by R. W. Peake
“Our part?” Pullus echoed. “Have we found an ally?”
“We’ll see,” Caesar answered cryptically, but then spoke for the next several moments, with Pullus listening intently.
Once Caesar finished, Pullus didn’t speak immediately, mainly because he was trying to grapple with the audacity and, frankly, foolhardiness of Caesar’s plan. Ultimately, however, it came down to one question, or more specifically, one man.
“Do you think Kamnaskires’ men can do it?”
“I’m about to ask him,” Caesar replied, but if Pullus had hoped to be dismissed without being asked, they were quickly dashed when Caesar asked him, “And can I count on the Equestrians? Can your men do what needs to be done?”
Pullus knew he was being manipulated, and it angered him, yet at the same time, he responded in exactly the manner Caesar expected, replying frostily, “Do you need to ask, Caesar? Of course my boys can do it.”
Before the assault began, Caesar sent a delegation to the city walls under a flag of truce and gave the Pattalans the opportunity to surrender without a fight, something that didn’t sit well with the men of the Legions, who grumbled that they hadn’t gotten aboard ships to spend almost a month on them just to have a city surrender. Whether it was a matter of Caesar’s Luck or he had some sort of information about the inhabitants of the city, which meant he knew they would reject his terms, none of the men of the ranks ever knew; his Legates and Primi Pili knew that what Caesar offered were terms in name only, being so onerous that there wasn’t much chance that the Pattalan leader, who styled himself as a king, would accept them. He gave them a day to decide, only because he needed the time for his own preparations, and as he had expected, at dawn the next day, a delegation from the city flatly rejected the terms. They did so in Greek, although it was slightly different from the style in which Caesar and other educated Romans spoke, which Caesar ascribed to the fact that the basis for the Pattalan dialect was almost three centuries old. Nevertheless, the two sides understood each other, and exactly as Caesar foresaw, the Romans were rebuffed and essentially told to do their worst. Five days later, at the beginning of the midnight watch, two hundred picked men left from the Roman camp that had been erected a mile upstream from Pattala. One by one, twenty rafts, carrying ten men apiece, slipped out into the swiftly moving current, while the men paddled and poled furiously in an attempt to get to the opposite riverbank as quickly as possible. This was just one of the many difficulties confronting those carrying out Caesar’s plan, but Pullus was simply happy that none of his men were involved in this part of it. He and his Equestrians were crammed aboard half the number of ships that normally carried an entire Legion, and even without the animals, slaves, and supplies taking up space, the men were cheek to jowl down in the hold. Pullus, naturally, was on deck, watching as each raft, waiting perhaps ten heartbeats after the previous one, was shoved out into the river, sometimes with so much noise and splashing Pullus was certain they could be heard all the way to Pattala.
Even under normal circumstances, Pullus would have been nervous, but this plan had been thrown together so hastily that he was certain that something potentially major had been overlooked. That this was the case wasn’t due to Caesar’s normal impatience, at least to the customary degree, but in the fact that one can’t slow down the phases of the moon. This was the last moonless night for weeks, and it was crucial that the visibility be as poor as possible. One of the only things going for the two hundred Elymais of Kamnaskires was that, as long as they got to the opposite bank, there was no way to miss the city walls. Just as the last raft slipped out into the water, from downriver there came a noise that, while faint to his ears, would be a tremendous racket back where it was being created. This was the bulk of Caesar’s army, which was placed in two camps, one directly south of Pattala, but positioned in such a way that it blocked off the neck of land that was the only landward approach, and the other to the west, although it was across the river from the city on the far riverbank. On that western side of the city, there was a small wharf that at any given time could accommodate perhaps a half-dozen ships the size of a trireme, as well as what was clearly a manmade artificial harbor that carved a chunk out of the riverbank, which protected twenty-odd small craft that the Romans assumed were used for fishing the river. About half of the fleet was now positioned upriver from the city, but moving past its walls hadn’t been done without any damage being inflicted. The Romans learned firsthand about exactly where all the artillery belonging to the defenders of Pattala was positioned, and they quickly discovered that, while the citadel was placed closer to the southern wall, being perched on the small hill as it was, it gave the ballistae on its ramparts extra range, meaning that the reach of the artillery emplaced on the citadel’s eastern and western walls wasn’t inconsiderable. Nine triremes and several of the smaller biremes had been hit, with two of the triremes and a bireme heavily damaged, to the point that one of them was considered irreparable and the other two requiring several days and extra materials to repair. It had been an expensive way to discover just how well fortified Pattala was, and now the Romans would learn if it was worth it. Pullus stared into the darkness, watching the rafts until they were swallowed up by the night, then tried to continue tracking them with his ears for a few moments longer until the sounds of the demonstration Caesar and the rest of the army was putting on overwhelmed the splashing sound of paddles. Only if he strained his eyes could he distinguish the slightly darker bulk of the northern wall of the city, the base of which Kamnaskires’ handpicked men were heading directly for. Pullus hadn’t been there originally, but he had quickly heard about the prince of the Elymais’ boast that he had men who were nimbler than the mountains goats that inhabited the craggy heights of his small kingdom, mainly because the man himself was now standing next to him on the ship, watching his men moving into position. Pullus was certainly no expert in such things, but since it was of crucial importance to his own success, he had risked exposure on the upper deck of his ship as they rowed slowly past the city, the men doubling at the oars because of the current yet still barely making headway, and from what he had seen, he harbored grave doubts.
This was what prompted him to turn to Kamnaskires, who, to Pullus at least, didn’t seem any different from Bodroges or Artaxerxes in demeanor and the natural haughtiness of Parthian nobility, asking the prince bluntly, “That wall looked smooth to me. How do you know that your men can climb it?”
During his short tenure with the Romans, Kamnaskires had learned several things, not least of which was that they didn’t tolerate someone who they sensed thought themselves superior to them, and of all the Romans he had encountered, this brute Pullus was the last one to cross, so he forced himself to adopt a reasonable tone as he explained, “I agree that from a distance the wall appeared smooth, but rest assured that once one gets close to it, there are seams where the bricks are joined together that offer a handhold.” Despite the gloom, he saw Pullus wasn’t convinced, so against his natural inclination, he decided to share one of the secrets of the Elymais, confiding, “Also, my men wear a special glove on one hand that…” he paused, unsure of the Greek word, settling on, “…allows them to get a better grip because the fingertips have sharpened iron points. Like those of a lion,” he finished, and since Pullus seemed impressed, it encouraged Kamnaskires to explain, “They were developed by the Elymais many years ago, when my great-great-grandfather, whose name was…”
“Wait, don’t tell me,” Pullus interjected, “let me guess. His name was Kamnaskires.”
The prince was grateful for the dark, because he felt the hot flush in his cheeks, but while he was angered, he also had to acknowledge, ruefully, that it wasn’t that hard to guess, which he admitted with as much grace as he could summon. “Yes, Primus Pilus, you are correct. His name was Kamnaskires as well. Anyway, he loved to hunt lions, and there was one in particular that eluded capture for several years, while it would come from the mountains and kill our livestock
. And, no matter how many trackers the king used, he couldn’t seem to catch this lion. Until, one day, they finally thought they had him trapped in a canyon that they knew dead ended with a sheer rock face. They closed in on the lion, surrounding him so that the wall was to its back, and my great-great grandfather was certain that now, at last, he had this beast right where he wanted.”
Despite everything that was going on, Pullus found himself listening with great interest, so that when Kamnaskires paused, turning away towards the city, it prompted Pullus to demand, “Well? What happened?” Immediately, he saw the gleam of Kamnaskires’ white teeth, and he realized that the prince had done this deliberately, probably as a way to pay Pullus back for all the perceived slights he had received. And, if Pullus was honest with himself, some of them were meant that way, but Kamnaskires, his point made, answered Pullus, “To their astonishment, this lion turned and, barely pausing, climbed up this sheer rock wall, and they were so surprised, neither Kamnaskires nor his party thought to try and kill the animal. When they got off their horses to look, they could see that this animal’s claws were strong enough to penetrate deeply enough into rock to enable it to climb a sheer wall. So,” the prince shrugged, “this gave my great-great grandfather the idea. Although,” he added this in an offhand manner that reminded Pullus of how members of upper classes viewed the lives of those underneath them, “it is said he lost a hundred men before finding the right way to make the glove and the iron.”
Before Pullus could respond, a faint but clearly distinguishable roaring sound came rolling up the river, punctuated by notes from the several cornu that Caesar had ordered to be sounded when his part of the army came rushing towards the southern side of the city, arrayed across the neck of land between the loop in the river. This noise served two purposes, or so Caesar hoped; it would convince the defenders that this was the main attack, and it would be loud enough to be used as the signal to Kamnaskires’ men who, according to the plan, would have piloted their rafts up to the base of the northern wall. The rafts had been constructed so they would be wide enough that they could serve as a stable platform from which the Elymais men would leap up onto the wall. Frankly, Pullus didn’t think it had a chance of working, but even so, after counting to five hundred after the signal, just as Caesar had ordered, Pullus told the navarch to raise the anchor, while making one last inspection of his own men, making sure that the charcoal they had applied over their exposed, oiled skin hadn’t rubbed off, and that everything that might clank together was wrapped. The only thing that Caesar had ordered that Pullus hadn’t done was have the men wrap their feet with rags; they would need the traction provided by the hobnailed soles, he was certain, and it was worth the risk of being heard. Besides, he reasoned, if this worked, Caesar would never know. He felt the ship shudder as the anchor released its hold on the river bottom, then the men at the oars began the process of using them to maintain roughly the same position, as they all waited for what came next. On seeing the prearranged signal from the walls, Pullus ordered the navarch carrying his First and Second to move downstream to the wall, followed by the other ships carrying the Equestrians. Ascending the rope ladders that had been lowered by the Elymais, commanded by a man named Orodais, who had successfully scaled the wall, neutralized the sentries, and most importantly, disabled the artillery pieces arrayed along the wall.
Pullus led his men onto the ramparts, and ironically, the fact that the first part of Caesar’s plan went so smoothly contributed to the difficulties Pullus and his Equestrians would face. The first problem came in the form of the Pattalan defenders themselves; because of a lack of specific knowledge about these people, it meant that Pullus and his men were unprepared to face heavily armored phalanx troops who, if any Roman present had been alive three centuries earlier, would have recognized as being Macedonian in origin, including the use of the famed sarissa. Their reliance on this sixteen-foot-long spear that made it practically impossible for the Roman style of fighting was further augmented by the relatively narrow streets of the city, forcing Pullus and his Centurions to improvise their tactics in the moment; the result was that the battle for Pattala was the most disorganized and chaotic in Titus Pullus’ career, or any of the Centurions’ to that point. What saved the day for the Romans and averted what could have easily been a situation where the 10th was isolated inside the walls and chopped up piecemeal was based in the wisdom of Caesar selecting The Equestrians. Instead, in the mark of a truly veteran Legion, with capable Centurions leading well-trained men, each of the Pili Priores in the first wave realized independently that the only way to defeat the defenders of Pattala was to force them to pursue their foes, while the Romans then sought out situations that enabled them to maneuver around the slowly moving phalanxes.
As the night progressed, and Caesar’s other Legions were forced to wait for the Equestrians to reach the southern gate, inside the walls the Cohorts of the 10th spread themselves across the city, each of them trying to negotiate a path along the streets that led south. What they learned was that whoever commanded the garrison had enough trained phalanx troops to block most of the streets; it was Scribonius who determined that most didn’t mean all, although what one of his men found wasn’t a street as much as it was an alley. Regardless of the distinction, it enabled the Secundus Pilus Prior to send two of his Centuries down a block, so that while the rest of his Cohort engaged the Pattalan troops on two adjacent streets, each of them attacked their foes from the rear. Within a matter of heartbeats, the two opposing forces learned valuable lessons about each other; the Romans discovered that this was the only way to defeat troops of this nature when in a city, while the Pattalans found out how useless a sarissa was once their enemy got inside its reach. The Pattalan phalanx troops weren’t completely defenseless; they each carried a falcata of the same design as those carried by Alexander’s men, but it was immediately obvious that if they had ever undergone any training in the use of the sword, it wasn’t sufficient to face the undisputed masters of close-quarter combat in the Romans.
Once Scribonius’ men had assailed the Pattalans from the rear and either cut them down or sent them fleeing back south towards the center of the city and the citadel on the hill, the Centurion dispatched a man to find Pullus and inform him that a method of defeating the Pattalans had been found. Not surprisingly, this was welcome news to Pullus, although not for his own Cohort since he had already devised his own method, but for those who couldn’t take advantage of the fact that, like his Cohort, had the veritable high ground in the form of the eastern wall. Because they were moving south down the street that ran parallel to the eastern wall, Pullus ordered every javelin be given to his Fifth and Sixth Century, then sent them up to the rampart. After a brief struggle with defenders who had either been left or ordered up onto the wall, Centurions Asellio’s and Vistilia’s men had maneuvered into a position directly above the Pattalan phalanx down in the street, whereupon they hurled their missiles down on the unprotected Pattalans. Despite attempting to form a makeshift testudo, the shields carried by the phalanx quickly proved inadequate to the task; although they were roughly the same size as the Roman version, their different shape, and the notches where the shaft of the sarissae would rest created gaps in between shields that were simply too large.
Albeit in a different manner from Scribonius and the Second, Pullus and his men were able to sweep aside the first opposition they faced just a block from the northern wall, but before they could advance more than another three blocks, another Pattalan force appeared, marching up the eastern street. As the Pattalans of the first unit who had managed to avoid being skewered by a javelin or cut down by a Roman gladius consolidated with the reinforcements, Pullus used that time to come up with a different plan, made necessary when he was informed by the two Centurions still up on the rampart that their men had expended more than two-thirds of their supply of javelins with the first Pattalans, whose bodies were lying in heaps behind Pullus and his men. Now that they had managed to pe
netrate south some three blocks from the northern wall, this gave Pullus more alternatives for maneuver, and he didn’t hesitate to adopt Scribonius’ approach. Sending Laetus and Celadus, with their Third and Fourth Centuries, away from the eastern wall, his orders were straightforward and purposely minimal; find a way around this newly arrived force, relying on his Centurions’ experience and competence to accomplish this in the way they saw fit. While the Fifth and Sixth didn’t possess enough javelins to stop this phalanx, particularly now that it had been reinforced by the survivors of the first one, they could still inflict damage, but to Pullus’ pleased surprise, they would do much more than that.
With Pullus leading his First and Balbus’ Second, the two forces approached each other at roughly the same pace, a steady walk that was punctuated by the shouts and taunts of the Pattalans of the second force. None of the Romans bothered to respond verbally; instead, without Pullus or Balbus ordering it, men began rapping on their shields in time to their footsteps, creating an echoing racket, the sound bouncing off the wall to their left and the buildings to their right. Whether this served to distract the Pattalans enough to enable Asellio and Vistilia’s Centuries to move along the rampart above them unseen, no Roman would ever know, but whatever the cause, this second force was vanquished before Pullus and the two Centuries with him got within striking distance. It certainly wasn’t planned, but just as Asellio and Vistilia’s men, having run south to the lone stone staircase located in that stretch of the eastern wall and used it to descend down to the street, went slamming into the Pattalans’ rear, Laetus and Celadus’ Centuries came charging up one of the streets that ran perpendicular to the eastern wall, attacking the portion of the enemy phalanx that was even with that street. The fight was over in a matter of heartbeats, with only a handful of survivors, all of whom were cut down before Pullus or any other Centurion could stop their men, and with the removal of this last resistance, the First Cohort was free to march south along the first two streets that ran south, heading for the gate.
