Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) (15 page)

More men followed his example, officers senior and junior, keeling behind their swords, tips dug into the desert. Soon almost the entire officer corps was kneeling behind its sword. The legate had his answer and it was unanimous.

“No! I will not abandon Rome’s future to these barbarians,” Crassus roared. “Where is your sense of honor?”

Angry shouts rose from the men, all of whom held swords already drawn. The air was suddenly thick with danger.

Hadrianus stepped beside a torch so that he could be clearly seen by all. “Proconsul! Legates! Centurions!” he shouted to get control of the square. The grumbling subsided. “It has been shown to us that with our current weapons, the army is not equipped to fight on equal terms with the Parthian archers. So allow me to simplify the choices: surrender and live; fight on and die. With death will end all hope. Who knows what will happen tomorrow or the next day if we are given the chance to leave this desert with our heads still on our shoulders? Perhaps we will come back one day and make them pay for this humiliation delivered to the sons of Rome. In battle, there is a time to advance and time to withdraw. On this field, Mars has spoken and we must listen to him and heed his warnings. I beseech you, Proconsul Crassus and any man who supports him, let discretion be the better part of valor and take up the Parthians’ kind offer.”

A rousing cheer met the primipilus’s speech. His words surprised everyone, Rufinius included. Surely the legion’s leading centurion would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the proconsul.

“Stop!” Crassus yelled. “Did my son give his life for nothing? What of your fellow legionaries? Did they shed life’s blood only so that we could turn our backs on them and slink away?”

“Nothing can be done for the dead,” yelled a centurion beside Rufinius.

“I will not allow it!” Crassus seethed. “Do you think for one minute that you will be welcomed home in triumph? Surrender will be ignominious.”

“There is a third choice,” called out another centurion unfamiliar to Rufinius. “A change in leadership.”

“Mutiny?” Crassus was horrified.

No sooner was the hated word in the air, than a number of centurions, murder in their eyes, advanced across the square toward Crassus. The guards who accompanied the proconsul went forward to meet the threat.

“Halt! That is an order!” Cassius Longinus yelled above the discord and the men advancing upon each other stopped. “Who would you install as your leader? Do not look to me for treachery. I commanded that you step back!” The men seemed to hesitate and the legate took advantage of it. “Now, I promised that you could speak without fear or favor and I meant it! This council of war was formed to know the minds of the men. And now you have spoken and we will honor your decision. Tomorrow we will meet with the Parthian general and agree to his terms.”

The tension was thus unwound. Crassus gave his senior legate a final glower and then strode angrily from the square, pushing men aside, followed by his guard. Only when he and his small numbers of supporters were gone did the men who remained raise another cheer.

Shortly after first light, Carrhae’s gates opened. Through them, atop the best horses that could be found within the walls, rode Crassus and fifty of his guardsmen. Behind him came Legate Cassius Longinus, along with several of his senior officers and his own guard numbering around fifty. Next were the lesser legates and their guards, as well as prefects, and tribunes from good families so that the signatories would number a hundred, as stipulated. The Romans rode through two lines of exquisitely presented cataphracts whose armor of scales gleamed like mirrors and gathered all available light. Ahead, Spāhbed Surenas waited on an armored steed in his golden scales, with no protective chainmail screen across his face. He was accompanied by his closest attendants. Behind him, a hundred double paces away, a voluminous tent had been staked in the sand, where the agreement would be signed. At a discrete distance, on either side of this corridor of cataphracts, were long lines of Parthian archers that disappeared into the pre-dawn haze.

It was clear that Crassus had not welcomed this moment. His face wore a deeply lined scowl and his eyes glared straight ahead, fixed on his own disgrace and the cowardice of the legionaries, his supporters likewise showing their unhappiness at this ill-fated crossroads that the gods had brought them to. The Roman procession stopped when they arrived in front of Surenas.

“Good morning, Proconsul,” said Surenas in Greek, beaming at Crassus, his black oiled beard radiating health and vitality. “Let me welcome you and invite you to join me in my humble campaign tent. It is not so rich as yours, but you will find it comfortable. I have also have had food prepared, in the event that you and your men are hungry.”

Crassus eyes flickered at the mention of his tent. What was once his, now belonged to this man, including his honor.

Surenas rode forward several paces, wheeled slowly and brought his horse beside the proconsul’s. “This is a great day for our two countries. Peace can bring far more valuables to the table than can war, don’t you think?”

Crassus could not decide if the Parthian was being genuine or in fact mocking him, and so he met the comment with the barest acknowledgement.

“I understand how difficult this must be, Proconsul. I will try to make this as easy as possible.”

*

Legate Cassius Longinus’s horse walked behind the proconsul’s, its feet dragging in the dust as if it were also to be a signatory. The legate tried to hear what was being said between the Parthian commander and Crassus but he could not. Like Crassus, the legate’s heart carried a heavy burden. The decision of whether to fight or surrender had been taken from their hands by the threat of mutiny. In the depths of his heart, Cassius Longinus was almost relieved. A show of hands had been made redundant by a show of swords. If a vote had been taken, Crassus knew that his leading legate would have raised his hand for surrender. Now, no one would be able to say what his vote was. But that the war was effectively over between Rome and Parthia did not make this any easier to bear. He would still have to walk the streets of Rome and the knowledge of what happened here would follow him. The agreement shown throughout the Republic with his name on it would see to that.

The party made its way slowly to Surenas’s tent where a phalanx of attendants, richly clothed in loose colorful garments and no armor, waited to take control of the horses. As an attendant reached for his horse, Surenas slid from his mount with a lightness born of long practice and then made his way to the tent’s entrance. Attendants surged forward to take control of the Romans’ horses. Threatened by unfamiliar smells and movement, Crassus’s mount reared as a Parthian stablehand grabbed its reins. The horse’s hooves came down on the young man’s head, killing him instantly. The horses all then began to shriek and shy about in terror. Someone among Crassus’s entourage, unaware of the reasons for the spreading melee, yelled, “Draw swords! Protect the Proconsul!” And suddenly sharpened steel blades slashed at the attendants and panic raced through the gathering as blood spatter filled the air.

Cassius Longinus could see the situation deteriorating by the second, as Romans and Parthians alike began falling dead in the close combat. He yelled: “Get to the walls! The walls!” He gained control of his horse, turned its head around and thrashed its neck with the reins until the beast was galloping at full speed toward Carrhae. Chaos spread among the cataphracts who knew not what had happened and had no orders covering this unforeseen situation.

Surenas’s own guard, however, was quick to react, and all of Crassus’s guard, including Hadrianus and almost all of the most senior centurions, were shot through with arrows or knifed so that the only man left alive was the proconsul himself. He was left standing, covered by a semicircle of archers, their bowstrings drawn tight, a wound in his chest oozing blood that ran in rivers down one leg and pooled at his feet.

Surenas himself was enraged to the point of fury. He held a dagger in his own hand, surveyed the carnage brought down on his own attendants, young boys for the most part, and had to stop himself from plunging the knife into the proconsul’s heart with his own frustrated hand.

“Take him! Bind him!” he shouted at Volodates. “Do not kill him.”

*

“I can provide us with a guide who can lead us through the night to Syria,” said Coponius, speaking quietly within his residence so that others could not hear.

“What of the legionaries?” Cassius Longinus asked.

“There are horses for perhaps three hundred men. The army following us will have horses. Any legionaries marching on foot will slow us down. We can’t be overrun.”

The legate nodded, knowing the answer before he asked it. In fact, leaving Carrhae behind, defended by the legions, might prove enough of a distraction to allow a smaller number of horsemen from the best families the chance of escape.

“There is still confusion among the Parthians,” Coponius continued. “Tonight will be our only chance, and even then success is uncertain. If we are caught, we will be killed.”

“If we stay we will be killed,” observed Cassius Longinus.

The governor nodded. In truth, it was doubtful anyone would leave the vicinity of Carrhae alive. “What about the proconsul? Did you see him fall?”

“I saw a lot of blood and many swords stabbing at the Parthians, but I am not certain of the proconsul’s fate. I think we can assume the worst.”

*

Two days later, the town of Carrhae was not only tense, but also exhausted. Rufinius and his men, indeed all the legionaries, had manned the walls without sleep or rest of any kind since the Parthians had once again tricked them after promising safety, killing many of their officers. They had been waiting for the Parthians to attack ever since, but so far not a shot had been fired. Ringing the town all this time had been a sparse number of mounted archers – lookouts. There would be no repeat of the first night when all the surviving legates and senior officers had slipped away under the cover of darkness, taking every last remaining horse that wasn’t lame, and leaving the legionaries to fight it out with an enemy who had promised them only death.

“Cunni,” Rufinius muttered and spat over the wall.

*

The sun rose above the desert plain into a waiting clear blue sky. Spāhbed Surenas woke refreshed from his rest in the harem, despite the antics of several of his favorites that went far into the night. He washed, dressed and then offered libations to Ahura Mazda, promising that all he did was for the glory of the god. He then breakfasted on dates and cheese and the juices of several fruits.

“All preparations are ready, Spāhbed,” said Volodates, waiting outside the tent. “We await your pleasure.”

“There is no pleasure in any of this,” Surenas answered. He stood and walked out of his tent and followed the captain of horse to the execution taking place among the other tents pitched nearby.

A hardly pleasurable, but fitting – almost poetic – end had at last been settled on for the Roman proconsul. Crassus was tied face up on a framework, and still alive, though the man’s mind was given to wander. When his final moments came, Surenas wanted Crassus
to know
. He bent over the naked old man, his sunburned flesh marked by the angry wound in his side. So this was the world’s richest man?

“Proconsul Crassus, are you thirsty?”

Feebly, Crassus looked up at Surenas and nodded, his tongue and lips swollen by the desert sun.

The spāhbed took one of the familiar gold cups with the Zoroastrian sun on its flank, recovered from the proconsul’s possessions, dipped it into a firkin of murky blacksmith’s water and poured the contents into Crassus’s mouth. The proconsul choked and coughed.

“No, you are still thirsty,” Surenas insisted. But instead of returning the cup to its golden tray, Surenas dropped it into the crucible sitting on a nearby forge and nodded at the smith who then worked the bellows. Flames surged around the side of the crucible and the golden cup quickly dissolved to bright golden flowing liquid. Surenas dropped the other cups into the crucible and watched as they too melted like wax.

“Yours is a particular thirst that I believe will take much to be quenched, so I have something special for you.” He nodded to the smith who grasped the crucible with tongs, brought it to Crassus and poured the molten gold into the proconsul’s parched mouth. The liquid metal hissed and steamed and caused the man’s flesh to bubble and catch fire.

“Gold is what brought you here, and with gold you shall leave.”

Crassus bucked and strained against his restraints, his eyes wild with pain, his throat burned away and unable to make any sounds other than a choking gurgle.

Li-ch’ien, province of Gansu, Chin

a.d. IV Non. Sept. 750 AUC

2 September, 4 BC

In this manner the proconsul died, the molten gold burning away his insides so that he choked on his own steaming blood, killed by the thing that drove him, the thing he loved the most. In the panic that preceded Crassus’s capture, not many of the party of 100 officers made it back inside the gates of Carrhae. Opportunism saved Legate Cassius Longinus’s life and it was the proconsul’s own vanity that saved mine. “I brought you here to bear witness to my triumph, not record my humiliation,” Crassus had told me before venturing forth from the gates of Carrhae to meet with his fate. Thus I was left behind on the wall to observe the slaughter with the legionaries.

I cannot tell you whether Cassius Longinus later made it to Syria as he had planned, for news of his death or even his life (if indeed it continued) has not been noteworthy enough to reach my ears in the years that have since passed.

The legionaries remaining in Carrhae mounted a vigorous but brief defense that lasted barely three days. In the end the town was given easily to the Parthians, betrayed from within by an unknown citizen, as indeed Surenas himself had predicted. Surrounded and overrun by archers and charged by cataphracts, the legionaries had little choice but to throw down their swords, face the ignominy of capture, and place their lives in the hands of Surenas and hope for mercy. Some might call this cowardice, but a surer death was the only alternative. As Primus Pilus Hadrianus had said, at least with life there was hope.

The greatest insult of all – greater even than the ignominious defeat of a larger force led by one of Rome’s most favored sons – was the capture of the aquilas, the eagles, the symbols of power the Roman Republic carried at the head of each legion. I can only imagine the consternation and handwringing that situation must have caused in the Senate when news of it reached Rome.

Of the force that made up Proconsul Crassus’s defensive square, barely 7,000 legionaries survived and made it to Carrhae. Around 20,000 of his army had been killed by Surenas’s men in the various engagements, or succumbed to privation. The legions left behind on the wrong side of the river before the main battle had turned and fled west into the desert, but some of these legionaries and much of the soldiers’ baggage train was overrun by Surenas’s men and captured. In all, the spāhbed sent more than 10,000 men and women to the slave markets of Babylon to swell his coffers, and his reputation. I know of this because I was among them.

And this brings me to a point I feel compelled to state for the record (assuming it will ever be read by someone other than my slave, Viridia): I have heard much made over the years, by everyone from gossipers to so-called scholars, of the Roman defeat at Carrhae – how 10,000 Parthians overwhelmed 40,000 Romans, renowned as the best soldiers in the world. This is an assertion I wish to contest though I know I stand on my own in so doing. I feel I can say with complete authority that it was in fact 10,000 Parthians that defeated a mere 1,000 Roman auxiliary cavalry, equipped with inferior weaponry. I state this because, in reality, the proconsul’s 39,000 legionaries, blinded and choked by the dust, were mere bystanders to the battle and more or less stationary targets for Parthian arrows. Crassus and his legions were doomed from the moment they stepped out onto a flat plain affording no cover.

And if anyone destroyed Rome that day, it was not so much Surenas but Abgar, the man who ensured Crassus brought his army to this place of annihilation. I can tell you with absolute confidence that Publius suspected the man of duplicitous ways. He was also certain that the Arab chief was the agent of Pompey. The animosity between Pompey and Crassus was both well known and the subject of many jibes. Was Abgar indeed in the pay of Pompey? I shall never know, but the calamity of Carrhae would scarcely have happened but for his destructive influence.

“Viridia! Where are you going? Come back. Oh,
you’ve
had enough, so that’s it?”

Perhaps she is right. It has been a long week and I am tired. I received word from one of the secretaries from the City of Perpetual Peace, saying that my old friend Protector-General Chen Tang would soon be making the long and arduous journey west. I must keep up my strength for his arrival. While I will, of course, be delighted to see him, I fear he comes out of pity after Viridia sent him a message with certain news. She deserves a beating for sending it, if I could only bring myself to have such a beautiful creature thrashed. But it serves me right for bringing the woman with me to select the marble for my sarcophagus, and then discussing with the sculptor motifs for its design in her presence. Perhaps I secretly wanted her to know of my state. It would be sad to end this life to have not a solitary mourner.

As I look up from my notes, scribblings collected over all these years, I see Viridia standing before me naked. Yes, yes, it is time for my bath … I must confess that as my eyes follow the curve of her waist and the swell of her young breasts, I wish there was energy in this old body for more.

*

It has been several days since I sat down and added to this history, but I am back with you now. Reading over the previous entry, I must tell you that my bath went unexpectedly well. I have discovered that while reliving the past is tiring, it is also uplifting, as Viridia will attest. Perhaps it puts me in touch with my youth, folding this old decrepit end of time into a younger, more vigorous, me.

So, after bathing, Viridia took me to see Apothecary Wu. He is the physician who administers my cures and, as you will soon discover, I have known him for many years. Indeed, he once saved my life, but it is unlikely that he will be able to repeat this service. Wu’s skin is parched and cracked like mud baked in the sun. We are around the same age, but he looks to be around a hundred. I suspect he is a victim of his own balms and medicaments, which he often tests on himself before administering to patients. For my ailments (and there is a litany), I am to breath the smoke emitted by a range of dried plants, insect and animal matter thrown over hot coals. I must tell you that it is truly disgusting. There is also a potion that forces me to throw up, and often there is blood in it. Wu claims this is evidence of the poison my own body is producing to end my days and he insists that it is better expelled. I suspect it’s the potion itself that causes the bleeding and hurries me toward my tomb.

But everyone swears by Apothecary Wu, tutored in medicine by the son of a famed physician executed for the illegal practice of witchcraft, the edict emanating from no lesser a personage than Emperor Wu himself. So what is an illustrious man like Apothecary Wu doing in this outpost, you may ask. There are mandarins in the City of Perpetual Peace who suspect him of similar crimes purely by extension, so he came to this outpost of Li-ch’ien, which, while far from the Royal court, still offers some civilities. The cries of witchcraft are all nonsense, of course. As I said, we go back a long way, Wu and I, but I will come to that.

Viridia is ready, her paint brush hovering above the silk, her eyes staring in my direction beneath hooded lids because here I am again, prattling on like a slave over the washing. But I did warn her as I warned you: when you get to my age, the path to conclusion is rarely straight.

“Viridia, where was I …?”

“Surenas promised annihilation to those who remained behind the walls,” she says, “but that is not how it ended.”

“Yes … quite right. After the capitulation of Carrhae, the spāhbed gathered the survivors, joined them to the baggage train, and marched the column of defeated Roman legionaries across the desert toward Babylon. And it was on this leg of the journey that I first met Rufinius, the Alexandrian.”