The prefect waited for his turn, looking around at the office’s lavish wall hangings while Dexter heaped yet more anger onto his hapless functionaries. The story, the secretary had told him as they climbed the long staircase together, was already flying around the city, of how the lictors had run back to the city and ordered the gates closed only to find themselves and those members of the watch who had attempted to obey their orders forcibly restrained by armed soldiers.
‘And now he’s marching east with my bloody legion!’
His tirade exhausted, Dexter turned his attention to the prefect.
‘You took your time answering my summons.’
The Phrygian ignored his superior’s acid tone.
‘Apologies, Governor, I was on the practice ground with my men when your message arrived.’
The older man glowered at him for a moment.
‘Well you can go straight back again, muster your wing and get after my legion! I want Gaius Rutilius Scaurus back here, in chains, and I want the Third Gallic back in barracks! Now!’
The Phrygian nodded his understanding.
‘As you wish, Governor. And what are my orders if the legatus refuses to surrender himself into my custody?’
Dexter’s rage exploded again.
‘I don’t care what you have to do! Bring him back in one piece or carve him into mince if that’s the only way to do it! Just don’t come back here without the man! Is that understood?’
The prefect saluted crisply.
‘Perfectly, Governor.’
‘This better than ship. Even with stupid spear and shield made from stone, I having good day.’
Sanga snorted his disgust, looking up at the point of his own weapon and rolling his eyes as a bead of sweat fell from the end of his nose. The legion was slogging up a narrow valley ten miles to the north of Antioch, and the lack of any shelter from the sun was making the legionaries suffer from more than just the exertion of the road’s remorseless incline.
‘You’re off your head, boy. It’s too fucking hot now, it’ll be too fucking cold when the sun goes down, there’ll be nothing to drink, nothing to screw, and probably not much to eat either. And this Nisibis place we’re marching for is four hundred miles away, across a bloody great desert full of snakes and scorpions. And just to make the whole thing perfect, at some point in the march a bunch of maniacs on horses are going to have a fair old go at recreating the battle of … what was it again?’
‘Carrhae. That what tribune call it.’
‘Well he might just as well have called it “goat fuck”, ’cause that’s what it’ll be. Add in the fact that the legatus has made us the rearguard cohort, so we’ll be last to get into our blankets and I reckon-’
Saratos turned his head, waving a hand at Sanga to silence him.
‘Quiet! I hear horses!’
A swift blast of the trumpeter’s horn brought Scaurus and Julius back down the column, the latter ordering the legion to halt.
‘Stand easy!’
Reaching the rearmost cohort, he barked a swift order to Dubnus that made it clear he expected trouble.
‘This may just be Silus and his scouts rejoining but I don’t intend getting caught with my dick hanging out. Fourth Cohort, battle order! Dubnus, give me a double line across the valley, long spears in the front four ranks!’
Throwing their packs aside, the soldiers scrambled to fulfil his instructions while the sound of horses’ hoofs grew steadily louder, so that by the time the leading rider appeared around the valley’s bend, the ground to either side of the road was blocked by a determined defence bristling with spears. Sanga and Saratos found themselves in the front rank, angling their spears out to join with their comrades in offering a thicket of iron spearpoints to whoever was approaching along the road that led back to Antioch.
‘Mind you, what I’m supposed to do with this fucking thing if it comes to a fight beats me. Swing the fucker around and hope to take some bastard’s eye out?’
The horsemen rode into view, half a dozen of them climbing the valley’s slope at a fast trot, and Silus led them through the gap that Dubnus had opened in the wall of spears, grinning as the hedge of iron spikes closed behind his last man.
‘They may look a bit stupid on the march, but they’ll give any of us donkey wallopers a creaky backside when he sees that lot pointing at him.’
He climbed down from the saddle and took a swig from his water skin.
‘There’s a full cavalry wing overtaking us from the south. I’d guess they’ll overhaul your mules before you’ve gone much further.’
‘In which case, we might as well wait here for them. It is the Phrygians, I presume?’
The sweat had barely dried on the soldiers’ scalps before their pursuers caught up with the waiting legion, the growing swell of noise from their hoofs abruptly doubling as the leading riders came into view around the valley’s bend, the officer at their head raising a hand to halt his men and coming forward at a trot. The cavalrymen waiting behind him were fully armed and equipped, their shields held ready to use rather than slung across their backs. Julius looked down at them from his vantage point on the valley’s side with a dour expression.
‘It’s the Phrygians alright, and they’re not out for a pleasure ride, that’s obvious. And I think it’s fairly clear what their orders are.’
The cavalry prefect reined his horse in just short of the forest of spears, looking up and down the Tungrian line with an approving smile before shouting a greeting to the waiting officers.
‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it, Legatus. You actually plan to take the fight to the Parthians.’
Scaurus pushed his way through the line and stepped out in front of the cavalryman.
‘My men are still at the stage of wondering just how their new spears are supposed to be used, but yes, I’m under no illusions that we’ll have to give battle, and I’m damned if I’m going to make it easy for them.’
He looked up at the Phrygian with a grim smile.
‘And so you, Prefect, I presume, are under orders to take me back to Antioch?’
The horseman nodded sombrely.
‘In chains.’
‘In chains? I’d imagine nothing less would satisfy the governor’s need to restore face. And if you can’t achieve this act of submission on my part?’
The cavalryman shrugged.
‘Domitius Dexter was completely unambiguous on the subject; I’m to take you back to Antioch, intact or in pieces. He went as far as to tell me that if I can’t bring you back to Antioch, and his legion as well, then I’m not to come back at all. Which puts me in something of a difficult position, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.’
Scaurus pursed his lips, then waved a hand back at his waiting spear men.
‘My orders aren’t exactly open to misinterpretation either, and they certainly don’t leave room for me to do anything other than march for Zeugma and then on into Osrhoene. Which leaves us both with a dilemma that there may only be one way to resolve. So, if that’s the way it has to be, Prefect Felix, and if your men are as ready as they seem, then shall we get on with it?’
Marcus marched into Zeugma two days after the legion’s arrival, leading a long column of lightly armoured soldiers, each man with a bow over his shoulder and a quiver of arrows at his thigh. Behind them marched five hundred slightly built men clad only in thick woollen tunics. Sanga, watching from his sentry position on the earth wall of the legion’s marching camp, turned to Saratos in bemusement.
‘Some bow benders and a cohort of little boys. What fucking use are they going to be?’