by M C Scott
I stood apart from the slaughter, listening to the sounds of men cursing in the dull day. Lupus came to stand beside me.
‘Thank you for not speaking out,’ he said. ‘It would have gone badly had you said what was written on your face.’
‘Did he see it?’
‘Of course. But it’s different if no one says anything. He can manage it better then.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘I don’t know, but he passes blood when he passes anything at all and he barely eats now.’
‘Bloody flux?’ I gaped at him. ‘Then we’re all—’
‘No. He’s been like this since he joined us and none of us are the worse for it, nor any of his body attendants. At a guess, I’d say he has ill humours gnawing away at his bowels. If it were flux, we’d all have passed our innards into a bloody ditch by now, and no thanks to the Hebrews.’
‘But he’ll be dead by winter,’ I said.
‘I thought he’d be dead by now and I was wrong.’ A mule broke free and ran at the ditch and staked itself. Over the ear-harrowing screams, Lupus said, ‘He’s doing his best to keep us alive. It’s not good, but he is finally listening to us. If we can get through Beth Horon alive, we can run for Caesarea. He won’t try to do anything else.’
‘Was there anything else he could have done?’
‘He wanted to take us back to Antioch. Be grateful that he knows he hasn’t the strength.’
Without the wagons to slow us, we did actually run from Gabao into the Beth Horon pass, much as we of the sixth cohort had run down to the relief of the IVth, when we still thought there were men of that legion left to relieve.
There was an odd strength in the running, in the sweating, panting thrust and pump of it, so much like training that we could lose our minds in the count of stride and breath, staring at the man in front, listening to the men behind.
And we who had run it twice knew the places where we had to walk, where the path narrowed to a shelf along a precipice, fit for one man on a horse, or a narrow cart, but no more. Heading west now, as we were, the sheer rock wall reared up to our right and the cliff fell away to our left, while on the far side of the canyon the thick wooded slopes could have hidden half the Hebrew army.
We sent the cavalry along first, and then the men in single file. Lupus was way to the front. I found Horgias behind me, bearing the cohort standard. He came up until he was just behind my left shoulder. ‘What would you have done last night if you were the Hebrews?’ he asked.
‘I’d have sent men on above the pass through the night while we lost time killing mules. I’d have them waiting with rocks and spears, ready to force as many men off this ledge as I could.’ It wasn’t a new thought: I’d been playing it over in my mind the way a dog plays over a bone since we’d left in the morning. ‘There’s no way out but forwards.’ I slapped a hand on the rock wall to my right. ‘Even you can’t climb this.’
‘So we have to be ready to run,’ he said. ‘Soon.’
‘Can you see them?’
‘I saw the spark of sunlight on armour when we—’
‘Down!’ I pushed him sideways, clinging on to him at the same time, to keep him from falling off the ledge. The rock that hurtled down from above missed him by a hand’s breadth. Tears was wrestling with his horn a dozen paces behind. There was no time. I took a breath and screamed my lungs out.
‘Run!’
Like hunted deer, we ran, and like hunted deer they picked us off, one by one, harrying us ever forward, so that even when we made it off that bloody ledge and on to something approaching flat ground again in the valley’s depths, we were never able to come together in proper formation.
Their slingers and archers picked on the cavalry and then on the infantry, driving us from side to side across the pass and killing, killing, killing from mid-morning until the end of the afternoon and into the evening.
We should have been through and out the other side by then. We should have been halfway to Caesarea, but we had spent so much time scurrying for cover that we had made less than half of the progress we had done the last time we ran in this direction.
Only darkness saved us. When it was too dark to see, the Hebrews stopped wasting their spears, their arrows, their slingshot, their rocks, and we were left huddling in our units, waiting for instruction.
We lit no fires in the beginning, but sat where we had stopped, and Lupus had to walk amongst us, calling in the centurions.
We had no tents, and so met at a place only a little apart from the main body of our men.
Lupus gave the losses first. The allied infantry and cavalry had taken the greatest losses this time, for they were least armoured and least able to manage the constant unpredictable assaults. Most of them were dead. Out of a force of forty thousand that had left Antioch, and of twenty-two thousand that had left Jerusalem, we were reduced to ten thousand.
‘And by tomorrow we will all be gone,’ Lupus said. ‘There is no way out of here alive.’
‘Unless we go by night,’ Gallus said. ‘Now, in fact.’
‘No.’ Priscus was dead. The new leader of the VIth was named Festus and he spoke before Lupus as if rank had no meaning any more. ‘They’ll know. If we don’t light fires, if we don’t set guards that they can see, they’ll know we’ve gone. And if we can go, they can surely follow.’
There was a moment’s silence. I thought men were embarrassed at his intervention, but then I saw that Lupus was looking at Gallus and Gallus was looking back and there was an understanding between them.
‘The XIIth will stay,’ Lupus said. ‘We are less than a thousand men now. We shall stay here and light a thousand fires, so that it looks as if ten thousand men have camped for the night. The Hebrews won’t realize the deception until dawn. You should be clear of the pass by then.’
There was an uncomfortable moment in which nobody but me met Lupus’ eye. Then Gallus, nodding, said, ‘Name three centuries to escape with us. To carry the Eagle and the cohort standards that the XIIth might live beyond this night, and be honoured for your courage.’
‘No!’ Lupus and I spoke together.
I said, ‘We fought once before without our Eagle. We will never do so again.’
And Lupus, in much the same breath, said, ‘The Twelfth will never survive the shame of a second defeat. Let us die here, and be honoured at least for this much courage, and let our legion die with us.’
A new silence held the other men, of a quite different quality. Men touched their brows, in a mark of silent respect.
‘It will be as you wish,’ Gallus said. ‘We shall reach Caesarea and we shall return in spring with enough men to bring Jerusalem to its knees. Your sacrifice will not be in vain.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
WE WERE EIGHT hundred; all that was left of the XIIth legion, not including the cavalry. Cadus had begged to be allowed to stay, but he was the only surviving officer of the cavalry and Gallus had ordered him to lead his men safely through the pass.
And so we were left, we veterans who had lived through the humiliation of Raphana, and those who had joined us since, and we were not divided now; only by thinking hard could we remember that we had not always been as brothers.
I don’t think any man amongst us begrudged those who were leaving. In that, if nothing else, it was like the battle at Lizard Pass, when we counted ourselves lucky to be allowed to face Vologases’ cataphracts while others fled. This time, though, we intended that those who left us must get clear away, and so we threw ourselves into the deception.
Taurus organized five hundred men in groups of four to forage for firewood, noisily. The rest of us built fires, lit them, stood around them, spoke quietly, laughed, cooked and shared a meal, then passed on to the next one and did the same again, all with our standards in the centre; not so close to any fire that they might be counted, but close enough for the Eagle to catch the light of a dozen fires and be burnished by them, so that it hung over us, suspended in the bl
ack night, casting its own light back down on our helms and our armour as we moved and talked and moved again. None of us slept.
I found Tears just before daybreak; or rather, I allowed myself to go to him, when I had not through the night. He was sitting on an upturned shield with his knees hugged to his chin. He said nothing as I came near, only shifted a little by his fire as if to make space in a crowd and handed me a new-baked oatcake, hot and steaming, scorched a little at the edges, as I liked it, so that I could taste fire and corn and the melting sweetness at its heart, where the dough was still soft.
I had the Parthian war bow with me, slung over my shoulder. He had still not seen me shoot it, not properly; he had always been too busy.
‘Have you any arrows for that?’ he asked.
‘None.’ I unhooked it and held it balanced on my open palms. ‘I could burn it. The wood’s strong and true. It would hold a flame a long time.’
‘No, you couldn’t.’ His smile flashed and was gone. ‘If you were going to do that, you’d have done it half a night ago, when the cold began to bite. Let someone find it. A good bow deserves to be used.’
‘Even against us?’
‘It won’t be against us. We’ll be dead. We won’t care, and I don’t think the bow will care either. You’ve killed enough with it to balance your side of the scales. It can help another man to do the same.’
‘Maybe.’ Firelight rippled the white wood in colours of amber, copper and bronze. I watched it a while, seeing the glyphs on the inner face march up the length of the body to the curved horn tips and back again. I still had no idea what they said.
Presently, I put it away and we sat in silence, watching the flames and each other until Horgias and Taurus came to stir the embers of a fire nearby and we joined them, to lay on more wood. When, shortly after, Macer joined us, and then Lupus, we felt complete.
Taurus, too, had made oatcakes, which we shared, along with those from Tears’ fire, as if it were a god’s day, to celebrate.
I had two in my hands, and was steaming myself in their scent, when Macer lifted from his tunic a small fired pot the size of a hen’s egg, with honey bees marked in scored lines round the sides.
‘I have this,’ he said, and we all looked at him, for the shyness with which he had said it; Macer had never been a shy man.
‘Honey?’ Tears laughed. ‘Have you carried that all the way from Antioch, just for this?’
‘Further than that.’ Macer was grinning like a fool. ‘I brought it from Moesia when I was ordered to leave the Seventh. I thought that if I ever had occasion to share it, I would know I was a man of the Twelfth at last.’
He stopped smiling. ‘In Antioch, I thought I would die of old age and never have reason to open this. Many times these last days, I have feared I might die with it still in my tunic when we should have had it already.’
He held the jar on the flat of his palm, near the fire. It was sealed with dark red wax that stood in a blob over the top surface and ran down in uneven runnels about the bees. With all eyes on him, he drew his knife and cracked it open, and the smell of honey drenched us, like the smell of waxed bowstrings, multiplied a thousandfold.
As a priest at a sacrifice, Macer used his knife to lift a nugget of comb from the pot. He offered it to Lupus, then a second to me, then Horgias, Tears and Taurus. Last, he helped himself and spread it on his oatcake.
‘There was just enough,’ he said. ‘Some god guided us to this; just us.’ He raised his head. I had never seen his eyes so clear, so set in their purpose. Macer the Mournful had gone in the night and a new man inhabited his skin. ‘I would help to hold the Eagle,’ he said. ‘If you will permit me?’
‘Every man will hold the Eagle,’ Lupus said, ‘All eight hundred of us. It’s the only order: that we die before it is taken. But if you wish to be shield-man to Horgias’ shield-man, you are free to do so.’ He stood, a little stiff from the cold. ‘We’d best make ready. I can see you all by more than firelight. And if I can see you, the Hebrews will soon see how few of us there are here. It won’t take long. By noon, it should all be over.’
I stood at the heart of the increasing crowd who gathered about the standards and there was a sense of quiet competence as we fastened buckles and checked the grips on our blades. There was none of the fire, the zeal, the heroism-in-waiting that had attended us at the Lizard Pass when we faced the King of Kings’ army; just a job to be done and then peace at the end of it.
Day was coming on us more strongly with every heartbeat. The sky was heavy with the scent of rain, and a low, thick cloud held the valley walls, hovering just above our heads. We knew that it had been sent by the gods to aid our subterfuge; for a long time after true dawn we were still no more than helmets flashing in the mist, swords and shields scraping into position and units of men muttering amongst themselves, giving thanks to Jupiter, to Mithras, to Helios.
Lupus walked quietly among the men. ‘Hold the Eagle as long as you can. There is no other order.’ I heard his voice echoing back through the mist, over and over, impossible to tell its direction.
‘What will you do?’ He spoke in my ear. I jumped, and snatched away my sword, which had stabbed upward without my asking.
‘Fight,’ I said. ‘What else?’
‘Do you have your bow still?’
‘Yes. But I have no arrows.’ The bow lay near the fire where Tears had made his oatcakes. I reached down to pick it up and held it out to Lupus. ‘Do you want it?’
‘Regrettably, now is not the time for me to learn how to use a bow with true skill. But you have the skill. And I have a gift for you.’ From behind his back, Lupus brought a fistful of arrows. Even at a fast glance, I counted eight. In the grey light, their shafts were dark, almost black, and the feathers sullied, but still intact.
He read the question in my eyes and gave a brief, almost shy, shrug. ‘They’re from the bodies of the men you hit the other day. You and the others. I went back in the night and took them out. I thought you might have use for them.’
His brow rose as it always had, but there was an honesty in his eyes that stabbed me with sorrow for the first time since we had made our decision to stay.
‘I won’t waste them,’ I said, and heard the thickness in my own voice.
‘Good.’ He looked about us, frowning. ‘The mist is lifting.’ He took a sharp breath. ‘This is it.’
We were already in position; buckles fast, swords out, shields to hand. As one man, in stillness, we watched the mist thin and rise until, at last, we could see this place where we had chosen to die.
Wide and flat and shallow, we had come without knowing it to a bowl in the very foot of the pass. The path to freedom meandered up the mountainside before and rose steep and narrow behind, but here was the perfect battleground, a plate of turfed earth with little by way of boulders or rocky debris to hamper us.
The heights were hemmed about by winter trees, blowing ragged in the coming breeze, shading the grey hillside with copper. The scent was of dying fires, and oiled leather, and iron; the scent of any army in the morning; the scent of awaited death; a scent so peaceful, I could have lain down with that as my shroud, and slept.
And that was when the sun scraped through a finger’s width of mist and Helios cast a single ray, spear-straight, at our Eagle, washing it with living light, the breath of the gods.
Horgias took hold of the haft and raised it up so that it flew above us, our guardian and our care, ours to protect until death.
We cheered, how could we not? And so revealed how very few we were.
There was a moment’s raggedness, as the wind caught the last hurrahs and tore them to shreds. Then I caught a glint of sun on iron somewhere on the hill high to my left, and another along the valley, and another on the shoulder of the mountain to my right, and another, if I craned my head to look behind, along the pathway that led out of the valley, and another and another, as our enemies rose from the places in which they had been hidden, and so revealed ho
w very many they were.
They began to group together, moving easily through the scrub and debris of the pass as if they knew each bush and rock. The first we saw were not the Roman-clad men we had faced before, but lean warriors in rough tunics belted in plain leather, bareheaded and barefoot, carrying long-spears, small shields and side swords. Each one carried a sling, and a pouch of lead shot over his shoulder.
They took stances above us on left and right, before and behind, and one among them put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, as a boy does to his goats.
What came then down the wide, meandering path that led from the east was not goats but men on horseback and on foot, men in mail and helmets, bearing shields and spears, men mounted on …
One man mounted on a Berber mare, milk white in her coat, with her mane down to her knees flowing black as a Parthian heart and she as beautiful as any living thing might be, with a long, loose-limbed walk that made my heart turn over and my eyes sting, so that I had to dash away tears with the back of my hand and even then I could not tear my eyes from her to see whom she bore.
‘There’s gold on his helmet,’ someone said nearby; Horgias, I think. ‘That’s the king.’
‘Demalion, is there any chance …?’ Lupus was still close by. His voice snapped me back into myself. The bow lay at my feet, but even as I eyed the distance, I knew there was no point in picking it up. ‘Too far,’ I said. ‘I’d only waste an arrow. But if he comes closer, I’ll take him.’
‘Take the ones near him, too,’ Tears said. ‘The giant with the axes near to his right is Parthian and on his left is a centurion, a traitor to Rome.’
‘But neither of those is giving the orders,’ Lupus said. ‘See to the right hand of the king, in the tunic and the red shoulder cloak, bearing only a shield and a sword? That’s the man they’re listening to. And he’s a Roman or I’m a Gaul.’
‘Are you not?’ Horgias eyed him in mock horror. ‘All those years and I thought you were one of us.’