‘Too late, I’m afraid. Far too late.’
The Roman cavalry bored in from either side of the legion’s line, riders bent over their mount’s necks to encourage them to their greatest speed as they raced across the hillside in pursuit of their shattered enemy. At their head the legatus could see Felix, his spear held high as he closed on the first of the fleeing cataphracts, Hades seeming to float across the ground such was the speed of his gallop. With a swift adjustment in his saddle, the young prefect lowered his weapon, leaning gracefully out of his saddle to thrust the long blade deep into the unarmoured anus of his target’s mount. The horse went down in a flurry of limbs, throwing its rider heavily to the ground as Felix ripped the bloodied spear free and went after his next victim, while a man on his flank reined his horse in and jumped nimbly from the saddle, drawing his sword and standing over the fallen horseman.
Julius shook his head in horrified amazement.
‘Is that usual?’
Scaurus shook his head.
‘Hardly. But when your enemy has a weakness it’s wise to exploit it, I feel. If we allow that many armoured cavalry to escape they’ll soon enough regain their wits and come at us again. And all of those surprises we’ve sprung on them today won’t catch them off guard the next time. Let’s hope that our men remember that each of the enemy knights they take alive is worth his weight in gold.’
As the cataphractoi retreat quickened to a rout, a single man defied the tide of horseflesh washing back from the Roman line, stepping off his horse and striding forward to the place where his king lay stunned, drawing a long sword with his right hand even as he batted away an axe blade with the mace held in his left. Pivoting to kill the Tungrian behind the blade so quickly that the long sword was free in a shower of blood before his victim’s lifeless body could slump into the gore-foamed mud beneath him, he planted his feet firmly over his ruler, snarling defiance at the Romans before him, ready to die in Osroes’ defence.
‘Hold!’
Marcus stepped forward, his gladius ready to fight but with the empty hand that had held his spatha half raised and covered in the blood running from his wound, the palm wide open. He bellowed at the warrior in Greek.
‘Hold! Surrender and the king will live! Look around you!’
The cataphractoi were in full-scale retreat now, harried down the hillside by Phrygian cavalrymen who were taking a savage advantage of their unexpected vulnerability when attacked from the rear.
‘You’re alone! Throw down your sword, and live to protect your king in captivity!’
The nobleman looked about him again, seeing the spears levelled at him from all sides, then stared back at the tribune before him, clearly reckoning the odds. Marcus shook his head and sheathed his gladius, stepping forward with his right hand dripping blood from the wound to his arm. Face-to-face with the man, close enough to see the hatred in his eyes, he shrugged.
‘You can kill me now. But you’ll die here beside me, and what will become of your king without you to stand over him?’
The eyes held his own for a long moment before the helmeted head shook in brusque disgust. Sheathing his weapons, the warrior raised his arms and waited in silence for the inevitable. An axe man stepped in behind him, kicking hard at the back of the armoured giant’s knee to drop him beside his king. Marcus nodded down at him, reaching down to pick up the king’s mace and bellowing a challenge at the soldiers around him.
‘Alive! The man that harms him pays the price with me!’
Narsai reached the safety of the Parthian infantry waiting at the slope’s base with the dozen men who remained of his bodyguard trotting on either side.
‘Gundsalar!’
The general hurried forward, looking to either side of the king with an expression of hope, but his only answer was a brusque head shake as Narsai pulled the helmet from his head.
‘Osroes is fallen. Dead or captured, it makes little difference. Those honourless scum fought us from behind a wall of wood and iron!’
The older man looked up the hill with a calculating expression.
‘We have suffered grievously, Your Highness …’
He looked at Narsai for guidance, but the king’s gaze was locked on the ground.
‘Your orders, Highness? In the absence of my king, your word is the army’s command.’
The black-armoured monarch looked up.
‘So it is …’
He sat straighter in his saddle, looking across the ranks of infantry waiting in silence, their faces set hard at the sight of so many dead men and horses scattered down the hill’s bloody slope.
‘Send our foot to dislodge them from their roost, Gundsalar.’
The general bowed.
‘As you wish, Highness.’
He turned away, issuing a volley of orders to the waiting officers, and Narsai turned in his saddle to look back up at the Roman line with a calculating expression.
Scaurus walked across to the line of wooden stakes, shaking his head at the scene of devastation. The corpses of over a hundred magnificent horses were strewn in bloodied heaps across the churned, gore-covered ground, scores more studding the slope where the survivors had been harried back down the hill by Felix’s cavalrymen. They were told to take prisoners.
‘It worked. There was a part of me that wondered whether the histories were just so much nonsense made up to make the old generals look good, but it actually worked …’
He shook his head in bemused regret.
‘If only we hadn’t been forced to kill so many of these magnificent creatures.’
Julius shrugged.
‘I would have been happy to have had a choice in the matter. I’ve given orders for them to be butchered. We’ve little enough food, if those bastards decide to keep us penned up here.’
Scaurus winced at the prospect, but gave no sign of countermanding his senior centurion’s orders.
‘As you decide, First Spear. But I doubt there’s much risk of the Parthians trying to stop us leaving.’
He fell silent, and Julius looked up to find him staring down the hill.
‘Well now …’
The Parthian infantry was marching forward, marshalling to attack at the slope’s foot, densely packed formations of spear men forming a fighting front barely half the width of the defenders’ line. Julius stared down at them for a moment before voicing an opinion.
‘Really? Are they mad?’
Scaurus shrugged.
‘Probably not, but they seem brave enough to follow the orders some fool has given them.’
The two men watched the infantry’s slow advance for a moment before Julius turned away, gesturing to his trumpeter.
‘Sound the Stand To!’
Marcus had stood a close guard over the Parthian king as half a dozen Tungrians lifted the supine figure onto their shoulders and carried him with appropriate dignity to a spot high on the hill above the line of bolt throwers. The nobleman who had dismounted to protect Osroes had insisted on accompanying his ruler, surrendering his sword to Marcus with a flourish, holding the ornately decorated hilt out to the Roman while the Tungrians around him waited with their own blades ready to strike.
‘This is the finest weapon in the whole of my gund …’ He’d searched for the right Greek word for a moment. ‘The word means speira.’
‘Cohort?’
‘Close enough. It has been edged with steel from the far south, and will cut cleanly through a silken scarf that is dropped upon the blade. A single blow will cleave an armoured man from his collarbone to his balls, if wielded by an expert.’
Marcus lifted the scabbard with a questioning expression.
‘May I?’
The other man nodded, and the sword floated from the leather and gold sheath, perfectly balanced and as light as air.