The Cursed Kingdom

by Peter Darman

  ‘On our own?’ he said at last.

  Spartacus stood and walked over to the map.

  ‘I did not assemble thirty thousand troops only to be told to disband them. Though I love my parents and have the greatest respect for my uncle, for too long Dura and Hatra have ruled the empire.’

  ‘I thought King of Kings Phraates ruled Parthia, majesty.’

  ‘Phraates?’ scoffed Spartacus. ‘He is just a puppet who dances to the tune of my uncle at Dura. It was King Pacorus who put him on his throne, who saved his arse at Phraaspa and who now withholds tens of thousands of men from his service.’

  ‘Why is that, majesty?’

  Spartacus gave him a sly glance. ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have a golden opportunity to defeat the Medians and their Roman allies and earn the undying gratitude of Phraates in the process. We will also no longer have to worry about any more threats from Media.’

  ‘Why is that, majesty?’

  ‘Because when King Darius is dead I will make you Lord Protector of Media.’

  ‘That is very generous, majesty, but the army of Media is not to be underestimated.’

  Spartacus nodded. ‘That is why our victory will make all Parthia sit up and take notice of us. For too long Gordyene has been regarded as a backwater, an uncivilised place, and more an embarrassment than an asset. But soon Gordyene will be seen in a different light. The army marches tomorrow.’

  Spartacus grudgingly accepted his army and the thinking that had created it had originated from Roman military doctrine. The Immortals were legionaries in all but name, their training exactly the same as the Durans and Exiles of King Pacorus, which replicated Roman methods, and the organisation of the army as a whole duplicated Roman logistics. When it marched it did so with three months’ rations to keep it at peak efficiency during a campaign. Most Parthian armies relied on the generosity of the ruler of the kingdom they were campaigning in to supply them with food, or if they were fighting in hostile lands they lived off those lands. But the army of Gordyene had its own supply train to transport its food, the Immortals alone requiring two thousand mules to carry their food and supplies. The horse archers and medium horsemen had their own pack animals – camels, mostly – to carry their fodder and supplies, plus an ammunition train carrying spare arrows. The lords and their retainers brought their own food and fodder, though nowhere near enough to sustain them for three months. After a month, they would either be provided with food or return home. Spartacus believed the campaign would be over in less than four weeks.

  The next day the city of tents around Vanadzor disappeared as the army struck camp and headed south, the passes through the mountains now free of snow but still subject to mist and rains. It rained every day during the first week as ten thousand foot soldiers, wrapped in cloaks, their shields protected by hide covers and carrying up to sixty pounds of food, tools and clothing on their backs, struggled along narrow paths through densely wooded terrain. The army’s three and a half thousand professional horsemen fared little better, being forced to dismount and lead their mounts on foot along stony tracks. The kingdom’s lords and their ten thousand retainers were sent ahead to provide a screen for the army, to act as its eyes and ears, and to keep them from clogging the many tracks and paths being used by Spartacus’ professionals. Similarly, Prince Spadines and his over five thousand Aorsi absented themselves, promising to rendezvous with Spartacus on the Irbil Plain.

  ‘Can we trust him?’

  Hovik, his cloak wet from the rain lashing the army camped among the hills of southern Gordyene, removed his helmet and smiled as Rasha handed him a cup of warm milk. The sides of the king’s tent moved in and out as the wind buffeted it. Haytham and Castus looked miserable in their thick woollen tunics, staring at their feet as they sat huddled round the fire burning in the brazier. Rasha had wanted to leave them at home but Spartacus was eager for them to take part in their first campaign. Thus far the experience had been cold, wet and boring.

  ‘I’ve known Spadines for a long time,’ said Spartacus, ‘he will not let me down.’

  ‘Not with the prospect of loot dangling in front of him,’ added Rasha.

  Hovik’s forehead creased in disapproval as he drank the milk.

  ‘If this storm carries on the tracks will be too muddy to continue. We might have to wait it out.’

  ‘We are through the mountains now,’ said Spartacus, ‘in the next two days we will reach the plain where the weather will be milder and warmer.’

  He looked at his two sons. ‘Are you looking forward to seeing Irbil?’

  ‘Yes father,’ they answered in unison and without enthusiasm.

  *****

  King Darius was a handsome man, his dark brown hair and beard immaculately groomed, his figure lithe without a trace of fat. He was the archetypal Parthian monarch: a man borne from parents who had impeccable bloodlines. But he had ascended Media’s throne too young, his father having died fighting the Romans, the same race as the man who was standing in front of his dais in Irbil’s throne room. Queen Parisa sat next to her husband but it was the brooding presence of the queen mother, hovering on the right side of her son’s throne, whose influence bore down on everyone in the chamber. Only the august figure of General Joro, who had served under Darius’ father and grandfather, had the backbone to challenge Aliyeh, though out of duty and honour he rarely did so.

  ‘Where are they now?’ Darius asked the general.

  ‘A hundred miles north of the capital, majesty,’ said Joro. ‘I have issued a summons to all the lords to present themselves at Irbil in the next two days.’

  Darius began fidgeting with the golden arm of his throne in an obvious sign of nervousness. Joro noticed it, as did the queen mother.

  The king looked at the Roman legate, his red-plumed helmet in the crook of his arm.

  ‘How many men did Mark Antony leave here?’

  ‘Five thousand, two hundred,’ majesty.

  Darius shook his head. ‘Not enough.’

  ‘We can muster fifty thousand Medians, majesty,’ said Joro, ‘more than enough to defeat the army of King Spartacus.’

  ‘How many of those are soldiers?’ asked Aliyeh.

  She knew, as did Joro, that the lords of Media would bring their villagers as well as their personal retinues. The latter were good horsemen, predominantly horse archers who were expert at shooting a bow from the saddle. But the villagers would be poorly armed and inadequately trained. Against veteran troops they would crumble.

  ‘Around half, majesty,’ stated Joro bluntly.

  ‘We need more men,’ said Darius in a slightly high-pitched voice. ‘We should fortify Irbil and let Spartacus waste his soldiers trying to take the citadel, which has never fallen to a foe.’

  The legate viewed the king with barely concealed contempt and Joro shook his head.

  ‘If we do that, majesty, we abandon your kingdom to the enemy. Furthermore, if we just defend the citadel the rest of Irbil will be taken by the enemy.’

  ‘We must meet King Spartacus before he reaches Irbil,’ agreed Aliyeh. ‘A king who abandons his people will not be king for long.’

  Her eyes bored into her son’s skull until he gave in.

  ‘Very well, very well, assemble the army, general.’

  Under King Atrax the army of Media had been a force to be reckoned with. Its five thousand professional foot soldiers had been designed to batter their way through a Roman legion in the days when Media led the war against Rome. But following Atrax’s death their numbers had been allowed to dwindle until they numbered only a thousand men and had become nothing more than glorified sentries in the citadel. Like the rest of the professional soldiers quartered in and around Irbil, they wore blue tunics and grey leggings. Joro had done his best to maintain the army and his five hundred cataphracts were as good as any in the empire, as were the five thousand professional horse archers. But every soldier knew their king was a mere shadow of Atrax, the man who had risen to
become lord high general of the empire before being killed. As a result, their morale left a lot to be desired.

  Morale was not a problem for the thousands of horsemen who travelled to Irbil over the next two days. The lords of Media were proud and arrogant and some claimed to have lineage that stretched back to the time when dragons roamed the earth. They brought a variety of troop types, including horse archers, mounted spearmen, spearmen on foot with long spears with long points at one end and butt spikes on the other, foot archers, and kettledrummers. All the foot soldiers had wicker shields, one in five had a helmet and one in ten some sort of armour, usually an old leather cuirass. The impressive sight of hundreds of tents, thousands of horses and camels and thousands of soldiers stiffened Darius’ resolve on the eve of his departure from Irbil. He had wanted to leave his professional foot soldiers behind to guard his mother, wife and children, but Joro had advised against it. To do so risked demoralising them to the point of mutiny. So they too would march north, along with fifty thousand others and five thousand Romans to meet the lowborn King Spartacus.

  That night Aliyeh penned a letter to King Gafarn, which would be despatched at first light, reaching Hatra in two days via the post stations established throughout the empire.

  ‘My dear brother. When you read this my son will be on the march to defend his kingdom from the army of King Spartacus, which invaded Media some days ago, along with thousands of Sarmatian barbarians. We have heard King Spartacus, who has never shown Media or its rulers any respect, has pledged to burn Irbil to the ground and slaughter its royal family. I have no care for my own life, which ended the day Atrax was cut down. But I plead for the lives of Parisa and her three children, who are wholly innocent victims in this conflict. With Phraates gathering his forces in the south and Spartacus rampaging in the north, Media’s resources are stretched thin and I fear my son’s kingdom will be erased from the face of the earth.

  ‘I therefore request Queen Parisa and her children be given sanctuary in Hatra before this city is reduced to ashes.’

  She rolled the papyrus and applied hot wax, pressing the dragon seal into it. She handed it to a waiting slave who bowed and took it to the post office located near the gates to the palace. At dawn it would be on its way to Hatra. She smiled to herself. A simple papyrus scroll may yet tip the scales of fortune in her favour.

  Chapter 11

  The army of Gordyene did not march directly south when it exited the mountains, instead striking west to the River Tigris and the small town of Mepsila on the eastern side of the waterway. The town’s inhabitants, tiny garrison and surrounding villagers abandoned their homes to flee south, leaving the area under the control of Spartacus and his troops. Irbil was only fifty miles to the southeast and so scouts were despatched in all directions to give warning of the inevitable approach of King Darius and his army.

  ‘Perhaps they will wait at Irbil,’ opined Hovik.

  Spartacus gave a sweep of his arm, in front of them the beautiful green grassland stretching into the distance, made lush by the winter rains. Villages and farms dotted the fertile landscape, between them fields, orchards and vineyards.

  ‘This is a fertile land, fed by the rains, Tigris and underground springs. No king would allow such a treasure to fall without a fight, not if he wished to remain king. Darius will come.’

  Hovik looked around at the expanse of flat land.

  ‘We should fight with our backs against the mountains in the north, just in case.’

  ‘Just in case?’ mocked Spadines beside him.

  ‘In case we have to fall back,’ snapped Hovik, ‘if we get trapped against the river, we would lose many men.’

  ‘And women,’ smiled Rasha beside Spartacus.

  ‘Indeed, majesty,’ said Hovik.

  ‘We did not come here to withdraw,’ remarked Spartacus, ‘we came here to conquer. We will fight with our backs against the river using Mepsila as our base. That will encourage the enemy to attack.’

  The Aorsi made camp along the Tigris, their tents stretching south from Mepsila for a distance of two miles, but the rest of the army slept behind the mud-brick walls of Mepsila, the empty homes and buildings providing just enough space for soldiers, horses, carts and mules. Spartacus stood on the walls peering south, the night clear and cool, a million stars twinkling in the sky. Beyond the Sarmatians campfires and revelry there was blackness and silence. He was aware of someone behind him and spun round to see Rasha approaching, the brazier on the battlements illuminating her lithe figure. Her hair, black as night, was plaited down her back, the style adopted by all the Vipers and copied from Queen Gallia and her Amazons, on whom the Vipers were modelled. The sentry snapped to attention as she passed. She threaded an arm through her husband’s.

  ‘You wish to see the enemy first?’

  He laughed. ‘I think we shall hear them first. The Medians like their trumpets and kettledrums. They like to make a lot of noise on the battlefield.’

  ‘They will outnumber us?’

  ‘They will. But that is irrelevant.’

  He turned to face her. ‘Remember when we first met, all those years ago at Dura?’

  She smiled. ‘Of course, I remember my father wanted to kill you for showing me too much attention.’

  He smiled at the memory. ‘I was sent to Dura in disgrace and as punishment was forced to sit through hours of lessons on military strategy and tactics, as well as being a dog’s body for Lucius Domitus. Remember him?’

  ‘Always.’

  Spartacus turned his gaze back to the blackness. ‘But I learned a lot about the difference between a bad soldier and a good one and how an army should be trained, equipped and organised. I can still hear Domitus’ voice in my head, “train hard, fight easy, that is the secret, boy”. I thought him a tiresome bully at the time but he was right. I owe him a great debt; Gordyene owes him a great debt.’

  ‘If we beat King Darius,’ she said, ‘what then?’

  ‘Then Gordyene will have the respect it deserves and Parthia will be rid of a traitor.’

  ‘What about what happened to Queen Aliyeh, Spartacus?’

  He shrugged. ‘You play with fire, you get burnt. Queen Aliyeh was always our enemy. She despises you for being Agraci and me for being the son of a slave. It would have been better if Phraates had strangled her after his slaves had toyed with her. This coming battle will finally bury her notion of Parthian purity.’

  ‘If we reach Irbil and Aliyeh is still there, what then?’

  A cruel grin creased his lips. ‘I will make her walk barefoot from her palace to the outskirts of the city. From there she may go where she will, if anyone will have her.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘We join Phraates and free Armenia from the Romans, after which a grateful king of kings will bequeath Gordyene land in Media and Armenia, plus more gold. Neither Armenia nor Media will threaten my kingdom again.’

  She dug a finger in his ribs. ‘Our kingdom, which one day will be our children’s. Talking of which, we need to find Akmon a wife.’

  Spartacus groaned. ‘I have more important things to worry about than Akmon’s future wife. I’m sure one of my lords has a spare daughter. What about Hovik’s friend, Ara, he has three daughters?’

  Rasha wracked her brains for a moment. ‘They are all fat and ugly, like Lord Ara.’

  ‘We will worry about it when the campaign is over.’

  ‘He wants to marry Lusin,’ she told him.

  ‘Not all that again. I have forbidden it, and anyway she is promised to a rich Babylonian merchant.’

  He grinned in triumph. ‘Word is, he is fat and ugly. He should clip her wings nicely.’

  Hovik wanted to construct field fortifications in front of Mepsila as the army waited for the Medians to arrive but Spartacus forbade it. Ditches and stakes would impede the enemy’s horsemen it was true, but Spartacus knew General Joro was a capable commander and would not waste the lives of his men in fruitless attacks against barriers.
More likely, he would withdraw and wait until Spartacus attacked him. Though as the days passed the king wondered if the Medians were going to appear at all.

  *****

  General Joro was exasperated to the point of despair by the slow advance of the Median army. With the king’s Roman allies, he had command of nearly fifty-seven thousand men, a mixture of the very good and the very poor. The best was the king’s bodyguard of five hundred cataphracts, five thousand professional horse archers and a thousand professional foot soldiers. The four thousand Roman legionaries were also excellent soldiers. The retinues of the lords were a mixture of quality and dross, their ten thousand horse archers were excellent mobile missile troops, though he worried they carried too few arrows. The ten thousand mounted spearmen were all armed with lances, swords or axes and equipped with helmets, round shields and a mixture of leather and scale armour. The Achilles’ heel of the army was the twenty-three thousand farmers, townsmen and villagers who had suddenly become foot soldiers. They were all poorly trained, armed and armoured, though at least all had a shield, spear and knife, a few thousand also carrying axes. The two thousand foot archers would lend them missile support and stiffen their resolve.

  On the march the army managed a paltry ten miles a day, taking an age to marshal the civilians-cum-foot soldiers into their ranks before they could set off. Darius, eager to prevent the myriad of villages surrounding Irbil being plundered, sent his horse archers to ensure the other sections of the army did not wander off to indulge in a spot of looting. The lords insisted on hunting while they waited for the foot soldiers to get organised, which resulted in frequent disputes that only the king could resolve. It all meant the army crawled along, approaching Mepsila only after a tortuous five days of marching. Once the town was in sight at least men’s minds became focused on the enemy rather than filling their bellies or the prospect of loot. Food was in short supply even before the army departed Irbil. The lords and their mounted entourages had brought food and fodder to last them a month, but the foot soldiers carried only enough rations – mostly cheese, biscuits and dates – to feed them for a week. Many had eaten what they had brought with them four days into their march north. They faced a battle against the enemy on empty stomachs, which did not augur well. Joro could only regard the well-provisioned Romans with envious eyes.