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Carrhae's walls had let the survivors of Crassus's Legions slip away as ignominiously as it had admitted them: ridding the town of one more set of masters unable to command it. The remnants of the Legion had no pride left—and very little strength. Blank and indifferent, the outpost might have been as far from them as Rome herself. At this moment, the tribune Quintus longed for the protection of those walls and wished the people within heartily to Tartarus. He fully expected to arrive among the damned sooner or later himself.
Up ahead, his superiors and elders gestured while centurions struck flagging men into one last formation with their vinestaffs in order to follow their guide into the marshes.
"You think we can trust him?"
"You want to eat mud, comrade?"
Someone else drew in his cheeks, making a sucking sound. Amazing anyone had strength and spirit left to raise even so feeble a jest.
"Quiet, you!" Rufus, the senior centurion, reinforced his order with his staff. Quintus would have expected that tough old man to survive. How he had made it himself, though, was more of a surprise. Perhaps because he did not wholly want to....
They had learned they could not trust their fellow Romans, let alone some of their allies: How then could they trust their guide, who cringed when they laid eyes or hand on him, and glared when their backs were turned? His knowledge gave them a scant chance, yet he promised a better, if less honorable, fate than the drums and the arrows they would probably face again at dawn.
The Parthians were horse archers, not ready to battle at night, which risked killing their prized mounts. If they felt that way about mere men, twenty thousand Romans would still be alive.
Besides, what need would now press The Surena and his warriors to fight at all? The legions of Syria were bled out. Roman cavalry was withdrawn, what survived of it. And the auxiliaries—only a few of them lived or remained loyal to follow the Legionaries marshward.
Now Prince Surena—The Surena, ruler of one of the noblest of the Parthian clans—had only to wait for sure-to-be-treacherous guides and the veritable sinks of the marshes to assure him of complete victory.
Near Quintus, someone gagged. Sour sickness rose in his own gullet, triggered by the fetid marsh stench, nearly as foul as the oaths sputtering from First Centurion Rufus, like bubbles popping in the muck. The veteran had not stopped swearing since the orders came to retire. First, they had fought their way from the battlefield, men falling under the horse-archers' bows. They were forced to abandon the wounded, and so their rout was complete and shaming. Then, they had slunk out of Carrhae itself like a man sneaking from the stews, defeated, destroyed. Dead, as soon as their only probable fate caught up with them.
Under the helm that made Quintus sweat, blood pounded in his temples, seeming as heavy as the enemies' wardrums and those bronze bells that had clanged deafeningly during the battle as The Surena had paraded or that had heralded the severed head of the proconsul's son impaled on a lancepoint before the Roman overlord, whose arrogance turned to grief and fear, robbing his Legions of such leadership as even Crassus might give and even of their will to win. Now that dull throb in the young tribunes head, the rasp of the cooling air he drew into his aching lungs, somehow kept him going even as the drums of a galley set the measure for sweating rowers. They had managed not to run. That was all that could be said for them—the shocked remnants of Crassus's seven Legions.
"Down!" The whisper held a snap.
Quintus flung himself to earth—or mud—by a pool, so scummed over it reflected neither stars nor moon. The gods have turned their faces from us, he thought. But what more could they expect after such a defeat as this?
Faintly, his memory sharpened. They had been cursed even as they marched from Rome. Had not tribune Aetius, not satisfied with arguing that Parthia was a neutral kingdom and thus not to be attacked, condemned Crassus and his army openly and sternly? Any sane man would have taken that as an omen and thought twice, thrice on what he would do. They said Crassus had prattled in company of the feats of Alexander, and it was rumored that he envied Caesar, his friend and rival. He would have his victory witnessed by all Rome. And so he had ignored Aetius.
What was that word the Greeks used for going against the gods? Quintus searched memory again. It was all in a fog.
Hubris. That was right. Well, given his own choice, he himself would have been a farmer, not a scholar. And certainly not a soldier. So plain words were good enough. And the blunt commons had a fit word for such arrogance, too. Nefas. Unspeakable evil.
Here all about him was nefas.
Around him, men were sinking to their knees or to their bellies by the fetid water, shedding their packs. Romans crouched with Romans; the few auxiliaries companioned one another, by nationality. At night it might be hard to tell auxilia from enemies; but they must note how the forces were strung out. Some of them had betrayed their oaths. Still, best not kill the ones who held to their faith.
His ribs ached with every breath he drew. In the battle, something had whined by his head. By unbelievable fortune, he had swerved at just the right time, only to be struck with a near-paralyzing but glancing blow.
I'm hit! he had thought. For a moment he was dazed as might be a gladiator waiting for the final stroke. Sluggishly, he tried to put away memory. Magna Mater, it hadn't been much of a life!
No home. No sons. No lands.
Time slowed, and he was back in his memories of the battle. He doubled over, bemused about whether an arrow had hit a lung and how long it might take him to drown in his own blood.
Quintus rubbed his side as he half sat, half lay by a scummy pool. No arrow wound had sapped his strength, but he winced from a burn mark. That blow had struck right above where he stowed the tiny bronze statue that had been his lucky-piece since he found it as a boy on the farm since stolen from his family.
"Don't drink, fools! Not that muck." The centurion ordered and enforced the command with a whack of his staff across the back of one impatient man. "No water? You there. Share with Titus here. And both of you, go easy. There is no likely spring here!"
No man in the Legion was obeyed more quickly than Rufus. Still a mutter, almost a whine, of protest rose.
"You don't drink standing water. Look at that scum. Smell it. You want the flux or a fever that would make Tiberside in the summer seem like a garden? Are you stupid enough to think they'll let us carry you when we move out?"
That, Quintus thought, was what hurt the old veteran worst. On a lost battlefield, Rome had abandoned her wounded. Men he had known, had ordered, had punished and praised as if they were his own sons—and they had been left to have their throats cut (or what more savage ways the Parthians killed those in their power), their screams concealed beneath the beat of the Parthian drums.
Without knowing it, the Primus Pilus took off his helmet and rubbed his graying hair. Rufus no longer: The red hair that had given him that name had long since faded. He had grown old in the Legions. Only the needs of men who feared this battle without him to bully them had stopped him from storming into Crassus's tent and choosing the moment of his death rather than waiting for the Parthians. His men. The only sons he would ever have. He had watched these sons of his die for pride and treachery, shot full of Parthian arrows and now he would watch them die in the marshes outside Carrhae, and no sword or shield of his could be raised in bloody answer.