The night was long, but the beachhead held. As the first rays of the morning sun peered over the massive walls of Ctesiphon, a mere half mile distant, the entire Roman army was drawn up in battle array at the top of the high riverbank, the Tigris below them filled across its width by half a thousand bobbing transport craft. Despite Victor's initial hesitation, he had performed magnificently, clearing the ground of defenders and bringing the incoming troops to order. Artillery weapons and heavy equipment were being assembled by the engineers, some even before being removed from their landing craft. Even livestock were now beginning to be ferried across, a deliberate indication to the Persians of our intent to remain on the Tigris' left bank.
The Ctesiphon garrison, for its part, had recovered from the turmoil of the night before, and to the Persians' credit, the size of the forces opposing us had grown considerably from what we had estimated the previous day, to a level close to or even larger than that of our own army. Either a large body of troops had been held in reserve inside the city walls, or the local governor had quickly summoned garrisons from neighboring towns and villages to augment his own forces. As the Romans stood calmly in formation, awaiting the command to attack, we watched with considerable trepidation as the Persians made their own preparations. The advantage of the field was theirs, situated as they were at the top of a long, upward slope that rose to the very gates of the city, and supported by a series of bulwarks and ditches that had been dug over the past several days as they anticipated the Roman approach. A half mile uphill is an eternity to run in full armor while facing withering Persian arrow fire, and the defenders intended to make us sweat blood for every step of ground. Thousands of onlookers from the city, even women in finery, had set up positions on top of the walls, shaded under awnings and umbrellas, to watch the affair.
Opposing us the Persians had set up thick ranks of archers, their tight-fitting, fish-scale armor polished to such a brilliance that it hurt our eyes. They were supported by glaring detachments of infantry, bearing the foot-to-shoulder curved shields of the King's guard, sturdy though lightweight contraptions of wicker hung with hardened, polished rawhide for strength. The officers' white stallions were protected by the same wrought leather, and the officers themselves wore helmets and armor gilded and bejeweled with stones of such size that we could make out their colors from where we stood. Most terrifying of all, however, were the squads of elephants looming skittish and impatient behind the serried ranks of troops, looking for all the world like moving hills with their huge, gray bodies. Our troops eyed them nervously, for we had heard that such beasts were used by King Sapor, though we had hoped that they had been taken with him on his march to meet us up the Tigris.
Despite the chaos and turmoil of our crossing only hours before, Julian had left no detail forgotten in preparing his own battle lines. He had taken care to identify his weakest forces, the Asian troops who had joined us in Antioch, and to place them not in the rear, where they could panic and retreat with no one to stop them, nor in the van, where they might stumble in their fear and lead the entire army into rout; but rather disbursed in small groups amongst all his other companies, between the beefy Gauls who had stood with him steadfast ever since Strasbourg and on whom he could count to remain loyal even in the face of a charging bull elephant. Julian himself, shadowed by a squadron of light-armed auxiliaries and his council, ranged widely from one end of the lines to the other, bullying a laggard squadron into formation here, shouting encouragement to a cavalry officer there. His relentless energy drove the waiting troops into a fever of anticipation.
Suddenly he stopped in front of his lines, the eyes of all the troops upon him. Sallustius and Victor rode up and flanked him on either side with their skittish mounts. They also stopped, facing the troops. Silence fell over the field as Julian slowly surveyed the lines of sunburned, dusty men, men who had marched with him five hundred miles from Antioch, across burning sands and leech-infested marches, some of whom had traveled with him even thrice that distance more, from the farthest western reaches of the Empire. All stood silent, watching, as a smile slowly spread across his face, a gash of white teeth gleaming through the brown beard that had grown thick and unruly on the march. Wordlessly he grinned at them, this trained orator and rhetorician, a man who had never in his life been at a loss for words and had never failed to take the opportunity to lecture to his men, to encourage them in battle, to admonish them, even to give them a history lesson. His broad smile demonstrated, however, more than any words of praise, his love and pride for them and for all they had accomplished, and wordlessly they grinned back. As they responded, he raised his right arm to the men in the Roman salute, a gesture reserved only for the men themselves to give to their own conquering general. After a moment of stunned silence, with an almost audible intake of breath from the vast forces, they burst forth in a roar capable of shaking the thick walls of Ctesiphon itself, a bellow that made Julian's mount rear in startlement, though his broad grin and outstretched arm did not falter. After a moment, however, his smile disappeared back into his beard, and lifting his fist straight up in the air, above his head, he brought it down to his hip in a slashing motion, the field signal for attack.
Immediately the ox-hide drums sounded their deep, anapestic rhythm, the ominous, repetitive, three-beat tattoo that marks the Pyrrhic march step. Developed by the Spartans, it is dancelike in its movement, hypnotic in its relentless, deadly rhythm. Three steps forward, pause for a beat. Such concentration on the rhythm, each man keeping in step with his comrades, gives a soldier substance to occupy his mind, distraction from the approach of painful death. Three steps, pause. Gleaming shields swinging deliberately from left to right in strict unison. Sixty thousand men marching thus in utter precision, the strange, trance-inducing beat and vast walls of swaying shields striking terror into the watching enemy. Three steps, pause. Thud, thud, thud, silence. The low chanting of the hymn to Ares served as an undercurrent to the beat, growled rather than bellowed, felt as a vibration in the gut rather than heard. The vast, swaying monster of metal and death advanced slowly and implacably toward the lines of astonished defenders.
The Persians didn't stand a chance.
The first volley of arrows, a thousand whistling missiles, struck our front ranks full on. From this distance they did slight damage, sticking harmlessly in the troops' heavy shields or skittering off to the ground. A few men fell, though the mesmerizing rhythm of the drums did the work for which it was designed, and there was no faltering in the steps. The ranks behind simply stepped over the fallen, and moved up to take their place. The Persians paused for a moment in their shooting, dumbstruck at the display.
Another hundred yards the men marched, shields swaying in perfect unison. Thump, thump, thump, pause. The Persians fired another volley, this time from a more lethal range. More men stumbled and fell. Victor, I saw, who was as heedless as the Emperor in riding at the front of his forces and engaging the enemy directly, caught an arrow in the right shoulder and lurched back on his horse in pain. Julian saw it too and whipped his horse toward the front to investigate, but Victor recovered and waved him off, sitting bolt upright on his mount now, the arrow emerging straight out in front of him. Julian stared a long moment to be sure he was able to ride, then raised his sword high in the air toward Victor, the long-awaited signal to charge.