Thunder of the Gods (37 page)

‘We’re being fucked! Air your iron, Tribune, and stay close to me!
You!
’

He pointed to his trumpeter.

‘Sound the stand to!’

The first notes of the summons to action broke the camp’s silence with the power of a thunderclap, and before the first echoes had died away the legion was struggling to its collective feet, soldiers shrugging off their blankets and reflexively reaching for their weapons.

‘Stand to! Prepare to defend the camp!’

The closest centurions heard Julius’s bellowed command and repeated it in their own parade-ground roars, each successive cohort springing into action as the order rippled across the camp’s expanse. Rushing forward to the walls, each century took its place in the wall of iron that was rapidly building behind the earth wall, soldiers swiftly arraying themselves into solid ranks despite the near darkness and settling into place as they had practised so many times before with a solid line of shields facing out into the darkness and another held overhead to protect against lofted arrows, their glinting swords held ready to fight. Julius looked about him, pride in the speed of his command’s response tempered by a nagging sense that something was not as it should be.

‘No arrows.’

Varus looked at him uncertainly.

‘No arrows, First Spear? Isn’t that a good thing?’

The Tungrian shook his head.

‘No arrows, no attack.’

‘And that’s a
bad
thing?’

‘They’re not attacking. They managed to fool the sentries, which means they must have looked familiar, but having made their opening there’s no follow-up.’

Understanding hit the two men simultaneously, and Varus gasped at the audacity of the Parthian plan.

‘The prisoners!’

‘Fuck the prisoners! They’re after the king!’

The first spear spun, shouting an order at the closest centurion.

‘You! With me, and bring your men!’

The infiltrators broke on the men guarding the prisoners in a wave of iron and muscle, their captured armour buying them precious time while the men who stood in their path wasted their chances to defend themselves, fooled by the sight of Romans running towards them. Drawing their swords at the last possible moment, the dozen-strong raiding party tore into the guards with the abandoned ferocity of men who knew that they were already dead. At the cost of four of their number, they left ten men dead and dying on the thin grass, hurdling the fallen with desperate haste.

‘Intruders! Stand and fight!’

Marcus, standing by Osroes with an ear cocked for the sounds of battle from the camp’s perimeter, started as he heard the screams and shouts of closer combat. Realising what was happening, he pulled the dagger from his belt and handed it to Gurgen, who stared back at him in amazement.

‘Free your warriors.’

Marcus waved his good hand to indicate the men about them, then turned away, drawing the gladius from his left hip.

‘And be ready to defend your king. This is a suicide mission, and it can only have one purpose.’

Stalking forward with the sword held low, he watched as the fast-moving attackers stormed into the tent party of legionaries who stood between them and their quarry. Alerted, and with their blades drawn and shields set, the Romans advanced to meet them in a solid line, but from the moment that the two forces clashed it was evident that the fight was one-sided. While the legionaries fought in the way they had been drilled for years, their attackers, each of them bigger and better trained than the soldiers, and with the joy of battle surging in their veins, gave battle with unmatchable speed and purpose. Hacking their way into the guards without regard for their own danger, they wrought swirling, lethal chaos, killing two of the defenders for each one of them that fell.

As the last few men under his command fought for their lives, their centurion took one of the enemy down with a perfect shield punch and brutal sword stroke, disembowelling the Parthian despite his borrowed plate armour, then died in his turn with a sword blade rammed through his neck. The last two men turned to run, falling to the attackers’ swords as those of the raiding party still on their feet stormed through them, and came face-to-face with the gathered prisoners. Freed by Gurgen with swift strokes of the dagger Marcus had thrust upon him, they had been marshalled into a line that stood squarely in the path to the tent within which Osroes lay. Their leader limped forward, his sword arm red with the blood of the legionaries he had killed, his right leg a bloody ruin barely strong enough to keep him erect.

‘The king! Where is the king?!’

The newly freed men looked at the noble in silence, only Gurgen having the authority to challenge him.

‘Do you come to free him, or to kill him?’

Another man took a step forward, raising his gore-slathered blade.

‘They’ll kill him anyway, once they reach Nisibis! Stand aside!’

Gurgen shook his head, raising a hand.

‘They’ve promised to free us all! The king needs—’

Osroes could be seen in the tent’s doorway behind his protector, and the raiding party’s leader looked down his sword at the red-headed warrior, his face white with blood loss and fury.

‘I haven’t sold my life this night to buy your lies, Gurgen! Get out of my path, the king must die!’

Gurgen pointed at the would-be assassins, bellowing an order at the freed prisoners.

‘Defend the king!’

They stormed forward, the bravest of them dying on their amazed countrymen’s swords before the remainder overwhelmed the infiltrators in a flurry of fists and boots. Marcus turned away, a flicker of motion at the edge of his vision the only warning he got before the last of them was upon him. The man must have lagged behind, waiting for the opportunity to strike in case the assassins lacked the nerve to carry through their grisly task. Raising his sword the Roman barely managed to parry the first blow, and was still turning back to face the threat when a swift fist to the face staggered him for an instant, long enough for the assailant to hook his ankle and send him sprawling and momentarily unfocused, laying him wide open to the death stroke.

He tensed, knowing that his stunned wits were no match for the man looming over him with a shining bar of razor-sharp metal in his hand, but the attacker was already past him with the sword raised, ready to kill and closing in on Osroes with clear intent. As the assassin ran the last few steps, drawing the blade back to strike, a legion-issue javelin hit him squarely between the shoulder blades, dropping him onto his knees with a foot of iron protruding from his chest.

Pulled backwards by the weight of the spear’s wooden shaft he struggled forward a step, inching closer to the king, and Marcus rolled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his wounded arm to put the spatha’s blade at his throat. Shaking his head to regain his sense, he lifted the sword’s point, forcing the dying man back from his intended victim.

‘Give it up. You’re a dead man, with nothing left but go to your grave with dignity.’

The assassin’s head turned with painful slowness until he could see the Roman standing over him. Blood was running down the spear’s shaft and pooling at the base.

‘Should have … killed you.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘I didn’t throw the spear. He did.’

Gurgen stepped forward.

‘No one kills my king, not while I have the breath to resist.’

He stared at the stricken killer.

‘I know you. You’re Narsai’s man.’

The killer shrugged.

‘Tell them … how close … I came …’

He snatched at Marcus’s blade with quivering fingers, forcing it into his throat with a lunge that cut his palms to the bone and ripped through the veins in his neck. Bubbling an inaudible curse he sagged back onto the spear, ruined hands falling from the blade to hang on either side.

‘That was a good throw.’

The bidaxs shrugged.

‘I didn’t see anyone else in a position to stop him. And there’s your proof – Narsai wanted the king dead so that he could kill you all.’

‘
Us
all.’

They turned to find Julius and Scaurus behind them, both men holding their swords ready to use, and the legatus strolled forward with a grimace at the assassin’s corpse.

‘We’ll have the prisoners bound again shall we, First Spear? And I’d be altogether happier if that dagger you’re holding was to find its way back into the tribune’s sheath.’

Gurgen handed the weapon back to Marcus and held out his hands for the rope.

‘Not you. Tribune Corvus here needs someone to help with the king, and you’ve certainly proven your dedication to the man. We march at dawn.’

The enemy horse archers were waiting when the legion broke camp in the morning, and Julius stared at them with a grim expression as his soldiers prepared for the day’s march.

‘So now we get to find out just how much power Narsai has over Osroes’ nobles. If they’re willing to sacrifice their king, they’ll start loosing arrows at us the moment we’re out of camp.’

Scaurus cocked an eyebrow at the king.

‘What do you think, Your Highness? Do your nobles love you enough to resist Narsai’s pressure?’

Osroes shook his head, still perpetually weary.

‘Of course not. I’ve been their king for little more than two years, and the previous ruler was a much loved man. He may have died in his bed peacefully enough, but I suspect that his death was too well timed for some of them to accept as being without some other cause.’

‘And everyone loves the idea of a conspiracy, especially where the possibility of what they fear holds some credibility.’

‘Indeed. So in this case, Legatus, there are three factors in play.’

Scaurus frowned.

‘Three? I can see the balance between their fear of what Narsai might do to them if they don’t obey him and attack today, set against their fear of what your father might do to them if they do – what’s the third factor in play?’

The king smiled tiredly.

‘It isn’t. Yet.’

Having tarried over his breakfast, calculating the likelihood of swaying the Median nobles to his side, Narsai rode through his army towards the Roman camp to be greeted by an unexpected sight when he reached the host’s front ranks. His momentary look of bemusement darkened to one of anger as he realised who it was that the knot of armoured cavalry men were gathered around fifty paces from the army’s ranks, a figure at once familiar by his rich blue tunic and proud stance.

‘It’s the king’s bidaxs, Your Highness.’

Kicking his horse forward, the king cantered across the gap between his army and the small group of nobles, taking in at a glance which of the Median nobles had ridden forward to meet Osroes’ man. A dozen or so faces turned to regard him as he approached, none of them kindly, several of them hostile. He noted the latter, half promising himself to have the more powerful of them meet with accidents before he remembered that his assassin had failed to return from the Roman camp.

‘I warn you, my lords, you’d do as well not to listen to this man. His master has had his wits bludgeoned from his skull by the Romans, and this one wants nothing more than to pretend that the problem does not exist.’

Gurgen shook his head in disgust.

‘I will repeat myself for those of you who may be hard of hearing, or who lack the old-fashioned virtue to arrive on the field of battle in a timely manner. Your king sends you his regards, and his regrets that he is unable to greet you in person. He wishes you to know that he is of sound mind, if still a little dazed from the way in which he was unhorsed in the battle during which he was taken. And he expressed his disappointment that you should have decided to seek his death, and sent the cream of our Median army into the Roman camp last night with orders to find and kill their own king.’

The reason for their hostility was at once apparent, and Narsai shook his head in a manner he hoped would emphatically give the lie to the bodyguard’s words.

‘I know of no such attempt on the king’s life. If our warriors, being realists in all things, decided to take matters into their own hands, I can only applaud their determination to bring this enemy to—’

‘They’re all dead. They fought their way to the king’s tent with the greatest of bravery and skill at arms, but in the end their sacrifice was without fruit. I speared the last of them myself, as he stood before my king with a drawn sword.’

Narsai swelled with genuine rage.

‘You prevented your own people from removing a hostage from Roman hands!’

Gurgen shook his head, his lip curling.

‘I killed an assassin who threatened the man to whom I have sworn lifelong loyalty, nothing more. And not all of the men who sought their king’s life were pure in their intentions.’

He emptied the bag onto the rough grass, watching Narsai’s face as the head of his killer rolled to a halt on the sandy ground, the dead man’s eyes staring sightlessly up at him.

‘You see this king’s face when confronted with the head of his tame murderer, my lords? You see him recognise his man? A dozen of your finest fought their way to the king’s side last night, determined to kill him only as a last resort, when they realised that they were surrounded. We restrained them with our empty hands, my lords, for love of our brothers and their ideal of their sacrifice, and several of my fellow captives paid for that fealty with their lives. But this man, this
scorpion
, lurked in the shadows behind them and sought to bring a dishonourable death to
your
king!’

Narsai snarled at him, turning his horse away.

‘It was the only way I could see to prevent this legion from escaping our vengeance for the men we lost, back there on that bloody hillside! And I still see it as the only answer! If you fools lack the guts, then I will have to show you how it’s done with my own archers!’

Gurgen smiled at his back, looking to the men gathered around him.

‘A choice presents itself, my brothers.’

Scaurus watched the small group of nobles intently, waiting until Gurgen turned away and strode back towards the Roman camp, proudly heedless of the risk that he might find an arrow between his shoulder blades at any moment.