Fire in the East (16 page)

Acilius Glabrio leant forward on the wooden rail and yelled, ‘Are you ready for war!’ Almost before he had finished nearly a thousand men roared back: ‘Ready!’ Three times the call and the response then, nearly without waiting for the signal, the centuries of the left-hand cohort re-formed themselves into
testudo
formation; six close-packed tortoises of eighty men, shields held to front, flanks and rear, and close as roof tiles overhead. The shields slammed together not a moment too soon. The front rank of the right-hand cohort ran forward and hurled a volley of untipped javelins. As their javelins were still arcing through the air, the second rank ran past them to hurl their weapons in another neat volley. Again, and again. There was a deafening rolling noise as volley after volley of javelins thumped into the heavy leather-covered shields. A trumpet blast, and the roles were reversed. Another faultless display.

There was a pause, the two lines facing one another. Then they began the
barritus.
Low at first, shield over mouth for reverberation, the roar built to an unearthly sound. The
barritus
, the war cry of the Germans adopted by the Romans, always brought the sweat to Ballista’s palms, made his heart beat faster, always reminded him of the things he had lost with his first home.

As the sound hung in the air, the two cohorts launched into each other. The weapons might be heavy wood, without metal points or edges, but they could still hurt, maim, even kill when wielded with skill and intent.

The signal was given, and the two sides pulled apart. Medical orderlies removed the dozen or so legionaries with cracked ribs, broken limbs or injured heads. Then the cohorts moved smoothly into a close-ordered phalanx sixteen men deep facing the tribunal. One of Ballista’s heralds stepped to the rail and shouted at the completely silent ranks: ‘Silence! Silence in the ranks for Marcus Clodius Ballista,
Vir Egregius, Dux Ripae.’
The legionaries remained silent.

Ballista and the legionaries looked at each other. The legionaries held themselves with a shoulders-back, chest-out swagger. They had done well, and they knew it. But Ballista sensed they were curious. He had seen them in action now, while they knew nothing of him beyond rumour. It was quite likely they shared Acilius Glabrio’s prejudice against northern barbarians.

‘Milites,
soldiers’ - Ballista had thought of calling them
commilitiones,
fellow soldiers, but he detested officers who shamelessly courted popularity: ‘fellow soldier’ was a title that had to be earned on both sides - ‘
Milites,
there are many things against you. There are many excuses for poor drill. It is always difficult for a
vexillatio
detached from its parent legion. It is away from the example and rivalry of the rest of the cohorts. It is not under the experienced eye of the legion’s commander.’

If possible, the ranks of the legionaries were even more silent. To give him his due, Acilius Glabrio’s patrician calm did not waver.

‘In your case, none of these excuses is necessary. You did everything asked of you in exemplary style. The
barritus,
in particular, was outstanding. Many do not know the importance of the battle cry, especially when facing unseasoned troops. How many untrained Persian peasants driven into battle by the whips of their masters will stand against your
barritus?
Well done! I am impressed.

‘Raised by that great Roman warrior Mark Antony, Legio IIII Scythica has seen action all over the
imperium Romanum.
From the frozen north to here in the fiery east, Legio IIII has seen off the enemies of Rome. Parthians, Armenians, Thracians, Dacians, Sarmatians and countless hordes of Scythians have fallen to her swords. The long and proud history of Legio IIII Scythica is safe in your hands. We will see off the reptiles that go by the name of Sassanid Persians.’

Ballista concluded: ‘All except essential details, to be determined by your commander, will take a day’s leave. Enjoy yourselves - you have earned it!’

The legionaries cheered, moved smoothly into one column of fours and, saluting, marched past the tribunal and out of the
campus martius.

 

It was now almost the third hour. Ballista had ordered that the tribune Gaius Scribonius Mucianus should lead Cohors XX on to the parade ground at that time. Ballista had been dreading this part of the day; he did not know what he would do if his orders were disobeyed. In an attempt to convey an air of unconcern, he studied the
campus martius.
It was separated from the civilian city behind him by a six-foot wall, more of a barrier to trespassers than a deterrent to an attacker. To his left it was bounded by the inside of the western wall of the city. These were both nice clean lines. The other two were messier. To his right the boundary was a large barracks block, the
principia,
and a temple to a local deity called Azzanathcona which he knew had been taken over to serve as the headquarters of Cohors XX. But in the far-right corner, Acilius Glabrio’s residence, a requisitioned large private house, stuck out into the parade ground. It was not the young patrician’s fault that it was there, but somehow it was another reason to dislike him. On its final boundary, the
campus martius
petered out before it reached Arete’s north wall. Here Ballista could see the large temple to the local god Bel, smoke rising from the eternal fire in the courtyard. To its right was the first of the towers in the northern wall, the one with the postern gate. It was odd that the wall was colonnaded there but nowhere else.

It was now the third hour. For the third time, Gaius Scribonius Mucianus,
Tribunus Cohortis,
commanding officer of Cohors XX, had not turned up. Was he deliberately trying to undermine Ballista by showing ostentatious disrespect?

Whatever was happening with the tribune, Turpio had been given a direct order. If the auxiliary unit was not on the parade ground in the next few moments, the first centurion would be later - in the middle, tied to a stake, his ribs bared by the flogging.

Ballista’s rising temper was stemmed when a mounted soldier appeared from behind the barracks block and conveyed the request of the first centurion that Cohors XX be allowed to begin its manœuvres.

The infantrymen of Cohors XX marched on to the
campus martius
in a column of fives. There should have been 960 of them but, to the various experienced military eyes on the tribunal, it was obvious there was nowhere near that number. The column executed a simple series of manoeuvres, very shabbily: century collided with century, man bumped into man.

The order was given for the first rank to shoot. Ballista counted several seconds between the first arrow and the last. By the turn of the fifth rank, almost all semblance of shooting by volleys had disappeared. For some seconds after the order to cease, arrows still arced through the air. It was a sign of very poor discipline that a bowman who had taken an arrow from his quiver, notched it and drawn his bow would disobey an order rather than go to the trouble of putting it back. The unit’s manoeuvring to re-form as a line at the far end of the
campus martius
was, if anything, worse than its earlier efforts.

‘Where the fuck are the rest of them, and how come, of those who turned up, only about half have all their kit?’ Maximus whispered in Ballista’s ear.

Ballista thought the same. The only redeeming feature that he could see was that the individual marksmanship was not too bad; most of the arrows were fairly closely grouped around the man-sized targets of wood inside the western wall.

A trumpet sounded
Pursuit!
and, after an interval, two groups of horsemen - presumably two
turmae
of Cohors XX - galloped on to the
campus martius.
There looked to be about sixty troopers in each. The nearer appeared to be the
turma
of Cocceius which had accompanied Ballista from Seleuceia, but the troopers in both groups were so lacking in order that it was hard to be certain of anything. They approached the fixed targets and, as soon as they were within range, began shooting arrows. At fifty yards each trooper wheeled his mount to the right and attempted to execute the Parthian shot, firing backwards over the horse’s quarters as he galloped away. As the
turmae
were not in disciplined columns but rode as two amorphous clumps, this was a manœuvre fraught with the dangers of trooper shooting trooper and horse colliding with horse. In the event it passed off not too badly. One horse bolted, refusing to turn and galloping straight ahead. Its rider threw himself off before he reached the target area where the arrows were falling. Another horse, turning and finding one of its fellows heading straight for it, dug its feet in and refused. Its rider shot over its neck and was deposited on the sand.

While this was going on, the other three
turmae
had entered quietly and taken up a four-deep line to the right of the parade ground, but these seemed barely at half strength, about thirty troopers in each. Ballista could see what Turpio was trying to do: to disguise both that the unit was massively under strength and that its units were in a dreadful state of training. The centurion must have stripped men from three of the five
turmae
to bring just two up to strength, hoping that the antics of these two full-strength
turmae
would draw attention away from the undermanning of the others.

When the two loose horses had been caught and their troopers remounted, the original two
turmae
formed up in front of their companions. An order rang out for them each to perform the Cantabrian Circle, little more than a simple piece of formation riding in which a cavalry unit galloped in a circle, always turning to the right to keep its shielded side to the enemy. As each man came to the point closest to the enemy he shot his weapon at a target. Every mounted unit in the empire practised it but Ballista had never heard of a Roman army actually employing it in battle.

At first all went well. The
campus
was filled with two whirling circles of horsemen, turning in the same direction as the sun. The horses moved at an easy canter. The noise of drumming hooves, the twang of the bows, the whoosh of the arrows tearing through the air, the thump as they hit, bounced back off the walls. Dust rose in the air. More and more arrows flew. Then disaster struck. The only real difficulty with the Cantabrian Circle was if the horsemen lost the line of the circle - cornered too fast, or spun out of the intended path. The latter happened. One horseman strayed from the nearer circle. The frantic efforts of a trooper from the further one to get out of the way merely confused his mount. The collision was sickening. The two horses and men went down in a tangle of limbs and bodies. After a moment one horse struggled to its feet and ran off. Some seconds later, its rider sat up. But the other man lay motionless, and his horse thrashed with awful screams as it tried to rise with a broken leg.

Now there were long delays before the medical orderlies carried off the motionless trooper. Ballista noticed that they used a door instead of a stretcher which showed their complete lack ofpreparedness but, at the same time, a certain ingenuity. It was also some time before the unit’s farrier arrived to put down the injured horse. While three men sat on the doomed animal, the farrier pulled its head back. With an almost unbearable affection he stroked its muzzle, then pulled the glinting knife across its throat. The initial spray of blood shot out several yards; then cane the arterial blood. It spread quickly, relentlessly over the sand. The dying horse’s efforts to breath through its severed windpipe added a pink foam to the bright-red pool.

Eventually the
cohors
had clumsily manoeuvred itself to stand before the tribunal. Many of the men had a hangdog air. They looked not at their new Dux but at the ground or at the back of the man in front of them. An unnerving number, however, looked up at Ballista with dumb insolence, the very set of their shoulders challenging this northern barbarian.

What will I say to them? thought Ballista. Allfather, how am I going to play this?

‘Silence! Silence in the ranks for Marcus Clodius Ballista,
Vir Egregius, Dux Ripae.’

A murmuring continued.

‘Silence in the ranks!’ bellowed Turpio. This time, there was some response.

‘Milites,’
said Ballista, ‘it seems to me that military manoeuvres have their own rules. Add too much, and the whole thing becomes an over-complicated pantomime but, equally, take too much away, and you are left with nothing to show the skill of the units.’ Ballista paused. The murmuring was stilled.

‘You carried out very few manoeuvres. The infantry did not adopt skirmish order, did not countermarch. The cavalry tried no complicated manoeuvres; neither the
xynema
nor the
touloutegon.’
The murmuring returned. ‘Yet you are not to be blamed too savagely. Your depleted numbers and your lack of equipment point to your being neglected by your officers, as do your limited range of manoeuvres and your limited success in carrying them out. Your marksmanship, however, points to your own skill.’

The men were silent. More of them looked up at Ballista. Now it was not just those whose demeanour said ‘fuck you’ who would catch Ballista’s eye.

‘By tonight you will have a new commander. In two days’ time you will begin to train again. By the spring, Cohors XX Palmyrenorum Milliaria Equitata will be at the peak of efficiency, as befits a proud unit, one established under Marcus Aurelius, one which has campaigned under Lucius Verus, Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Valerian and Gallienus.’ Again Ballista concluded: ‘All except essential details, to be determined by First Centurion Titus Flavius Turpio, will take a day’s leave.’

Again the troops cheered and, in no better order than before, the unit made its way off the
campus martius.

 

The courier stood by the head of his camel and waited. The
telones,
the customs official, had disappeared into the registry on the ground floor of the southern tower of the Palmyrene Gate. The courier looked up at the northern wall of the courtyard between the two great wooden gates. Above head height the wall was plastered and painted with an offertory scene. Glancing down, the courier noticed a merchant come out of the registry, climb on a donkey and, leading another donkey, ride off. The courier returned to studying the wall. Below head height the wall was plain brick, but covered in graffiti, most scratched or painted in Greek or Aramaic, some in Latin. Some just consisted of a man’s name and that of his father. For the most part, these two words were preceded by ‘I thank you,
Tyche
of Arete.’ Without having to look, the courier knew the southern wall was much the same.