Instantly, they moved into that steady-paced jog that they practised day in and day out. Tiberius drew his sword, but his men’s remained in their scabbards. Each of them carried a single pilum in his right hand.
A rush through the air above them heralded a new volley of boulders and arrows that tore gaps in the Parthian line ahead. At the same time, a great crash shook the earth and a terrible screaming to the front left announced the arrival of the latest missile from the catapults.
A hundred paces away the Parthian infantry waited in a great bustling crowd, uncertain which was the greatest danger they faced. Some looked fearfully to the skies, wondering when the next terrible bombardment would arrive. Their stomachs tightened at the thought of the missiles which were now relentlessly flailing their line, gutting, dismembering and smashing. Yet the most ominous sight was the implacable line of brightly painted shields that now rushed towards them. An hour earlier they had sat comfortably at the centre of a great army, listening to the clash of arms, awaiting victory and grumbling about being so far from home. Now they were in the front line and death was on every side.
Fifty paces. ‘Ready.’ A legionary learned to throw the pilum at the run almost as soon as he learned to march. A running man could throw further than a stationary one. The staggered ranks of cohorts and centuries stretched the width of the valley and each centurion would choose his moment to order the cast, when the enemy was close enough for the javelins to cause maximum casualties and far enough away to allow his men time to draw their swords before the two lines met.
Forty. Tiberius glanced nervously to his left, searching for the threat of a flanking movement by the now underemployed Parthian archers. Even if they had no arrows they still had their swords, and a legion was never more threatened than when it was attacked from the flank while forming up for an assault. But there would be no flank attack, because the front line of Parthian infantry jammed the valley from cliff to cliff and blocked off any opportunity for the cavalry to advance.
Thirty. ‘Throw!’ A hail of javelins slanted out from the Roman line and fresh screams rang out across the battlefield as the lethal iron spikes found throat and face and chest. The order was followed by the musical hiss of a thousand swords being drawn, and the sequence was repeated again and again by the ranks behind. Tiberius watched the pila arc through the warm air and plunge into the massed ranks ahead of him. He heard himself growling like a dog and his ears told him the sound was being repeated all along the line. Ahead, howls and screams, white terrified eyes; a feral combination of fear, determination and hate. A wall of spears, but spears that shook in their owners’ hands. His eyes focused on a group of five or six bearded men, but as he closed with the Parthian line every ounce of his concentration was bent on keeping his shield locked with the man on his right, just as the man on his left did with him. A man’s instinct was to either surge ahead and be a hero or hang back and survive, but in a Roman charge neither was possible, only discipline. Hold the line. Stay in rank. Shield to shield. Swords ready.
A glistening spear point clattered against the rim of his helmet, but he kept his head down and it glanced off and he knew he had won. The big wooden shield with its solid iron boss smashed into something yielding. At first he was surprised at the gentleness of the contact. Shield line meeting shield line meant a crash like thunder, a rippling and grinding of unstoppable force meeting unstoppable force. But the poorly armed Parthian foot soldiers, deserted by their cavalry, had no scutum. He punched the shield forward and heard a grunt of agony from beyond.
‘Now!’
At the command, every legionary angled his big scutum to his left, creating a narrow gap between his shield and his neighbour’s, and rammed his gladius into the gap. Tiberius felt the familiar thrill as the sword’s point pierced first cloth, then flesh, the muscle sucking on the blade as it dared to violate deeper and deeper into the body. He heard a man scream, but his mind was already on the withdrawal: the pull, the simultaneous twist of the wrist, the grip on the blade weakening and the stink of blood and torn bowels. He slammed the shield forward again, the rhythm of the battlefield taking over his mind.
‘Now!’
The Parthians smelled of blood and death and sweat and fear and strange spices he had never encountered before. From somewhere, a shower of arrows hailed down on the rear ranks of the Roman attack. It was not only the Parthians who were dying.
‘Now!’
A felled enemy clawed at his legs, but the legionary behind hacked at the clutching hand and it fell free with the fingers still twitching. For the first time Tiberius wondered about Valerius on his fine horse. Was he alive or dead? Perhaps they would cut their way through to each other and meet on the threshold of Vologases’ pavilion.
‘Now!’
His sandal slipped on something slimy and he glanced down. Below his feet was a red smear and a shattered skull with half a face and he remembered the pink haze as the great boulder from the catapult made its first impact. A certain cadence in the screaming told him that the boulders and the rocks and the great barbed arrows were still doing their work among the ranks ahead, but otherwise his whole being was concentrated on the weight behind the shield, the thrust of his arm and the threat from above and below.
‘Now!’
With every word of command, each man in the Roman line took a step forward as he pushed with his shield. And with every step the men in front of them howled and died. A Roman legion was a killing machine and this was the killing machine at its most efficient, against the unarmoured and the unled; warriors who individually might be champions but in the claustrophobic crush beyond the shields were reduced to mere cattle to be slaughtered. A tortured, bearded face appeared below Tiberius’s shield and he smashed his iron-shod caliga down on it, smashing the teeth, turning the nose to pulp and crossing the eyes. Yet the force beyond the shield was becoming stronger, each step more difficult to take, even with the weight of the men behind him. Tiberius guessed that somewhere beyond the Parthian infantry cavalry were being used to stiffen the line, the weight of the horses and the threat of death if a man took another step back bolstering the resistance of men who did not want to fight. If that continued, the Roman line would stall, and logic and experience said that eventually, when strength failed, a stalled line became a retreating line and then men died, in their hundreds and their thousands. Corbulo’s face came into his head, the features drooping with exhaustion, but the eyes hard and unyielding. The face created conflicting emotions inside him. He had come to the east with a very definite opinion of this man and a single-minded determination to do what needed to be done, yet proximity to greatness had eroded his certainty until he was confused and disorientated. He knew that somehow he must rediscover that certainty if he was to do what he had to do. The thought gave him a new surge of energy and he thrust forward and killed another man. How many? It did not matter, because Corbulo could not fail.
And suddenly it happened.
A drum beat a frantic rhythm. The weight behind the shield faded away. A horn sounded a familiar but unlikely call and the Roman line stopped, dazed and uncertain whether to hold their line or to charge after an enemy who had retreated a dozen steps and thrown down their spears.
An armoured warlord in a green cloak urged his horse through the centre of the gaping Parthians holding a green branch high.
Corbulo had won.
XLIV
From his position by the largest of the three grave mounds raised over the Parthian dead, Valerius marvelled again at the size of the force Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo had defeated. They were the last stragglers of Vologases’ great army, but they streamed past in their thousands and tens of thousands, spears on their shoulders, heads down and shoulders drooping, sharing the King of Kings’ ignominy. Ignominy, but not humiliation.
Corbulo had been insistent, on pain of death, that the contents of Vologases’ personal baggage train, his wardrobe, his library, his vast treasures of gold, silver and precious stones and his travelling harem of two hundred concubines, must be left untouched.
While the stink of death still hung heavy over the battlefield, the King of Kings had sat upon his lion throne of
