‘Are mounted on horses, which makes them at least twice as fast as your soldiers. You need me to go back over there and get in their way for a while, don’t you?’
The trumpets blared again, and the legion’s column lurched into motion back the way they had come with a mass grinding rasp of hobnails on the road’s grit. Scaurus looked up at him for a moment, crooking a beckoning finger, and Felix bent over his horse’s neck as the legatus stepped in close, apparently not worried by the beast’s fearsome reputation.
‘I’d be careful if I were you, sir, the bastard’ll have your blasted ear off if you give him half a chance.’
The legatus shook his head, matching his prefect’s grin with a hard smile.
‘I think not. If your fucking horse so much as nibbles me I’ll geld him. Now …’
He looked up at the young prefect with an expression that was in some small part almost pleading.
‘Cornelius Felix, I know how you stupid bloody aristocrats think.’
Felix smiled knowingly.
‘Because in reality you’re a stupid bloody aristocrat yourself, sir?’
Scaurus shook his head in mock irritation.
‘Yes, Prefect, most likely that’s the reason I know that you’re currently in that “expendable” frame of mind that overcomes you lot when you see an opportunity to do your “Horatius on the bridge” act. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, eh, Cornelius Felix?’
The prefect shrugged, and Scaurus shook his head in irritation, his voice a vehement snarl.
‘Well not today, you young prick! Today you take your command, all five hundred of these precious horsemen, and you do not engage, Prefect, do you understand?’
Felix tilted his head, as if the instruction simply failed to make any sense to him.
‘If we’re not to engage …?’
‘You display, Prefect Felix.’
The look of incomprehension on the younger man’s face became simple confusion.
‘Display, Legatus?’
‘Display, Prefect. Pretend you’re on parade, with the dragon banner whistling like the scream of a harpie and your ceremonial armour making the women wet with excitement. Get their attention and hold it. Distract them from my legion, Prefect, and give me time to get to the ground I need if I’m going to beat them.’
He paused for a moment, eyeing Felix with a look that brooked no argument.
‘Bring me that cavalry wing back intact, Prefect, because when I’ve taught those men what it really means to take on Rome, and sent what’s left of them back east with their arses stoved in, I’ll be needing you to lead the pursuit and keep them running.’
Felix smiled and the legatus nodded knowingly.
‘I thought you’d like the sound of that.’
The prefect shrugged, straightening up in his saddle.
‘Never fear, Legatus! I’ll be back in good time if there’s a chance to witness some sort of military miracle!’
He turned Hades away, tugging at the fearsome stallion’s reins as the beast pranced with the desire to be away.
‘Come on then, Seventh Phrygians! Today, my lads, we go forth with a noble objective!’
He paused, and the horsemen to either side of him grinned at their prefect, clearly in love with his approach to their craft.
‘Today we go forth not to die for Rome, but to make a fine display on her behalf!’
He led the horsemen away towards the rest of his men, and Scaurus rejoined the column alongside Julius, who had stood waiting while he’d briefed Felix.
‘You really think we can hold off thousands of horse archers?’
The legatus shrugged.
‘At least our understanding of the landscape means that we won’t be fighting them on level ground. And in any case, it’s too late to be worrying now. The die, as the Divine Julius so succinctly put it, is well and truly cast.’
His first spear nodded grimly.
‘So all we can do now is pray to Cocidius and look to our weapons.’
Scaurus marched in silence for a moment, looking down the column’s length to its head, from where the sound of braying mules was issuing as their keepers drove the animals on without regard for their protests.
‘You pray to your gods for strength in battle, First Spear, and I’ll pray to mine that all those historians I’ve been taking lessons from weren’t just pandering to their patrons when they told us how to beat the Parthians.’
‘Seventh Phrygians,’ Felix bellowed his command at the men of his cavalry wing. ‘Form battle line! Decurions, to me!’
His troopers obeyed with parade-ground precision, swiftly forming up into the formation he’d ordered, a battle line only two horses deep that stretched over half a mile in width, while their officers trotted their mounts to gather round the prefect, dismounting and waiting in disciplined silence for him to speak. When the last man was in position, he turned to his senior decurion, gesturing towards the distant dust cloud being raised by the oncoming Parthians.
‘When you’re ready, Decurion, I think we’ll go over there for a look at those easterners. But let us all be very clear, gentlemen, our role today is to confuse the enemy, nothing more, nothing less, and there will be no glory hunting. Any man who breaks formation today, or who fails to obey the trumpet calls promptly, will be flogged in front of the legion tonight. Any man.’
The grizzled veteran nodded dourly, looking around the gathered officers.
‘You heard the prefect! Legatus Scaurus has promised that we can ride those eastern goat nudgers down once they’ve been beaten, but until then all we’re allowed to do is to dance around a bit and make them nervous for their flanks! Understood? Dismissed!’
With the officers dispersed back to their squadrons, Felix nodded to the decurion, who leapt into his saddle and pointed towards the dust cloud that was slowly growing larger on the eastern horizon.
‘Shall we go, Prefect? If we wait any longer they’ll be up in our faces and we’ll have no room to manoeuvre.’
At the trumpet’s signal, the five-hundred-strong cavalry wing started forward, first at the walk and then, with the gentle breeze keening through the dragon standard that flew proudly alongside Felix, the senior decurion ordered the horn to sound again. Accelerating to a canter, the horsemen stared grimly over their horses’ necks at the enemy to their front still invisible bar the clouds of dust that were being kicked up by their horses.
‘There must be ten thousand of them!’
Felix nodded at the man’s shouted words, barely discernible over the rolling thunder of the cavalry wing’s hoofs. As if on cue, they crested a gentle rise and there, spread out across the plain before them, was the enemy army. Two miles distant, the armoured heart of the enemy host, perhaps a thousand horsemen, glittered like a field of stars in the drab landscape. Fanned out across the plain ahead of them were several times their number of more lightly equipped horse archers, while the enemy army’s rear was formed from a series of tightly ordered infantry columns, advancing at a brisk march in the wake of the horsemen. Felix and his subordinate exchanged glances, the prefect putting an involuntary hand to the hilt of his sword before he remembered the nature of Scaurus’s orders.
‘We need to turn now!’
Felix nodded his assent, and Quintus rose in his saddle, bellowing the command for a wheel to the left. The trumpeter blared out the order, and with a flurry of shouted commands the squadrons to their right speeded up their pace and pulled their mounts steadily around to their left, while the left-most squadron slowed until it was barely marking time.
‘It’s going to be close! Your legatus may get a cavalry action whether he wants it or not!’
The Parthian horse archers had already reacted, galloping forward towards the suddenly visible Romans with all the speed they could muster. Felix looked down the wheeling line of his wing with narrowed eyes, nodding slowly.