The Parthians opened ranks. Their legendary bowmen stepped forward, the bows half drawn back, ready to raise and fire in an instant and drive those deadly feathered barbs into the hearts of their ancient enemies.
Avidius gave one quick command, and the legion formed the testudo, the maneuver named after the tortoise shell because the shields of the legionnaires were placed over their heads and to the front and sides, forming a strong shell surrounding their bearers.
As the legion formed the testudo, the Parthians let fly their arrows. Some found their way into the faces, throats, and stomachs of the Romans and their allies, but not enough. Having faced the Parthian bows before, Avidius had prepared for them and had issued hides of leather to cover the shields of the tortoise. These helped stop the amazing penetrating qualities of the Parthian bows. As the legions formed the shell, they opened their ranks for an instant and behind was Avidius's secret weapon. One hundred rapid-fire ballistae had been assembled in the night by his engineers. They had been carried with great secrecy on special mules and camels all the way from Antioch where they had been made in secrecy and in that manner transported to his forces just before they had moved out from Bostra and Damascus.
The ballistae looked a great deal like the Parthian bows as their crews winched back the horsehair windings that would let the heavy darts fly forth with enough force to go through two to three men at a time. The first volley left over five hundred Parthians dead in the dust, most of them the irreplaceable bowmen. Before the Parthians could respond to this surprise tactic, the light cavalry of the Arab contingent attacked their left flank with their own flight of arrows, followed by a smashing charge of the Roman heavy cavalry. This forced the flank of the Parthians back in on itself. Avidius, using what he called the swinging lever principle, applied his heaviest pressure to one flank and thus compressed it back, creating congestion and making it difficult for the Parthians to have any kind of cohesive control. Step by step the Romans forced the Parthians to a spot between the walls of Ctesiphon and the banks of the Tigris.
The special four-rank formation that Avidius had ordered now proved its value. A man on the line was good for only about fifteen minutes' constant fighting before he was exhausted. The four-rank formation anticipated that. As one rank became tired, the centurion in charge would watch carefully for the moment to signal the change of ranks. Like a magician's sleight of hand, when the trumpet blew the second rank would step forward and take the place in line, letting the men they relieved go to the rear to become the fourth rank. This way, each man had only fifteen minutes to fight out of each hour. The constant supply of fresh troops was too much for even the valorous Parthians, and the pressure began to show on them.
Casca was in the second rank when the fight began. He held himself back. Damn it, 1 am not going to get involved. I'll just do what I have to do to get by. I am not going to get emotional… But the ranks behind began beating on their shields in time with the drums, the flats of their blades resounding like a pulse beat as they hammered their way into Casca's brain. No! I am not going to do it… Even as he said No! his gladius came up as if with a mind of its own, and, like a child breaking down, Casca let loose a primal cry and began beating his shield harder and harder, wanting his turn at the wall of flesh facing him. Then the centurion in charge of his maniple gave the order, and, like a beast, Casca raced forth into the gap, his sword flashing in the morning light.
They fought and fought. The ground became slippery with the blood of thousands, and men died because they lost their footing and were trampled to death in the bloody clay mud. Many drowned, their mouths filled with blood that had collected in pools into which they had been unlucky enough to fall face first and had never been able to get up because the crazed men above them stood on their bodies trying to find a better footing.
And Casca cried.
Tears flowed down his face as he fought and killed, fought and killed, and killed again. His face struck terror into those who confronted this insane crying Roman. When his rank was signaled to step back, he refused. Unconscious of the order, he stayed in the front line, chopping and hacking. Time and again blows struck him, tearing holes in his armor, gouging chunks of meat from him. Then there came a burning in his left thigh. Looking down, he saw an arrow shaft sticking out of his leg. Roaring in rage-filled anguish and mental grief, he grabbed the shaft and pulled. The barbed head remained inside, but the gut bindings used to hold the bronze arrowhead to the shaft came loose under his tugging, and the shaft came out. A Parthian noble, gorgeous in bright Tyrian purple, threw himself bodily over the head of some of his countrymen to get at this mad Roman. Casca caught him as he came over, and with one hand he squeezed the life out of the noble while at the same time smashing the brains out of a wounded Parthian bowman with his shield. He regained his sword and hacked away.
The butchery continued through the day. Only chest-heaving exhaustion forced Casca to stop his personal slaughtering. He lay behind while the ranks of the Romans forced the Parthians back. Back against the river and the walls. Casca lay and sobbed, his mind whirling with images and patterns he could not understand. The battle was almost done. Raising himself, he stumbled over the battlefield, stepping heedlessly over the bodies of the dead and dying. Crying still, he screamed out loud, but no one paid any attention to him. Madness in one form or another was not unusual in battle.
'Is this all there is for me?' he cried to the unanswering heavens. 'Is this what I am condemned to repeat over and over, never ending? Is this what I really am, a beast fit only for butchering his own kind?'
But there was no answer from the sky, darkening now with a coming storm.
The last of the Parthians was dead or in chains.
The wailing of the women in the city was an eerie testimony to the devastation outside the walls. The noble Avidius Cassius had promised they would be spared and not sold into slavery if their men came out. At least they and their children would be spared that. But their men were dead.
The arrow in Casca's leg burned like the acid in his soul as he worked his way mindlessly across and away from the battlefield. He sobbed, and stumbled with tear-blinded eyes.
It was over.
For now, at least, it was over…
TWENTY-FIVE
Dark clouds raced low over the plains of Parthia. Streaks of lightning shot from them like shining lances spearing the raped earth beneath. The waters of the Tigris reflected rust-colored lights.
Blood, Casca thought. Death.
He climbed wearily to the top of a mound and sat upon a pile of once-sunbaked bricks, now lead gray in the stormlight, and looked across the plains. The roof of a house showed that the mound he sat on was covering a ruined building from the mists of antiquity. To the southeast lay ancient Babylon, abandoned, forsaken all these centuries, knowing the footsteps of only a few shepherds. Eternity… Casca looked at his hands. They were covered with blood that was turning black from exposure to the air and drying on his skin. The arrowhead in his thigh had settled in with a dull throbbing. He raised his grime-streaked face to the skies. The storm clouds were great cumulus stallions racing toward some unknown infinity. As they crowded together, the dark deepened. In the flickering light and shadows that preceded darkness he looked out upon a scene that could only have come from a tortured mind. Below on the plains were forty-five thousand men locked in an obscene caricature of humanity, holding each other in contorted positions of death. Broken spears and gear littered the earth as far as Casca could see. For what? He looked toward the cause, that great city.
Ctesiphon was no more. The flames of the burning city reached up with black, greasy fingers to the stormy sky. The screams of the inhabitants blended with the roar of the flames. Ctesiphon was being put to the sword and to the torch, her remaining people marched off into slavery-after the soldiers had first taken their pleasures, for is not rape the right of conquest? And what purpose do women serve other than that of servicing men? Those too old were put to the sword. The children were loaded into carts for the long journey to the slave markets of Syria where they would be auctioned off.
The Parthian commander, surrounded by his dead followers, lay on the field, his mouth filled with dirt. The noble had died in spasms, biting at his wounds and the earth like a mad dog. At this moment his favorite wife was opening her legs and letting a squad of legionnaires take their pleasure with her in the hope that she and her children would be spared. The king's sons had already been quickly put to the sword-even to the babes. The best way to stop a royal line from cropping up to give trouble later was to wipe it out completely- and the Romans were practical men.
