Huddles of soldiery formed round screaming victims, ripping off their clothes, holding them down and cheering on their comrades as they mounted and rode the spoils of war. Each man hungrily awaited his turn to defile the thrashing wenches who cursed and spat at the persecutors pumping away at them, slapping their faces in vain attempts to quieten their hissing rage.
Those auxiliaries whose lust had been sated guzzled wine and roamed through the town with drawn swords and burning torches, raising fires with heedless recklessness and slaughtering the elderly and the young in the same casual manner.
‘It’ll take a lot to calm the lads down after this,’ Magnus muttered as they passed a group of drunken soldiery urinating into the mouth of a barely conscious teenage girl whose hideous ordeal could be measured by the bruising and welts on her face and naked body, as well as by the pool of blood that had seeped from between her legs.
Vespasian forced himself to watch the final act in the girl’s life as one of the auxiliaries shook the drops from his penis, adjusted his dress, then took his sword and thrust it into her mouth; blood sprayed, diluted by urine, and the soldiers laughed as they wandered off in search of similar sport. ‘Just as long as enough of the populace survive to be able to spread the news of what this little Roman army is capable of doing,’ he muttered, urging his horse on up the main street that bisected the town from the western gate to the eastern one. ‘Now I need to find Paelignus and impress upon him the need to push on with all due haste in this glorious campaign of liberation that he has embarked upon.’
Magnus took one last look at the dead girl and then followed. ‘Now he’s got the taste for it, I imagine that it’ll be hard to hold him back.’
‘I’ll rest my soldiers for two days,’ Paelignus announced from behind a vulgarly large desk to his cohort prefects and their senior centurions as Vespasian and Magnus were shown into the grandiose chamber. The stooped general had commandeered the most impressive house in the town for himself. ‘After such a gruelling victory they deserve rest and recuperation. There’ll be no parades or drills, all fatigues are excused and all outstanding disciplinary charges dropped, double rations of both food and wine are to be issued for both days and sentry duty and patrols should be set at the bare minimum.’ If Paelignus had expected his senior officers to applaud his sensitivity towards his rampaging troops he was much mistaken: his declaration was met with barely concealed disgust both for his orders and his appearance. Paelignus, however, seemed unaware of his staff’s derision; he rose from his chair, placed his fists on the desk and thrust his face towards his subordinates. ‘Any questions?’
‘Yes, sir,’ a balding prefect of auxiliary infantry barked, stepping forward and crashing to attention.
Paelignus sighed with irritation. ‘What is it this time, Mammius?’
‘How can my centurions and optiones keep discipline if you excuse all fatigues and drop all outstanding charges just because we’ve taken a town?’
‘This was an outstanding victory, prefect.’
Mammius was unable to contain himself. ‘No, procurator, it was not; my grandmother and four-score hags of equal age could have taken this place armed only with their distaffs. Where was the defending garrison? Where are their bodies now that we’ve scaled the walls and stormed through their gates? Surely we should be able to see dead men in some sort of uniform with armour and helmets?’
‘We were shot at by arrows; men threw javelins at us!’
‘Civic Militia!’ Mammius bawled. ‘A rabble incapable of doing anything more than hurling a few sticks before bravely running away only to be caught and butchered up alleyways. They even opened the gates for us; but you didn’t call the troops back. And now you want to threaten the cohesion of our cohorts by rewarding them for rape and slaughter when the most danger any of them have been in is from getting a spear up the arse from the man behind them tripping over drunk. I’ve had a report of one single death in my cohort and that was some stupid bugger getting his cock bitten off and bleeding out.’
Paelignus’ mouth opened and shut for a few moments in speechless outrage at the force of the prefect’s diatribe. ‘How dare you shout at me, prefect! I’m a friend of the Emperor.’
‘No, Paelignus, you’re the butt of the Emperor’s jokes as you are the butt of ours.’
‘I think, Paelignus,’ Vespasian said in a conciliatory manner, walking further into the room, ‘that we should sit down and consider the situation in a calm and logical fashion.’
Paelignus’ outrage persisted. ‘And what gives you the right to walk in here uninvited and tell me what to do?’
‘Military experience, Paelignus; something that you evidently lack, as Mammius was only trying gently and politely to make clear to you. Now sit back down.’ He glared at Paelignus until he sat with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘Good; now listen to me: Mammius is right. There is no conceivable way that today’s farce could be called a glorious victory, Paelignus; therefore the troops do not deserve two days’ rest nor do they deserve all the other rubbish that you were suggesting, much to the amusement of all listening, no doubt. I suggest that you rein in the men immediately, get them out of the town, build a camp and give them the night to sober up before marching on to Tigranocerta in the morning. In the meantime, Paelignus, why don’t you strip this house of all that’s valuable and have it loaded onto the baggage train so that you can start to pay off the debts that your friend the Emperor saddled you with as you tried to ingratiate yourself with him, playing dice.’
Paelignus’ sharp-featured face drew back into an ugly leer. ‘That’s already being done, Vespasian, as well as all the other houses of value; that’s why I need two days.’
‘You haven’t got two days; I suggest you leave tomorrow.’
‘I give the orders here!’
‘No, Paelignus; you just take the credit and the plunder.’ He turned to the assembled staff who were having difficulty in hiding their shock that a man whose presence they had been only vaguely aware of on the expedition should exercise such control over their commander. ‘I believe that you gentlemen would also deem it wise to move first thing in the morning rather than let the men lose discipline over the next couple of days.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Mammius replied; his colleagues nodded dumbly.
Vespasian walked to an open door and passed through it onto the terrace beyond, looking north towards the heart of Armenia. ‘Have patrols range out along the border keeping parallel with us as we move east. They’re to keep their wits about them and not infringe upon Parthian territory.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Mammius said, frowning. ‘But on whose authority do you take command?’
‘I’m not taking command, prefect, in fact I’m not even here — officially. I’m just making suggestions that Paelignus will no doubt want to take up. Isn’t that right, Paelignus?’
The procurator did not deny it.
‘Good. See that the patrols go out and pull the men back into order; execute a few of them just to sober the others up. And we are going to need them sober, gentlemen; because when news of what happened here today gets to the Parthian army that is already marching towards us they are going to increase their pace. We need to be safely behind the walls of Tigranocerta when they arrive, otherwise we’ll find ourselves outnumbered on a battlefield and, soon after, quite probably dead.’ Vespasian smiled at the uncomprehending expressions that greeted that news. ‘Yes, gentlemen, I know; the walls of Tigranocerta have not been rebuilt since the last Parthian war as a condition in the peace treaty. But the peace treaty also specified that Rome would not take any troops into Armenia; something that Paelignus neglected to think about in his haste to gain favour with the Emperor and restore Rome’s influence here.’