The Sassanids were no cowards, but they had been caught unprepared, trapped between the impetus of the Romans and the steep slope down to the river. Panic spreads through an army like fire across a Mediterranean hillside in high summer. Soon the only Persians left on the stricken field were dead or helpless and soon to die. Ballista kept the Equites Tertii Catafractarii Palmirenorum close in hand. He did not let any of them descend the banks of the Chaboras, although after a time he let some dismount to throw rocks down into the tangled mass of horses and riders struggling in the stream. Any recruits in the ranks now knew that a river running red with blood was not just a literary conceit.
Here in the south where the Chaboras had impeded their flight, the slaughter of the Sassanids had been prodigious. Some easterners had also died in the north, those who had been too close to avoid the charge of Acilius Glabrio and Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi. In the centre, all the Persian horsemen had got away into the desert to the east. Mucapor and the Equites Singulares had merely run down some poor infantrymen. Yet Ballista's plan had worked. Although Acilius Glabrio's premature charge had let the majority of the Sassanid army escape, it mattered little. The easterners were scattered, their morale was broken.
As Ballista slid from the saddle to relieve the weight on Pale Horse's back, a wave of depression broke over him. What did it signify? He had beaten this army. The Sassanids would send another. And another after that. This was a religious war. The easterners would not stop until they had lit the Bahram fires, the sacred fires of Mazda, throughout the whole world. A black thought struck Ballista — even if he defeated Shapur himself, even if he killed or captured the King of Kings, the eternal war between east and west would continue.
XII
The aftermath of any battle is hellish, and the battle of Circesium was no exception. Under a high sun, the flat, bright desert stretched away. The ground was covered with the detritus of warfare: discarded, broken weapons, dead horses, the half-naked, humped corpses of men, sweet-smelling piles of horse droppings, the foul stench of human guts.
'Ave, I give you joy of your victory.' Acilius Glabrio had taken off his helmet. His usually purposefully teased curls lay flat to his skull. Sweat was running down into his beard. He was beaming, very full of himself. Ballista noticed the cut on the young patrician's cheek was still open. 'Celeritas and cold steel. Nothing a goat-eyed easterner can do about it.'
Ballista stepped very close to him. 'You insubordinate little prick. I ought to kill you now,' he hissed.
The smile stayed on Acilius Glabrio's face, but his eyes went cold. 'Be grateful, you jumped-up barbarian shit. I have just given us a great victory.'
'You have just given us half a victory, and thrown away the better part,' snapped Ballista. His right hand was swelling. It throbbed like hell. His temper was on a knife edge.
'You gutless barbarian bastard.' Acilius Glabrio's face was full of scorn. 'I have chased away the Sassanids you were so scared of, and now you can retake Circesium unopposed. A great victory. Enjoy it while you can. I have not forgotten what you did to my brother.'
Ballista struggled to control his fury. 'And what will you do about it? Hire another assassin?'
Acilius Glabrio's snort of laughter was genuine. 'You judge others by yourself. I would be as low as you if I stooped to such things.'
The cavalry prefects Niger and Albinus walked up. They said it was time to acknowledge the acclamations of the troops. Ballista, eyes still locked with those of Acilius Glabrio, stepped back. The terrible thing was, he believed him: the odious young patrician had not hired the assassin.
Bone-tired, Ballista hauled himself back into the saddle. Pale Horse's flanks were lathered in sweat, his head down. With his officers, Ballista slowly rode back towards the army's starting position. Everywhere was the frenzied looting of the dead. Many of the scavengers were civilians. There were far too many to have all come from the baggage train. Ballista had seen it on so many stricken fields that he did not wonder at it. No matter how remote a battlefield from human habitation, as soon as the fighting was over, the scavengers appeared. The skinny, furtive men and the hideous old crones, sharp knives in their hands and, always among them, always upsetting the northerner, the young children, far too young for that disgusting work.
Yet on the plain before Circesium, most of those despoiling the dead were soldiers. The Roman moralists were wrong. Disciplina was not a durable, inherent quality. On the contrary, it was terribly fragile. A victory could shatter it as easily as a crushing defeat. When the milites saw the cavalcade coming they stopped their searching. They drew their swords and, hunched over, chopped down, as many blows as it took. Then, as the horsemen drew near, they stood. They thrust out their right arms in a sort of salute, in their fists the severed Persian heads. One man had a head in each hand and the long black hair of a third gripped in his teeth. The gore ran up his arms, down the front of his mail shirt. As a Roman general should, Ballista inspected the grisly trophies, commended those holding them with a kind word or an affectionate look.
In the liberty of the moment, the soldiers called out whatever they pleased: praise, jokes, boasts. Small knots of men chanted the names of the officers. Ballista noted that more chanted for Acilius Glabrio than for himself. The northerner bitterly reflected how all his hard work, all his planning, counted for next to nothing in their eyes. One foolish, insubordinate charge — a charge which brought a half success and squandered total victory — had won the odious little patrician the hearts of the men.
'Gaius Acilius Glabrio! Gaius Acilius Glabrio!'
The chanted name rang through Ballista's angry thoughts. Acilius Glabrio was an arrogant, stupid, self-satisfied fool — but not a murderer. Ballista had been so convinced that he had hired the assassins. But there had been an honesty in the young nobleman's contemptuous retort — 'I would be as low as you, if I stooped to such things.' It had changed the northerner's mind.
'Gaius Acilius Glabrio! Gaius Acilius Glabrio!'
Ballista's thoughts scrabbled round like rats in a trap. Not Acilius Glabrio… then who? Ballista had never really thought it was the Borani prince, Videric. This conclusion was not from any misty-eyed sentiment that northerners such as himself would not resort to such underhand methods. They did. Often. Bloodfeuds in Germania involved murder. It was more that various things did not seem right: the assassin in the clearing shouting, 'The young eupatrid sends you this,' the pantomime masks and cavalry parade helmet in the alley, the man himself in the silver mask calling Ballista a barbarian. But if it hadn't been Videric or Acilius Glabrio who had hired the assassin, it must be the sons of the sinister Count of the Largess, Macrianus the Lame. But which one? Quietus, who Ballista had punched in the balls? Macrianus the Younger, who had been shown to lack the courage to help his brother? Or was it both of them? And what of their powerful, devious father? Was Macrianus the Lame a part of it? If he was, Allfather help me, thought Ballista. Apart from the emperor, there could be no more dangerous enemy in the whole imperium.
Voices were raised in anger. A fight had broken out among some of the looters. Ballista ran his right hand over his face. He felt a stab of pain. At least one knuckle was broken and the hand was swelling fast. I must get a grip on things, he thought. He had to take charge before this army descended into chaos, laid itself open to a Sassanid counterattack.
Ballista called his officers to him. He rapped out orders. Niger and Albinus were to send out patrols. They were to report immediately if any still-formed bodies of Persian troops were to be found within five miles. Mucapor was to recall the Equites Singulares to the standard and have them fall in behind Ballista. Legio III, under its prefect, Rutillius Rufus, was to secure the town. Sandario was to use his slingers and any other light infantry he needed to bring the fires there under control. Turpio was to get the baggage train in order and, as soon as possible, quarter it safely within the walls. Acilius Glabrio was to disperse the looters, sending the troops among them back to their unit
s on pain of death. Legio IIII was to remain formed on the road as a reserve under Castricius. Aurelian was to attend the Dux Ripae.
Some horsemen clattered away purposefully. Others remained, looking concerned. There was something unspoken in the air. Aurelian? Where was Aurelian?
Macapor edged his horse forward. 'He is hurt.'
'Badly?'
Mucapor shrugged.
'Everyone, carry out your orders. Mucapor, we will go to him.' Even in the extremity of his fear — this was no trick, no false alarm — Ballista did not push Pale Horse too hard. He forced himself to keep the gelding to the gentlest of canters, forced down the hollow feeling of panic.
There was a knot of men under the standards of Legio IIII. It parted as Ballista approached. Aurelian was lying on his back. His right leg was at an odd angle. An army doctor was on his knees, preparing to set the broken limb.
Ballista jumped down from the saddle. Aurelian's face was grey, and he was sweating. Through gritted teeth, he whispered, 'I give you joy of your victory.'
Ballista looked into his friend's eyes. 'Thank you.' Unable to say more, Ballista leant down and very gently squeezed Aurelian's shoulder. Then he straightened up, turned away, and got on with what needed to be done. The army had stayed at Circesium for thirteen days. It had been a busy time for Ballista. He had pushed cavalry patrols out further and further in all directions. There had been no sign of any Persians — or none that were still living. The premature charge of Acilius Glabrio had robbed him of the chance to destroy the Persian army, but it seemed the easterners had withdrawn, at least for the time being.
There had been many, many burials to attend to. Aelius Spartianus, the tribune commanding the Roman forces in Circesium, who had fallen with almost all his men when the Sassanids took the town, was interred in a slendid sarcophagus in a fine tomb by the main road into town — admittedly, both sarcophagus and tomb were reused, but the local stonemason made a good job of the new inscriptions. The other Roman dead among the soldiers were buried in communal graves, but they were accorded all due respect: their eyes closed, a coin in each mouth, a newly sculpted monument on top of each grave.
Things had been different with the Sassanids. Their often mutilated remains were burned and the ashes thrown anyhow into pits. But this was not just casual contempt for the enemy. The Romans knew that the Sassanids were Zoroastrian fire-worshippers who exposed their dead to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. They knew well that the Zoroastrians held that the mere touch of a corpse polluted the very sacredness of fire. A small voice at the back of Ballista's mind had whispered that this could only exacerbate the conflict between east and west, that it might even rebound personally on its perpetrator. The Sassanids would see it as an atrocity, a deliberate insult to their religion. They would, of course, be right. Yet there was little that Ballista had felt he could do. His men had suffered day after day at the hands of the easterners. They had wanted revenge even on the dead bodies of their tormentors.
Ballista had tried to set the defence of the town on a sounder footing. Across the Chaboras a tower was built to give early warning of any Sassanid forces advancing up the Euphrates. The walls and gates of Circesium itself had needed little work, as the town had fallen to a surprise attack rather than regular siege works. Ballista had arranged for supplies and materials of war to be transported by boat downriver from Zeugma. Two thousand inhabitants of Circesium had been conscripted to form a local militia. Legio III Felix and the Mesopotamian archers were to be left as a regular garrison. They would be supported by three of the small war galleys.
The whole was to be commanded by Rutillius Rufus, the prefect of Legio III. The gods knew it was a small force, but Rufus seemed solid enough. While having done nothing outstanding, he had performed creditably on the march and in the battle. Ballista had started to give him a lengthy lecture on the tactics and stratagems to be adopted in defending a town against the Sassanids. The northerner had stopped abruptly when he thought he detected a badly suppressed smile on the prefect's face. Ever since he had entered the imperium as a sixteen-year-old from barbaricum, Ballista had had a strong dread of being mocked. He knew he was still oversensitive about it. But there again, it had to be admitted that Arete, the only town Ballista had defended from the Sassanids, had fallen in a bloody sack. And now it seemed Acilius Glabrio had stolen much of the credit for the victory at Circesium.
The march back had initially retraced their steps, north to Basileia and Leontopolis, across the Euphrates by the wide stone bridge at Soura, and on to Barbalissus. It had been hot and tiring but, with no enemy in sight, it had been a stroll in a Persian paradise by comparison with the march south. At Barbalissus, Castricius had taken his leave, marching his vexillatio on up the Euphrates to the base of Legio IIII at Zeugma. Ballista had led the remainder of the army west, skirting the southern shores of the great lake of Garboula to the city of Chalcis ad Belum and on to the main road to Antioch.
As they approached the capital of the Roman east, they had passed through the small village of Meroe. It was strange how some unimportant places stuck in one's mind. Ballista could always picture the dingy, dust-covered, mud-brick houses which flanked the road, the cracked public fountain, the thin, straggly trees which passed for a sacred grove. He had been through the village four times, on his way to and from first Arete and then Circesium. Nothing of note had happened on any of these occasions. Yet he could summon it up exactly, down to the smell of the water evaporating in the sun as it leaked from the fountain.
For five days, the returning army had been camped outside the Beroea Gate. Finally, the emperor Valerian had given his gracious permission for them to enter. Ballista looked up and down the procession. Everything was nearly ready.
Turpio rode up and saluted, the gold bracelet he had taken from the Persian king's tent sparkling in the sun. All was ready. Ballista cast a last look down the line. The army made a brave show, standards flying, infantry in serried ranks, cavalry and officers on prancing horses. Acilius Glabrio looked particularly splendid on a glossy black charger. Aurelian, on account of his broken leg, was having to ride in a carriage. Ballista adjusted his helmet and made the signal to move off.
The crowds were waiting through the Beroea Gate. They lined the colonnades of the Street of Tiberius and Herod. They threw flowers and called out compliments. A few girls, surely prostitutes, lifted their skirts or pulled down their tunics, offering the troops tantalizing glimpses of flesh.
'Keep the line straight, boys,' exhorted Ballista. 'Plenty of time later.'
They turned off into the street that ran down to the second bridge over the Orontes. They made their way across the island, the circus and the imperial palace to their right, past the Tetrapylon, the four columns supporting statues of elephants where imperial orders were posted, through the district known as the Bull, and out over the far bridge to the suburbs. There were no crowds on the western bank of the river. Instead, at no great intervals, the heads of malefactors and those who had earned imperial disfavour rotted on their pikes. They reached the campus martius and drew up in front of the imperial tribunal.
Ballista played with Pale Horse's ears as they waited. Imperial ceremonies tended to involve waiting. Junior officers scurried about checking the men were standing properly squared off, their kit just so. The sand of the campus martius had been watered that morning. No one wanted the polished arms and armour coated in dust. The usual wind from the south-east that blew up the Orontes valley was getting up. Already it tugged fitfully at the purple hangings of the imperial tribunal. Ballista smiled to himself. Outside verse Panegyrics, the gods and not the emperors controlled the winds.
After a decently short amount of time, the imperial party arrived. Slowly, the aged emperor Valerian stepped down from his carriage. After him, equally slowly, emerged the Comes Sacrarum Largitionum. There were few higher honours in the imperium than the invitation to ride in the emperor's carriage. Macrianus the Lame looked as if he felt
he belonged there.
Laboriously, the two old men climbed the steps. The other great officers of state followed them. When they were all in the position their rank dictated, Valerian alone moved to the front of the tribunal. He saluted the army. The army saluted back. The prearranged chants rang out: 'Hail, Valerian Augustus, may the gods preserve you!' — twenty times; 'Valerian Augustus, deliver us from the Persians!' — thirty times; 'Valerian Augustus, long may you live!' — forty times.
In the quiet that followed, the snap of the purple hangings in the wind echoed across the parade ground. Valerian filled his lungs, put his head back and began to speak.
'Ave, hail the victors of the battle of Circesium. Ave, hail the conquerors of the eastern barbarians!'
He had got no further when an exceptionally strong gust of wind tore one of the purple hangings from the front of the dais. It eddied for a moment. An imperial servant ran after it. A second gust sent it skidding along the ground, to come to rest where the injured Aurelian stood, leaning on a walking stick. The Danubian picked it up and handed it to the slave.
There was a slight stir at the back of the dais, but most of the men standing there had not risen high in the imperial service by exhibiting obvious interest in things that might be interpreted as dangerous omens. The emperor himself had paused, but he did not deign to look directly at the incident. Now the servant had retrieved the bit of cloth, Valerian continued.
'From the very earliest times, the west has been relentlessly attacked by the cruelty, avarice and lust of the east. First, duplicitous Phoenicians who sailed to Greece under the pretence of trade abducted Io, daughter of King Inachus of Argos. Since then, Mardonius, Xerxes, and now Shapur, in their pride have led innumerable Asiatic hordes against us.
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