Thunder of the Gods (50 page)

‘Because if they manage to put arrows into you and me then the odds are that this defence will fail! And because every man we kill down there is being used to improve their footing. Before long they’ll be looking down at us from a ramp of their own dead! We need to try something else!’

He pointed at the earthenware jars.

‘It’s time for Petronius’s nasty little surprise!’

Julius nodded, lifting one of the jars with both hands, apparently finding it surprisingly light. He raised the spherical object for the men around him to see, bellowing an order over the battlefield’s cacophony.

‘Pass the jars! And don’t drop any of them!’

He pitched the pottery globe over the rampart, following its brief trajectory with a look of fascination as it arced down to land in the middle of a wave of fresh enemy infantry, the thin earthenware shattering as it hit the helmet of a hapless spear man. Out of the shards of creamy brown pottery came a fresh menace, utterly unexpected and clearly terrifying to the horrified Parthians. Unable to run in the thick mud, they floundered away from the jar’s contents, seeking escape in any direction possible as the enraged creatures scuttled across the soft ground with their stingers raised, seeking a target for their ire. More pots sailed over the rampart as they were passed to the men closest to the enemy, each one splitting to reveal dozens of black-bodied scorpions whose venomous power was only too well known to the men onto whom they were being showered. As Scaurus watched in fascination, a Parthian who had taken the brunt of a falling pot jerked spasmodically as half a dozen of the deadly insects stung him. The men around him pressed backwards, climbing over each other to escape from the swarming scorpions, fresh chaos erupting everywhere that one of the jars landed.

‘Throw them closer to the wall!’

More of the terrifying weapons arced down onto the spear men fighting for the makeshift barricade that blocked their path into the city, and the Parthians’ concerted effort to drive the Romans from the wall disintegrated into farce as the infantrymen dropped their spears and frantically stamped at the deadly insects, drawing their knives to brush the scorpions from their shoulders and arms while the archers on the walls above them drew and shot again and again to force the enemy bowmen to look to their own protection.

‘Rotate!’

The soldiers fighting at the wall looked over their shoulders as the Tungrians stamped hard-eyed up the ramp behind them, readying themselves to surrender their positions to the northerners while the attacking infantry were otherwise occupied.

Scaurus looked out over the parapet, realising immediately that something had changed in the battle’s pattern.

‘Look!’

Julius switched his attention from the handover taking place below them to the rear of the enemy formation. The dismounted enemy cavalrymen were pushing forward through the rear ranks of the spear men, bulling their way forward with their swords and maces drawn, their roars of command audible over the battle’s constant din as they shouted orders for the infantry to move aside and let them pass.

‘I’ve been waiting for this!’

He nodded at his legatus’s shout.

‘They’re the only men on the field with any chance of surviving long enough to get over that wall, and if enough of them make it they’ll hack our boys to mincemeat! But before that they have to—’

He jerked as if he’d been shot by one of the arrows, but when Scaurus followed his gaze he too found himself horrified at the events that were unfolding before him.

The Tungrians gazed over the wall at the sea of dead and wounded Parthians with the dispassionate eyes of men who had fought on too many battlefields to be troubled by the sight of blood, Varus pushing his way through them to stare down at the enemy below. The spear men had lost all heart with the unexpected and shocking rain of venomous insects, and most of them were looking down at the corpse-strewn ground beneath their feet rather than the men lining the wall, stamping down at the insects scuttling about them without regard for the wounded men lying helpless under their feet. Something caught the tribune’s eye beyond the men to their immediate front, the flash of a sword that rose and fell in the blink of an eye, and he stared out over the sea of heads to the cohort’s front, unsure as to whether he had seen the momentary flash of polished iron. The Parthians before him were still backing slowly away, half crouched under the protection of their shields, but it seemed that they were meeting a gradually stiffer resistance, some force from their rear first arresting their gradual retreat and then actually reversing it, driving them reluctantly towards the wall.

Faced with the choice of being crushed into the makeshift defence or escaping, the spear men spilled out of their column to either side. Frowning in bemusement, Varus craned his neck to see what it could be that was causing such consternation among the soldiers. As the flood of men escaping to either side started to thin, his eyes narrowed as glimpses of what was happening behind them gave him cause to doubt his sanity.

Scaurus looked down at the oncoming cataphracts in disbelief, the threat posed by arrows flicking past the defenders’ heads forgotten in the shock of what was happening at the rear of the Parthian column. Clearly realising that their attack was stalling before it had developed, the dismounted Parthian knights had taken action that rendered the two officers temporarily speechless. Fanning out to either side of the wavering column of spear men, they had drawn their swords, and were herding the infantry forward, summarily executing any man who tried to retreat. The legatus looked down at the scene playing out beneath them with an expression of horrified understanding.

‘They’re driving their men forward to be massacred. They know that every dead spear man makes it that much easier to get over the wall.’

Denied any means of retreat, the Parthian infantry had no choice but to advance across the acrid-smelling mire of blood, urine and faeces towards the makeshift wall, like cattle stampeding away from a hunting predator. All thoughts of retreat forgotten, as the crescent-shaped line of fully armoured men stalked forward and drove the infantry, now little better than a rabble, before them, the spear men washed back up against the defences, staggering almost apologetically back onto the defenders’ implacable spears.

‘Tribune?’

Varus shook his head, clearing the momentary spell of amazement, turning to find Dubnus at his shoulder. He nodded at the bearded centurion, drawing a deep breath.

‘Front rank – spears!’

Three hundred long spears swung from their resting positions, pivoting to point down at the hapless infantry being pressed up against the wall, more than one clearly already considering scrambling over the rough stone rampart to escape the crush.

‘Front rank – engage!
’

Dubnus’s voice bellowed out over the Parthians’ terrified din, the unquestioned master of his craft calling his men to battle.

‘Strike!’

The long iron spear heads lanced out as the Tungrians lunged their right arms forward, stabbing into unprotected necks and faces with a ferocity that was made all the more devastating by the lack of resistance being offered by the enemy soldiers.

‘Back!’

Ripping their weapons free, the men around Varus leaned back, pulling their spear arms back behind their heads and waiting for the command, heads turning to the hard-faced first spear as he waited for the dead and dying enemy from their first strike to crumple, and for fresh targets to present themselves. Varus took a spear from a man in the second rank, swallowing his revulsion and swinging the weapon to point down at the milling infantry, drawing his arm back and waiting for the command the entire cohort knew was coming.

‘Strike!’

Thrusting the long shaft forward, he watched as an empty-eyed enemy infantryman opened his arms wide to take the blow, the Parthian’s body shivering as Varus’s foot-long blade slid through the base of his throat and erupted from his back, both wounds spraying fine mists of blood past the blade’s obstruction.

‘Back!’

This isn’t war, this is murder.

The thought struggled for escape through his mouth, the urge to murmur the heresy swelling to a need to scream it at the sky.

‘Strike!’

Looking down the spear’s blade he saw his next victim, a man who had been forced around in the panicking crush until his back was presented to the defenders, his helmet gone and the nape of his neck glistening with the sweat running from his scalp. The blade severed his spine as neatly as a priest’s ceremonial axe taking a bull’s life, dropping the stricken Parthian into the mud to increase the height of their ramp of bodies.

‘Back!’

This isn’t murder, this is slaughter.

‘Strike!’

His spear head lanced forward with those of the men to either side, part of a finely drilled war machine trained until it had no equal in the bloody art of war, three hundred spears striking out in perfect unison to flense the enemy army of its strength. A small part of Varus’s mind exulted in the joy of belonging, of brotherhood with the Tungrians’ warrior tribe and killing alongside men who had terrified him only a fortnight before, but even as he embraced the sheer joy of their collective deadliness, he looked down the spear again, and saw a soldier clearly no more than a child looking back up at him, blood flowing from his mouth as the long iron blade took his young life.

The cataphracts were concentrating again, closing ranks from the long crescent they had used to terrify their infantry forward and into the defenders’ spears, hammering their swords against their armoured shoulders in a rhythmic clash of iron that was slowly gathering pace as they stalked ahead. Spilling out to either side, the spear men scurried to clear a path for the oncoming knights as they headed towards the wall. Julius turned to his legatus with a grim expression, drawing his sword with an iron rasp.

‘I’m no use up here! This is going to come down to a goat fuck, with us as the goat if we’re not careful!’

He turned and was gone, running for the nearest tower with a snapped command to his trumpeter to follow him.

Realising the oncoming knights’ intentions, Varus turned to Dubnus.

‘They’re going to try to break through!’

The Briton nodded, drawing breath to shout a warning to his men.

‘Don’t let them across the wall!’

With terrifying abruptness, it seemed, the armoured men were up close, striding through the scatter of arrows lancing down into them from atop the walls to either side. One of them staggered, a shaft protruding between two iron plates that had become separated rather than overlapping, and as he tottered, his eyes narrowed with agony, the man behind him stepped in and administered the mercy stroke, pushing his corpse forward to lie face down in the mud. More knights flooded forward carrying the fascines that had been dropped by their infantry, swiftly throwing them across the heaped bodies that were piled up against the Roman defences, clearly working to provide a firm path across which an armoured man could pass without the risk of losing his balance, then pulled back to the main body that had halted twenty paces from the wall.

‘Oh no …’

The young tribune watched in horror as the cataphracts took the bows from across their shoulders, reaching back to quivers slung over their backs, and nocked arrows, drawing the strings until the flights touched their ears, forcing the power of their muscular frames into the weapons. The Tungrians needed no instruction, ducking behind their shields and into the wall’s cover, shouting warnings at the ranks of men wanting their turn at the wall, but the marines behind them had no time to ready themselves. The Parthians loosed, their arrows whirring across the makeshift wall and wreaking havoc among the blue tunicked men, nocking fresh arrows and shooting again, and again, each volley aimed a little higher, to fall among the cohorts waiting further back.

‘They’re trying to isolate us!’

Peering carefully over the wall, Varus realised that the enemy had dropped their bows and were striding towards the wall.

‘Up! Here they come!’

Moving as quickly as they could across the treacherously uneven surface of bodies piled up before the wall, and slowed by the weight of their armour, the Parthians were advancing with swords and maces drawn. Before the Tungrians could align their spears, the fastest among them were at the wall, throwing themselves at the low parapet with savage battle cries. Varus realised their predicament an instant before Dubnus, and bellowed the order that he knew was needed if the line was to hold under such an onslaught.

‘Rear rank! Swords!’

Leaping onto the wall’s top, the first of the attackers was still for an instant, regaining his balance and looking down at the soldiers before him, only his eyes visible between his helmet and the chain-mail veil that covered his nose and jaw.

‘Mazda!’

Striking down with the mace as he screamed the war cry, he smashed the closest soldier aside with brutal power, jumping down from the parapet and hacking about him with the sword in his other hand, seeking to drive the Tungrians away from the wall. The men in the rear rank came at him, three soldiers competing to be the one to claim his gold- and silver-chased armour, but the Parthian stepped into their attack with graceful purpose, allowing a stabbing sword to scrape along his armoured sword arm before backhanding the soldier away with his mace, a rising blow shattering his jaw with an audible crack. The other two men hesitated for an instant, and he was on them, stabbing his sword through the closer man’s throat, ripping it out and swinging it wide to strike fast at the last man, hacking the long blade into the base of his neck. Dubnus stepped in close behind him as the Parthian delivered the decapitating blow, swinging his axe’s pick blade into the square of the Parthian’s back, punching through the armour and contorting his body with the sudden agony as the centurion kicked him off the iron spike. But the damage was done. Seeing their comrade’s success in crossing the wall and engaging the defenders, a dozen more cataphracts had followed him up the grisly ramp and thrown themselves at the spot where he’d crossed the rampart. Hacking their way into the hedge of spears that sought to push them away, first one and then another of them succeeding in making it onto the wall’s top and jumping into the fight.