Field of Mars (The Complete Novel)

by David Rollins

  “Our bows wouldn’t do this from twenty paces,” Megabocchus remarked.

  Publius nodded, plainly aware that they had nothing in their arsenal to counter the Parthian weapon. He turned his attention to the two enemy cataphracts being guarded by Publius’s Celts. Both men were now conscious, the one with the broken leg lying on the ground, groaning. Publius looked at the bloody dagger in his hand and knew what he had to do. He wasted no time.

  “Strip them,” he commanded.

  *

  The sun beat down on the legions like white-hot hammers pulled from a forge. The pounding heat bent the backs of the men and drained the vigor from their limbs while, on the horizon, the ever-present dancing shimmer of false water that lay between earth and sky devoured the long snake of the endless cohorts marching forward.

  “The sand is cooking the soles of my feet,” announced Legionnaire Gaius Carbo to the men walking either side of him in the last line of the century.

  “Stop – you’re making me hungry,” growled Lucius Terentius Libo. “A couple of delicious, tender cooked soles will go well with the hard bread and onions I’m planning for dinner.”

  “Do you ever stop thinking about food, Beast?” Orthus Verginius Paleo asked, the century’s tesserarius, the senior non-commissioned officer.

  “Only when I’m fucking,” Libo answered with a grin. “But then it comes on powerfully afterward.”

  Paleo looked at him and shook his head.

  “You asked,” Gnaeus Pontus Albas, the legionary marching beside Paleo pointed out.

  “I’m serious,” Carbo told no one in particular. “The heat is going straight through my sandals. Aren’t you cunni feeling that?”

  “What do you think?” said Adrianus Acilius Figulus, a former armorer from Gallia.

  Tullus Bassius Rufinius, the optio – the century’s executive officer and second in command – knew there wasn’t a man in the entire army who wasn’t feeling serious discomfort. All of them except Rufinius had been new to soldiering when this campaign began the previous year, and all except Figulus had been free Italian laborers working the fields in Syria who had chosen to take up Crassus’s offer of paid service in the legions, along with the promise of booty that came with it.

  Optio Rufinius was proud of this contubernium, the eight-man unit that marched, ate, drank, slept and fought together. It had fought particularly bravely to date, and had been part of Crassus’s army that had swept away Parthian resistance to conquer the whole of Mesopotamia before retiring to winter quarters in Syria. These men, and indeed the rest of the century, had been formidable because Rufinius had drilled them well. As the legion’s optio, that was part of his job. But he was also the army’s champion swordsman and had passed on his father’s skills, hard won in a military career that spanned thirty years, fighting under Consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus in the Battles of Tigranocerta and Artaxata, and the Battle of the Lycus under Pompey the Great.

  A dozen Celtic cavalry led by the Prefect Publius cantered by trailing ribbons, animal skins, and other fine adornments. They were heading toward Proconsul Crassus’s position in the column several miles ahead. Publius’s well-known polished steel cuirass flashed in the sunlight.

  Now there was a soldier worth admiration, thought Rufinius with a touch of envy. Besides being Crassus’s son, Publius was a highly decorated veteran of Caesar’s conquest of Gallia, the subjugator of all of Aquitania, and still under thirty. His mere presence gave Rufinius confidence in complete victory and a speedy return to barracks in Antioch. What news was the man carrying forward, he wondered?

  “Want to stop your feet being cooked?” said Vibius Petronius Gracchus, nodding at the cavalry horses dashing by. “Come into this world rich enough to equip yourself with one of those.”

  Rufinius ignored the idle chat and searched the horizon. It was currently devoid of the enemy’s horse and camel-mounted scouts, spies determining numbers for the battle to come. The optio licked his cracked, bloody lips and looked around for a water donkey. The animals were never close by when you needed them. Every day on this accursed desert plain was just like the one before, a blazing sun in a cloudless blue sky heating up a baked land the color of fired pottery. He drank two mouthfuls of water from a wineskin and then passed it along to the man beside him, Marcus Tuccius Dentianus, who drank from it and handed it to Gracchus.

  “It’s for drinking, not pouring on your feet,” Rufinius called out as Gracchus drank from the skin and then passed it to Carbo. “Two mouthfuls each – no more.”

  “If I poured water on them they’d sizzle like stones in a steam room,” Carbo observed, accepting the skin and sucking back a couple of mouthfuls.

  “Pass the word,” said Rufinius. “Next chance we get, everyone fills an extra skin. Add it to your load. Under this sun you’ll need it if you ever want to see your favorite whores back in Antioch.”

  Someone grumbled about the extra weight but grumbling was normal and, in this case, reasonable. Each legionary was loaded down like a pack animal when on the march, helmet dangling from a strap around his neck, his shield protected by a leather cover occupying the left arm, and steel gladius hanging from his left shoulder. And on the baggage pole slung over his right shoulder was his bedroll, woolen cloak, pick-axe, scythe and field knife, rations, mess tin, a wicker basket for earthworks, a water bucket also used as a kettle, the horsehair crest for his helmet, two heavy javelins strapped to the pole along with three palisade sticks, and any personal items he might care to keep on him such as shaving blades. Then of course there was the weight of what he wore: a tunic, a padded vest over the top, and then over that a cuirass of heavy leather covered in ringlets of iron mail. On his feet, hobnailed caliga – the legionary’s boots. What difference were a few additional pounds going to make? Plenty. But there might come a time when they’d appreciate extra water rations and Rufinius was well aware that a man can fight with more commitment when he’s not dying of thirst.

  Movement to his right caught the optio’s attention. An arrow had hit the sand, sending up a small plume. It had stuck fast, its shaft quivering. Several others followed, these ones skipping off the hard ground and coming to rest not more than a stone’s throw from the century. There were no enemy archers that Rufinius could see. The land seemed flat, but that was deceptive. Everywhere were dry riverbeds capable of concealing men and horses. A handful of archers could easily fire a volley from one of those beds without being seen, chancing their luck that their arrows would find targets. Quite a few men in the army had been killed already by arrows such as these, fired blindly and from a great distance.

  The volley reminded Rufinius of the rumors spreading through the army that the Parthians were skilled warriors with a formidable arsenal of weaponry. These stories infecting the men and filling them with doubt had been brought into the army by the fleeing survivors of garrisons left behind in conquered Mesopotamian towns retaken by the Parthians over the winter.

  Ahead of Rufinius, two legionaries suddenly dropped to the ground, struck by the lethal arrows. As Rufinius’s line passed them, he could see both men were clearly dead, the arrows having pierced their helmets and spitted their heads.

  *

  Publius rode at an easy canter with Censorinus, Megabocchus and the others. He had news for his father, the proconsul, but it wasn’t urgent enough to risk the health of his mount with a full gallop. The heat was ferocious. He put the blazing sun from his mind and rode alongside the marching legions, the sight of which never ceased to thrill him. The column of over 40,000 men stretched all the way to the horizon and beyond, the tip of the spear of civilization itself. Organized, disciplined and well led, the Roman military machine was the finest fighting force the world had ever seen. And proof of the fact? Much of the world was now Rome’s dominion. If things continued to go well, his father’s campaigning would add still more territory to the empire. Of course, it would also add to his own personal inheritance, even though, thanks to his father’s business acum
en, this was already almost incalculably large. But there were discouraging signs and, as the days passed by on this sandy desert plain, Publius’s concerns had been mounting.

  The horses lifted their gait when they caught the scent of the heavy cavalry in the dust cloud rolling across the desert toward them. Soon Publius and his men came to the baggage train belonging to Crassus and the senior officers.

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” Publius called to Censorinus and Megabocchus. Giving them a wave, he turned his horse away. Clearly visible ahead was his father’s personal guard – handpicked spearmen and archers. Among them would be Crassus himself, as well as the legates, military tribunes, and other officers. Beyond, silhouetted in the pall kicked up by thousands of men, animals, and wagons were the shapes of various beams and other items used for the building of siege machines and artillery pieces. And beyond them still, swallowed by the dust and the glittering false water, were the engineers and the men tasked with building the camp for the evening, as well as the entire First Legion along with several cohorts of light archers and the 600 cavalry loaned to Proconsul Crassus by his friend, Armenian King Artavastes.

  Publius threaded his horse through the guard protecting his father and reined in beside him. “Proconsul,” he said by way of greeting.

  “There you are, Publius,” Crassus exclaimed, grinning broadly, pleased to see his son.

  “His name is Surenas-Pahlav, Proconsul, and he is the spāhbed of King Orodes’s army. That’s who we’re up against.”

  “Spāhbed?”

  “Commander-in-chief.”

  “Surenas … What’s the word on him? He any good?”

  “He’s their best general, father, or so we’re told. He defeated Orodes’s brother Mithridates so that Orodes could ascend the throne. That’s how he came to be commander-in-chief.”

  Abgar, the Arab chieftain who had offered his services to Crassus as a translator and guide, made a sound that implied disbelief. “And who told you this?”

  “We caught two of his cataphracts harassing the Seventh.”

  “And you tortured them,” said Abgar, smiling.

  Publius drank from a wineskin offered by a young tribune and wiped his mouth. “And you’d have offered them a villa on the cliffs of Capua?”

  Abgar’s grin broadened. “One always gets the answers one wants when one separates a man from his testicles.”

  Publius refused further eye contact with Abgar, whom he distrusted and detested. “If your intention is to admonish me for gathering knowledge, spare me your wisdom, Arab. The other man who watched on, fearful of receiving the same treatment, confirmed the information yielded by the one whose arm we skinned. I think we can be assured of its accuracy.”

  “Which is?” asked the proconsul.

  “That Abgar here has led us into this godless place to soften us up for the enemy.”

  “They told you this specifically?” Crassus asked.

  “Father, we cook in this cauldron solely because of this man’s treachery.” He jabbed a finger at Abgar. “We should have come down through Armenia, protected against the enemy’s arrows by the mountains and forests, as King Artavastes advocated. And then we should have followed the Euphrates, keeping it at our backs as Legate Cassius Longinus recommended. In so doing we could have avoided the risk of being surrounded and used the river as a supply road. Instead we trust his assurances that this is the best and fastest way to victory!”

  “Are we surrounded now?” Abgar inquired, gesturing at the empty desert beside them.

  Publius ignored him. “You agreed to these more favorable options, Father, but each time this Arab here brought you around to a lesser alternative. So now we’re in this land shunned by gods and men, out in the open, far from water and resupply and a ready target for the enemy’s arrows.”

  Abgar shook his head theatrically. “You would have us march by the Euphrates and lose all surprise?”

  Publius sneered. “We lost that long ago, Arab.”

  “So I take it your answer is no, Publius,” said Crassus, losing patience. “No specific mentions of Abgar.”

  Publius’s frustration was evident. “Where do you go, Arab – you and your countrymen? Where do you go when you ride off into the desert with no Roman escort?”

  “We forage, Publius, just like your Celts.”

  “And what do you forage for? Sand?”

  “Just so that you know, Publius,” Crassus interrupted, “the decision to take a more direct route to the capital of the Parthians was not Abgar’s, but mine.”

  “Based on his advice and assurances.” The prefect lifted his chin at the Arab.

  Crassus’s impatience was growing. “Publius, what’s done is done and I stick by it. I had reasons for taking this route, chief among them to reabsorb into my army the garrisons left behind during last year’s campaigning.” Crassus gave a glance to Appias Cominius Maro, his own historian, to make a note of that. “And I command a Roman army, not a collection of country squires seeking the delights of Campania. The King of Armenia has never led an army of such stature as the one that marches at my bidding. And, as for this desert, I would say that to conquer the world, one must first conquer hardship.”

  The prefect shook his head, his ammunition spent.

  “Now, Publius, this Surenas … Do we know how many men he commands?”

  “Ten thousand, Father. His personal guard.”

  Crassus leaned forward in the saddle to take the stiffness out of his back, but he was pleased enough to chuckle. “Ten thousand against our forty thousand? It will be a slaughter.”

  “There is King Orodes’s army somewhere out there too,” Publius warned him. “A much bigger army, and we don’t know where it is. Also, I have just come from a minor skirmish. It took around thirty legionaries and twenty of our cavalry to repel just two Parthian cataphracts and a handful of mounted archers. We lost half a dozen legionaries in the exchange. You can believe it when I say these desert horsemen are worthy adversaries. They are not the rabble we defeated last year.”

  “And once you have dispatched this worthy adversary,” said Abgar, “the way will be clear for you to capture, sack or spare all the great cities of the land of two rivers, as the mood takes you.”

  Crassus nodded, savoring Abgar’s summary as if it were something already come to pass.

  Legate Cassius Longinus, the general charged with direct command of Crassus’s legions, brushed the flies out of his face. “Publius, what of the terrain ahead?” he asked.

  “Perhaps I can answer that,” Abgar offered. “There is a river a day’s march from here, the Balikh. It feeds the Euphrates.”

  “And you’re sure there’s water?” Cassius Longinus asked him.

  “A whole river of it, General,” Abgar assured him playfully and with the broad smile of his that infuriated Publius.

  “And my answer would be that all we can truly be sure of, Legate, is that there’s a lot more desert between the army and any water,” said Publius.

  “A Roman army can march a long way in a day,” Abgar shrugged.

  “I think I know better than you, Arab, what a Roman army can do.”

  “Enough!” Crassus snapped, grown tired of the bickering. “Publius, how are the men?”

  “My Celts are straining to be unleased, Father. As for the legions, the heat is extreme and the dust clogs their throats. Also, rumors are rife about the enemy. The Parthians are now believed to be ten feet tall and invincible.”

  “Last year, this same army beat the Parthians from one end of Mesopotamia to the other,” Crassus said with impatience.

  “Not this army … Proconsul, their fear is born of fatigue. I would rest them for a day, perhaps two, before offering battle to Surenas.”

  Crassus’s simmering scowl told Publius none of this was what his father wanted to hear.

  “I concur with Publius, Proconsul,” said Cassius Longinus, continuing the theme fearlessly. “The centurions are reporting much unrest in the r
anks.”

  “Where is the problem?” Abgar wondered. “I fail to see it. Surenas is heavily outnumbered, is he not? March for the river with all haste. The men will then have all the water they need. Let them rest a while there.”

  Crassus turned to Appias Cominius Maro. “How about you, historian? What would your Ptolemy do? Join battle as soon as possible? Or hide behind trenches and palisades?”

  “What survives of Ptolemy’s campaigns do not cover his journeys in as much detail, Proconsul,” the historian replied, eager not to be held to account by either father or son.

  The exchanges had done nothing to alleviate Publius’s concern. “Father, a word, if it suits you.”

  Crassus took a moment to think about it before giving his son a nod, and then followed Publius to the upwind side of the column where the air was clear of dust. The two men rode along together, their horses ambling. “Excuse my impertinence, Father,” said Publius, “if that’s what it seems.”

  “No, I need the Conqueror of Aquitania to speak his mind.”

  “In that case, allow me to say that I believe you put too much faith in the Arab’s counsel. Abgar knows you want this campaign concluded as soon as possible. My concern is that his advice is putting the whip to your horse. We both know he’s Pompey’s close friend and supporter. That alone is warning enough for me. Would it be beyond Pompey to have given the Arab certain instructions?”

  “You’re seeing conspiracy where there is none,” said Crassus.

  “Pompey would love to see you fail, we both know that.”

  “I pay Abgar handsomely, with a bonus in gold to come at the successful conclusion of hostilities.”

  “Pompey has gold and the man’s friendship,” Publius reminded him.

  “Even if you’re right and Abgar lives in Pompey’s purse, Surenas is a fly blowing around our ass.”

  “And we’ll come upon this fly in his own land, a land he knows well.”

  “As you came upon the tribes of Aquitania in their land and subdued them.”