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value. A man on the line was good for only about fifteen minutes constant
fighting before he was exhausted. The four-rank formation anticipated that. As
one rank became tired, the centurion in charge would watch carefully for the
moment to signal the change of ranks. Like a magician's sleight of hand, when
the trumpet blew the second rank would step forward and take the place in
line, letting the men they relieved go to the rear to become the fourth rank.
This way, each man had only fifteen minutes to fight out of each hour. The
constant supply of fresh troops was too much for even the valorous Parthians,
and the pressure began to show on them.
Casca was in the second rank when the fight began. He held himself back. Damn
it, I am not going to get involved. I'll just do what I have to do to get by.
I am not going to get emotional... But the ranks behind began beating on their
shields in time with the drums, the flats of their blades resounding like a
pulse beat as they hammered their way into Casca's brain. No! I am not going
to do it... Even as he said No! his gladius came up as if with a mind of its
own, and, like a child breaking down, Casca let loose a primal cry and began
beating his shield harder and harder, wanting his turn at the wall of flesh
facing him. Then the centurion in charge of his maniple gave the order, and,
like a beast, Casca raced forth into the gap, his sword flashing in the
morning light.
They fought and fought. The ground became slippery with the blood of
thousands, and men died because they lost their footing and were trampled to
death in the bloody clay mud. Many drowned, their mouths filled with blood
that had collected in pools into which they had been unlucky enough to fall
face first and had never been able to get up because the crazed men above them
stood on their bodies trying to find a better footing.
And Casca cried.
Tears flowed down his face as he fought and killed, fought and killed, and
killed again. His face struck terror into those who confronted this insane
crying Roman. When his rank was signaled to step back, he refused. Unconscious
of the order, he stayed in the front line, chopping and hacking. Time and
again blows struck him, tearing holes in his armor, gouging chunks of meat
from him. Then there came a burning in his left thigh. Looking down, he saw an
arrow shaft sticking out of his leg. Roaring in rage-filled anguish and mental
grief, he grabbed the shaft and pulled. The barbed head remained inside, but
the gut bindings used to hold the bronze arrowhead to the shaft came loose
under his tugging, and the shaft came out. A Parthian noble, gorgeous in
bright Tyrian purple, threw himself bodily over the head of some of his
countrymen to get at this mad Roman. Casca caught him as he came over, and
with one hand he squeezed the life out of the noble while at the same time
smashing the brains out of a wounded Parthian bowman with his shield. He
regained his sword and hacked away.
The butchery continued through the day Only chest-heaving exhaustion forced
Casca to stop his personal slaughtering. He lay behind while the ranks of the
Romans forced the Parthians back. Back against the river and the walls. Casca
lay and sobbed, his mind whirling with images and patterns he could not
understand. The battle was almost done. Raising himself, he stumbled over the
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battlefield, stepping heedlessly over the bodies of the dead and dying. Crying
still, he screamed out loud, but no one paid any attention to him. Mad-ness in
one form or another was not unusual in battle.
"Is this all there is for me?" he cried to the unanswering heavens. "Is this
what I am condemned to repeat over and over, never ending? Is this what I
really am, a beast fit only for butchering his own kind?"
But there was no answer from the sky, darkening now with a coming storm.
The last of the Parthians was dead or in chains.
'The wailing of the women in the city was an eerie testimony to the
devastation outside the walls. The noble Avidius Cassius had promised they
would be spared and not sold into slavery if their men came out. At least they
and their children would be spared that. But their men were dead.
The arrow in Casca's leg burned like the acid in his soul as he worked his way
mindlessly across and away from the battlefield. He sobbed, and stumbled with
tear-blinded eyes.
It was over.
For now, at least, it was over. .
TWENTY-FIVE
Dark clouds raced low over the plains of Parthia. Streaks of lightning shot
from them like shining lances spearing the raped earth beneath. The waters of
the Tigris reflected rust-colored lights.
Blood, Casca thought. Death.
He climbed wearily to the top of a mound and sat upon a pile of once-sunbaked
bricks, now lead gray in the stormlight, and looked across the plains. The
roof of a house showed that the mound he sat on was covering a ruined building
from the mists of antiquity. To the southeast lay ancient Babylon, abandoned,
forsaken all these centuries, knowing the footsteps of only a few shepherds.
Eternity. . . Casca looked at his hands. They were covered with blood that was
turning black from exposure to the air and drying on his skin. The arrowhead
in his thigh had settled in with a dull throbbing. He raised his
grime-streaked face to the skies. The storm clouds were great cumulus
stallions racing toward some unknown infinity. As they crowded together, the
dark deepened. In the flickering light and shadows that preceded darkness he
looked out upon a scene that could only have come from a tortured mind. Below
on the plains were forty-five thousand men locked in an obscene caricature of
humanity, holding each other in contorted positions of death. Broken spears
and gear littered the earth as far as Casca could see. For what? He looked
toward the cause, that great city.
Ctesiphon was no more. The flames of the burning city reached up with black,
greasy fingers to the stormy sky. The screams of the inhabitants blended with
the roar of the flames. Ctesiphon was being put to the sword and to the torch,
her remaining people marched off into slavery-after the soldiers had first
taken their pleasures, for is not rape the right of conquest? And what purpose [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]