The Sassanids swept on, narrowing the distance. The ground shook under the beat of their hooves. Five hundred paces. Four hundred.
Slowly, slowly, the Roman infantry wheeled and marched into position. Successianus had the praetorians face about the way they had come. The front and back of the square were in line. At an agonizing pace, the flank units marched back to form the sides of the square. An unbroken line is everything when facing a cavalry charge.
The clibanarii were closing. Sunlight flashed off spear points. Three hundred paces. Two hundred.
The Roman light infantry was running in no order, flocking together into the potential safety of the centre of the sluggishly forming square. The legionaries on the flanks were coming together, shuffling this way and that, closing the gaps between units, locking shields together.
The square was made.
Sassanid light horse swooped along each flank. Arrows arced down, finding ready targets among the close- packed Romans.
Cledonius spoke to the emperor. 'Dominus, you should dismount. Let a squad of praetorians form a testudo around you.'
Valerian looked coldly at his ab Admissionibus. 'You give me bad advice, amicus. Would you have me believe that an emperor should hide while his men die for him?' For a moment, the silver-haired man looked like his old self. 'Together we will endure the storm.'
The Persian clibanarii had pulled up some fifty paces short. Those with bows, evidently a high proportion, were using them with a will. More – far more – arrows were tearing in from the flanks. At the rear, the Sassanid light horse were closing in on the baggage train, surrounding the Roman force, severing the way home. A confused roar of men and animals in extremis swelled.
Allfather, thought Ballista, the baggage train – Turpio! With mounting apprehension, the northerner scanned the chaos along the road. Where was he? Where was the bastard? There! A wedge of light-blue tunics. Some of the Dalmatian cavalry. At their head, a gold bracelet flashed as its owner wielded his sword. Left and right it flickered, as Turpio desperately tried to cut a way through to the infantry square. The cavalry was moving. But slowly, so very slowly.
An eddy of dark-haired easterners blocked the way. The momentum of the light-blue tunics decelerated even further. They came to a standstill. Sassanid horse swarmed around them. A Persian grabbed the arm with the bracelet. Turpio was being hauled from the saddle. It was all over.
There was the quick strike of a Dalmatian blade. The Persian fell. Turpio pulled himself upright. The golden bracelet rose and fell, rose and fell. The Romans were moving, initially barely, then gathering pace. They burst through the last enemy. They were clear, galloping flat out. In parade-ground fashion, the praetorians opened ranks. The Dalmatians thundered in. The praetorians closed the lane.
Turpio rode up to the imperial party. His helmet was gone. The front of his tunic was covered in blood. Grinning, he saluted. 'Dominus, I am afraid we seem to have lost our dinner.' Despite the arrows whipping past, most of the men around the emperor laughed.
'Dominus.' Quietus was not laughing. His face was grey with fear. 'Dominus, we must send a herald, arrange a truce. It is our only hope.'
'No!' Valerian thundered, his voice dispelling his years. 'I will hear no more talk of truces today.' Then, seeing who spoke to him, the heavy face softened. 'My boy, I know it is only the love that you, like your father, feel for me that makes you suggest it. It is not for today. Their blood is up. Today there is no choice. We must fight.'
The emperor looked at Ballista. 'How far to Edessa?'
'Twenty miles.'
Valerian glanced at the sun. 'Several hours of daylight.' He turned back to Ballista. 'Is there water ahead?'
'A stream, four or five miles ahead.'
Valerian nodded. 'We will march in square. We should reach the stream long before dark, but we will camp there under arms for the night. Gods willing, the Sassanids will withdraw for the hours of darkness. At first light, we will march on. The easterners will be waiting. But if we hold our positions, keep our disciplina, hold fast to our virtus, and if the gods favour us, we will win through to Edessa.' He looked at the Praetorian Prefect. 'Make the orders.'
Successianus issued instructions and messengers hared off to all corners of the square. The Comites Augusti, with a subtlety intended to preserve the emperor's virtus, closed ranks around Valerian, placing their shields and bodies between the Persian arrows and the old man's body.
Quietus wormed his way between Ballista and Valerian. The young man leaned over, his face close. The smell of fear was rank on his breath. He hissed with venom, 'You barbarian shit, your usefulness is at an end.' The march to Edessa was hard. Many died. Many were wounded. But it fell out as Valerian had predicted. At dusk, at the stream, the Persians melted away. The Romans passed a hungry, sleepless night in formation. At least they had water and, crucially, they still had disciplina. At dawn they marched, and the Sassanids were on them, circling like fighting dogs, mastiffs with their hackles up, snapping at their heels, feinting charge after charge, and ever the whisp, whisp, whisp of the incoming arrows, ever the screams of pain.
Fifteen long, agonizing miles, and the Roman field army of the east reached the white-walled city of Edessa. They found that the north gate, the Gate of Hours, had already been unblocked to admit the Roman cavalry. Inside, they located Pomponius Bassus and Maeonius Astyanax with their troopers.
They had made it. They had not left a wounded man behind. But, as Turpio whispered to Ballista as they rode in, they had marched and fought and died for two days to be trapped in a besieged city.
XXVIII
On 17 May in the consulships of Saecularis and Donatus, each for the second time, the one thousand and twelfth year since the founding of Rome, eight days after the arrival of the bloodied imperial eastern field army, the inhabitants of Edessa, despite the siege, were intent on celebrating the Maiuma.
Moralists of all persuasions – Roman, Christian and other – were as one in their condemnation of the Maiuma, the festival of lights, if in nothing else. For all their impassioned oratory, for all their long beards and evident earnestness, they were fighting a losing battle. Unless there was to be a seismic shift in morality – say something insane like a Christian becoming emperor – the spring festival would continue. It was everywhere in the east. Under one name or another, it was celebrated by most cities between Byzantium and the Tigris. It was hard to pin down. Many in Edessa thought it in honour of the deities manifest as the evening and morning stars, but others held the honorand to be Sin, the moon god, or Atargatis, the Syrian goddess, or none other than the lord of the heavens himself, mighty Ba'alshamin. The greatest stumbling block to the moralists was that the Maiuma, just like the Saturnalia, was a lot of fun.
In the afternoon, the gates and streets of Edessa were adorned with cloths of many colours, and lamps and candles were suspended from cords from the porticoes and trees. When the evening star came out, it was joined by the citizens, dressed in white linen. The men had turbans on their heads, the women tall headdresses from which hung silk veils. To the horror of those with stern morals, there was not a belt to be seen. Both sexes walked out with their garments loose or, as a moralist might put it, with their loins ungirt.
A flower in one hand, a candle in the other, the men and women processed down to the river. Soon the banks of the Scirtos were lined with thousands of tiny lights, from the west where it flowed into the city near the Gate of Arches, to the eastern Water Gates by which it left. Incense was offered to the 'Leaping River'. The flowers were cast on to the glittering, azure waters. Then men and women alike walked the streets of the city; singing, shouting, eating, drinking. Everywhere, there was music and dance. Everywhere, kohl-lined eyes flashed above silk. In the soft spring night, assignations were made. The Maiuma really was a lot of fun.
This year, Ballista thought, there was an additional reason for the citizens of Edessa to celebrate. It was common knowledge that the imperial field army was leaving. It was a terrible irony that, after two hellish days of fighting on the march to get there, Valerian's men had not been hailed as saviours but received as a considerable nuisance.
The siege had not been lying heavily on Edessa. The walls were sound. The garrison was big enough, both
