Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth (19 page)

The sounds of iron hacking at soil slowed around me, and stopped. At our feet, the raw earth was open deep enough to swallow a man, and wide enough for me to lie inside with head and feet tight to each wall. Above the ditches, on the inner side, earth ramparts rose eight feet above the ground.

Syrion gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘The river’ll have to rise higher than a man to top that.’

‘And even if it does,’ said Rufus, ‘the egress channels will carry everything away. It’ll have to flood in here higher than our knees to reach the tents.’

‘Higher than your knees, maybe,’ Sarapammon said. ‘That’s barely past the ankles for the rest of us.’

That wasn’t true, or not all of it, but it didn’t matter; we were in jovial mood again, with the prospect of drier nights and a fire that might light and hold. I can’t begin to tell you the relief of that; winters on the Hawk mountains might have hardened us to cold and endurance, but we had never before gone without fire and cooked food and the last half-month had worn us down.

Now, we had a watertight quarter-stores packed with enough food to last us the winter, and a sheltered paddock for the horses with stalls to one side and even they had begun to fill out on good fodder so that their ribs did not stare so through their coats and their eyes were bright once again.

A thread of smoke rose from just beyond the horse paddocks. I smelled the scent of applewood amidst the oak, and the first savoury rush of cooking, and my mouth flooded with spit just as my stomach griped, and I turned and—

‘Vologases is coming! The King of Kings! Parthia’s army!’

That was Horgias, riding my bay mare’s youngest son, who had been born chestnut and was turning a fine rose grey as he aged. I gave him as a gift after Proclion’s death, and wished I had given him sooner, only that he was not broken before that, and in truth I had considered giving him to Cadus.

Horgias had seemed grateful at the time, in so far as he ever seemed to enjoy anything these days. He had promised to take best care of him, and treat him as I might have done myself. Just now, he was riding him harder than I had ever seen a man drive a horse.

He hauled to a bloody halt by the standards and flung himself out of the saddle, calling the camp alarm.

We were already running; us and the rest of the legion. We got close enough to see the sweat running down man and
horse,
so that both were slick, and steaming, and near to broken in wind.

Horgias was wilder than he had ever been; unshaved and unwashed, his hair bound back by a leather thong, he could have been a barbarian come amongst us, except that he wore the red tunic of our cohort and the mule’s tail was painted on the scabbard of his gladius, and in any case everybody in both legions knew Horgias by name and sight by now.

Everybody except Paetus, obviously. He emerged from his newly built house and stood on the top step, softly pink as from a hot bath, with his hair wet and his face half shaved, holding a towel in one hand and a pomegranate –
a pomegranate! –
in the other.

‘Who is this man?’

Cadus was there, one step ahead of trouble. ‘He’s a scout, lord. He was sent to watch the Taurus Mountains, whence any attack is most likely to come. It would appear one is coming, and he has seen it?’

This last, he directed to Horgias. I was next to him by then, acting as his groom, giving water to man and beast.

Horgias saluted first to Cadus, and then to Paetus, as he must. And then he gave his report there, in the open, in a voice that bounced from one rampart to the next, and never mind that Paetus was trying to invite him inside to give it in private.

‘Vologases, the King of Kings, rides at the head of his army. He has with him, I would estimate, ten thousand cataphracts, fifteen thousand light cavalry, five thousand infantry. They go slowly, held back by the pace of their marching men. In two days’ time, they will traverse the Taurus Mountains south and east of here. There is a place we could stop them. At a fast march, we could be there in half a day. A legion, perhaps, could hold them, allowing the rest to finish the defences here.’

He spoke into a hollow silence. We sucked his words in and drained them dry of meaning and still we did not fully comprehend the size of the army that came at us. Paetus understood least of all. His gaze flickered from Cadus to Horgias and back as if he suspected both of some kind of conspiracy to unman him.

At length, Cadus said, ‘Perhaps the senior centurions could meet with your excellency to discuss our strategy?’ and Paetus was persuaded inside.

Horgias was dismissed without a second glance. We led him away to find food and water and wine, and Syrion and the Rabbit stayed back in case there was anything we needed to hear.

Horgias said, ‘I’m sorry about your colt.’

Beneath the filth of four days living wild, his face was unreadable. He had never been an easy man to befriend, but since Proclion’s death he had become a blank slate with nothing to see, nothing to know, except on those few occasions when we faced the enemy, when he became a lethal, screaming demon. The rest of the time he didn’t talk much; the horse was his exception, he spoke about that.

I shrugged. ‘He’s fine. His tendons are whole; you didn’t break him. In a while, when he’s had fodder and water, I’ll stand him in the river and let him cool off properly. For now, we’ll light a fire and cook you something to eat.’

We reached our camp, the rows of tents with ours at the head of our cohort. We had firewood under a goatskin awning, and a fire pit that we had dug while he was away. I crouched and began to gather the tinder, and small twigs to start the fire. Horgias crouched with me, and caught my hand.

‘Let me,’ he said quietly. ‘I haven’t lit a fire in four days. I miss it.’

Even if it hadn’t been Horgias, I wouldn’t have argued with that;
a
man needs to light fires to keep his soul warm, or so my father taught me.

I let the twigs fall at the side of the pit, set down the bunch of fleece that I planned would hold the flame and set my fingers to my belt, where I kept the glow from the last fire in a pot.

‘Have you fire to light it? If not, I can—’

A horn split the air from the far side of the camp. Three notes, rising, and two falling; it was the call to witness a sacrifice, which all men must attend who do not wish to call ill luck on themselves.

It came from the lines of the IVth legion. Horgias cursed softly, viciously, and tilted his head to look up at me. What could I say? ‘We’re going to war. Best not to offend the gods, even for the lousy Fourth.’

‘Right.’ He set his fire-making things down with careful precision and rose and together we ambled over at our leisure, drinking in the late sun, the scent of smoke, the sound of corn cakes frying.

In time, we came to a trench dug twenty paces in front of the tent lines of the IVth; the foundation for their quarter-stores. They had decided to build them in stone, an affectation they brought from the Hawk mountains. We didn’t share it, but we failed entirely to talk them out of it, and it was, I think, a way for us each to show our differences, lest any man begin to think we were one unit.

Whatever the reason, they had dug foundations and someone had been into the town and bought a dark-fleeced shearling ram for the sacrifice. It was a fine, stout animal, with yellow eyes set with the vertical slit that makes them seem like demons, when in fact they are as terrified as any beast can be. Certainly this one was not being held with the calmness that is due an offering given to the gods. The young conscript who held it had evidently never done so before; in
the
time it took for us to fall into ordered lines he kept losing his grip and reclutching in a way designed to induce panic in any creature’s breast.

The ram, for its part, had been dragged from the town to a place it did not know, amongst unfamiliar men who sharpened knives in its easy view; terrified, it fought its bonds fiercely. That could have been put to use if the priests and augurs had the sense to use its fighting spirit for our good, but these were small men with small minds and they were already drenched in fear at the size of Vologases’ army.

So when they caught it up, and cut its bonds, there was a moment when neither the conscript nor the chief priest was fully holding it, and it lunged out with feet and horns, thrust the former to the ground and the latter into the priest’s ribs and, with a kick and a butt, was free to leap out, over the foundations, past the tent lines, through eight ranks of men and away to freedom.

You could have heated the silence then, and beaten it flat to make a sword. Soon, though, the first mutterings rolled through, as men spelled out for each other the doom that was on us all.
A failed sacrifice. Failed! We’re finished
.

The idiot priest made an effort to read something good in the beast’s escape, but he was wasting his breath; every man in the empire knows that a failed sacrifice is the clearest statement the gods ever give that the endeavour – whatever it is that the sacrifice was for – is doomed.

So the IVth couldn’t build their quarter-stores on those foundations. And we were dead men if we tried to face Vologases’ army.

I turned, and found Horgias beside me. ‘Let’s go,’ I said tightly. ‘There’s no good to be had in staying here.’

Back at our own tent lines, we set to making our evening meal. For a while, I watched Horgias as he devoted himself
again
to the fire, laid the tinder and the wool and shaved peelings from a dry block around them.

He borrowed my glow-coal and nursed the infant spark it gave him, feeding it small twigs that he had kept in the breast of his tunic and dried with his own body’s heat. In time, he had a youthful, boisterous blaze that sent thin smoke spiralling to the sky.

He took wheat meal and water from his bag, spices, some dried rosemary, a little bead of lamb’s fat, rolled and rolled until it was hard as beeswax. Mixed, they made a mash that he squeezed between his hands until it made small, flat cakes.

He oiled his mess tin and set the cakes to roast and it had the ritual feel of a last meal, shared amongst friends, amongst brothers, amongst men who knew their lives to be short, and yet still cherished each other’s company. If anything, I thought Horgias looked at peace, and was glad for him.

I crouched beside him. ‘Do you think he waits for you?’ I meant Proclion, but did not have to say so.

‘I am sure of it. I dream him often, standing at the river’s edge, looking back at me as I live this half-life without him.’ Horgias flicked a glance at me sideways. ‘Don’t think I’m in a hurry to die. He’ll wait as long as it takes, and I will kill as many Parthians as I may before I join him.’

I shook my head. ‘If you were going to die soon after him, you would have done so by now. There’s been enough opportunity.’ Not more than a skirmish or two as we left Tigranocerta, but sufficient for him to have thrown himself on an enemy spear if he had wanted to. ‘I just wanted to know where he was.’

Other than my father, Proclion was the only man I knew well who had died, and I would have trusted him with my life in ways I would never have trusted my family. It was good to know he watched over Horgias.

I took out my own pack and set about mixing beans and
corn
and dried mushrooms and garlic, taking the same care as had Horgias. As they did in battle, my senses became sharper, so that I heard Lupus’ footsteps long before I heard his voice and knew who came up behind me, and exactly when he drew breath to speak.

‘Tell me we’re not going to be stoking up the cook fires to build palisades through the night by their light.’ I stood, turning as I spoke.

Gravely, he said, ‘You’re not going to be stoking the cook fires and building palisades through the night by their light.’

Something was wrong with Lupus. He had never in his life made a joke, and his eyes were not laughing; quite the reverse.

‘What then?’ Horgias was holding his dagger ready to lift one of his meal cakes from the mess tin. He looked eager, ready to fight.

‘We are to sally out tonight, before dusk. Paetus will lead us. All except the first cohort of the Fourth, which is travelling to Arsamosata, with the care of the general’s wife and infant son as their only priority.’

‘
What?
’

‘He’s sending the
first cohort
away?’

‘But the palisades aren’t finished. They aren’t even begun. Is he
completely
mad?’

Syrion, Horgias and I spoke all together. Lupus affected a deafness which left him immune to the treachery spoken around him; then, in a voice so sharp, it would have cut through wood, he said, ‘Our governor’ – he spat the word – ‘is of the belief that he was given command of men to fight for him, not wooden walls; that Vologases’ army will be sleeping in their tents, so why should we not do the same? He would meet the Parthians at the Lizard Pass in the Taurus Mountains. He believes we can hold them there.’

‘So we will hold the Parthians until Corbulo can get here?’
I
said. ‘That, at least, makes sense.’ After a fashion, it did; we had crossed the mountains through that pass twice in the summer, going out, and coming in. We knew it as well as we knew anywhere here.

Lupus shut his eyes. ‘I have suggested,’ he said faintly, ‘that a message should be sent to General Corbulo requesting his aid. Cadus and the camp prefect added their voices. Paetus, however, is of the opinion that we will not need any man’s help to defeat the King of Kings.’

Nobody spoke then; there were limits to what we could say and not be flogged for it, and in any case Lupus was distressed enough. The reason was obvious: Paetus was afraid of Corbulo’s genius. To get himself into a crisis and then cry for help? It would ruin his political career.

To me, Lupus said, ‘It might be that you could send a message to your old commander, wishing him well before you march out to die?’

‘Aquila? But he’ll send any message straight to Corbulo!’

‘Who might choose to send us help. Or not. But at least he will know what has happened. I am sending a similar message to Hygienus, a centurion of the Tenth, and Cadus will write to a man he knows in the Third. We have need of a courier to deliver the messages. Would you—’