Thunder of the Gods (31 page)

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

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

‘Your men are battle hardened?’

The Roman shook his head.

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

The Parthian nodded.

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

Marcus frowned.

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

Gurgen grinned at him wolfishly.

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

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

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

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

The big man shrugged.

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

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

Marcus nodded.

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

Gurgen nodded, smoothing his heavy moustache.

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

The Roman shrugged in his turn.

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

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

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

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

‘Ready …’

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

‘Ready …’

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

‘Front rank – throw!’

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

‘Second rank – throw!’

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

‘Swords!
’

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

‘Fuck me!’

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

‘Tungrians! Advance!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gurgen spat on the ground and turned away in disgust.

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

‘Your men were poorly used.’

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

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

He turned to face Marcus.

‘You have taken prisoners.’

The Roman nodded.

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

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

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

Marcus raised a wry eyebrow.

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

‘The usual suspects.’

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

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

Dubnus nodded grimly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What were your casualties this time?’

The big man pulled a tablet from his belt pouch.

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

‘Officers?

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

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

Dubnus looked at him for a moment.

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

His friend shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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