‘Their column seems to stretch back to the horizon, Tribune. Every man we killed was replaced by another, and their wounded fall into the mud and are drowned if they don’t die of their wounds. We were killing them, and killing them, and killing them … but there are so many of them.’
Varus let him pass, turning back to his own cohort with a thoughtful expression.
‘What’s going on, Tribune sir?’
Varus nodded at Sanga, smiling at the feathers poking upwards on either side of his helmet.
‘Congratulations on your promotion, Watch Officer. As to what’s happening, it’s all very simple. The enemy are trying to overcome our defences by means of overwhelming numbers, and we’re doing our very best to kill so many of them that they decide that the game’s not worth playing.’
‘An’ who’s winning, sir?’
Horns blew, and the cohort marched forward twenty paces. The tribune shrugged.
‘Who’s winning? It doesn’t sound to me like anyone’s winning.’
An hour later the enemy soldiers were no longer fighting against a four foot height disadvantage. As Ravilla had told Varus, any spear man unable to crawl away when the Romans’ questing blades pierced his armour was simply trampled under the feet of the men behind to form the foundation of a ramp of human bodies, some dead, some still clinging to life and protesting feebly at the indignity of being so cruelly used by their fellows. Goaded on by the harsh commands of the cataphracts close on their heels, the Parthians were still flooding forwards, stabbing up at the Romans lined up on the makeshift wall before them.
‘Petronius!’
Scaurus was having to shout to be heard now, the cacophony of agony from the battle below making it almost impossible to communicate in anything less than a parade-ground roar. The prefect turned to face him, then staggered and toppled over the rear of the wall’s fighting platform with an arrow in his face.
‘Shit! You!’
He reached out and took a Hamian centurion by the arm, shouting in the man’s ear.
‘Tell your men I want them to shoot at the enemy archers! Pass the word to your prefect!’
Julius strode down the wall, completely ignoring the arrows flying past him as the Parthian bowmen loosed arrows as fast as they could.
‘Why have we stopped shooting at the infantry?’
Scaurus pulled him into the wall’s cover.
‘Because if they manage to put arrows into you and me then the odds are that this defence will fail! And because every man we kill down there is being used to improve their footing. Before long they’ll be looking down at us from a ramp of their own dead! We need to try something else!’
He pointed at the earthenware jars.
‘It’s time for Petronius’s nasty little surprise!’
Julius nodded, lifting one of the jars with both hands, apparently finding it surprisingly light. He raised the spherical object for the men around him to see, bellowing an order over the battlefield’s cacophony.
‘Pass the jars! And don’t drop any of them!’
He pitched the pottery globe over the rampart, following its brief trajectory with a look of fascination as it arced down to land in the middle of a wave of fresh enemy infantry, the thin earthenware shattering as it hit the helmet of a hapless spear man. Out of the shards of creamy brown pottery came a fresh menace, utterly unexpected and clearly terrifying to the horrified Parthians. Unable to run in the thick mud, they floundered away from the jar’s contents, seeking escape in any direction possible as the enraged creatures scuttled across the soft ground with their stingers raised, seeking a target for their ire. More pots sailed over the rampart as they were passed to the men closest to the enemy, each one splitting to reveal dozens of black-bodied scorpions whose venomous power was only too well known to the men onto whom they were being showered. As Scaurus watched in fascination, a Parthian who had taken the brunt of a falling pot jerked spasmodically as half a dozen of the deadly insects stung him. The men around him pressed backwards, climbing over each other to escape from the swarming scorpions, fresh chaos erupting everywhere that one of the jars landed.
‘Throw them closer to the wall!’
More of the terrifying weapons arced down onto the spear men fighting for the makeshift barricade that blocked their path into the city, and the Parthians’ concerted effort to drive the Romans from the wall disintegrated into farce as the infantrymen dropped their spears and frantically stamped at the deadly insects, drawing their knives to brush the scorpions from their shoulders and arms while the archers on the walls above them drew and shot again and again to force the enemy bowmen to look to their own protection.
‘Rotate!’
The soldiers fighting at the wall looked over their shoulders as the Tungrians stamped hard-eyed up the ramp behind them, readying themselves to surrender their positions to the northerners while the attacking infantry were otherwise occupied.
Scaurus looked out over the parapet, realising immediately that something had changed in the battle’s pattern.
‘Look!’
Julius switched his attention from the handover taking place below them to the rear of the enemy formation. The dismounted enemy cavalrymen were pushing forward through the rear ranks of the spear men, bulling their way forward with their swords and maces drawn, their roars of command audible over the battle’s constant din as they shouted orders for the infantry to move aside and let them pass.
‘I’ve been waiting for this!’
He nodded at his legatus’s shout.
‘They’re the only men on the field with any chance of surviving long enough to get over that wall, and if enough of them make it they’ll hack our boys to mincemeat! But before that they have to-’
He jerked as if he’d been shot by one of the arrows, but when Scaurus followed his gaze he too found himself horrified at the events that were unfolding before him.
The Tungrians gazed over the wall at the sea of dead and wounded Parthians with the dispassionate eyes of men who had fought on too many battlefields to be troubled by the sight of blood, Varus pushing his way through them to stare down at the enemy below. The spear men had lost all heart with the unexpected and shocking rain of venomous insects, and most of them were looking down at the corpse-strewn ground beneath their feet rather than the men lining the wall, stamping down at the insects scuttling about them without regard for the wounded men lying helpless under their feet. Something caught the tribune’s eye beyond the men to their immediate front, the flash of a sword that rose and fell in the blink of an eye, and he stared out over the sea of heads to the cohort’s front, unsure as to whether he had seen the momentary flash of polished iron. The Parthians before him were still backing slowly away, half crouched under the protection of their shields, but it seemed that they were meeting a gradually stiffer resistance, some force from their rear first arresting their gradual retreat and then actually reversing it, driving them reluctantly towards the wall.
Faced with the choice of being crushed into the makeshift defence or escaping, the spear men spilled out of their column to either side. Frowning in bemusement, Varus craned his neck to see what it could be that was causing such consternation among the soldiers. As the flood of men escaping to either side started to thin, his eyes narrowed as glimpses of what was happening behind them gave him cause to doubt his sanity.
Scaurus looked down at the oncoming cataphracts in disbelief, the threat posed by arrows flicking past the defenders’ heads forgotten in the shock of what was happening at the rear of the Parthian column. Clearly realising that their attack was stalling before it had developed, the dismounted Parthian knights had taken action that rendered the two officers temporarily speechless. Fanning out to either side of the wavering column of spear men, they had drawn their swords, and were herding the infantry forward, summarily executing any man who tried to retreat. The legatus looked down at the scene playing out beneath them with an expression of horrified understanding.