And following the Parthians, the luster of its metal tarnished, was the Eagle of Quintus’s Legion.
3
The sun was rising far over Asia when the remnants of Crassus’s great army finally came to The Surena’s camp. Save for a small group, the Parthians had ridden away, “to prepare a welcome,” someone had said bleakly. “Morituri te … We who are about to die…”
“Quiet there!” a centurion shouted before one of the Parthians could enforce silence. All told, it was a small group of guards. Possibly, the Romans could have broken free. But the Parthians had bows, and the Romans’ will to fight was gone with their leader’s. The Surena had promised a truce; a truce they would have.
Quintus forced himself not to stagger into the great square outside the prince’s tent. From the corner of his eye, he saw the signifer raise his battered Eagle proudly, as if its presence alone could turn the camp into a Roman conquest.
Remember, you are a Roman, he told himself as he put foot ahead of foot. It was an effort not to shake or weave, and his kit felt as if he carried all Rome upon his back. Crassus and some of the other, most senior officers had been given horses and Quintus saw sidelong smiles at how poorly they sat them, tired as they were and as unused to the breeds of Parthia and Persia. (Lucilius, Quintus noticed, had somehow acquired a horse too and rode with a grace that made the other tribune, worn as he was, want to pull him out of the saddle.) Their world was ending, but Lucilius managed to look almost jaunty ahorse.
Remember you are a Roman.
Tramp, tramp, tramp. The Parthians were watching… long sidelong glances and sly smiles were as much of their faces as you could see under their helms.
Tramp, tramp, tramp. Remember you are mortal. Remembering that was all too easy, even though Crassus had probably dreamed of returning in triumph to Rome, throwing down his colleague Caesar (who would never have permitted such a defeat as this), and becoming a Sulla who never, never resigned his power. Of the great army that had marched from Armenia—28,000 Legionaries, 3,000 Asian mounted auxiliaries, and 100 Gaulish cavalry—perhaps 10,000 Romans survived.
As captives, no matter what sort of gloss was put on it.
Outside the camp, bland-faced guards requested they stack their arms. There were more guards than Romans.
“Where’s the yoke?” muttered Rufus, marching with his men. Quintus was willing to wager the pay he’d never see now that most of the men had hidden daggers or even a gladius somewhere about them. He had sanctioned enough of a departure from the ranks that hale men bore along those who were wounded or nigh dropping from exhaustion or fever.
It was a Roman custom, marching captives beneath the iugum, their necks bent in token of servitude.
“Vae victis,” Quintus muttered out of his memories of boyhood Livy. Woe to the conquered. It had happened to Romans before. It was still a disgrace.
The sun’s first rays shot down over the great plain, turning the sallow land ruddy as if the rays were arrows. And fine scale armor and weapons blazed as the light rose toward full dawn. It kindled on the fittings of drums and brass bells, which rang as the Romans marched toward inevitable dishonor. Only the Legion’s Eagle did not shine.
Outside the prince’s great tent, troops were drawn up—proud Parthians, their Persian auxiliaries so like those of Rome (and possibly men who had eaten Roman bread among them), the tall Saka, masters of horse, and, strangest of all, the Yueh-chih with their sallow skins, narrow, slanting eyes, and those bandy legs that only were revealed on the rare occasions when these mercenaries from the steppes and high deserts of Asia dismounted. Their battle standards were strange: But last time that Quintus had seen such men in the field, it had not been their standards that concerned him.
There were even officials of Carrhae, that whore of garrisons, and some wealthy merchants whose long, rich robes bloused over their bellies, making them look slack and weak by contrast with the men who had destroyed Rome’s greatest army. Their eyes were eager, though: the clever, ancient eyes of the Levantine, eager for advantage, hoping now that Rome’s defeat meant the end of Rome’s taxes.
All watched the sorry remnants of what had been the -greatest army in Asia. Romans in defeat. Remarkable: They bleed like other men. Can they also serve as slaves?
The princes held the arms; the merchants held other power. Quintus fancied that they cast knowledgeable eyes over the conquered Romans, assessing this one’s strength and that one’s skills, where each might be needed, and how to dispose of the infirm, the useless, and the merely dangerous.
Quintus and the standard-bearer found themselves shunted subtly toward the front of the Roman column, away from the remnants of the cohort that Rufus had managed to keep together. To his horror, he realized he might well have welcomed a command to kneel: At this point, “kneel” meant “rest,” not disgrace. He thought that even Rufus would have accepted it if it meant his sons, the Legionaries, could rest. There he waited, disarmed, his body shivering a little in the dawn wind. The scarlet silk banners of Parthia lifted in the wind and the rising sunlight turned the sallow plain to gold.
It was not the blue river valleys of his home, but it was, nevertheless, beautiful country. Would he have chosen it as a place in which to die? Better the square amid his troops, he realized. Better yet the farm, with its river and the mourning voice of the spirit who touched his mind and heart. Better than all, however, would have been to go on living with health and honor. Since that did not seem possible, Quintus tried to tell himself he had no regrets. He thought he could believe that the dancing feet of his amulet would tread out the measures long after he would cease to breathe. It had existed so long that it challenged time itself.
Crassus sat his horse before his army, preserving the illusion, for one last moment, of a general, not a suppliant come to submit to whatever terms The Surena thought good. Then an officer emerged from The Surena’s tent and gestured. Crassus began to dismount and wavered. His face twisted.
Cassius slid out of his saddle quickly and was at the wretched proconsul’s side, aiding him to dismount, keeping a supportive hold on his arm as master and officer vanished into the tent. Sunlight struck the doorflap, making the space within look very dark. Other officers followed the proconsul, last of them Lucilius. His eyes, despite the circles beneath them, were bright as if he were about to spend the day dicing.
Perhaps he was. They all were. The difference was that Lucilius had no doubts he would emerge with his hands full of coin.
A cataphract in full heavy armor rode by and shoved Quintus on the shoulder. Pointless to resent the petty insult, and worse than that: He knew how quickly the Parthians could nock and shoot when they wished. He wore an officer’s sigils; he must go inside.
He caught Rufus’s eyes. They narrowed and the old soldier tightened his lips, wishing him good luck without speech, as was safest.
Then, as best he could, he marched into the dark maw of The Surena’s tent.
The air was thick with mansmell: sweat, leather, armor, and the perfumes that these easterners used to scent themselves, even in battle. Too many men crowded into the huge tent; as one of the last and least of the Romans, Quintus would have found himself pressing against the tent wall, had a guard not stood between him and any quick knifeslash up that wall that might have bought a few Romans at least a chance for freedom had he still a ready knife.
Even though it was dawn, torches still flared, and he blinked. It took some time to become accustomed to the changing light and shadow in the prince’s tent. The torchlight danced, a flickering, treacherous pattern in which partners changed and betrayed each other in the flickering of an eye. The Surena and his men. Representatives of the six other great Parthian families—and probably even a spy or two from Pacorus, the king’s renegade son. Arabs from Edessa, no doubt servants of Ariamnes and Alchaudonius, the chieftains who had snatched their six thousand riders away.
And even though Orodes of Parthia had led half his army into Armenia to punish Artavasdos for sending troops to Crassus, Armenian lords sat as witnesses. No doubt their king prepared to turn his coat, too. Empty chairs, richly draped, stood at the center of the cluster of Rome’s enemies. They did not face the chief of them, yet.
Crassus stood before the men who had destroyed him. Despite the weathered armor he wore and the sword he had been allowed to keep, he looked like an old man, a sick man, a man who had lost his son. Like Priam in Achilles’s tent, stripped of his pride. Cassius stood away from him, and Crassus raised his chin. That gesture took an effort which impressed Quintus.