Gods and Legions (41 page)

'The swimmers made it!' Julian shouted in relief, and all around us men clapped one another on the shoulders, for the five advance vessels would be landing in moments to secure the beach. We began climbing onto our own ships, preparing to cast off, when suddenly the eastern sky lit up with a thousand balls of fire, arching through the air in streaking, yellow trails. The men around us erupted in panic.

'Fire arrows! The Persians have attacked them with fire arrows!' someone shouted. More fiery trails streaked through the sky and a bluish conflagration spread to reveal the hellish roaring of a ship destroyed. Running figures began to be visible in front of the flames, and faint shouts were carried to us on the wind.

'No!' Julian cried, leaping out of the water and clambering over the gunwales of the nearest ship. 'That's the signal! They've secured the beach! They're signing for us to come, that the heights are ours for the taking!'

Sallustius stared at him, agape. 'Lord Augustus! That's not—'

'Release the fleet!' Julian bellowed, shouting him down. 'That's the signal! All hands to the oars! Ctesiphon is ours!'

With a roar the men leaped at the ships, pushing those already loaded out into the swift-moving current, surging onto those still awaiting their loads. In a moment the fleet was in the river, the men no longer concerned with stealth, but lighting lanterns, chanting the count of the oars as the vessels raced with the current to the designated landing spot. Across the Tigris the Persian camp was in an uproar, men and horses scurrying madly in all directions in front of the fires, a confused shouting and clamor rising up and drifting across the water to fill the gaps between our men's chants.

By the time we arrived Victor's ships were only fiery hulks, destroyed by the pots of naphtha and flaming arrows hurled at them by the large detachment of Persians cunningly posted to patrol this portion of the river in case such an invasion was to occur. Victor's men, however, had managed to leap out into the reeds and attack and kill many of the enemy, who had run splashing gleefully into the water to plunder the Roman vessels before they burned to the waterline. These survivors bought time for the rest of the fleet to safely land, as Julian had predicted with his fortuitous lie. They took the heights of the bank before the bulk of the Persian garrison could race back down the road to intercept us. By the time the garrison arrived, it was too late for them: thirty thousand Roman troops had already landed and leaped ashore, and more were arriving every moment on the vessels that were left, on barges and livestock rafts, some men even paddling across on their curved, wooden shields, towed by ropes dangling off the backs of the vessels if there was no room for them on board.

The night was long, but the beachhead held. As the first rays of the morning sun peered over the massive walls of Ctesiphon, a mere half mile distant, the entire Roman army was drawn up in battle array at the top of the high riverbank, the Tigris below them filled across its width by half a thousand bobbing transport craft. Despite Victor's initial hesitation, he had performed magnificently, clearing the ground of defenders and bringing the incoming troops to order. Artillery weapons and heavy equipment were being assembled by the engineers, some even before being removed from their landing craft. Even livestock were now beginning to be ferried across, a deliberate indication to the Persians of our intent to remain on the Tigris' left bank.

The Ctesiphon garrison, for its part, had recovered from the turmoil of the night before, and to the Persians' credit, the size of the forces opposing us had grown considerably from what we had estimated the previous day, to a level close to or even larger than that of our own army. Either a large body of troops had been held in reserve inside the city walls, or the local governor had quickly summoned garrisons from neighboring towns and villages to augment his own forces. As the Romans stood calmly in formation, awaiting the command to attack, we watched with considerable trepidation as the Persians made their own preparations. The advantage of the field was theirs, situated as they were at the top of a long, upward slope that rose to the very gates of the city, and supported by a series of bulwarks and ditches that had been dug over the past several days as they anticipated the Roman approach. A half mile uphill is an eternity to run in full armor while facing withering Persian arrow fire, and the defenders intended to make us sweat blood for every step of ground. Thousands of onlookers from the city, even women in finery, had set up positions on top of the walls, shaded under awnings and umbrellas, to watch the affair.

Opposing us the Persians had set up thick ranks of archers, their tight-fitting, fish-scale armor polished to such a brilliance that it hurt our eyes. They were supported by glaring detachments of infantry, bearing the foot-to-shoulder curved shields of the King's guard, sturdy though lightweight contraptions of wicker hung with hardened, polished rawhide for strength. The officers' white stallions were protected by the same wrought leather, and the officers themselves wore helmets and armor gilded and bejeweled with stones of such size that we could make out their colors from where we stood. Most terrifying of all, however, were the squads of elephants looming skittish and impatient behind the serried ranks of troops, looking for all the world like moving hills with their huge, gray bodies. Our troops eyed them nervously, for we had heard that such beasts were used by King Sapor, though we had hoped that they had been taken with him on his march to meet us up the Tigris.

Despite the chaos and turmoil of our crossing only hours before, Julian had left no detail forgotten in preparing his own battle lines. He had taken care to identify his weakest forces, the Asian troops who had joined us in Antioch, and to place them not in the rear, where they could panic and retreat with no one to stop them, nor in the van, where they might stumble in their fear and lead the entire army into rout; but rather disbursed in small groups amongst all his other companies, between the beefy Gauls who had stood with him steadfast ever since Strasbourg and on whom he could count to remain loyal even in the face of a charging bull elephant. Julian himself, shadowed by a squadron of light-armed auxiliaries and his council, ranged widely from one end of the lines to the other, bullying a laggard squadron into formation here, shouting encouragement to a cavalry officer there. His relentless energy drove the waiting troops into a fever of anticipation.

Suddenly he stopped in front of his lines, the eyes of all the troops upon him. Sallustius and Victor rode up and flanked him on either side with their skittish mounts. They also stopped, facing the troops. Silence fell over the field as Julian slowly surveyed the lines of sunburned, dusty men, men who had marched with him five hundred miles from Antioch, across burning sands and leech-infested marches, some of whom had traveled with him even thrice that distance more, from the farthest western reaches of the Empire. All stood silent, watching, as a smile slowly spread across his face, a gash of white teeth gleaming through the brown beard that had grown thick and unruly on the march. Wordlessly he grinned at them, this trained orator and rhetorician, a man who had never in his life been at a loss for words and had never failed to take the opportunity to lecture to his men, to encourage them in battle, to admonish them, even to give them a history lesson. His broad smile demonstrated, however, more than any words of praise, his love and pride for them and for all they had accomplished, and wordlessly they grinned back. As they responded, he raised his right arm to the men in the Roman salute, a gesture reserved only for the men themselves to give to their own conquering general. After a moment of stunned silence, with an almost audible intake of breath from the vast forces, they burst forth in a roar capable of shaking the thick walls of Ctesiphon itself, a bellow that made Julian's mount rear in startlement, though his broad grin and outstretched arm did not falter. After a moment, however, his smile disappeared back into his beard, and lifting his fist straight up in the air, above his head, he brought it down to his hip in a slashing motion, the field signal for attack.

Immediately the ox-hide drums sounded their deep, anapestic rhythm, the ominous, repetitive, three-beat tattoo that marks the Pyrrhic march step. Developed by the Spartans, it is dancelike in its movement, hypnotic in its relentless, deadly rhythm. Three steps forward, pause for a beat. Such concentration on the rhythm, each man keeping in step with his comrades, gives a soldier substance to occupy his mind, distraction from the approach of painful death. Three steps, pause. Gleaming shields swinging deliberately from left to right in strict unison. Sixty thousand men marching thus in utter precision, the strange, trance-inducing beat and vast walls of swaying shields striking terror into the watching enemy. Three steps, pause. Thud, thud, thud, silence. The low chanting of the hymn to Ares served as an undercurrent to the beat, growled rather than bellowed, felt as a vibration in the gut rather than heard. The vast, swaying monster of metal and death advanced slowly and implacably toward the lines of astonished defenders.

The Persians didn't stand a chance.

The first volley of arrows, a thousand whistling missiles, struck our front ranks full on. From this distance they did slight damage, sticking harmlessly in the troops' heavy shields or skittering off to the ground. A few men fell, though the mesmerizing rhythm of the drums did the work for which it was designed, and there was no faltering in the steps. The ranks behind simply stepped over the fallen, and moved up to take their place. The Persians paused for a moment in their shooting, dumbstruck at the display.

Another hundred yards the men marched, shields swaying in perfect unison. Thump, thump, thump, pause. The Persians fired another volley, this time from a more lethal range. More men stumbled and fell. Victor, I saw, who was as heedless as the Emperor in riding at the front of his forces and engaging the enemy directly, caught an arrow in the right shoulder and lurched back on his horse in pain. Julian saw it too and whipped his horse toward the front to investigate, but Victor recovered and waved him off, sitting bolt upright on his mount now, the arrow emerging straight out in front of him. Julian stared a long moment to be sure he was able to ride, then raised his sword high in the air toward Victor, the long-awaited signal to charge.

Victor did not hesitate. Spurring his horse forward he raced to the front of the Roman lines, transferring his sword to his left hand as his right arm dangled useless and bloodied at his side. Raising the weapon high in the air, he opened his mouth wide to bellow the command to charge, though before the words reached my ears it was drowned by the shrill howl of the Gauls' battle cry, which the entire army had taken up as its own.

Breaking their three-step rhythm, the men burst into a mad dash, shields held high, straight into the midst of the enemy arrows, which now rained down on them in a thick hail, a cloudburst of whizzing death. Long had we known that the Persians' greatest strength lies in the skill of their archers, and the most effective though painful method of defeating them is to charge into their very teeth, straight into the bows, and simply bowl the devils over, for the archers have little defense besides light wicker shields, which they prop up before them on the ground, braced with one foot. Such a charge is terrifying – into the very maws of death, hiding your face in the concave shelter of your shield, running blindly forward and struggling to align yourself with your comrades on either side, peering occasionally over the rim to gauge your distance. The steady pelting of the missiles on your shield and armor intensifies and thickens, and sometimes arrowheads emerge through to pierce your cheek or your eye if you huddle too closely behind the deceptive wall of ox hide and bronze you are carrying.

With the sudden clash of the lines a huge cloud of dust arose on the plain and I lost track of the battle, concentrating instead on keeping Julian in sight, should my services be required. He ranged back and forth across the field, straining to peer into the roiling haze, shouting furious oaths in his frustration at being unable to see. At one point he leaped into the thick of it on his horse, and I despaired of seeing him emerge alive, but emerge he did, several moments later, hacking viciously at a pair of Persian cavalry riders who were flanking him and attempting to trip up his horse with their lances. They were quickly dispatched by his guard, who had been as disconcerted as I when he had disappeared into the dust and as relieved when he rode out again, though to their horror he quickly dove back into the fray and emerged once again many moments later, his sword and greaves covered in gore.

The fighting that day was horrendous, hand-to-hand under the broiling sun and that fatal dust cloud. When the filth rose occasionally, lifted by the faint wafting of a breeze, one could see mountains of corpses and writhing horses in the ditches and at the bulwarks where they fell, so covered by layers of blood and filth that I was unable to make out to whose side they belonged. In the end, the dust cloud began slowly moving back, yielding toward the thick-stoned walls of Ctesiphon, as the Persians retreated. The cloud moved gradually at first, then faster, until with a final clash and a weary shout the Persian lines finally broke, and from the rear of the haze thousands of enemy raced panic-stricken toward their city, and I saw the enormous gates begin to swing ponderously open to receive them.

'The gates!' Julian cried, rushing toward the battle line, which was quickly moving away from him as the men raced to the walls to head off the Persians. 'Victor – seize the gates!'

It would have been impossible to hear him above the mad fray, but Victor was still there with his men, now slumped painfully over his horse's neck, supported by a guard who rode alongside him. The wounded general, weak from loss of blood, struggled to shout out his orders. The rout swirled around him as the Romans followed hard on the terrified enemies' heels, hacking at their backs and calves, hamstringing hundreds and tripping them up, then quickly slashing them to immobilize them and leave them to die in their own spilled juices. The Persians ran headlong toward the city and began pouring through the gates as the townsfolk on the walls above wept and tore their hair, raining rubble and bricks down on the Romans who were as yet too far down the slope to be hit.