.’

The doctor frowned up at him.

‘I fail to see-’

‘Clearly you do. So let me make this a little clearer for your limited experience of this sort of situation. If this man dies then these others behind me will turn into a pack of wolves, and will almost certainly have to be put down to the last man. Which would be a waste of your handiwork, to say the least. On top of that, consider the implications for the likelihood of our being able to make it to Nisibis, if we allow this most important of hostages to slip through our fingers.’

The doctor nodded slowly, then gestured to the men bearing the king’s body to lay him down for treatment.

‘And if I can’t save him?’

‘Then you will have tried with all of your skill, and these gentlemen watching will doubtless be understanding …’