Bone-tired, Ballista hauled himself back into the saddle. Pale Horse's flanks were lathered in sweat, his head down. With his officers, Ballista slowly rode back towards the army's starting position. Everywhere was the frenzied looting of the dead. Many of the scavengers were civilians. There were far too many to have all come from the baggage train. Ballista had seen it on so many stricken fields that he did not wonder at it. No matter how remote a battlefield from human habitation, as soon as the fighting was over, the scavengers appeared. The skinny, furtive men and the hideous old crones, sharp knives in their hands and, always among them, always upsetting the northerner, the young children, far too young for that disgusting work.
Yet on the plain before Circesium, most of those despoiling the dead were soldiers. The Roman moralists were wrong. Disciplina was not a durable, inherent quality. On the contrary, it was terribly fragile. A victory could shatter it as easily as a crushing defeat. When the milites saw the cavalcade coming they stopped their searching. They drew their swords and, hunched over, chopped down, as many blows as it took. Then, as the horsemen drew near, they stood. They thrust out their right arms in a sort of salute, in their fists the severed Persian heads. One man had a head in each hand and the long black hair of a third gripped in his teeth. The gore ran up his arms, down the front of his mail shirt. As a Roman general should, Ballista inspected the grisly trophies, commended those holding them with a kind word or an affectionate look.
In the liberty of the moment, the soldiers called out whatever they pleased: praise, jokes, boasts. Small knots of men chanted the names of the officers. Ballista noted that more chanted for Acilius Glabrio than for himself. The northerner bitterly reflected how all his hard work, all his planning, counted for next to nothing in their eyes. One foolish, insubordinate charge – a charge which brought a half success and squandered total victory – had won the odious little patrician the hearts of the men.
'Gaius Acilius Glabrio! Gaius Acilius Glabrio!'
The chanted name rang through Ballista's angry thoughts. Acilius Glabrio was an arrogant, stupid, self-satisfied fool – but not a murderer. Ballista had been so convinced that he had hired the assassins. But there had been an honesty in the young nobleman's contemptuous retort – 'I would be as low as you, if I stooped to such things.' It had changed the northerner's mind.
'Gaius Acilius Glabrio! Gaius Acilius Glabrio!'
Ballista's thoughts scrabbled round like rats in a trap. Not Acilius Glabrio… then who? Ballista had never really thought it was the Borani prince, Videric. This conclusion was not from any misty-eyed sentiment that northerners such as himself would not resort to such underhand methods. They did. Often. Bloodfeuds in Germania involved murder. It was more that various things did not seem right: the assassin in the clearing shouting, 'The young eupatrid sends you this,' the pantomime masks and cavalry parade helmet in the alley, the man himself in the silver mask calling Ballista a barbarian. But if it hadn't been Videric or Acilius Glabrio who had hired the assassin, it must be the sons of the sinister Count of the Largess, Macrianus the Lame. But which one? Quietus, who Ballista had punched in the balls? Macrianus the Younger, who had been shown to lack the courage to help his brother? Or was it both of them? And what of their powerful, devious father? Was Macrianus the Lame a part of it? If he was, Allfather help me, thought Ballista. Apart from the emperor, there could be no more dangerous enemy in the whole imperium.
Voices were raised in anger. A fight had broken out among some of the looters. Ballista ran his right hand over his face. He felt a stab of pain. At least one knuckle was broken and the hand was swelling fast. I must get a grip on things, he thought. He had to take charge before this army descended into chaos, laid itself open to a Sassanid counterattack.
Ballista called his officers to him. He rapped out orders. Niger and Albinus were to send out patrols. They were to report immediately if any still-formed bodies of Persian troops were to be found within five miles. Mucapor was to recall the Equites Singulares to the standard and have them fall in behind Ballista. Legio III, under its prefect, Rutillius Rufus, was to secure the town. Sandario was to use his slingers and any other light infantry he needed to bring the fires there under control. Turpio was to get the baggage train in order and, as soon as possible, quarter it safely within the walls. Acilius Glabrio was to disperse the looters, sending the troops among them back to their units on pain of death. Legio IIII was to remain formed on the road as a reserve under Castricius. Aurelian was to attend the Dux Ripae.
Some horsemen clattered away purposefully. Others remained, looking concerned. There was something unspoken in the air. Aurelian? Where was Aurelian?
Macapor edged his horse forward. 'He is hurt.'
'Badly?'
Mucapor shrugged.
'Everyone, carry out your orders. Mucapor, we will go to him.' Even in the extremity of his fear – this was no trick, no false alarm – Ballista did not push Pale Horse too hard. He forced himself to keep the gelding to the gentlest of canters, forced down the hollow feeling of panic.
There was a knot of men under the standards of Legio IIII. It parted as Ballista approached. Aurelian was lying on his back. His right leg was at an odd angle. An army doctor was on his knees, preparing to set the broken limb.
Ballista jumped down from the saddle. Aurelian's face was grey, and he was sweating. Through gritted teeth, he whispered, 'I give you joy of your victory.'
Ballista looked into his friend's eyes. 'Thank you.' Unable to say more, Ballista leant down and very gently squeezed Aurelian's shoulder. Then he straightened up, turned away, and got on with what needed to be done. The army had stayed at Circesium for thirteen days. It had been a busy time for Ballista. He had pushed cavalry patrols out further and further in all directions. There had been no sign of any Persians – or none that were still living. The premature charge of Acilius Glabrio had robbed him of the chance to destroy the Persian army, but it seemed the easterners had withdrawn, at least for the time being.
There had been many, many burials to attend to. Aelius Spartianus, the tribune commanding the Roman forces in Circesium, who had fallen with almost all his men when the Sassanids took the town, was interred in a slendid sarcophagus in a fine tomb by the main road into town – admittedly, both sarcophagus and tomb were reused, but the local stonemason made a good job of the new inscriptions. The other Roman dead among the soldiers were buried in communal graves, but they were accorded all due respect: their eyes closed, a coin in each mouth, a newly sculpted monument on top of each grave.
Things had been different with the Sassanids. Their often mutilated remains were burned and the ashes thrown anyhow into pits. But this was not just casual contempt for the enemy. The Romans knew that the Sassanids were Zoroastrian fire-worshippers who exposed their dead to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. They knew well that the Zoroastrians held that the mere touch of a corpse polluted the very sacredness of fire. A small voice at the back of Ballista's mind had whispered that this could only exacerbate the conflict between east and west, that it might even rebound personally on its perpetrator. The Sassanids would see it as an atrocity, a deliberate insult to their religion. They would, of course, be right. Yet there was little that Ballista had felt he could do. His men had suffered day after day at the hands of the easterners. They had wanted revenge even on the dead bodies of their tormentors.
Ballista had tried to set the defence of the town on a sounder footing. Across the Chaboras a tower was built to give early warning of any Sassanid forces advancing up the Euphrates. The walls and gates of Circesium itself had needed little work, as the town had fallen to a surprise attack rather than regular siege works. Ballista had arranged for supplies and materials of war to be transported by boat downriver from Zeugma. Two thousand inhabitants of Circesium had been conscripted to form a local militia. Legio III Felix and the Mesopotamian archers were to be left as a regular garrison. They would be supported by three of the small war galleys.