Thunder of the Gods (53 page)

His junior rubbed the material of his sleeve between finger and thumb.

‘It’s raw silk, Legatus, and worth about as much as my armour and weapons, in the right market in Rome. And it’s the uniform worn by the King of Kings’ Immortals, when they’re not carrying enough iron to make a strong man’s knees bend.’

He pointed to the Parthian siege lines again.

‘If you’ll accompany me, the explanations you’re looking for are all over there.’

Following the younger man across the empty space between the fortress’s walls and the enemy’s waiting ranks, the legatus listened to a brief description of the journey down the Euphrates and the events that had unfolded in Ctesiphon, covering his eyes with one hand as Marcus recounted the death of their friend. Recovering control of his emotions after a moment, he shook his head apologetically.

‘My apologies, Tribune. I distinctly recall telling Julius you’d thank me for sending you south, but if I could have predicted that as an outcome …’

‘No …’

He looked up, to find Marcus staring back at him with emphasis.

‘Martos died quickly, and he died doing what he did best. He could never have gone home to the Dinpaladyr again, he told me as much, and what life is it for a king to wander the earth yearning for the one thing he can never have, and mourning the wife and children who died as a consequence of his actions? He was buried in the King of Kings’ own mausoleum dressed as a Captain of Arsaces’ personal bodyguard, honoured with weapons and armour as fine as Osroes was wearing when we captured him, and with a war horse sacrificed to his spirit and entombed with him.’

The younger man shook his head at the memory.

‘I’m not ashamed to tell you I shed tears over his corpse, and again at his interment, but all in all I’d say that if he’d known his fate in advance, he’d have been content. Now come and hear what Prince Vologases has to say on the matter. We may mourn it, but King Martos’s death defending Vologases’ father has put the King of Kings very much in our debt.’

The spear men manning the section of the siege line they had passed through snapped to attention as the Roman commander walked across one of the heavily guarded crossing points over the twenty-foot wide ditch, and the two men walked the short distance to Narsai’s command tent. Dismounted Immortals were clearly in control of the situation, the king’s own guard outnumbered three to one by white-tunicked men, every one of them a good six feet tall. Vologases turned from whatever he was discussing with the king and greeted Scaurus with a regal nod, smiling as the legatus bowed to a respectful angle.

‘Legatus Scaurus, greetings.’

He waved Scaurus forward, dismissing his guards to stand out of earshot so that only he and Narsai faced the two Romans.

‘Your tribune has told me much of your exploits while we’ve ridden here from Ctesiphon, and so I feel I already know you. Clearly you are an opponent of whom to be wary, an impression not dispelled by the news that my cousin King Narsai has shared with me. It seems you have handled his army roughly?’

The Roman returned the smile.

‘Thank you, Majesty. King Narsai’s men displayed all the bravery we expected of them, and the use of the river as a battering ram was inspired. We were fortunate to retain control of the fortress.’

Vologases shrugged.

‘The affairs of state so often hinge on the smallest of things. However lucky you might consider yourselves, you are indisputably still in command of Nisibis, which is just as well, for if my cousin had managed to wrest it from you I would have been forced to demand in my father’s name that he return it to Rome’s control.’

Narsai was glowering at Vologases, and the prince continued with a grim smile.

‘As I said, the smallest of things can sometimes be the fulcrum for great events. Your Tribune and his friends from the northern lands that are not to be named by the pious intervened in an attempt to kill my father, an attempt carried out by my brother Osroes and his bidaxs Gurgen. My brother feigned lost wits until he was returned to the palace, then used Gurgen to gather support among the army for an attempt to take power by the planned murders of both the King of Kings and myself, leaving him as the only man capable of ruling. I escaped death by good fortune, while my father was defended by his guests at the cost of the life of King Martos and the wounding of his bondsman.

‘You have both the King of Kings’ thanks and his abject apology that such violence should have been done to men who had been declared guests in the palace. His shame at this turn of events is only made deeper by the unavoidable fact that the very person who was the beneficiary of their bravery in journeying to Ctesiphon was then responsible for such infamy. He has directed me to pass on his most fulsome apology to you and to Rome, under whose protection these men were travelling. He hopes that it will not become the cause for a disturbance in the long peace since the end of the last war.’

Scaurus inclined his head in recognition of the apology.

‘Your father’s thanks are duly acknowledged and respected, Prince Vologases. It dismays me to have lost such a friend, but for him to have perished in such a noble endeavour gives solace to my sorrow. As to Rome, however …’

Vologases raised a hand.

‘Permit me, Legatus, but there is more I must make clear. My father was, as you can imagine, perturbed in the extreme to be so cruelly assaulted within his own palace and by his own son, with the apparent collusion of his most trusted gundsalar, Kophosates. Reprisals for this betrayal were swift and severe, a fact of which I can assure you, since I was the chosen instrument of my father’s prosecution of the men involved. Five senior members of the court have been interrogated, admitted to their part in the plot and punished, four of them with a death whose grisly nature it would be unfair to burden you with. Suffice to say that an example has been made. The fifth was my brother, of course, who has been returned to Ecbatana, the capital of his kingdom, under close and attentive watch. During his questioning, conducted by myself, he swiftly confessed to having been only the spear tip of a cabal of several of the empire’s kings, a group of dissenters which it seems has included my cousin Narsai.’

Scaurus looked at the king, whose eyes remained firmly fixed on his boots.

‘You’ll get no reaction there, Legatus. I’ve warned my cousin that the slightest reaction on his part, anything that might excite the ire of his guards, will result in their wholesale slaughter swiftly followed by his own public execution, here, in front of the very walls he sought to defeat and make his own. When we’ve completed our discussion, in which he will take no part other than to listen, I shall gather my father’s Immortals and ride away, taking the king with me. His generals will disperse the army back to their various kingdoms, with express orders from the King of Kings to end these hostilities immediately, and to have marched away from here by this time tomorrow. They know better than to disobey such an order.’

He looked Scaurus up and down.

‘And so, Legatus, you find yourself victorious. Were it not for my cousin and my brother’s ill-judged intervention, my father would have found it difficult to overrule a king who sought to remove Roman boots from our soil. The siege would have continued, with whatever result. As it is, however, Narsai’s imprudence has proved to be a sword with two edges. The other conspirators will be warned as to the potential consequences should they be so unwise as to transgress against my father’s tolerance again, and provided with a practical example of the nature that his ire will take. An example provided by King Narsai.’

He turned to the downcast king, speaking swiftly in Pahlavi, spitting out the words with a vehemence that would have been simple contempt were it not for the edge of pure hatred. Narsai turned away without ever looking up, walking towards his private section of the tent. The prince watched him go with hooded eyes, his jaw set hard.

‘He is to equip himself in his finest armour, array himself with weapons and mount the horse he rode into battle with you. I will greet him with solicitude and the respect due to a king, and invite him to accompany me to Ctesiphon for an audience with my father. We will ride out together, in the company of my father’s Immortals, and I will escort him away to meet his destiny. He will treated with the honour and respect due to a man of his station, and will attend the gathering of my father’s kings as a peer among his fellows. And then, at the right time, he will admit to his brother monarchs that he plotted to kill the King of Kings, but came to his senses in time to avert a tragedy that would have endangered them all. He will then retire to his capital Arbela, where he will rule in name only. I will find a suitably ruthless man to play the role of his bidaxs, and in reality that man will control his kingdom.’

‘And you don’t have any concern that the king, armed and armoured, might kill a dozen or more unarmoured men before he is taken down? Including yourself?’

‘No, Legatus, in truth I do not. Narsai knows that if he were to attempt anything so foolish he would be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, disarmed, and then forced to watch his family be despoiled and beheaded, one at a time. His fingers may twitch at the pommel of his mace, but he’ll resist the temptation.’

Scaurus tilted his head again, his mouth twisted into a hard smile.

‘A pragmatic solution, Your Highness. You will clearly make an excellent successor to your father.’

Vologases’ laugh was tinged with a faint hint of derision.

‘Forgive my disappointment at receiving praise from a Roman, Legatus, some habits die harder than others. I will indeed follow my father’s path of keeping Rome at bay with soft words, and focus my efforts on the northern borders where the real threat lies, but in truth I fear your empire more than ever before. My father has presided over a period of gentle but inevitable decline, and the time may yet come when a new Roman emperor, a man stronger than the current fool, looks to the east and considers the wealth to be had by invading Parthia, stripping the western kingdoms of their wealth and enslaving the population. For all that I despise Narsai for his attempt on my father’s life, a small part of me is shouting that he was right to confront Rome now, before it’s too late.’

He shook his head.

‘And you must forgive me my musing. I suggest you return to your fortress now, to spare Narsai the indignity of his departure from power being overseen by his enemy. And don’t allow my bitterness to lessen the gratitude I feel to you, Marcus Valerius Aquila.’

He embraced Marcus, turned to Scaurus with a brisk nod, and then turned away.

‘I will pray to Ahura Mazda for your safe delivery to those you love, and that your
hunar
will continue to burn with the same brilliance for the remainder of your days …’

Pausing, he turned back with a lopsided smile.

‘Unless, of course, we meet on the field of battle. On that day, look to your blades, Aquila, as I will look to mine. And remember, I know what you are capable of, but you have yet to see my mettle.’

Scaurus watched him walk away, then turned to the tent’s doorway.

‘He’s right. It would be unseemly to gloat over a man’s fall from power.’

They walked from the tent into the sun’s heat, a pair of Immortals to either side to safeguard their passage through the siege lines. Stopping to marvel anew at the destruction visited upon the fortress by the river’s torrent, Marcus looked about him at a sea of dried mud in which the scattered detritus of a major battle had been baked.

‘So Narsai used the Mygdonius to smash the wall, then sent his army to force their way into the city?’

Scaurus nodded, looking out across the scene of the battle from a new perspective.

‘Yes. And we were lucky, Tribune, that your colleague Varus happened to be the man in command when their cataphracts managed to get a foothold on the wall that we’d thrown up across the breach. They looked unbreakable, all that armour making them almost impossible to kill, and when Varus ran from the wall I thought his nerve had failed him again.’

He shook his head ruefully.

‘I misjudged the man. He rallied Ravilla’s marines just when they were on the point of breaking, with the Procurator dying and half their men shot with arrows, and he took them into the Parthian knights like a pack of mad dogs. I watched the whole thing from the city wall, as the Parthians stood firm and killed three men for every loss they took, expecting the marines to break and run a dozen times over, if I’m honest. But there was something in Varus that wouldn’t let them, some insanity that threw him at their line time and again, and in the end their sheer weight of numbers told. The cataphracts simply couldn’t stand against their ferocity, not with men being pulled from their line and hacked to pieces before their eyes. In the end it was they who turned tail, fighting their way back over the wall in bloody desperation, but for a time it was too close to judge the likely winner. If it hadn’t been for that young man and his burning urge for redemption …’

‘Did he live?’

Scaurus chuckled.

‘Live? He came through the madness without a scratch. You have a rival for the Tungrians’ affections, Tribune, given it was they who were being battered away from the wall when he intervened. Even Dubnus seems to respect the man.’

He started walking towards the fortress, and Marcus followed him, looking about him at the battle’s wreckage, weapons and discarded armour half sunk into the hardened mud.

‘One thing does occur to me though.’

Scaurus looked at his junior as they recrossed the bridge into the empty ground between fortress and besiegers.

‘What’s that?’

Marcus looked at the walls of the city for a moment as they walked across the expanse of dried mud, waving a hand at the battered walls and the ground before them.

‘I think Narsai was perilously close to getting it right. Indeed I think he only made one mistake.’

He turned to the legatus with an expression that made it clear he was deadly serious.

‘He chose the wrong brother. I rode for five days with Vologases, and I can assure you that if we ever face that man across a battlefield, it won’t be the easy ride Osroes gave us.’