Sarmatian

by Peter Darman

  Our tunics were white linen and short sleeved, our leggings baggy to provide ventilation in the Mesopotamian heat. In winter the army wore long-sleeved woollen tunics and thicker leggings. Dura rarely saw snow, but the winter months could be harsh and night-time temperatures fell to below freezing.

  On the fourth day after leaving Irbil, we came across Vazneh, just as Dilshad’s map predicted. It was located in a fertile plain surrounded by low-lying hills covered with trees, mostly alder and oak but also pine. The air was fresh and invigorating as we cantered towards the settlement, a collection of mud-brick huts with thatched roofs, ringed by apple, plum and pear trees. Before we reached the village we splashed through a wide stream that curved around the village before making its way north, towards Lake Urmia ten miles distant.

  ‘Ten miles south of the great lake,’ I said.

  ‘Majesty?’ queried Navid.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Like the hundreds of other villages in Media, fields ringed the settlement, most filled with crops still green, but others overgrown and full of weeds. Bullus drew his sword when he saw individuals with what looked like spears but were in fact hoes. Navid saw them, too.

  ‘Ready,’ he called to his men, prompting twenty-five bows being plucked from their cases.

  More individuals came running from the fields into the village, perhaps a score or more, women among them. By the way they moved I could tell they were all in their prime. The horse archers formed into a line either side of their commander, arrows nocked in bowstrings, reins wrapped around their left wrists to allow them to shoot their bows unhindered, as well as pivot in the saddle without obstruction.

  ‘Stand down,’ I shouted, the fields and orchards now empty of individuals.

  The village was around a hundred paces to our front and now looked deserted, the inhabitants having either taken shelter inside one or more of the huts or were waiting in some hidden location to spring a trap. I nudged Horns forward.

  ‘You are with me, Bullus.’

  ‘I would advise against that, majesty,’ said a concerned Navid. ‘They might have slingers or archers.’

  ‘Klietas is an accomplished slinger,’ I replied, ‘though I am hopeful he will not knock me from the saddle without speaking to me first. Stay here until I return.’

  I trotted forward, Bullus beside me, peering ahead to try to spot an archer or slinger.

  ‘I hope this is the right village, majesty, because if it is not the inhabitants, who obviously have a dim view of soldiers, might indeed shoot you.’

  ‘There is one way to find out,’ I told him.

  I pulled up Horns when we were around twenty paces from the first hut. I scanned the gaps between it and two adjacent dwellings, but another hut blocked my view of the centre of the village. It was deathly quiet. Bullus’ martial instincts, honed by many campaigns and battles, made him uncomfortable.

  ‘We should go,’ he whispered, ‘I can feel eyes on me.’

  ‘I am King Pacorus of Dura,’ I shouted, ‘and seek one Klietas, who used to be a resident of this village before being forced to leave when war visited northern Media.’

  Bullus was now holding his shield in front of him in a rather awkward position, gripping the central handgrip and resting the metal rim of the shield on the front of his saddle. He looked ridiculous.

  ‘He’s not here, majesty, we should go.’

  ‘Wait,’ I hissed.

  ‘We mean you no harm,’ I shouted.

  ‘I bet they’ve heard that before,’ quipped Bullus.

  ‘Silence,’ I snapped in irritation.

  We sat there for what seemed like an age but was probably only a minute, the eyes of Bullus resembling those of a hawk as they flitted left and right, only he was searching for enemies, not prey. And then he appeared, looking fit and well, slightly stockier than I remembered but with his usual thick mop of dark brown hair tumbling to his shoulders. I eased myself from the saddle on to the ground. There was a time when I would have leapt from the saddle in joy at seeing him, but those days were long gone. Bullus shook his head when Klietas sprinted over and fell on one knee before me.

  ‘Welcome to Vazneh, majesty.’

  I grabbed his shoulders and lifted him up. ‘It is good to see you, Klietas. How are you?’

  Surprised at my familiarity, he was at first lost for words.

  ‘Well, majesty,’ he said at last, nodding at Bullus. ‘Centurion.’

  Bullus nodded back. ‘Klietas.’

  ‘Come and meet everyone, majesty,’ beamed Klietas.

  I pulled on Horns’ reins. ‘Tell Navid to keep his men outside the village,’ I said to Bullus.

  ‘You are going alone?’ said the centurion.

  ‘The king will be quite safe,’ insisted Klietas.

  I saw the sling tucked into his belt, along with a dagger and a quiver of arrows slung over his now broad shoulders.

  ‘Where’s your bow?’ I asked.

  ‘In good hands, majesty.’

  The hands in question belonged to a rather plain-looking young woman with sparkling emerald eyes, who like the others prostrated themselves before me when I appeared in the centre of the village.

  ‘Rise, rise all of you,’ I commanded.

  Klietas walked over to her, grabbed her hand and escorted her over to me, the other villagers, around thirty in total, all armed with a variety of makeshift weapons, including sickles, slings and clubs, eyeing me warily. To them I was just a man in armour armed with a sword, accompanied by other men on horses with swords and bows. Just like those who had once rampaged through northern Media, killing and looting its villages.

  ‘I come in peace,’ I said pathetically, though it was the only statement I thought might soothe their concerns.

  ‘This is Anush, majesty, my wife,’ beamed Klietas, oblivious to the cool reception directed towards me by the other villagers.

  She fell to her knees, but I lifted her up. I saw her slightly enlarged belly and realised she was pregnant. I embraced her.

  ‘I am pleased to meet the wife of the man who saved my life. When is your child due?’

  ‘In the autumn, highborn.’

  The other villagers now stood in a semi-circle around us, still clutching their weapons. I noticed two things about them: they were all young, being teenagers or young adults, and there were no children or old among them. Klietas suddenly became aware of them.

  ‘Back to work,’ he said.

  Remarkably, they obeyed his command and shuffled away, several giving me sideways glances before departing back to the fields and orchards. I was impressed.

  ‘You are headman here?’

  He blushed with embarrassment but Anush had no such reticence.

  ‘This village has arisen from the dead because of Klietas, highborn.’

  I was intrigued. ‘How did you do it?’

  A village was in essence a unit for taxation and conscription, nothing more. It existed to produce food to feed its inhabitants and livestock and give the surplus to a lord who ruled it as tax. In times of war, the same lord would recruit the menfolk of the village to supplement his mounted retinue. In this way, the lords of the kingdom would fulfil their military obligation to their king. If the war went well, the village menfolk might return to their homes and families. If not, their bloated carcasses would provide meat for scavengers in some foreign land.

  I had always liked Klietas, not least for saving my life when a bear had decided it wanted me for a meal, but as we strolled through the village and he told me his story, my admiration for him grew. He left Dura with a horse and a pouch full of gold, the profits accrued by his farm while he was beyond Parthia’s borders seeking out the enemies of my wife. He used the gold to purchase a donkey, small cart, tools and seeds in Irbil, thence travelling north on his own back to his village. Once there, he rode around the countryside searching out any who still remained in the area, promising them a better life than the miserable existence they endured either living wild or
working on farms mostly devoid of livestock and crops. His efforts resulted in Vazneh being re-populated with individuals who were young and hardy, two attributes vital to the task in hand.

  ‘The first crop will feed us through the winter and the one after that will hopefully produce a surplus that I can sell in Irbil,’ he told me.

  We had reached the edge of the village, from where we could see orchards and fields, in the far distance the mountains that marked the border with Gordyene.

  ‘You have done well, Klietas.’

  I grabbed Anush’s hand and squeezed it. ‘You both have.’

  Her hand was calloused and hard, a sign she had worked in the fields all her young life.

  ‘Thank you, highborn.’

  I knew then that he would never return to Dura and my journey had been in vain. But I was pleased he had, in the wasteland that was northern Media, planted the seeds of a new beginning, both figuratively and literally. As if reading my mind, he got straight to the point.

  ‘Why did you come, majesty? Is it the horse? The queen said I could have it, but if you want it back…’

  I stopped him in his tracks. ‘The horse is yours, Klietas. I came to try to persuade you to return to Dura, but I can see you are building yourself a life here.’

  I smiled at Anush. ‘As well as creating life.’

  I instructed Navid and his men to make camp outside the village, on the other side of the stream, so as not to unduly alarm the villagers. That night I ate with Klietas, Anush and two of his colleagues, a scrawny, feisty individual named Avedis and a giant of a man called Kevork. The former was a shepherd, the latter a blacksmith, but their stories were identical. Of how their families and villages had been destroyed first by the menfolk being conscripted to fight the enemies of Media, dying in a battle many miles away. I knew they were talking of the clash at Mepsila where thousands of Medians had been killed.

  ‘Then the wild men on horses came,’ said Avedis, bitterly. ‘They killed all my sheep and tried to kill me.’

  He pulled up his tunic to reveal a wicked scar on his belly.

  ‘They left me for dead.’

  ‘They ravaged this region,’ agreed Kevork, shaking his huge head. ‘They even killed the cats and dogs.’

  For some reason this saddened me greatly. I had seen countless thousands slain on the battlefield but the thought of innocent animals being butchered needlessly plunged me into a sombre mood. I assumed they were speaking of the horsemen of Gordyene and an image of the loathsome Shamshir, the commander of King’s Guard, filled my mind, though he and his men were always immaculately uniformed and never left the king’s side. Still, murder and rapine were certainly his speciality.

  ‘This land is now at peace,’ I told them, ‘you have nothing to fear.’

  Outside the wind suddenly picked up, the wooden door of Klietas’ hut rattled and the flame of the single candle illuminating its bare interior flickered.

  ‘There is never peace, highborn,’ said a melancholic Avedis.

  At that moment, a god must have been whispering into his ear for his words were to prove prophetic. But the wind subsided and Klietas would hear no words of pessimism.

  ‘Others will join our community and later in the year we will harvest wheat and barley, and pick apples, cherries, plums, peaches and strawberries. And next year we will have money to buy you some sheep.’

  ‘If we had oxen we could plough more fields,’ said Kevork, ‘to grow more crops so you could sell the surplus this year. We have ploughs but no oxen.’

  ‘There is only so much we can achieve with what we have, my friend,’ said Klietas. ‘Gula will protect us.’

  I glanced at the clay statuette depicting a seated figure with a dog at its feet in an alcove cut in the wall. It represented the Goddess Gula, the ‘great healer’ who creates life in the land.

  Ploughs pulled by animals allowed the land to be tilled more easily and faster, thus producing more food.

  ‘We will soon be harvesting the barley,’ said Kevork. ‘The goddess has been kind to us this year.’

  The next morning, men and women already in the fields and orchards just after the dawn broke, I sought out Klietas and found him rubbing down the horse he had been gifted by Gallia. He had moved into the headman’s hut with Anush, it being larger than the others as befitting the status of the individual who occupied it. He stopped his activity when I appeared, bowing his head.

  ‘You slept well, majesty?’

  I stretched my back. ‘As well as an old man full of aches and pains can in a draughty tent. Here.’

  I tossed him a pouch full of drachmas. ‘There is enough in there to purchase a pair of oxen.’

  His eyes lit up when he looked into the pouch.

  ‘You are too generous, majesty.’

  ‘Nonsense. What use is having money if one cannot spend it on worthwhile causes.?’

  An agitated Navid appeared at the entrance to the stable to interrupt our conversation.

  ‘Horsemen approaching, majesty.’

  Chapter 6

  ‘How many?’ I asked.

  ‘My scouts report at least a hundred, majesty.’

  ‘Uniforms?’

  He shook his head. ‘Too far away to identify, majesty. But they are heading this way.’

  Klietas was alarmed. ‘Why are horsemen coming here?’

  ‘If they are Medians, they are probably just on patrol,’ I told him. ‘But they might be bandits. Word must have spread that the village of Vazneh is prospering.’

  I looked at Navid. ‘Get your men into the village, among the huts. If they are bandits and if they are heading here, I want to maximise the element of surprise. And tell Bullus to report to me.’

  He saluted, returned to his horse, vaulted into the saddle and rode off. I laid a hand on Klietas’ shoulder.

  ‘Get your people out of the fields and into the village.’

  I knew the riders approaching were not King Akmon’s soldiers. He had told me his authority as yet did not extend to the north of his kingdom. That left two possibilities: the horsemen could be soldiers of Gordyene, or, most likely, they were renegades looking for loot and women and children to take as slaves. I had twenty-five horse archers, twenty-six including their commander, plus Centurion Bullus, who was the perfect foot soldier but who could not shoot a bow. In theory, if it came to violence and if my men achieved maximum surprise, they could easily cut down one hundred enemy horsemen.

  In theory.

  But battles are not theoretical affairs. They are confusing, nerve-shredding events in which the best-laid plans can turn to ashes in the blink of an eye. And the enemy would not be obligingly standing still, waiting to be killed. They would be fighting back, against horse archers wearing no helmets or armour. I clutched the lock of Gallia’s hair at my neck and said a silent prayer to Shamash to aid us in our peril. A ludicrous thought passed through my mind: perhaps the horsemen were not heading towards us. Perhaps their target was elsewhere. My gut told me otherwise.

  Navid mustered his men and deployed them in the village, which resembled two circles of over a score of houses around a central open space. Like most small settlements, it had grown haphazardly over the years, but always retaining a circular shape to facilitate defence against raiders.

  Klietas and the others assembled in the open space, worried expressions etched on their faces, particularly the women. But everyone had a weapon of sorts, my former squire handing his sling to Anush, a quiver slung over his shoulder and his bow in hand. The villagers glanced at my horse archers positioning themselves next to houses in the inner circle of dwellings. Navid held the reins of Horns a few paces behind me.

  I stood before the villagers. Bullus beside me, fully attired in war gear and gripping his shield, called for silence.

  ‘My scouts have returned with news that a large party of horsemen is heading this way,’ I announced. ‘For what reason, I do not know. But I want to reassure you that we will do everything in our power
to protect you.’

  ‘It is the wild horsemen, highborn,’ said Avedis. ‘They have returned.’

  ‘Keep inside your homes, out of sight,’ I told them. ‘Do not block my men’s field of vision.’

  ‘We prefer to fight,’ growled the big Kevork, clutching a hammer in his big hand.

  ‘If we are killed, you will get your wish,’ said Bullus, bluntly. ‘But until then, do as you are told.’

  They exchanged glances and some mumbled to each other before shuffling away to their homes. Aside from Klietas’ bow and a few slings, they had no proper weapons to speak of. Enemy horsemen would make short work of them.

  ‘Wait here,’ I called to Navid before pacing towards the edge of the village.

  ‘I would advise against placing yourself in danger, majesty,’ Navid replied.

  ‘I am already in danger,’ I retorted.

  ‘He’s full of advice, that one,’ said Bullus, striding beside me.

  ‘He’s doing what he has been trained to do,’ I replied. ‘Sporaces informs me Navid is a rising star among his horse archers, destined for a high rank. A bit like you, Bullus.’

  ‘Me, majesty? I’m just a simple soldier.’

  ‘You could have had your own cohort by now.

  ‘I like being a centurion, majesty.’

  We reached the edge of the village, ahead of us a small orchard of apple trees and beyond that fields of barley. I scanned the low hills in the middle-distance but saw nothing save birds flying away from the village. Bullus began to tap the pommel of his gladius.

  ‘It won’t be long now,’ he said, ominously. ‘The air changes before a battle, or at least it does to me. It crackles with menace, just like now.’

  ‘A soldier’s instinct,’ I agreed, ‘born of long experience.’

  I could feel my heart racing and knew he was right. I no longer saw any birds and it was quiet, very quiet. I had heard stories of animals leaving an area hours before an earthquake occurred, people wondering why flocks of birds were suddenly flying away in the same direction, and then rodents following in droves. It must be the same when the shedding of blood is in the air, for the world appeared suddenly empty of life.