Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) (18 page)

Servants appeared with trays of cooked meats, as well as watered wine, and set them down. And then they were gone, leaving behind four women of striking beauty, each dressed in the flimsy insubstantial material known as silk from the kingdom bordering that of the Xiongnu. The silk was the color of milk and so fine that it concealed neither nipple, aureole, navel, nor the cleft between their legs. Each woman let the film slide from her body so that all were naked but for the jewels in their hair, and then they came to him.

Food and especially water was provided in reasonable quantities to avoid disease and undue hardship, the slavers keen to avoid damaging that which they hoped to sell. Shelter, though, was a different matter. At night, under clear skies, the temperatures dropped markedly so that the legionaries would huddle together to conserve their body heat. But in the daytime, the temperatures reversed and by mid-morning, the men would be cowering in the ever-diminishing crescent of shade beneath the wall. And they would gather together similarly in the afternoon when some shelter from the sun would again present itself on the opposite side of the pen. But at midday, and for too long on either side of it, there was no refuge at all from Sol Indiges burning directly overhead.

As with any commodity in demand, those who were canny stepped forward to exploit it, imposing their will on the weak by dispossessing them of it. In the pen shared by Rufinius and what remained of his men, time in the shade was being exchanged for favors and whatever trinkets of value had been smuggled in.

One such avaricious opportunist was named Adrianus Nonus, a native of Carthage. Nonus had enlisted in Crassus’s army, so rumor told it, to escape those who would balance his many debts against the spillage of his own blood. Adrianus Nonus, and several others he recruited, murdered two other men in order to establish their hegemony over the shade, the most precious resource in the pen. But the day came when Nonus and his criminals beat on the wrong man – Carbo. The legionary was huddled in a prime space beneath the wall. Though small in stature for a soldier and apparently without company, Carbo refused to give up his place when commanded to do so by Nonus.

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Carbo demanded. “Push off, cophragious cunnus.”

Nonus, seeing the opportunity to reinforce his claim over the precious shelter, chose instead to summon his delinquent brutes and make an example of Carbo. The legionary, outnumbered and out-muscled four to one, was no match for their bare-knuckle thuggery and soon found himself down in the sand, his face bruised and his bones crunching.

“Hey!” came a shout from the back of the gathering.

It was Rufinius. Hearing that a man from his contubernium had been set upon, he pushed his way to the front and saw his comrade-at-arms barely breathing, several of his teeth in a pool of blood beneath split and bleeding lips.

“Who are you that believes he can lord it over his brothers?” Rufinius demanded of the criminals.

These men regarded Rufinius and thought little of his chances against them. Nonus also stepped forth, choosing to capitalize on yet another opportunity to impress his fellow legionaries.

“And who are you that you stand between a man and his honest labor?” Nonus exclaimed regally, in a manner aimed at recruiting the crowd to his cause.

“What labor?” asked Rufinius, infuriated by the state of Carbo lying insensate at his feet.

“Have you not heard? The shade is owned by me, Adrianus Nonus. I asked this man here to move and the request was polite. His reply was to suggest that I was a cunnus who ate merda and that if I wanted him to move, I would have to move him. I simply had my men do as he himself requested.”

Rufinius took two steps toward one of the legionaries who had thrown their lot in with Nonus, sunk to a knee and drove his clenched fist through the man’s testicles. The fellow dropped where he stood with not a sound uttered. His three friends then rushed to re-balance the account with Rufinius, but neither fared any better. The first was on the ground with blood welling from his ears after they were clapped between the centurion’s powerful hands, a rock held in each. One of the remaining men looked for an escape route before considering how to deal with Rufinius, who was striding toward him. The man decided to fight, his own warrior reputation at stake. Large and fit by any standards, the legionary went to grapple with Rufinius, who merely grabbed the man’s hand and bent his arm in a most unforgiving direction. The momentum took the man off his feet and planted his face into the ground, a maneuver that rendered him unconscious.

By this time, the legionaries witnessing this exhibition were shouting a name: “Alexandricus … ! Alexandricus … !”

Nonus, seeing his cause lost, tried to back into the crowd and disappear, but he was prevented from doing so by Libo, who had come to watch.

But those hoping to profit from the sale of slaves do not appreciate disturbances among them, especially ones that damage their property. The doors to the holding pen were flung open and in raced a squad of men wearing dirty, rusted scale armor. Some were armed with bow and arrow with which to threaten the masses and hold them at bay; others among them wielded clubs and the balance carried the lash, which was then liberally used to break up the gathering.

The pens were under constant scrutiny and the leaders of the melee were separated from the general populace and marched from the enclosure, curved Parthian blades resting against their necks.

The jailers paraded Rufinius, Nonus, and two of his soldiers still capable of placing one foot in front of the other, and brought them before a large table set on a raised floor. Behind it a voluminous tent billowed here and there in the slight breeze. From out of the tent waddled a fat man, his small feet clothed in gold slippers, his bearded face painted like a woman’s, and oily black braids piled on top of his head. He sat in front of the table as if he were the ruler of the world. Four enormous hairless men, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and headband, each with a large green eye tattooed on his round protruding belly, appeared as if from nowhere – a feat not easily done for men of such size. They assembled behind their master.

Rufinius, for one, was aware of the blade against his neck, not least because it was sharp and had cut through his skin so that a rivulet of blood ran down his chest. But still the creature behind the desk ignored them and busied himself over several soft clay tablets. Eventually, after enough time that one of Nonus’s abettors collapsed to the ground, a victim of heat stress and the beating he’d obtained, the painted man looked up from his tablets and, in passable Latin, said, “Who gave you permission to spoil my stock? I am the master of slaves here, not you. Tell me why I should not remove the heads from each of you? I could do so, and with only the slightest raising of a finger. Do you not believe me?”

Neither Rufinius nor Nonus nor his remaining mercenary moved so much as a muscle.

The slave master glanced at one of the men in armor and gestured at him and the jailer moved suddenly, swinging his blade so that it cleaved off the side of the head belonging to Nonus’s remaining man and he sunk to the ground, dead.

“One man is now fit only for worms. His death is
your
responsibility,” he said to Rufinius and Nonus and the man who had passed out earlier and was laying on the ground. “You three owe Spāhbed Surenas-Pahlav what the deceased would have bought at the market. Eighteen hundred drachma, plus my commission. How do you intend to repay this loss?”

None of the legionaries had an answer.

“Who is the Alexandrian?” the slave master inquired.

Neither Rufinius nor Nonus was prepared to speak up so the slave master moved his finger.

“It is he,” Nonus blurted, alarmed.

The master stood up from behind his desk and stepped down onto a rug rolled across the sand by one of his boys. He approached close enough so that Rufinius could smell the man’s perfume, a suffocating sweetness mixed with old sweat. The slave master indicated to the jailer to remove the blade from the centurion’s neck.

“So you are Alexandricus, the Alexandrian.” He pinched the muscles on Rufinius’s arm the way a herder examined cattle. “You have a considerable reputation. Many of your fellow legionaries have spoken of you and I’m told the men chanted your name just now. You are something of a hero. And a swordsman, I believe.”

“Just a legionary, dominus.”

One of the jailers thumped Rufinius in the side of his head with an elbow and he staggered under the blow. “And I am
Slave Master
Farnavindah and I don’t remember giving you permission to speak.” He next considered Nonus. “I believe that if you are returned to the men in your enclosure, they will commit homicide on you, another loss I can ill afford.” The master nodded at one of the jailers. “Remove them each to the pits.” Then to the Romans he said,“I will give you a day and a night in your own company to consider your debt to my client.”

The jailers hustled Rufinius, Nonus, and his surviving accomplice to another section of the encampment where the desert floor was a patchwork of steel doors. The first door was opened and Nonus was thrust inside, the door then slammed shut and bolted. His barely conscious thug went into another box, after which it was Rufinius’s turn.

The steel door was banged closed over Rufinius’s head and bolted home with a hammer, so that the centurion’s ears rang from the noise. Beneath the door there was not enough space to sit or crouch, and no room to lie stretched out, the walls and floor made of mud as hard as marble splinters and its jagged edges sliced at his skin. The only position possible was to roll into a ball, lying on one’s side. It was in this seat of repose, sweating and bleeding from cuts gouged in his skin by the sharp mud, that Rufinius pondered how he would kill Nonus.

Surenas dined with the King and a cohort of his closest confidants and many toasts were made. Once the King, unconscious with wine, had been carried from the tent, the spāhbed left for his own quarters where the revelries continued, a number of officers including Captain Ishmah keen for more drink. Finally, when the night was old and Surenas could consume no more, the party broke up and drifted away, leaving the spāhbed on his own.

The slaves provided by the King’s purse had prepared his bed and were lying in wait for him, all their naked charms displayed. Surenas collapsed among them and felt their hands on him but the wine had been strong and served with less and less water as the stories of the campaigns held in the desert and Armenia had become bolder. The result was that Surenas had no pleasure to give the women and instead fell asleep, snoring loudly.

A few hours later the women brought him awake, as a man likes to be woken, with a mouth around his erection. His seed given to the woman and consumed by her, Surenas rose and allowed himself to be washed down with cloths. The women then perfumed his skin, dressed him and re-plaited his beard and hair. When they had finished, the spāhbed’s strength had returned and his robe bulged with renewed vigor. But as he was eyeing one of the women in particular, Ishmah arrived and called to him.

“The sun rises and all I can hear are the drums pounding in my head. I swear there is a parade ground between my ears. May I enter, Lord?”

“Yes, come,” Surenas replied.

The captain walked in as the women ran giggling from the room, the officer’s eyes on them. “I trust you have slept well, my lord?”

“In truth I slept poorly, but I was well woken.” Surenas wore a grin as he adjusted his robes.

“Far be it for me to hurry you, but the King and his eagles are waiting.”

“I’m ready.” Surenas took some fruits from a bowl and breakfasted on the way as he followed the captain through a series of paths that wound between mazes of tents housing officers of progressively lower ranks. Eventually they came into an open square, where a hundred men or more were gathered with King Orodes. Also with the party were a number of the barbarians from the Kingdom of Xiongnu.

“The foreigners are joining us?” Surenas inquired.

“I am told they are great practitioners of the sport in their homeland,” Ishmah replied. “They call it berkutchi. The birds they hunt with are varied, but they prefer our majestic golden eagle, which flies in their country also.”

The gathering cheered Surenas’s arrival, for he was a man among men, yet there were none of Surenas’s own vassals in the party, which surprised the spāhbed. The King, dressed in white robes with golden bands around his head and his beard ornamented with gold beads, sat regally atop a white stallion that stood head and shoulders above the rest. He had recovered well from all the consumption of the previous night.

Calling to his commander-in chief, Orodes said, “It is a fine morning after an equally fine night, I trust?” There was a gleam in the King’s eye.

“Yes indeed, sire. I thank you and I must also compliment you on your taste,” Surenas said, as he leaped up onto a glossy black mare with the ease of a man who had spent his entire life with reins in his hands.

“Nothing but the best for our conqueror,” Orodes replied with the slightest of bows. “Now, let us go before there is nothing left for us to catch.”

The party departed the camp via the Sun Gate, the ordinary men in Orodes’s army bowing low as their king passed with Surenas by his right hand.

“So, tell me Surenas-Pahlav,” Orodes asked as they rode along. “We have not yet talked of rewards. What would you think an equitable compensation for the great service you have done Parthia?”

“As I said last evening, sire, to continue in the service of my King is reward enough,” Surenas replied correctly. “Though I am partial to at least two of the slaves that served me so well during the night.”

“Ha! Consider them yours, and a hundred others if you so wish. While I am aware that you captured the baggage train of the Proconsul Crassus and are, as a consequence, as rich as a monarch in your own right, I will have the lands of your family doubled. You shall also receive one hundred talents of gold and three hundred talents of silver, and I shall consider – if you are amenable – adopting one of your children, so that your house will have royal blood in the generations to come.”

Surenas was stunned. “My King, I am honored by your generosity! And it is the greatest distinction possible that our two houses shall be mixed. I am unworthy! I beg you to know that no reward is sought. I am truthful when I say that I live only to serve.”

“Nonsense,” said Orodes dismissive of Surenas’s pledge. “Oh, and I nearly forgot. I shall also give you my favorite eagle, Black Lightning, for she is a most magnificent hunter and worthy of your stewardship.”

Surenas glanced over his shoulder. In among the riders was a cart on which sat the King’s falconer, an old bent man with only two fingers remaining on his right hand, and two wicker cages with a raptor in each. Black Lightning was a magnificent bird indeed; a killer with talons like arrowheads. “Sire, your generosity is beyond imagining. I shall treasure all your gifts as if they were provided by Ahura Mazda himself.”

Orodes and Surenas rode together as two men that had shared a long history, reminiscing about earlier hunting trips until the desert came to an end and the reed beds and marshes began. The silted marshes buzzing with insects not far ahead, the King called a halt. “Let us conduct a wager,” he suggested to Surenas.

“If it please the King,” Surenas replied, the prospect of the hunt exciting him. “What do you suggest?”

“Ride to the far sand ridge on the edge of the marshes with Black Lightning. I shall hunt with Desert Arrow, a lesser bird, as you know. We shall send the men forth to beat the ground and raise the prey into the sky and whoever’s eagle snares the heaviest duck shall win a thousand slaves from the other.”

A thousand slaves! It was a large number to wager on the vagaries of a hunt, but Surenas could hardly resist. “Of course I accept!”

The falconer rode up in his cart and handed Orodes and Surenas each a heavy leather glove and a dog’s bloody hindquarter with which to keep the bird diverted. He then opened the cages, brought Desert Arrow to the King’s arm and then Black Lightning to Surenas. The fearsome hooded creature dug its talons into the glove protecting Surenas’s arm as it adjusted its weight. Once it had settled there, the commander-in-chief prised open its hooked beak, spat in its mouth and then again on the bloody hindquarter. He then allowed the bird to pick at the ragged flesh, the bird now familiarized with its new handler’s scent in the time-honored way.

A signal was given to the King’s men, who immediately charged forward at a gallop toward the marshes. Surenas took a moment to admire the golden eagle perched on his forearm and marvel at the wicked talons biting into the leather. Black Lightning was a large animal and yet her weight felt significantly less than her height.

“May the gods grant you victory, sire,” Surenas cried as he turned his horse and trotted away, heading for the far dune. Arriving at its crest, he lifted the bird to the sky, causing it to spread its mighty wings. In response to this signal, Orodes had one of his remaining men fire an arrow at the sun. Surenas believed this to be the sign for the horsemen to beat at the reed beds and make noise and commotion enough to send the prey skyward. There! Movement in the marshes! Birds took flight. Surenas removed the jeweled hood from the raptor, allowing its keen eyes to sight the frightened prey. The spāhbed raised his arm and called to the bird and Black Lightning lifted off, the winds from her powerful wings washing over him. Surenas watched her fly straight and true. But then, a sudden change of course. The bird climbed upward instead, carving circles against the blue. Something had appeared to frighten her. It was only then that Surenas noted other objects rising from the marshes: a volley of black death. Arrows! They flew in an arc that Surenas knew all too well from his many years in the field. They were flying toward him. The spāhbed had no thought other than the preservation of his own life. He whipped his horse to flight, but the sand beneath its hooves was soft and its pumping hindquarters failed to gain purchase. Barely seconds passed before the first arrow pierced the horse’s belly beneath him, burying itself to its flight feathers. An instant later, more arrows struck home and Surenas was speared in the throat, back, jaw, and knee. The horse also took more arrows so that it fell sideways, finally spilling its rider onto the sand. The force of the landing drove the arrowheads still further into Surenas’s flesh so that he was overcome with mortal pain. And then a final arrow drove down through the top of his head, pinning him to the sand and ending his life.

Black Lightning returned, alighting on the outstretched leather glove to tear at the strips of bloody dog flesh still within Surenas’s grip.

The King rode at a leisurely canter across the ridge toward the body of his former friend and vassal. On arrival he looked down on the dead man he had known for all these years, whose eyes now stared sightless at the glare of the naked sun. He presented his glove and called to the bird and Black Lightning flew to him.

“When I tell you to harry the invader,” Orodes sneered at the corpse by his horse’s hooves, “you choose instead to ignore my orders and become the conqueror. All of Parthia knows of your ambition, but you have not succeeded. Know also that you have forfeited our wager. All your lands will be stripped from your family. There will be no talents of gold or silver, and no mingling of our blood, for why should I honor a traitor? Also know that all the wealth captured in your illegal campaign against the Roman invader will now flow to the King’s personal treasury.”

*

Tears streamed from the veiled eyes of Surenas’s own archers, for it was they who loosed the arrows that had murdered their lord. But they had been given little choice in the execution, for this was by order of the King. All knew that it was kill or be killed, along with their families, if they failed to assassinate the man who had led them to so many victories. Enforcing this order was Captain Ishmah and the 100 men with him who aimed their arrows at the hearts of the dead spāhbed’s once faithful vassals, hidden in the marshes.