‘Romans!’ A cry sounded from the cabin.
Pavo and Sura twisted.
‘Wait,’ the flat-nosed man said, ‘don’t move, just wait!’
Pavo frowned, then looked forward to see sweat leaping from the mahout as he lined up to thrash at the elephant’s skull once more. This blow gouged chunks of skin and bloodied flesh from the poor beast’s head, and this time it started to rear up. Pavo felt his grip weaken. His gut tightened as he readied to fall. The mahout twisted in his rope saddle, grinning. ‘Now, you will be cast to the ground!’ the man hissed.
The words had no sooner left his lips than the elephant stopped rising, sunk back down, reached up with its trunk, snatched the mahout from his saddle and hurled him groundwards like a rock. The creature then rushed forward to trample the mahout. A chorus of grinding, bursting and popping sounded, then the man was little more than a crimson patch of gristle in the creature’s wake.
Pavo panted, sharing a relieved glance with Sura. Shorn of its rider, the beast seemed to calm a little. The flat-nosed man scrambled past them, along the elephant’s neck to sit in the saddle. The beast tensed at first, but the man stroked around its wounds, speaking in soothing tones as he did so, then threw down the hooked stick as a gesture of goodwill. With a quick squeeze of his left thigh, he had the elephant turning at his behest. The three elephants ahead had been seized by the paighan likewise, while the Persian crew of the other beasts carried on ahead, fighting the paighan on the ground and unaware of the fate of these four colossal creatures.
The flat-nosed man looked back over his shoulder, his face still etched with that easy smile. ‘And now we go to battle, yes?’
Pavo inched back into the howdah cabin, finally pulling his spatha clear of the archer corpse. Sura stood beside him. The pair looked to the filthy crimson stain on the shoreline. Thousands of corpses, Persian and Roman, now floated in the sea or lay draped on the sand, a carpet of dead surrounding the ferocious battle on the waterline. But so very few intercisa helms still stood amidst the storm of Persian steel.
‘Aye, to war,’ Pavo cried, ‘and make haste!’
Gallus wondered if he had died back in Bishapur, if the constant battle and bloodshed since then was simply his place in Hades. Blinking barely cleared the hot blood from his eyes, and every breath brought with it a mouthful of crimson spray and that familiar metallic tang. He heard the rasping of his own breath, the hammering of his heart upon his ribs, and little else. The Persian warriors came at him like demons. Many of them had dismounted now to finish the last handfuls of Romans off. Pushtigban warriors had forced their way to the front, sensing imminent victory and eager for a share of the glory. Gallus struck the flat of his spatha across the neck of one of them. The warrior stumbled, winded. Gallus ripped the facemask away and thrust his blade into the man’s eye socket. With a gout of dark blood and chunky matter, the warrior fell to Gallus’ feet, piled there with so many others.
Is that enough glory for you, whoreson?
Another pair rushed for him, and he knew he could kill only one of them. The other would take his life at last. An animal growl tumbled through his gritted teeth. He sought out Olivia and Marcus in his mind’s eye as he hefted his spatha back for the last time. But he halted, blade overhead, as two spears punched up and under the arms of the approaching pair. Blood erupted from the iron mask eyeholes and mouth slits. Zosimus and Quadratus roared as they pulled their spears free.
Not yet, he realised, the image of his loved ones fading, but soon.
Quadratus and Zosimus pushed up either side of him. The last of his kind, it seemed. He raised his shield with theirs and the Persian blades hammered down on them with a rhythm akin to the relentless war drums.
‘Are you ready for this, sir?’ Zosimus cried by his side, his face caked in strips of skin and blood.
‘For what?’ he panted.
‘For that,’ Quadratus pointed a finger; over the thrashing mass of Savaran that clamoured to slay them, something was coming. Four colossal shapes silhouetted by the morning sun. While the rest of the war elephants circled up on the grassy dunes where some disturbance had broken out amongst the paighan, these four beasts had charged down onto the beach. The creatures’ every stride threw up great clods of wet sand and the sun sparkled on their serrated tusks.
Now this is surely the end, he realised, knowing shield and spatha would be useless against these creatures. The lead beast thundered up behind the gold-painted Persian war drummer, who looked on at the last throes of Roman resistance excitedly, his arms thrashing as he upped the beat a little more. Then he slowed, looking over his shoulder in realisation, then up at the massive creature about to trample him. At the last, the drummer ducked out of the way.
Gallus frowned, then squinted up to the cabin on the lead creature’s back. Two figures stood there. They held Roman spathas. A desert-dry grin stretched across his features and his sword arm tingled with a new lease of life.
The panicked squeal of the drummer faded as the war elephants thundered onwards, the drumbeat striking up again moments later.
Pavo leant from the edge of the cabin, willing the lead creature not to draw up short. Ahead of it lay the majority of the Savaran. This close to victory, the Persian ranks were in disorder, thousands of them dismounted and fighting as infantry. But when the lead elephant trumpeted with all its might, many Persian heads turned, eyes bulging, mouths agape. At once, they broke out in a roar of panic. They scrambled to get clear, but weighed down with iron plate and ring armour, they were cumbersome and slow. Suddenly, the cabin juddered as if the elephant was charging over rocky ground, but the crunch of iron, bone and the screaming of men below told a different story. The other three elephants fanned out either side, ploughing a similar gory furrow through the Savaran ranks. Then the flat-nosed paighan guiding the lead elephant uttered some jagged command, patting at the side of the creature’s head. Without hesitation, the elephant scooped down with its tusks, tearing the serrated bronze tips through a throng of clibanarii, tossing pockets of them into the air. Their armour crumpled from the strike. Limbs were shattered, flesh torn asunder and brains gouged from skulls. The other three beasts followed suit soon after, swiping scores of men aside with every swish of their tusks. In moments, the tight pack of flashing swords and spears around the Roman pocket had disintegrated, men fleeing in every direction. Of the clibanarii and pushtigban who waded out to sea to escape the elephants’ wrath, many stumbled, falling into the water. Despite being prone in just a few feet of water, these men found the weight of their armour anchored them to the seabed and many drowned, their faces only inches under the surface.
As the great creatures wreaked havoc through the Savaran masses, the flat-nosed paighan guiding the lead beast cried out in unintelligible Parsi. He punched the air, his air of serenity gone at last as he no doubt unleashed his anger over years of marching in chains.
Pavo felt an ember of hope in his heart.
‘They’re still alive,’ Sura grasped his shoulder, pointing down to the shallows.
Pavo followed his friend’s outstretched finger over the edge of the cabin. Down on the crimson shoreline, while the Savaran scattered, a ragged band of legionaries stood there. Barely a century of them, still poised and ready for the Savaran to return. Gallus, Zosimus and Quadratus still stood. He looked this way and that. Perhaps there could be a way out. Perhaps they could survive after all.
Then his eyes snagged on the activity a mile or so up the beach, where the vast Persian fleet was disembarking. Tens of thousands of fresh riders and spearmen fanned out, blades piercing the skyline like an iron grin.