Beyond its fringe of reeds, the river shone, as water sometimes does in the darkness before dawn. An arrowhead of ducks flighted past, splashing down somewhere towards the tail of the army. The sky was lightening. A handful of high clouds could be made out. They were moving north. Down where the army of the barbarian Dux Ripae marched, there was no wind.
Barbarian Dux Ripae — the words did not fit properly together. It was, thought Gaius Acilius Glabrio, like saying 'sedentary Scythian' or 'virtuous whore'. Lulled by the motion of his horse, his thoughts ran on: 'short-haired Gaul', 'vegetarian nomad', 'trustworthy Carthaginian', 'taciturn Greek'. A darker line running through the gloom, running across the path of the army, interrupted his paradoxical ethnographic musing. He raised himself in the saddle and peered ahead. The cliffs off to the left made the dark of night linger longer down on the floodplain. Distances and heights were hard to judge in the murk. The dark line appeared to be about a hundred paces away and somewhat taller than a man. It seemed to move, to waver or sway. Was it a line of tamarisks such as you often found out here, along watercourses, moving gently in the early morning breeze, or even poplars?
Then Acilius Glabrio remembered: there was no wind down on the floodplain. A large, pale shape moved along the dark line. On it something seemed to glint in the half-light. A horse. A horse and rider. A cavalryman. The line was a line of Sassanid cavalrymen.
'Form line, form line on me,' Acilius Glabrio shouted, his voice loud and slightly cracked. After a second or so, there was a rising swell of noise as junior officers barked orders, armour and weapons jingled and clashed, and horses snorted. The three hundred men of Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi began to manoeuvre from a column five abreast into a line five deep.
Whisp, whisp, whisp; something shot past his face. Something else struck the ground by his mount's near foreleg and skittered away. Arrows! The reptiles were shooing arrows out of the near-darkness. The bastards!
'Bucinator, prepare to sound the charge.' Acilius Glabrio was pleased that, this time, his voice sounded less ragged.
'Wait, Dominus.' Out of the body of men, Niger, the prefect of the unit, drew his horse up alongside that of Acilius Glabrio. He leant over, speaking softly to avoid being much overheard. 'The Dux ordered us to hold the formation, not to charge.' The prefect's voice was clipped and urgent. 'We must halt. Find out what is facing us. Send a messenger to fetch the Dux. He will give us our orders.'
Us, thought Acilius Glabrio. Us, indeed. Since when had plebeians like this prefect seen themselves as equals of a patrician? Wait like a slave for orders from a northern barbarian? Never. A sudden thunder of drums made the young nobleman physically jump. It was followed by the braying of Sassanid trumpets. He turned his back on Niger. He could feel his heart pounding. Carpe diem: seize the day.
'Bucinator, sound the charge.' Acilius Glabrio saw the musician look past him to the prefect. To Hades with all of them. He kicked in his heels savagely, and his mount jumped forward. He felt an arrow fly past. Behind him the charge rang out. When his horse reached a steady canter, he looked back. It was all right. There was no formed line, rather a mob of men on horses. But it was all right. They were following him. Carpe diem. This was going to be his day. This would show the barbarian bastard that had left his brother to die, and that Danubian peasant Aurelian. This would show them all.
'Are you ready for war?' The young patrician's words were lost, snatched away over his shoulder, drowned by the pounding hooves, the ringing of weapons and armour.
He caught sight of the canal a moment before they were on it. His horse seemed to disappear from beneath him. Only the high horns at the rear of his saddle stopped him being thrown. The horse found its feet. Acilius Glabrio slammed painfully down into the saddle. It knocked the breath out of him. They splashed across the watercourse. The bed of the watercourse was smooth, the water no more than hock high. Acilius Glabrio heard himself sob as, hunched over in agony, he forced air back into his lungs.
The far bank was in front of him. Thank the gods it was not too steep. As his mount gathered itself, Acilius Glabrio looked up. A fierce, bearded face was gazing down at him. The Persian yelled something in their incomprehensible tongue, his teeth very white in the midst of his black beard. A long Sassanid cavalry blade glittered. Acilius Glabrio remembered he had not drawn his own sword. One hand clinging to the saddle, he wrestled it out of its scabbard as they scrambled up the slope.
His horse hauled them over the top of the bank into bright sunshine. The Persian was gone. All the Persians were gone. The nearest was twenty paces away, his bowcase banging against the flank of his mount, puffs of dust rising from under its hooves. They were running. All the reptiles were running.
'After them. Don't let them get away.' Acilius Glabrio kicked on. The reassuring sound of his men at his heels. Carpe diem. He was laughing out loud.
The Persians were light cavalry. They were riding hard. Unencumbered by armour, their bright clothes shining in the morning sun, they were pulling clear of the Roman heavy cavalry. Off to his right, down by the Euphrates, Acilius Glabrio saw tethered horses, Sassanids on foot milling around. He glanced over his shoulder. The bucinator was nowhere to be seen. But the standard bearer of Equites Primi was close. He waved for the man to follow and steered towards the riverbank. He did not look back again. He knew the troopers would follow the standard.
Down by the bank, Persians were throwing away pickaxes, cutting the tethers of their horses, throwing themselves into the saddle, spurring away. The gap closed quickly. Acilius Glabrio picked his man: a tall, thin Persian some way from his mount, running desperately. His baggy trousers flapped as he ran. As Acilius Glabrio came up with him, the man looked round. Acilius Glabrio leant out from the saddle, swinging his long blade in an arc. The Persian threw up an arm, screaming, his goat eyes wild with terror. The blade bit home. The impact wrenched Acilius Glabrio's shoulder, almost pulled the hilt from his grasp. The Persian fell, and his horse carried Acilius Glabrio past.
'After them. Don't let them get away.' Leaning forward in the saddle, Acilius Glabrio urged his mount on. The Persian light horse were getting away. He pushed his horse harder. The sound of a Roman bucinator playing recall cut into his consciousness. How dare the bastard, without orders? Acilius Glabrio looked around. The widely scattered Roman catafractarii nearest to him were slowing down, reining in, coming to a stand. He stared after the Persians. Possibly it was for the best. The reptiles were outdistancing the pursuit. The south wind was blowing the dust of their passage into his face. He pulled up his own horse.
It was lame. He had not noticed. Now that he had, he did not care. He had another ten as good with the baggage train. He was sweating. His sword was slick with Sassanid blood. His heart was singing.
As the lame animal picked its way down to the riverbank, Acilius Glabrio counted six Persian corpses, the glorious colours of their clothes dimmed by dust and blood. One of them was his. He was not sure which. It did not matter. He had been the first to kill his man.
Puzzled, Acilius Glabrio looked at the pickaxes, shovels and other tools scattered by the riverbank. The Persians had been digging. Then he realized what they had been about. The shifty little easterners, too cowardly to face Roman steel, had been trying to enlist nature on their side. They had been digging through the embankment to flood the land between the Euphrates and the cliffs. Only a little longer and they would have succeeded. Well, he had put paid to that. Laughing out loud again, he kicked on his lame horse. Carpe diem. It was his day, his victory. A glorious victory. If your sword is too short, take a step closer.
X
Sunrise usually made Ballista happy. Today it did not. He was with the scouts, about a mile in front of the marching camp. He sat on Pale Horse, watching the sky over the cliffs turn a delicate lemon-yellow. A small hawk was hunting — a black, humped silhouette against the beautiful sky. None of it lightened his mood.
Gaius Acilius Glabrio was a fool, an insubordinate, arrogant f
ool. Yesterday he had disobeyed orders. His headstrong charge had scattered Equites I Parthi, worn out their horses — easy pickings had the Sassanids laid a trap. The charge had left the army in disarray, the van completely open if the Sassanids had been ready with an attack. He had courted utter disaster. But it had not happened. The Sassanids had not set a trap, had not been ready with a counter-attack. Not only had the fool got away with it, he had prevented the enemy sabotaging the levee and the irrigation sluices, prevented them from flooding the path that the Roman army must take. Had they done so, it would have stopped the army in its tracks, delayed them for days. The insufferable fool had returned a hero in his own eyes and even in the estimation of many of his men.
Angry as he had been, Ballista had somehow summoned the restraint to wait until they were in the relative privacy of the his tent before upbraiding Acilius Glabrio. It had done no good whatsoever. Yesterday's stupidity had merely served to reinforce the young officer's patrician pride. Six dead Persians, and he had had the gall to speak of a glorious victory. Ballista doubted the widows of the four dead troopers from Equites I Parthi would see it in the same light. Patting his ridiculously coiffed curls, Acilius Glabrio had started to talk of the famed celeritas of Julius Caesar. Unwilling to listen to a lecture on the efficacy of speedy action from the young fool, Ballista had summarily dismissed him from his presence. If only he could equally summarily dismiss him from his command. But the general could not. Acilius Glabrio had been appointed personally by the emperor. The fool had to remain cavalry commander, and the worst of it was that, now, he had been reinforced in his insubordination, now he would be even less ready to obey Ballista's orders. It did not look good — an insubordinate, arrogant fool, and possibly a murderous one… Who better fitted the assassin's description of a young eupatrid? At least he had not made an attempt on Ballista's life since Antioch.
Angrily, Ballista tried to push the patrician out of his mind. He returned his attention from the skies to the terrain his army must cross. Here, the cliffs started to run away to the west, opening up a wide, largely featureless plain between themselves and the Euphrates. Ideal terrain for cavalry. Ideal for the Sassanids; bad for the Romans.
A brassy peal of trumpets announced that the army was breaking camp. Ballista turned in his saddle to watch. He wanted to study the order of march that he had prescribed — to see it, as it were, from the outside, through the eyes of the enemy. Straight away, the four parallel columns that were the heart of the formation began to be apparent. First, out on the river, some one hundred boats of all shapes and sizes were being rowed, paddled and poled into position. Around the ungainly transports nipped five little one-banked galleys, chivvying like sheepdogs. Ballista was pleased that he had gone to the trouble of finding and requisitioning the galleys, partly crewing them with experienced boatmen from Legio IIII Scythica. He was even more pleased that he had bullied the military commander at Caeciliana into handing over five bolt-throwing ballistae to mount on the galleys. The galleys were manoeuvrable. The artillery on them had a far better range than any hand-held bow or sling. A Sassanid cavalry force was very unlikely to have any boats or artillery with it. The little improvised war galleys gave Ballista command of the Euphrates. And that secured one flank of his army.
Next, keeping as close to the riverbank as possible, came the land-based half of the baggage train — over three hundred indiscriminate beasts of burden: donkeys, mules, camels, horses and broad-shouldered slaves. Somewhere in that braying, surging mass were the ten spare mounts of Acilius Glabrio and the rest of his luxurious equipage. At least the latter was now carried on the backs of animals or men, not on lumbering wagons which got stuck at the merest hint of bad going. Ballista watched horsemen spurring up and down the column trying to instil some order. He was glad that he had not only seconded Turpio some legionaries for the galleys but twenty cavalrymen from the Equites Singulares. It was not just that they would help Turpio control the awkward land column; if everything went wrong, he would have some good men at his back to help him cut his way out of the rout. Ballista pushed the thought away. He was irritated with himself for thinking such an ill-omened thing.
The Dux Ripae switched his attention from the tail to the teeth of his army. Parallel to the baggage rode the cavalry: eight hundred heavily armoured men in column of fours. It was easy enough to spot Acilius Glabrio. One only needed to locate the standard of the lead unit, Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi, and look just in front of it for the elegant figure in scarlet and gold who rode alone. Some way back, looming above the dust, was Ballista's own standard, the white draco. It marked the mid-point in the column where marched the Equites Singulares. The rear unit, the Equites Tertii Catafractarii Palmirenorum, was already completely obscured by the dust.
The fourth and final column was the tough outer carapace behind which the others sheltered. This was the column furthest from the river. Here was the infantry, Legio IIII Scythica followed by Legio III Felix: two thousand legionaries marching in a column four wide and five hundred deep. They were ordered just so, two paces between ranks to allow the bowmen, four hundred Armenians and four hundred Mesopotamians, to come and go. The tough, fiery Aurelian had taken his post at the centre of the column.
Finally, Ballista considered the three units that were not organized into the columns. Across the front and rear of the army were two thin lines of bowmen, turning the whole formation into a hollow square. But how very thin the line at the front looked — just two hundred Saracens. Ballista could not see them, but he knew that the line at the rear was little better, just three hundred Itureans. The last unit that made up the army was also lost in the dust. But somewhere between the columns of cavalry and infantry, the resourceful Sandario held his three hundred and fifty slingers ready to reinforce any part of the square.
It was quite good. Bits of it — the river flank and the infantry column — were very good. But there were undeniable problems. There was not enough heavy infantry. Another five hundred legionaries in the van and in the rear, and the square would have been nigh on impregnable — or rather it would have been nigh on impregnable if everyone obeyed orders and held their position.
As it was, Ballista was worried about the obedience of his command. It was not really the two columns of baggage under Turpio. Yes, the sardonic ex-centurion had been mired in corruption when the northerner had first met him. Turpio had sworn that he had been blackmailed into it. Ballista did not know what it was that had laid Turpio open to such coercion. Turpio claimed that it was resolved, that it could not happen again. But one never knew. Ballista tried to shrug all this away. Turpio had more than redeemed himself in action since then, and Ballista liked him. You had to trust your judgement. As for the infantry on the other wing under 'hand-to-steel' — Aurelian might be something of a hothead but, in a paradoxical way, he was also the personification of old-style disciplina. Ballista had no real worries there — unlike with the cavalry. It all came back to Acilius Glabrio.
How much damage could the young patrician do? Ballista would take his position with the Equites Singulares. They should not be directly affected by any foolishness of Acilius Glabrio. The Equites Tertii Catafractarii Palmirenorum rode at the rear of the cavalry column. Ballista was between them and Acilius Glabrio. Their prefect, Albinus, was a sound man, a long-service career officer. They should be all right. Which left Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi at the head of the column. Again, their prefect, Niger, was a sound man. Ballista had told Niger not to let his men follow Acilius Glabrio if he tried to do anything stupid. But would the men heed the sensible prefect or the glamorous patrician? Allfather, do not let that arrogant young fool lead them off in another mad charge. And what if he did? What would Ballista do then? Watch them become isolated, surrounded, cut down? Or try and rescue them — and run the risk of dragging the whole army down in bloody ruin?
Maximus rode between Ballista and the Roman army, breaking into his worries. 'Time to go.'
The Sassanid
scouts were coming on at an easy, loose canter. There were more of them than before, maybe forty or fifty. They were strung out across the plain in no particular order. From time to time, as if on a whim, an individual horseman would turn, now angling towards the river, now the cliffs, then again heading straight for Ballista and his small party.
Some way behind the Persian scouts rose a large, whirling dust cloud. There was no breeze, and it rose straight and tall. Its base was some miles away. It was moving towards them.
'It could be onagers,' said Demetrius hopefully. 'Turpio told me that when a herd of wild asses is attacked by lions, they come together in a dense pack to frustrate the predators. He said the dust was often mistaken for that raised by troops.' Keen for reassurance, the young Greek talked on. 'Turpio has been out here a long time. He knows what he is talking about, knows about these plains.'
'It could be onagers.' The flat tone of Ballista's reply showed that his mind was elsewhere.
'Time to go,' said Maximus again, more loudly. As if woken from a reverie, Ballista realized that the Sassanid outriders were coming into bowshot. He hurriedly made the signal, and turned Pale Horse. The Romans rode hard and straight for the safety of the army, only jinking around the occasional scrub of camel thorn. Behind them, the easterners swooped across the plain like swallows.
A couple of hours later, mid-morning, about the time when, in Rome, the courts stop sitting, even Demetrius could not cling to the idea that the dust was raised by onagers.
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