Thunder of the Gods (47 page)

He looked down at Marcus, still frozen in his bow.

‘Rise, Roman. Rise friends of Rome. You …’

He pointed to one of the flanking guardsmen.

‘Assist the giant in rising from his proskynesis, he is clearly disadvantaged by his wound.’

Two guards stepped forward, each taking one of Lugos’s arms and straining to lift him from his prostration.

‘So tell me, Roman, before we speak further of your valour and generosity, why you and this one-eyed barb—’.

Arsaces paused.

‘This one-eyed …
man
… offer me no more than a bow?’

He pointed to Martos, and Marcus smiled.

‘
King
Martos has come to understand the term “barbarian”, Majesty, although he speaks little Greek. He also understands the reason for its use.’

‘Does he speak Latin?’

‘He does, Majesty. His father recognised that a knowledge of our tongue would help him in defending his kingdom.’

Arsaces chuckled.

‘Although clearly it was insufficient to prevent him from becoming your slave?’

Marcus gestured to Martos, who stood impassively.

‘King Martos is no slave, Majesty. His kingdom is allied with Rome, but not occupied by our army. He lost his eye fighting to free his people from the rule of a usurper who killed his wife and children, a battle that he won, with the aid of Rome.’

The king thought for a moment, then dismounted from the horse, handing his magnificent helmet to the herald.

‘Then on this day of gratitude I shall break my vow, once and once only, and speak in a language you all understand.’

He switched seamlessly from Greek to Latin.

‘And since I am greeting a king, I shall offer him the respect that his position demands. You may kiss me, King Martos.’

The Briton froze for a moment, but before the courtiers had chance to take umbrage, Marcus whispered a single word in Brythonic.

‘Cheek.’

Nodding, Martos stepped forward, bowed deeply and then pressed his lips to Arsaces’s cheek. The Parthian nodded, and, stepping away, Martos bowed deeply again before resuming his position beside Marcus.

‘And you, Roman? Am I to receive no more recognition than a bow from you?’

Marcus raised his left hand in an apologetic gesture.

‘Majesty, as a Roman ambassador I can offer you nothing more, for the Roman state cannot countenance any show of submission to a foreign kingdom, no matter how exalted. Nor do I have a gift to offer. Were I armed I would present you with my sword, handed down to me by my father and the possession of a long line of men dedicated to the service of our people, but since you already possess my sword, I have nothing to offer but my undying respect for your long and fruitful reign.’

The king swung to look at the general standing behind him.

‘Such a weapon must surely be honoured. Bagadates, you have it safe?’

The chief priest inclined his head respectfully.

‘I do, Majesty.’

Nodding satisfaction, Arsaces turned back to face Marcus.

‘No gift is required, Roman. You spared my son’s life in battle, and then you risked your life to bring him to me by the fastest possible route in order that he might be treated by my physicians. No man wishes to be so cursed as to bury his own son, even at my age. No gift could have been as precious to me.’

He bowed slightly to the Roman.

‘And your companions. King Martos stood over my son in an arrow storm, I am told by his bidaxs Gurgen, and the giant was wounded ensuring his escape. You too both have my gratitude. And as tokens of my everlasting thanks for his return …’

He waved a hand at the herald, who stepped forward and presented him with a silk bag.

‘Wear these gifts, my friends, and when you look at them be reminded that the King of Kings is for ever in your debt.’

He handed each of them a gold ring. Marcus looked at his, finding it decorated with the image of Arsaces’s head in profile.

‘No man in any kingdom I reign over will be able to deny that you have my favour, for the image on those rings is unmistakably mine. See the mark on my forehead?’

He pointed to his brow, showing them a skin lesion that had been covered by his grey hair.

‘It is the mark of the men who ruled the first Persian empire, the proof that my dynasty can be traced back to Ataxerxes the Long Handed, ruler of an empire so great that it challenged the Greeks themselves.’

Marcus bowed again, and the king smiled.

‘And so you will leave Ctesiphon with my gratitude, Roman. You will be escorted to your ship, and granted free passage back up the river to your own people.’

He paused, his face crinkling into a smile.

‘And have a care, Marcus Tribulus Corvus, should you face my warriors in battle again. Many among my armies will mark you as a man whose death would make their name in an instant.’

He turned and walked from the hall, his courtiers turning to follow him. The last to do so was his son Vologases, whose stare lingered on Marcus for a long moment before he too swivelled on his heel and left the room. The priest Artapanes waited until the hall was empty once more, eyeing the pile of dung with disappointment.

‘As well as could be expected, despite the poor omen and your insistence on refusing to follow the protocol I laid out for you. Come then, let us return to your place of safe keeping. Tomorrow you will return to your ship and leave the city, counting your blessings that you have survived your time in Ctesiphon and vowing never to return.’

‘The walls are breached on both sides of the fortress. Our supplies have been depleted significantly by flood water, and while the mud is still being dug away from the grain stores it’s estimated that we’ve lost over half of the food that was in storage. We have over five hundred dead, and bodies are still being recovered from the filth that chokes the streets and houses with every hour that passes.’

Scaurus paused, looking round at his officers.

‘On the other hand, the fact that we had some brief warning of the flood gave us time to evacuate most of the off-duty soldiers who would probably have drowned. The legion is still effective, and so is Prefect Petronius’s cohort. We can still hold out for two or three months with the grain we have left, most of the bolt throwers are still operative, and Centurion Avidus and his pioneers are supervising temporary defences. Does anyone want to add anything?’

Julius raised a hand.

‘My biggest question is just how long it’s going to take for the mud to dry?’

Scaurus acknowledged the question’s pertinence with a nod.

‘Good question. Centurion Avidus?’

The African raised his vine stick.

‘For those of you who’ve been too busy digging out weapons and food, the river’s back inside its banks now but it left a thick coating of mud behind as it washed away, so thick that when the Parthians tried to attack they weren’t able to get anywhere close to the walls.’

Petronius’s glum face brightened slightly. Predicting that the enemy would attempt to storm the breaches in the walls, he had ordered the bolt throwers to be hurriedly dismantled and rebuilt on either side of the gaps. When the Parthians had attacked, an hour after the waters had receded, their advance had first been slowed and then halted by the mud, horses and soldiers unable to move any faster than they could tear each foot from the clinging sludge. Faced with the onslaught from the Roman artillery, they had retreated back to their siege lines leaving several dozen men spreadeagled in the mud, their blood sprayed across the tan surface where each man had been targeted and brutally killed by the bolt-thrower crews.

‘I walked around on the stuff for a while this afternoon, carefully, mind you. It’s as deep as a man in some places, and I took my armour off first.’

‘And?’

‘It’s hard to say, Legatus. There’s a crust formed on the top, but if I trod down in the wrong place my foot went straight through. It’s not going to get very much drier overnight, so I’d bet that crust won’t be baked strong enough to hold a man’s weight until midday tomorrow, when the sun’s been on it for a few more hours.’

Scaurus looked at his men with a look of calculation.

‘So, not much more than twelve hours from now we might find ourselves under massed infantry attack, because if Narsai can read the signs as clearly as we can, he’ll dismount his entire force and send it in on foot. I’d put the spear men in first with the archers behind them, and then, once they have a foothold, the knights to punch a way into the city and open us for a full-scale assault. And if they get into the city then we’ll struggle to stop them, because there are just too many ways for them to get around any defence we throw up. If we’re going to hold Nisibis, gentlemen, then we have to stop the enemy before they get over what’s left of the walls and into the city. Shall we go and take a look?’

On Avidus’s advice he led them to the northern breach, where the walls had fallen inwards and presented the defenders with a hundred paces of brick-strewn ruin.

‘They’ll put their main attack in here, because once the mud out there is dry their advance to the defences will be nice and easy, unlike the other side where the walls collapsed outwards.’

The African waved a hand at the rubble-strewn street, illuminated by torches held up by citizens of the city who had volunteered to play a part in their own defence, working as fast as they could to tear up the rubble and carry it to the breach in the northern wall. Bricks from the walls’ collapse were strewn five and six deep, mortared in place by the mud to form a vicious obstacle course where a man could advance only with the greatest of care.

‘If you have the brick field on the other side of the southern breach sown with the caltrops we pulled out of the battlefield on the hillside, I can’t see how they’re going to get across it to attack us. Just try for yourself Legatus, and see how long it takes you to pick your way over this lot. One wrong move and you’ll break your ankle, so take it easy sir. We’re having to pull the bricks out with iron bars.’

He led them to the breach, and Scaurus stood and marvelled once more at the devastation visited upon the twin walls by the river’s destructive power. Hundreds of legionaries were labouring at the point where the inner wall had stood, their arms and legs filthy with mud as they pulled bricks from the wreckage and passed them to the wall’s foundation in human chains, one in every two being packed into a roughly constructed rampart while the other was hurled over the slowly growing wall into the muddy plain’s slowly drying mire.

‘We can’t rebuild the wall the way it was, not without a lot of skilled labour and a month or two to spend on the job, but we can put together something to slow the bastards down. It’s slow work though, and the men are exhausted after a couple of hours, so we’re rotating the cohorts in two at a time.’

‘How tall can you get that defence by dawn?’

Avidus looked at the roughly constructed rampart for a moment.

‘No more than eight feet tall. I could go faster with some light, but if we use anything more than the moon’s giving us then the enemy will realise what’s going on and start sprinkling us with arrows, and that’ll make us go a lot slower. It won’t stop a determined attack, but it’ll give them something to think about. And I’ve got one or two more tricks up my sleeve.’

‘So have I. I think it’s time you saw something I’ve been hoping not to have to use, Legatus.’

Slightly baffled, Scaurus left Julius to organise the preparation of the debris to the fortress’s south for the sort of defence that Avidus felt would be sufficient, following Petronius back into the city. The prefect led him up a staircase to the top floor of an otherwise nondescript building, and Scaurus looked about him curiously in the light of the torch the prefect was carrying at each landing, noting to his bemusement that the rooms to either side were stacked with earthenware jars. On reaching the top floor, Petronius waved an arm at the hundreds of wicker cages stacked on all sides.

‘We were fortunate that this little farm was built at the top of the building, to keep it as dry as possible, so the mud had no effect. As you can see.’

He handed Scaurus the torch with a broad grin.

‘Take a look, Legatus, and tell me what you think.’

Late the same evening, as the three friends were readying themselves for sleep with the expectation of beginning their journey north the next day, Artapanes opened the door to their suite and beckoned Marcus to join him. Outside the door the same two guards were standing duty over the foreigners, but they ignored Marcus as he followed the cleric down the corridor that he knew from experience led into the palace.

‘What—’

The priest raised a hand to silence him, and whispered a rebuke over his shoulder.

‘Say nothing. I cannot answer your questions, for I do not know the answers. And, since I am already asleep in my bed as far as anyone other than those two guards is concerned, I was clearly never here.’

Bemused, the Roman followed him along the same route as before, but where they had previously forked left into the anteroom, the priest led him to the right, and up a corridor that climbed as it turned. Reaching a torch-lit landing, Marcus recognised the robed figure of the high priest, Bagadates. The senior cleric waved a hand to his subordinate, and Artapanes bowed, staying where he was as the older man led Marcus deeper into the palace, speaking quietly as he walked.

‘You made a favourable impression on my master earlier. He has ordered me to effect a further meeting between you, a meeting that will never have taken place as far as the scribes and the bureaucrats are concerned. And which the generals must never even suspect. Here …’

He indicated a door.

‘I will wait for you here. Enter.’

Marcus found himself in a room no larger than a good-sized office, a small fire burning in one corner. The walls were decorated with richly embroidered tapestries, the floor carpeted with ornately knotted rugs. A guardsman stood impassively by the door in the opposite wall, his unblinking gaze locked on the Roman. The door beside him opened and Arsaces entered the room, closing the door firmly behind him.