Harry Sidebottom - Iron and Rust

Aspines had told him that safety was not the only benefit a ruler should give. Justice was the other great gift, beyond wealth or honour. Many men had been condemned in his reign. Maximinus was unconvinced of the justice of all their convictions. Senators and equestrians fell over themselves to accuse each other. An Emperor knew only what he was told. He had asked Aspines how he should judge. Aspines had said the ruler should listen only to true friends. That was easy for the sophist to say. He had not sat on the throne of the Caesars. He did not realize that an Emperor has no true friends. Now Paulina was dead, no one spoke to him without some calculation of advantage or fear.

The wind was rising. It carried fine grit and the bitter tang of trampled wormwood. A few light clouds raced overhead; darker ones were gathering in the south. Perhaps the first of the overdue autumn storms was coming. The dust raised by the Equites Singulares blew ahead to mingle with that scuffed up by the boots of the second line of infantry. The vanguard and the bowmen were almost completely obscured. Of the thousands of men led by Flavius Vopiscus and Iotapianus, all that could be seen clearly were their standards and the helmets of some mounted officers.

Horns rang out from the front. The first flights of arrows arced up and fell like straight, black rain. The barbarians responded in kind. The infantry under Anullinus halted. The cavalry on both flanks pulled up next to them, jumping down to take the weight off the backs of their horses. Maximinus raised an arm to halt the reserve. The Horse Guards also dismounted. Maximinus remained in the saddle; unlike the troopers, he had a spare mount.

Ahead, above the roiling dust, the sky was thick with arrows. There was something thrilling and horrible about watching the shafts plunge down on unseen victims who would not glimpse them until far too late, something godlike about watching from perfect safety as other men risked everything and died in that terrible gloom.

Maximinus looked away to the right at the eastern horizon. Methodically, he scanned around through the south all the way to the west, staring at every hollow, following the shadow of every cloud. There was still nothing but the high sun and the wind riffling the dried grass, tugging at the sideoats and the silkweed.

A terrible noise, like in the high mountains when a cliff face shifts and falls, rolled back from the north. The legionaries and barbarians were fighting in front of the wagons. Maximinus peered, trying to see through the murk by an exercise of will.

‘Enemy cavalry!’ Javolenus, the bodyguard, pointed.

Off to the left, a line of tapering silhouettes was coming up between the trees on the riverbank. Emerging from the dappled shade, the bodies of the horses formed a solid dark mass with thin, flickering legs below and the shapes of their riders above. The cavalry were very black above the tan earth. More and more came, until the very ground seemed to shift.

Maximinus smiled. You had to admire whoever led the Sarmatian cavalry. The riverbanks were high, tree-fringed. The river itself must be fordable; the camp was to the south, the herds to the north. Not there this morning, the horsemen must have ridden down the shallow riverbed from the west, using the only cover in the whole steppe. At least, depending how far they had come, their mounts might be tired.

‘Modestus is outnumbered, Imperator , we must send Honoratus from the right to support him,’ Perpetuus said.

Maximinus did not answer straight away. The Consul might be right. There were at least four thousand nomad horsemen facing the two thousand riders with Modestus. But that might not be all. Maximinus traced the line of the river from the west, past where it was hidden behind the infantry fighting in front of the wagons, to where it re-emerged to the east.

‘No,’ Maximinus said. Having beckoned two mounted messengers, he sent one to Anullinus with orders to wheel his Praetorians to the right to support the cavalry of Honoratus. The other galloped off to tell Julius Capitolinus to pivot 2nd Legion Parthica to the left to aid Modestus.

The Sarmatian cavalry were coming on at a walk, getting into a fighting formation as they moved. Maximinus’ admiration for their leader increased: he was not a man to throw away his advantage with an over-hasty charge. Modestus, however, had responded well. Perhaps Timesitheus’ cousin was not as slow as most judged him. Modestus had his Moors spread out in open order covering a lot of ground to his left, while he was with his cataphracts, who were packed knee to knee, three deep.

‘ Imperator …’

‘Silence in the ranks!’ Some fools always feel the need to talk.

Maximinus surveyed the rest of the field. Like the leaves of an opening gate, the men of Julius Capitolinus and Anullinus were jogging left and right. Directly ahead, the clouds of dust coiled up to the heavens where the battle had been joined. Soon, the Roman infantry would form an enormous inverted ‘U’. The 2nd Legion had only four thousand men, compared with the eight thousand Praetorians. Maximinus judged that there would be gap between the right of Julius Capitolinus’ men and the front line. Honoratus’ troopers, back in the saddle, waited quietly on the east flank.

‘To the right!’ Javolenus said.

More mounted Sarmatians were coming up from the river in front of Honoratus’ cavalry. These nomads were scrambling over the lip, scattered and disordered. The bank must be steeper, harder to negotiate there. Their numbers were impossible to gauge as yet but, no matter how many, it would take them some time to form up.

‘Gods below, it will be another Cannae,’ Maximus said.

Maximinus silenced his son with a glare. He should have left him with the civilian officials in the camp, or back south of the Danube with the whores.

The Sarmatians on the left were moving into a slow canter. About half, in a deep phalanx, were charging Modestus’ heavy cavalry and a thousand or so heading for the Moors. The remainder, perhaps another thousand, were angling towards the gap between 2nd Legion and the infantry battle. Clearly, they intended to take the Roman left from the flank and rear, to roll up the line.

‘Equites Singulares, mount up.’

Maximinus summoned the groom with his battle charger, Borythenes. He stepped from one horse to the other without alighting. The big black stallion shifted under his weight. The boy led the hack away.

‘Form a wedge on me.’ Maximinus knew exactly what was going to happen, what he had to do. In the theatre, he might not always follow the plot of the tragedies and allusions to epics often eluded him, but on the battlefield nothing escaped him: events unfolded in his mind like the rustic dances of his youth.

When the men were ready, there was no time for a long speech. Maximinus was relieved. He raised himself up and twisted in the saddle. Fierce, bearded faces looked up at him.

‘Fellow-soldiers, let us go and hunt Sarmatians. A year’s pay to every man who rides with me.’

The men of the imperial Horse Guard roared their appreciation. These were men like himself, the sons of soldiers or northern peasants. Vopiscus or Honoratus might have given them a line or two of Virgil, but Maximinus had given them what they wanted: companionship in danger and the promise of money. Enrich the soldiers, ignore everyone else.

With his knees, Maximinus nudged Borysthenes into a walk. He did not want to arrive at the crucial place too soon or with blown horses. He led the spearpoint of armed men directly towards the centre of the front line.

The left flank was filled with wheeling cavalry. Through the palls of dust, Maximinus saw squadrons of Moors now racing towards him, now hurtling back into the fray. Javelins and arrowheads flashed in the sun. The Africans were holding their own. Things were not going so well for the cataphracts. The fighting was at close quarters, near stationary. Each side was inextricably mixed with its opponent, all cohesion gone. Outnumbered, the Roman heavy horse were giving ground. So far, the movement was slow. Not many cataphracts were down yet. They were well protected, with men and horses in metal armour. These troopers were elite veterans; unless the gods willed different, they should hold long enough. In any event, Julius Capitolinus and the 2nd Legion were behind them.