‘You mean make sure that he’s not pumping your slave for information, if you take my meaning?’
‘I’m sure I do,’ Vespasian said with a smile as he pushed on to Cotta’s cohort forming up in a column at the north gate. Now all he had to do was clear the way for the new arrivals to link up with the Romans, then together they would abandon Tigranocerta and stage a fighting retreat, leading the Parthians further and further into the Roman client kingdom of Armenia and creating a just cause for war between the two empires. This was the war that Tryphaena had planned. A war that would secure her nephew the Armenian crown, a war that could be used to destabilise the drunken, drooling fool ruling in Rome and ensure that Nero, the son of her kinswoman Agrippina, would take the Purple before Claudius’ natural son, Britannicus, came of age. And this is what Vespasian now considered to be the best course of events for him and his family: he had seen Nero and he had seen Britannicus and of the two of them it was obvious, even surely to a drooling fool, that Britannicus was the better choice. But it was not the better choice that would suit Vespasian’s purposes if the destiny that he suspected had been laid out for him really was to come to pass; that better choice would stabilise the Julio-Claudians and perhaps secure their line for decades to come. No, it was the weaker, vainer, more arrogant candidate that Vespasian needed to succeed Claudius: Nero, whose suitability to rule was only superficial. The dazzling Prince of the Youth in the image of a young god; but underneath that appealing exterior lay what Vespasian believed could be the madness that would make Tiberius’ behaviour in his latter years seem like mild eccentricity. He had recognised it in the moment he had seen Nero resting his head on Agrippina’s breast and then had had it confirmed by Narcissus: an incestuous relationship with his mother. Giving absolute power to a man who saw nothing wrong in bedding his own mother was, to Vespasian’s mind, a sure way to release within him the madness of unrestrainable self-indulgence. A madness that would exceed Caligula’s and make his public sexual displays with his sister Drusilla be remembered as a mere foible. A madness that, in conjunction with the dominating presence of his mother and lover, Agrippina, insisting on recognition never before given to a woman, would be capable of bringing down the Julio-Claudian line because neither the Senate, the people nor even the Praetorian Guard would be able to countenance another emperor from that family that had deteriorated so dismally. And if the Julio-Claudians were to fail, who could guess what would follow? Perhaps it would be the time of New Men. Perhaps.
But that was still a long way off and first he had to help implement Tryphaena’s plan; the initial stage had been accomplished: he had a Parthian army on Armenian soil. Now the second phase was coming to fruition because, as Tryphaena had promised he would, the usurper had come to fight alongside Rome.
Radamistus had brought his army to Tigranocerta.
CHAPTER X
THE SPEED WITH which Vespasian led Cotta’s II Cappadocia Auxiliary Cohort out of the north gate, had it form up in two ranks, each of five centuries, and then advance towards the siege lines unnerved the conscripts manning them as he hoped it would. Once the centurions’ bellowed commands had died away the eight hundred men marched in silence, their uniform footsteps more threatening than any battle cry, their inexorable progress across the field more ominous than any charge, and their precision drill as their shields came up and their right arms went back in preparation to release their javelins more crushing to the conscripts’ morale than the impact of the volley itself. Before the first sleek point hissed into the Parthian lines the human cattle had stampeded despite the summary slaughter of many of their number by their pitiless officers who soon became overwhelmed by the herd’s terror. They surged north, through the artillery, sweeping away the crews and on towards the Tigris, towards the bridge.
But the bridge was wide enough for only eight men at a time.
Barely pausing to jab the tips of their swords into the throats of those trampled in the panic, the men of the II Cappadocia Auxiliary Cohort crossed the siege lines in good order and drove the conscripts on to the river as behind them the other four cohorts began to march in column out of the north gate. The Romans were abandoning Tigranocerta, leaving it aflame and the citizens defenceless.
The arithmetic of getting more than three thousand terrified men across a bridge just eight paces wide did not work in the conscripts’ favour and many suffocated in the crush. Many more drowned in the deep waters of the Tigris into which they threw themselves in desperation, praying that Apam Napat, the fire god of fresh water, would save them. But the god’s eyes were elsewhere, focused on the Naphtha-stoked fires raging in the city; hundreds were swept away and hundreds were trampled underfoot. Yet hundreds more were shot down on the north bank by the Iberian and Armenian horse and foot archers of Radamistus’ army as they traversed the bridge on the River Kentrites, the remainder of the army, its heavy cavalry, conscript infantry and baggage, following slowly behind.