The Slave King

by Peter Darman

  ‘Your centurions are like wild dogs,’ he said half in jest.

  ‘Well-trained dogs, lord,’ I replied, a shiver going down my spine in his presence.

  I offered my hand to assist him getting out of the trench, but then withdrew it. Was one permitted to touch an immortal? He laughed.

  ‘Is there anything you need, lord?’ I asked.

  He stretched his body again. ‘A new back would be useful.’

  He laughed again. ‘So, you have saved Akmon and his pretty young wife.’

  ‘A task only half-completed, lord.’

  ‘And tomorrow you go to give battle to Atrax.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘He has allies,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘you should beware the two eagles. Please pass me my spade.’

  I turned to pick up the tool but when I went to hand it to its owner I saw he had gone. I looked all around but there was no sign of Marduk, not a trace. I put down the spade and walked away from the half-finished trench, but then thought such a tool might be useful in the coming battle. I turned but it too had disappeared, just like its owner.

  I spent the rest of the evening walking among the men I would be fighting alongside tomorrow, their morale high in the knowledge they were facing an enemy who had already tasted defeat and disappointment at Irbil, a foe that included poorly armed and ill-disciplined hill men. Many were looking forward to battling their legionary counterparts from Pontus, especially when the Exiles and Durans learned they were commanded by Titus Tullus. This was the man who had fought beside them at Ctesiphon but who had now turned traitor to side with the pretender Atrax and his mercenaries. So they sharpened their swords, pledged death before dishonour and dreamed of glory. Chrestus imagined another silver disc added to the Staff of Victory and I returned to my tent trying to make sense of the warning concerning two eagles.

  The Rawanduz Valley was green, the river itself a mere twenty paces wide and because the height of summer had just passed, its current slow and its level low, barely two feet at most. The waterway was in the centre of the valley as we advanced east, the gap between the two hillsides half a mile at its entrance but narrowing sharply as we moved upwards on a gentle slope. Kalet and Gallia were leading dismounted horsemen and women respectively, ahead of them centuries of legionaries negotiating the grassy slopes. Once again it was a warm, beautiful day, a slight breeze coming from the north ruffling our banners and providing a modicum of relief for men wearing helmets, mail armour, leather vests and carrying shields and javelins.

  In the valley itself Chrestus marshalled his foot soldiers, being able to deploy only three cohorts abreast as the valley suddenly narrowed as Soter had warned.

  He was part of the mounted party that followed the cohorts as they marched east, their progress slowed by having to haul scorpion bolt throwers with them. Akmon, magnificent in dragon-skin armour, shining helmet and gold crown, studied Dura’s foot soldiers intently, pointing at the cohorts and centuries as they inched forward. Next to him was Joro, large blue plume in his helmet, glancing up at the slopes that were flooded with dismounted archers and legionaries. The valley floor was now around three hundred paces wide and ahead I could see individuals massing some half a mile further up the gorge.

  ‘Our reception party,’ I said.

  There were also individuals on the slopes either side of the black mass ahead, widely spaced to blanket the hillsides.

  ‘Enemy missile troops,’ noted Joro.

  Our own troops on the slopes had also seen them and there was flurries of whistle blasts as centurions organised their men into testudo formation, men closing ranks to present a wall of shields to the enemy, those behind the front rank forming a roof with their shields. The archers accompanying them, including Gallia, closed up to take cover within each testudo.

  Because of the incline progress on the slopes was almost non-existent, the valley reverberating with hisses and cracks as the enemy archers and slingers shot at the locked shields of each testudo. In reply, our own archers took shots at Atrax’s men, a shield in the roof of a testudo moving to create a gap through which an arrow could be loosed on a high trajectory against the enemy. Such shots could not be aimed but the enemy had no shields and were very vulnerable, notwithstanding they were widely spaced. That said, they could see the arrows arching in the sky before dropping on them and thus had a chance to dodge the missiles.

  With a de facto stalemate on the slopes, Chrestus faced the task of breaking through the mass of warriors now crowded in the narrow neck of land in front of us, around four hundred paces distant. In front of the seething mass of hill men now brandishing their axes and hollering chilling war cries, I discerned a row of slingers standing ahead of the wild barbarians.

  ‘Why does not the enemy place his best soldiers across the bottom of the gorge?’ asked Soter.

  ‘He knows, or rather Atrax’s commander Tullus does, that we possess scorpions,’ I told him. ‘That being the case, he will not waste his best soldiers when he can sacrifice the hill men instead. His best men will be well to the rear, safely out of the way. How far to the east is the plain, lord?’

  ‘Five miles, majesty,’ answered Joro, ‘and the pass is narrow for all that length.’

  ‘It will take the rest of the day to clear the gorge,’ Akmon told us, pointing ahead at the files of legionary helmets that had now halted at least four hundred paces from the noisy enemy horde.

  ‘The enemy plays a perceptive game.’ Akmon continued. ‘Each of King Pacorus’ legionaries occupies a space of three feet when he is in close order. A century has a frontage of ten yards, which means a maximum of only three cohorts can attack the enemy, less if we include the problem of the river.’

  ‘You have a keen eye, majesty,’ said Joro admiringly.

  Clearly being raised in Gordyene had given the new King of Media a thorough education in the organisation and tactics of Roman legionaries, though because of Spartacus’ hatred of all things Roman his foot soldiers were called Immortals.

  ‘It will be a challenge for the scorpion crews to hit their targets,’ I said.

  Orobaz, attired in an expensive scale-armour cuirass, was confused.

  ‘They can hardly miss, majesty.’

  ‘The hill men, yes,’ I agreed, ‘but they will be aiming at the slingers in front of them. They are the ones that can inflict real damage; the rest are just chaff that can be swept aside easily enough.’

  Scorpions were straightforward but effective machines. Resembling a large bow lying parallel to the ground on a wooden bolt carrier, the whole machine is mounted on a wooden stand. Just under the height of a man’s chest, the scorpion was a complex piece of equipment, the two arms that shot the two-foot-long iron-tipped bolt being pushed through ropes made of animal sinew, which are then twisted to create hugely powerful tension devices that propel each arm forwards. The arms are then pulled back by means of a bowstring, the bolt is placed on the carrier and then the bowstring is released. A bolt had a range of around five hundred feet and could inflict horrible damage on densely packed groups of foot soldiers. Those bolts now began to hiss through the air, aimed at the slingers but hitting one or more hill men if they missed. The slingers shot back, their lead missiles searching out the crews of the scorpions. It was a deadly cat-and-mouse battle in which we had the advantage, for every scorpion bolt hit at least one man whereas the lead pellets of the enemy only rarely found a target, the hide covered shields of the legionaries protecting the scorpion crews as they worked methodically to search out and hit their prey.

  Each century had one scorpion operated by two men and the dozen centuries facing the enemy waited patiently behind their locked shields for the slingers to be killed. In skilled hands a scorpion could shoot three bolts a minute, but the crews were loosing between one and two bolts a minute as they directed their missiles at the slingers. Nevertheless, after five minutes the slingers had been shot down and behind them a few dozen hill men had also been either killed or wounded.
But the scorpions had done nothing to dint the bloodlust of the Pontic barbarians who now surged forward in a crescendo of noise to do battle with Chrestus’ men.

  The river running through the middle of the gorge slowed the advance of those hill men charging through its shallow waters, comrades either side racing ahead of them to hurl themselves at the locked shields of the legionaries.

  To run into a hail of javelins.

  As they were trained to do, the centurions led their men forward into the attack rather than wait to receive the enemy in a stationary position. The soldiers of Dura screamed their war cries, the first two ranks hurled their javelins at the enemy before drawing their swords to battle the hill men. As they did so the men in the third and fourth ranks paused momentarily to throw their javelins over the heads of the first two ranks, which meant the enemy ran into a rain of iron-tipped missiles. As they were intended to do, once they struck a target the soft, thin iron shafts bent, adding weight to shields if embedded in them or, more likely against unarmoured hill men, piercing flesh easily. The javelin was designed to be used but once, after which it was largely useless because an enemy could not pick it up and throw it back.

  But the last thing on the minds of the enemy was retrieving javelins as dozens ran into the storm of pila to be cut down. Those following tripped and stumbled over their dead and wounded comrades – to run straight into the legionaries who had thrown them. Using their shields as mobile battering rams, the soldiers of Dura crashed into the faltering enemy to begin stabbing their short swords into defenceless torsos.

  ‘Jab and stab, do not slash and hack.’

  I smiled when I remembered the words Lucius Domitus had repeated a thousand times to new recruits at the training posts.

  ‘A gladius blade is just under two feet in length, but you only need two or three inches to put an opponent down. Stick the point in him fast and withdraw it just as quick. Don’t waste your time and energy trying to shove it into him all the way up to the guard. All that bone, muscle and other bits will only make it harder to pull it out.’

  Like dozens of hornets with steel stings, the foot soldiers of Dura moved forward into the disorganised, crumbling horde of hill men, stabbing around, under and over the rims of their shields, gladius points sticking torsos, necks, faces and groins. As the impetus slowed due to my men having to step on, over and around the bodies of hill men writhing on the ground with javelins stuck in them, or clutching at stab wounds gushing blood, a fresh javelin storm was unleashed against them as the rear ranks of the centuries moved forward to hurl their missiles at the now-fleeing Pontic barbarians.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Akmon make a fist as Chrestus’ cohorts moved forward, the scorpions being abandoned to be retrieved by the rear-echelon cohorts. I glanced up at the slopes and saw the Pontic archers and slingers also falling back, the testudos sheltering our archers inching forward, still shooting the occasional arrow to urge them on their way. Behind us thousands of dismounted horsemen waited patiently for the foot soldiers to clear the gorge of enemy troops to allow them to sweep onto the plain to surround and then destroy the army of Atrax.

  As the hillsides became gradually steeper, becoming almost vertical at the narrowest point in the valley, the archers and legionaries withdrew to join the rest of the army, now compacted into a column barely two hundred paces wide but stretching back to the entrance to the valley three miles to the rear. After the initial bout of frenzied bloodletting, the fighting became more sporadic and haphazard as the hill men, now demoralised after suffering hundreds of casualties, became reluctant to tangle with Chrestus’ men.

  My general, part of his crest missing, and blood smeared on his shield, though not his own, reported to me as the sun reached its highest point in the sky. It was very warm in the confines of the valley and there was no wind. Everyone was sweating, especially Akmon’s cataphracts who acted as his bodyguard. Looking magnificent in their scale armour, with tubular steel armour covering their limbs, their horses also covered in thick scale armour, they had nothing to do except hold their lances erect and sweat. Joro could have ordered them to dismount, remove their helmets and lay their long lances on the ground. But these were Media’s finest soldiers and in Media appearances were all, and so while Kalet and his men lounged on the ground, chatting and joking, Media’s cataphracts stood like stone statues in the valley of death.

  Chrestus saluted, clenching his blood-covered sword to his chest.

  ‘Another couple of hours at most and we will be on the plain, majesty. The fight has gone out of them.’

  In front of us were neat rows and lines of helmets, with centuries being detached from the main bodies either side of the river to move the dead bodies of hill men and dump them at the foot of the slopes. It was a grisly task but necessary to keep the narrow route through the valley clear, and to remove any bodies in the river itself to preserve the army’s water supply.

  Soter and Orobaz stared at Chrestus, wondering why a general would fight as a common foot soldier rather than sit on a horse to direct his soldiers.

  ‘We will make camp on the plain and give battle to Atrax tomorrow,’ I said.

  Chrestus screwed up his face. ‘If he’s got any sense, he will keep going north rather than offer battle.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I told him, ‘he can run and you can destroy the foot soldiers he will be forced to leave behind. The rest of us will pursue with the horsemen and hunt him down. Either way, he’s a dead man.’

  ‘You are forgetting the civilian captives, lord,’ said Akmon. ‘In our plans we must consider them, for they are Medians.’

  Chrestus half-smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Most likely they are dead already, majesty, or will be as soon as we reach the plain.’

  Akmon rounded on him. ‘Until I have seen their bodies for myself, general, I will not abandon them.’

  ‘If they are still alive, we will offer the enemy their own lives if they surrender their captives unharmed,’ I offered.

  ‘Including Atrax, majesty?’ asked Orobaz.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered through gritted teeth.

  Chrestus puffed out his cheeks and gestured at the ground, which looked like it had been sprinkled with blood.

  ‘If you do that, majesty, he might raise another army and return to Parthia and then we will have to do this all over again.’

  ‘Atrax will not be returning to Parthia,’ I told him.

  He walked back to his cohorts an unhappy man but Akmon was contented and so was Joro, pleased I had indulged his king regarding his slightly naive desire to save lowly commoners. For his part Soter maintained a dignified silence, though I suspected he was slowing warming to his young king who had shown steel and courage in the defence of Irbil and was obviously genuinely concerned about the welfare of his people. Soter rarely spoke to me directly and I suspected he viewed me with suspicion, probably because the hatred directed at me for years by my sister, her husband and their two sons had made me an ogre in Media, and the cause of the kingdom’s misfortune. It did not matter if every one of Media’s lords despised me as long as they displayed loyalty towards Akmon.

  Chrestus was right about clearing the valley, the sun dipping in the west behind us when his cohorts finally reached flat, open ground. Rather than attempt to block our entry to the vast plain, Atrax and his army withdrew with all speed to the site of the former Musasir stronghold of Gird-I Dasht. Talib and his scouts were sent ahead to reconnoitre the ancient fortress and the plain surrounding it, Gallia joining us after her exertions on the slopes in the valley. She looked remarkably fresh considering she had spent most of the day huddled among sweating, stinking, cursing legionaries in a testudo, but she informed me the biggest problem had been trying to keep her footing on the grassy slope rather than worrying about enemy missiles.

  She pointed at the mound and crumbling walls on top of it in the distance, shimmering in the late afternoon sun, beyond it the snowy peaks of the Zagros.
/>   ‘Atrax hides in that stronghold. Now we can besiege him.’

  ‘It will not be much of a siege, majesty,’ opined Soter. ‘The stronghold is too small to accommodate no more than a few hundred men, its walls are in a state of great disrepair and though there are numerous streams around it, there are no wells on the mound itself.’

  ‘The civilians must be on the mound as well,’ lamented Akmon.

  Around us the Durans and Exiles, who had suffered hardly any casualties during the day, were now hacking at the earth with their entrenching tools to create a ditch and palisade to encompass our camp for the night. Mules and wagons were also threading their way through the valley to reach the barren plain, which I had to admit was ideal for combat. Our horse archers would be able to isolate, surround and annihilate the enemy’s hill men, while other horse archers and our mounted spearmen and cataphracts would be able to counter the enemy’s mounted skirmishers and greatly outnumbered horse archers. This would allow the Durans and Exiles to destroy the Pontic legionaries and foot slingers and archers.

  By the time over twenty-two thousand soldiers, their animals, wagons, camels and all the non-combatants were safely behind the ramparts of our camp, it was dusk, the sky a mixture of reds, blues and purples in the evening twilight. Evening meals were being prepared, including the one in my command tent, to which I had invited Akmon, Soter, Orobaz, Chrestus and Joro. The King of Media had his own tent, of course, a sumptuous circular affair more lavish than my own, but he had left his cooks and servants in Irbil with his wife, though he did have the one hundred and eighty squires of his cataphracts to assist him in his kingly duties.

  My own retinue of servants consisted of Klietas, who in his boyish desire to please and his gratitude at being rescued from a life, a short life, of poverty and hunger, worked like a man possessed. He polished my helmet, sword and even my bow, though I had to tell him it had to be treated with bees’ wax, and then only once or twice a year.