Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth (23 page)

But the rest were alive, who had expected to die, and nobody knew why unless we were to be crucified in a line facing the Roman camp across the river, which is exactly what we would have done to vanquished prisoners of an army that had dared to oppose us.

There seemed no point in mentioning that, when everybody knew. I sat with Cadus, who had a bruise the size of a goose egg on his temple and skin paled to a sweat-beaded green, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

‘Does Vologases know …’ I sought a way of saying what I needed, cautiously, in case we were overheard. ‘Does he know of Horgias and Tears?’

Lupus said. ‘None of us has told him.’ He had broken his collarbone on the left. His face was a dirty grey-white that became simply white whenever he moved. He moved now, to fetch me water, when he could have called one of the others to do it, and when he handed me the jug with his one good hand he would not meet my eye, only said, ‘You destroyed the bridge. That was well done.’

‘Was it?’ I drank, and felt cold trickle down to my stomach and was not sick. Lupus watched, still looking anywhere but at my face.

I set down the mug. ‘Lupus, there is no shame in this. You offered your lives to the gods and to the enemy. It’s not your fault that Vologases chose not to take them. Don’t let him shame you by it.’

‘Drink,’ said Lupus tightly, ‘and wait until your head is better. Then we can talk of who is shamed, and what might come of it.’

We languished half a day during which I drank a great deal of water, and ate sparingly, and began slowly to feel less ill.

Our guards did not address us, but they did not mistreat us either. We did not speak much amongst ourselves; men awaiting crucifixion find little to say.

Near dusk, a mounted officer approached. His face was compressed, top to bottom, his cheeks wide, his eyes small. He wore Vologases’ sign of the silver elephant on a blue ground, but he also wore a badge of a bear’s head in black and white that I had not seen before.

He dismounted and saluted Cadus, Lupus and myself. In sing-song Greek he said, ‘Please to accompany me. The King of Kings will speak to you.’

Vologases’ tent was larger than any I had ever seen, of silk so thick, so deeply hued, it was as if night itself lay on the tent poles. We were invited to enter the first of its many rooms, offered seating on benches padded with horse hide, and given peach wine to drink out of golden goblets. We ate dates and olives and small pieces of smoked ham that came apart in our mouths and spilled the taste of meat and spices freely.

‘If they had given me this when first I woke,’ I murmured to Lupus, ‘I would have believed myself dead far longer.’

A horn answered for him, or perhaps a flute, for the notes were high and breathy, and rippled faster than I could have blown. At its summoning, we stood, turned, walked through a lifted tent flap.

Showered by sound, preceded by officers in silk and silver, with the sign of the elephant on its blue ground carried by each man, we came into the presence of Vologases, the King of Kings.

I knelt, because I had done so once before, because Pantera had done so, because it was natural to do so.

A half-breath behind, uncertainly, Lupus and Cadus knelt with me. We did not press our brows to the floor, but we did bow our heads to him, and then raise them again to look on his face, which was not, I am sure, how a prisoner was supposed to behave.

He sat on a seat of oak, marvellously worked, inlaid with
gilt
and silver, and lapis lazuli, and amber. He wore blue silk with silver and a filet of gold round the battle helm that held his head. His beard was longer than I remembered, and carried white through it, like frost on rock, but his eyes were the same: sharp, light and lively.

They roamed over us now, back and forth.

‘You, and you.’ He pointed with a silvered blade. I saw something viscous run from it, and for a moment thought it blood, until I saw the fruit in his other hand, filling his palm, something green-skinned that I had never seen before. ‘You have knelt to us before.’ His eyes were on me, not Cadus.

‘With Pantera, lord,’ I said. ‘The man known as the Leopard. In Hyrcania. After the death of … the traitor.’

His son, who had not been named then and was as likely unnamed now. I watched a ghosted grief pass over Vologases’ face.

‘Indeed. We gave your companion a horse. A bay mare.’

There were men of my acquaintance who thought I had lied, that she had not been given as a gift by the King of Kings. I was glad, suddenly, that Lupus was behind me. ‘Pantera gave her to me, lord, when he was summoned to Britain. I have her still. She is in the camp across the river.’

‘Then you must return to her and keep her safe from harm. We are told there is a ford across the river.’

I could have denied it, but what point? ‘Yes, lord. Although the river has swollen somewhat since we last crossed it. We had built a bridge.’

‘Which you destroyed yesterday. We watched you. Our archers begged to be allowed to use you for their practice. They said a dozen men could have hit you three times each before you fell.’

‘I’m sure they could have done, lord.’

‘And you knew they were there?’

‘My lord always has archers. In the past, he has always used them.’

This time he had not; and he had taken men prisoner, whom he could have slain. I could not ask why. He showed no inclination to explain, but only observed me, thoughtfully, tapping his knife on the gilded arm of his throne.

At length he said, ‘You will ford the river tomorrow. Take from my army what men and horses you need to get you across safely. But they will return to our side of the river, and you alone will step on to the far bank. You will go to your commander, Paetus’ – he weighed the name with the same kind of acerbic loathing as did Lupus – ‘and you will tell him the terms of your surrender. When he has heard them, you will bring his acceptance back to us. Is that clear?’

‘Most clear, lord.’

I didn’t ask the terms of our surrender, and in truth I didn’t want to know any sooner than I must, but Vologases said, in dismissal, ‘Your General Corbulo gave me his solemn word that not a single Roman legionary would cross to the east of the Euphrates. In crossing the Murad Su, in camping on its northern bank, which faces eastward, your Paetus has broken the oath of a better man. He shall pay for it. His men, however, need not.’

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
O
NE

‘LORD, THEY ARE
taking everything,
everything
. We can’t let them do it.’

So said Crescens of the IVth, first to speak after me in the commanders’ meeting that Paetus had called on my return to hear the Parthians’ demands.

Paetus stared him down. ‘You misunderstand. They are not taking everything. We may keep the Eagles, and so retain the honour of the legions.’

‘Honour?’ Crescens’ voice cracked. ‘After a
surrender
! Lord, you cannot mean—’

‘Centurion Crescens, you forget yourself!’ Paetus seemed to have aged overnight. His shoulders fell round a concave chest; his hair, I swear, was whiter; his hands were skin and bone with no strength in the sinews. He held them together, blanching his knuckles, as if he they might betray him did he only let them go.

‘I mean that I am not prepared to see the men of my command crucified before my eyes when by my actions I can prevent it. Corbulo may arrive, but not in time to save the lives of First Centurion Cadus and his men. They are my priority.’

He turned to me and I found his gaze surprisingly sharp. This was a man who had survived two Caesars, who had kept in good odour with Nero when so many others had fallen from grace and paid for it with their lives. He was not a soldier, but he was a politician. ‘As I understand it,’ he said, ‘we will be allowed to keep the standards. Is that true?’

‘Yes, lord; all of them. We must march away leaving everything else behind, the food, the wine, the armour, the weapons, the horses … But first we must build them a bridge, to replace the one that was destroyed.’

‘If we keep the standards, we have not fully surrendered.’ Paetus’ gaze had grown distant, seeing himself back in Rome, speaking to the emperor, setting the record straight, so that he, Paetus, came out of it shining.

He dragged his grey eyes back to mine. ‘You destroyed the bridge?’

‘I did, lord. At your order.’

‘And with my help,’ Crescens said. For a man of the IVth, he was remarkably decent.

Paetus’ smile was thin as a lizard’s. ‘Then by my order and with your help, he shall replace it as the Parthians have requested.’ He stepped in front of me. ‘Clearly you will have to ford the river once more in order to give our agreement to the terms of surrender. But I wish you to return here afterwards, unless it is impossible to do so.’

Unless Vologases has had your head struck from your shoulders
, is what he meant.

I swam back across the river, aided by a rope that the Parthians had already strung across. I delivered our acceptance. My head was not struck off.

As I was heading for the river again, the narrow-eyed general of the Parthians came up to me and caught my arm, turning me back to face him.

He had laid his hand on his heart and stared into my
eyes.
‘Amongst our people,’ he said, ‘that is, amongst the Parthian tribes from which comes the King of Kings, it is an unthinkable dishonour to take back a gift once it is given. His magnificence wishes you to remember that, in the time that is to come.’

‘I see.’ I thought of the bay mare and what she was worth and how far I was prepared to risk my life for her. Quite far, I thought, particularly if I had Vologases’ backing. ‘Thank you. I will not forget.’

I bowed from the waist with my hands on my breast as I had seen Pantera do with the kings in Hyrcania and the old man returned it as if we were not mortal enemies who had lately spent a great deal of effort and other men’s blood trying to kill each other.

Soon after, I swam back across and helped the work parties to rebuild the bridge. It was lucky that we had wood enough in the camp without having to cross the river to cut more. Or perhaps it was ill luck. Cutting wood would have taken time, and in time, perhaps, Corbulo might have come and relieved us.

But under the Parthians’ hard gaze we could not dally overmuch, nor could we pretend that we didn’t have enough men, when the several centuries not working on the bridge were standing in clots around their tents, doing nothing.

The bridge was built in less than a day. That same evening, we stood in lines as Vologases had demanded, to receive him and his army.

He came in pomp, weighted in blue silk, carried on a litter at head height by men taller than any I had ever seen. His captains rode around him on black horses that sported silver and silk at their brows and tails.

After him, on horseback, not in a litter, came Monobasus of Adiabene, as smugly triumphant as any man I have ever seen. I could have killed him; I might have done so, whatever
the
consequences, had he not been leading Cadus and Lupus at either stirrup with leather leashes tied to their necks.

So, like the others, I swallowed my pride and my loathing and watched as Vologases and Paetus each approached the table that had been carried over and placed in the centre of the camp. There, the entirety of both armies heard read aloud by the Parthian herald the terms of our surrender. Vologases held out a quill pen and a block of ink and Paetus stepped up to put his name to the document.

We were finished then; even if Corbulo had come, we were bound by Paetus’ word to leave without bloodshed, to abandon all of our goods, keeping only our Eagles.

Paetus stepped back and saluted – he
saluted
an enemy king! We gaped in disbelief.

There was a moment’s hiatus before Vologases lifted his hand in a sign that was both acknowledgement and order. At that, Monobasus released the leashes holding Cadus and Lupus and they were pushed ungently forward past Paetus to join us.

I clasped Cadus by the arms, holding Lupus more gingerly, taking care for his fractures. A short while later, I saw Syrion lifted on a litter, and had the beginnings of hope that the day might not be as bad as I had thought, that Paetus had shown wisdom in not leaving these men to the worst of deaths, that we could walk out with our heads high and our Eagles to the fore and perhaps rescue something of our reputation.

Then I saw a movement from the corner of my eye; Vologases had dropped his hand – and that was when the Parthian army fell on us like a cloud of locusts, and set about pillaging our camp as if it were empty.

Cadus pushed me away. ‘See to your horse.’

I ran fast, being light, with no armour. I saw my gladius taken, our tent ripped apart. My mail shirt was lifted,
fingered,
thrown from one laughing man to the next; the metal rings glimmered in the sick winter light.

But these were random acts by men who ransacked for the sake of it because that was what war expected and what Vologases demanded. A tighter, more disciplined group had moved almost before the order and made straight for the horse lines that were set beneath the palisade on the northern edge of the camp. Every one of the men was marked by the blue tern of Adiabene.

They went down the lines as my father used to, picking out the best mounts with a practised eye, tapping the tails as a signal that they were chosen, leaving their boys to squeeze in between the horses and free their halters from the tether bar.

My mare was last of the line. I reached her just ahead of the bearded maniac who threatened to take her.

‘Stop! This mare was a gift from the King of Kings. If you take her, you dishonour him!’

If I screamed, it was a pouring out of the whole camp’s anger, and my frustration that I had no blade and could not even strike him with my fist for fear of breaking the truce. I stood close, though, hoping to use my size and rage to overwhelm him.

I failed.

‘Liar!’ A gobbet of spittle struck my cheek. A leering face pressed close to mine. ‘The King of Kings gifts no Romans. She is mine now. You can kiss her goodbye.’