The War at the Edge of the World

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The army assembled before dawn. All night the legionaries had marched through dry ravines and across rocky slopes, stumbling in the darkness with muffled weapons, forbidden to make a sound as they flanked the enemy position. Now, as the first rays of sun lit the snows of the high mountain ranges, they saw the royal encampment of the King of Persia in the brown valley below them, with their enemies spilling from the gates in confusion. Already in their hearts was the promise of a battle won.

Twenty-five thousand men formed a battle line over a mile long. Massed squadrons of cavalry held the higher ground at the flanks: mailed Sarmatian lancers; Dalmatian light horsemen; mounted archers from Armenia and Osrhoene. Between them stood five thousand allied Gothic tribesmen in full barbaric array, fierce warriors from beyond the empire’s northern boundaries. But at the centre of the line were ten thousand armoured infantrymen drawn from the crack legions of the Danube frontier. As the sun rose, the light gleamed off helmets of burnished iron and bronze, hauberks of mail and scale, the bristling tips of spears and javelins and the serried lines of oval shields. The sky-blue shields of Legion I Jovia bore the eagle and thunderbolt of Jupiter; beside them, the blood-red shields of II Herculia were emblazoned with the naked figure of Hercules with his club and lion-skin. To either side were the black shields of I Italica, the sea-green of XI Claudia, the white of V Macedonica and the tawny-yellow of IV Flavia.

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