‘What did they do with the bodies?’
Varus looked at Cotta with blank eyes.
‘Left them where they lay. They will not defile the purity of the fire they worship with human flesh, and I doubt enough wood could have been found in any case. For all I know their bodies still rot where they fell.’
‘And that was it?’
The young tribune shook his head at Dubnus.
‘Not quite. The man in the black armour climbed down from his horse and made sure that both of the soldiers he had killed were truly dead, then raised the mace in his hand and shouted up at the hills, as if he knew I was watching. His Latin was perfect, but his voice was a cold as the dagger at your belt.’
‘What did he say, Tribune?’
The young man turned to Scaurus.
‘He said “Let this be a warning to all whose boots disturb the blessed soil of our motherland! Rome’s presence will no longer be tolerated! I, Narsai of Adiabene swear this!” And then he mounted, turned his horse and rode away without once looking back.’
Scaurus nodded.
‘Thank you, Tribune, for your honesty. A lesser man would have been more bombastic, whereas your humility in the face of such a trial does you great honour. I look forward to marching to confront this enemy with you at my side.’
Varus saluted and left the friends in silence. Once the door was shut, Scaurus looked around at his officers.
‘As I feared, the enemy we will be facing is indeed Parthian, almost certainly drawn from the provinces that abut Adiabene and Osrhoene. The action he describes is straight out of the history books too, clouds of horse archers pinning an enemy where they stand, shooting their arrows and then running away faster than any infantryman can pursue, gradually weakening their enemy to the point of collapse. And then they unleash the finest heavy cavalry in the world, their cataphracts. Armed with lances, swords and maces, the mere sound and threat of their advance can be enough to break an already demoralised army before any contact, while in combat their armour makes them almost impervious to any attack. They are dangerous beyond belief, gentlemen, and I doubt very much that the numbers described by our colleague Varus represent their full strength, given that he made no mention of the infantry I’m sure they will have levied from their peasantry. Fighting our way past them to relieve Nisibis is going to prove difficult, especially with only half a legion.’
‘Why bother, Legatus?’
The men turned to look at Dubnus, but the big man simply shrugged.
‘What’s so important about a town in the middle of the desert? It seems to me that the only reason for caring about the place is to be able to draw a line on a map.’
Scaurus raised an eyebrow at Cotta, who nodded back at him and turned to address the question.
‘I had much the same point of view until the first time I marched east from Zeugma. Why cross three hundred miles of desolate, barren ground to go and stand garrison duty on a city in the middle of nowhere? Why go to the bother of taking it from Adiabene in the first place, and holding it in the face of the locals’ anger at our boots dishonouring their soil? It’s only when you get there that you realise why such a city should have come into being in that place, where there’s nothing much of any value apart from the timber from the mountains to the north and whatever can be grown on the margins of the river that runs past it to the south, eventually flowing into the Euphrates but navigable only in the spring, when the mountain snows melt.’
He fell silent, and Dubnus raised an eyebrow.
‘And …?’
‘The secret, my friend, lies in the city’s placement, almost equidistant between the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon and the borders of the empire. You see, there is a place very faraway to the east of Parthia, across a desert of enormous size, where a race of people quite different to us live. I saw some of them in Nisibis once, a trading party on their way to Rome. They have different-coloured skin to us, more yellow than pink, and their eyes are different too, less round than ours. And in this faraway place they grow and make things that the rich citizens of Rome want to buy, expensive fabrics so fine and smooth to the hand that a woman dressed in them might as well be naked, and exotic spices found nowhere in the empire. They bring these goods across the desert to Parthia, and then barter some of their cargo for the right to cross the empire and sell their goods to our merchants.’
‘Who in turn add their own markup when they get the stuff to Rome?’
‘Exactly. It’s a long road from this distant land in the east, and at every stop the traders must give up some small part of their profit in order to be allowed to progress which, of course, means that the price to the end customer in Rome is that little bit higher.’
Dubnus nodded knowingly.
‘So Nisibis is owned by the emperor, right?’
Marcus nodded.
‘As my Greek tutors laboured long and hard to make me understand, the history of this part of the world is both long and complex. Rome has been fighting Parthia for control of the region for at least two hundred years, and the lines on this particular map have moved around quite vigorously, depending on who has had the upper hand in the constant battle of wills. The current Parthian king attacked us, back in the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and was so soundly beaten by a general by the name of Avidius Cassius …’
He raised an eyebrow at Cotta, who gave him an emotionless return stare.
‘… that he hasn’t moved against us in all of the thirty years since. Rome established a client kingdom adjoining Syria, Osrhoene, and pursued the usual policy of putting a forward base right in the middle of Adiabene, the next-door kingdom. Nisibis was the natural choice, the main trading city in Adiabene, the perfect place for a customs post out past the empire’s edge, where goods can be taxed before they get into the hands of men who are rather better skilled at avoiding payment.’
‘So when these eastern traders reach Nisibis, they have to pay a toll, which goes straight to Commodus?’
Marcus nodded at his friend’s question.
‘Exactly. If we lose Nisibis then we lose a source of wealth to whoever it is that has decided to take it off our hands. Wealth which will then be used to bolster their ability to repel any attempt to recapture the place.’
Cotta raised a hand.
‘If I might comment on the odds of taking the city back, once we’ve lost it?’
Scaurus nodded, staring hard at the map painted onto the office’s wall.
‘A tour of duty in Nisibis was the most boring tour of duty you can imagine, but if that place was one thing above all, it was strong. Two circular walls, a mile long, both over thirty feet tall, with a twenty-five foot-wide dry moat between them. In time of peace the moat is bridged, but when there’s a threat to the city the bridges are dismantled. The Parthians don’t have any siege machinery, so all they can hope to achieve is to take the outer wall, at a huge cost in dead and wounded, after which they have precisely nothing because there’s no way across to the other wall until the moat is filled in, with bowmen and bolt throwers on the inner wall – which is taller, of course – busy killing anyone foolish enough to venture out onto the outer wall. Oh, and the city has its own fresh water springs, and grain stores big enough to feed the population and a legion for six months if need be. If they manage to starve the garrison out we’ll never take it back again without a full-scale war like the one thirty years ago. Nisibis can be taken by defeating the Parthians in battle and humiliating them into surrendering the fortress, but not by direct assault.’
The legatus nodded.
‘Quite so. The legatus who manages to rescue the city from this threat will be judged to have done his job effectively, while the man who presides over its loss will return to Rome in disgrace. No wonder the governor’s reaction to my thin stripe was to starve my command of men, he knows enough to understand that it’s the simplest way he can see off Cleander’s little experiment in allowing a man of my class to command a legion.’