Legionary: Land of the Sacred Fire (2 page)

Jovian felt his throat clenching and the familiar trembling in his limbs. A skinful of wine in the mornings had become a loathsome habit, but one he had been unable to break as he tried to cope with the demands of his lofty post as the emperor’s protector. He looked to his guardsmen, desperately trying to summon the words to rally them. He licked his lips to give an order.

‘For – form up, f-face . . . ’ the staccato uttering died in his throat and drew only confused frowns from his men. Self-loathing now strangled his heart.

But his shame was short-lived as, once more, Emperor Julian led the way.

‘Form up, face your enemy!’ Julian cried, kicking his white stallion until the beast reared up and whinnied.
Buccinas
were raised to lips, the horns wailing across the ranks as standards waved frantically. Like a silver asp, the staggered mass of the Roman retreat came together and turned to form a broad and deep line facing east. They presented a wall of battered shields and a nest of spears. On each flank, an
ala
of some five hundred
equites sagittarii
shuffled on their saddles, nocking arrows to their bows, winking under the rim of their helms as they sighted their targets. These Roman horse archers were well armoured in scale and armed with the finest composite bows, but they would meet their match today.

The rally cry of Emperor Julian had been enough to strike the fear from many thousands of Roman hearts. But not from Jovian’s. Forming part of the Roman right, he and his imperial guardsmen were on the front rank. His tongue was shrivelled and utterly dry, his bladder seemingly full to bursting. There would be no escaping battle today. White lights flashed in his eyes and he felt his guts melt as he beheld the Savaran riders facing them. A solid wall of
clibanarii;
iron-masked horsemen who betrayed not a glimpse of humanity, armour in every place there should have been flesh and tall, pointed helms with plumes whipping behind them. Thousands of them. Sharpened lances held two-handed. Lithe mounts clad in iron plate-armour and scale aprons. The riders
sighted their targets, then kicked their gnashing, frothing mounts forward at a trot with an ululating war cry.

Jovian roared, not in defiance like the imperial guardsmen around him, but in utter terror. He screwed his eyes shut in disgust at his craven heart. In this coward’s darkness, he felt the blistering heat fall away momentarily. He cracked open one eye and saw that the sky had blackened, the azure masked by a thundercloud of Persian arrows, hovering momentarily before darting down like a brood of iron raptors. Jovian’s legs seemed numb and unable to respond to his primal urge to run. He gawped as those around him scattered, some splitting their ranks and others falling back to avoid the incoming hail. They were oblivious to Emperor Julian’s cry to hold their lines. The arrows hammered down into backs, necks and limbs. A fine crimson mist puffed into the air all across the panicked Roman lines and many hundreds fell. Jovian trembled in disbelief; arrows quivered in the earth and in corpses all around him – yet he was unharmed. Then he heard the Persian war horns blare once again, and saw the glint of thousands of enemy lances falling level like outstretched and accusing fingers, the clibanarii riders now lying flat in the saddle and coming forward at a gallop. The Persian arrows had tenderised the Roman ranks, now their lances would cut the legions to pieces.

Jovian met the inhuman eye slits of the masked rider coming for him, clutched the Christian Chi-Rho amulet around his neck – the one thing that gave him courage – and roared his last as the Savaran charge smashed into the Roman ranks. In a flash of steel it was over. A blow wrenched Jovian’s spear from his grasp and threw him from his feet. Sky and ground swapped places, hooves and boots thundering past him, dust and blood filling his throat and blinding him. Then he felt the earth shake fiercely. The trumpeting of the great, tusked creatures filled the air. Then came a terrible chorus of snapping bone, tearing flesh and screaming men. Finally, like an ebb tide, it all died away, and he was numb.

He presumed the long blackness that followed was death. But he still felt something. A crushing pain in his head. Next, a distant, dull cry cut through the blackness.

‘Emperor Julian has been slain! Throw down your weapons and they may spare us!’

In his confusion, Jovian wondered if these voices were those of the dead accompanying him to the afterlife. Perhaps his devotion to the Christian God had been prudent. Then he realised he was floating, or perhaps being carried. He put everything into an attempt at reaching out, but heard only a pained groan topple from his lips.

‘The Comes Domesticorum – he’s alive,’ a voice said.

‘Then there is no doubt about what must happen,’ another added.

At last, Jovian’s eyes cracked open. He was in a torn, smoke-stained Roman command tent, reclined upon a cot. His guardsmen stared back at him; a circle of filthy, bloodied and sullen faces. The nearest of them stepped forward and thrust a white robe and a wreath into his hands. He stared at the dark-red stain on the midriff of the robe; Emperor Julian’s blood.

Then, as one, the guards raised their hands in salute and cried;

‘
Imperator!
’

He looked up at them. A terror like never before gripped his heart.

It was the morning after the battle. The dawn air was already balmy and still tinged with the scent of decay and death. A cloud of carrion birds shrieked and circled overhead. The battered remnant of the Roman army huddled against the banks of the Tigris – cowering within a mass of hastily erected tents and ramshackle palisades – pinned there by the bullhorn Savaran lines. From the Roman camp, a pocket of eighty figures strode forth, crossing the short stretch of no-man’s land and entering the heart of the enemy camp.

Jovian’s stride was awkward and uneven under the scrutiny of so many eyes. Masses of dawn-silhouetted Persian warriors glared at him and he felt the eyes of his own men burning on his back. This was his first duty, or so the men had advised him; to meet with Shapur and sue for peace. The dust stung in his nostrils and the air felt like fire in his lungs. His white imperial robes were already drenched in sweat. The usual skinful of wine had not been enough this morning. To soothe his battle wounds and to still his nerves he had needed two. Yet still he trembled.

The sea of Persian warriors parted before him, revealing a vast tent at the heart of their lines. Fluttering drafsh banners encircled the tent, and one magnificent banner crowned it, depicting a golden star bursting across a purple background. This was the
Drafsh Kavian
, the ultimate symbol of Sassanid Persian might. Atop the banner – where the Roman armies would mount their silver eagles – was the broad-winged and soaring guardian angel, half eagle, half man; this was the
Faravahar,
the sacred image of the Zoroastrian faith. Even this lifeless effigy seemed to glare down upon Jovian, stoking the self-doubt in his gut.

He summoned a speck of courage and they marched on until they reached the tent entrance. There, a pair of tall and broad bodyguards eyed him. These men were
pushtigban
, the cream of the Savaran army and the shahanshah’s personal guard. They wore flawless iron helms adorned with finely crafted wings on either side, scale and plate-armour vests, iron rings on their arms, and carried bronze-coated spears and shields. Like the clibanarii riders, they too wore iron masks obscuring all but the glint of steely glowers through the eye slits. Each carried a
shamshir
in his sword belt, the honeycomb-hilted blades cleaned since yesterday’s clash.

Jovian halted before them and his eighty guards stopped behind him. He wiped a hand across his rubicund features, his bloodshot eyes bulging, his lips trembling. He was now Emperor of Rome, rich beyond imagining, power untold. Despite all this, he wanted nothing more than to turn and run from this place. He saw in his mind the waters of the Tigris, imagined throwing himself into its foaming torrents, thrashing to reach the other side. Murmurs swept around the gathered crowd as he remained, speechless, eyes darting in this craven whimsy. Finally, the two pushtigban warriors held the tent flap open. An aged man emerged – well past his fiftieth year, Jovian reckoned. He wore a striking gilded ram’s skull and skin as a crown, and his broad features were taut and unforgiving, not unlike the ram’s. His grey hair hung in thick, tight curls across his shoulders, his beard equally well groomed and oiled. A pleasant scent of perfumed wax emanated from the man, cutting through the stench of death. An emerald and purple silken robe hugged his shoulders. This was Shapur II, King of Kings, Shahanshah of all Persia. Jovian’s terror grew fierce, as if wolf cubs gnashed in his belly.

Shapur dragged his gaze across Jovian, his hazel eyes glassy, before crouching onto one knee and prostrating himself to kiss the dust.

Jovian frowned, his mind spinning. Then one of his guards jabbed an elbow into his back. At once, he realised his error, and hastily fell to one knee and then lay flat too, pressing his lips to the dust. This was the Persian way – a sign of respect between adversaries. Shapur was first to stand, then he turned to his tent and beckoned Jovian inside.

Jovian stepped forward, leaving his guards behind. Inside, it was pleasantly cool and lit only by the gentle orange glow of daylight. A cloying, floral scent curled from glowing cones of incense, sweetening the air. Spoils of war lined the tent’s sides, frames mounted with animal hides, ancient shields and crossed spears. In the centre of the tent sat a squat, oak table, behind which knelt an incongruous pair. One was a white-haired ox of a warrior almost as aged as Shapur, his broad features pinched in discomfort and his breath coming and going in wet rasps. He wore a bloodstained bandage around his abdomen, barely covering what looked like a mortal wound from yesterday’s battle, and a red silk robe held in place by a brooch bearing the image of a golden lion. The other at the table was a slightly-built, sharp-eyed man in a blue silk robe whom Jovian could only liken to a sickly carrion bird. He was hairless, the skin on his scalp and face pallid and stretched so thin that it highlighted every contour of bone and snaking vein. His eyes were gold. His nose curved like a sharp beak over thin, colourless lips.

Shapur knelt beside this pair, then gestured for Jovian to sit opposite. The shahanshah then gestured to the injured warrior and the shrivelled, bald man in turn; ‘Cyrus,
Spahbad
of the Persis Satrapy, and Ramak,
Archimagus
of those lands, will be joining us in our negotiations.’ Cyrus nodded curtly, while Ramak remained statue-still, his eyes seeming to search Jovian.

Jovian awkwardly knelt opposite them. As soon as he settled, his eyes latched onto the silver goblet of dark-red wine that a slave placed before him. He poked out his tongue to wet his lips, reaching for the cup, when Shapur spoke in Greek.

‘We find ourselves at an unfortunate juncture, Roman brother.’

Jovian snatched his hand back from the goblet, cursing his shaking fingers. His mouth had never been drier. He shuffled to sit straight and tried to flush the fear from his face, but his upper lip twitched nervously.

‘Your armies are broken,’ Shapur continued, ‘you have nowhere to flee. Persian steel and the dark, cold depths of the Tigris ensnare you. So what am I to do?’

‘I trust we will be able to find a solution to this problem, Persian brother?’ Jovian croaked in reply.

‘Oh, I am sure we will,’ Shapur said. ‘In my years I have seen many brave Romans dare to stride into these lands. I grow tired of their folly and of spilling their blood.’

Jovian heard the retort in his mind.
And your armies have just as often marched gaily into Roman Anatolia and Syria, claiming those lands as your own by ancestral right.
But fear gripped him before he could muster the courage to voice this, and so he merely nodded.

‘I know the thoughts that dance in your mind, Roman. As masters of east and west, we each have much to take pride in, but more to be shameful of,’ Shapur added, his gaze growing distant and a hint of submission lacing his words.

For a precious moment, Jovian felt his fear ebb just a fraction. This legendary figure who had led Persia and her armies like a god for so long cut a tired figure. Cyrus and Ramak seemed unaffected by their shahanshah’s melancholy though. Cyrus looked on with a barely tempered scowl, his disdain for Jovian plain. Archimagus Ramak, however, perplexed him most of all. The man watched him studiously, as if searching his thoughts, reading them like a scroll. Then the archimagus turned his eyes upon Shapur, and Jovian wondered if he could read the great king of kings as easily. A curious creature, Jovian surmised. He snatched at the goblet and gulped at the wine, anxious to wash away his distress.

Shapur continued; ‘The struggle is endless, Rome tears at our borders and then Persia finds itself battering back at Rome’s. To and fro. Forlorn fathers look on from the afterlife as their sons repeat their follies.’ He stopped, his gaze again growing distant, as if caught in a storm of unpleasant memories. Finally, he snapped out of his malaise, his eyes meeting Jovian’s once more. ‘Today, Persia is the master of this eternal struggle.’ He paused for a moment, the silence from Jovian upholding his assertion, then pushed out a sheaf of paper. It had two passages inked upon it – one in Parsi and one in Greek. ‘If you wish to see your army safely back in Roman lands, then I am sure you will see the wisdom in conceding to me the following imperial possessions.’