Triumph in Dust

by Ian Ross

  The magistrate was standing in the middle of the room, clasping his Christian amulet. With an exhilarated cry he rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Even the smallest creatures of the air will plague them and strike at them…’ he said, his voice quavering with joy. ‘The bishop’s curse upon the Persians – it’s come true! We’re saved! Nisibis is saved… Praise to Almighty God!’

  *

  Seven days later, in the full heat of noon, Castus stood on the steps above the Singara Gate with his officers around him. Along the rampart walks there were soldiers and militiamen, all of them gazing out across the shimmering plain that surrounded the city. The high sun blazed down on them, and in the distance the colours of land and sky flowed like running water.

  ‘Over two months,’ Egnatius said in a parched voice. ‘And now it ends.’

  Castus said nothing. He narrowed his eyes into the glare. Silence from the ramparts. Only the faint rustle of the draco banner stirring in the hot breeze.

  Through the rolling clouds of dust, the Persian army was mustering. The glimmer of armour and the bright colours of the flags bled together in the haze. Distant sounds of trumpets and drums, the far cries of men, but all of it fading steadily. Castus was looking for the royal standard, hoping for a last glimpse of that famed banner. But there was no sign of it. Perhaps, he thought, Shapur had already departed.

  And, after sixty-three days of siege, the Persian army was departing with him.

  Blackness was spreading like a smudge along the line of the enemy entrenchments. As the men on the wall watched, it formed into rising smoke trails. Then the flames appeared, bright explosions in the dusty fog. The enemy were burning their palisades, Castus realised, and the mass of huts and shelters that had formed their camp.

  The fires rose, sheets of flame dancing in the heat, all around the city. Beyond the flames, beyond the choking dust and the smoke, the vast fever-stricken army of Iran-Shahr was melting away into the emptiness to the south.

  ‘You did it,’ a dry voice said.

  Castus turned, and saw Dorotheus standing on the steps. Ephraim was beside him, the young priest now dressed in the filthy cloak and tunic of his dead bishop, Iacob.

  ‘You held the city,’ said Dorotheus. ‘I did not think it possible… but I was wrong.’

  ‘Save your words, magistrate,’ Castus said. ‘You’ll need to address your people soon. Those that survive. Set them to work, or we’ll be facing famine and fever too, just like the Persians.’

  The magistrate nodded. For a while longer the men on the wall stood in silence, watching the Persian withdrawal and the ripple of flames from the burning siege lines.

  ‘Excellency,’ Egnatius said. Castus glanced back, and saw the tribune pointing to the rampart walkway below them. Soldiers were gathering, men of all the different units, and city people too. All of them staring up at him. Several raised their arms in salute.

  Standing at the head of the steps, the sun glaring all around him, Castus lifted a hand in acknowledgement.

  ‘Victor!’ a soldier yelled.

  And at once the cry was taken up by all the men around him. Their shouts rose from the walls, spreading along the ramparts in both directions in a wave of noise.

  ‘Victor! Victor! Defender of Nisibis!’

  XXIX

  Ashes and bones. Charred timber, flies and blackened dust.

  Little else remained of the Persian encampments. Ten days after Shapur’s retreat from Nisibis, and the air around the city still stank of death. The plague of mosquitoes seemed to have vanished with the Persian departure, but the atmosphere of pestilence remained. Riding out from the Edessa Gate, Castus felt his horse shudder and flinch beneath him. He shortened the reins, and pulled a scarf over his mouth as he passed through the wasteland of destruction. Five hundred paces, and he moved beyond the last of the ruined tower-tombs and saw open country ahead of him. The road stretched away to the shimmering horizon. And from the point where road and horizon met rolled the vast low dust cloud of an advancing army.

  For days all Castus had wanted to do was ride west, away from the parched and battered city and the troops he commanded, back towards Antioch, towards his wife and daughter and the peace he had once known. But the west was an uncertain place to him now; what had happened in Antioch since he had left, months before? Whenever he looked towards the setting sun he felt a great yearning in his soul, but a sense of warning too. So he sent out his messengers, attended to his command, and waited.

  Already word had come back from the outside world. Scouts had returned from the south, reporting that Shapur had withdrawn beyond Singara. But from the north and east had come news of a smaller Persian force, under the command of the king’s cousin, Prince Narses, sent to devastate the upper Tigris valley and the Armenian borderland. Amida and Bezabde had held out against him, and now Narses too was pulling back southward along the river. But from the west had come no news at all – until now.

  Waiting beside the road with his bodyguard and standard-bearer, Castus watched the vanguard of the marching column appear out of the billowing dust. He picked out their banners: Legion I Illyricorum, XVI Flavia Firma, III Gallica and Cyrenaica, IV Scythica and Martia… these were the men that had been based at Soura on the Euphrates, in readiness for Constantine’s grand offensive against Persia. A campaign that would never happen. Galloping out ahead of them, with his mounted guard behind him, came their commander.

  ‘You took your time,’ Castus said with a crooked smile as the man made his salute. Flavius Quintianus was one of Castus’s own appointees, a hard-faced veteran soldier with a long career in command.

  ‘Apologies, excellency,’ the officer said stiffly. ‘We got the order to march north from Soura nearly three weeks ago. I was instructed to wait at Edessa for Valerius Mucatra to arrive with the field army from Antioch, but when I heard that the enemy had lifted the siege, I reckoned you’d need supplies and reinforcement…’

  ‘You did well,’ Castus said, and leaned from the saddle to clap him on the shoulder. A billow of dust rose. Clearly Quintianus had made his own assessment of the situation, and decided to ignore his orders. No doubt, Castus thought, those orders had come direct from the palace at Antioch.

  He glanced at the columns of carts, piled with sacks of grain and amphorae of wine and oil, that were rolling steadily along the road towards him between the lines of marching men. With infantry and cavalry combined, there were nearly ten thousand soldiers in Quintianus’s command. Yes, he had done very well. But Castus could tell that the officer had more to tell him yet, and wanted to wait until they were in a private place to do so.

  ‘Camp your force to the north of the city,’ he said, ‘upstream and well away from the old Persian lines. When you’re ready, find me in the city Strategion. You can make your full report then.’

  *

  The slaves were lighting the lamps by the time Quintianus was announced. Castus ordered the chamber cleared and the doors sealed. Only then did he listen to the news from the west. As Quintianus spoke, Castus’s jaw tightened and he drew in a long slow breath.

  ‘So Constantius is Augustus now?’ he asked. ‘It’s confirmed?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ the officer replied. ‘The young emperor’s still on the Danube somewhere, either fighting the Sarmatians or meeting his brothers. But since Ablabius was removed and Dracilianus took control, that’s been the official word from Antioch.’

  Castus had already noticed that the legion detachments carried the portrait of young Constantius on their standards, where the image of his father had once been displayed. But there was more to come.

  ‘What else?’

  Quintianus shifted nervously. ‘Excellency,’ he said. ‘We also hear that Valerius Mucatra’s been promoted to Magister Equitum in your place… There’s a story that you’ve been accused of treason against the new emperor. Dracilianus has ordered that you should be seized and brought to Antioch under guard…’

  ‘What?’ Castus said, stunned.


  Quintianus could not meet his eye. ‘And he’s holding your wife and family under arrest in the city too. If you don’t surrender, they’ll answer for your actions.’

  Turning his back on the officer, Castus stared blindly at the far wall. His heart was in his throat, thunder in his head. For a few long heartbeats he fought to control himself. All the apprehension he had felt over the last ten days had gained sudden and terrible focus. He felt his face reddening with furious despair.

  ‘The troops believe this?’ he gasped. ‘That I’m…?’

  ‘No, no they don’t,’ Quintianus said quickly. ‘That is… they don’t know what to think. Everything’s so confused now. But they can see that you’ve held the city here – you turned back the Persians…’

  The idea that the soldiers might doubt him, might think him disloyal, was far more painful to Castus than the news of Dracilianus’s condemnation. And what if this new force from the west carried a contagion, a seed of mistrust that could spread through his entire command? Perhaps even Quintianus… No, he could not allow himself to believe that. Marcellina and Aeliana were captives, their lives held as forfeit for his own. It was intolerable, after all that he had done.

  With Quintianus dismissed, Castus summoned Sabinus and Diogenes to join him. Once they arrived he again ordered the doors closed behind them. He could allow nothing of what was spoken to escape the room – not yet.

  ‘But this is madness!’ Sabinus declared when Castus had told them what he had learned. ‘Father,’ he said, leaping to his feet, ‘let me ride for Antioch at once – or to find the emperor! I can explain everything to him…’

  ‘No,’ Castus said firmly. ‘If you go back west you’ll be seized too, and Dracilianus’ll have another hostage. We don’t know what the new emperor believes, or even where he is.’

  ‘Then what?’ Sabinus exclaimed. ‘We just sit here and wait for Mucatra to arrive with the field army? He has eighteen thousand men with him!’

  Diogenes was plucking idly at the frayed hem of his cloak. He peered into the dark corner of the room for a moment before speaking. ‘It seems to me, brother,’ he said, ‘that a certain freedom of movement remains to us. You have an army – if a small one – and the opportunity to use it. Not against Mucatra, that would be madness… But there is still another enemy in the field, is there not?’

  Castus had already been turning over the options in his mind while he waited for the other men to arrive. The messengers from the north had told him that Prince Narses was retreating down the eastern bank of the Tigris. His army was small, perhaps smaller than the combined force that Castus now commanded. Trap it, defeat it, and Castus might hope to erase the ignominious defeat of Romulianus at Zagurae, and destroy any chance of a second Persian invasion that year. And in the process, he would demonstrate his loyalty to the emperor. Could Mucatra and Dracilianus argue with that?

  But even as he considered the idea, a darker thought rose to shadow his mind.

  If he himself were killed in the fighting, Marcellina and his daughter, and all of his household, his friends and followers, would be saved.

  Victory, then; or a glorious death. Those were his only options.

  ‘We’re soldiers,’ he said quietly. ‘We do what we must. Summon the officers at dawn.’

  *

  The road from Nisibis to the Tigris River ran for sixty miles, dead straight across the flat plains of eastern Mesopotamia. It would be a hard march. Only a day before the kalends of September, and in the broiling late summer heat the ground was parched and dry, the air simmering. Every breath burned. There were settlements along the road, at Sisara and Sapha, but Castus knew the wells there would be almost dry as well. He would march his men in the cool of morning and evening, and by night if necessary. But still it would not be easy, and he needed to push them hard if he wanted to reach the river in time to intercept Narses and bring him to battle.

  But as the army mustered on the level ground, a mile east of the city just outside the old Persian siege lines, Castus felt a firm sense of purpose firing his blood. Alongside the troops Quintianus had brought with him, Castus had drawn another two thousand picked men from the surviving defenders of Nisibis, placing them under the command of Egnatius and Lycianus, Gunthia and Barbatio. They made a fine sight as they assembled on the plain; there were even a dozen ballistae taken from the city walls, mounted on light carts. But Castus knew that he was short of cavalry – barely a thousand horsemen accompanied his army.

  He was with the vanguard troops, discussing the order of march with Barbatio, when a rider galloped up to him. The man flung a salute as he dragged his horse to a halt. ‘Excellency!’ he cried. ‘Message from Quintianus – scouts have sighted a force to the west of us!’

  Castus felt his mouth dry at once. He peered back along the stationary column of men, into the bright haze on the western horizon. Then, with a signal to Sabinus and his staff, he pulled his horse around and kicked it into a gallop.

  ‘Cavalry,’ Lycianus said, once Castus had located him and Quintianus. The scout commander was shading his eyes, squinting into the glare. ‘See the high dust cloud there, fading to the south? Quite a few thousand of them, and they’re coming this way.’

  Sitting heavily in the saddle, Castus stared until he could make out the cloud. Surely Mucatra could not have caught up with them so fast? But if this was his cavalry vanguard, then the rest of his force could not be far behind. With a sharp ache, Castus sensed his last desperate hope slipping from his grasp.

  ‘Strange sort of formation,’ Quintianus said, his teeth bared as he watched the horizon. ‘Don’t seem to be in column at all. Could they be Persians, d’you think?’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ Castus growled. He signalled for Sabinus and his mounted bodyguard to form up around him, then nudged his horse forward again.

  Steadily the dust on the horizon thickened, and Castus began to make out the leading riders. They were advancing across the plain in a ragged mass rather than a regular military array. He rode further, sweat slicking his brow.

  ‘Do you see what I see?’ Sabinus said, leaning forward in his saddle.

  Castus nodded, and began to smile.

  Now he could hear the high yells of the advancing horde, the wild barbarian cries. There were camels with them, forging through the dust with one and sometimes two men mounted high upon them. In the wavering heat the figures of animals and riders appeared to warp and stretch.

  Reining to a halt, Castus sat and waited for them to approach. The advancing horde had split into two long curving horns, ponies and fast camels racing forward on either flank, surrounding him and his escort. Dust rose around them in a swirling ochre fog.

  And out of the fog, mounted on a tall white camel, came Hind.

  The Queen of the Tanukhids wore a white linen scarf wrapped around her head, but drew it from her face as she approached. She had a padded linen vest over her tunic, a bow and a lance on her saddle, and carried a cavalry mace in one hand like a sceptre. Heavy gold medallions hung at her neck. To either side of her, mounted warriors sat with lances ready.

  Castus’s horse backed and shied at the sight and scent of the camels. Shortening his reins, Castus brought the animal under control.

  ‘I expected you months ago, phylarch,’ he called.

  Hind threw her head back contemptuously. ‘Three moons,’ she cried, her harsh voice carrying through the dust, ‘and we have no word from Antioch, none from your emperor. Where are the insignia of command you promised?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Castus told her, then gestured towards the walls of Nisibis. ‘I’ve been here. Holding off the King of Persia!’

  ‘This we know,’ the queen replied. ‘Already my people have fought with the Persian insects, driving them southward as they retreated. But what is our treaty with Rome? Where is your emperor now?’

  ‘That I cannot say,’ Castus told her. ‘But I have an army, and I intend to march east to the Tigris. Are we allies, or not?’ />
  He knew that Hind and her Saracens must have been waiting for many days to see how the siege of Nisibis developed, before committing themselves. They were scavengers, outriders of war. But as he gazed around at the wild desert horsemen that surrounded him, he remembered what Egnatius had once said. The finest light cavalry on earth. Hind must have several thousand of them with her, ragged and ferocious, tireless in the heat. Castus felt a tight itch in his right hand, and rubbed his scalp.

  ‘Allies?’ Hind said, staring down from her camel. ‘With Rome, no.’ Then her face split into a grin, her teeth gleaming very white. ‘But with you, Aurelios Kastos – yes. We will go to kill Persians with you!’

  And Castus grinned back at her as the Saracens began to whoop and raise their lances to the burning sky.

  Now, he thought. Now we are ready for battle.

  *

  They were at Sapha, two days east, when the scouts brought word of another force approaching them from the wilderness. The flyblown little settlement on the road had been sacked by Shapur’s men months before, the garrison of the fort butchered and the well fouled with the dead. Castus’s men were camped a short way further on, in a grove of pistachio trees and some scrubby fields where they could dig for water. All of them were weary, and as the evening darkened quickly into night many had already flung themselves down to sleep.

  The scouts found Castus in his command tent and made their report. ‘They’re still a day or two south, dominus,’ the exarch leading them told him, ‘but moving fast. Persians, we’re sure of it. A powerful force, mostly cavalry. They had light horsemen ahead of them, and we lost a couple of our boys before we got clear.’

  ‘Surely there aren’t any Persians still on this side of the Tigris?’ Egnatius said.

  ‘Seems we were wrong about that,’ Castus said quietly. He stared at the haze of tiny insects swarming around the lamp flames. His army was a day’s march west of the river; the scouts had confirmed that the bridge was still standing, but they would need to move fast if they were to reach it before Narses. Frowning heavily, he contemplated the news. Could Shapur have left a force at Singara? How would such a force have known that he was marching eastwards?