by Ian Ross
Only an hour later, he had his confirmation of the initial report. A group of Hind’s Saracens, riding far to the south on a foraging mission, had sighted the advancing Persians before nightfall. They had brought a prisoner back with them too, a Syrian from Singara, who had been forced to lead the enemy across the desert.
‘They have six thousand horse, dominus,’ the man said, kneeling on the matting before Castus’s stool. ‘Heavy cataphracts and archers. Their plan is to cut off the road behind you, then swing east and pin you against the river.’
Castus sat with clenched teeth, his fists braced on his knees. He had guessed as much. The cavalry advancing from the south would trap him, and then Narses’ army would move down from the north along the far bank of the river and crush him. A classic pincer. But how was it possible? In order to coordinate their advance, the two Persian armies must have known of his plans days ago, before he had even left Nisibis.
‘We have to retreat,’ Egnatius declared. ‘Otherwise they’ll surround us on all sides. Fall back to Nisibis, fast as the men can march…’
‘It’s too far,’ Castus said. ‘If their cavalry catch us in open country, strung out along the road, they’ll cut us to bits.’
How had they known? The thought pressed at his skull.
Lycianus appeared to have read his mind. ‘The Saracens,’ he said quietly. ‘Hind’s people.’ He shot a quick glance towards the two desert tribesmen lingering at the tent door. Neither could understand Latin. ‘They must have sent word to the Persians. She’s changed sides, dominus, it’s clear as day…’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Castus said, low in his throat. Even as he spoke, he was not sure. But if the Tanukhids had gone over to the enemy, all was lost already.
‘She’s betrayed us!’ Lycianus said with angry emphasis.
‘No.’ Castus stood up. ‘It doesn’t matter how the enemy discovered our plans. We have to find a way out.’
He was thinking fast, struggling to formulate a strategy. All that divided the converging Persian armies was the river, and the single bridge. Reach that, and they had a chance to outmanoeuvre their enemy.
‘We can’t retreat,’ he said, ‘so we advance, and quickly. Rouse the troops – all of them. We march by night. I want to be on the banks of the Tigris by sun-up.’
The messengers were already running into the darkness as Castus heard the Syrian prisoner speak once more. He turned back to the man.
‘Say that again?’
‘Their leader, dominus,’ the man said. ‘The Persian leader, the spahbed – he has vowed to kill you, I heard him say it. His name is Zamasp.’
XXX
The waters of the Tigris were a pale and tranquil blue in the early light. To the east rose the stark brown mountains of Corduene; hills closed the northern horizon, while the open plain stretched away into the haze to the west. On a scrub-covered hillock above the river, Castus stood and watched his army filing slowly across the high-arched stone bridge. Thousands of men were bunched together on the western bank, waiting to cross. On the eastern side, below his vantage point, the units were forming quickly and marching away southward in a ragged column, already a mile or more long. Castus stared at them, fuming with anxious frustration at the delay. If the Persians attacked now, from either direction, the result would be catastrophic.
‘Such a sight,’ Diogenes said, ‘makes one realise just how numerous an army of this size can be. I’m reminded of Herodotus’s account of the ancient Kings of Persia calculating the numbers of their troops. They herded them in sections into a certain sized pen, and then counted how many times the pen had been filled!’
‘Fascinating,’ Castus muttered grimly. At least, he thought, his secretary had consented to resume an approximation of civilised costume. Then he stared back at the crossing once more. Men and horses funnelled across the narrow bridge in a ceaseless line, goaded by the yells of their officers. In the further distance, on both banks of the river, Hind’s Saracen horsemen and camel riders swarmed.
Castus glanced to the north, and then towards the western horizon. No clouds of dust betrayed the approach of a hostile force. But still he could not feel secure until his entire army was across the river and marching south, out from between the closing jaws of the enemy entrapment.
‘You won’t make them move any faster by glaring at them, brother,’ Diogenes said quietly.
Castus tightened his lips. Diogenes was right, of course. With a shrug of annoyance he turned his back on the bridge and paced across the scrubby hillock to the awning that sheltered his staff and senior officers. Riders had just come in, leaping from their horses and making their reports.
‘Dominus,’ Egnatius said, saluting as Castus stepped into the shade of the awning. ‘The scouts have sighted Narses, but his main force is still half a day to the north of us. It looks like Zamasp’s cavalry have yet to pass Sapha.’
‘Good,’ Castus said. He had ordered the men in the ranks to rest and eat at first light, before they commenced the river crossing. All being well, they could get over the bridge and march another few miles yet before the first Persian skirmishers caught up with them. He breathed deeply, willing the anxiety that tensed his body to lift.
Hind had arrived shortly before him, her attendants setting out a stool for her to sit on, and her bodyguards gathering close around her. The Roman officers kept a wary distance from the group; Castus noticed Lycianus in particular barely concealing his unease.
‘Brothers,’ Castus announced. ‘Allies,’ with a nod towards Hind and her party. ‘With the blessing of the gods, we’ve evaded the Persian trap. All of you have done well, but we can’t rest yet. Now we set the terms of engagement.’
He glanced around at the faces of the men. They were tired, but resolute. Every one of them waiting on his orders. Hind regarded him with lowered eyelids, smiling slightly.
‘It’s my intention,’ Castus went on, ‘to march south down the Tigris and find a position where we can turn and confront the Persians. Zamasp will cross the river behind us and link up with Narses – we’ll have to fight their combined force, so we’ll be outnumbered. But there’s nothing new about that!’
A stir of wry laughter. Many of those present had served on the walls of Nisibis. Castus picked up a cup of wine and sipped.
‘I aim to find a position,’ he went on, ‘where the enemy won’t be able to outflank us, and there won’t be any hostile force behind us either. I want scouts out ahead of our column for ten miles, surveying the terrain and reporting back here.’
Again he paused. His throat was dry; wine would help with that, but the heat was beginning to make his head ache. He had spoken in Latin, and Diogenes was already repeating his words in Greek, for Hind’s benefit. But she broke in before the secretary had finished.
‘My people know of a place,’ she told Castus.
The officers turned to her, frowning.
‘South of here, one hundred stades, maybe more,’ she went on. ‘Hills come down to the river. And there is a stream, a wadi, dry at this season. It cuts through the hills to meet the river. We call it Nahr As’ara. High land behind, a village, and good water from the ground.’
Castus nodded slowly. It sounded right. He tried not to catch Lycianus’s eye. ‘Then we march for this… Narasara,’ he said. ‘If it’s as good as you say, we wait for the Persians to follow us there. And may the gods watch over us!’
*
The position was indeed as good as Hind had claimed. As good, Castus thought, as he might have hoped to find. From the north, following the road across rolling open country, the watercourse appeared only as an undulation in the landscape, with rising ground behind it. But from the far side, the situation looked quite different.
Riding along the crest of the stony ridge to the west of his lines, Castus looked down at the twisting course of the dry stream. It was scored deep, with steep banks of crumbling earth to either side. In places along the sinuous gulley there were pools of grey-green wate
r still remaining, screened by vegetation, but most of the stream bed was dry and stony, with patches of thorny scrub bushes in the hollows.
Behind him, on the south side of the ridge, a village straggled down through parched green fields and orchards to meet the road. The Corduenians who had lived there had fled at the army’s first approach the evening before, but the two wells provided good water for the troops, and Castus had established his command post in the largest of the mud-brick houses. The rest of the country was open, and arid under the September sun. Thin grass covered the slopes, dried to the colour of bleached bone. Deserted by its population, the land appeared to be sleeping. Soon enough, Castus thought, it would be awakened by the thunder of war.
He had drawn up his infantry a bowshot south of the watercourse. Eight thousand legionary troops formed two close-order lines, each four ranks deep. Quintianus held the command there, in the centre. Behind them, fifty paces back, Barbatio commanded a thousand-man reserve, to plug any gaps in the line. To the left, on the lower slopes of the ridge, the understrength detachments of the Parthica legions were posted to guard the western approaches. The Tigris was two miles away, but the ground descended in that direction into steep ravines and broken country, impassable to all but light troops. To the right, Egnatius had the entire regular cavalry force assembled in one body on the eastern flank. Lycianus had his light horsemen stationed in groups to either side, while Hind’s Saracens occupied the high ground beyond.
Gazing down at the assembled army, Castus felt a warm swell of pride rising through him. But the flutter of anxiety remained, the occasional stabs of fear. His plan of battle was simple enough, but there were always things that could go wrong. ‘Do not advance beyond the watercourse,’ he had told his commander. ‘That’s our line of defence – hold it but don’t cross it.’
And now, as he raised his eyes to the north, he could survey the gathering horde of the Persian army on the opposite slopes. All day they had been assembling, building their camp on a plateau a mile distant. Now, in the late afternoon sun, their squadrons darkened the land as far as the horizon. The familiar noise of horns and drums stirred the air.
‘You think they’ll attack today?’ Sabinus asked, reining his horse to a halt beside Castus.
‘Not today,’ Castus said. ‘They can see we’re not going anywhere, and they’ll want to rest their men and horses. But we’ll hold our positions until sundown.’
Surely by now every man in the ranks must know what they needed to do. Castus had ordered them to find the range with bows and darts, javelins and slingshot. But every time he closed his eyes he saw the ranks crushed under the Persian onslaught, the line disintegrating under the relentless hail of arrows, men cut down by the charging cataphracts as the choking dust billowed around them. Fantasies of defeat and destruction, over and over again. He suppressed a fierce shudder.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said to Sabinus, forcing himself to smile. ‘Might have time for a quick meal before sundown, eh?’
After dark, he sat on the roof of the little mud-brick house with Sabinus, Diogenes and a couple of staff officers. The rest of his senior commanders were away with their troops in their entrenched camp, and Castus was glad of the relative quiet and easy company. He found he had grown fearful of looking the other men in the eye, unsure of what he might find there.
‘The night before the battle…’ Sabinus said, rather ponderously, as he refilled the cups with thin vinegar wine. ‘I feel I should… write a poem, or something.’
Castus noticed the nervous catch in his voice. His son had fought well at Nisibis, but he had never experienced a field battle, never witnessed the powerful mounted charge of the Persian cataphracts.
‘The less you feel, the better,’ he said. ‘Try not to think too much either.’
Sabinus peered at him in the darkness. ‘I’ll try.’
But emptying the mind was far easier said than done. Once, in his younger years, Castus might have managed it. Not now. Thoughts pressed in on him, and the night seethed with images. His wife and daughter, held prisoner in Antioch. The dying Constantine, rigid with fear as he felt life and power slipping from his hands. Bishop Iacob laughing like a maniac before his altar. The fury of the battle to come.
From out in the darkness came the wild chanting of the Saracens. Singing their praises to the moon, Castus guessed. He wondered again about their loyalties, remembering Lycianus’s warnings. Too late to do anything about that now. Trust in the gods. Trust in yourself.
*
The night passed quietly, and in the coppery light of the rising sun the troops assembled once more in their battle lines. Castus rode down from the village to the scream of the trumpets and the massed yells of the centurions as they marshalled their men. The sky was already a deep pulsating blue, and every man was sweating.
Riding up onto the slope to the left of the infantry line, Castus drew his horse to a halt and swung himself down from the saddle. He had woken that morning feeling unaccountably refreshed, almost light-headed. Years seemed to have fallen from him in the night, and he felt his mind and body illuminated by a warm certainty. Something told him that it was a dangerous sort of mood, but he enjoyed it nonetheless. As he looked down along the ranks of troops he was filled with a sense of elation. Victory, he thought. Or a glorious death. Those were his only options. He raised his hands towards the sun and spoke the words of the prayer to Sol Invictus.
The Persians too seemed filled with new purpose. As the sun’s rays lit the rolling plain Castus saw their banners arrayed, their troops drawn up in formation. Far off, on a low rise near their camp, he could make out a brighter cluster of flags. Prince Narses, he guessed, surveying the battle lines just as he himself was doing.
Turning his horse, he rode down from the ridge and along the rear of the infantry lines, followed by Sabinus and his staff officers. Lycianus joined them on the way. He paused briefly at intervals, speaking to each of the senior officers. All understood their task; all were prepared for what lay ahead. Arriving at the eastern flank of the array, he saw Hind and a band of her Tanukhid Saracens moving down from their camp. They raised a guttural wailing chant as they stabbed the air with their lances, the repeated phrases bitter and scalding.
‘What are they singing?’ Castus asked Lycianus.
‘The battle hymn of the Tanukh,’ the scout commander replied. ‘Upon them, upon them, O Mighty Al-Uzza! Let our spears drink at their hearts! Let our swords drink at their hearts...!’
‘Aurelios Kastos!’ Hind cried, sitting tall in the saddle of her camel. ‘We go to make war upon the Persian insects! May the Mother of Dust overwhelm them, may she obliterate them!’
‘Ha! Ha!’ her warriors screamed.
Castus raised his hand in salute, and the Saracen horde threshed up the dust as they galloped out onto the far right flank.
And now the cries of defiance were rising from the packed ranks of the Roman infantry. A roar of voices, then a resounding clash of spears against shields, shattering the calm of the morning. From the Persian lines on the far slope came an answering cheer, building to a steady chant.
‘MARD-O-MARD! MARD-O-MARD!’
‘Anyone know what that means?’ Castus called to the officers around him.
But several of them were pointing, out towards the open ground that lay between the armies, beyond the dry watercourse. Castus stared, and made out a figure on a black horse riding down from the Persian lines. A herald rode behind him, dressed in a bright lilac tunic, and as they approached the man raised himself in the saddle and yelled towards the Roman ranks.
‘It’s a challenge,’ Diogenes said, riding up beside Castus. ‘The spahbed Zamasp desires to fight the champion of Rome, man to man.’
Castus smiled tightly, then spurred his horse forward. Sabinus cried out, and seized his bridle. ‘Father, don’t go! Let me fight him instead – I beg you!’
‘Think I’m an idiot, boy?’ Castus growled.
He shook Sabinus away from hi
m, then smiled again and advanced. Just for a moment, he admitted to himself, the idea had seemed attractive. What better way to settle this? But Zamasp would have beaten him, he was certain of that. The Persian commander was younger, a better horseman, and probably a better swordsman too. It would, Castus told himself, have been a fine way to die. But not yet.
The infantry opened a lane before him, and he rode through their ranks and out onto the gentle slope that descended to the watercourse. Slowly he walked his horse forward, until he stood opposite the Persian. Zamasp was dressed in glittering gilded scale armour, blue plumes on his shoulders, his harness decked with silk tassels. In one hand he held a lance, in the other a mace. He had removed his masked helmet, and Castus could clearly make out his hooked black moustaches and his burning black-rimmed eyes.
‘Zamasp!’ he cried, raising himself in the saddle. ‘You want a duel? Then have one! These,’ he said, gesturing back at the serried ranks of the Roman infantry, ‘are my champions! Every single one of them. Come across and fight them if you dare!’
A vast cheer went up from the Roman lines. Zamasp’s powerful black horse shied and circled. The Persian commander made no reply; he just raised his mace, and brought it swinging down. Then he turned and galloped back to rejoin his army.
Pulling on the reins, Castus began to ride along the front of the infantry lines. The mood of elation that had gripped him earlier had returned; he felt illuminated by it. The air around him glimmered in waves. He remembered the battle at Oxsa, nearly forty years before; he had stood in the ranks as an infantryman then. How young he been, and how very long ago…
‘Brothers!’ he cried, drawing his horse to a halt before the centre of the line. ‘Fellow soldiers! You see before you the bastard sons of Persia. They came to our lands hoping to sack our cities, ravage our fortresses and drag our people into slavery. But they have failed… The cities and fortresses have repelled them; the people have driven them away. Now they have to crawl back to their king and tell him of their failures!’