"Our senex there. We'll all turn old and gray," the young aristocrat mocked. "If we live that long."
But the centurion turned his head and glared, and Lucilius's voice softened to a whisper and a too-hectic laugh. Many of the men had not drunk all day. Despite Rufus's oaths, Quintus knew some of them were stealthily lapping up the thick water. There would be fever in the marsh before dawn.
Behind him, some of the younger tribunes diced. Fortunes could rise and fall on the throw of the dice, even in the Legions. That was one of the ways Lucilius had gotten himself into trouble. Quintus had never had any money to play. Callous to play now, he thought—not that it mattered. Still, if one of Crassus's staff happened by, the gamers would regret it in the short time they probably had left.
But they were undoubtedly privileged, as usual. Cassius and his troops were likelier to stay with the proconsul, enjoying whatever comforts he had been able to wrest from the wreck of his armies. Rufus's deep rumble set about disposing the men as comfortably as might be until dawn, when they must break free of the swamp or die. Quintus heard himself repeat orders—to his surprise, he spoke the right ones—as if in a waking dream that differed totally from the memories he had brushed against.
"Why don't they come after us?" a young Legionary whispered in the darkness, then fell silent when someone chuckled.
"Why should they? Got us pinned here, haven't they? They can just wait and pick us off, unless they get bored and want to go hunting. They'll wait till dawn for anything. Or offer us terms. But that's a hope I wouldn't count on, son. However, they just might want some new slaves to push around."
Mumbles about the guards just sneaking off into the swamp rose. Rufus's eye swept round, and the men were silent. Quintus too had heard those voices in the ranks, careless around a green tribune as they dared not be around the wily old veteran. Only hours ago, he had heard them as he stood sweating in the square, too hot to feel as hungry or thirsty as they all had been kept for days. Some men had collapsed from the heat, from the lack of proper food, water, and rest, which had not been enough to keep the Legions marching at their best-known pace, let alone the cavalry pace Crassus had been goaded into ordering. He had heard their mutters of hope when, looking out, no one saw any of the deadly Parthian cataphracts.
And then The Surena had signaled. At his command, the drums and bronze bells throbbed, all over the battlefield. The Parthian prince was tall, handsome for a barbarian, much as Quintus hated to admit it. His eyes were huge, painted against the sun, which could blind you here, where even in May the sunlight burned. A dancing boy's trick, but no one said that after seeing the killing light in those eyes—and feeling the sun's glare themselves.
Sunlight blazed off the gleaming arms of The Surena's deadly riders and shimmered from thin, brilliant banners that floated in the still air like tongues of fire. Helmets and breastplates caught fire as the light glinted off the armor of the Parthian horse archers. Some of the men were Parthians. Others, though, were unlike their prince. They were rather small and yellow and bowed of leg. Their eyes seemed hidden in slanted folds, and they smiled at the Romans as a glutton gloats, facing his feast table.
"The Seres," Quintus had heard. They had made the steel that the Romans knew they were about to taste. And the banners?
"What would that stuff cost in Rome?" some fool with a patrician accent breathed.
"More than you want to pay ... sir," rasped a centurion before the drums and bells drowned out his words.
To their eternal credit, none of the Legionaries had broken. They stood firm in the hollow square, twelve cohorts on each side, Crassus, his pet cavalry, and the baggage in the center. Quintus got a glimpse of the proconsul. He was sweating—they all were—and the whites of his eyes were showing. Even as he watched, Cassius flung down his hands in a gesture of disgust.
"That doesn't look good," muttered the man next to Quintus. "Probably told him that the cavalry should be divided up. We should be spread out, not penned up like this."
Hard to tell when the battle started. At first, it had seemed promising. The Surena's cataphracts raced forward, to be stopped by the deep Roman formation. The arrows fell like deadly rain against the Roman testudo. It held, of course: Like a strongly shelled tortoise, they would wait for the archers' quivers to empty.
The Legions had settled in to wait for the archers to run out of arrows. When such flights grew sparser, the Romans cheered. Rufus had started swearing then, in between shouting the orders that let the buccinatores horns bray before those trumpeters screamed and died, shot by men who aimed at the glinting metal of their horns. When they fell, he had shouted, reforming his men, cursing and begging them to fight and die like Romans. Ultimately, the drums had drowned out his voice and hopes. You couldn't tell the sweat on his face from the tears.
The drums sounded again as the Romans fled, a hateful mercy, as the Parthians slaughtered the wounded Crassus had ordered must be left behind. Quintus wondered if he would ever forget those screams and cries for aid—or for their mothers.
How long since Quintus had been able to cast his helmet down, bury his face in flowing water, and drink his fill? He could not remember. His canteen held the water and vinegar mixture that now stank of leather, and precious little of it. Water trickled in the swamp near Carrhae. Thirsty, he had always seemed thirsty since they left the Euphrates for the desert that was so different from his home near the Tiber.
One or two of the men had already escaped into memories and tumbled forward like men asleep. Rufus had slain another who refused to move, who curled up like a newborn, whimpering deep in his throat.
"Better than just leaving him, sir," he muttered, then spat, cursing how the desert got into his throat.
Memories flowed on, trickling like the water in the swamp. In the desert, Quintus had dreamed of moisture. Now, he had far too much. Sweat trickled under his filthy tunic. If the night got cold, he could expect fever, and that was probably the best death he could expect. Maybe he could rest...
The underofficers had hoped to camp their men by the little Ballisur stream for a night, but even that mercy had been denied them by Crassus's son Publius and his Gaulish riders. Press on at the wretched cavalry's pace, press on, without food or water to sustain a mule, let alone Rome's mules, the men of the Legions. It was a gift from Mars that more men had not fallen out, never to rise.
Or perhaps the gift from Mars was embodied in Rufus, whose curses, made more foul and more frightening by the unwonted quiet of his voice, flowed as filthy as the water in the marsh by the walled city—the city they must reach if they hoped to save their lives and the old soldier was to get the wooden sword he joked, in his rare good moods, about looking forward to. Everyone had always played along, though a good First Spear was likelier to get a castra to command than the reward of a freed gladiator. Best not think of them either. Life as a slave might be the best fate any of them could face.
Quintus shut his eyes. Life as a gladiator was no mercy while Crassus ruled. Young though Quintus was, he could still remember how brutally the proconsul had put down the gladiators' revolt. The roads had been lined with crosses, and the air smelled like death. Crassus could be ruthless when surrounded by an invincible army. Still, Spartacus ... the gladiator turned renegade had been the bogey of Quintus's childhood, just as The Surena, no doubt, would haunt the rest of his life, however brief it was.