The Slave King

by Peter Darman

  The atmosphere was subdued with very little conversation. Akmon picked at his food, Joro and Soter engaged in polite conversation, and Lucius and Bullus said little as they devoured the mutton, chicken and beef on offer. But they lagged well behind another guest who was intent on consuming his own bodyweight in food.

  ‘Slow down,’ I told Klietas sitting beside me, ‘you will be ill.’

  He shoved a slice of beef into his mouth, followed by a chunk of bread.

  ‘Yes, highborn.’

  Joro, Soter and their wives had noticed the young boy sitting on the top table but had said nothing, though their disapproving visages spoke volumes. Bullus had done a decent job cleaning him up, had found him a change of clothes and had even cut his matted mane to make him modestly presentable. A servant went to fill his golden rhyton with wine but I placed a hand over the drinking vessel.

  ‘Bring fruit juice for our young friend.’

  ‘Have you adopted the boy, majesty?’ asked Soter, a trace of mockery in his voice.

  ‘This is our latest recruit,’ I told him, ‘a slinger who will augment our forces, he and I hope dozens of others.’

  ‘We recruit children now, lord?’ asked Lusin.

  ‘I can fight as well as any man, highborn,’ declared Klietas, breadcrumbs tumbling from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘I doubt that,’ mocked Pogon.

  ‘How long have you been able to use a sling, Klietas?’

  ‘Since I was five, highborn,’ he answered proudly.

  ‘Around a couple of years, then,’ said Soter derisively, to the amusement of his and Joro’s wives.

  ‘A slingshot can travel over a greater distance than an arrow,’ I said, ‘and in skilled hands can be deadlier. It would be foolish to ignore the dozens of farmers and their sons who can fight as slingers on the walls. We need every man we can get our hands on.’

  ‘And boy,’ said Joro.

  I took a sip of wine. It was excellent, though poor in comparison to the magical beverage we had consumed in the tent of our otherworldly friends.

  ‘If the enemy breaches the walls, they will make no distinction between men and boys,’ I said harshly.

  ‘Or women and girls,’ added Gallia.

  Our words soured the atmosphere and conversation died as everyone digested the stark reality of the situation they found themselves in. All aside from Klietas who was blissfully happy to be at a table that contained so much delicious fare. When Akmon and Lusin retired to their private quarters to signal the end of the meal, he began to gather up bread, cheese and fruit before him, intent on taking all he could carry. I laid a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘That won’t be necessary. You will sleep in the palace tonight and have breakfast in the morning. We need to put some meat on your bones before the enemy comes.’

  The appeal for slingers among the refugees yielded an impressive three hundred volunteers, together with an additional two hundred archers – men who had served as horse archers with their lords during the recent wars, and had been lucky enough to survive the carnage inflicted on Media’s armies. We therefore had an additional five hundred men and boys to increase our army to fifteen hundred.

  The next day we again laboured on the defences, digging trenches and pits under a blazing sun. As we did so a steady trickle of individuals left the city, mostly foreign merchants but also cowards, those with family outside the city and others who considered their chances of survival to be greater outside Irbil than inside its walls. I was glad to see them go – it meant fewer mouths to feed.

  Klietas, in his new tunic and leather shoes, his sling tucked into his new leather belt, sifted through the soil freshly dug from the trench, picking out largish stones to place in his leather pouch. The soil would be put back in the trench when the sharpened stakes had been placed. The four great fields of obstacles around the city were taking shape, in stark contrast to the areas adjacent to them that for an attacker would look very tempting, or so we all hoped.

  Klietas picked up a medium-sized stone and examined it.

  ‘How far could you shoot one of those?’ I asked him, standing in the trench beside him.

  ‘Four hundred paces, highborn,’ he grinned.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Bullus, handing me a full waterskin.

  I removed the cork and took two measured gulps before passing it to the centurion beside me.

  ‘It is true,’ the boy declared, ‘I counted the number myself.’

  ‘What did you kill, boy?’

  ‘A wolf,’ he beamed. ‘Very dangerous.’

  ‘Not as dangerous as an enemy archer or slinger,’ grumbled Bullus.

  But Klietas was not to be swayed from the conviction he would reap a harvest of enemy dead when Prince Atrax appeared, which I did nothing to disabuse him of.

  ‘We will be fighting side-by-side, Klietas.’

  Bullus said nothing but gave me a sceptical look.

  ‘You and me, highborn?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘we are brothers-in-arms now. We will share the same hardships and triumphs in the days to come.’

  Bullus glanced behind him.

  ‘Talking of brothers-in-arms, majesty.’

  I saw the black banner with a silver dragon motif and the score of kontus points glinting in the sun and knew Akmon was approaching. The king was in a gleaming scale armour cuirass, beside him Joro with a great blue plume in his helmet, his blue tunic made of silk and his white leggings also silk. Akmon’s open-faced helmet was topped with a gold crown and at his hip he carried his father’s sword: a straight, double-edged weapon with a steel cross-guard, grip wrapped in leather, and a silver pommel in the shape of a horse’s head. The sword had originally been forged in Hatra and was gifted to Spartacus when he had been a rebellious prince in the city of my birth.

  ‘Make way for the king.’

  The cataphracts flanking Akmon and Joro lowered their lances to usher toiling civilians out of the way before halting their horses in front of me. Joro frowned at my dirty appearance and at the spade in my hand. Digging trenches was not how a Parthian King should behave, not at all, but Akmon smiled as I jumped from the trench. Klietas went down on all fours in front of his king. Everyone ignored him.

  ‘The scouts have returned with news from the north,’ said Akmon.

  I discerned concern in his voice.

  I wiped my hands on a cloth. ‘I assume Prince Atrax has mustered a large army.’

  Akmon nodded. ‘Thousands of horse and foot.’

  The latter gave me hope we had a few more days yet to complete our task, as the enemy would be forced to march at the rate of the slower-moving foot soldiers.

  ‘How far away?’

  ‘Fifty miles, more or less, advancing from the northeast,’ Joro told me. ‘They will be here in three days. Media is in your debt, majesty, for without your arrival we would have been in a very vulnerable position.’

  I sighed. ‘As opposed to merely vulnerable.’

  ‘Lord Soter has left the city with his family,’ said Akmon suddenly, ‘to rally the lords of the kingdom, you understand.’

  I nodded to Akmon and glanced at Joro, whose face was a mask of stone. We were all thinking the same: was Soter a traitor or a loyalist? If the former, I worried that he might attempt to intercept Dura’s army as it advanced from the south. But there was nothing I could do about it now. The die was cast.

  Bullus kicked Klietas with his boot. ‘You will need more stones for your sling, boy.’

  Chapter 7

  The work on the obstacles was speeded up, men and now women working day and night to complete them before the enemy arrived. The whole city knew it was no longer a game, that the feverish activity sparked by the arrival of the King and Queen of Dura in their magical sparkling armour might just save them. Joro sent out scouts in all directions to ensure our adversaries did not arrive unannounced before the city. Lucius had drawn a plan of the city and its defences on a sheet of papyrus and we now stared at it as
he explained the tactics we should adopt. The white-haired Joro watched him like a hawk as we stood round the small table in the king’s study in the palace’s private apartments. Joro’s son was the commander of the king’s bodyguard, though it now numbered only one hundred cataphracts, and his wife was still resident in the citadel. He had lost another son at the Battle of Mepsila and despite his loss I knew he was a true professional. It must have taken great resolve to swear allegiance to the man who was the son of the king who had been responsible for his son’s death.

  ‘Irbil is essentially a circle,’ said Lucius, pointing at the map, ‘the sprawl around the citadel copying its round shape. The perimeter wall is thus also circular, with entrances to the city found at the four points of the compass.’

  My quartermaster caught Joro’s eye. ‘You wish to add something, sir?’

  Joro shook his head.

  ‘Please continue, Lucius,’ I said.

  ‘The fields of obstacles have been constructed either side of the gates,’ said Lucius, ‘to channel any enemy attack against the four entrances into the city.’

  Now Joro spoke. ‘There are wooden bridges across the ditch to give access to all four gates, general. We should destroy them before the enemy arrives.’

  ‘That would be sensible, I agree,’ said Lucius. ‘However, I propose leaving them in place.’

  ‘If the enemy has any sense, he will build four battering rams and use them to smash in all four gates simultaneously,’ said Pogon.

  ‘That is the intention,’ smiled Lucius.

  Joro’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’

  ‘No, lord,’ replied Lucius, ‘my intention is to present a tempting target for the enemy, so he will throw all his forces against the gates, either side of which will be our slingers and archers. Besides, the bridges will be fired once the enemy is on them.’

  Joro was surprised. ‘Fired?’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ smiled Lucius. ‘Beneath every bridge is brushwood, which will be soaked in pitch just prior to the enemy’s arrival.’

  Joro nodded approvingly. ‘Good.’

  ‘How many do the enemy number?’ asked Akmon.

  ‘Our scouts indicate an army of between ten and fifteen thousand, majesty,’ Joro told him.

  ‘Let us hope nearer the former,’ I said.

  ‘Long odds,’ remarked Pogon solemnly.

  ‘That is why we must kill as many in the first clash,’ said Lucius. ‘If Atrax receives a bloody nose in the first assault, he may reconsider launching a second.’

  ‘He will not,’ stated Joro. ‘He grew up in this palace and I can tell you he will not be diverted from his belief.’

  ‘Which is what, general?’ asked Akmon.

  ‘That he is the rightful king of Media.’

  ‘It does not matter what Atrax does or thinks,’ I said. ‘All we have to do is hold out until my army arrives, then we can crush Atrax and his army.’

  ‘If I may address the issue of dispositions,’ said Lucius, eager to move on.

  I nodded to him.

  ‘We have just over twelve hundred missile troops to man the perimeter wall,’ he informed us.

  Joro was surprised. ‘That many?’

  ‘Including the squires of your own cataphracts, lord, the Daughters of Dura and the civilian archers and slingers who volunteered.’

  ‘Children and girls?’

  It was the first time Lusin had spoken. There were dark rings around her brown eyes and she looked pale and tired.

  ‘If the worst happens,’ smiled Gallia, ‘even children and girls prefer to have a weapon in their hands before dying.’

  To my wife such a view made perfect sense. To a young woman brought up in the confines of Armenian nobility it was an appalling prospect, but even she knew that cities that fell to assault became charnel houses. Lucius tried to provide a modicum of reassurance.

  ‘The reserve will comprise Lord Pogon’s city garrison and the palace guard will defend the citadel. If the city falls, there are ample supplies in the citadel to hold out until Dura’s army arrives.’

  ‘There is not enough food to feed the city population if the perimeter wall is breached, general,’ said Akmon.

  ‘No, majesty.’

  ‘Then what will happen to the people?’ asked Lusin.

  ‘They will die, most likely, majesty,’ stated Pogon bluntly.

  ‘The citadel is strong,’ I said, ‘and it has its own water supply, so it can withstand a prolonged siege.’

  ‘If the perimeter wall is breached, then the population will be welcomed into the citadel,’ Lusin told us.

  ‘I would advise against that, majesty,’ said Lucius. ‘If the enemy are butchering civilians, it will give us the opportunity to gather our troops and get them inside the citadel.’

  She stared, wide-eyed, at my quartermaster-general, appalled at his suggestion.

  ‘No! The people will not be sacrificed to satisfy your theories, general. They and we will triumph, or perish, together. If this condition is disagreeable to our Duran allies, they may leave before the enemy arrives.’

  Gallia laughed approvingly and Lucius wore a confused look, but I was delighted by her words. There was obviously steel beneath the charm and looks.

  ‘We have every faith in the diligence and ability of General Varsas,’ said Akmon, ‘and his plan to defeat the enemy.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Lucius, tipping his head to Akmon, ‘when the enemy attacks, endeavour to get the slingers to commence shooting first. Their weapons have a longer range than a recurve bow and it does not matter if their ammunition expenditure is prodigious. There are no shortages of stones whereas there is not an inexhaustible supply of arrows.’

  ‘The armouries are well stocked,’ Akmon reassured us. ‘The gods be with you.’

  It was hot in the palace, the temperature outside oppressive as the sun roasted the city from a cloudless sky. The atmosphere inside the city was also suffocating, everyone weighed down by the prospect of imminent assault. We filed out of the room and a servant immediately accosted Gallia and me.

  ‘Highnesses, your presence is requested in the Temple of Shamash.’

  ‘Who requests our presence?’ Gallia demanded to know.

  ‘High Priest Parmenion, highness.’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘It is just a short distance,’ I said.

  The beauty of Irbil’s citadel was its small size, which meant all points were easily within walking distance. And because it was the preserve of royalty and nobility, it was mercifully absent of crowds, beggars and chaos. In their place was order, calm and quiet, notwithstanding the threat of siege. We walked the short distance to the temple, turning down the offer of litters. As yet the effects of the magical elixir we had been served had not worn off; if anything, our senses, strength and stamina were increasing by the day. The narrow alleyways were largely devoid of life apart from two-man patrols of the royal bodyguard, their orders being to eject anyone from the citadel who had no business being there. Like the other temples dedicated to the Sun God, the main entrance faced east to welcome Shamash as he began his journey across the heavens each day, its white-stone walls and gold-leaf covered double doors presenting a deliberate brilliance to the world. The doors had gold handles and from within came the heady aroma of burning cassia and myrrh, incense being burnt to make Shamash feel welcome and enable mortals to more easily converse with immortals.

  We walked through the doors into the temple, sunlight flooding into its interior via the windows cut high in the walls, white marble tiles and columns supporting the arched cedar roof accentuating the light to create a dazzling effect that made us squint.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  The male voice came from behind us and we immediately spun on our heels. To see a figure wearing a white robe and a belt of silver metal, a hood covering his face. He removed it to reveal a ‘man’ we had seen before, his skin pale, almost pure white in the temple’s b
rilliant light, his hair white but appearing silver as the sun’s rays caught it. Girra smiled at us.

  ‘Time is of the essence, my friends. The enemy draws close and Erra encourages their advance. You will have to endure the wrath of the seven sons of Anu.’

  How I wish Claudia were with us at that moment. I wracked my brains trying to remember the Poem of Erra, the Babylonian text that was over two thousand years old. A tutor had made me learn it in my early youth but it existed in my mind only as fragments.

  ‘Anu, the king of the gods, sowed his seed in the earth and she bore him seven sons,’ I said.

  Girra smiled. ‘Very good, Pacorus, but do you remember the ordained destinies of those sons, which were also given to Erra?’

  Gallia looked at me in anticipation but I failed the test.

  ‘I am ashamed to say I do not.’

  ‘Do not be ashamed,’ he said, ‘it is a long and tedious piece of writing. But the specific commands given to each of the Seven will be visited on Irbil. To the first Anu said: wherever you go, spread terror, have no equal. To the second, he told him to burn like fire, scorch like flame. To the third he commanded, look like a lion; let him who sees you be paralysed by fear. To the fourth he said: let a mountain collapse when you present your fierce arms. The fifth was exhorted to blast like the wind and scan the circumference of the earth. The sixth was ordered to go out everywhere and spare no one. And the seventh was charged with slaying whatever lives.’

  ‘Are you saying the siege will last seven days?’ asked Gallia.

  ‘Seven days of trial,’ nodded Girra.

  ‘Are the gods aiding Prince Atrax?’ I enquired.

  He flashed a smile. ‘Shamash has forbidden it, though if I had a choice I would stand beside you both on the ramparts.’

  ‘And Erra?’

  Another smile. ‘He cares not who prevails as long as there is fire, destruction and death.’