‘Once the wing’s in position, sound the gallop! We need to get out from under the threat of those archers!’
Quintus nodded, raising an arm ready to give the signal, and as the furthest right squadron wheeled through ninety degrees, he swept it forward, bellowing the order at the decurions who had already ridden their mounts forward of their men to better see him, anticipating the command.
‘At the gallop … GO!’
The wing’s horses leapt forward, eager to run, and with a hammering cacophony of hoofs, the squadrons accelerated away from the pursuing archers who fell away behind them, their mounts clearly blown from their impetuous charge. Looking over his left shoulder, Felix gauged the amount of progress that the fleeing wing had made, then turned in his saddle to stare back at the pursuing archers, who were now peeling away from their erstwhile prey to rejoin the main body in its remorseless advance towards the Roman main body.
‘Slow them down to a canter and give the horses a chance to breathe!’
He waited while Quintus gave the order, watching as the archers fell in with the line of their army’s advance.
‘We haven’t distracted them enough yet!’
His senior decurion looked back at the Parthians, then back at his prefect with a knowing expression.
‘What are you thinking?’
The Phrygians were now riding out past the Parthian right flank, the closest of the enemy horsemen a good mile distant from the furthest right squadron in their line.
‘As long as we just buzz around their line of advance like a sand fly, we’re not going to distract them enough to give the legatus the time he needs!’
He looked back at his subordinate, his face hard with the certainty of what they were going to have to do.
The soldiers were sweating heavily now, working hard at the double march that was taking them north towards the distant mountains that formed the border with Armenia. Scaurus looked over his shoulder, seeing the Phrygians’ dust moving slowly across what he presumed was the front of the Parthian advance.
‘How far back do you think they are?’
Julius took a swift look back.
‘Five miles?’
Scaurus nodded.
‘No more than six. If they’re trotting their horses to keep them fresh for the battle we might just beat them to the hills. But if they’re cantering …’
Julius shrugged.
‘Then we’ll have to fight them on the plain. And we know from young Varus’s account how well that’s likely to go.’
‘My orders from the Legatus were to distract the enemy from the legion for long enough to let him set up a defence, Quintus, and at the moment it’s not working! We’ll just have to try harder!’
The prefect grinned at his senior decurion, provoking a shake of the older man’s head.
‘Right wheel?’
Felix nodded back at him.
‘Right wheel!’
Quintus shouted the order with a look of disbelief that was matched by the troopers around them as the wing began to pivot once more, turning gradually to the east, its path curving round to take the Roman cavalry around to the rear of the Parthian force and present a threat to the plodding infantrymen that he calculated the enemy general would be unable to ignore. Turning in his saddle, the young prefect watched the enemy host intently. Quintus shook his head.
‘They’re not reacting!’
‘Just a little longer …’
The Phrygians had turned most of the way through ninety degrees, their course taking them past the right-hand side of the Parthian host with half a mile of empty desert between the two bodies of men. Quintus opened his mouth to argue with his prefect, closing it as Felix snapped out a terse command.
‘Left wheel, canter pace!’
The Parthian host had abruptly wheeled to their right and accelerated to a headlong gallop, their commander heedless of his force’s reserves of stamina as he drove them across the plain in pursuit of the Romans. For a moment even Felix was convinced that he had gambled and lost, as the leading Parthian horse archers galloped at his wing’s rear with arrows ready to loose.
‘Should we gallop them?’
The veteran shook his head with a scowl, looking back at the pursing archers.
‘Their mounts will soon be blown at that speed, so they’ll never catch us. Only question is whether they can get close enough to loose their-’
‘Here it comes!’
One of the riders pointed at their pursuers with an urgent warning shout. Felix followed his pointing arm and cringed as the Parthian horsemen, knowing that the Romans would soon be out of range, loosed a volley of arrows at their maximum range.
‘Shields!’
The first volley was swiftly followed by two more, the third flight of arrows leaving their bows before the first had fallen to earth, while each of the Phrygians raised his long oval shield to protect both horse and rider from the falling arrowheads. With an eerie whistle the first volley fell onto the very rearmost of the wing’s riders, an iron rain that battered at their raised shields, hammering down into horses and riders alike. A score or more of the rearmost horses were hit on their unshielded hindquarters, most of them continuing on their way with no more reaction than a squeal of protest as the falling missiles drove the protective iron scales of their barding into the flesh below, but in four cases the arrows penetrated the armoured protection and drove deep into the flesh, causing the beasts unbearable pain and driving them to throw their riders in their kicking, screaming agony. The second and third volleys lanced down onto the fallen riders even as Felix hesitated, only one of them retaining sufficient of his wits to raise his shield and take shelter beneath its thick wooden protection. The other three troopers jerked under the arrows’ impact, but as the Phrygians rode on, the last of their comrades threw aside his shield and stared after them in disbelief at his fate. Readying himself to turn and ride to the man’s rescue, the prefect felt a hard grip clamp onto his right arm.
‘No! No man breaks formation!’
Felix started at Quintus’s barked command.
‘And especially not you, Prefect!’
The prefect stared bleakly at his senior decurion.
‘But …’
The decurion shook his head sadly, staring back at the solitary trooper as the Parthian archers rode towards the doomed man.
‘You gave the order, no man to leave the formation, now you can honour it! He knows what to do … if he has the sense to use his dagger on himself before they get hold of him.’
The first cohort of legionaries marched wearily onto the hill’s lowest slopes and were promptly turned from the line of march by the waiting Julius. He stalked alongside their senior centurion for a moment, barking out instructions and pointing out their intended position.
‘Just as we practised it! Climb until you’re a hundred paces from the crest, then turn to your left and take them along the hillside for three hundred paces, then stop! Make sure there’s enough room behind you for the artillery to shoot over your heads! Face your men down slope and get your long spears to the front, then let them have a rest and a drink of water. I want a continuous line along the hill with no gaps, so make sure your boys and the next cohort have a seamless join! Right, get on with it!’
He turned away and walked down the cohort’s column past rank after rank of grim-faced, sweating soldiers, ready to repeat his instructions to the next cohort’s commander. The bulk of the legion was deploying across the hillside before Scaurus marched up with the rearguard, smiling when he saw the first spear waiting for him. The two men paused as the Tungrians marched on into the heart of the swiftly composed defence, taking their place in the central section of the line.
‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’
Scaurus nodded, his gaze running along the line of men stretching across a mile or so of the ridge that ran from east to west, then turned to look out over the landscape below, the road they had left lost in the distance to the south. The legion’s defensive positions were effectively at the top of a shallow climb of over a mile’s length that steepened discernibly in its last two hundred paces, and Julius shook his head as he looked at the ground before them.