Anthony Riches - Thunder of the Gods

September AD 184

‘Well now Tribune, are you still sure you wouldn’t rather be back in Antioch with your young friends?’

Gaius Vibius Varus looked down from his horse at the centurion marching alongside him with a quick smile, easy in his relationship with the older man despite their twenty-year age difference and the social gulf between them.

‘It’s a difficult choice you pose, First Spear. On the one hand, I could be lounging around drinking wine and watching exquisite young ladies oil each other up for my entertainment. On the other, here I am, breathing in the fart-laden dust of five hundred men’s boots.’

He paused for a moment, looking up at the sky and pursing his lips as if in thought. The cohort’s senior centurion grinned up at him, flicking away a vicious-looking fly that was hovering over his head with a practised sweep of his vine stick.

‘You forgot to mention the heat, the insects, the constant moaning of soldiers on the march, the occasional screams of abuse from my more vigorous centurions …’

He winked at the younger man.

‘Which is to say all of them. That and the fact that any “young ladies” you encounter in Nisibis will have bandier legs than most cavalrymen you’ve ever met.’

Varus shrugged.

‘Surprising though it might seem, First Spear, I didn’t actually have whoring on my mind when I persuaded my father to use his influence to get me a tribunate with the Third Gallic.’

The older man, technically his subordinate but very much the master of all he surveyed, and happy enough to indulge a tribune whose apparent disdain for the differences between them was in pleasant contrast to the usual attitudes of sons of the aristocracy towards the soldiers they commanded, snorted gentle derision.

‘Which is quite unlike most of your colleagues, if I might be so bold. Antioch sees a good sight more of you young gentlemen than the fortress at Zeugma ever will, and as for Nisibis …’

Varus barked out a harsh laugh, his mimicry of the legion’s senior tribune uncannily accurate.

‘Only a bloody fool ever makes the march to Nisibis without direct orders, young Vibius Varus! The whole town positively stinks of unwashed Arabs.’

The centurion smirked at the precision of his tribune’s imitation of their mutual superior.

‘And the women ! Dear gods, the women are fit for nothing better than servicing the common soldiery!’

The senior centurion shrugged, conceding the point.

‘Tribune Umbrius has something of a point, as it happens. You’ll see the wisdom of his words soon enough, once you’ve spent a few days with nothing more entertaining to fill them than walking the city’s walls and staring out into the emptiness that surrounds the place. You mark my words, young Tribune, you’ll be yearning for the delights of Antioch soon enough …’

He fell silent, his sharp eyes narrowing at the sight of a half-dozen horsemen galloping back down the road that led away into the east.

‘What’s got them moving so fast, I wonder? Trumpeter, sound the halt!’

The long column of soldiers stopped marching at the horn’s signal, their officers watching with calculating expressions as the cohort’s scouts came down their line at a fast trot. The horsemen’s leader jumped down from his mount and saluted the centurion with the look of a hunted man, belatedly turning to repeat the gesture towards Varus. His face was seamed from a lifetime spent in the saddle under desert skies, although he was little more than a decade older than the tribune.

‘What is it Abbas? Did that pretty little mare of yours get stung on the arse?’

The officer’s tone was light, but there was no mistaking the look on his face. The scout pointed down the road to the cohort’s front as he replied, his words a near gabble.

‘Horsemen! More horsemen than I can count!’

The first spear nodded slowly, as if deliberately refusing to allow himself to be infected by the panic that was clearly gripping the man before him.

‘What sort of horsemen?’

The scout gestured again, looking back over his shoulder as if he expected whatever it was he’d seen to come over the horizon at any moment.

‘Archers. Many archers. And cataphracti …’

Varus started at the word, drummed into him years before by his Greek tutor. One of the riders waiting behind him muttered something unintelligible in their own language, clearly keen to be gone, and the scout gestured angrily for silence without turning from the officers, bowing to the centurion before speaking again. His voice was quiet, and to Varus’s ears carried the solemnity of a funeral orator.

‘First Spear, you are a good man. I have enjoyed marching with you, and I will pray to my god for you.’

The centurion reached out a hand, gripping the other man’s arm as he turned to remount.

‘And where do you think you’re fucking going?’

The scout looked down at the hand, then raised his gaze to the Roman’s face.

‘To stay here is to die here, Centurion. I choose to live. And you need word of this to reach the city of the bridge, no?’

The Roman released his grip, nodding slowly at the scout’s logic.

‘How many cataphracti ? Could they be local troops or some sort of bandit gang?’

The scout shook his head quickly.

‘So many armoured men, the land shines like polished silver. These are not bandits. There are too many of them.’

He leapt into his horse’s saddle, threw the two men a hasty salute and led his compatriots away at a fast trot.

‘You’re letting them go, First Spear?’

The older man nodded, grinning grimly at Varus’s bemusement.

‘It was either that or I’d have had to order them killed. And he’s right. If these horsemen are what he believes them to be, then the legion at Zeugma needs to know that the treacherous bastards have invaded Osrhoene. If we’re lucky, they’ll have seen our scouts and decided not to pick a fight today. After all, it’s been a long time since the Parthians were any real threat to the frontier-’

A chorus of shouts from the front of the column gave the lie to his hopes, and Varus straightened his body in the saddle to gaze out to the east, over the heads of the stationary column of soldiers, as a solid mass of cavalry began to rise into view from a fold in the landscape. He shook his head in disbelief as the Parthian army continued to emerge into view, hundreds upon hundreds of horsemen with a mass of armoured warriors at their core, whose polished armour made the sun’s reflections from the iron plates almost painful.

‘What can you see lad?’

The younger man was silent for a moment more, until a tap on the shoulder from the centurion’s stick wrenched his attention from the oncoming enemy.

‘It’s like something out of the history books …’

He glanced down at the centurion apologetically.

‘Sorry First Spear, just not what I was expecting to see when I climbed out from under my blanket this morning. We seem to be standing in the way of several thousand rather unfriendly looking cavalry …’

The centurion was already running for the column’s head with his trumpeter hot on his heels, and after a moment’s consideration of the options, the young tribune dismounted, handing the horse’s reins to a soldier, and ran after him.

Stopping alongside the foremost century, the first spear looked out across the mile of flat, dusty ground that lay between his men and a thick line of horsemen who were trotting their mounts towards the Romans.

‘Form square! Deploy to the left on me! Double time! ’