The expressions on the faces of the centurions showed their displeasure with being left out of most of the fighting.
“Ah, is there anything more lovely than a centurion’s grimace?” Rufio said. “Stop scowling. All of you bled enough for Rome on the Rhenus. You have nothing to prove here. I don’t want heroes, I want victors. Understood?”
“Yes!” Decius said as he came riding up.
Rufio turned back to his men. “We’re going to practice five complete runs. No swords, just movement. The six of us up here will be the enemy. Pretend that you want to kill all these charming centurions.” Rufio smiled. “That shouldn’t be too challenging to imagine. Hit, roll, hit, roll. After one complete run of all twenty ranks, stop to rest and take a drink. Then we’ll do four more. All right, take a drink now and get ready.”
Rufio rode past the horse pens and saw Haritat’s sons finishing packing their gear. Haritat was down on one knee and speaking with Morlana. Crus was standing off to the left and watching as well. Haritat pushed back Morlana’s blue hood and tousled her wild mane. She said something to him and he let loose that great laugh that was so thunderous and so rare. She threw her arms around his neck and held him for a long time. Then she kissed him on a cheek and ran off to her equine charges.
Rufio dismounted and left Nimbus ground tied as he and Crus approached the desert chieftain.
Haritat stood up and faced them.
“Rome is grateful for all you’ve done,” Crus said. “Of course,” he continued, smiling, “I know that means nothing to you, but I had to say it.”
Haritat gravely inclined his head forward an inch.
“I’ve already said all I can ever say,” Rufio added. “You know my heart.”
“I do, and I honor it,” he said, staring into Rufio’s eyes. “But the appreciation of the centurion or of the tribune or even of Rome itself is of little concern to Haritat.”
Rufio noticed that Haritat’s gaze had slid past him. He turned around and saw Flavia standing about twenty feet away. She seemed rigid, not her usual relaxed self. Her eyes were already moist. Rufio gestured to her to come forward.
Flavia moved toward them as if her entire body ached. She glanced at Rufio and Crus and then stood before Haritat.
“I’ve come to say farewell,” she said to the Nabataean.
“I thank you. And I am honored.” His voice was soft, consoling. “Dushara has led us through many trials, has he not?”
“Yes,” she answered faintly.
A pair of tears burned their way out and slid down her face.
Haritat pressed each of his forefingers to her cheeks and glided his fingertips along the two lines of tears and made them vanish. “Merely the first drops of the early morning dew.”
Rufio could see her lower lip quivering, and her hands began to tremble. By colossal force of will, she seemed to have rooted herself to the ground.
“Flavia,” Rufio said.
She turned to him.
“It’s all right.”
She stepped hesitantly toward Haritat and he slid both of his hands around the back of her head and drew her to his chest.
What an apparition, Rufio thought, a vision he would never forget. That hawk-like face carved from rock and hided over with dark and drawn leather, and gazing down now at a pink and soft-skinned huntress from a shadowed forest far away.
At last Haritat eased his hands from her hair and Flavia straightened up.
She reached out and touched his left cheek, and Haritat surprised them all by smiling a smile as warm as a glowing blade pulled from a hot forge.
His eyes overflowing with affection, he laid his right hand upon her head in blessing. “Farewell.”
He then turned away and rode off into the mists of memory.
50
WHAT SHATTERS OR EXALTS THE STRENGTH OF A SOLDIER IS HIS CAUSE.
PROPERTIUS
The yelling of children made Rufio smile as he leaped onto Nimbus and rode to the training arena. About thirty boys from Hezrail were sitting outside the fence of the arena and shouting and laughing while Bellator and Arrianus worked on rollbacks with the Fourth Century. Like adults everywhere, Rufio was unable to resist the laughter of children and he laughed along with them.
Crus came riding up with a look of bafflement on his face.
“Matthias did his work well,” Rufio said. “I told him to promise that any boys who came today and screamed themselves hoarse would get a midday meal and enough food to take home to their families.”
“But for what?”
“The Parthians are famous for shouting to unnerve their enemy in battle. And especially their enemy’s horses. After a few days of these shrieking bandits, our horses will consider the Parthians little more than mutes.”
Crus laughed. “You think of everything, don’t you?”
“I wish I could. But this will help. We’ll be blowing horns next, because the Parthians love those, too.”
Morlana handed out cups of water to the thirsty children so they could continue without searing their throats.
“Decius was looking for you earlier,” Crus said.
“I was checking on our Judaean archers.”
“I believe he went out on this morning’s scouting with his men.”
“He’s a good Roman. Did they see anything interesting?
“He said he wanted to follow proper military procedure and speak with you first, but he certainly seemed excited about something.”
“Well, Decius is not an excitable man. Do you know where he is?”
“With his horses.”
Rufio found Decius at the pens. He and his men were just finishing watering the animals they had ridden on patrol.
Rufio dismounted and walked over to the centurion. “Any Oriental delights to dazzle me with?”
A rare smile lifted Decius’s heavy face. “Better than that. You have to see it for yourself.”
Rufio grinned. “What a fortunate man I am to have centurions who live to make me happy. Should Matthias see it, too?”
“Yes, he should.”
“Get a fresh horse and we’ll find him and the tribune and go.”
Ten minutes later the four men were riding out of the fort and off to the east.
As they passed at a trot through the already baking Judaean wilderness, the color of the soil began to lighten, and the terrain started flattening out into an uneven plain.
After about two miles of this, Decius pulled up and said, “There.”
The earth seemed to drop away, a great gorge opening before them. The chasm was actually a dry riverbed, no doubt flowing with water only during the violent winter rains. It sprawled about a half-mile north to south and slightly less west to east, where it cut through yellow bluffs that rose about two hundred feet in front of the riders, up to the Judaean flatland stretching beyond to infinity.
The creamy hues of the tops of the cliffs faded away toward the bottom of the valley. There the entire surface was an eerie and deathly white.
“It looks like snow,” Crus said. “What . . . ?”
“Salt,” Rufio answered.
A few valiant acacias were struggling through the lifeless and crusted soil, the trees’ distinctive flattened branches spreading out hopefully in a landscape without hope. No birds could be glimpsed, no insects heard. Other than the acacias and a few defiant shrubs, no scrap of life was seen.
Even Rufio, who had witnessed so much in an eventful life, was taken aback. He dismounted and walked toward the edge of the precipice. “By all the gods at once . . . . this has to be the cruelest place on earth.” Staring in horror at an expanse of blanched and brackish nothingness that would have caused Jupiter himself to turn away in despair, he said softly, “We’ve finally reached the end of the world.”
The others dismounted and came forward. In the manner of desert warriors everywhere, the four soldiers sat on the ground in the shadows of their horses, animals far tougher than feeble men.
“Di
d we pass the entrance to this?” Rufio asked Decius.
“About a quarter-mile back.”
“Is the entrance wide enough for the entire cohort?”
“It is.”
“And that defile to the east—did you explore it?”
“We did. A grade from the plain beyond it leads down it into this dead valley.”
“And the slope is big enough for a thousand Parthian horsemen to swoop on our vulnerable Judaean friends?”
Decius smiled. “Yes.”
“They could never flank us down there, could they?” Crus said.
“No,” Rufio answered. He removed his water flask from his belt and took a long drink. “If we can lure them in. . . .” He smiled. “Which we can.”
“I could sting them with my century and then retreat,” Decius said. “Use their own tactics against them.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Rufio said.
Matthias turned to Decius. “This is our land. We’ll suck them in and strike them down. In that way, your century doesn’t have to be worn out before the battle.”
Rufio looked at Crus. “If we can challenge them in that abyss—with the walls guarding our left and right elbows—we can take the risk of striking with two columns on each wing rather than one and still hold two in reserve. Nothing could be better than that.” He stared across the salt valley to the tableland beyond. “From here, we should be able to make out the Parthian camel riders coming to replenish the troops with water and arrows. The sun will be in our eyes, but we should be able to see well enough. We’ll have someone up here with a carnyx to warn us down in the gorge.”
“Bellator?” Crus asked.
“It has to be. He’s in no condition to ride into battle. But he can blow the carnyx.”
“What is that?” Matthias asked.
“A Celtic horn,” Rufio said. “Of course, if the Parthians have already taken control of one of those hidden Nabataean cisterns, they might not need the camels. At least for water.”
“But for arrows?” Crus said.
“Probably,” Rufio answered and took another drink.
“What about water for our mounts?” Decius asked. “We can’t just go back to the fort.”
“No we cannot,” Rufio said. “We’re going to tear down the gyrus and make water troughs and fill them up and bring them here with the wagons we have left. We’ll leave the wagons here to bring back the wounded and the dead.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Matthias said. “Why would the Parthians be kind enough to do what we want? To pounce on us in this gorge? Even for such tempting prey?”
“Because they cannot afford not to,” Rufio said. “They’ll come. I’m certain of it. They’ll ride straight in and kill us or die.”
“Once they’re down there, can we try to cut them off at the other entrance to the gorge?” Crus asked. “Trap them and destroy them?”
“No, tribune,” Rufio said. “We don’t have enough troops to risk that. But it doesn’t matter, because even if we fight only to a draw, we win. Unless they smash us, they have to go back in disgrace. Let them go. To Phraates, dead Parthians will be forgotten—he’ll make sure of that. But he’ll see his own vanquished as nothing more than disgusting worms humiliating him by crawling home in shame."
When the four men returned to the fort, Rufio met with the other centurions and once more discussed the particulars of the battle plan. All were eager. Rufio had decided long ago to have Matthias leave some of his troops back to guard the fort. After traveling so far with his own devoted soldiers, he was not going to leave any Romans out of the fight. Someday these men would have grandchildren who would be eager and proud to know how their grandfathers had fought the barbarian Asiatics in the Judaean wasteland.
Rufio ordered the centurions to give all their men the afternoon off from training and to rest all of them and their horses the following day. Only routine duties would be required, other than the dismantling of the gyrus and the fabrication and the transport of the troughs.
Bellator was less than enthused about the details that Rufio laid before him. His reason, though, was personal rather than tactical. Yet he finally relented, for he knew as well as Rufio that his bad hip prevented him from sharing the battlefield on horseback with his troops.
“Besides,” Rufio had said to him, “I want you on the plain above us overseeing everything and signaling if needed. Who else is there?”
Rufio spent the next several hours with the horses. He randomly checked legs and feet and found none wanting. The horses had endured the rigors of training as if they had all been the spawn of Pegasus. Certainly there were more tractable and less arrogant breeds than the Arabian, but he had found none sounder and tougher.
Tack, too, he examined with a searching eye and was pleased with what he found. Arrianus and the young blonde strator had doted on it daily with the diligence of fanatics.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Rufio grabbed an armful of medica and led Nimbus from his pen to the empty parade ground far from everyone. He dropped the hay on the ground and sat beside it, and then leaned back as Nimbus bent down to feed. To Rufio, no cup of Setian wine could be even half as soothing as simply relaxing in the long shadow of one’s horse as it grazed contentedly in the failing light.
Running footsteps behind him ended his rest far too soon. He recognized Valerius’s crisp trot without even bothering to turn around.
“What is it?” Rufio said with more annoyance than Valerius deserved.
“The cohort has a visitor.”
Rufio turned and looked over his left shoulder. Valerius had a bemused expression more appropriate to Metellus than to the usually serious optio.
“And who interrupts the repose of Caesar’s soldier?” Rufio asked.
“The centurion has only himself to blame.”
“All right,” Rufio said. “Who?”
Valerius smiled. “Yahlavi awaits the pleasure of the servant of Caesar.”
Rufio laughed and jumped up, startling Nimbus. “Where?”
“The tribune’s office.”
“Take care of my boy here,” Rufio said and handed the horse’s lead rope to Valerius.
Yahlavi looked frightened when he turned in his chair and saw Rufio enter Crus’s office. He stood up quickly.
“What’s wrong, soldier?” Rufio said.
That seemed to relax him a bit. Rufio had never called him that before.
“I was afraid you’d think I’d betrayed your trust,” Yahlavi said.
“If you’d not gone back to report to your commander, you’d have betrayed my good judgment.”
“You knew I would?”
“I’m a fair judge of men.”
Yahlavi smiled. “Thank you, centurion.”
“Sit back down,” Crus said from behind his desk.
Rufio slid a chair next to the Parthian and sat.
“Yahlavi has come here to warn us,” Crus said in a rather buoyant tone.
Everyone was sounding like Metellus today.
“No,” Yahlavi said. “Not to warn. To take you to negotiate.”
“About what?” Crus asked.
“Your presence here.”
“Didn’t you tell your commander that it’s not negotiable?”
“I did, tribune. But this is Durena.”
“What’s that to Rome?”
Yahlavi hesitated.
“Well?” Crus said.
“His name should count for much.”
“Along the Tiber it counts for nothing.”
Yahlavi looked to Rufio for help.
“And do you speak for Durena?” Rufio asked.
“No, centurion. He wants to meet with the tribune personally.”
“How benevolent,” Rufio said.
“When?” Crus asked.
“As soon as possible. Now.”
“Where?”
“Not far. I’ll show you. And you have to come unarmed.”
“How far is the
entire drafsh?” Rufio asked.
“At your doorstep.”
Rufio smiled. “It’s not nice to lie to the man who could have nailed you to a cross. We have patrols out. The whole force cannot be closer than a day’s ride. My guess is that it’s farther.”
Yahlavi looked embarrassed. “I’m a poor deceiver, I know. Two days’ ride distant. On my honor.”
“Who will be at the meeting?” Crus asked.
“You and the centurion and Durena and Aridates.”
“And the tribune’s safety?” Rufio asked.
“Promised on Durena’s honor.”
Crus laughed. “Well, I’m satisfied.”
“Draw us a map,” Rufio said.
“I’ll take you.”
“You’ll take no one,” Rufio said. “You’ll stay here as a hostage until the tribune returns to his men.”
51
TO FIGHT FOR OUR COUNTRY, FOR OUR CHILDREN, FOR OUR ALTARS, FOR OUR HEARTHS.
SALLUST
Rufio and Crus rode across the desert with the sun at their backs. The arid air always failed to retain even a hint of its ferocity as the day began to wane, and their easy trot was pleasant in the fading light.
They rode along a dry streambed and saw the tracks Yahlavi’s horse had made as the Parthian had ridden to the fort.
“Should be soon,” Rufio said, and as they turned left through a narrow gorge they saw two men seated on horseback in the deep blue shadows of the ravine and patiently waiting for the coming of Rome.
Rufio and Crus stopped about twenty feet away.
The man on the right was clearly the leader. He reeked of authority and the confidence of command.
“You’re supposed to be unarmed,” Durena said in a soft voice.
“You’re supposed to be in Parthia,” Crus answered with the cool assurance bought at great price in the valley of the Rhenus.
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