by R. W. Peake
“How many died from burns?” Caesar asked, his mouth set in a thin, bloodless line.
“Four. Both pairs in the towers,” Pullus replied, “but we have three men with severe burns from either the naphtha splattering onto them, or,” he had to consult his tablet, “one of them was actually burned by the body of one of the men in the tower. Apparently, he threw himself out and his corpse landed on top of one of the sentries at the nearest post who had come running to help.”
“And I suppose the towers are a total loss? As well as the artillery in them?”
“Yes, Caesar,” Pullus confirmed. “Four scorpions gone.” Snapping the tablet shut, having exhausted its use, the Primus Pilus asked, “When do we replace the towers?”
Caesar hesitated, then turned and retrieved a tablet of his own, opened it, and perused the contents with a frown before he began, “I know I don’t have to tell you that our calculations for the amount of timber we’d need meant that not only would we have to cannibalize the wagons, but we’d have virtually nothing left over. Well, this,” he indicated the tablet with a disgusted wave, “tells me the news is even worse. We’re going to come up short, even using every available scrap.”
If the truth were known, Pullus had actually heard rumors of this through Diocles, who was friends with at least one slave or body servant of every senior officer of Caesar’s command, and it was through Volusenus’ slave that Pullus had learned indirectly this was the likely case.
“Are you sending back to Ctesiphon for more?” Pullus asked, but Caesar gave a frustrated shake of the head.
“Not without causing more problems for Octavian,” he explained. “Remember, we used most of our stock to help rebuild, especially in Seleucia. I’m only going to order him to tear that lumber out as a last resort, but I don’t think we’re there yet.”
This, Pullus knew very well, was nothing more than the truth, and while there had been some inevitable grumbling among the Centurionate throughout the army, the majority understood that this was not only the right thing to do, it was necessary if the army wanted to have at least partial ease of mind that what was now their supply base wasn’t in a state of constant turmoil and disruption. Only by proving to both the Parthian populace, and particularly to those Greeks of Seleucia, that they weren’t viewed as the enemy would this have a chance of working, and it meant that devoting resources, even scarce ones like timber, was a sound investment. Now, Pullus realized, if the Romans came and ripped down the rebuilt structures, especially given how many of them were constructed at least partially of wood, the work of an entire year of trying to win over the populace would be ruined.
“What about sending word back to Rome to ship more over?” Pullus asked, which elicited a frustrated grimace from Caesar, who replied, “The problem is that while that’s simple enough, you know that the timber has to be seasoned, and we took most of that stock with us. Waiting for it to cure takes time, which we don’t have.”
“So,” Pullus asked, “what are you going to do?”
“Right now,” Caesar admitted, “I don’t really know.”
On that unsatisfactory note, Pullus was dismissed, rendering a proper salute and executing an about-turn, both men occupied with their thoughts, and both in their own way trying to find a way to make their respective tasks happen.
Now that Kambyses was reasonably certain that his head would be remaining on his shoulders for the foreseeable future, he turned his attention towards trying to divine what Phraates intended to do about the situation he had left behind in Susa. It had been difficult, but he had managed a few moments alone with Intaphernes, from whom he learned that Kambyses was far from alone in his worries.
“He ran from Ctesiphon first,” was how Intaphernes put it, although the actual words he attributed to one of Phraates’ courtiers who he claimed to have overheard, “now he ran from Susa. We don’t have that many cities to begin with that we can afford to lose more of them.”
They were now sitting on a rampart of one of the summer palaces of the King of Kings, located on a small island in the middle of the river the Parthians called the Karun, but Romans knew better by the name given to it by the Greeks, the Pasitigris. On either bank was the small city of Sostrate (Shushtar), about half the size of Susa, but with walls like the capital. These walls, however, had been built long before the arrival of Greeks with their artillery, and Kambyses had viewed them with new eyes now that he had seen firsthand what Roman engineering could do; his private estimate was that it would take Caesar less than a day to breach them. This was something he had not broached with Phraates; he was still unsure of his status, and he had made the decision to hold his own counsel and wait until he was asked. Which, to this point, Phraates had not seen fit to do, at least as far as military matters were concerned. His questions about Caesar, however, were never-ending, and this was one way, if the only, where Kambyses could see a similarity between his King and the Roman general. The reason they were here in Sostrate instead of Istakhr as Phraates had initially planned hadn’t been given, but it was widely assumed that it was because Phraates had been badly shaken by his encounter with Caesar, although it did have the advantage of being closer to Susa than the other city. The brothers had selected this spot to talk for the simple but practical reason that they couldn’t be overheard without someone approaching along the rampart that was atop one wing of the palace. Since this was the first time that Kambyses felt confident enough there would be no eavesdropping, he finally blurted out the question that had been plaguing him for days.
“What happened when Caesar attacked?”
It was almost as if, Kambyses thought, his brother had been waiting for the question, because he didn’t hesitate in answering, “Phraates froze. He had no idea what to do. But,” he allowed, albeit reluctantly, “it was the responsibility of Melchior to make sure he and his men gave us time to meet the Romans, and he failed.”
This confirmed Kambyses’ sense of things, but there was still one nagging thought that he had been unable to dismiss, although he had no idea why it troubled him.
“What about the boy?” Kambyses asked Intaphernes.
“Boy?” Intaphernes was puzzled at first, then realized to whom his brother was referring, “Ah. You mean Sherh? The horn player?”
“Yes, him,” Kambyses felt a faint sense of guilt that he hadn’t even bothered to learn the name of the youngster who suffered such a gruesome fate. “Was he late in sounding the command?”
Intaphernes nodded, saying flatly, “Yes.” Then, after a brief pause, he added, “But only because Phraates took too long to give the order.”
Kambyses considered this, and it slowly came to him why this incident had bothered him so much, which meant his words came slowly as he thought aloud, “So the question is, did Phraates have the boy executed because he was worried the boy would tell others what really happened? Or was he just lashing out?”
“Does it matter?” Intaphernes asked, not hiding his puzzlement.
“It might,” Kambyses countered, his words coming faster as the thoughts fell together in his mind. “The question is, what happens the next time we face Caesar? And who will Phraates blame then? Pacorus,” he was surprised at the sudden lump in his throat at the thought of the dead crown prince, “was inexperienced, and it’s no secret that we had our differences, but he was brave, and more importantly, he took responsibility for his mistakes. Phraates?” He shook his head. “I don’t think there will ever be a time where he would do something like that. It’s why Orodes didn’t trust him, among other reasons.”
There was a silence for a moment, but it was Intaphernes who broke it, taking advantage of his older brother’s mention of Caesar’s name.
“Why did the Roman let you go?”
If this had been asked of Kambyses just a year before, he was honest with himself and knew he would have given a different answer, but the one thing time spent in captivity does for a man is give him time to think. Added to this was that he had be
en asking himself the same question ever since the moment occurred.
“I think,” he said hesitantly, “because Caesar is certain that he can predict my actions better than that of Phraates, and I suppose his hope is that the King will return some form of command back to me.”
Intaphernes didn’t answer immediately, then gave a quick glance around, though it was more out of reflex and despite seeing they were still isolated, he lowered his voice.
“I think that’s what Phraates is going to do. I overheard him talking to Vindarna and the way it sounded, he plans on sending us back to Susa…while he stays here.”
Kambyses’ stomach began fluttering at this, the idea both thrilling and grimly satisfying. He would never admit, even to his own brother, that he had come to not only admire and respect Caesar, he actually liked the man a great deal. But he was also a Parthian, and he had been held captive by a Roman, an enemy of Parthia, which meant his fondest hope was that he would be in a position to return the favor to Caesar that the Roman had shown him.
As Caesar ordered, over the course of the next few nights after the Crassoi attack, the men of his army were informed that the commonly held belief that their fellow Romans who fought for Parthia wouldn’t have their hearts in it when the two armies clashed was in fact not the case. Additionally, the reason they were expected to fight was communicated down through the ranks, but this had an unexpected effect on Caesar’s men, something that was immediately noticed by Pullus and his Centurions.
“They know the Crassoi are going to fight, but they still have sympathy for them,” he mused to Scribonius as they were standing, watching their charges toiling at their assigned tasks. “I just hope this doesn’t come back to haunt us later.”
Normally, Scribonius could be counted on to at least offer a different viewpoint, but this time, he was as concerned as Pullus.
“It’s hard to get enthusiastic about shoving your blade into a man’s guts when you’re thinking of his family,” Scribonius agreed. “But I think that when the moment comes, the boys will do what they’re trained to do.”
“You think,” Pullus interjected, regarding his friend with a raised eyebrow. “Or you hope?”
Scribonius colored slightly, but he didn’t hesitate, replying, “Hope, I suppose.”
This prompted a sigh from Pullus, then they resumed their duties, each walking towards their Century, and within a few heartbeats, were already “encouraging” men who had taken advantage of their Centurions’ inattention. The circle around Susa was almost closed, while Caesar had devoted four Legions to beginning the work on the double line, oriented facing outward, identical in concept to the fortifications used at Alesia, when the Arverni king Vercingetorix had been forced to surrender to Caesar, in front of many of the men now laboring in the hot sun. And, while the Legions did their work, Caesar was performing his own prodigious labors, acting as both the Legate commanding this army, and as Dictator of Rome. Under the best of conditions, it took a dispatch rider more than six weeks to arrive from Rome; more commonly, it was closer to two months, a situation that Caesar was determined to fix, and it was the first major challenge he handed to his young nephew, who had remained behind, albeit unhappily, in Ctesiphon. Caesar’s judgment about the youngster, that he had a mind uniquely adapted for matters of logistical importance such as this, was sound, and while he wasn’t particularly enamored with the task, just the challenge of it intrigued Octavian to the point that, quickly enough, he had thrown himself into solving the problem with a growing enthusiasm. And, Caesar was pleased that the reports were that Octavian was making progress, yet there was still quite a way to go before the Dictator would be satisfied that he was receiving information as fast as humanly possible. If this was the only worry, that would be one thing, but it was the information contained in those dispatches coming from the myriad of sources Caesar had cultivated, across all levels of Roman society, that was particularly troublesome. The complete picture never came from one source, nor was it ever actually truly complete, but Caesar was a master at taking seemingly disparate bits of information, usually hidden in the form of gossip or a casual mention of something overheard, from a variety of sources, and seeing a pattern where no others could, at least until more pieces of the picture fell into place. And now, the picture that was falling into place was that it appeared his trust in Marcus Antonius might have been misplaced, although he still didn’t think it was as much cupidity on his own as it was that, when all was said and done about his relative, Antonius wasn’t nearly as clever as some of the men around him, particularly Cicero. And, while Caesar was loath to admit it, when it came to the powers of persuasion, Marcus Tullius Cicero had no equal.
Nevertheless, if the reports were true, this was just another headache for a man who had assumed the mantle of supreme power in Rome, a place where ambition and desire for greatness was seemingly passed onto upper class Romans with their mother’s milk, and the scheming, plotting, and treachery that came with it. And that, Caesar thought with a combination of exasperation, disgust, and a touch of amusement, was before Cleopatra decided to relocate herself from Alexandria and was coming to Ctesiphon. The one consolation was that she was bringing Caesarion with her, and he looked forward to spending time with his son. He hadn’t spent nearly the time he would have liked with the boy, and he did worry that Cleopatra’s influence would make the boy more Egyptian than Roman. That Caesarion was Pharaoh was certainly significant in itself, but it didn’t compare to the mantle of First Man in Rome, and while he hadn’t divulged a word of his plans in this regard to anyone, especially Cleopatra, Caesar had grand ambitions for the boy who was just becoming old enough to be interesting. Turning his mind away from thoughts of his family, he returned his attention to questions and problems that were of more immediate concern than some far-off point in time, and the gods knew he had more than enough of those. This would be the most ambitious endeavor of Caesar’s career, because the challenge in taking Susa was twofold; first, the line of entrenchments created by the Crassoi had to be penetrated, and the Crassoi either destroyed in detail, or at least rendered ineffective because their casualties were so high. He wished it didn’t have to be done this way, but the instant that Ventidius had informed him the year before that the Crassoi had arrived in Susa, and brought a “tail” with them consisting of more than just the normal assortment of camp followers, he knew that negotiating a surrender of the Crassoi would be practically impossible, if only because from the moment he learned this, he had correctly assumed that the Parthian king hadn’t gone to the expense and trouble of relocating the Crassoi families out of any charity, but as leverage over these men. However, taking the fortifications was only the first step, because then Susa’s walls had to be breached, and the worst possible scenario was that the Crassoi managed to withdraw back into the safety of the city. Caesar, and the men of his Legions, had taken the measure of the Parthian infantry when assaulting Ctesiphon, and while they had proven to be better at defending a static position than they were in open battle, they weren’t a cause for concern. Also, any Cataphractoi that had remained behind would be next to useless in the defense of a city because Parthian noblemen thought it beneath them to fight afoot, although their horse archers had proven as adept at handling their bows from a wall as they had from horseback, but this at least was a known quality. There was one possibility, that whoever was left in command behind the walls of Susa had spent their time training their cavalrymen to fight on the ground, and even further, from a rampart, but it was one that Caesar had calculated was slight. Which, of course, meant that this was exactly what was going on, even as he was thinking about it.
It had been Caspar’s idea, but he had found an unlikely ally, and the Crassoi was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that the reason Gobryas had not only acquiesced, but instilled the requisite fear in his fellow nobility to make a sincere effort in their training, was due to Teispes. The one-eyed Parthian had listened to Caspar’s proposal without saying a wor
d, but the Primus Pilus knew this wasn’t unusual.
“We can bloody them here,” Caspar had asked Teispes to meet him on the rampart facing north, where Caesar’s camp was located and where the two blackened remnants of the towers bore testament to the raid, “and I think we can repel them at least once and drive them back to regroup, maybe twice. Three times?” He shrugged as he said, “It’s not likely, at least if you don’t want to lose every one of us before we can fall back inside the walls. But,” at this, Caspar turned to make sure he was looking at Teispes as he warned, “our regular infantry won’t be enough on those walls to hold them back. And they’re going to be prepared for the naphtha this time, so the element of surprise is gone there.” Taking a deep breath, he came to the crux of the proposal, “Which is why I’m asking that you go to Gobryas and convince him that he needs to take steps to make his bodyguard and the drafsh of cataphractoi that King Phraates left behind learn what they need to know to make a defense like this.”
Teispes remained silent for what Caspar guessed was the span of a dozen heartbeats, then in a rarity for him, asked, “What would they have to learn?”
Caspar spent the next sixth part of a watch outlining the training program that, up until it came tumbling out of his mouth, he hadn’t even been aware he had actually thought through, but the words came easily as he realized that, somehow, he had been forming this plan for some time.
Once he was finished, Teispes, in another unusual move, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, but while Caspar was surprised when the Parthian said simply, “I think this is a good idea, and I will talk to Gobryas immediately,” he was almost too shocked to respond when Teispes finished, “and I would like to learn these things you are talking about as well.”