Gordon Doherty - Land of the Sacred Fire

Gallus smoothed at his chin with a thumb and forefinger. ‘Yet the eastern defences are sturdy, are they not? The fortifications along the Strata Diocletiana are legendary,’ he suggested, drawing a finger along the line on the map that ran from Armenia in the north down past Palmyra in the south. He had heard many tales of the proud network of stone forts that studded that desert road. ‘Surely — limitanei or otherwise — these legions here could bed in and man our strongholds should Shapur choose to invade?’

Valens pulled a wry smile. ‘The Strata Diocletiana has fallen into grievous disrepair. There are scarcely enough legionaries to garrison those forts, let alone funds to repair them. If Shapur turns his armies upon them, they will fall.’

Gallus frowned. Suddenly, the memory of the ballistae lining Antioch’s mountaintop eastern walls took on an air of desperation — like some final bastion. ‘And the Persians, what forces can they muster against us?’

Valens’ gaze grew distant. ‘Including the Armenian garrison, nearly one hundred thousand warriors. Perhaps a third are paighan — peasant infantry, many of them chained and forced to march. But the heart of the Persian army, over half, are Savaran.’

‘The Savaran?’ Gallus asked. ‘The Persian cavalry?’

Valens’ brow knitted in a frown. ‘Cavalry? Aye, perhaps you could call them that. Though the empire over I have yet to see riders so fierce.’

‘Emperor?’ Gallus asked, agitated by the sense of unease creeping back into his gut.

‘The detail we can come to later on,’ Valens waved a hand as if swatting a mayfly, ‘but you should be aware that the Sassanid rulers have changed the Persian way of war. In these last decades, they have shed the last vestiges of the old Parthian dynasty. They have fine forts, broad roads — they even model their borders on our limites. Their standing armies are as well-drilled as any legion.’ He stopped, screwing up his eyes and pinching the top of his nose as if fending off a headache. ‘Suffice to say they are a formidable foe.’

Gallus smoothed the tip of his chin. ‘Perhaps their unity — or lack of it — might be exploited? If Shapur has his enemies as you say,’ he offered.

‘A salient question, Tribunus, and one I have exhausted in these last months.’ Valens’ eyes sparkled keenly. ‘Unity is a multi-faceted concept. To a man, the Persians fight under the banner of their Zoroastrian god, Ahura Mazda, and unanimously rail against anything they see as the work of his antithesis, Ahriman . After that, internecine rivalries and power struggles muddy Persian politics so wickedly that few have a clear picture of how things truly stand. The spahbads who answer to Shapur control vast wings of the Savaran. They are like kings themselves, fiercely proud of their satrapies and their ancient and noble houses. And then there are the Zoroastrian Magi who walk before the armies, carrying torches that blaze with the Sacred Fire, a symbol of their faith. These men are mystical, powerful figures who control the hearts of people, armies and kings alike.’

‘It sounds like we could stoke some trouble that might keep them occupied?’ Gallus persisted.

Valens’ lips played with a smile. ‘Again, you echo my thoughts of recent times. Indeed, I have tried. Last year I sent a party of riders into The Satrapy of Elam in an attempt to bribe the spahbad and his army.’

‘Did the riders return?’ Gallus asked, sure he knew the answer already.

‘In a manner of speaking, yes. Their heads were delivered to a fort on the Strata Diocletiana, mouths stuffed with Roman coins,’ as Valens said this, his gaze faltered. ‘The Persians will not turn upon one another for a few bags of Roman gold. . and our coffers are all but empty in any case,’ he said dryly. ‘Subterfuge of any other kind — stoking up rivalries, instigating blood-feuds, that kind of thing — takes time, Gallus. And I fear time is running out. This year, next year at the latest, the Persian armies will fall upon these lands.’

‘Very well,’ Gallus nodded, his gut twisting further. ‘So if invasion is inevitable, and our fortifications cannot withstand such an assault, then why have you called us east, Emperor? Surely my vexillatio can offer little to change this?’

Valens shook his head slowly. ‘On the contrary, Tribunus. I know that you and your hardy men can.’ He clapped his hands and a pair of slaves hurried in with a jug of watered wine and a plate of fresh bread, figs and cheese. ‘Fill your belly and I will explain.’

Valens poured a goblet of wine and added three parts water, then swirled the concoction, gazing at the surface. ‘Fourteen years ago, an emperor died on the edge of a Persian blade.’

‘Julian,’ Gallus nodded, folding a piece of bread around a chunk of cheese and chewing upon it. He washed the mouthful down with water, forgoing wine as always. ‘I remember his reign. I was a young lad at the time. The Apostate, they called him — he had little time for Christian meekness.’ He said this with the beginnings of a dry chuckle, then remembered that Valens was a staunch Arian Christian and thought better of it.

Valens beheld him with a solemn gaze; ‘Then you will know of the man who succeeded him.’

‘Jovian,’ Gallus affirmed. ‘I remember little of his reign, other than that it was short. Very short. He was dead within a year, was he not?’

‘Jovian was a sot, Tribunus,’ Valens said, the stark words echoing around the chamber. ‘He stumbled into power and then swiftly drowned himself in wine, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. They say he died of accidental poisoning, but I heard the truth — he was found, soaked in his own vomit, surrounded by wineskins. Yet it was not wine that killed him. It was fear — a fear that he could escape only in a drunken haze. It takes a brave man to bear the burden of empire on his shoulders. The deaths of countless thousands haunting your dreams. The staring eyes of the living.’

Valens’ tone was clipped, yet his eyes betrayed a hint of glassiness. Gallus wondered if this was pity for poor Jovian, or for himself.

‘But on the day he acceded to the purple — the day after Julian had been slain, when the Roman army were pinned like wounded deer to the banks of the Tigris by the Savaran lances — Jovian found himself forced to concede a humiliating peace with Shapur. He gave away almost everything the empire had worked so hard to gain. Centuries of struggle, oceans of legionary blood, gone in a heartbeat.’ Valens leant forward, the lamplight dancing in his eyes. ‘But there is a chance, just a sliver of chance, that Jovian negotiated one thing in Rome’s favour that day. Something that, all these years later, could be the saviour of the east.’

Gallus’ spine tingled. The oil lamp on the edge of the table flickered as a cool night breeze tumbled in through the window like the breath of a shade.

‘Shapur is a ferocious adversary, but a noble one. It is thought that somehow Jovian convinced the shahanshah to agree to a lasting truce. That the lands west of the Euphrates were forever to remain unburdened by the Persian yoke.’

Gallus’ eyes widened. ‘That’s everything. . Antioch, Beroea, Damascus, the Strata Diocletiana.’

‘Now you are beginning to understand, Tribunus?’ Valens’ earnest smile returned. ‘A perpetual peace. The border kingdoms — Armenia, Iberia and the hordes of Saracen nomads in the Syrian Desert — would support such a treaty. They would stand with us against any Persian invasion.’

‘Then we must present this treaty. . ’

Valens held up a hand, fingers splayed. ‘Five copies of the treaty were prepared. Five scrolls. Two were given to Jovian and his retinue, three remained with Shapur. But in the flight across the Tigris, the Roman copies were lost. Indeed, much was lost; some soldiers took to wading into the river in their armour and drowned in their haste. Many arrived back in their homelands starved and dressed in filthy rags like beggars.’