Thunder of the Gods (2 page)

‘Horsemen! More horsemen than I can count!’

The first spear nodded slowly, as if deliberately refusing to allow himself to be infected by the panic that was clearly gripping the man before him.

‘What sort of horsemen?’

The scout gestured again, looking back over his shoulder as if he expected whatever it was he’d seen to come over the horizon at any moment.

‘Archers. Many archers. And
cataphracti
…’

Varus started at the word, drummed into him years before by his Greek tutor. One of the riders waiting behind him muttered something unintelligible in their own language, clearly keen to be gone, and the scout gestured angrily for silence without turning from the officers, bowing to the centurion before speaking again. His voice was quiet, and to Varus’s ears carried the solemnity of a funeral orator.

‘First Spear, you are a good man. I have enjoyed marching with you, and I will pray to my god for you.’

The centurion reached out a hand, gripping the other man’s arm as he turned to remount.

‘And where do you think
you’re
fucking going?’

The scout looked down at the hand, then raised his gaze to the Roman’s face.

‘To stay here is to
die
here, Centurion. I choose to live. And you need word of this to reach the city of the bridge, no?’

The Roman released his grip, nodding slowly at the scout’s logic.

‘How many
cataphracti
? Could they be local troops or some sort of bandit gang?’

The scout shook his head quickly.

‘So many armoured men, the land shines like polished silver. These are not bandits. There are too many of them.’

He leapt into his horse’s saddle, threw the two men a hasty salute and led his compatriots away at a fast trot.

‘You’re letting them go, First Spear?’

The older man nodded, grinning grimly at Varus’s bemusement.

‘It was either that or I’d have had to order them killed. And he’s right. If these horsemen are what he believes them to be, then the legion at Zeugma needs to know that the treacherous bastards have invaded Osrhoene. If we’re lucky, they’ll have seen our scouts and decided not to pick a fight today. After all, it’s been a long time since the Parthians were any real threat to the frontier—’

A chorus of shouts from the front of the column gave the lie to his hopes, and Varus straightened his body in the saddle to gaze out to the east, over the heads of the stationary column of soldiers, as a solid mass of cavalry began to rise into view from a fold in the landscape. He shook his head in disbelief as the Parthian army continued to emerge into view, hundreds upon hundreds of horsemen with a mass of armoured warriors at their core, whose polished armour made the sun’s reflections from the iron plates almost painful.

‘What can you see lad?’

The younger man was silent for a moment more, until a tap on the shoulder from the centurion’s stick wrenched his attention from the oncoming enemy.

‘It’s like something out of the history books …’

He glanced down at the centurion apologetically.

‘Sorry First Spear, just not what I was expecting to see when I climbed out from under my blanket this morning. We seem to be standing in the way of several thousand rather unfriendly looking cavalry …’

The centurion was already running for the column’s head with his trumpeter hot on his heels, and after a moment’s consideration of the options, the young tribune dismounted, handing the horse’s reins to a soldier, and ran after him.

Stopping alongside the foremost century, the first spear looked out across the mile of flat, dusty ground that lay between his men and a thick line of horsemen who were trotting their mounts towards the Romans.

‘Form square! Deploy to the left on me!
Double time!
’

He pulled the tribune to one side as the leading century’s men trotted out to the left of the road, leading the cohort’s change of formation from the column of march to a hollow square, nodding in quiet satisfaction as the manoeuvre’s near faultless execution.

‘See that? There are enough horsemen out there to kill the lot of us half a dozen times over, but I give these lads a bit of drill to perform, something they’ve practised a thousand times, and they jump to it like veterans.’

His voice was suddenly gruff, and Varus realised that the older man’s eyes were shining with barely suppressed emotion as he stared at the advancing cavalry, speaking without taking his eyes off the oncoming threat.

‘And now I need you to do something for me that will stick in your throat. Get back on your horse, Tribune, and ride for Zeugma as if your life depended on it!’

He turned to face his superior, raising a hand to forestall the protest that was on the tribune’s lips, his face twisting with anger that set the younger man back an involuntary half pace.

‘No!
You may be my superior, but you will fucking well do what you’re told by a subordinate just this
one
time!’

Shaking his head, he waved his vine stick at the line of soldiers forming behind him.

‘These men and me, we’ve no choice in the matter. If the Parthians have decided that this is our day to fight for our lives, well then that’s just our luck. We can’t outrun them, and we don’t have the weapons to give them back the pain they’ll start heaping on us soon enough. But there’s no reason for you to go throwing your life away alongside us.’

Varus opened his mouth to protest, but the centurion shook his head sadly, his expression choking off the younger man’s retort.

‘You know the worst thing about this for me? It ain’t dying, if it’s my day to die. Every man dies, young ’un,
every
man. Rich or poor, we’re all dust on the wind sooner or later. It’s just a question of when, and more importantly
how
. And it ain’t just
how
we die that matters, but how we’re
seen
to die. It’s whether my brother officers shake their heads in disgust at the loss of a good cohort …’

His voice hardened.

‘Or if they can nod with pride when they hear how many of these cock-sucking eastern cunts we took with us!’

He pointed back down the road at the man holding onto Varus’s horse.

‘So, Tribune, in a moment you’re going to get back on that beast and ride away, far enough that you can see what happens here without getting an arrow stuck through you. Because the only way we get to die with some self-respect is if you watch us fight it out, right to the end, and then you take the story back to the legion. If you want to throw your life away after that, then by all means take the first chance you get, but
not
before you’ve given these men the reputation they’ll be earning once those bow-waving tosspots get their shit in a pile and come for us.’

He stared wordlessly at the young officer, holding eye contact until Varus dropped his gaze and looked at his boots for a moment. When he looked up again the centurion was smiling at him, his face split in a taut, humourless grin.

‘I know. This don’t feel
honourable
to you, does it? Like I say, you’ll have plenty more opportunities to die gloriously, but me and these men – this is our only chance. And you won’t take that from us, not a decent man like you.’

The tribune nodded reluctantly, holding out a hand, but the older man wrapped an arm around him, slapping him on the back.

‘It’s not like I’m at any risk of being demoted for overfamiliar behaviour to a senior officer, is it? Go well, young ’un, and choose your time for glory carefully, eh? Don’t go sending yourself to meet Hades too quickly; make sure you make an exit that’ll make men nod their heads when they hear your name. Now, shall we get these apes into the mood for a fight?’

He turned away with a wink, walking into the square with the tribune at his heels as the last man marched into position and closed the formation.

‘Sixth Cohort, face inward!
’

The soldiers pivoted to look into the space enclosed by their ranks, and the centurion took a deep breath before speaking again. ‘You
lucky
bastards! No bugger on this frontier’s seen any action for thirty years, and now the gods have seen fit to grant us the honour, the sheer fucking privilege of getting the chance to show these Parthian animals the way that
real
men fight. And better than that, the tribune here is going to watch us make a stand against them, and take an accurate account back to the rest of the legion. Does any man here want him to have to tell them that the Sixth Cohort lacked the balls to give a decent account of itself?’

One of the soldiers in his own first century raised a hand and opened his mouth as if to speak, but the stupid grin plastered across his face raised a titter across the formation, and broke the tension in an instant. The first spear raised a knowing eyebrow, his lips twitching in a slight smile even as he raised his vine stick in admonishment.

‘Yes, there’s always one!’

His expression hardened.

‘I won’t lie to you lads, this is a tough spot. Worse than tough, this is shit so deep that we’re already up to our nuts in it. We either fight these arse punchers to a standstill here and now, or else we go to meet our gods, either with dignity or with our pride in tatters.’

He looked around at them, swelling his chest out and raising his head defiantly.

‘And if it comes to dying, I know which way
I’m
going! I’ll face whatever’s coming to me and meet it head on. After all, we know what they do to their prisoners, don’t we?’

He looked about him in silence for a moment, then bellowed out a challenge.

‘So, are we going to face these fuckers like men?!’

The soldiers roared back at him, waving their spears and shields. He nodded to the tribune, slapping the younger man on the shoulder.

‘Good enough. Right then, get yourself away, Tribune, before the trap closes on you as well as us.’

Varus nodded mutely, saluting the centurion and then turning away, pushing his way through the soldiers and hurrying to the mare. Mounting, he looked over the square to find that the Parthian archers had reined in their horses just outside bow shot of the Romans, pausing to order their ranks and ready themselves for the battle. The cohort was still turned inward, their attention fixed on the first spear as he paced around inside the square, exhorting his men to sell their lives dearly. The tribune shook his head, raising a hand to his face to wipe away the tears trickling down his cheeks, then turned the horse to the west and spurred it away at a canter, back down the road that led past Osrhoene’s capital Edessa, and on towards the legion fortress at Zeugma. Reaching a rise in the road he reined the mare in, turning in the saddle to look back at the battle that was unfolding across the arid plain. The legionaries had turned to face their enemy, their shields raised in defence against the steady rain of arrows that the horse archers were now dropping into their ranks, each man trotting his mount forward, loosing a shot and then reversing his course to ride back a few dozen paces while another archer took his turn. A score and more dead and wounded soldiers had already been dragged into the shelter of the square’s raised shields, struck by arrows that had found the inevitable gaps in their defences, or whose shields had failed to stop the plummeting missiles.

His gaze shifted back across the plain behind the bowmen, to where a force of armoured horsemen gleaming with the sun’s reflected light stood beside horses bearing coats of the same shining metal scales, patiently waiting while the Romans stood beneath the iron rain that was slowly, inevitably, picking apart their formation. The time would come, he knew, when the defenders would be too weak to resist the final killing blow that would fall upon them from behind the archers. Horns would sound, and the bowmen would ride away to either side, making room for the
cataphracts
to sweep into the attack. He briefly considered riding away, at the same time knowing all too well that he could never break the promise he’d made to the centurion. Dry-eyed now, his emotions wrung out by the slaughter playing out before him, he raised a hand to salute the single figure still standing at the cohort’s heart.

‘I won’t turn away from you, First Spear, not unless they chase me away. I’ll watch you and your men die, and I’ll take your story back to the legion. I will find my own path to glory, when the time is right. And I will see you again. In Hades.’

‘You’re confident that’s our landfall, Navarchus?’

The hard-faced offquestion with a look of disbelief and a curt nod, his voice harsh from years of barking commands at his crew before his promotion from ship’s trierarchus to commander of the fleet.

‘Yes, Procurator. Completely confident.’

The equestrian official turned back to the soldier standing alongside him, his grey-flecked hair ruffled by the wind as he raised a hand and pointed out over the ship’s bow.

‘As I said, there it is, Legatus. Seleucia.’

Legatus Gaius Rutilius Scaurus stared out over the warship’s prow as it sliced through the ocean under the urging of the massive vessel’s banked oars, looking past the massive bolt thrower that dominated the vessel’s bow, raising a hand to shield his grey eyes from the winter sun’s glare. A line of mountains was just visible on the eastern horizon, seemingly rising from the sea to block their course, their bases almost invisible in the sea’s haze.

‘The gateway to the east. Well done, Cassius Ravilla, you and your men have performed your task admirably, given the circumstances.’

The fleet’s navarchus turned his bearded frown from procurator to legatus for a moment, then shook his head and walked slowly away from the two men, his face taking on the look of a man hunting for someone on whom to exercise his considerable irritation. The vessel’s trierarchus and his centurion turned and walked away towards the
Victoria
’s stern with the look of men earnestly discussing the finer points of ship handling, prompting a knowing smile from Scaurus.

‘He’s still not the happiest of men, is he?’