With the assault from above having moved on, the shields came down and across the plain the enemy could be seen shimmering in the desert heat, thousands of horsemen maneuvering far beyond the retribution of Roman sword or spear. Beside Rufinius, a legionary holding his unsheathed gladius aloft raged, “Bring yourself to the Undertaker here, and I’ll show you cunni what death looks like!”
“Your hand,” said Rufinius, swaying on his wounded leg, and the legionary glanced at the hand holding his scuta, blood pumping freely from the stumps of two fingers recently amputated by an arrow. The legionary examined the wound in wonder for a few moments before dropping the shield and clenching his fist, jamming the fresh stumps into the flesh of his palm to staunch the worst of the bleeding. “The Senate and People of Rome,” Rufinius said, with a pat on his shoulder to offer some comfort, and left to find his contubernium. All along the line, behind the wall of shields, Rufinius could see that a surprising number of men were wounded, dead, or dying.
*
Surenas watched with pride as waves of archers, 500 at a time, rode past the Roman lines, firing all the while. The archers were becoming bolder and riding ever closer to the Romans after realizing that their enemy had nothing with which to return the punishment. On all sides of the square now, Surenas saw the Romans were taking arrows, the copper bosses on their shields flashing in the sunlight as they turned them in the direction of each volley. It was clear that arrows were finding targets as, here and there, holes began to appear in the seemingly impenetrable wall. As their lines pulled back, the bodies of legionaries were often left on the desert sand before being recovered by fellow legionaries. But the Romans held their formation and didn’t falter and Surenas was still uncertain about the strategy employed and its chances of success. Surely this Marcus Licinius Crassus would find some response?
*
Publius rode hard with Megabocchus, Censorinus, their weapons bearers, and many of their most trusted lieutenants, toward the Herculean knot hanging limp in the heat of the overhead sun. The prefect leaped from his horse and ran to his father, who stood peering at the dust clouds rising ever higher everywhere on the plain, towering proof that the enemy had surrounded them. Lessor tribunes, who had been dispatched by their superiors from the front lines, had gathered to bring news about the enemy’s attacks and movements to the proconsul. The mood was anxious to say the least, their news consistently bad. It was clear to Publius that his father was overwhelmed, solutions to their vexatious predicament eluding him.
“Proconsul!” Publius called out. Crassus turned toward him, the relief on his face apparent at seeing his son alive. For the first time that he could recall, his father seemed an old man. “A word if I may …”
Crassus made a gesture and the officers crowding around him parted to let the prefect through, and then moved beyond earshot.
“Let my Celts loose, Father,” Publius began. “We will hound them, get behind them and force them forward onto the tips of our legionaries’ swords.”
Crassus looked into the eyes of his son and saw not a single hint of doubt. “No, Publius. I have dispatched orders already for our response.”
*
Cornicens delivered the order, blasting it over the legionaries taunting the enemy with a ribald chant, and the square opened up to release the archers and light infantry onto the plain. The men formed up in good order in front of Rufinius’s cohort and advanced at the double toward the lines of Parthian horse archers.
“It’s about time those shirt lifters kicked in,” shouted someone over the chant, earning the mirth of the men around him.
As Rufinius watched, far beyond the range of the Roman archers, a cloud of Parthian arrows soared high through the dust and into the blue sky above, then hung there seemingly suspended before changing course and dropping toward the plain. When the missiles started to reach their mark and men toppled where they stood, panic gripped the ranks and the archers and infantry ran into each other or turned and fled, helter-skelter, back to the relative shelter provided by the lines of legionaries.
The Parthians, emboldened by the success of their arrows, began an advance on the main square at the gallop, at least 500 of them, and loosed more arrows at shields that quickly and methodically came together to form a barrier.
Arrows thudded into scuta, thumping like clubs and mostly punching straight through in a puff of fine splintering wood. Rufinius heard a loud exhalation of breath beside him. It was Albas. The man looked down at his chest in surprise and then disbelief, the arrow having penetrated his shield and chainmail cuirass to the depth of several inches. Blood welled up like water from a spring in the ground and gushed down the front of his cuirass. Albas knew he was dead. He glanced at Rufinius a little stunned and then slumped sideways as two more arrows blasted holes in his shield and pinned an arm and a leg so that he rolled sideways.
The swearing and the screaming started anew as more and more of the deadly shafts drilled holes in the lines. Some of the legionaries that Rufinius could see had become attached to their shields, unable to move at all, the arrows fixing them like hands and feet nailed for crucifixion.
A brief lull in this onslaught brought calls for water, the air under the shields super-heated by the legionaries’ sweating bodies and as unbearable as any steam room.
“Any o’ you shitlips got water?” Libo asked, breaking off arrow shafts in his scutum with a sweep of a gladius. “Where in Hades is that cunnus water donkey?”
“Where’s your wineskin, fool?” asked Figulus, an instant before an arrow went straight through his shield’s boss and lodged deep in his eye. “I’m hit,” he said, and sagged to the ground as another volley swept through the ranks.
Rufinius saw the decanus collapse but had no time to even acknowledge his death. The men around him seemed to take several steps backwards in the face of this renewed onslaught. “Hold the line!” he shouted. “Hold the line!” The call was repeated up and down the cohort and the formation steadied.
“The Senate and People of Rome!” someone called out, which was echoed briefly a number of times before it died out.
“Soon they’ll run out of arrows and stop fighting like a pack o’ cunni and fight like proper men!” Rufinius yelled.
“Cunni, cunni, cunni …” the men chanted.
And again a volley of arrows thrashed the legionaries, killing and maiming whatever morale had been rescued by all the swearing. A missile shied off the metal edge of Rufinius’s shield on its way to ending the life of the man standing behind him. And then three more crashed through the curved wood of his scuta and pierced Rufinius’s cuirass, slicing his skin and sticking fast, reducing his mobility. The optio pushed his shield forward, away from himself, and then mimicked Libo and broke off the shafts sprouting from his cuirass with his sword. Technically defenseless, the action was nevertheless fortuitous, since with no shield obstructing the view in front of him, Rufinius could see through the boiling dust cloud enveloping them. The cataphracts were charging directly for his section of the line under the cover of the horse archer’s volley, their lances lowered, targets selected. There was no opportunity for the optio to dart forward and recover his scuta. “Legionnaires! Brace!” he yelled, seconds before the first of the armored horsemen smashed into the Roman line.
Rufinius sensed the cataphract’s interest in him even before he saw the silver horse and rider galloping straight at him. He was unprotected, easy pickings. And though the seconds slowed and the world slowed with them, there was no time to be fearful. Dipped in gold, the lance head glowed and drew small circles in the air with the horse’s motion. Rufinius’s fingers tightened around the grip of his gladius. Wait … wait … In the last instant of impact, the horse so close that Rufinius could see its nostrils flaring beneath its armor scales, the lance head searching for his belly, Rufinius moved to one side and slapped the flat of his gladius down on the thrusting lance. The gold head ploughed into the sand, dug a furrow and then stuck fast. The rider was insta
ntly thrown off the back of the horse by the impact while the animal continued forward, unbalanced and half stumbling. It smashed into a wall of legionary shields, crying and writhing, its hooves pawing the air. Rufinius turned and saw that its armor was like a blanket, tied beneath the animal’s belly by several knotted leather thongs. He ran back and stabbed the horse with his gladius, the blade entering below the beast’s anus and ripping through leather knots and entrails on its journey to the sternum. The horse puffed in shock and then the tip of Rufinius’s blade found its heart in the sea of blood and entrails and pierced it, silencing the beast’s fight. The optio looked around, searching for familiar faces he knew he could rely on and found two. “Libo! Carbo! Get three men and strip this horse!” Rufinius then went to the Parthian cataphract rolling barely conscious on the scorching sand, dust already dulling the bright metal scales covering the man from head to foot. He kicked him onto his back and plunged the gladius deep through the seam of his armor tunic, which, like the horse’s, was tied by leather knots. The man died fast and Rufinius began stripping him, taking precious seconds to finally pull the sleeves off the man’s dead arms.
Dentianus appeared beside him. “Optio!” he said, pointing toward the Parthian lines with his gladius. “Look there …”
Rufinius peered through the dust. A break in its density allowed him a glance at the legionary’s concern. Camels, hundreds of them, were dispersing arrows among the horse archers. Lightly armed runners accompanied the animals, which were slung with barrels like water donkeys. Only these barrels carried not water but the deadly missiles – thousands and thousands of them – the runners grabbing whole armfuls of the hateful ammunition for distribution among the archers.
“Cunni,” Rufinius muttered.
A collective groan seemed to well from the cohort as it, too, saw how the horse archers were being replenished, and that the supply would be as good as endless. The men had been prepared to endure being Parthian target practice in the belief that their arrows would become scarcer and scarcer, but now that hope was gone.
“Where’s Publius and his glory boys from Gallia?” a man shouted. “Publius! Publius!” The men around him took up the chant and it began to ripple down the line, a thousand voices joining quickly to become a deafening chorus: “Publius! Publius! Publius … !”
VII
Anxious messengers from the front lines informing Crassus of the enemy’s likely strategy – to bring the Romans to their knees beneath a never-ending torrent of arrows – waited for the supreme commander’s decision. One of these tribunes held a dead legionary’s bloody scutum that had been bashed to splinters by more than a dozen arrows, a memento of the assault for the proconsul’s inspection, proof that the legionaries were currently less than able to defend themselves. Legate Cassius Longinus wanted an orderly retreat behind the river where the legions would draw up in an extended line. Another suggestion from the general staff was to break up the one enormous defensive square into smaller, more manageable defensive squares, thereby at least dispersing the enemy’s attack while offering the possibility of a counter-attack using the impenetrable dust for cover. Publius had other ideas still. And while Crassus deliberated, the legates at the front waited on orders and watched the situation deteriorate further.
“I don’t know what you think you can do, Publius,” said Crassus finally, shaking his head. “You are one thousand, but they are ten thousand.”
“And your legions are forty thousand, Proconsul. I’ll do what I said I would do; attack them and drive them onto our legions’ swords. Our men cannot stand all day beneath this barrage, with no hope of engagement, slaughtered at arm’s length. They will break. Why wouldn’t they? Let me charge these Arabs. At the very least we can give the men a taste of the enemy’s blood with which to fortify their own.”
Crassus considered his son’s request. He was afraid for him, and desperate for the encouragement his words promised, and fully cognizant that he spoke the truth about the men’s morale and resolve. The two arguments skirmished in his mind while he fought to keep them from his face. And while he did so, the chant of “Publius! Publius! Publius!” rose from the lines as high as the pall of dust that now blocked the sun.
Searching for the words he knew his father wanted to hear, Publius said, “I will not be riding the Ferryboat to Hades today, Proconsul.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know.”
Crassus seemed to his son a man who had lost his way.
“Father …” said Publius gently.
“Beware the Parthian archers, my son. I have had many reports of their antics. When pressed, they readily show their horses’ hooves to their pursuers in apparent retreat. But then chased, the archers turn on their mounts and fire their arrows behind them, with the same deadly accuracy as if they were stationary and shooting forward. Retreat is not a retreat at all but another aggressive maneuver.”
“Father, think you that I have learned nothing about war?”
“All I am saying is beware the Parthian archers, Publius.”
“Yes, Father,” he said quietly, a reassuring hand on the old man’s forearm. Crassus then spoke up suddenly so that all could hear, steel gathering in his voice. “Prefect Publius, you will take the archers and the light infantry, as they have regrouped, in addition to your beloved Celts. You will advance with all adventure and you will hound the enemy and see them destroyed for the glory of Rome. Go now with all speed.”
“Yes, primor!” Publius responded with a salute, his limbs shaking with anticipation.
“Go,” said Crassus quietly a second time and resisted the temptation to tell his son to be careful.
Publius ran beneath the Hercules knot to the guardsman holding his horse. He leaped on and galloped to the lines of legionaries facing the enemy’s main force where his Celtic auxiliary cavalry, archers and light infantry were already assembled, by his earlier orders, awaiting his return.
Marcius Censorinus and Megabocchus, their attendants and weapons bearers trailing behind them, rode out to meet him. Publius lowered the dust-filled focale from his mouth and, pulling up his mount beside them, yelled, “We are ordered to take the fight to the Parthians!”
*
Volodates watched two thousand archers, newly provisioned with arrows, fire on the enemy while a thousand more cantered back and forth along the lines of the enemy, merely so that their hooves kicked up yet more of the powdered dust that seemed to float weightless in the air. The slight breeze was lifting these brown clouds and drifting them into the Romans’ faces. From many past experiences, Volodates knew how wretched those soldiers fighting under their eagles must be feeling because of it. Their teeth would grind on it, their eyes would water in it, and they would cough and gag as it caught in their throats. And, of course, through this thick veil of dust, arrows by their hundreds and their thousands would suddenly arrive among them unheralded. Volodates could not help but marvel at the discipline of these westerners. Despite the discomfort choking them and the death falling on them, their response had been to stand and sing. They were singing now – just the one word over and over. It sounded like, yes … Publius, Publius, Publius … Volodates wondered what it meant. Behind him, a force of 500 horse archers waited patiently, held back from the main attack for a specific purpose. They all knew that soon it would be their turn. They knew this for certain – just as Volodates knew it – because Spāhbed Surenas had told them so. The Captain of Horse drank water from the wineskin on his saddle, cooled by the rush of it down his throat, and he waited. He did not have to wait long as, from within the thick cloud blanketing all, climbed a chorus of trumpeting horns.
*
Rufinius cheered as loudly as any of the men around him when the cornicens blew the familiar call for a cavalry charge. Arrows had continued to wreak a horrible toll on the cohort, and tens of men were falling still. If the carnage was repeated around the square, at least a quarter of the army now lay dead, with perhaps another quarte
r of it increasingly incapacitated, the legionaries’ legs and arms pinned to their scuta by arrow shafts. Others were choking on the dust and dying of thirst, all water supplies having dried up.
A couple of arrows thumped onto his shield and bounced off the cataphract’s fish-scale armor that now adorned it, held in place by broken arrow shafts. Dentianus, Libo, Carbo, Paleo, and perhaps a dozen more legionaries huddled beneath shields supporting a roof of armor lifted from the cataphract’s horse. What manner of bow could fire an arrow with such unheard-of power, wondered Rufinius, that it could hold Rome at bay with such ease?
He peered through the rolling dust, hunting for any movement. There had been two more cataphract charges, neither ending well for his men, and he wanted to be ready for the one aimed at his section of the line when it appeared from out of the dust. But then a cheer was heard from legionaries further along the cohort. Moments later Rufinius saw Publius ride into the haze, the column of men behind him dressed in the fineries of their battle adornments, appearing in the eerie brown light like a squadron of lost souls. Rufinius’s voice joined the cheering and the calls of encouragement welling up around him.
“Go get the cocksuckers!” someone yelled out.
“Come back with their heads!” Rufinius added, his throat hoarse with dust, receiving plenty of lusty accord for this sentiment from the men within earshot.
“Or don’t you cunni come back at all,” Carbo said, spitting brown sludge onto the ground by his feet.
*
Volodates saw the Roman cavalry appear suddenly in a swath of clear air. They were cantering in lines of two hundred across and four deep. Their form and raiment were magnificent. Volodates had respect for this cavalry. They were horsemen not unlike those he commanded. It was as Surenas had said. Sooner or later the Romans would release its only long-range weapon. Slowly revealed in the dust behind the mounted javelin-throwers, marching at the double, came numerous cohorts of light-armed infantry and archers – large numbers of men.
Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) Page 10