Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) (12 page)

“A pit is being dug for our section of the line.”

“Which gods did he favor?”

“Who, Paleo? Don’t know.”

“What rites will be observed?”

“Don’t know that either,” said Rufinius honestly, more concerned with just getting the dead well and truly buried. As much as observing the correct rites concerned him, the gods would have to wait their turn for attention. Men who had died in the first exchanges when the sun burned down on them were already stinking. If the army had to stay on this ground another day, a quick mass burial was a first priority.

“What about Albas and Figulus? I heard Figulus was crushed to death by a horse.”

“Figulus died in the lines. I saw him fall. Took an arrow. Albas is already in the pit.”

Dentianus nodded, accepting of these fates. “And Gracchus. He must be somewhere here also.”

Rufinius nodded.

“Are we retreating? We have to retreat. We can’t go forward, not now.”

“Not for me to decide,” said the centurion.

“They can’t expect us to stand and be killed by those ass-licking arrows, can they?”

Rufinius didn’t reply. There was every chance that’s exactly what they’d be expected to do. In fact, the tone among the men was concerning. The desire to turn and run was infectious and he could feel it sweeping the ranks. If the commanders offered battle to the enemy, the legionaries would die – all of them. And the men knew it as certain as the shit-stinking sun in this corner of Hades was hot.

“What are we going to do?” asked Dentianus relentlessly.

“Shut up, Marcus Tuccius. How would I know? I know as much as you. Put him down.”

They had stopped by the legion’s signifer who had taken on the role of noting the names of the dead, writing them on papyrus. Later, the legionaries no longer among the living would be crossed from the legion’s rolls in the Temple of Mars back at Antioch.

“Orthus Verginius Paleo,” said Rufinius when a signifer unknown to him looked up from a desk thrown together from parts of a scuta.

The signifer marked the name on the roll illuminated by a wax lantern. “Rank?”

“Tesserarius.”

“Legion?”

“Fourth Syrian.”

“Cohort?”

“Tenth.”

“Century?”

“Sixth.”

“Carry him forward,” the signifer said without looking up from his bill of death.

Rufinius and Dentianus lifted the body, carried it down into the pit, and lay it in a long line of other deceased legionaries. Rufinius put his hand inside Paleo’s cuirass and felt around for the pocket containing the denarius. Locating it, he pulled the coin out and held it near a burning torch. It was silver, a bust of some woman by the name of Leuconoe on one side and Jupiter hurling thunderbolts from a chariot on the reverse. Roman, not Syrian. He placed it in Paleo’s mouth. A silver denarius, probably from the great city itself. More than enough to make Charon happy, Rufinius thought.

“Primor …” Dentianus motioned him over to where he stood, further up the line of corpses. “Look.”

Rufinius joined him and saw Gracchus, one eye staring sightless, the other a black hole buzzing with files around the torn black flesh that remained of his throat. He checked his mouth with a heavy heart and saw a coin. Gracchus, Paleo, Figulus, Albas – the heart of their contubernium ripped out. All dead. They were good men and Rufinius liked them. They had fought, messed, whored and tented together. He saluted each of them, recalling their faces and deeds in happier times. Death was part of life, no one appreciated the fact more than a soldier on active duty, but seeing death on the faces of so many close comrades was far from a joyous occasion.

Rufinius’s heart was heavy. “Let’s go.”

He and Dentianus retraced their steps out of the pit and headed toward the signifer’s desk. It was then that Rufinius saw a centurion wearing a magnificent brass cuirass, hung with half a dozen clinking gold torcs, accompanied by an optio he recognized from another century, a tall man of Greek origin known for religious discipline who had allowed his black beard to grow thick. Both men wound their way through the long procession of legionaries bringing bodies for the pits. And then the two men changed direction toward him. The optio limped, one leg caked in dried blood.

“Is this Tullus Bassius Rufinius?” the centurion, a tough old boot, growled at the optio.

“Yes, primor,” the optio replied.

Now that the centurion was close by, Rufinius could see the ribbons of the Primus Pilus or “first file” on the old man’s cuirass. This was the leading centurion, the most senior combat officer in the entire army who commanded no less than the First Cohort, the army’s toughest, hardest-fighting unit. His name was Julius Hadrianus Calpurnicus. Rufinius had only ever seen him from a distance when the legions were on parade. Men of such lofty rank and reputation did not usually converse with lowly officers from other cohorts. The centurion regarded Rufinius, looking him up and down like a tree feller pondering the right place in which to make the cut. “Tullus Bassius Rufinius?”

“Yes, Primus Pilus,” Rufinius answered, coming to attention.

“You have blond hair. And you’re tall. There’s not enough light … Your eyes, they’re blue?” he inquired.

Rufinius found the questions odd to say the least, but he replied, “So I am told, primor.”

“Your name is Roman, but you look German.” The old centurion stared at Rufinius as if looking into his very heart, causing Rufinius to turn away. “Do not take offense. Your eyes. You remind me of someone I know.”

“Primor,” said Rufinius politely.

“Tell me about your forebears.”

“My grandfather fought for Gaius Marius. He was discharged from the legions, wounded, and took a woman from the Cimbri to wife.”

“Ah yes, the Cimbri. Good Germanic stock. Excellent fighters.” Centurion Julius Hadrianus nodded with what Rufinius took to be approval. “What about your father? Was he in the legions also?”

“Yes, primor. He fought under Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Pompey.”

“He fought at the battle of the Lycus?”

“Yes, primor.”

“I was there also.” The old centurion nodded his head sagely. “You’re good stock, but your Latin is strangely accented.”

“My father was an engineer. After discharge he found work in Alexandria, primor. Egypt.”

“You’re not the one they call Alexandricus, are you?”

Rufinius shrugged. “Maybe there are others …”

With a nod, the optio accompanying the primpilus confirmed that this was indeed the man they were looking for.

“Maybe, eh? Well, Alexandricus, it was a hard day today. Harder than most,” he said.

“Yes, primor.”

“I’m told your cohort saw much action. How many did you lose?”

“The head count is still going on. Some of our men were separated from the cohort, but so far more than 250 men, primor.”

“You hear that, son?” the centurion said, turning to the optio. “That’s what? Around sixty percent wiped out in one cohort alone? It’s worse than I thought.”

“Yes, Primus Pilus,” replied the junior officer beside him, because there was no other answer except silence, and silence wasn’t an option when the primipilus asked a direct question.

The old centurion returned his attention to Rufinius. “I see you carry a lot of dried blood on your tunic and leg. Is it yours? Are you wounded?”

There had been so much to keep him occupied that Rufinius scarcely had time to consider the holes in his leg and beneath his cuirass, though being reminded of his wounds made them throb painfully. “Nothing of note, primor.”

“Glad to hear it. Now, the reason I’m here … I’ve heard it told that you were the first to strip the enemy of his armor and use it for the protection of your men.”

“I don’t know, primor. Maybe.”

“There it is again – maybe. But you did, in fact, single-handedly defeat a charging cataphract and strip him of his armor?”

“Yes, primor. That’s exactly what he did,” said Dentianus. “I saw him. I was there too.”

The primipilus ignored the legionary.

“So, this idea of yours to put the enemy’s armor to good use … You know it was taken up across the army?”

“No, primor.”

“Well, it was, and because of it you saved the lives of many a good man. I wanted to come here personally to salute you.”

Somewhat dazed, Rufinius watched as Hadrianus – the primus pilus, no less – saluted
him
. The old veteran then offered his hand and Rufinius took the man’s forearm and felt a grip like steel bands clenched around his own.

“Rufinius Alexandricus, I am recommending that you receive the gold torc and a cup.”

Rufinius was stunned. “Th … thank you, primor.”

“And you are pretty handy with a sword, I hear.”

“Optio Tullus Bassus Rufinius is the legion’s Primus Gladius,” Dentianus offered proudly.

The primipilus fixed on the legionary a momentary burst of withering glare for providing him with common knowledge, and then turned a more pleasant countenance back to Rufinius. “Well, the Primus Pilus is honored to inform the First Sword of his legion that he is no longer an optio. Henceforth, Tullus Bassus Rufinius, you are elevated to the rank of centurion, junior grade. You’ll need this …” Centurion Hadrianus produced a helmet he had been carrying, a centurion’s galea with the transverse red horsehair plume, and handed it to Rufinius. “We lost Centurion Marius Pontius today,” he continued, “in the charge to recover the remains of Publius Licinius Crassus. Pontius was a fine legionary, despite his faults. He spoke very highly of you. I believe he would have wanted you to have that.”

Rufinius looked at the galea, feeling dazed. There was a lot of blood on it, some if it sticky. Rufinius breathed heavily. Marius Pontius, gone? That was a blow.

“What is your age, Alexandricus?”

“Twenty-five years, primor.”

“Young for a centurion. Your father would be proud.”

“Primor.”

Hadrianus looked him up and down again. “Centurion Tullus Bassius Rufinius. You will take the place of Marius Pontius in this century, on the far left of the first line,” he said officially and then saluted him again. “We need good men to lead the army and you are, I am reliably informed, a good man. The enemy will return tomorrow and we must be ready for them. Also, I recommend Optio Marcus Fulvius Fabianus here as your second in command.” He turned to Fabianus and snapped, “Shave your beard, Optio. We are not barbarians.” Centurion Hadrianus then clapped Rufinius on the shoulder and said, “Congratulations, Centurion Rufinius Alexandricus,” before striding away into the night.

“Congratulations, Centurion,” Fabianus echoed sternly, saluting his superior in the correct manner. “Where’s your tesserarius, primor?”

Rufinius looked down on the twisted corpse by his feet.

“Did I hear it right?” Dentianus asked. “Did that cunnus just say we’re going to stand around here like rent boys waiting for tomorrow to be fucked in the ass by those Parthian cocks all over again?”

*

Behind his tent, under the stars, Proconsul Crassus laid himself face down on the sand, covered his head with his sagum and sobbed beneath it. His beautiful son … The image of Publius’s head spiked on a lance … it was tattooed on his eyeballs. Even when he clamped his lids down tight, the image remained, the head bobbing up and down on the lance with the motion of the horse, his lips and hair moving as if still alive. Crassus could not stop the tears flowing. All the promise that he held for his son had vanished. All the triumphs, gone … All the victories that would never be …

Crassus had other sons but none like Publius, a conqueror and almost a legate by the age of thirty. He was an Alexander. Publius – handsome, a favorite with women and adored by his men … Gone. Publius had all that was good in him, Crassus believed, and none of the bad. “Publius, Publius …” he wailed. Over a thousand legionaries had charged the enemy in an attempt to recover his head. All were wiped out, right in front of him. But no, Crassus told himself, that simply could not be possible. Perhaps it was all a dream. Perhaps his son was still alive and the army intact. Perhaps the catastrophe was merely a vision of what
might
transpire if he continued to ignore the auguries, as he had done to date, all of which foretold of disaster. If so, Crassus told himself, when he woke he would retreat immediately and –

“Proconsul …”

Crassus lay still.

“Marcus Licinius Crassus …”

Crassus knew that voice – Legate Cassius Longinus. “Go away,” he said. “Leave me.”

“Primor, we must talk. There are decisions that must be made. What are we to do?”

“Publius …” he moaned.

“I summoned all the legates, tribunes, prefects and senior centurions to a council of war. We are all of one mind. We must retreat, primor.”

“Retreat?”

“We are an army of infantrymen fighting an army we cannot engage with, but whose weapons can reach us with murderous impunity. We cannot close with them and use sword and spear and by consequence we cannot win. Slaughter is all that awaits us if we refuse to move. And moving forward is no longer a way open to us …”

“Go away,” Crassus wailed.

“Primor, I implore you. Let us retreat to the river, under the cover of darkness, replenish our water supplies and let the desert sands beyond provide us with cover. We crossed them once; we can cross them again. If we leave now, we can fight the Parthians another day. Bring the wrath of Rome down on them from the north, from the mountains of Armenia where their arrows will have far less sky in which to rain down on us and wreak their havoc.”

“Publius … Publius …” cried Crassus as if he’d heard nothing, lost in grief, his head still wrapped in his sagum.

Legate Cassiuss Longinus kneeled beside the proconsul and brought the man up onto his knees. He removed the cloak from his face and looked into the eyes of a broken old man. “Primor, I have a horse for you. The council awaits your judgement.”

Most of the burial work completed, Rufinius and Dentianus made their way back to the century’s place in the encampment. “What about Mena and Popixia?” Dentianus asked, concerned about their slaves.

“In the rush to attack the Parthians the baggage got left behind with most of the Sixth and Seventh Legions,” Rufinius answered.

“Then I don’t like their chances.”

Rufinius didn’t like them either.

“So we got nothing – no food, not much water.”

“Other than what we can scrounge,” Rufinius reminded him.

“You mean
I
can scrounge?”

Rufinius shrugged. “Dentianus, if your prowess with the sword matched the lightness of your fingers, you would be Primus Gladius of the entire army.”

They passed a number of wounded men warming themselves by low fires fueled by the enemy’s spent arrow shafts. In the flickering light, Rufinius saw a legionary bandaging the raw hole in a man’s gut with dirty rags, the air thick with the smell of blood, shit, and vomit, the sounds of buzzing flies and men in pain.

A man opened his remaining eye and saw Rufinius and Dentianus picking their way through the men. “Centurion … Centurion …” he called out weakly, his voice cracked and dry. “Are we retreating?”

The legionary who was trying to make the man comfortable joined in. “Everyone says we’re going to leave, primor. Are we getting out of Hades, is that what’s going to happen? What are those cunni in control of our fates saying?”

“He is lucky,” said another centurion with his leg in a bloody splint, nodding at Rufinius. “He is wounded but he can still march.”

Before Rufinius could pass along what he knew, which was nothing certain, another wounded legionary lying on his military sagum raised himself up on an elbow. “Are you going to leave us? You’re going to leave us, aren’t you? Don’t leave us behind. I can walk, you watch me.” The man tried to get up and white bone shifted in the ugly wound in his thigh and he collapsed to the ground with a shriek that raised the hair on the back of Rufinius’s neck.

The legionary with the gut wound said, “If you leave us, Centurion, you know what will happen to us.”

“If we’re retreating, that’s news to me,” Rufinius told them.

A legionary just staring into the fire said, “If we’re not leaving, they’ll make us fight in the morning. But how do we fight their ass-fucking arrows?”

Rufinius had no answers. In truth he’d avoided asking himself these very questions. Their situation was bad, that was plain. They’d lost the day’s fight and were overburdened with wounded. If the army retreated, those who couldn’t walk would, of necessity, be left behind. In that eventuality, one of two fates would then befall them. The enemy would kill them where they lay or they’d be taken prisoner and sold as slaves, providing they survived their wounds. But if the generals decided to stay and fight, how would tomorrow’s battle differ from today’s? Those who were not dead or wounded would soon be so if the Parthians had yet more arrows. When you won, you won it all. And when you lost, well, that was disaster. Rufinius was about to say, “We’ll find out soon enough,” when a clean-shaven Fabianus hobbled up to him and saluted.

“Centurion, I have come with orders from Hadrianus. A council of senior officers has met with Proconsul Crassus. The army retreats to a Roman garrisoned town to the northwest. We are to make preparations to depart immediately. There will be no orders conveyed by the cornicens, primor. We are to leave silently.”

“Like thieves,” Dentianus summarized.

“Are we marching?” asked one of the wounded men nearby who had overheard the exchange.

“Shit,” said someone. “The army leaves.”

“I told you,” said another.

“They’re cunni, the lot of them,” a third added. The wounded men on the ground, the ones who were conscious, tried to move, and the air suddenly filled with the buzzing of disturbed flies.

“Help me up, help me up,” begged the man with the gut wound. “I can walk.” The legionary who dressed his wound, reluctantly dragged him to his feet, but then black blood gushed from the bandaged rent in the man’s abdomen and he slumped to the ground, eyes open, dead.

“There’s nothing to be done here, primor,” Dentianus whispered.

Rufinius knew he was right. “C’mon,” he said and they left the wounded men to their fate and hurried with Optio Fabianus back to their century. But the camp was overflowing with wounded and as news of the army’s movement swept the ranks, a great cry of anguish and fear rose into the night sky louder than any cornicens.

*

With no food to eat, tents to repack, slaves to haggle with or baggage trains to manage, it took the legions no time at all to assemble and depart. And so, with the sun still many hours below the horizon and the bright silver starlight turning the legions into an army of ghosts, the army left the encampment’s gate and marched in a number of directions across the desert to confuse pursuit, but slow enough so that stragglers and the wounded could keep up.

Rufinius took his place as centurion on the far right of the front row in the century. Behind him marched just forty-two legionaries, most of whom were, like him, nursing wounds of varying severity. Left behind to rot on the desert sands where they fell were thirty-eight of their comrades, the reason for the sullen silence that hung like a poisonous cloud over the ranks.

*

First light came to the desert, illuminating a shattered army of men longing to be anywhere but under the approaching sun. The legions’ strength had been gutted, left behind on the sandy plain along with dreams of conquest and booty. Few seemed to embody the magnitude of this loss more than Proconsul Crassus, who rode on his horse like he himself had been mortally wounded, his back hunched, his muscles unable to match the rhythm of the plodding horse beneath him, his sagum worn over his head like an old woman’s shawl. Occasionally he could be heard to lament, “Publius …” before settling into a silence as if whatever life animated his body had departed.

Cassius Longinus, riding beside the proconsul, kept an eye on him. The disaster of this campaign was Crassus’s, but how could his own reputation avoid being tainted by it? They’d been dealt a defeat by an army less than a quarter the size of their own, purely because the proconsul had refused to listen to wise council – and from many quarters. Had Crassus heeded the Armenian King Artavastes’s advice to approach from the north, they would have received shelter from the mountains, limiting the effectiveness of the Parthian horse archers, and had the use of 30,000 Armenian cavalry with which to augment their own. Had they traveled south along the Euphrates River, they could have landed the army more or less intact in the heart of Babylon itself. In both instances, the legions would’ve been spared the debilitating march across this wind and sand-blown cauldron. And, of course, on this cauldron, the army could and should have been deployed to limit the enemy’s ability to concentrate its fire, arrayed in extended line with the river at its back to avoid being surrounded. But Crassus would not listen to King Artavastes, nor would he listen to his own senior legate – he, Cassius Longinus. Instead he had dismissed all caution – except for that which agreed with his own determination – and now look at the result. A speech would have to be delivered to the senate, and part way through constructing it in his head it dawned on Cassius Longinus that much of the senate was largely in awe of Crassus’s chief supporter, Gaius Julius Caesar, a man not unlike Marcus Licinius Crassus in that he was driven by boundless ambition. Speaking against Crassus would surely set him at odds with Caesar, conqueror of Gallia and subjugator of the Germanic tribes …

The legate shook his head in a silent lament over the poor timing of this calamitous campaign. Unless things had changed back home, he would be forced to bite his tongue and Rome would be denied the truth. If history remembered Cassius Longinus, at all, he told himself, it would be as the co-architect of one of the biggest and most ignominious defeats in the Republic’s long and glorious history.

A tribune rode out of the dust and reined in his horse nearby. “Legate, riders from the northwest.”

“How many?”

“A couple of hundred, primor. It’s difficult to see, but they appear to be carrying standards. I think they’re legionaries.”

Cassius Longinus left the proconsul’s side and rode with a detachment of his personal guards to meet the approaching horsemen. They hadn’t ridden far when the legate could see that, yes, the approaching riders were indeed Roman. As they approached, the two small forces slowed to a trot.

“Greetings. I am Governor Antonius Coponius, garrison commander of the Roman frontier town of Carrhae,” the officer leading the unit announced when he and Cassius Longinus stopped opposite each other in a cloud of dust.

The legate unwound the sagum from his face, which he used to keep the swirling grit from his lungs, and replied, “I am Senior Legate Gaius Cassius Longinus, serving under Proconsul of Syria, Marcus Licinius Crassus.”

“Your speculatores riding ahead warned us of your arrival, which is why we’ve ridden to meet you. We hear there has been a great battle.” The governor gestured at one of his men, who rode forward with wineskins containing water and handed them over to the legate and his men. “The gates of Carrhae are open and ready to welcome the legions. The Senate and the People of Rome.”

“The Senate and the People of Rome,” Cassius Longinus repeated. He took a mouthful to clear his mouth and spat it on the ground. He then drank gratefully and felt relief flow through his body. Wiping his sunburned lips with the back of a filthy hand, he replied formally, “On behalf of Proconsul Crassus, I welcome your hospitality and accept it gratefully.”

*

Spāhbed Surenas, Volodates, and a small detachment of 300 horse archers rode ahead of the main body to inspect the deserted Roman camp. Once at the rampart, the sheer size of the camp and its fortifications, hurriedly constructed, could not fail to impress Surenas.

“The army that held these fortifications was gigantic,” said Volodates beneath a towering rampart, in awe of the scale of it.

And that must have made the defeat all the more humiliating to this Crassus, Surenas surmised. And yet, despite the heavy toll inflicted on the Romans, its officers still had the presence of mind, and the determination, to dig these fortifications around their entire position. Surenas could not help but be impressed. If men like this set their teeth into Parthia, they would never let it go.

Surenas rode ahead of his men before coming eventually upon the main gate. Scouts had already informed him that the enemy had departed, the heavily churned sand leading from the gate in many directions, the occasional bird-covered corpse of a fallen legionary dotting the disturbed sand, signposting the various routes of abandonment.

Surenas brought his horse slowly through the entrance and stopped. And then, from the shadows, two javelins came hurtling toward him. One glanced off his golden armor; the other missed its mark as the spāhbed’s horse shied away. His bodyguards surged forward and formed a protective ring around their lord. Through them, Surenas saw a group of around thirty men. From their bloodied state, all appeared wounded and though none seemed able to walk without support, all were defiantly brandishing their swords. Sounds began to rise beyond them, from the field of discarded shields and spent arrows. There were many men left behind, stricken in some way by wounds or sickness and unable to join the fleeing mass of their comrades. Surenas raised his arm, made a gesture and 2,000 horse archers thundered through gate and began the grisly work the wounded Romans had expected.

Later, with the voices of these Romans silenced and the camp secured, Surenas stopped beneath a gold-tasseled banner with the symbol of a knot depicted on it. The condition of the tents beyond the banner indicated that these were the premises of the army’s leader – Crassus.

“The way ahead is clear, Lord,” Volodates assured Surenas as the spāhbed dismounted.

Soon the Parthian commander-in-chief found himself inside a cavernous tent of many riches – golden candelabras, golden plates, cups and water jugs emblazoned with the Zoroastrian sun; a gold inlaid table and matching chairs; the bust of a powerful man so perfect in its execution that it seemed real enough to draw breath; exquisite wall hangings and rugs; the magnificent pelt of an enormous lion and other treasures. The horde of so much wealth looted, for the most part from Parthian cities, angered Surenas. “Volodates, take my fastest horses. Divide your men and follow the trails left by the Romans. Send word when you have found their army. My archers and I will not be far behind.”

“There is a town within a day’s march,” Volodates replied. “It is garrisoned by Romans – the town of Carrhae.”

“You will go there personally. If you find Crassus, this is what you shall tell him …”