Horns and trumpets called from Vibulenus’ right, and the young tribune turned toward the source of the sound. Well behind the last rank, the command group was picking its way through the wreckage — once living and otherwise — of battle.
There were two men on horseback, Falco and another of the tribunes. The rest of the command group was mounted on beasts which bore far less resemblance to horses than the four-horned draft animals of the enemy did to oxen. They were carnivorous, beyond doubt: giant lions, perhaps, or even huger dogs. They wore coats of iron scales, like the horses of the richest Parthian cataphracts. The score of inhuman riders mounted on them, the Commander’s bodyguard, were armored in jointed suits which must have weighed hundreds of pounds apiece.
Gaius Vibulenus had not known where his place was. He still was not sure, but he knew he did not belong here, behind the legion, with Falco and those who had bought the Roman prisoners from their Parthian captors.
The young tribune began to jog down the remainder of the slope, clutching his sword but leaving his shield behind with the bodies. Every time his foot hit the ground, it pumped his skull airily lighter so that the pain resonating inside it became diluted to heat and a mild pressure.
When he opened his mouth to cry, “Rome!” he found that his constricted throat would not pass even a croak. He tried to shout anyway as he staggered like a drunk or a madman, reaching the sixth rank as its legionaries dodged the more numerous trees at the low point of the valley.
There were sounds of further fighting ahead, but the upward slope blocked vision. The slight decline from the opposite side of the valley had given the rear ranks an almost theatrical view of the start of the battle.
Gaius Vibulenus was an inch or two taller than most of the line soldiers, because his family could afford to feed him well as a child. That was not enough of a height advantage to permit him to see over the helmets and crests, short black brushes for the legionaries and red transverse combs to mark the centurions. He struggled through the ranks, bumping and once pushing aside the troops who were doing their best to keep their order: the only task they were called on to perform at this moment.
Ahead were the shouts of men and the clattering of weapons, brilliants of sound embroidered on the thunderous background still shuddering from the enemy camp. The young tribune thought of hogs stumbling through chutes toward the slaughterer’s knife, fearful and unable to see anything but the gap toward which they plunged between high board walls.
But even if the victims knew their fate, they might run to it for the sake of certainty in a universe of spin and chaos; and for Vibulenus, there was nothing certain except that he wanted the identity of a man who was in the forefront of this battle rather than one who hung back when he had the opportunity to hang back.
As he dodged a legionary who was unconsciously swinging his sword back and forth in an arc which threatened everyone on his right side, Vibulenus slammed into another of the serpentine trees. Its top nodule waved, showering the tribune with gooey, sweet-smelling fluid. Vibulenus swung himself around the bole, unconcerned by the glue-like smear the bark left on his arm and breastplate and unaware that his hair was now gummy with effluvium from the tree as well as with his own blood.
The third and fourth ranks had closed up so that the legionaries stood almost shield to shield as they mopped up spearmen still living in the wake of the front ranks. There had been an attempt to open out again as the advance continued unimpeded, but there were still clots and gaps like the pattern made by frog eggs on a still pond.
The portion of Vibulenus’ brain which was in control functioned like a racer’s, not like that of a man in the midst of battle. It sent the young tribune through one of the gaps. Ahead of him he could see the standards and the leading elements of the legion already coming to grips with the hostile infantry.