Shouts followed them as they ran through the snow, arrows tracking closer with each shot. A horse and rider went down in the snow, the poor beast squealing as it struggled to get up. The thunk of an arrow smacking into Mylitos’s shield punctuated their need for haste.
The Parthians still weren’t close enough for arrows to penetrate, but soon they would be. Ahead of them, Tigran didn’t bother testing the bridge before running across the narrow span. They were almost there.
Mylitos screamed as he went down. Sliding to a stop, Lucius spun around and raised his scutum to cover his friend. An arrow landed at his feet and another stuck in the wood of his shield as Mylitos got up.
“Go! Run!” Lucius shouted, backing up to cover Mylitos’s retreat.
When Lucius heard hobnails against the wood of the bridge, he turned and fled, keeping the shield between himself and his enemies. Normally, he’d take a bridge like that at a much slower pace, checking its integrity before crossing, but now was not the time for caution.
When his feet touched rock on the other side, he heaved a sigh of relief and turned around, squatting behind his shield. Mylitos stepped up, raising his to cover them like a roof. It had to be the saddest testudo Lucius had ever been a part of.
“Where’s the boy?” Lucius asked, scanning the area and panting.
“I don’t know.”
A few more arrows thudded into their shield. The first one made it through the wood, the gleam of its arrowhead taunting Lucius and raising a phantom pain in the scars on his forearm.
“Romans!” Someone shouted in the language of the Hellenes. “Throw down your weapons and surrender.”
It took Lucius a moment to realize it was a woman yelling at him.
“Centurio,” Mylitos whispered. “I hear something behind us. A lot of something.”
Lucius’s stomach fell. They’d been outflanked and there were more Parthians behind them. Still, he held his position.
“It doesn’t sound like much of an offer,” Lucius yelled back.
“You can sleep by the fire, and then when we’re done with you, we’ll sell you into the east like we did with Crassus’s men after Carrhae. Or we can kill you here and leave your bodies to feed the carrion animals. It’s your choice,” she called back.
It was hard to gauge her face behind the helmet she wore. She didn’t wear one of the full-face masks often favored by the Parthian kataphraktoi, but a more standard helmet that drew to a point on the top with a burst of horsehair sticking out of it. The helmet had wide cheek guards similar to Lucius’s, though her helmet lacked the neck guard his possessed and had a small nose guard his didn’t. Like Lucius, she’d bundled up under her helmet. He could only see her eyes and thick black eyebrows. Under her heavy cloak, he caught a glimpse of scale mail.
“You’ll have to cross this bridge to get to me and I can defend it for quite a while,” Lucius called back.
She laughed, the surprise and mirth in it brought a smile to Lucius’s lips. “You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that, Roman.”
As the thunder of hooves behind them increased, he kept his eyes firmly on the Parthians in front of them. When their horses started prancing and the riders looked about nervously, checking in with each other, the woman raised a hand and yelled an order in Parthian, drawing them back to order.
“Lucius, I think I see the boy. He’s riding on the back of a horse with someone. He’s waving at us,” Mylitos hissed.
Lucius gave a bare nod, keeping his eyes forward. Lucius and the Parthian woman stared across the narrow chasm at each other. Occasionally the woman’s eyes would flick up to the approaching horses behind Lucius.
“Back off, Parthian,” another woman shouted. “I’ve come to collect my Romans.”
A little of the tension Lucius had been holding in his body siphoned out at the sound of Ariazate’s voice, though he’d never heard that note of authority in it, at least not that strongly.
“Drop your shield down next to mine, and we’ll back up, shields to the fore,” Lucius whispered.
“Right.” Mylitos stepped to the side, dropping his shield down to help block their retreat.
“Armenia doesn’t belong to the Romans anymore, little girl,” the woman shouted. “It would be unwise to stand in the way of an agent of Parthia. We remember our friends and our enemies. It would be a shame for you to fall into the latter category at such a young age.”
“Romans, Parthians, we of the mountains pay no heed to the comings and goings of your petty kings and puppets,” Ariazate called. “Besides, you’d have to get home to report to your king. I might be a child, but I can count, and you don’t have the people to keep what you want nor to take it from me.” She turned her head to the side slightly. “Archers!”
At her call, people moved through the thick line of horse flesh and riders and put arrow to bowstring, but waited, bows at their sides. Likewise, those on horseback readied their bows. Lucius guessed Ariazate had the Parthians outnumbered five to one. Any attempt to make it across the narrow bridge would be met with an impenetrable wall of arrows backed up with mixed cavalry.
Lucius kept his shield up and ready, contributing his steely gaze to the mix. The wind whipped up and settled down. Lucius waited as Ariazate and the Parthian woman stared at each other.
The Parthian woman shook her head and held up her hand, issuing signals to her people. Those near the back turned and rode away, then the next row until only the woman a handful of others remained.
“You’ve won this round, but snows melt and spring comes, even to the mountains. We’ll be back to finish this little discussion,” she called before turning around and riding off.
Ariazate held her people in their line until the last of the Parthians disappeared the way they’d come. When she judged the way clear, she had a couple of horses brought forward for Lucius and Mylitos. The horses had packs behind their saddles filled with extra winter gear for them. Adding the extra cloak over his own, Lucius swapped his gloves for a thicker, nicer pair. After he removed his helmet, he wrapped his head in the thick cloth and pulled his hood over it.
Lucius joined Ariazate and Tigran in the middle of their column as they continued their northern progress. “Thank you, Zati. I’s not sure I could have held them all off if they decided to cross the bridge.”
Zati laughed, the sound freer than he’d heard it before. “I believe you would have, but I’m glad we showed up before you made the fool attempt.”
“Where did you find all these people?” Lucius asked.
She looked about her, her back rigid and head held regally. “My brother and I still command some respect, at least in the mountain villages and communities.”
“Apparently.”
“There’s a village a couple hours from here that’ll put us up until morning. We’ll continue on minus the warriors we picked up there,” Zati said.
“And then?”
“That depends on you, Roman.” They rode in silence for a while. “I’d suggest staying in the mountains until the spring thaw. You’re alive now, but there’s no guarantee two of you will make it out alive, not with Parthians crawling all over in the lowlands and your Romans pulling out.”
