‘You’re to keep everything packed, Hormus,’ Vespasian said, taking a tentative sip of the scalding wine. ‘With what they’ve got down there honour may be satisfied sooner than I thought.’
‘Master?’
‘We may be leaving in a hurry.’ Vespasian raised his gaze and surveyed the mountains, towering with majesty up from the foothills to form the natural barrier between Armenia and the Parthian Empire. ‘A shame really; it’s beautiful country, don’t you think so, Hormus?’
Hormus stroked the scraggy beard that tried but failed to disguise his undershot chin as he contemplated the scenery, uncertain how to respond having very rarely been asked his opinion by his master on anything more aesthetic than the order of precedence that clients should be received in. ‘If you say so, master.’
Vespasian frowned at his slave. ‘I do; but you should have your own opinion on the subject and not just take my word for it.’ He gestured at the expanse of natural beauty that dominated the vista, dwarfing the relatively insignificant disfigurement that humanity’s belligerence had scratched in its shadow. ‘This should speak to you, Hormus; after all, it is somewhere around this area that your family came from – you told me Armenia, didn’t you?’
Hormus’ smile was wan beneath his equally feeble beard. ‘Somewhere near Armenia, master, but I don’t know where. My mother told me in her tongue but when she died I forgot that language as it was of no use any more, and with it I forgot the name of my land.’
‘It’ll come back if you hear it again,’ Vespasian assured him but then hoping that he was wrong; a sense of belonging was not what he wanted for Hormus, preferring his slave to be compliant and meek – no, perhaps meekness was not something to be wished upon him either.
There was a scratching on the door and Hormus crossed the room, his footsteps muffled by the sumptuous rugs of deep reds, blues and umbers with which the floor was littered.
‘You’d better come quick, sir,’ Magnus said as the door opened; he was wearing the chain mail of an auxiliary. ‘Paelignus has seen that the Parthians have got some serious artillery and he doesn’t want to play any more, if you take my meaning?’
‘I do. Where is he?’
‘Mannius caught him trying to slip through the gate; he has him under arrest in the gatehouse.’
‘You have no right to hold me!’ Paelignus shrieked as Mannius showed Vespasian and Magnus into the small room where the nominal commander of the expedition was being held.
Without pausing, Vespasian slapped Paelignus’ cheek as if he were punishing a recalcitrant slave girl. ‘Now listen, you rapacious worm, I’ll do anything I like to you if you try to go over to the enemy again. I may even hang you on a cross and see if that does anything to straighten out your back.’
‘You can’t do that; I’m a citizen.’
‘Perhaps I’ll forget that fact just as you seem to have forgotten where your loyalties lie. What were you trying to achieve?’
Paelignus rubbed his cheek, which was coming out in a reddish welt. ‘I wanted to save us. There’re thousands of them and they’ve got artillery.’
‘Of course they’ve got artillery, but can they use it?’ He grabbed the procurator by the arm and dragged him from the room, past the guards on the door, who were unable to conceal their amusement at the sight, and up the stone steps next to the gates that led to the walkway running along behind the crenellated parapet. Magnus and Mannius followed, the prefect putting the two guards on a charge as he passed for failing to show due respect for an officer.
Vespasian held Paelignus’ chin in a cruel grasp and forced him to look through a crenel at the enemy lines. ‘See there, procurator, thousands of them, just as you said, but they’re conscripts. None of them have had any training beyond being shown which end of an arrow or a javelin to aim at the enemy. They look impressive but they’re nothing compared to our lads; they’re just cattle, human cattle, to be stampeded forward knowing that they cannot retreat because the bridge is down. Their best troops are their cavalry, half of whom have disappeared north and the other half are sitting on that hill and, apart from shooting arrows at us, will take no more part in the proceedings than the spectators at the Circus Maximus. As to the artillery; even if they make a breach in the walls, who’s going to storm through it? The crack Parthian infantry? The Immortals and the apple-bearers are with their King of Kings; this Babak is just a satrap of a client king, we have nothing to fear from his infantry.’