Thunder of the Gods (34 page)

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.’