‘You’ll have gathered from the enemy’s advance that, much as expected, the kings in charge of that Parthian army aren’t persuaded that they’re making a mistake.’
‘Kings?’
The legatus smiled knowingly at his First Spear.
‘Yes. Three of them. Where we use imperial governors to administer the empire’s provinces, the easterners use a system of minor kingdoms, each one ruled by its own king. There are three of them down there with their armies, one who rules a good-sized piece of the empire and two reasonably minor monarchs, and none of them was in much of a mood to compromise. As a consequence of which …’
He turned and looked down at the plain, waving a hand at the massed horse archers.
‘This is what those poor bastards in the Sixth Cohort had to face before they died, except they were caught on flat ground with standard-issue shields that were little better protection than thin air, and with no means of fighting back. Those archers can put three arrows in the air before the first one falls to earth, and I suspect that my new friend King Osroes of Media has been reading the same books that I have. See the supply camels following the archers? They’ll have enough arrows to keep showering them onto us until the legion’s nothing but a shell, if we’re stupid enough to let them.’
He smiled at Julius’s expression.
‘Which of course we’re not.’
Julius shook his head.
‘They have no idea what’s coming, do they?’
Scaurus shrugged.
‘Why would they? The Sixth Cohort rolled over and died in exactly the way they expected, in just the same way that twenty thousand men died at Carrhae for that matter, so why shouldn’t we succumb to their rather thin bag of tricks in our turn? All it takes from their perspective is a barrage of arrows for an hour or two followed up by a glorious charge of their cataphracts to break what’s left, a few minutes of bloody murder and the surrender and massacre of the survivors. Up until now the strongest requirement for a man serving in that army down there has been a capacity to tolerate spilt blood. The king in charge of that mass of men will regard this hill, and this legion, as no more than a minor hindrance, I’d imagine. And now, First Spear …’
He nodded decisively as the enemy horsemen approached the line of markers five hundred paces from the Roman line.
‘Shall we see just how fast Dubnus’s axemen can reload their bolt throwers?’
Julius turned to his trumpeter.
‘Sound the Stand To.’
As the first notes of the command pealed out across the hillside, the voices of dozens of centurions barked out over the trumpet’s squeal, and with a sudden flurry of movement the legion’s line lurched forward. Marching steadily down the hill, they advanced for a distance of thirty paces before stopping, centurions and watch officers swiftly dressing the line back into as near perfect straightness as could be achieved given the hill’s undulating surface. On the ground near the hill’s flat summit, a line of two-man bolt throwers stood revealed by the legion’s advance. Behind each Scorpion crouched four men, two of them squatting beside one of the oversized shields faced with leather that had so mystified Centurion Avidus when he’d first seen them on the legatus’s list of requirements. Julius raised his voice to bark a command that rang out over the distant noise of the advancing Parthians’ hoof beats.
‘Bolt throwers – load!’
With the screening infantry line no longer concealing them, the crews sprang into action, one of Dubnus’s axemen gripping the winding handles of each weapon and cranking back the heavy bowstring of his allotted weapon with straining muscles, each of them shooting sidelong glances at the men on either side, determined not to be outdone in the race to complete his task. With the Scorpions ready to shoot, the operators, Hamian bowmen for the most part, carefully placed heavy armour-piercing bolts into their weapons’ mechanisms and pointed the bolt throwers at the oncoming enemy.
‘Bolt throwers – at maximum range …’
The Scorpions angled skywards, their operators looking to Julius for the order to shoot.
‘Loose!’
In his place standing next to the legatus, the hairs rose on the back of Marcus’s neck as, with a snapping twang, the Scorpions spat their deadly loads high into the cloudless sky. He watched, unconsciously holding his breath, as the salvo of missiles arced over their apogee and plunged down into the advancing horsemen. Along the Parthian line the impact was instantaneous and shocking, the bolts’ impact punching men from their horses and, when a missile struck beast rather than rider, dropping the animals kicking and screaming to the ground in sprays of blood. Tearing his gaze away from the slaughter, Marcus shot a swift glance at the bolt throwers and the Tungrians already labouring to re-tension their strings, each man stepping away and raising his hand as the signal for the trigger man to load a bolt and elevate the weapon, ready to shoot once more.
‘Bolt throwers – shoot when ready!’
Another salvo of bolts tore at the advancing horsemen as they passed the four-hundred-pace marker, and Scaurus smiled tightly down at the oncoming mass of men and beasts.
‘So now the kings are looking at each other with that expression. We’ve all worn that face at some time or other, when something goes wrong without warning. After all, this isn’t what’s supposed to happen, is it? It’s not enough to put them off the idea that their victory’s predetermined, mind you …’
A third salvo of bolts hissed away from the Roman line, a little ragged this time as the faster crews loosed their bolts an instant before their comrades, and along the Parthian front more archers fell in bloody ruin or were thrown from their dying mounts.
‘After all, their losses are only a pinprick to an army of that size, and once those horsemen get into arrow range they’ll shower us with sharp iron in fine style. I doubt King Osroes is especially troubled at this point.’
He turned to Julius.
‘Archers, First Spear?’
The first spear nodded, raising his hand again.
‘Archers!’
From their places behind the legion’s line, two full cohorts of Hamians stepped back up the slope ten paces, gaining sufficient elevation to see the Parthian light cavalry trotting towards them. Some men rotated their right arms in readiness for the exertion to come without any conscious thought, already lost to the drilled routine that made them so deadly to an unprepared foe.
‘Archers … light targets!’
Each man reached his right hand back to the quiver of arrows waiting at his hip, using his thumb to find an arrow with a dimple drilled into the base of its shaft and delicately sliding it out of the press of its fellows. Some men kissed the missile’s broad crescent heads as they lifted them to their weapons, others muttered quiet prayers to their goddess, but the majority, eyes stonelike with concentration, simply nocked the arrow to their bows and waited for the next command.
‘At two hundred paces – draw!’
A thousand archers forced the perfectly trained strength of their upper bodies into their weapons, raising their arms until the arrows’ heads were pointing high into the air and then holding the position, waiting for the order to kill their enemies.
Julius waited in silence until the trotting horses passed the two-hundred-pace marker.
‘Loose!’
With a swishing sigh a thousand arrows flicked away from the Hamians’ bows, the archers’ previously slow, measured movements abruptly replaced by swift, merciless precision as they nocked their second arrows with hands that had been trained until the movements were simple muscle memory, mindless routine that they could repeat again and again until their quivers were empty.