his blue eye. “Could we not take Seleucia, Ctesiphon’s sister city across the Tigris, saving the actual surrender of Orodes for the arrival of Publius?”
“That would work,” Crassus laughed, “but my son made it clear that he actually wished to participate in the battle. And you must remember, gentlemen, Publius brings with him 1,000 Gallic horse; having seen them at close quarters I can tell you they will outweigh by far anything Orodes can cobble together by the time we cross the Euphrates when we head east for the second time next spring. Is that not right, Alexander?”
“Gentlemen, the day I witnessed their arrival in Rome, I promise you many a subligaculum required an extra washing.”
“Not yours, though, right Alexander,” said Vargunteius with a heaping of sarcasm.
“Vargunteius, you know I never wear them. I thought we agreed that would remain our little secret.”
As we were leaving the command tent, the legate who’d bitten off more than he could chew gripped me around the shoulder, knocked heads with me and said, “Nicely played, ya’ bastard.”
Marching northwest from the city, eight days later we arrived at Zeugma, a lovely little trading town where the wide, teal waters of the Euphrates, so broad and still that it seemed more meandering lake than river, were pinched narrow enough for a crossing. King Abgarus of Osrhoene had accompanied us with his escort of 300 cavalrymen. Like our own complement of 3,000 outriders, they ranged up and down our lines, providing scouting and flanking support. I saw little of the bejeweled, turbaned monarch with his twin waxed swords of hair quivering above his lip as he rode; he tended to stay toward the rear of the column. Crassus dismissed my repeated misgivings about Abgarus as irrelevant; he agreed the man was duplicitous, but as impotent as our enemy.
In Zeugma, Crassus shored up the existing bridge that had stood since Alexandros’ himself had crossed the ancient river on his travels East. Now it must withstand the passage of the greatest army that land had seen since those days. We marched east for three days across green valleys and fertile farmland until we came to the Balissos, a tributary of the great waterway. There, the garrison town of Carrhae welcomed us. There also, the King of Osrhoene begged permission to return to his capital. Ourha was only two days’ ride north, and Abgarus had pressing business at home, so he said. Crassus thanked the king over and over for his loyalty and assured him that his continued fealty would be well-rewarded.
To the north, the land sloped upwards into the mountains of Armenia. Here, then, at Carrhae, we stood at the border between those northern states allied with Roman and the great Parthian Empire. We turned south along the Balissos and began the war that for Crassus would begin and end not far from the very spot where he sat astride Eurysaces.
Chapter XXXII
54 BCE - Summer, Mesopotamia
Year of the consulship of
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher
It was Quintilis and we had received no communication from Tertulla since crossing the Euphrates.
•••
They threw the bodies over the city walls. One hundred legionaries from the first century of the first cohort of Legion V, executed in the style favored by the ancient Greeks: shot to death by a volley from Scythian archers. Except for the fact that the arrows were Parthian, it was an accurate reenactment. The town’s headman, Apollonius, was fond of irony.
•••
Having sent word to the Romans that he, too wished to rebel against the onerous Parthian yoke, but that his beloved city of Zenodotium had too few citizens to man the siege walls, Apollonius laid what he thought was a clever trap. Disappointed that the invaders had sent so few, he opened the gates and took what he could get. He had performed this seemingly insane act of defiance because he had assurances from the envoy of King Orodes that the royal armies would within hours be sweeping up from the south to repel these insolent Romans. In retrospect, Apollonius must have marveled at the speed with which the emissary and his party had galloped down the river road back to the capital. It was an irony he might have appreciated, were he not at the heart of it. No help was forthcoming.
A month earlier, Silaces, satrap of northwestern Parthia, his arm bandaged, his pride eviscerated, his future uncertain, kneeled before Orodes in his court. Silaces had been the first Parthian commander to engage the Romans when Crassus