by Peter Darman
‘My lord high general wishes to meet with King Pacorus of Dura,’ he shouted.
‘Does he mean Mithridates?’ asked Domitus.
I nudged Remus forward a few feet.
‘Careful, Pacorus,’ said Gallia, ‘it may be a trap.’
I looked at the man who still had his hands spread wide and his palms open.
‘I am confident that the Amazons will drop him before he can try anything.’
‘We may drop him anyway,’ added Praxima menacingly.
‘I thought you were the lord high general of the empire?’ said Domitus.
‘It appears I have a rival,’ I replied. ‘I am King Pacorus,’ I cried out. ‘Who is your lord high general?’
‘King Nicetas,’ he shouted back.
I looked back at the others who stared back at me with blank faces. I had never heard the name and neither had they.
‘If you assent, majesty,’ the soldier continued, ‘he will meet you alone at the midpoint between your army and the city walls.’
‘Do you want me to kill him, Pacorus?’ offered Praxima.
‘No thank you,’ I replied.
I had to admit I was curious to know the identity of the man who claimed the title I held.
‘Very well,’ I called back. ‘Go and tell your general to show himself.’
The soldier bowed his head and then turned his mount to gallop back to the city. The Amazons lowered their bows as Gallia rode up to me. Meanwhile, the walls of Seleucia still appeared devoid of any life.
‘Mithridates has captured the city,’ she said sternly.
I nodded. ‘It would appear so. Whoever this Nicetas is I assume he is in his service.’
Behind us Byrd and Malik brought their horses to a halt and then walked them forward.
‘No enemy within twenty miles,’ said Byrd.
‘The land is empty of all life,’ added Malik.
I kept looking at the city. Had Mithridates massacred the population? The absence of any crows or buzzards circling overhead suggested that the streets were not piled high with corpses. The mystery deepened.
‘Not quite empty,’ remarked Domitus, pointing at the walls.
I looked to see that another figure had appeared at the remains of the gatehouse, a man mounted on a black horse wearing what appeared to be a silver cuirass over a bright yellow tunic.
‘That must be Nicetas, whoever he is,’ said Nergal.
‘Time to solve the mystery,’ I said, nudging Remus forward as the individual who apparently had the same title as me approached.
‘Do not go, Pacorus,’ called Gallia, ‘it is obviously a trap.’
‘She is right,’ added Domitus, but I merely raised my hand at them. I was too curious to see this man up close and solve the riddle we faced.
As Remus walked forward I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Domitus and Kronos hurrying back to their men. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I suddenly felt tense, and yet there were no soldiers on the walls and silence still enveloped Seleucia. Ahead the man in the silver armour continued to move towards me, his left hand holding his horse’s reins and his right arm hanging by his side.
We were now less than a hundred paces apart and I saw that his cuirass was made up of dozens of overlapping rectangular silver scales that shimmered when he moved. His head was encased in a gilded helmet with large cheekguards hiding some of his features. And yet, as he came closer, there was something about his fair skin, powerful frame and neatly trimmed beard that was familiar. He halted a few feet from me, his magnificent stallion flicking its long black tail.
‘King Pacorus of Dura.’ His tone was both aggressive and slightly condescending.
‘And you must be Nicetas,’ I replied, ‘though your name was previously unknown to me before today.’
‘King Nicetas, and it is known to you now,’ he growled. I kept looking at his young face and saw in it a resemblance to someone I had known. But who?
His brown eyes burned with contempt as he looked past me. ‘So this is the famed army of Dura, the instrument by which Orodes has usurped the throne of the rightful king of kings.’
He looked back at me. ‘Men say that it is invincible, that it is protected by the magic of a sorceress. And yet it seems ordinary enough. Perhaps the stories have been exaggerated.’
He really was full of his own self-importance.
I had no time for his strutting. ‘You are here at the behest of Mithridates, so state what you have to say.’
He was momentarily nonplussed by my manner but then his insolence returned.
‘King of Kings Mithridates demands that you and the rabble of Dura leave this place and withdraw back across the Euphrates. The army of Mesene will likewise withdraw to Uruk, there to await the high king’s pleasure.’
I was beginning to lose my patience. ‘First of all, boy, you will answer my questions rather than dictate terms. Firstly you will inform me what has happened to Lord Mardonius, whose city this is. And secondly you will reveal the whereabouts of Mithridates so that justice can be served upon him.’
Nicetas smiled evilly to reveal a row of perfect white teeth, fixing me with his stare before raising his right arm. The walls beyond the left of what had been the gatehouse were suddenly lined with soldiers, two of them holding an elderly man – Mardonius. I looked on in horror as they hurled him over the battlements and then saw his body jerk violently as the noose around his throat snapped his neck.
‘Lord Mardonius was judged, found guilty of aiding traitors and sentenced to death,’ said Nicetas without emotion.
I was stunned by what I had just seen and still staring at the dead body of Mardonius when I caught a grey blur out of the corner of my eye.
‘King Mithridates wishes you to withdraw but I suggested to him that your death and the destruction of your army would serve our interests better and he agreed.’
He had hoisted his sword above his head and now dug his knees into his horse, which bolted forward. I instinctively yanked on Remus’ reins and he turned to the right as Nicetas came alongside and swung his sword at me, the blade cutting deep into my left arm. I screamed in pain and drew my own sword, wheeling Remus away from him as he turned his own horse to face me once more.
‘I am the rightful King of Persis and the son of King Narses who was murdered by your own hand at Susa, and I will have my revenge.’
He raised his sword and I prepared to meet his attack, but instead there was a blast of noise as thousands of men suddenly charged from the city. From the remains of the gatehouse and from the two breaches in the walls on either side they flooded out – a great mob of warriors on foot wielding axes, javelins and small wicker shields. They had no organisation or discipline but headed for the legions like a great herd of maddened animals, piercing the air with their feral screams. There were thousands of them.
Nicetas shouted in triumph and raised his sword once more, before letting out a groan when the arrow slammed into his shoulder. He grimaced in pain and then wheeled his horse away as the unstoppable wave of oncoming warriors threatened to engulf me.
‘Move, Pacorus!’ screamed Gallia as she rode to my side with the Amazons forming a screen in front of us. She grabbed Remus’ reins and then shouted at Epona to move as we galloped back to the Durans, the Amazons turning in the saddle and shooting arrows at the oncoming enemy over the hindquarters of their horses.
‘Let them through,’ I heard a voice in front of me shout as the ranks of the legionaries opened to allow us to pass through them. We halted in the space between the first and second lines of cohorts as a loud scraping noise filled our ears. The enemy wave had hit the breakwater that was the legions. The air was thick with javelins as the Cilician warriors hurled their missiles at the locked shields of the Durans and Exiles, then they went to work with their axes, literally trying to hack the legionaries’ shields to pieces.
The wild charge buckled and bent the front line of the legionaries but did not break it, and
as the Cilicians spat and cursed and hacked with their axes, the rear ranks of the first-line centuries hurled their javelins forward into the stinking, seething mass of enemy warriors.
The Cilicians wore no armour or helmets and so every javelin found flesh and bone, felling hundreds in the densely packed press. The line had held.
I rode north along the rear of the Duran first line to where the cataphracts were deployed in two lines, each one of two ranks.
Vagises galloped over as the Amazons deployed in three ranks behind us.
‘You should let Alcaeus see to that arm,’ said Gallia. ‘I told you it was a trap.’
But my attention was focused on what was happening directly ahead as horsemen began pouring through the gaps in the city walls – Sarmatian horse archers wearing ox-hide corselets and helmets – grouped round their chiefs and their dragon windsocks.
I pointed at them. ‘Destroy them, Vagises.’
He saluted and galloped back to his horsemen. Moments later three thousand horse archers had deployed into thirty columns as companies charged at the disorganised mass of Sarmatian horsemen and began discharging arrows, the men at the front of the columns shooting their bows and then wheeling right to gallop to the rear of the formation as their comrades behind shot their bows in turn and likewise rode to the rear of the column.
Vagises’ men were outnumbered by the Sarmatians but the latter lacked discipline and cohesion and never recovered from being assaulted by horsemen who directed a withering arrow storm against them. A few loosed their bows and attempted to charge but too many of their comrades had been hit by missiles and so they began to disperse, most back to the city. A few fled north into the desert.
To my right the Cilicians were still hacking at the Durans and Exiles but were suffering fearful casualties as the legionaries went to work with their short swords and began pushing them back towards the city. In the ever-increasing cloud of dust that was being kicked up by thousands of men and horses’ hooves I could not discern what was happening beyond the Exiles, on the army’s right wing, but felt certain that Nergal’s men would be holding their own at least.
I felt a surge of pain shoot through my left arm and looked down to see the whole of my ripped lower sleeve was covered in blood that had dripped onto my leggings.
‘Get that wound seen to,’ commanded Gallia as arrows thudded into the ground a few paces from her – the parting shots of the Sarmatian archers.
‘I’m fine,’ I insisted, wincing from the pain coming from my arm.
She reached over, grabbed my reins and led me to the rear.
‘Take command of the Amazons,’ she said to Zenobia, leading me through the cataphracts and then behind the battling Durans. The men of the second line stood with their javelins in their right hands and their shields on their left sides, ready to reinforce their comrades in the first line. Men ferried the wounded on stretchers to the rear where Alcaeus and his physicians were waiting to treat them. Gallia led me over to our Greek friend. He was standing with his canvas bag slung over his shoulder, running a hand through his black wiry hair. Gallia called to him.
I slid off Remus’ back as he approached and saw my bloody arm.
‘Sword cut,’ said Gallia.
‘It’s nothing,’ I protested.
Alcaeus reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of sprung scissors to cut away the bloodied sleeve of my shirt just below the shoulder.
‘It doesn’t look like nothing,’ he scolded me as he put the scissors back into his bag and examined the wound.
‘Fortunately for you your opponent chose to slash instead of stab. Looks worse than it is, though you appear to have lost a deal of blood.’
He pulled a small clay pot from his bag and removed the cork, then poured some of the watery contents onto my arm. It felt as though he had laid a red-hot iron on my flesh. I winced.
‘Acetum to clean the wound,’ he said.
He took another pot from his bag of wonders, this one containing honey, which he applied to the wound before binding it with a bandage.
‘You should go back to camp, really,’ he remarked, ‘but I suppose there is little chance of that.’
‘Thank you, and no, I will not be going back to camp.’
I hoisted myself back into the saddle and went to find Domitus. I discovered him standing behind the first-line cohorts with Kronos and a group of their senior officers. He saw my bandaged bare arm.
‘You and the other lord high general ran out of words, then?’
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
‘What’s left of them are falling back to the city. Do you want us to pursue them?’
‘Not yet,’ I replied. ‘Casualties?’
‘Very light. They gambled on their mad charge breaking us but we stopped that easily enough.’
‘Nergal sent a rider over to report that he had thrown back the horsemen that had assaulted his wing,’ added Kronos.
I looked up at the sun and judged the time to be midday. It was now very warm and legionaries were drinking from their water bottles to quench their thirst.
‘Are we going to storm the city?’ asked Domitus.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but send for Marcus and his machines. I think we will need them.’
A lull descended over the battlefield as the fighting petered out and the remnants of the Cilicians withdrew to the relative safety of Seleucia. With Gallia I rode back to where my heavy horsemen remained in their initial positions, having been nothing more than front-row spectators to the carnage. As usual the Durans and Exiles had been very efficient in their work, the ground in front of their positions carpeted with Cilician corpses and the badly wounded. Already parties of legionaries were going among the fallen looking for those still alive, slitting their throats when they found them to put them out of their misery.
The shrill blast of whistles followed by trumpets called them back as fresh troops marched from Seleucia. There was a rapid reorganisation among the Durans and Exiles as the rear centuries in each front-line cohort swapped places so that fresh legionaries stood ready to receive a new enemy. Whereas the Cilicians had hurled themselves against the legions in a disorganised, feral rush, these soldiers – Thracian mercenaries – emerged from the city and deployed into battle formation before they advanced.
The assault of the Cilician foot and horse had been designed to soften us up before the Thracian attack, to thin our ranks and shake our morale to make the task of the more heavily armed soldiers who now flooded the ground in front of the city easier. If that was the plan of Nicetas then it had failed as our losses had been light and he had greatly underestimated the professionalism of Dura’s army. But then this was hardly surprising if Mithridates had been whispering in his ear about my army of slaves.
In the vanguard of the Thracian contingent were élite troops equipped with the fearsome rhomphaia, a weapon that had a long, slightly curved, single-edged blade attached to a much shorter pole. Held with both hands, it was essentially a battle scythe that could slice through helmets and armour and was also used to chop through horses’ legs if cavalry got too close to their users. These men wore helmets, bronze breastplates and metal greaves.
Behind these élite troops came more Thracian foot armed with the shorter, one-handed rhomphaia and carrying large oval shields called thureos. Like our own shields they were made of wood, faced with leather and had a metal boss over a central handgrip. They also wore helmets and studded leather armour vests.
I sent a rider to our right flank to ask Nergal to direct his horse archers against these Thracians before they had a chance to attack our own foot soldiers.
More and more Thracians were coming from the city until there must have been upwards of twenty thousand of them arrayed in front of the legions, and then they began to move forward.
Domitus had pulled the Durans and Exiles back around a hundred paces so that our wings of horsemen were advanced of the centre, and from the flanks companies of horse archers rode
forward and inwards to shoot volleys of arrows against the Thracians, who suddenly charged.
They covered the seven hundred paces of ground between them and the front ranks of legionaries in around two and a half minutes, the first four ranks of élite troops sprinting forward and becoming separated from those behind who tried to retain their cohesion. But all of them ran into the hail of arrows that was shot at them from both flanks. This not only killed and wounded hundreds but also disrupted their momentum. And as the survivors got to within fifty paces of the legions the first five ranks of legionaries ran forward and hurled their javelins.
From our first line of fourteen cohorts standing shoulder to shoulder came sixteen hundred javelins thrown at the oncoming enemy. Hundreds of iron points found their target and cut down most of the front rank of Thracians, those behind tripping and stumbling as they tried to pick their way through the newly laid field of carrion.
Those Thracians following behind hauled their shields above their heads as protection against the arrows being shot at them. However they were moving too quickly and their ranks were too ragged to form an unbroken roof of leather and wood. So arrows plunged from the sky to hit arms and legs and pierce sandal-clad feet.
There was an ear-piercing crack as the élite Thracian troops collided with the front ranks of the legionaries and began wielding their fearsome rhomphaias, slashing and hacking at shields and helmets. I was thankful that the legionaries in Dura’s army had their helmets strengthened with forehead cross-braces designed to offer additional protection against men on horseback wielding swords. They were just as effective against a Thracian rhomphaia.
As the shouts and screams of thousands of men locked in combat echoed across the battlefield, I heard fresh trumpet blasts and then saw a volley of javelins coming from the rear ranks of our front-line centuries to land among the great press of Thracians. Hundreds more of the latter were killed and wounded but still they pressed on, hacking and thrusting with grim determination, actually forcing the cohorts back.