King of Kings

by Unknown

  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.

  A fold in the plain hid the Sassanid army until it was quite close. The first things that could be seen quite clearly were the big standards: fierce beasts – lions, wolves, bears; and abstract, minimal designs – here a straight line, there a curve, something like the shape of a cup. They flashed bright in the sunshine, all colours: scarlet, yellow, violet. Strange, thou
ght Ballista, how the abstract patterns were more threatening than the animals. A bear is just a bear, but who in the Roman army could tell what powers and horrors the minimal and totally alien designs symbolized?

  The Sassanids were drawing closer. As their cavalry breasted the slight rise, individuals could be easily made out. They were less than a thousand paces away now. Ballista looked carefully. He could just about determine that some wore pointed helmets and others domed caps, while the majority appeared bareheaded. Now they were less than seven hundred paces away, and advancing at a brisk canter. There were a lot of them. They filled the plain. The thunder of their coming preceded them.

  ‘Steady, boys,’ Ballista called as he rode along behind his front line. He had reinforced the two hundred Saracen archers led by Viridius with the three hundred and fifty slingers of Sandario, but the line still looked horribly thin. Light infantry will seldom stand a really determined charge by cavalry. It was a risk, but he did not want to weaken the rest of his formation. ‘Steady, boys,’ Ballista called again, as much to himself as anyone.

  At five hundred paces he could pick out details of the Sassanid riders’ accoutrements: flashes of colour, glints of metal, the paler smudges of their faces, the occasional white sock on a horse. The northerner felt a tentative sense of relief. He could see the riders’ faces, see the legs of the horses. These were not the feared Sassanid clibanarii, the terrible, heavily armoured men on heavily armoured horses. Ballista’s gamble with having only light infantry in his front line might work. These Sassanids were horse archers. These bowmen should have no intention of trying to charge home against an unbroken enemy.

  ‘Hold the line, boys. They are just horse archers. They will never close with us.’

  Ballista rode past Acilius Glabrio, to his left at the head of the central column of the army, the cavalry column. ‘They will not charge home. Leave them to our infantry. Hold the line,’ the northerner called. He did not notice any response from the patrician.

  Ballista moved on, offering a few words of encouragement to the front line as he went. Now and then Demetrius would lean over and mutter in his ear, and then he would call out to junior officers and one or two men by name.

  ‘No fear, Dominus. These easterners do not have the balls to face us,’ shouted a grizzled slinger.

  ‘True, comilitio, and they are only light cavalry – they are nothing close to the steel,’ replied Ballista. He did not add, But the clibanarii, the heavy cavalry, they are out there somewhere, hidden by the drifting dust cloud, waiting, long spears in hand and murder in their hearts, and they, fellow-soldier, they are something, something terrible close to the steel.

  Ballista pushed Pale Horse into a canter. The others followed: Maximus, Calgacus, Demetrius, the standard bearer called Bargas, a trumpeter and ten Equites Singulares. The great white draco hissed and snapped above their heads. Ballista had wanted to speak to Sandario, on the extreme left of the front line, before the attack came into range. Now it was obvious that was not going to happen.

  Ballista was still some way short when he saw Sandario make the signal: the trumpets called, the slings whirred round and he half-glimpsed the slingshots fly towards the enemy. A moment or two later Roman trumpets rang out behind Ballista. He turned in his saddle and watched Viridius’ men loose their bows. Archers on foot outrange those on horseback, and slingers outrange both. For a short time, the Romans were in the god-like position of being able to kill without the least danger of being killed. With a clear view over his own infantry, Ballista could see the effect on the Sassanids. Men were knocked from saddles, some horses went down in a maelstrom of thrashing hooves and dust. But far, far too few to stop the charge.

  The bright day darkened and a storm of Persian arrows came slicing down. All around, men were roaring with fury, screaming in pain. Ballista felt an arrow tug at his cloak, saw the sparks as another ricocheted off Pale Horse’s armour. He made a signal and turned his tiny column back the way it had come. Everyone feels better with their left, shielded side to the enemy. As if in confirmation of the thought, Ballista was knocked sideways in his saddle as an arrow punched into his shield. Pulling on the horns of his saddle, he hauled himself upright. The bright fletchings of the arrow nodded as he moved, its steel tip embedded in the thick linden boards.

  Without conscious thought, Ballista had slipped into the altered state of almost complete calm that sometimes came on him in battle. At the centre of the storm, he looked out over the heads of his infantrymen and tried to work out how the fight was going. Men were falling on both sides. Neither side wore heavy armour. The Sassanids had the advantage of numbers, but the dust and movement made it impossible to judge by how much. On horseback the Sassanids were bigger targets, but then again they were moving.

  As the northerner watched, the front rank of Sassanids, no more than thirty paces distant, turned to their right, spun round and headed away. As they retreated they aimed their arrows back over the rumps of their horses, employing the famous ‘Parthian shot’. The next rank, and the one after that, and all those following repeated the manoeuvre. Arrows still rained down, but in next to no time the whole force was cantering away.

  A great wave of confused noise hit Ballista. It came from up ahead, from near the centre of the Roman line. For a few seconds the northerner could not accept the evidence of his eyes. There was the scarlet and gold figure of Acilius Glabrio out in front of the line. The standard bearers and musicians were with him. Behind him, the column of cavalry surged forward. The heavy cavalry of Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi were riding through, riding over the line of Roman light infantry. Slingers ran desperately out of the way. One or two, too slow, were bowled over, were either sent spinning like tops or, worse, disappeared beneath the plunging hooves. Acilius Glabrio, scarlet paludamentum flying, was leading his men out in a hell-for-leather charge after the Sassanid light cavalry.

  You fool – they are not running, it is just their way. They will turn in a moment. Ballista was not sure if he shouted out loud or not. He found that he had put Pale Horse into a flat-out gallop towards the point where more and more armoured horsemen were pouring out of the Roman formation. Ballista turned in the saddle. His entourage were still with him: Maximus, Calgacus, Demetrius, the others. Good. He called for the trumpeter to sound recall. Towards the rear of the column some of the troopers began to rein in their horses.

  Ballista angled his horse into the charging column of catafractarii. His knee crunched painfully into the armoured knee of a trooper. Highly strung for the charge, the trooper rounded on the man who had barged into him then, as he recognized his general, the fight drained out of him. Ballista seized the trooper’s reins and pushed their mounts across the four-wide column, bringing those behind them to a skidding halt.

  Rising in the saddle, Ballista looked round to take stock. He had managed to prevent about one hundred men of Equites I Parthi leaving the army. But the rest of the unit, some two hundred troopers, were streaming away across the plain.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Maximus eloquently. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

  Ballista summoned over a decurion. Demetrius quietly provided his name. ‘Lappius, I am appointing you in temporary command of those of Equites I Parthi still here with the main body of the army. I want you to get them in order and form them up in close order, knee to knee, in a line two deep, with the right-hand men by the riverbank. Hold that position. On no account move without a direct order from me.’ To give him credit, the decurion took this unexpected turn of events in his stride, saluting smartly and barking out orders to make things so.

  Staring out across the plain, Ballista watched the rest of Equites I Parthi hurtle towards their fate. They were already some two hundred paces away. The Persians, of course, were giving way before them. But now some of the eastern horse archers were beginning to hang back to lap round their flanks. In a classic manoeuvre, the Persians were drawing the Romans on while flowing around them like water.

  Ballista spok
e fast but clearly to a messenger. ‘Tell Mucapor to bring the Equites Singulares forward. I want them in a line one hundred across and two deep, in open order, a horse’s length between each rider, the whole line cantered on me.’

  The messenger clattered away. Ballista looked back out over the plain. The majority of the Equites I Parthi still galloped hard after Acilius Glabrio, though now they were strung out like the train of a meteor. Carrying their own heavy armour and their armoured riders, the horses must be nearly blown. Towards the rear, some troopers were slackening their pace. One or two had even stopped and were tuning their mounts.

  The jingle of equipment, the stamp of hooves, and the muted grunt of orders announced that his bodyguard, the Equites Singulares, were being deployed behind him, as Ballista wished. He did not turn around, he kept his eyes on the plain. The main group of Roman troopers had come to a halt. He could see the standards still flying above them. They were about four hundred paces away. And the Sassanids were closing around them. Across the plain were isolated Roman troopers. Sassanid light cavalry will fight hand to hand if the odds are well in their favour. One after another, the isolated Roman cavalrymen were dragged down, overwhelmed by sheer numbers as the trap closed. In a matter of moments the main body of Acilius Glabrio’s men was surrounded. Arrows were flying at them from all directions.

  Leave the bastard there. A small voice spoke in Ballista’s mind. The bastard hired someone to kill you. Leave the bastard to die. It is his own fault.

  Mucapor approached, saluted, and waited for orders.