Thunder of the Gods

8

It was late in the day before a party rode up the hill, now bathed in the descending sun’s soft, golden light, and demanded to speak with Scaurus, who quite properly made them wait while he finished a plate of freshly cooked horse meat before choosing to answer the peremptorily worded summons. Strolling down the hill from his command tent to the line of legionaries standing guard on the defensive line in the company of Julius, a century of armed and armoured legionaries and a pair of hooded prisoners, he found a dozen lance-armed cataphracts waiting impassively behind two lavishly armoured men on magnificently decorated horses.

‘Good evening, Your Highnesses. Perhaps you’ll join me? I find myself with a bit of a stiff neck after a day spent looking down at your failed efforts to knock me off my perch.’

He waited in silence while Narsai and Wolgash looked at each other and then dismounted at his suggestion, smiling slightly at Narsai’s sour expression at having his attempted position of superiority dismissed.

‘We demand that-’

‘You demand, King Narsai? I wouldn’t have thought you were in much of a position to be demanding anything. What is it that you’d like to request from me?’

Narsai took a deep breath before replying, clearly unused to having his pronouncements interrupted.

‘Release our cousin, and then we can negotiate your departure from this place. I am willing to allow you-’

Scaurus raised a hand to stop him, shaking his head in genuine amusement.

‘Let me guess. You’re willing to allow my legion to march back to the west, just as long as I surrender my prisoners to you. Is that it, Your Highness?’

Narsai stood in silence, glowering at the Roman.

‘I’ll take your silence as an affirmation of my surmise, shall I? So, if I’m good enough to hand over the large number of prisoners I currently hold, you’ll be magnanimous enough to let me scurry away back to Zeugma, will you?’

Wolgash opened his mouth to speak, but found himself silenced by Narsai’s raised arm.

‘Take the chance now, while you still have it, Roman. The alternative is-’

Scaurus shook his head emphatically.

‘No. The alternative, Your Highness, is to sit here, eat some more of the excellent horseflesh you’ve been good enough to deliver to my doorstep, and wait to see which of us blinks first. And before you start issuing dire warnings as to what you’re going to do to us all when we eventually surrender, let me point out one or two things to you.’

He waved a hand at the hillside, and the unbroken line of legionnaires resting in their places, ready to defend the position.

‘Firstly, you will note that my legion is still effectively untouched. Your archers were unable to pierce our shields, your cataphracts did no more than ride to their bloody ruin against our defences, and your infantry … gods below man, what were you thinking? You had all the individual elements of victory, but you sent them at us one at a time, and squandered their collective power.’

He looked at the king for a moment with the disgust of a man trained from youth to spend his men’s lives carefully.

‘Your lack of caution has cost many men’s lives today. And not just men …’

He looked along the legion’s line in both directions, shaking his head in genuine regret at the slaughtered beasts that were still being butchered under the watchful eyes of the legion’s archers.

‘Ignoring whatever your motivation for sacrificing your foot soldiers might have been, I’d say you left a third of your strength in heavy cavalry up here, some of them literally skewered on the stakes that you can see are still ready to greet any further attempt to bludgeon your way through to us. Their deaths were hardly what I’d call noble either, their horses baulked by our defences, hemmed in by the riders behind them, then pulled from their saddles and bludgeoned to death by barbarians recruited in the far north. The remainder were taken down as they stumbled back down the hill, when they realised that they were beaten. It’s a sad sight, a war horse dying with a spear shoved up its backside, but fitting, wouldn’t you say, given the mess you’ve made of this battle?’

Narsai glared at him, and the legatus allowed the silence to play out for a moment before speaking again.

‘So, you’ve been bested in battle. And your only consolation is that the moment we stir from this hill you’ll have us at your mercy, on flat ground and open for the usual tactics that have served you so well, volley after volley of arrows until we’re too weak to resist.’

He clicked his fingers, and a soldier carried forward a shield studded with the shafts of arrows.

‘And so I thought this might interest you. Most of my men have cleaned up their shields, and the arrowheads will make a useful contribution to our stocks, but I kept this one as I found it, beside one of the few dozen men who were unlucky or stupid enough to get hit despite having such excellent protection.’

He peeled back the leather cover to reveal the layers of linen beneath.

‘These materials make it almost impervious to arrows, unless they’re loosed from so close a distance that your archers will find themselves with a face full of legion for their pains. And besides being arrow proof, my men have another defence available to them, kindly donated by yourselves.’

Two more men stepped forward with one of the Parthian captives between them, the armour stripped from his body and a roughly fashioned bag over his head. Scaurus nodded, and the centurion standing behind the prisoner pulled the bag away, leaving him blinking in the evening’s sunlight. The black-clad monarch started at the sight of the young rider, his face swollen with the cruel bruising inflicted during his capture.

‘This is your son, I believe?’

Narsai nodded, his jaw clenching.

‘He’ll be treated with all the respect due to a man of royal blood, you can be assured of that. But sadly, should you choose to attempt any attack upon our column, when we leave this rather dreary hillside to march on Nisibis, your son, and all our other prisoners, will be placed directly in the places where the arrows will fall the heaviest. I don’t think you’re going to want to order the deaths of that many members of your aristocracy, and even if you are, I’d imagine that the men waiting for news down there might be a little upset at the thought of their sons, brothers, fathers, and doubtless in some cases their lovers, standing unprotected under that storm of iron.’

He waved a dismissive hand.

‘I suggest that you take a while to consider your options. And don’t make the mistake of taking me for one of those people who won’t follow up on his promises. One thing I am is a man of my word.’

The king of Adiabene stared hard at him for a moment.

‘I will have the skin off you before you die, Roman. Slowly enough that you’ll take days to die. That is my promise.’

Scaurus’s only response was a shrug, but as the fuming king turned away, a hint of mischief touched his face.

‘There is one more thing, Narsai. One question you didn’t ask …’

He waited while the two kings turned back, hope in Wolgash’s face, dark presentiment in Narsai’s scowl.

‘I can see you’ve already guessed what I’m going to tell you. It was the one thing you really wanted to know, wasn’t it? After all Narsai, you suddenly find yourself in command of an army far greater than anything you could muster from your own insignificant kingdom. Doubtless you’re already scheming to keep control of it, and perhaps even make yourself king of Media, eh? Of course, that won’t be easy, not given that Media was a gift from the King of Kings to his son Osroes, but you can hardly turn away the chance to try for it, can you?’

He stared at Narsai for a moment with a calculating look.

‘But here’s the thing, Narsai. Osroes isn’t dead. He’s not even properly wounded. He was stunned on the battlefield by an enterprising young tribune of mine, and carried through our line into captivity without having the chance to resist, or to sell his life dearly and die like a king should under such desperate circumstances. And now he’s my captive, entirely dependent on me for his life. So if the presence of your son isn’t enough to inspire a little caution in you – and let’s face it, there’s a calculation there, isn’t there? A son for a kingdom, perhaps?’

He smiled into Narsai’s sudden outrage, patting the hilt of his sword.

‘If you were truly furious with me, we’d have these out by now, wouldn’t we? There’s more calculation in you than meets the eye, I’d say. And remember this. If you attack us before we reach Nisibis, you’ll be responsible of the death of the oldest of the King of Kings’ sons by your own arrows. Do you think Osroes’ father will take that well?’

He clicked his fingers to summon forward the other prisoner, reaching out to remove the man’s hood to reveal Gurgen’s impassive face.

‘And so to make sure that the remaining members of your aristocracy down there get to make a considered decision, I’m returning this man to you, albeit temporarily. He’s undertaken to accompany you back to your army, and to explain to his fellow nobles the condition of their king, and what will result from any further attempt to attack us. After which, as he has sworn to the Sun God, he will climb this hill in the morning and surrender himself to us once more.’

Narsai stared at his comrade for a moment, then turned away wordlessly, mounting his horse and pulling its head round to descend the hill, his escort falling in around him. Marcus and Gurgen exchanged glances, the Roman taking stock of the determined glint in the eyes that followed them down the slope.

‘May your god watch over you. And if I were you, I’d stay away from that one.’

The prisoner nodded in silent reply, turning to follow his comrades down the golden slope.

‘And what the fuck do you pair want?’

Otho’s new chosen man hid a smirk behind his hand as the veteran centurion turned to the two soldiers waiting for him to notice them. Both men saluted with a briskness bordering on the punctilious, and the officer’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

‘Come on, spit it out!’

Sanga took a deep breath.

‘Soldiers Sanga and Saratos, Centurion, sent by First Spear Dubnus-’

Otho snorted at the mention of the cohort’s new senior centurion’s name.

‘What’s young Dubnus sent me now, a pair of men to replace my casualties?’

Sanga ploughed on, still not meeting the big man’s eye.

‘Sent by First Spear Dubnus, Centurion, to act as replacements for your watch officer.’

The centurion raised an eyebrow bisected by a thick white scar, putting both hands on his hips as he looked the two soldiers up and down.

‘Sent to me by Prince Dubnus, are you? Two men to replace one watch officer? Either you’re both something special or so poor that he thinks it’ll take two of you to do the job. Or are you special friends who can’t be separated?’

A soldier tittered audibly behind him, and he turned to face his men with unexpected speed.

‘I heard that, and I know who it was! If I hear it again you’ll be out here for a short demonstration of keeping your mouth shut in the ranks.’

The century’s men stared to their front with an apparent fixation on the horizon that spoke volumes for their belief that whatever Otho threatened was only ever a heartbeat from actually happening. He turned back to Sanga and Saratos with a questioning look.

‘Well then, which is it? Are you future centurions or just the scrapings of another century’s latrine sponges?’

Sanga spoke again, his face held in rigid lines despite an almost overwhelming urge to laugh at Otho’s goading.

‘Centurion sir! First Spear Dubnus and Two Kni … Tribune Corvus decided that we are two soldiers who are not entirely without merit, and has decided to assign us to your command in the hope that you’ll beat some sense into us both! His exact words, sir!’

A slow, evil smile spread across the centurion’s face.

‘Did he now? He’s a good judge of character, the prince. My character, that is, because beat some sense into the pair of you is exactly what I’ll do, if either of you so much as farts in the wrong direction. Won’t I?’

The question was directed at the newly promoted chosen man behind him, and the man’s answer was both swift and crisp.

‘Yes Centurion!’

Otho stepped forward, looking Saratos up and down.

‘Nothing to say for yourself? Your mate here doing all the talking?’

The Dacian held his brace position, speaking at the empty air behind the officer’s shoulder.

‘I nothing to say, Centurion sir! When I something to say, I say it, Centurion sir!’

Otho nodded slowly.

‘Good boy. You’re the fighter who won the cohort boxing prize, aren’t you, the Dacian animal?’

‘Yes, Centurion!’

The grin returned.

‘Well that is good news. I haven’t had a decent sparring partner for so long I’ve almost forgotten how to hit a man.’

He swivelled and scanned the ranks of his century, but nobody was unwise enough to take the bait dangling before them. Slapping a big hand down on the Dacian’s shoulder, he hooked a thumb behind him at the waiting ranks.

‘Looks like I’ve got a new sparring partner. Welcome to the Seventh Century! Your mate can stay too – for the time being.’

‘None of you can meet my eye.’

Gurgen spat in the dust at his feet.

‘And it’s just as well that none of you has the balls to try.’

He looked around the fire where the surviving men of his house were gathered, shaking his head in disgust at them. Their joy at his survival had been fleeting, as his fury at being the only man to have stayed with his king had become apparent. Most of his knights were still armed and armoured for fear that the Romans would mount a night attack, their numbers grievously reduced by the battle’s horrific outcome, but the bidaxs had more presence than any of them despite the fact that he was dressed in nothing more impressive than the padded jacket that he had worn beneath his armour before its confiscation.

‘Your king fell. Your king’s bidaxs dismounted to make a stand over his body. And you women rode for your lives! At least the peasants showed the Romans that they know how to fight and die.’

He lapsed into silence and stared into the flames.

‘How many men fell in total?’

His master of horse answered, his voice gruff from the day’s exertions.

‘Three hundred and forty cataphracti, my Lord, and three times as many horse archers. The foot soldiers lost as many as both put together.’

Gurgen looked up at the stars and allowed a long breath to escape his lungs.

‘One third of our knights? The holy fire must be flickering on the altars of Media tonight.’

He fell silent for a moment, then spoke again with a sudden note of curiosity.

‘And do I need to ask which fool ordered the infantry to attack unsupported?’

‘King Narsai, my Lord.’

Gurgen laughed hollowly.

‘I should have known as much. The king’s gundsalar would never have been that eager to see his men die for no good reason. Whereas Narsai …’

He left the thought unspoken, standing in brooding silence.

‘Spread these words to the men of Media. The king lives, and it is our sworn duty to protect his life. These Romans will march east tomorrow, I am sure of this, and they will use him as a living shield, so tell our countrymen that the first of them to loose an arrow before Osroes is freed will pay for it with his life, with my knife to open his belly and my fist to rip his guts out through the bloody hole. And now you can get out of my sight.’

The noble’s men left him staring at the fire, going out into the Median army in ones and twos to spread the word as he commanded, while Gurgen faced the flames in silence, brooding on his capture and humiliation long into the night.

‘Really, Legatus? We just break camp and march out onto the plain? With that lot waiting for us? Do you think they’ll be able to resist the opportunity to get revenge for what we’ve done to them today?’

Scaurus shrugged, sipping at his wine and looking back at his first spear with an understanding smile. The legatus had gathered his officers, as was now customary once darkness fell, and had led a discussion of the battle’s conduct, pointing out where the Parthian leaders had made their biggest mistakes. In the course of the discussion more than one of the young officers had succumbed to sleep and the cups of wine that Scaurus had poured for them, but he simply shook his head when Julius mimed waking the closest of the sleepers.

‘Let him sleep. This hill will be as quiet as a freshly dug grave tonight, with our men lying in their tents as still as corpses after the horrors of the day, and he’ll need to be bright-eyed in the morning. What that boy needed most was a decent drink of unwatered wine to numb him enough to let him sleep. Let’s leave the night’s work to those of us who’ve been here enough times to cope with the shock, shall we? And while I know it seems unlikely that the Parthians will allow us to march, I’d bet that rascal Morban all the gold in my chest that they will. Pass me some more of that horse meat, will you Tribune?’

The flickering light of the fire around which the legion’s officers had gathered coloured his face as he chewed a piece of cold meat, nodding with pleasure as he wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

‘Splendid. How quickly we forget the simpler pleasures in life. With a cup of wine in my hand, my belly full of freshly slaughtered horse and a fire to warm my toes, it’s almost enough to make me forget the fact that there are a rather large number of angry soldiers waiting for us just outside of bowshot. You did put out listening patrols, I presume?’

Julius snorted.

‘I put out fighting patrols, Legatus, a selection of each cohort’s nastiest soldiers. I also tasked Centurion Qadir to take a few of his best infiltrators forward to make sure that the Parthians aren’t planning anything clever under the cover of dark. I’ve got no intention of being nailed to this fucking hillside by an arrow in my sleep.’

He took a sip of his own wine, winking at his superior with a hard smile.

‘So, you were saying, Legatus?’

Scaurus grinned back at him, amused by the responses of those tribunes who were still awake to such familiarity.

‘Don’t look so troubled, gentlemen. The first spear and I have endured enough together that neither of us needs to stand on ceremony with the other. If any of you should rise to a position of responsibility for this many men, then trust me, you’ll either be on very good terms with the man who does most of the hard work in leading the legion, or you’ll regret it soon enough. And you could all do worse than cultivate an equally frank relationship with your own first spears. Which in your case, Vibius Varus, since Tribune Corvus has managed to get himself wounded, is a man almost as fierce as Julius here.’

He winked at Varus, who inclined his head in acceptance of the point.

‘I’ll be careful to treat First Spear Dubnus with the greatest of respect, Legatus.’

Julius snorted into his wine, and Scaurus raised an eyebrow at him in silent question.

‘I was thinking, Legatus, that the task of keeping a close eye on Tribune Varus here ought to be meat and drink to First Spear Dubnus …’

He grinned again at the oddity of using the title to describe his former centurion.

‘Given that all he’s done for the last four years is pull another young maniac’s balls out of the fire every time he tries to get himself killed. I think you’ll fit in here just perfectly, Tribune.’

Gurgen climbed back up the slope soon after first light, stopping at the first challenge and allowing himself to be searched before he was led to the command tent. Scaurus greeted him with an easy smile.

‘You came back then? Julius here was convinced you’d either think better of your oath or that you’d be face down with a knife in your back.’

The red-haired warrior turned a disparaging gaze on the senior centurion.

‘He does not speak Greek?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘Then please be so good as to explain to him the importance of an oath to a man of honour.’

The legatus raised his eyebrows in amusement.

‘He understands the concept only too well, but like most of my people, he struggles to connect it with barbarian peoples outside the empire’s frontiers. You’re much the same in that respect, I suspect. So tell me, what happened last night? How did your people take the news of Osroes’ capture?’

The Parthian shrugged.

‘Much as you would expect. Some argued that we should appoint a new king and declare Osroes lost, others that to abandon the King of Kings’ son would be a disastrous mistake and bring even greater dishonour upon us all than already taints our worthless lives.’

‘And?’

‘And the army decided to honour the king. There will be no attack on your legion while you hold him. But what can you hope to achieve, Roman? You say you will march for Nisibis, but when you reach the city, what then? Narsai will lay siege to its walls, and you are a long way from your empire. Narsai is telling the tribes that your governor in Antioch will not raise a finger to assist you, corrupt and soft as he is, and that you are a single weakened legion, with no hope of reinforcement, marching into a sea of your enemies.’

He fell silent, and Scaurus shrugged with a smile.

‘And he’s right, of course. We’ll march to Nisibis with your army trailing us all the way like a pack of hungry dogs, and when we arrive in the city we will doubtless present the man commanding the defence with a good-sized problem, being as we’re carrying no more than two days’ rations. But be assured, we will make that march.’

‘Why?’

The legatus stared at his prisoner for a moment before speaking, finding the answer to the man’s question in his eyes.

‘You already know why. Because I’m a soldier in the service of my emperor. Because it’s my duty. You would do exactly the same in my place.’

The Parthian nodded.

‘I believe I would. Even if it meant my death, and those of the men serving me.’

The legion marched off the hill soon after, leaving nothing more than the stripped carcasses of several hundred dead horses for the flies, while the Parthian dead were laid out in tidy rows, their bodies wrapped tightly in their cloaks. The enemy’s corpses had been carefully protected from the sorts of desecrations that were usual under such bitter circumstances. Each cohort formed up in their turn with swift precision and took their place in the line of march down the hill, the centurions pacing alongside them following the leading officer’s example and striding out in front of their men as they led their centuries down the hill and through the Parthians in a deliberate show of bravado. Scaurus had attended Julius’s centurions’ meeting that morning, looking round at his officers with a grim smile.

‘That army down there is too big to go round without making it look like an admission of weakness, so you’re going to have to march straight through them. And I think we can be reasonably sure that they’re not going to like it. I’m going to use the Tungrian cohorts as my advance guard, so they’ll be-’

‘Legatus?’

He’d turned to find that Cassius Ravilla had stepped forward, his punctilious salute at odds with the irritated expression on his face.

‘Procurator?’

‘My marines have marched with you, drilled with you, and fought with you, not that we saw much of the fighting yesterday at the far end of the line. To be frank with you, Legatus, we’re getting a little tired of being regarded as just here to make the numbers up and be the butt of your men’s ribaldry.’

‘And you’d like to lead your cohort down into that angry mob as the vanguard? When any mistake might start another full-scale battle?’

Ravilla had nodded.

‘My marines have discipline, Legatus, and they won’t offer the Parthians a fight unless there’s no alternative, but they also have more courage than you’re giving them credit for. And I’ll tell you what else they have …’

Scaurus had raised an eyebrow.

‘They have Greek, Legatus. At least half my men have a decent command of the language, which isn’t surprising given they’ve served all over the Middle Sea. If you send them down the hill first they’ll be a lot more capable of communicating with those barbarians than your Tungrians.’

‘And if the Parthians don’t just move out of the way?’

Ravilla had turned his head to look at Julius with his lower jaw thrust out.

‘My boys won’t start any fights they don’t have to, not with the situation already as tense as it is, but neither will they step back, First Spear, I can assure you of that. And neither will I.’

Legatus and first spear exchanged glances, and Julius shrugged.

‘Why not? The procurator has a point about our lads not speaking the language. The only thing they’ll be able to communicate will be with their swords and shields.’

Scaurus had nodded.

‘Very well Procurator, get your men assembled and ready to march. You’ll have to take them straight down the hill and through the enemy though, nice and slow but without any hesitation, and I’m sending the king’s man Gurgen down there with you to reinforce the message. Gentlemen, I’ve warned Narsai that if his men so much as twitch in our direction then my officers are under orders to halt, turn to both sides and attack. In which case, the legion will launch a concerted attack from whatever position it has reached.’

He’d looked about him at the officers’ serious faces.

‘Officers of the Third Gallic, here is my direct order. An attack on any of us is an attack on all of us. Whilst I’ll flog any man needlessly offering provocation to the Parthians, it’s a case of one in, all in. Not that I expect Narsai to offer us any provocation …’

He’d grinned at them wolfishly.

‘But if they do, I expect you all to get in amongst them like butchers on the day before Saturnalia!’

Each cohort was led by one of the tribunes, and alongside each of them walked a hooded prisoner with a soldier to guide his steps, and the rest of the man’s tent party clustered around the pair, another dozen or so of the captive Parthian nobility distributed throughout the cohort’s following centuries.

‘Consider it a game of bluff.’

Scaurus had met with Narsai again that morning, the two men looking at each other with undisguised loathing across the line of dead horses.

‘My legion is so long on the march that you might be tempted to engage my van, or my rearguard, with the expectation of destroying a cohort or two for no loss to yourself.’

He raised an eyebrow at the scowling king, his lips twitching as he fought the urge to grin at the man.

‘After all, you do have some catching up to do.’

Narsai had glowered back at him in silence.

‘And so, just to raise the stakes on such a gamble, each cohort will contain a number of prisoners, every man hooded and surrounded by a dozen soldiers. If your men attempt to recapture any of them, that man’s throat will be cut. And an attack on any of my cohorts will result in all of the prisoners being executed in the same manner. That attack you’re considering will kill the King of Kings’ son, and start a pitched battle I just can’t see you winning. Your men may be masters of fighting mobile battles across this empty desolation, but when it comes to bloodletting at close quarters, I think you’ve already learned your lesson. And now, if you’ll excuse me …’

Marcus marched with the Tungrians, immediately behind the marines, the Britons indistinguishable from the legion’s established cohorts now that their new equipment had been weathered from its initial gleaming newness. The cohort followed hard on the heels of the blue-tunicked troops, their eyes fixed to the man in front and giving no signs of recognition that there were thousands of sullen enemy warriors within a few paces on either side. Centurions and their watch officers walked ahead of and behind their centuries to avoid offering any unnecessary provocation to the Parthians, but where an enemy moved too close to the column, the soldiers whose path they blocked were as uncompromising as they had been instructed to be, using their shields or the heavy iron plates that curved over their shoulders to forcefully push back the attempted harassment. Beside the young tribune, on one of the legion’s more docile mules, rode a no better than partially recovered Osroes, his words slurred by the concussion from which he was clearly still suffering.

‘When can I remove this hood, Roman?’

Marcus looked up at him, meeting the man’s eyes though the rough slits cut in the bag’s rough fabric.

‘I apologise for subjecting you to such ignominy, Your Highness, but the hood is essential, I’m afraid.’

‘Ignominy is the least of my problems, Tribune. My head …’

Marcus nodded. Osroes’ eyes had been screwed up against the early morning sun’s rays while they waited to march, and his head was carried in a way that spoke of the pain that flooded him with the smallest of movements. The doctor had examined him carefully the previous evening before pronouncing his prognosis with a dour shake of his head.

‘There’s nothing much I can do without trepanning his skull, and I don’t think he’d thank me for drilling a hole where one may not be necessary. It’s a severe concussion at the least, and the flesh over his skull is so inflamed and swollen that I can’t probe to see if the skull itself is cracked or not without draining the inflammation, an action against which Galen strictly advises in the seminal work on the subject. If it’s just a concussion then he’ll be unsteady on his feet for a few days, then it’ll sort itself out. Keep an eye on him, and if he comes to then keep him on his back and well watered.’

He’d stood, moving on to the next man in the line of casualties with a grimace.

‘Orderly! Pass me a bone saw please! That’ll have to come off …’

Marcus looked up at the swaying figure beside him.

‘Do you know where you are, King Osroes?’

The response was taut with exhaustion, but edged with an unmistakable anger.

‘Of course I know where I am, Roman. I’m sitting on a mule with a bag on my head in the middle of my father’s vassal kingdom of Adiabene, the day after I was stupid enough to let that halfwit Narsai to push me into sending the best men in my army uphill at a prepared position, against an enemy with every trick in the history books to use against us.’

Osroes shook his head, visibly wincing at the pain induced by the movement.

‘And so now here I am, reduced from riding the proudest war horse in all of Parthia to sitting astride a mule with a bag over my head.’

He paused for a moment before speaking again.

‘Doubtless your legatus is now using the prospect of my death to keep Narsai at arm’s length?’

‘Yes.’

The king was silent for a moment before speaking again, his voice edged with bitterness.

‘A smart move. He displays a high degree of cunning … for a Roman.’

He lapsed into silence, and Marcus stepped out of the column to look back down its length. Half of the legion was off the hill now, and the waggon train that formed its centre on the march was now rumbling past the watching enemy host. Supply carts loaded with the Scorpions and their bolts, transports bearing tents and cooking equipment and scores of waggons loaded with everything too heavy for the legionaries to carry, their passage raising clouds of dust that blew across the watching Parthians. In its wake came Felix’s cavalry, and the young tribune smiled at the thought of the dark looks that would be directed at them by those men who had managed to escape the marauding Phrygians in the cataphracts’ flight down the hill’s merciless open slope. Behind the horsemen came the archers and slingers, followed by a rearguard of two more legion cohorts and the Second Tungrians, each one an imposing fighting unit in itself but taken together they were a fighting machine of incredible power and ferocity.

‘Narsai can’t allow you to reach Nisibis, you know.’

The Roman shrugged at his prisoner, his response phrased with the appropriate respect for Osroes’ rank, but brutally frank nonetheless.

‘He won’t stop us, Your Highness. Not as long as we have you to deter another attack.’

Osroes snorted, his body jerking again at the sudden pain in his head.

‘Then you’d better be sure to keep me safe, hadn’t you? I doubt I’m much use to you dead.’

Narsai watched the Roman column marching down from its perch atop the hill with a mixture of frustration and calculation.

‘No man is to provoke them, understood? Your king is at their mercy.’

Osroes’ gundsalar inclined his head.

‘Your command has been passed to the army, Your Highness, with a threat of a slow and painful death for the man who dis-obeys. But I must ask you …’

‘How do I plan to free the king?’

The soldiers stared at him, and Narsai felt the weight of their expectations settle upon him like a cataphract’s armour.

‘In truth, gentlemen, I do not yet know. But …’

He waited ostentatiously for their muttering to die down, picking a piece of dried flesh from his mace.

‘What I do know is that knowledge is power. So, Gundsalar, send out your scouts. I want to know everything that these Romans do as they march east. Any further trick that this legatus plays without our having predicted them will carry a bad portent for the man who had the chance to predict it.’

The general bowed in his saddle once more.

‘Oh, and Gundsalar?’

‘Your Highness?’

‘There was a minor skirmish with the Roman cavalry yesterday, as I recall it?’

The older man nodded.

‘Indeed, Your Highness.’

‘Your scouts were overwhelmed, I believe, but they killed a number of the enemy?’

‘We found thirteen dead Romans, Highness.’

‘And the bodies?’

The Median general waved a dismissive hand.

‘We left the barbarians to rot.’

Narsai raised a regal eyebrow at the man’s apparent lack of foresight.

‘Then I suggest you drive off the vultures and bring them to me. I have a use for them.’

The legion’s column moved fast once the last cohorts had reached the road’s smooth surface, trumpet calls for the double-pace march pealing out to pass Julius’s orders to the most distant of centurions, and within a dozen heartbeats his men were moving at the fastest march pace short of a running gait.

Once the Tungrians were on the rough road and up to speed, Dubnus called for a song to take their minds off the coming exertions, and the marching soldiers roared out a ditty that had been several days in the composition:

‘I’d rather have my balls cut off than sail the Middle Sea,

I’d rather go without my cock than sail the Middle Sea,

Sailors spend their lives on boats,

With nothing to fuck but goats

So I’m never going to sign up to sail the Middle Sea!’

Cassius Ravilla had dropped back to check on his rearmost men, and if his greeting to Dubnus as he waited for the Briton to reach him was acerbic, he was unable to keep some vestige of a smile off his face.

‘I suppose this means that we’re now sufficiently accepted to be openly abused?’

The procurator’s brother officer grinned back at him.

‘You haven’t heard the rest of it yet.’

As if on cue, the Tungrians launched into the second verse:

‘But I’d rather be a sailor than serve as a marine,

I’d rather pull a fucking oar than serve as a marine

They spend their lives on boats,

Pretending to be goats,

So I’m never going to sign up to serve as a marine!’

The Parthian host responded by moving out from the positions in which they had watched the Romans march off the hill, their loose formation pacing the legion to the north of the road’s long ribbon.

‘You really think they’ll resist the temptation to attack?’

Varus had run up the column’s length from his place at the head of the Seventh Cohort, grinning at the good-natured jibes that had followed him as he revelled in both his new-found fitness and the legion’s sudden rediscovery of its pride. Marcus looked up at Osroes, lolling loosely on the mule’s back and apparently asleep in the saddle, blessed with the innate skills of a man trained to ride from his earliest days.

‘The king here thinks so, at least until we stop moving.’

‘And you? What do you think, Tribulus Corvus?’

Marcus watched a fifty-man group of horse archers trotting back across the plain towards the enemy, one of several that had been dispatched from the Parthian army during the day to scout the ground before them.

‘What do I think? I think that the man leading that host will be desperate to get to the king here, although whether he’ll be hoping to rescue him or simply kill him …’

‘Narsai won’t care. All he needs is my body, living or dead. Once the tribes know I’m no longer a reason not to attack, he’ll have you at his mercy. No amount of clever trickery will save you now that you’ve abandoned the security of that hill.’

Osroes had stirred, and was looking down at the two tribunes with a resigned expression.

‘You think your own people will try to kill you?’

The king shook his head wearily at Varus.

‘Not my people, Roman. Narsai’s people. Explain it to him, if you will, Tribune Corvus?’

Marcus nodded.

‘Parthia isn’t one kingdom, there are at least a dozen kings who owe their allegiance to King Osroes’ father, Arsaces, the King of Kings. Osroes is one of them, and King Narsai is another. Narsai rules Adiabene, a smaller and less important kingdom than Media, but were our guest the king to die in captivity, then Narsai will immediately have the right as the commander in the field to claim command of the Median army until another ruler can be appointed by Arsaces and his council. And if Narsai can present himself to the Great King as the man who defeated a Roman legion, and ejected Rome from a prize like Nisibis to boot, then his claim to that throne of Media would be hard for Arsaces to resist.’

‘So if he manages to kill the king here …’

‘He’ll blame my death on Rome, and position himself as the saviour of Parthia.’

Both men looked up at Osroes.

‘And if his killers come for you tonight?’

‘Yes, Tribune Corvus?’

‘Do you wish to live or die?’

The king shook his head tiredly, slumping back in the saddle.

‘How should I know? The Sun God will decide …’

The legion covered thirty miles that day, the exhausted legionaries digging out a marching camp, eating their rations cold and then for the most part collapsing into sleep, unless they happened to have the misfortune to have drawn guard duty. A handful of centurions patrolled the camp’s perimeter with unfailing vigilance, only too well aware that there were enough of the enemy to breach the camp’s walls, given a determined assault and an unready defence. Julius had paraded the legion’s centunions while their men were building the camp, expressing himself with a degree of robustness that had raised eyebrows among men who still harboured distant memories of a more relaxed way of life.

‘I couldn’t give a shit how degenerate a shower of arse-eating goat fuckers the enemy are, any man found asleep at his post will be beaten to death by his tent party in the morning, and any one of you that feels like making allowances can take his place. Understood?’

He’d looked across their ranks, his face hard with evident contempt for their collective abilities.

‘Just so we understand each other, I’ll be up and about during the night, and if I find any of your men with their eyes closed on guard then I’ll be the one doing the beating to death. Think on that, and on who I might choose to pay the price for those few minutes of sleep.’

In consequence the duty centurions were harsh in their vigilance, taking their vine sticks to any man looking the slightest bit like sleeping, and when the sun rose it was the opinion of them all that while their new first spear might be a bastard, he certainly didn’t spare himself, having been seen about the camp by several of his centurions during the night. The legion took a swift breakfast before forming up to resume its march at dawn, covering a good five miles before its Parthian escort managed to stir themselves and join the line of march, leaving the infantry to toil along to their rear.

‘So, there was no sign of your assassins last night, Your Highness?’

Osroes was little improved on the previous day, and if anything, less animated than before, and waved Marcus’s question away with a grimace.

‘Too soon. They’ll wait until you’re exhausted before making their move.’

The Roman had smiled back at his prisoner wryly.

‘They’d better not wait too long. There’s a reason that Julius has us wearing out our hobnails this quickly.’

They marched all day with only brief stops for food and water, their rate of progress alternating between the burning pain of the double pace and the marginal respite of the standard marching speed, enough in itself to cover twenty miles in a day.

‘Narsai will be getting twitchy, I expect. By the time we stop for the night we’ll be a good twenty miles closer to Nisibis than he would have expected, and with only one more day’s march ahead of us rather than the two he’d have been calculating. So if he’s going to make an attempt to get to our prisoners, it has to be tonight. We’ll double the guards, I think.’

The legion took Julius’s decision with an uncharacteristic lack of complaint, and the first spear looked about him as the cohorts toiled to throw up the customary walls of the camp that would be their defence once night fell.

‘Perhaps we’ve turned them into soldiers.’

‘Or maybe they’re just too weary to give voice to their complaints?’

Scaurus grinned at his subordinate’s jaundiced expression.

‘Yes, I know. Since when was a soldier ever too tired to complain? Perhaps they’ve realised that this is the last chance the Parthians will have to pull a victory out of this disaster. Tonight’s the night Julius, there’s no doubt about that.’

‘You are certain of this?’

The old man spoke without taking his head from the dusty ground where he lay prostrate.

‘Yes, Your Highness. I have ridden alongside the king since he was a young child. His seat on a horse is as evident to me as his hand on parchment would be to a scribe.’

Narsai nodded slowly, a grim smile of satisfaction settling on his face.

‘And he was riding alongside the officer leading the first cohort?’

‘Yes, Your Highness.’

The king turned to Osroes’ gundsalar.

‘Your scouts tracked each of their cohorts into the camp, and noted the place each one took inside its walls?’

The general inclined his head.

‘They did so with precision and diligence, Highness. If my king remains with the cohort that led on the march today then he will be found somewhere here …’

He sketched a map in the dirt at their feet with the point of his dagger, quickly scratching in the roads that divided its rectangle into four smaller sections.

‘Here. Where the roads meet in the camp’s centre, that is where my king is held captive.’

Narsai stared down at the crude map for a moment.

‘I will need the very best of your fighting men, Gundsalar. The bravest and the cleverest, men who can pass unnoticed in the shadows, but who will fight like uncaged beasts when the time comes for them to strike. I doubt we have a dozen men of this quality in our entire army, but we must assemble them quickly and make a bold strike into the heart of our enemy. This chance will not be offered to us again.’

The older man bowed deeply.

‘As you command, Your Highness. I will bring the chosen men here.’

The king waited until he had vanished into the gloom before turning to his own general.

‘Find Varaz and bring him here. Tell him that the moment of his glory is upon him.’

Narsai looked around the men who had been gathered from his army, taking the measure of them with a slow, calculating assessment in the light of the crackling fire. Each of them met his eyes with the appropriate deference, heads inclining in recognition of his exalted status, but the glint of their eyes and the set of their jaws betrayed supreme and untroubled confidence in their physical and martial prowess. Cataphracti nobility for the most part, they were big men with powerfully muscled frames, trained from childhood in the use of the lance, the sword and mace, on horseback and on foot, supremely conditioned to fight carrying the heaviest armour in the full heat of the day. His own champion stood among them dressed in the same unfamiliar garb they all wore, the neutral set of his body and the blank look on his carefully composed features masking the contempt that the king knew he was feeling for the men around him and for any man who lacked his unique and deadly approach to his craft. If the gathered soldiers were alike to swords and maces, weapons for hacking and bludgeoning at an enemy line, Varaz was an assassin’s blade by comparison, forged with the intention of delivering a single unpredictable and lethal wound.

The man was untameable, giving his loyalty to none and his service to Narsai purely in return for gold, with an unveiled cynicism that would have long since earned him a swift death and an ignominious burial were it not for his unparalleled ability for swift and ruthless violence. He had bowed to his master on being brought before him, raising his dark eyes to stare unflinchingly at a man before whom he should in truth have been prostrating himself.

‘So, King. Your chamberlain tells me that my moment in the sun has arrived.’

He looked up at the crescent moon, his mouth twisted in irony. ‘And yet I see no sun. Only the moon, and a hunter’s moon at that.’

Narsai had shaken his head in amusement.

‘No man ever claimed to be your parent, Killer. No man knows where you were born, or how you came to be so skilled with blade and bone. You are nobody, as disposable as the water in which I shave, and yet you are the deadliest weapon at my disposal. You have served me well, and in return I have kept every promise I have made to you, have I not?’

The assassin inclined his head in acceptance of the point.

‘And now, King, with an enemy army camped one day’s march from a fortress so powerful that we may never break its walls, you call for me? What is it that you need that can be accomplished by a single man in the darkness? You wish the Roman general dead, perhaps?’

Narsai had smiled despite himself.

‘No. He goes everywhere in the company of more hard-eyed men than even you could defeat in combat. I have a different challenge in mind for you. A kill worthy of both your skills and your dark heart. A kill that will ennoble your descendants …’

Varaz had raised an eyebrow.

‘Ennoble?’

‘You have a son, by the slave woman I gave you. He shows promise with weapons for one so young, I hear. Would you like him to be raised as a royal prince?’

The other man stared back at him.

‘You offer to take my son into your household?’

‘Yes. I will swear the oath to the Sun God now, before my priest.’

His assassin’s face creased into a hard smile.

‘In which case it would be well if he were to commend my spirit to Ahura Mazda at the same time. For if you offer such a large inducement, I can safely assume that the price of delivering what you want of me will be that I have seen my last sunrise.’

Narsai had nodded, sharing a moment of understanding with his man.

‘I think that assumption is realistic. In return for your death I offer you a life of privilege for your son, and his sons and grandsons. You will catapult your blood to the heights of nobility, and fulfil your destiny.’

‘By killing King Osroes?’

Narsai had nodded tersely, aware that the man before him was quite capable of turning on him in an instant, even unarmed and in the presence of the royal bodyguard. The killer had looked at his booted feet for a moment before nodding his assent.

‘It was never my expectation to end this life in my bed. Fetch your priest, King. Make your oath and have him shrive me.’

Narsai completed his assessment of the men standing before him, nodding his approval to the gundsalar.

‘Time is short, so I will not waste it with unnecessary appeals to your virtue or duty. You all know why you have been gathered. You are the greatest warriors in our armies, the strongest, the bravest and the best of us, and your king has need of you. He is being held within the Roman camp, and while they have him we cannot mount an attack on them for fear of killing him. In the morning they will march again, and by nightfall the King of Kings’ oldest son will be a prisoner within a fortress city so strong that he might never be freed. Tonight, my brothers, you must enter the camp of the Romans by stealth, find the king and bring him to safety.’

The most senior of them bowed before speaking, a black-bearded officer with a fresh cut down one cheek from the battle on the hill, the wound’s edges roughly stitched together and black with dried blood.

‘Your Highness, we may well find the king, but bringing him to safety may be impossible if the Romans detect us. What then?’

Narsai inclined his head in recognition of the question’s ramifications.

‘In the event that you find yourselves alone among the enemy, then you must follow the instructions of King Osroes himself, whatever they may be.’

The noble nodded.

‘And if the king is not capable of making such a decision? His bidaxs Gurgen told us that he was suffering badly from the effects of a blow to the head.’

Narsai waited a moment, allowing the question’s full implications to unfold in the minds of the men before him.

‘In that case, you will have to make your own decision, for only you will be able to enact that choice.’

The noble held his eye for a moment, then nodded tersely.

‘We will do what we must. Come, brothers.’

The king watched them walk away with a carefully composed face, his thoughts racing as he watched the assassin follow in their wake.

In the darkness between the two camps the infiltrators paused, waiting for their eyes to fully adapt to the darkness, checking by touch that each other’s unfamiliar armour and equipment was as it should be. Then, following the big officer’s lead, they moved slowly around the Roman camp until they were approaching it from the east, removing any risk of their being silhouetted against the glow of the fires burning in the Parthian encampment.

When they were no more than one hundred paces from the sentries guarding the camp’s eastern gateway, the big man gestured for them to stop.

‘Stay here.’

Narsai’s killer shook his head, raising his hands to demonstrate the appropriate respect.

‘Lord, you are a man of the greatest possible honour. This is a task that ought to be undertaken by a man who, through his long experience of the dirtier aspects of serving his king, has already sacrificed his honour. If you will allow me, I do have some small measure of expertise in such matters.’

The bearded noble nodded, quietly relieved to have the responsibility lifted from his shoulders.

‘Go then. And do not fail.’

Varaz paced away into the night, smiling to himself in the darkness and permitting himself a whispered response once he was out of earshot.

‘And in addition, Lord, where I am expert at moving quietly in the darkness, you blunder around like a blind bull. Now …’

He sank to the ground and watched the guards from no more than thirty paces, quietly calculating the best point at which to strike. The legionaries were most strongly concentrated around the gateway in the middle of the earth wall, keeping close to the fires that burned on either side, which would seriously reduce their ability to see into the darkness. A pair of men were positioned at each corner of the camp, their beats a good fifty paces from the nearest sentry and who, he noted, tended to spend more of their time getting as close to the fire as possible and as little as they could actually patrolling their section of the wall.

Retracing his steps, he found his fellow infiltrators waiting impatiently.

‘I have scouted the best way into the enemy camp. Follow me.’

The noble tugged at his arm, whispering fiercely.

‘Have you killed the guards?’

‘No, Lord, not yet.’

‘But-’

Biting down on his exasperation, he shook his head with an expression he hoped would not betray his frustration.

‘Lord, from the very moment we make our first kill we will have only a short time before their bodies are discovered. We must make that time as long as possible. Trust me in this.’

He turned and led them to the point from where he had watched previously.

‘Stay silent and still.’

Pacing forward in the darkness, he waited until the guards to his left had turned and walked down their beat towards the fire, stepping quickly and lightly across the space separating him from the wall, easing noiselessly into its shadow and staring intently at the men standing at the camp’s corner as he knelt to scoop up a handful of the dusty soil. When they showed no sign of reaction, he rose from the gloom and paced towards them with a measured, confident tread. He had no shield, but in every other respect he appeared authentic enough to stand up to a brief scrutiny in the darkness, his armour and helmet pulled from a dead Roman cavalryman retrieved from the open desert. Drawing his long knife, and reversing his grip on the hilt to put the blade in the shelter of his arm, he strode towards the guards, being careful not to speed up as he got closer.

The nearest of the two registered his presence in his peripheral vision at the very last moment, turning with a question as Varaz punched the knife through his throat and ran at the other man, hurling the handful of sandy dust at his target to buy a moment’s confusion before the knife tore into his neck and severed both windpipe and vocal cords. The dying man gasped silently for air as he contorted into his death throes, then shuddered, and was gone. Dragging the corpses into the earth wall’s cover, the assassin scowled as his comrades made their inevitably noisy appearance, feet scuffing in the dirt as they crouched low in poses.

‘Over the wall!’

They obeyed his hissed instruction without question, their leader pausing for a moment to look at the bloodied killer.

‘And you?’

Varaz looked at him with none of his previous deference, noting the hint of fear that had replaced the man’s previous air of superiority.

‘I’ll stay here until you’re well into the camp. As well for the Romans to see one their own when they walk back this way. When they turn back again I’ll follow you in.’

The noble nodded, swallowing nervously without even realising it, and went over the wall in pursuit of his fellows. Varaz stared after him for a moment, calculating the odds that they would get close enough to the king to strike the fateful blow, then hefted a fallen shield and stood up, strolling out into the moonlight with a deliberate pace, quietly muttering to himself.

‘Just another bored sentry.’