To our right and coming closer, I saw his pennant cleave the harsh blue sky: a red pennant with the crossed thunderbolts of the XIIth in the centre and below them his personal mark of the white horse.
He had his men held in a solid line, sweeping across the fallof the slope. Spears flashed silver and red through the dust they made. Men fell before them and did not rise again after they had gone. The slope ran to mud-slurry with blood and urine and the soft parts of entrails that leaked out into the autumn dust. The churning wind brought us the iron-sweet scent of blood, and the sharper smells of death. That same wind carried a flicker of blue, a shade deeper than the sky, with ‘ Demalion! ’
Tears’ voice. A blade coming at my face. I threw my shield up, put my shoulder behind it, heaved forward, and felt face bones crack on the boss. I thrust my blade in on instinct and felt it skitter off armour, and then bite in skin and flesh. A man screamed and the pressure on my shield grew less. I looked around it, saw a helmet, falling, and kicked the flat of my foot at where the face must be… and all the time my head kept trying to turn to the side, to look up the slope at the flicker of blue I had seen that was not the sky.
At the next chance, I looked back, and that was when I saw it — the blue tern against a white ground that had haunted my dreams since my days in Hyrcania.
Shock held me still and only Tears’ fast action saved me. But then he saw what I had seen: that the peril was far greater than we had thought, for Cadus was fighting cataphracts. Here, eight miles north of Jerusalem. C ataphracts! Led by Monobasus of Adiabene. I threw back my head and yelled over the havoc.
‘Horgias! Monobasus is here! Adiabene has sided with the Hebrews!’
The cry ran through the ranks like fire through straw. ‘Monobasus! Adiabene! He’s brought his heavy cavalry!’
The news spread like floodwater and reached Lupus faster than if we had signalled it. As my cry died away, we heard the blare of his horn and, acting on each signal as puppetsto a master’s pull, found ourselves faced about, with new centuries taking our place on the battle’s front, so that we might lock shields and advance against the new-old enemy, filling the gap in Cadus’ left flank, letting him move out and round, higher up the hill, to come down on them from above, which is what cavalry does best.
The horn guided us uphill and right to a place Lupus must have scouted out beforehand, where we found ourselves formed into a wedge.
Alexander used this formation in his battles, only his wedges were of cavalry. We were foot men, and I was at the apex, with five hundred men behind me, ready to widen any gap I could force with my shield and my body. This is one reason why centurions die more readily and in greater numbers than any other men on the battlefield: they lead the wedges.
I felt a flash of terror so fast, so fierce, so overwhelming that it was indistinguishable from joy. My body thrilled to it and drank it in, even as I knew that death waited for me in a dozen paces.
‘ Charge! ’
The horn blared it, but I had shouted before the notes came, so clear was our moment of chance. Sunlight flashed on weapons and armour all around, blinding me to everything but the flash of a blue banner in the centre of the cavalry block, and the black horse that bore it and the fox-faced rider to its left, leaner than I remembered, but swinging his sword with the same savage carelessness, laughing as we came at him.
And then not laughing, as our javelins flew; we who had held them until the last, which was now. And not laughing as his horse stumbled, hit in the one place where it was vulnerable, on the loins, where no armour hung; we knew that, who had fought him before.
And not laughing at all, but shouting for order, trying to hold his men in line, as we ploughed on through their lines, and I did not die but let the force of the men behind me push me on, crushing on to horseflesh and manflesh alike, breaking bones and toppling riders by the sheer force of the wedge.
And then that force withered and we were left trying to reform a battle line in the midst of an enemy whose own line was fractured beyond repair.
By the gods’ will, I found myself still alive, and fighting opposite the blue-bannered king who led his men in battle.
The air was drenched with horse-sweat, thick with blood and fear, and fury. I saw a black hide and stabbed at it, twisted and pulled free; I saw a flash of a pale unarmoured wrist, and stabbed for that, and felt the blade turned aside, and felt a hand grasp at my wrist, pulling me forward, and a gap where Tears was not with me. I saw a wall of horseflesh, rising, and iron within it, falling, and was spinning, trying to find my balance, when something more silver than iron was in the way, and I heard a horse’s feet hit solid bull’s hide and saw the blue tern banner of Adiabene fall at my feet, and the dead king beside it.
And then Tears was there, sliding in to my side, and I was safe in the shelter of his shield, with Macer to his left and Horgias and Taurus on my right with the silver of our standard between them, blistering in the sun.
Our shields made a new line and we took the long steps of a forward wall and heard-felt the smack of the bosses on armour.
I heard the enemy try to rally, but without their commander they failed, and within ten paces they were backing their horses away from us, step by bloody step, and I had time to pause and look to my left and found Macer grinning at me — grinning! — holding a stolen Parthian shield with silverworked thick on the boss and edges. So he was the one who had saved me, not Tears or Horgias.
‘All right?’ He hefted the shield, as if pleased with its weight.
I had flogged him five times with my own hand and tied him to the cartwheel for two nights as one of the worst thorns in my side. And he had saved my life in battle.
‘All right,’ I said, and smiled back.
We came to a halt at the edge of the bluff. With the retreat of Monobasus’ cataphracts, the line of Hebrews facing us had fallen back and Lupus was not fool enough to send us after them. In the valley beyond us the Hebrews were retreating, as if their cavalry’s defeat had knocked the fight out of them.
I signalled Tears to halt our men and we stopped where we stood while the slaves ran from the supply lines with water.
My arms were shaking. My whole body, in fact, was shuddering like a horse at the end of a race. My shoulders felt bruised; my knuckles bled where I had smashed my shield boss too often and too hard. My bladder was full and my bowels loose, and I wanted more than anything to find the blue banner that had fallen near the place where Macer had saved my life.
Horgias was there before me, standing over the still-warm body of the black horse. Its rider lay on his back, his eyes wide open. His armour was silvered, with gems on his gloves. His eyes were black. His face was fox-like, but a young fox. Horgias had kicked off his helmet. His hair shone sleek in the noonday sun — and it was red.
I said, ‘Monobasus had black hair. Black going grey. It’s not him.’ I tilted the face back with my foot and we both looked down at a man younger than either of us.
Horgias said nothing. I didn’t push him. Taurus stood nearby, watching with a new closeness.
Tears came to join us. He had a ragged cut on his cheek just below one eye. He saw me looking and shook his head. ‘Later.’He nodded over to Horgias. ‘He killed Monobasus. You took the horse, but Horgias took the rider.’
‘It isn’t Monobasus,’ Horgias said woodenly.
‘His son, then?’ Tears said.
‘Does he have sons?’ Taurus asked.
‘Bound to have,’ I said. ‘The way they are in Adiabene, he probably has half a village of sons sired on a dozen different women.’