Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) (10 page)

“Where’s your wineskin, fool?” asked Figulus, an instant before an arrow went straight through his shield’s boss and lodged deep in his eye. “I’m hit,” he said, and sagged to the ground as another volley swept through the ranks.

Rufinius saw the decanus collapse but had no time to even acknowledge his death. The men around him seemed to take several steps backwards in the face of this renewed onslaught. “Hold the line!” he shouted. “Hold the line!” The call was repeated up and down the cohort and the formation steadied.

“The Senate and People of Rome!” someone called out, which was echoed briefly a number of times before it died out.

“Soon they’ll run out of arrows and stop fighting like a pack o’ cunni and fight like proper men!” Rufinius yelled.

“Cunni, cunni, cunni …” the men chanted.

And again a volley of arrows thrashed the legionaries, killing and maiming whatever morale had been rescued by all the swearing. A missile shied off the metal edge of Rufinius’s shield on its way to ending the life of the man standing behind him. And then three more crashed through the curved wood of his scuta and pierced Rufinius’s cuirass, slicing his skin and sticking fast, reducing his mobility. The optio pushed his shield forward, away from himself, and then mimicked Libo and broke off the shafts sprouting from his cuirass with his sword. Technically defenseless, the action was nevertheless fortuitous, since with no shield obstructing the view in front of him, Rufinius could see through the boiling dust cloud enveloping them. The cataphracts were charging directly for his section of the line under the cover of the horse archer’s volley, their lances lowered, targets selected. There was no opportunity for the optio to dart forward and recover his scuta. “Legionnaires! Brace!” he yelled, seconds before the first of the armored horsemen smashed into the Roman line.

Rufinius sensed the cataphract’s interest in him even before he saw the silver horse and rider galloping straight at him. He was unprotected, easy pickings. And though the seconds slowed and the world slowed with them, there was no time to be fearful. Dipped in gold, the lance head glowed and drew small circles in the air with the horse’s motion. Rufinius’s fingers tightened around the grip of his gladius. Wait … wait … In the last instant of impact, the horse so close that Rufinius could see its nostrils flaring beneath its armor scales, the lance head searching for his belly, Rufinius moved to one side and slapped the flat of his gladius down on the thrusting lance. The gold head ploughed into the sand, dug a furrow and then stuck fast. The rider was instantly thrown off the back of the horse by the impact while the animal continued forward, unbalanced and half stumbling. It smashed into a wall of legionary shields, crying and writhing, its hooves pawing the air. Rufinius turned and saw that its armor was like a blanket, tied beneath the animal’s belly by several knotted leather thongs. He ran back and stabbed the horse with his gladius, the blade entering below the beast’s anus and ripping through leather knots and entrails on its journey to the sternum. The horse puffed in shock and then the tip of Rufinius’s blade found its heart in the sea of blood and entrails and pierced it, silencing the beast’s fight. The optio looked around, searching for familiar faces he knew he could rely on and found two. “Libo! Carbo! Get three men and strip this horse!” Rufinius then went to the Parthian cataphract rolling barely conscious on the scorching sand, dust already dulling the bright metal scales covering the man from head to foot. He kicked him onto his back and plunged the gladius deep through the seam of his armor tunic, which, like the horse’s, was tied by leather knots. The man died fast and Rufinius began stripping him, taking precious seconds to finally pull the sleeves off the man’s dead arms.

Dentianus appeared beside him. “Optio!” he said, pointing toward the Parthian lines with his gladius. “Look there …”

Rufinius peered through the dust. A break in its density allowed him a glance at the legionary’s concern. Camels, hundreds of them, were dispersing arrows among the horse archers. Lightly armed runners accompanied the animals, which were slung with barrels like water donkeys. Only these barrels carried not water but the deadly missiles – thousands and thousands of them – the runners grabbing whole armfuls of the hateful ammunition for distribution among the archers.

“Cunni,” Rufinius muttered.

A collective groan seemed to well from the cohort as it, too, saw how the horse archers were being replenished, and that the supply would be as good as endless. The men had been prepared to endure being Parthian target practice in the belief that their arrows would become scarcer and scarcer, but now that hope was gone.

“Where’s Publius and his glory boys from Gallia?” a man shouted. “Publius! Publius!” The men around him took up the chant and it began to ripple down the line, a thousand voices joining quickly to become a deafening chorus: “Publius! Publius! Publius … !”

Anxious messengers from the front lines informing Crassus of the enemy’s likely strategy – to bring the Romans to their knees beneath a never-ending torrent of arrows – waited for the supreme commander’s decision. One of these tribunes held a dead legionary’s bloody scutum that had been bashed to splinters by more than a dozen arrows, a memento of the assault for the proconsul’s inspection, proof that the legionaries were currently less than able to defend themselves. Legate Cassius Longinus wanted an orderly retreat behind the river where the legions would draw up in an extended line. Another suggestion from the general staff was to break up the one enormous defensive square into smaller, more manageable defensive squares, thereby at least dispersing the enemy’s attack while offering the possibility of a counter-attack using the impenetrable dust for cover. Publius had other ideas still. And while Crassus deliberated, the legates at the front waited on orders and watched the situation deteriorate further.

“I don’t know what you think you can do, Publius,” said Crassus finally, shaking his head. “You are one thousand, but they are ten thousand.”

“And your legions are forty thousand, Proconsul. I’ll do what I said I would do; attack them and drive them onto our legions’ swords. Our men cannot stand all day beneath this barrage, with no hope of engagement, slaughtered at arm’s length. They will break. Why wouldn’t they? Let me charge these Arabs. At the very least we can give the men a taste of the enemy’s blood with which to fortify their own.”

Crassus considered his son’s request. He was afraid for him, and desperate for the encouragement his words promised, and fully cognizant that he spoke the truth about the men’s morale and resolve. The two arguments skirmished in his mind while he fought to keep them from his face. And while he did so, the chant of “Publius! Publius! Publius!” rose from the lines as high as the pall of dust that now blocked the sun.

Searching for the words he knew his father wanted to hear, Publius said, “I will not be riding the Ferryboat to Hades today, Proconsul.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know.”

Crassus seemed to his son a man who had lost his way.

“Father …” said Publius gently.

“Beware the Parthian archers, my son. I have had many reports of their antics. When pressed, they readily show their horses’ hooves to their pursuers in apparent retreat. But then chased, the archers turn on their mounts and fire their arrows behind them, with the same deadly accuracy as if they were stationary and shooting forward. Retreat is not a retreat at all but another aggressive maneuver.”

“Father, think you that I have learned nothing about war?”

“All I am saying is beware the Parthian archers, Publius.”

“Yes, Father,” he said quietly, a reassuring hand on the old man’s forearm. Crassus then spoke up suddenly so that all could hear, steel gathering in his voice. “Prefect Publius, you will take the archers and the light infantry, as they have regrouped, in addition to your beloved Celts. You will advance with all adventure and you will hound the enemy and see them destroyed for the glory of Rome. Go now with all speed.”

“Yes, primor!” Publius responded with a salute, his limbs shaking with anticipation.

“Go,” said Crassus quietly a second time and resisted the temptation to tell his son to be careful.

Publius ran beneath the Hercules knot to the guardsman holding his horse. He leaped on and galloped to the lines of legionaries facing the enemy’s main force where his Celtic auxiliary cavalry, archers and light infantry were already assembled, by his earlier orders, awaiting his return.

Marcius Censorinus and Megabocchus, their attendants and weapons bearers trailing behind them, rode out to meet him. Publius lowered the dust-filled focale from his mouth and, pulling up his mount beside them, yelled, “We are ordered to take the fight to the Parthians!”

*

Volodates watched two thousand archers, newly provisioned with arrows, fire on the enemy while a thousand more cantered back and forth along the lines of the enemy, merely so that their hooves kicked up yet more of the powdered dust that seemed to float weightless in the air. The slight breeze was lifting these brown clouds and drifting them into the Romans’ faces. From many past experiences, Volodates knew how wretched those soldiers fighting under their eagles must be feeling because of it. Their teeth would grind on it, their eyes would water in it, and they would cough and gag as it caught in their throats. And, of course, through this thick veil of dust, arrows by their hundreds and their thousands would suddenly arrive among them unheralded. Volodates could not help but marvel at the discipline of these westerners. Despite the discomfort choking them and the death falling on them, their response had been to stand and sing. They were singing now – just the one word over and over. It sounded like, yes …
Publius, Publius, Publius
… Volodates wondered what it meant. Behind him, a force of 500 horse archers waited patiently, held back from the main attack for a specific purpose. They all knew that soon it would be their turn. They knew this for certain – just as Volodates knew it – because Spāhbed Surenas had told them so. The Captain of Horse drank water from the wineskin on his saddle, cooled by the rush of it down his throat, and he waited. He did not have to wait long as, from within the thick cloud blanketing all, climbed a chorus of trumpeting horns.

*

Rufinius cheered as loudly as any of the men around him when the cornicens blew the familiar call for a cavalry charge. Arrows had continued to wreak a horrible toll on the cohort, and tens of men were falling still. If the carnage was repeated around the square, at least a quarter of the army now lay dead, with perhaps another quarter of it increasingly incapacitated, the legionaries’ legs and arms pinned to their scuta by arrow shafts. Others were choking on the dust and dying of thirst, all water supplies having dried up.

A couple of arrows thumped onto his shield and bounced off the cataphract’s fish-scale armor that now adorned it, held in place by broken arrow shafts. Dentianus, Libo, Carbo, Paleo, and perhaps a dozen more legionaries huddled beneath shields supporting a roof of armor lifted from the cataphract’s horse. What manner of bow could fire an arrow with such unheard-of power, wondered Rufinius, that it could hold Rome at bay with such ease?

He peered through the rolling dust, hunting for any movement. There had been two more cataphract charges, neither ending well for his men, and he wanted to be ready for the one aimed at his section of the line when it appeared from out of the dust. But then a cheer was heard from legionaries further along the cohort. Moments later Rufinius saw Publius ride into the haze, the column of men behind him dressed in the fineries of their battle adornments, appearing in the eerie brown light like a squadron of lost souls. Rufinius’s voice joined the cheering and the calls of encouragement welling up around him.

“Go get the cocksuckers!” someone yelled out.

“Come back with their heads!” Rufinius added, his throat hoarse with dust, receiving plenty of lusty accord for this sentiment from the men within earshot.

“Or don’t you cunni come back at all,” Carbo said, spitting brown sludge onto the ground by his feet.

*

Volodates saw the Roman cavalry appear suddenly in a swath of clear air. They were cantering in lines of two hundred across and four deep. Their form and raiment were magnificent. Volodates had respect for this cavalry. They were horsemen not unlike those he commanded. It was as Surenas had said. Sooner or later the Romans would release its only long-range weapon. Slowly revealed in the dust behind the mounted javelin-throwers, marching at the double, came numerous cohorts of light-armed infantry and archers – large numbers of men.

Volodates had his signalers trumpet the order to advance at all speed and, digging his heels into his mount, he sprang toward the Romans.

*

“There!” Megabocchus shouted, thrusting his javelin in the direction of the enemy riding across their path.

Publius saw the column at the same instant, horse archers and cataphracts led by an officer in robes of gold and blue over flashing silver fish-scale armor. His desire for confrontation was irresistible and he whipped his horse toward them as if he alone would be enough to defeat the column, leaving any orders for the formations behind him to Megabocchus and Censorinus.

The Parthians fired poorly aimed arrows in the direction of the Romans and then simply turned about and retreated in apparent terror and disarray. Over his shoulder, Publius called out to Megabocchus and Censorinus, “See? They fly before us!”

The retreating Parthians fired behind themselves impressively as they fled, arrows finding targets among the Celts, but in all other respects Publius saw panic. The fleeing horse archers rode over a dune and then another, the Romans slowly gaining on them. Riding over the crest of a third dune and arriving at a plain, Publius had cause to pull his horse to a rapid halt for these same Parthians he was giving chase to had turned to confront him, drawn up in perfect order, displaying no hysteria at all. Censorinus and Megabocchus arrived beside their prefect with the Celts close behind.

“This is where we fight,” said Publius.

Censorinus spoke with alarm. “First they run like rabbits and now they choose to stand? It’s a trick.”

“Bring the archers,” Publius commanded.

“The Parthians are beyond range, primor,” Megabocchus observed.

Across the expanse of sand, the Parthian horse archers appeared to act as one, notching arrows to bowstrings. They took aim and fired and a volley of missiles flew rapidly across the sky and descended on the Celts far behind Publius, his two companions and their arms bearers and attendants. A cry of wounded men and horses was heard immediately and Publius recognized his folly.

Compounding their dire situation, a force of 200 or more cataphracts and at least 1,000 more horse archers, accompanied by ammunition camels, appeared over the rise adjacent to the Romans, churning the sand and throwing skyward a cloud of the hateful dust that drifted gently toward them.

And on the far opposite dune there arrived many more numbers of Parthians, horse archers and cataphracts.

“We are surrounded!” said Censorinus. He scanned the horizon, his horse difficult to control, sensing the fear in the air.

“And if we are not, we soon will be,” Megabocchus added. “We must retreat, primor.”

“Retreat? Where to?” Publius replied. “Back to our lines? No. Here is where we fight our way through.”

The Celts arrived. Arrayed in their squadrons and decuriae, they immediately dispatched formations in a defensive ring around their prefect as the heavy dust drifted across the plain.

*

Volodates knew it would be slaughter and his feelings about it were mixed. The Romans would give them no quarter if the roles were reversed and the prize was nothing less than his homeland. Tactics had brought the Romans undone. Perhaps it was their national pride. If so, the men hidden in the boiling dust would pay for it with their lives, killed at arm’s length. There was nothing noble in it, but it was necessary. Volodates nodded at the standard bearer who raised his banner and waved it in the agreed manner. And then horns blew the command for the archers and the cataphracts to engage.

*

A thousand arrows flew at the Romans. But still they could not see their enemy, the dust obscuring all, and in parts so thick that they could barely see each other. And, lightly armored as they were, the arrows cut into them hard. Men fell by the dozen and then by the hundred as the volley of missiles became a blizzard of snapping, whistling, flying death, coming at them from all directions, unrelenting and merciless. Horses, too, died both fast and slow, their screams joining those of the men broken by the heavy shafts and iron heads. Wounded animals crazed and blinded by pain ran around in terror, trampling men who could not get out of the way, or collided with other animals, their screams pitiful as they lay with broken backs and shattered legs. Some took many arrows before they eventually dropped, holed and bloody. The men suffered equally as the arrowheads also flayed the flesh when the blow was glancing, so that many fell into a slop of their own viscera, gored and stripped from their bellies. Men who were terribly wounded, though not fatally so, yet stuck through with many arrows, chose to end their own misery and rolled on the broken shafts, pushing them into their organs. Some tried to pull the arrows out of them, an impossible task and one that only increased their pain. And still the arrows came from all around and at every height, the enemy’s supply seemingly inexhaustible.

Only lightly wounded in the arm by a glancing blow and protected by the gods, Publius strode through the dust with those who could still walk. “Rally, men! If we stay we die. Follow me!”

Some tried to stand, only to find a foot pierced through by an arrow and utterly nailed to the sand beneath. Others found their arms pinned to their sides, or their legs skewered together. Few were able to pull their gladius or draw a bowstring in their own defense, let alone go on the attack. And every second that passed in this dense fog, more joined those incapacitated by the deadly flights.

What remained of the cavalry rallied around Publius, Megabocchus having found the prefect a horse as yet miraculously unwounded. Publius leaped up on it. “This way!” he yelled, and chose to ride into the breeze in the belief that this would bring them to clear air sooner. Men and animals fell away from the charge but still Publius led from the front, choosing not to cower behind others. And within a short time, what remained of the cavalry rode into the clear, beyond the dust and the arrows. Facing them across the plain were the cataphracts, the enemy’s horse archers concentrating their fire on what was left of the Roman archers and light infantry. Publius drew his Celts up in line abreast. The prefect, not needing to exhort his men to feats of bravery with the dying cries of their kinsmen and comrades still fresh in their ears, turned his horse and, brandishing a lance high overhead, charged at the enemy.