“This must have been Carrhae all over again,” Dacius said. “I only hope Galerius suffered the same fate.”
For a moment Constantine was too much in the grip of the horror he was witnessing to risk speech. Finally, however, he forced himself to look away to where the scene of death and plunder stretched westward toward Antioch along the route the retreating army had followed.
“You know this means were behind the Persians following Galerius, don’t you?” he said.
“By the gods of Rome!” the centurion exclaimed. “We have ridden into a trap without knowing it. What shall we do?”
War against the Egyptian rebels
It was a measure of the way Constantine had matured as a leader of men, since they had left Nicomedia for the war against the Egyptian rebels, that Dacius asked for a decision instead of offering advice.
‘If the trapper doesn’t know were in the trap, we may be able to get out before he can spring it.” Constantine’s mind was working rapidly while he spoke his thoughts aloud, testing them, so to speak, against the battle wisdom Dacius had gained through decades of service. “Do you know how far it is to Europos or Dura, that Lucius Catullus spoke about?”
“Only a short distance, as I remember it from the map.”
“The retreating column wasn’t very wide here,” Constantine pointed out, “so we might be able to circle the enemy’s south flank unobserved and cross the river to join what is left of our forces.”
“It’s probably our only chance to get past the Persians with whole skins,” Dacius agreed. “And not much of a chance at that.”
“Pass the order,” Constantine told him. “And warn the men to be quiet. We don’t want to give the enemy’s rear guard any warning that we are behind them.”
It proved to be less than two hours’ ride to the Euphrates and, as Constantine had hoped, they did not see any sign of the enemy on the way. But when Constantine and Dacius at the head of the column topped a low rise and found the river flowing placidly before them in the light of the setting sun, there was no mistaking the meaning of the scene that met their eyes.
A squadron of perhaps two hundred soldiers led by a tall man whose armor shone so brightly in the rays of the setting sun that it appeared to have been burnished, was attempting to make an orderly crossing of the river. Their banners were held high and their ranks were still solid, even though some were wounded and a number were being carried by others inside the square they had formed for their defense. Nor was there any sign of panic, though fully twice their number of Persian cavalry were harrying them in the typical slashing attack favored by those superb horsemen.
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