was consumed with a familiar hatred, and it was not hatred for the Parthian warrior he stalked. This was not his fight and the Romans were not his people. But he had pledged his life to Valerius and Valerius was the closest thing to a friend he had. So he would kill. He would kill with regret, but the Parthian was already in his grave.
He made swift progress along the shallow depression and he neither saw nor heard the guards as he passed the pale light among the rocks. A minute later he smelled the horses.
A mile away to the north, Valerius willed himself to stay calm. Every minute was precious. Every minute they wasted here was another minute when the men of Corbulo’s army must suffer the agony of the Parthian arrows. It would take time to get the column in motion again. Time to negotiate the gully that would bring them to the river. And time to form up his men for the attack. Too much time. All around him men and horses waited impatiently for the order to move.
A gentle whisper reached Serpentius as he lay face down in the rough grass ten paces from the tethered Parthian mounts. The count of two hundred had long come and gone, but he could not afford to hurry. He would have the chance for one strike and one only. The knife or the axe? The knife: quicker, cleaner and surer. The unwary Parthian sentry was talking quietly to his horses as they snickered nervously in their halters. They were upwind, if the gentle movement of the air could be called a wind, of the Roman column, but some instinct had alerted them to the presence of others of their kind. Their nervousness should have alerted the guard, but Serpentius guessed there would have been many such false alarms in hills roamed by the lion, the leopard and the wolf. If anything, it increased his chances of success. Even if the animals became aware of him, the sentry was unlikely to react swiftly enough.
Drawing his long knife, he crawled through the grass until he was on the edge of the group of horses: small, light-limbed beasts favoured by the Parthian archers. He raised his hand so the closest would catch his scent and the animal snickered gently, wary, but not frightened of this new human presence. Shielded by the herd, Serpentius rose smoothly to his feet and reassessed his situation. The Parthian had stopped whispering and it was impossible to see because the cliff above shielded the moon, but Serpentius searched the darkness until he found what he was looking for. Not a man shape, just something that might have been a rock, but wasn’t. When the rock moved, he was certain.
No man could approach an armed warrior in the dark without feeling fear, but Serpentius had long since learned how to channel his fear and turn it into ice cold, iron hard resolution. Another man would have rushed the sentry, depending on the element of surprise, but all it would take was the glint of the knife or the sound of footsteps to turn surprise into disaster. Instead, Serpentius dropped to his stomach again and slid through the jungle of moving legs and fresh horseshit until he was within touching distance of his target. Still shielded by the shifting horses, he waited for his moment.
The sentry was little more than a boy, unblooded and on his first campaign, and he was angry that he had to spend another night with the horses. Part of his mind was on the older men who had laughed at him when he had warned against lighting the fire. The other chewed on the battle he was missing and the brothers who were gaining all the glory. The last thing he saw was a slim shadow that stepped from among the horses. The last thing he felt was the sting of the knife that sliced across his throat severing tendon and windpipe to leave him drowning in his own blood. But he managed to cry out, and that one cry was enough. The second guard had been sitting to his left and now he launched himself, not at Serpentius, but at the nearest horse, loosing the knot that held it as he went. He was in the saddle and moving before Serpentius could stop him. The Spaniard reached for the axe at his belt…
Valerius waited impatiently as Caladus led the patrol back. He had to be certain before he made his next move. One by one the Thracians came to him and laid a round object at his feet. He counted the bearded, snarling heads until he reached twenty-three.
‘Your Numidian said twenty-four.’
Caladus shrugged. ‘The Spaniard never came back.’
‘We don’t have time for this…’
He was interrupted as a silent figure stepped from the dark. Serpentius dropped the two heads he carried with the others.
‘Twenty-five.’ He turned to Caladus. ‘I would have word with the Numidian.’
The Thracian laughed. ‘You could count yourself fortunate, indeed, for then you would be in Elysium. He was always too cocky for his own good. You can never underestimate a Parthian.’
Three men dead, an hour lost. But the way was clear.
The sun was well up when they reached the river and Valerius despaired of discovery by some wandering patrol or foraging party. Corbulo had said time was his enemy’s enemy, but now it was Valerius’s. He had promised the general he would be in position at dawn on the second day. Instead, his ten thousand cavalry were still straggling across two miles of path and he didn’t dare move out on to the narrow strip of floodplain that separated the mountains from the river until he was ready.
Petronius explained their position. ‘Yonder you see the river.’ He pointed to a deep gorge half a mile distant. ‘It is only crossable at one place in this area, and that is at Cepha a mile upstream. From Cepha it is another four miles to the gap. Vologases will undoubtedly have left a guard on the crossing place, but beyond it all that will be between you and his army is the baggage train. The plain below us is hidden from the bridge by rising ground, but it is possible we will be seen forming up from the far bank, so there is no time to lose.’
‘Pass the word to put on the tunics.’
Every man had carried a rolled-up bundle behind his saddle as well as his weapons and rations. Now they unwrapped them to reveal the Armenian tunics Corbulo had ordered his quartermaster to requisition on the long march from Zeugma. Short and woven of light cloth, they had intricately embroidered facings of gold and blue and red, similar to those of the Parthians. The tunics were loose enough to be worn over mail and Valerius gambled that any observer who saw them from a distance would be lulled into thinking it was one of his own formations.
‘It may seem unnecessary, even foolish,’ Corbulo had told him. ‘You may not convince them, but even if you confuse them for only a second, that could be the second that makes the difference between victory and defeat.’
A courier forced his way past the riders behind Valerius and announced that the rearguard was ready.
With his heart pounding, Valerius gave the order to advance out on to the plain. After the long hours in the mountains it felt very open and vulnerable. There was no turning back now. In truth, for all his doubts and fears on the long night march there had never been any turning back. Corbulo had chosen his man well. They had outflanked the Parthians.
Yet the mountain crossing had merely been the first hurdle. Now he must attack Vologases’ army of seventy thousand men with barely a tenth that number. His cavalry troopers were exhausted and hungry. There was no hope of support if the attack faltered and no place to retreat if the Parthians prevailed. If he failed, every man here would die, along with the thousands of Romans fighting for their lives a bare five miles away.
They were late to the fight, but they were here. The only thing in their favour was surprise, but as the cavalry wings began to form up behind him, with Hanno and his Third Thracians in the centre, Valerius felt the first rising of that glorious sense of invulnerability that preceded battle and he sent a silent prayer to Fortuna, the goddess of good fortune.
‘At the walk… advance.’
XLI
Tiberius knew this was his day to die.
In the first light of dawn he had snatched a mouthful of bread from his pouch and a hurried drink from one of the carriers who traversed the depleted Roman line with a dozen skins of brackish water hanging from his shoulder. It was clear he would not complete his mission now, but that did not matter. He had done his duty. Even his father would be proud.
The initial Parthian sorties had come not long after daylight and the hail of arrows rattling against the curved Roman shields had resumed. That had been two hours ago, and already the man on his right had changed twice. First the fool who replaced the legionary with the wounded foot inched his shield to the side to take a look at the
