Thunder of the Gods (26 page)

He turned to Julius.

‘The Parthians, First Spear, are well known for their habit of violating truces in order to win battles. Crassus was still more than likely to get away from Carrhae with most of his army intact until he was unwise enough to ride out to negotiate, and got himself decapitated. So, given I’m quite interested in what those men down there have to say for themselves, I’ll take a century of your biggest, ugliest men with me, if you’ll whistle up an appropriate escort?’

The black-bearded senior centurion nodded, turning away and bellowing an order at the legion arrayed across the hillside.

‘Dubnus! I’ll have your Tenth Century down here!

Scaurus watched with an amused smile as the recently promoted first spear led his axe men forward, bulling their way through the legion’s line and reforming before the command group with impressive speed and precision. The Briton took his place before them and saluted with unexpected vigour, shouldering his massive axe.

‘First Spear! The Tenth Century is at your command!’

‘You can stop shouting, thank you, Dubnus.’

Scaurus stepped forward, looking the massive Briton up and down.

‘Perfect. You and your men will do very nicely, Centurion, just as long as you can keep your temper in check.

Dubnus snapped to attention, and behind him his men followed suit.

‘So gentlemen, you’re going to escort me down to meet those horsemen. You
are
going to make sure nothing untoward happens to me, but you are
not
going to go starting any unwanted fights. There will be no hand gestures, no dirty looks and no fingering your weapons when I’m not looking. Is that understood, First Spear Dubnus?’

‘Yes Legatus!’

‘If any of you as much as twitches a muscle at these men, you most likely will be responsible for my death. And I won’t be the happiest of men under that circumstance. Is that understood, First Spear Dubnus?’

‘Yes Legatus!’

‘All I want from you and your men is to march down to meet those barbarians like you’re the biggest, fastest, deadliest men in the entire empire. Make eye contact with a man, fix on him and hold the stare. Do not look away. I want those horsemen going back down the hill knowing that there’s a race of fearless giants with axes waiting for them up here.’

‘And you think the sight of The Prince and his men will stop them from attacking us?’

Scaurus turned back to Julius with a laugh.

‘Stop them from attacking us? I very much doubt it. But it might give them pause for thought while they’re toiling up that slope. You’d better stay here and take command in the event that anything happens to me. The negotiation will have to be conducted in Greek in any case. Come along then Tribune Corvus! Let’s go and show these tribesmen some good old-fashioned patrician disdain, shall we?’

He turned to make his way down the slope, pulling tight the leather cord that secured his helmet’s cheek guards.

‘There is another reason for bringing you and your giants with me for this brief and doubtless disappointing meeting, First Spear.’

Dubnus puffed out his chest proudly.

‘Legatus?’

Scaurus grinned at him, his features hardened by the helmet’s harsh lines.

‘Yes. While you and your bolt-thrower winders are down with me, there’s much less risk of anyone being tempted to use a handful of Parthian kings for target practice.’

Ignoring the Briton’s wounded expression, he marched down the slope, stopping ten paces from the three magnificently armoured men waiting for him in a half-circle of bodyguards. Bowing deeply, he straightened up and examined each of them in turn before speaking, noting the differences between their armour, equipment and bearing. At length, and with the equable tone of a man greeting visitors to his country estate, he raised his voice in greeting, switching to Greek in order to ensure that he was understood.

‘Greetings, noble lords from the east. I always take pleasure in meeting men of high birth on the road with their bodyguards.’

Their apparent leader, standing in between the older and younger members of their party, stepped forward a pace with a look of amusement.

‘And there was I, raised to believe that the Romans were a race of humourless murderers. It would be a shame to have to kill you, given that under different circumstances we might well have shared a jar of wine and told each other stories of our homelands. But kill you we will, unless—’

‘Unless we agree to pass under the yoke and swear to pass back over the Euphrates, vowing never to return?’

The king nodded in silence, while his older companion stared at Scaurus with an intensity that made Dubnus’s knuckles turn white on the handle of his axe. The legatus smiled tightly back at him.

‘It would be helpful to know which august personages I’m addressing, Your Highness. Your names would make useful embroidery for my confession and death warrant, were I to accede to your request, I imagine.’

The king shook his head with a lopsided smile.

‘You’re an amusing man, Roman. But I will humour your request.’

He raised a hand to indicate the young man standing on his right.

‘This is his imperial highness Wolgash the Second, king of the desert kingdom of Hatra.’

Scaurus nodded, bowing respectfully.

‘Greetings, Your Highness.’

Wolgash inclined his head stiffly in reply, and his fellow monarch turned to the man on his left.

‘And this is my cousin Narsai, King of Adiabene. He has sworn an oath to the Sun God that he will not wear any colour other than black until the day that his kingdom is free from the presence of your empire.’

Scaurus bowed again.

‘Greetings, King Narsai.’

He turned back to the speaker.

‘His armour will make him easy to pick out on the field of battle, I expect.’

‘You will have no need to look for me, Roman. Stand still for long enough and you will find me in your face.’

The legatus inclined his head again, a slight smile the only indication of a reaction to the Parthian’s bombast.

‘And you, Your Magnificence. Might I know whom I have the honour of addressing?’

The king spread his hands.

‘I am Osroes, son of King Arsaces the Forty-Fifth, the King of Kings, the Anointed, the Just, the Illustrious, Friend of the Greeks. I rule the province of Media on behalf of my father, and it is with his blessing that I bring my army to the cause of my kinsman Narsai. And now that you know who it is that will deliver you to your gods, tell us your name so that we might decorate your grave appropriately.’

‘My name, mighty kings, is Gaius Rutilius Scaurus. I am legatus of the imperial Third Gallic Legion, and I am sworn to my god, the Lightbringer, the Lord Mithras, to fight here and win a famous victory that will echo across the plains to the walls of your father’s city Ctesiphon. Either that, or die in a manner that will bring pleasure to the spirits of my ancestors. And as to my grave …’

His face hardened.

‘My only expectation, King Osroes, is that you will despoil my corpse in the same barbaric manner you did with my Sixth Cohort.’

He paused, playing a hard stare across all three men’s faces.

‘You may defeat my legion today—’

‘We will bleed your legion with our arrows, then crush it flat with our maces!’

The Roman smiled again, showing his teeth.

‘You
may
defeat us today, Narsai of Adiabene, but you will simply be postponing the day of your reckoning for these crimes. And beware, when you come up this hill seeking my head, because I will not be displaying my sense of humour.’

Osroes shook his head.

‘You had better return to your command, Legatus, before you provoke my cousin here to an act that would dishonour him.’

Scaurus nodded.

‘Sage advice, Your Highness. I wouldn’t want to end up being murdered at a parlay, like my countryman Crassus, would I? An ignominious death is so bad for a man’s reputation.’

He turned away and headed up the slope, the Tungrian axemen backing away in his wake, watched with angry eyes by the black-armoured monarch.

‘I should have killed him.’

Osroes stared after the legatus.

‘I could never permit such dishonour under a flag of truce. But if you’re so certain that you have the beating of him, I suggest you seek him out once we have them at our mercy, and test your mettle against his. Come!’

He led the horsemen away, signalling to his general to begin the attack.

‘Here they come.’

Julius pointed down at the plain below them, grimacing as thousands of Parthian horsemen began to move forward. Spreading out across the plain until their frontage was a good half-mile wide, they came forward at a deliberate pace and with unmistakable purpose. Julius stared down at the mass of men and horses, shaking his head in disgust.

‘And not one of them wearing anything thicker than a felt cap.’

The different hued jackets worn by the three kings’ men gave the scene a surreal look, their advance gradually flooding the ground with a riot of colour. Qadir nodded, a wry smile on his lips.

‘These men do not face iron, First Spear, they only know how to deal it out by means of their bows. Threatened with attack, they only have one tactic – to run away and shoot as they do so, and as accurately as if they were going forward. Their record against Rome has tended to be the result not of their skills, which are undoubted, but upon the skills and preparedness of their opponents.’

He stared down at the horsemen riding towards them before speaking again.

‘I suspect that this day may prove an unpleasant surprise for them.’

The legion stood wreathed in silence, the only sound that of the distant hoof beats as the Parthian horse archers trotted forward in a disciplined mass with their bows held ready for use. Scaurus’s party threaded through the legion’s line, and the legatus dismissed his escort back to their places before resuming his climb, shaking his head as he joined his officers.

‘You’ll have gathered from the enemy’s advance that, much as expected, the kings in charge of that Parthian army aren’t persuaded that they’re making a mistake.’

‘Kings?’

The legatus smiled knowingly at his First Spear.

‘Yes. Three of them. Where we use imperial governors to administer the empire’s provinces, the easterners use a system of minor kingdoms, each one ruled by its own king. There are three of them down there with their armies, one who rules a good-sized piece of the empire and two reasonably minor monarchs, and none of them was in much of a mood to compromise. As a consequence of which …’

He turned and looked down at the plain, waving a hand at the massed horse archers.

‘This is what those poor bastards in the Sixth Cohort had to face before they died, except they were caught on flat ground with standard-issue shields that were little better protection than thin air, and with no means of fighting back. Those archers can put three arrows in the air before the first one falls to earth, and I suspect that my new friend King Osroes of Media has been reading the same books that I have. See the supply camels following the archers? They’ll have enough arrows to keep showering them onto us until the legion’s nothing but a shell, if we’re stupid enough to let them.’

He smiled at Julius’s expression.

‘Which of course we’re not.’

Julius shook his head.

‘They have no idea what’s coming, do they?’

Scaurus shrugged.

‘Why would they? The Sixth Cohort rolled over and died in exactly the way they expected, in just the same way that twenty thousand men died at Carrhae for that matter, so why shouldn’t we succumb to their rather thin bag of tricks in our turn? All it takes from their perspective is a barrage of arrows for an hour or two followed up by a glorious charge of their cataphracts to break what’s left, a few minutes of bloody murder and the surrender and massacre of the survivors. Up until now the strongest requirement for a man serving in that army down there has been a capacity to tolerate spilt blood. The king in charge of that mass of men will regard this hill, and this legion, as no more than a minor hindrance, I’d imagine. And now, First Spear …’

He nodded decisively as the enemy horsemen approached the line of markers five hundred paces from the Roman line.

‘Shall we see just how fast Dubnus’s axemen can reload their bolt throwers?’

Julius turned to his trumpeter.

‘Sound the Stand To.’

As the first notes of the command pealed out across the hillside, the voices of dozens of centurions barked out over the trumpet’s squeal, and with a sudden flurry of movement the legion’s line lurched forward. Marching steadily down the hill, they advanced for a distance of thirty paces before stopping, centurions and watch officers swiftly dressing the line back into as near perfect straightness as could be achieved given the hill’s undulating surface. On the ground near the hill’s flat summit, a line of two-man bolt throwers stood revealed by the legion’s advance. Behind each Scorpion crouched four men, two of them squatting beside one of the oversized shields faced with leather that had so mystified Centurion Avidus when he’d first seen them on the legatus’s list of requirements. Julius raised his voice to bark a command that rang out over the distant noise of the advancing Parthians’ hoof beats.

‘Bolt throwers – load!’

With the screening infantry line no longer concealing them, the crews sprang into action, one of Dubnus’s axemen gripping the winding handles of each weapon and cranking back the heavy bowstring of his allotted weapon with straining muscles, each of them shooting sidelong glances at the men on either side, determined not to be outdone in the race to complete his task. With the Scorpions ready to shoot, the operators, Hamian bowmen for the most part, carefully placed heavy armour-piercing bolts into their weapons’ mechanisms and pointed the bolt throwers at the oncoming enemy.

‘Bolt throwers – at maximum range …’

The Scorpions angled skywards, their operators looking to Julius for the order to shoot.

‘Loose!’

In his place standing next to the legatus, the hairs rose on the back of Marcus’s neck as, with a snapping twang, the Scorpions spat their deadly loads high into the cloudless sky. He watched, unconsciously holding his breath, as the salvo of missiles arced over their apogee and plunged down into the advancing horsemen. Along the Parthian line the impact was instantaneous and shocking, the bolts’ impact punching men from their horses and, when a missile struck beast rather than rider, dropping the animals kicking and screaming to the ground in sprays of blood. Tearing his gaze away from the slaughter, Marcus shot a swift glance at the bolt throwers and the Tungrians already labouring to re-tension their strings, each man stepping away and raising his hand as the signal for the trigger man to load a bolt and elevate the weapon, ready to shoot once more.