The second attempt at composure was successful. Melyaket removed his headdress and ran his fingers through his hair. He wiped his eyes and steadied his breathing. We sat a moment doing no more than watching the elegant passage of commerce on the street beyond the colonnade. “How have you done it, Alexandros? So many years. What hatred you must have felt for him. I can’t even imagine. I don’t feel it there now. Frustration, yes, and sometimes anger, too. But no matter how many thousands he brings across the Euphrates, I know that Marcus Crassus is at heart a good man.”
“How can you possibly know that? You are too young to know anything.”
“You must learn to stop talking about the difference in our ages. Even your own philosophers know that it is not how long you look but what you see that discovers truth, and despite my youth, I have seen much. No, don’t bother to ask, just trust a stranger a little while longer.
“Let me tell what I know. I know when politics drew their real father away for days, sometimes months at a time, little Marcus and Publius turned to you and never found you lacking. I know that before you departed, Crassus hadn’t a clue what amounts resided in all his treasuries, because he trusted you to guard each balance down to the last sestercius. I know that the arrival of Lucius Curio stung like the crack of the lorum.”
“Who is telling you these things? Is dominus revealing such intimacies to you?”
“I am a spy, am I not? Let me share one last discovery. I know you are practicing a woman’s handwriting.”
“That was nothing,” I said offhandedly, glancing at the tablets.
“More than this, I know that when Chanina, one of the servant girls who cleans the Regia, takes the refuse to be burned, she sometimes finds crumpled letters; once in a while, after she has been through your quarters, she will discover two notes almost identical in every detail. A letter, copied, then the original and the copy, both discarded, neither sent. Most unusual.”
“I know her. A sweet child. Why would I not have her arrested the minute I return?
“Why not arrest me? Sympathy? Empathy? Caution, perhaps?”
“Melyaket, what game are you playing at?”
“I could ask the same of you,” he said, nodding toward the folded tablets in my lap.
“None that is of your concern.” I slid the wooden frames back inside my satchel. “Tell me how you come to know these things.”
“By looking in your eyes. I see a man who is far from home, a man more worried for the safety of those dear to him than for his own fate.”
“What sane man would not want to protect those he loves?”
Melyaket laughed. “Many men. Men like Orodes and many who follow Crassus. Men who are not like us.”
“Not Crassus himself?”
“Marcus Crassus is beset by demons.”
That this man, hardly more than a boy, should pluck such private truths about my master and me seemingly from the air suddenly made me angry. “I know who I am,” I said, “and what I am doing here; but you, I see no reason to trust a man who betrays first his own people and then the enemy who subverts him.”
“I would never betray my people,” he said, his sensibilities pricked. “You think those schemers in Seleucia and Ctesiphon are my people? Parthia is even less an empire than the one your Roman masters have stitched together with their swords and politics. The 200 families who live on a mountainside village out there at the desert’s edge are my people,” he said, pointing east. “They know nothing of Parthia. Yet this war will come even to them.
“Now, Alexandros, do this. Take one insignificant Sinjar and sprinkle ten thousand of these about the wastes and valleys of a land so vast it rivals whatever part of the world Rome lays claim to. That is Parthia—a kingdom of cook fires separated by hundreds of miles of nothing.”
“Then Parthia is doomed. You have seen the army of Crassus.”
“It is unstoppable, invincible.”
“Is that what you tell your king?”
“No, as a matter of fact, that is what I tell a man called Salar. Yes, Alexandros, I am a spy. You will not believe me, and that is acceptable, but in spite of that truth, here is another: I am not here for Orodes, or Crassus, or any man. I am here for almost the same reason as you.”
“I am here because I am a slave and I have no choice but to be where my master drags me.”
“You are here to try to prevent this war.”
“You have an odd notion of the power granted to slaves. Tell me, spy, if what you say were true, how do our reasons differ?”
“You want to stop the war. I know it is too late for that. Crassus is here. He is not going home. But the sooner he is gone the better.”
“Then why not assassinate him?” I asked him, testing. I felt the sheath of my knife pressing against my hip.
“Because I’m not a fool. Rome is an eagle with many heads. And I like this old bird.”
I relaxed. “So you spy on us while deceiving my master.”
“I will hurt neither of you. I swear it. As for my other duties, what is it that Cassius Longinus thinks I can tell the men in Hatra? They know your numbers; they know your intentions. I have been watching you, Alexandros, even before your master invented his little deception. And what I have seen is a good man, a decent man in a hard circumstance. My surprise came when I beheld yet another. I saw Marcus Crassus through your eyes, Alexandros; the way you care for him, chide him, protect him. A man with reason to hate does not do this. I have seen how he is with you as well. He respects you, seeks your opinion, even your companionship. You should hear how he speaks of you. There is a bond there beyond master and servant.” He pointed at me, a kind accuser. “You have made a place for him in your heart, and a man like you could not do that for anyone who did not deserve such an honor.”
“You are impudent,” I said, but my voice cracked.
“How it must hurt to see him falter. He is a great man, but I can see that once he was greater still. A man such as this deserves an old age with dignity and honor, a graceful decline with grandchildren and great-grandchildren at his feet. Let us find a way to help him rediscover what it is he does not realize he has lost.”
“What do you want?”
“Me? I want to go home to my people, to my village. But for the time being, fate has brought the two of us together, here, now. It is up to us what we do next. I must gain your trust, I know that. Here is a coin that may buy it: you are right not to trust King Abgarus. Osrhoene fears everyone—Armenia to the north, Rome to the west, Parthia to the south and east. Abgarus will bend toward whoever he thinks has advantage, and whoever blinds his eye with the brightest glint of gold. Did you see how richly he was dressed and how his horse was caparisoned? Gifts from Orodes. Crassus trusts you. He will be more likely to believe that I am here for your cause if he hears it from you, not me.”
“You are here for our cause?”
“You asked what I want, Alexandros. I want the one thing that will cost the least amount of lives in the days ahead. Your army is invincible. I want it far from Sinjar. I want to help your master win this war.”
•••
After more weeks of drilling and marching and training, at the start of Aprilis, Crassus assembled the army. He explained to his legates and centurions that the main settlements most likely to welcome our advance were not to be found along the main river but were spread along the length of a gentler tributary several days’ march east. Our mission was to garrison these towns, destroy any resistance met along the way and create a base of operations from which we could learn more about the land and the people. Cassius asked once again why not fight on to the capital. Dominus agreed with his quaestor that it could easily be done—so feeble was the resistance he expected to encounter, it would take only a matter of weeks before the war was over and the spoils were oppressing the ox carts. But he had made a promise he would not break. “I will not enter Ctesiphon,” he told his commanders, “without my son at my side. And Publius will not reach Antioch be
fore November.”
Octavius, never one to foment conflict, cleared his throat. “General, your oath is sacrosanct, but once we cross the Euphrates, Orodes will see this as an act of invasion, and if he hasn’t already, he surely will begin preparing his defenses. If we let this fighting season go by while we wait for your son to arrive, the Parthians will have a whole year to prepare to meet us on the field.”
Petronius scratched his beard, an eyebrow raising like a gull’s wing over his blue eye. “Could we not take Seleucia, Ctesiphon’s sister city across the Tigris, saving the actual surrender of Orodes for the arrival of Publius?”
“That would work,” Crassus laughed, “but my son made it clear that he actually wished to participate in the battle. And you must remember, gentlemen, Publius brings with him 1,000 Gallic horse; having seen them at close quarters I can tell you they will outweigh by far anything Orodes can cobble together by the time we cross the Euphrates when we head east for the second time next spring. Is that not right, Alexander?”
“Gentlemen, the day I witnessed their arrival in Rome, I promise you many a subligaculum required an extra washing.”
“Not yours, though, right Alexander,” said Vargunteius with a heaping of sarcasm.
“Vargunteius, you know I never wear them. I thought we agreed that would remain our little secret.”
As we were leaving the command tent, the legate who’d bitten off more than he could chew gripped me around the shoulder, knocked heads with me and said, “Nicely played, ya’ bastard.”
Marching northwest from the city, eight days later we arrived at Zeugma, a lovely little trading town where the wide, teal waters of the Euphrates, so broad and still that it seemed more meandering lake than river, were pinched narrow enough for a crossing. King Abgarus of Osrhoene had accompanied us with his escort of 300 cavalrymen. Like our own complement of 3,000 outriders, they ranged up and down our lines, providing scouting and flanking support. I saw little of the bejeweled, turbaned monarch with his twin waxed swords of hair quivering above his lip as he rode; he tended to stay toward the rear of the column. Crassus dismissed my repeated misgivings about Abgarus as irrelevant; he agreed the man was duplicitous, but as impotent as our enemy.
In Zeugma, Crassus shored up the existing bridge that had stood since Alexandros’ himself had crossed the ancient river on his travels East. Now it must withstand the passage of the greatest army that land had seen since those days. We marched east for three days across green valleys and fertile farmland until we came to the Balissos, a tributary of the great waterway. There, the garrison town of Carrhae welcomed us. There also, the King of Osrhoene begged permission to return to his capital. Ourha was only two days’ ride north, and Abgarus had pressing business at home, so he said. Crassus thanked the king over and over for his loyalty and assured him that his continued fealty would be well-rewarded.
To the north, the land sloped upwards into the mountains of Armenia. Here, then, at Carrhae, we stood at the border between those northern states allied with Roman and the great Parthian Empire. We turned south along the Balissos and began the war that for Crassus would begin and end not far from the very spot where he sat astride Eurysaces.
Chapter XXXII
54 BCE - Summer, Mesopotamia
Year of the consulship of
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher
It was Quintilis and we had received no communication from Tertulla since crossing the Euphrates.
•••
They threw the bodies over the city walls. One hundred legionaries from the first century of the first cohort of Legion V, executed in the style favored by the ancient Greeks: shot to death by a volley from Scythian archers. Except for the fact that the arrows were Parthian, it was an accurate reenactment. The town’s headman, Apollonius, was fond of irony.
•••
Having sent word to the Romans that he, too wished to rebel against the onerous Parthian yoke, but that his beloved city of Zenodotium had too few citizens to man the siege walls, Apollonius laid what he thought was a clever trap. Disappointed that the invaders had sent so few, he opened the gates and took what he could get. He had performed this seemingly insane act of defiance because he had assurances from the envoy of King Orodes that the royal armies would within hours be sweeping up from the south to repel these insolent Romans. In retrospect, Apollonius must have marveled at the speed with which the emissary and his party had galloped down the river road back to the capital. It was an irony he might have appreciated, were he not at the heart of it. No help was forthcoming.
A month earlier, Silaces, satrap of northwestern Parthia, his arm bandaged, his pride eviscerated, his future uncertain, kneeled before Orodes in his court. Silaces had been the first Parthian commander to engage the Romans when Crassus crossed at Zeugma, and his resistance had been demolished. But Orodes was magnanimous in his forgiveness. He asked many questions about the invaders, complimented Silaces on his survival, and wondered how he might devise his own.
The Parthian king needed to take the measure of this man Crassus. And then he thought of that strutting little tyrant Apollonius. Let us see, he thought, if with this Roman, we are dealing with reason or ruthlessness. And in the meantime, Orodes gave orders for the nobles to gather their men at arms and prepare for war. To the cavalry stationed at Hatra, more than halfway between the palace and the invaders, he gave orders to remain close by that formidable citadel, and to redouble its recruiting efforts.
Crassus, having reassembled his legions after the brief engagement with Silaces, was systematically marching south down the Balissos, installing cohort after cohort in all the major Parthian towns: Dabana, Ichnae, Callinieum, Nicephorium. When news of the betrayal reached him, he unleashed Legions IV, V and VI to swarm over Zenodotium like hornets from an overturned nest.
Melyaket and I arrived with the general to find the retribution well underway. Dominus had been polite but unimpressed with the Parthian’s offer of assistance, reminding the young man that treachery was a spy’s stock in trade. His trust would have to be earned with more ‘proof’ than what Crassus himself had already surmised, that King Abgarus was an unknown quantity. In the meantime, the general instead invited Melyaket to learn how discipline, training and technique made a Roman army indomitable, giving him free passage to roam among us as he pleased, with equal freedom to come and go so that he could convince his masters of the futility of anything but a negotiated surrender. Even Cassius had to admit that when it came to Rome’s legions, an informed adversary was a pliant adversary.
The first spectacle to insist on our unwilling attention was the sight of our men hauling the executed Romans to a growing pyre where they were being stacked with military precision. Several soldiers were stripping the armor off the dead, leaving them barefoot, but decent in their tunics. Their weapons, possessions, tags and any medals were carefully inventoried and carted off by Cassius’ people. Other legionaries were coming out of Zenodotium carrying ladders, for while each and every one of them were experts at building ramparts, they had no wish to trample upon their fallen brothers.
There were twice as many Romans here now as there were ever civilians of this small walled city. Crassus sat atop his horse on a small rise overlooking the town. He stood by as every shop, home and plaza was stripped of anything of value. Shrieks, shouts and laughter rose on the flame-lit smoke that was visible in the eastern quarter of the town. Ox cart drivers cracked their whips, following legionaries door-to-door to fill their loads and withdraw before the grey stench unnerved their beasts. Men who resisted were killed, men and women too old to work were killed, any child who couldn’t stand on its own was killed. Women and girls were raped in situ.
I moved Apollo so that I could speak into my master’s ear, but found I was frantic, almost shouting. “Dominus! There is no one down there named Caesar!”
“Hold you tongue, Alexander, and close your eyes, if you cannot see this for what it is.” He was sitting tal
l and rigid, his arms locked across his muscled chest piece, his helmet obscuring most of his face.
“I am looking, dominus. But I cannot see the enemy.”
“Understand, Alexander. This is what latrunculi looks like when it is played off the board.”
“General Crassus,” Melyaket said. “Please have your commanders look at this.”
“He should not be here,” Cassius said. Ignoring the general’s orders to give Melyaket free rein, he pointed and two mounted legionaries interposed themselves between the Parthian and the general.
“Where did you get that?” Crassus asked. Dominus inspected the broken shaft and bloody, three-pronged point, then passed it to his legates. While we talked, Crassus wiped his hand on Eurysaces ebony neck.
“I pulled it from one of your legionaries,” Melyaket said. “Compare it to your own arrows. Your shafts are thinner, the heads lighter, less sharp.”
“True,” said Ignatius, his disdain evident, “but your archers will never get close enough for them to do any good. These are too heavy to have any range.” His other legates agreed.
“They are not my archers, but you are wrong, gentlemen. Parthian bows are better than yours. I will demonstrate,” he said, patting a wide leather case slung by his side, “at your convenience.”
“Later, Melyaket,” Crassus said. “We are engaged now.”
Even Petronius had an edge to his voice. “Do you see what has happened here, son?”
“Yes, commander. And I see what is happening here now.”
“I can stand no more of this,” Cassius said. “Alexander, if you do not remove this enemy from my sight, he can stay and join this one here.” The quaestor pointed down the hill.
I expected thunder and lightning from my lord, for Crassus hated to be contradicted in public, but the general merely said, “Perhaps you’d better do as Longinus says, Alexander. It’s not a good time for Melyaket to be here.”
A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven Page 38