by Peter Darman
‘Tiridates has returned, majesty.’
‘Not to surrender, I assume.’
He did not laugh. ‘You had better see for yourself.’
It was a beautiful morning, the sun rising into a crystal-clear blue sky and a slight breeze blowing away the stench of camp to invigorate the senses. Sadly, the climatic conditions were the only good thing about the early morning, for when I reached the camp’s eastern ramparts my heart sank quicker than a heavy stone tossed into a pond. An army was approaching the two camps, a very large army moving slowly and purposely and filling the entire eastern horizon. The day before we had faced Tiridates’ horsemen and now, far from skulking back to Babylon or Seleucia, the upstart self-styled king of kings had returned with a host of foot soldiers to supplement his still large number of horsemen.
My eye was drawn to two small groups of riders, both moving at speed towards the entrance to the Duran camp: black figures on black horses galloping furiously in an attempt to outrun the large group of mounted spearmen pursuing them. It was Talib and some of his scouts.
‘Archers!’ I called, grabbing the weapon of the nearest bowman and plucking a handful of arrows from his quiver.
I ran down from the rampart and ordered the spiked logs that barred the entrance to be moved aside, Chrestus beside me ordering legionaries within earshot to rally to their king. They and around half a dozen archers followed us as we ran from the camp to around fifty paces from its entrance, deploying into a line as Talib and his men thundered towards us.
‘Find your targets,’ I ordered, nocking an arrow in the bowstring and focusing on the spearmen, Gallia beside me.
My scouts slowed to thread their way through the debris of battle from yesterday’s clash – enemy dead and the gutted carcasses of horses and camels now being feasted on by ravens – the enemy nearly reaching them before they too were forced to slow to avoid the line of gore. The horses of the Agraci recommenced their gallop, heading towards us – now no more than three hundred paces away.
‘Shoot over their heads,’ I ordered, aiming my bow high, pulling back the bowstring and releasing it to send the arrow on a high trajectory. I reloaded and shot another arrow, Talib now two hundred paces away and closing fast. Those pursuing the Agraci, seeing arrows hitting the ground in front of them, pulled up their horses, turned tail and galloped away.
A sweating Talib and his horse pulled up before us, the other Agraci cantering into camp and Chrestus ordering the legionaries back to their positions. The archers with me waited until the enemy horsemen had retreated back to their main body before walking back into camp. I handed my borrowed bow to one of them so he could return it to his owner, walking between Gallia and Talib who had dismounted and was leading his sweating horse.
‘The foot soldiers of Babylon and Persis have joined Tiridates, lord,’ he told me.
‘How many?’
‘Over twenty thousand would be my estimate, though some are hill men drawn from Persis, poorly armed.’
‘Poorly armed men can still inflict casualties, Talib. It appears Tiridates is determined to grind us into the dust.’
A hasty council of war was convened in my tent, Quintus Dellius being fresh faced but his deputy looking the worse for wear after his drinking and eating bout the previous evening. His temper was short and his manners almost non-existent.
‘We face around one hundred thousand enemy soldiers once more. So much for your great victory.’
‘Tullus! Remember your place,’ the legate chastised him.
‘He’s quite right,’ I admitted, ‘there is no way to coat the situation with honey. We are surrounded, outnumbered and penned against the river. But at least we are behind a ditch, rampart and palisade, which the enemy will have to storm to destroy us.’
The legate was perturbed. ‘You will stay here, majesty? It might be prudent to attempt to fall back to Uruk.’
I discounted the idea. ‘We have strong defences, plenty of ammunition and well-trained troops. We keep Tiridates’ attention and he will not be able to divert troops to other threats.’
Quintus Dellius raised an eyebrow. ‘Other threats?’
‘The army of my brother and nephew, your nemesis, Tribune Tullus,’ I answered, ‘who even as we stand here pondering our fate, are marching to meet King Darius in battle.’
‘It won’t be much of a battle,’ sniffed Tullus. ‘We were stationed in Media when Darius made an alliance with Mark Antony, after we had dealt with the Armenians. His mother has backbone but Darius himself is all fancy clothes and big talk. Queen Aliyeh, may Pluto consign her to a dark place in the underworld, is the power behind that throne.’
Gallia laughed but Quintus Dellius was far from happy.
‘You insult King Pacorus’ sister, Tullus. He is within his rights to have your tongue cut out.’
‘The king and his sister are estranged from each other, legate,’ said Gallia.
‘It does not solve our present predicament,’ said Chrestus. ‘If the enemy had any sense he would lay siege to our two camps and try to starve us into submission.’
Tiridates did seek our submission, a herald arriving at the eastern entrance to the camp with a request for a parley. The note stated Tiridates would not attend in person but would send his ambassador, requesting I did the same. But I had little time for diplomacy and sent the herald away with a message that I would meet with the ambassador myself. I did so a mere hundred paces from the entrance, well within bow range, just in case Tiridates attempted an assassination attempt. Chrestus was also with me with two burly centurions, but I did not believe the new ruler of Ctesiphon would try anything clandestine. He had no need to. There were enough soldiers under his command to hasten my death if negotiations failed.
They were slowly deploying around the two camps, like a giant rainbow in their multi-coloured uniforms. This time the horsemen were not to the fore, providing a bright backdrop to the foot soldiers who were being marshalled into position. From the camp’s ramparts I had identified the black tunics and light tan leggings of the horsemen of Aria, the bright red tunics and leggings of the soldiers of Yueh-Chih sitting on horses and camels, the blue tunics and white leggings of the riders from Drangiana, and the somewhat dour grey-white tunics and brown leggings of the men from Anauon mounted on camels and horses.
The smallest contingent of the enemy’s foot soldiers was the spearmen of Babylon, all dressed in purple leggings and tunics that covered the arms and extended down to the knees. They wore leather caps and carried large rectangular wicker shields faced with hide and painted purple. It must have distressed Silani to see soldiers of his city marching with Tiridates.
The largest number of foot soldiers belonged to Persis, the new king of that realm, the traitor Osrow, having marched at the head of thousands from the south. The best was the palace guard standing in front of their king, a giant yellow flag sporting a black head of the bird god billowing behind him. The guards were armed and equipped after the Greek fashion: bronze helmets with large cheek guards, leather cuirasses, and round shields faced with bronze, painted with a bird god motif. Each guardsman was equipped with a spear with a leaf-shaped blade and short sword. The ordinary spearmen carried longer spears with similar-shaped blades, also wore helmets but no body armour, their larger rectangular wicker shields faced with hide and painted yellow, their only body protection. The hill men recruited from the tribes of the Zagros Mountains included slingers, axe men, archers and men wearing an assortment of leather, bronze and scale-armour cuirasses. Their only uniformity was their lack of headgear.
The ambassador arrived with a small escort of four archers, two of them carrying banners showing deer, the symbol of Aria. I smiled when the tall, thin diplomat dismounted and walked towards me. He was dressed in a padded white silk tunic as a defence against the cold, leather boots and a thick woollen cloak clasped at the shoulder with a gold fastener resembling a deer’s head. He halted a few paces from me and bowed deeply.
‘It
is good to see you again, Altan,’ I smiled. ‘I see that fate has been kind to you.’
He smiled, his teeth even and white, his beard neatly trimmed and his hair thick and black.
‘I am a mere servant of the high king, majesty, glad to be able to survive in a precarious world.’
He dripped wealth and privilege but his many years as an accomplished diplomat had made him an expert at being disarming and charming in equal measure.
‘It seems like only yesterday when we last met,’ I said, ‘at Sigal where you tried to explain the aggression of a coalition led by your king against my son-in-law. And here you are, again trying to explain the aggression of your king.’
‘I understand your emotions are raw, lord, what with the deaths of King Nergal and Queen Praxima. I know they were close friends of yourself and Queen Gallia. I trust she is well?’
I should have been angry with him but his words were sincere, or at least they appeared to be, and in truth I had a grudging respect for Altan. He had the unenviable task of venturing into the courts of Tiridates’ enemies to try to extricate his master when things went wrong. All that stood between him losing his head was his word craft, at which he was admittedly a master.
‘The queen is well, though I assume you are not here to enquire after our health.’
He glanced at Chrestus and the legionaries and archers on the camp’s ramparts.
‘In a way I am, majesty. I am here to try to convince you to march back to Dura. King of Kings Tiridates will allow all the soldiers of Dura to leave this place unmolested.’
He made no mention of the tens of thousands of soldiers moving into position around the two camps. It was as if we were two men engaging in convivial conversation on a city street, which was testimony to his diplomatic skills.
‘And what of the other contingents with me, Altan?’
He forehead showed the mere hint of a frown.
‘The offer is made to you alone, majesty. The traitor Karys murdered the rightful satrap of Mesene, a close friend of the high king himself, for which he will have to face the consequences. As for the Romans, you of all people must realise Parthia cannot tolerate the presence of the soldiers of its mortal enemy in the heart of the empire.’
He spread his arms. ‘Phraates is gone, majesty, dead most likely. That being the case, what are you fighting for? I know you do not desire the high crown for yourself, though it is Parthia’s loss that Dura’s king did not grace the throne of Ctesiphon. Must thousands die for nothing?’
‘Phraates is alive, Altan,’ I told him, though I had no way to verify those words, ‘and is the rightful high king. But for the sake of argument, let us assume he is dead. What is to stop other kings launching a bid for the high throne? Tiridates decided he would make a better king of kings than Phraates and seized the high throne by force. He thus established a dangerous precedent that could condemn the empire to years, decades, of civil strife. That is the reason I will not march back to Dura, ambassador, that and the fact I have never abandoned friends and allies and do not intend to start now.’
His eyes filled with sorrow. ‘That is unfortunate, majesty. Perhaps if given more time to consider my lord’s offer?’
I smiled. ‘It will make no difference, Altan. As the old saying goes: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Go back to Tiridates and tell him that when forced into a corner, the army of Dura will always fight rather than surrender.’
He was going to speak but thought better of it; no doubt realising further words would be wasted. So instead he placed a hand on his heart, bowed his head and returned to his shining grey mare draped in a red saddlecloth edged with gold and decorated with deer symbols in gold thread.
I watched him ride away before turning and walking back to camp, Chrestus striding beside me.
‘All the men are in camp?’
He nodded. ‘I had parties at the river filling water bottles and waterskins. When they attack, they will cut our supply line to the Euphrates but we should have enough for the men and animals to last four or five days. The Romans have done the same.’
I stopped and gazed at the Roman camp adjacent to our own.
‘Perhaps it would have been better if there was only one camp.’
‘Too late for that now, majesty. Besides, Scelias once told me that no Roman marching camp has ever been stormed by an enemy.’
I diverted my eyes to the huge enemy army that now surrounded the two camps in a great semi-circle.
‘There is a first time for everything.’
Our camp was large, containing as it did thousands of soldiers, camels, horses, mules and hundreds of carts and wagons. The ditch surrounding it was six feet wide and four feet deep, the spoil used to create it being employed to construct the rampart immediately behind. Surmounted by palisade stakes that increased its overall height, the rampart was constructed two hundred feet from the lines of tents inside the camp. This placed the soldiers’ sleeping quarters beyond the range of enemy arrows. As a further precaution, the horses, mules and camels were marshalled in the centre of the camp for the same reason. Wounded animals were difficult to control and their terror was infectious, causing stampedes in extreme circumstances.
The drums and horns of the enemy, silent during my meeting with Altan, suddenly came to life, their unending racket aimed at striking fear into the hearts of the legionaries and dismounted horse archers manning the ramparts. We had heard it all before: the noise, the frantic waving of banners and the insults of soldiers within earshot of our defences. The hill men from the Zagros were always good entertainment in the minutes before the bloodletting began, dropping their leggings and thrusting their genitals in our direction. Or turning before bending over to expose their buttocks. It was common knowledge the army of Dura contained female soldiers and the hill men thought it great sport to embarrass the Amazons, especially their commander.
‘Fine figures of men, are they not?’ I grinned as a hairy barbarian ran forward to within two hundred paces of the ditch, dropped his leggings and thrust his pelvis in our direction.
Gallia beside me said nothing but plucked an arrow from her quiver and nocked it in her bowstring. The hairy individual was rotating his hips in an obscene manner, shouting something that I could not discern. Behind him his equally hairy companions were hollering and shaking their weapons at us, whooping with joy at the prospect of the coming slaughter. I smiled to myself. Tiridates had deployed the hill men to the fore to test our defences. If they died in their thousands it would be no great loss – he still had thousands of other foot soldiers and behind them tens of thousands of horsemen.
Twang.
The hairy barbarian clutched at his stomach, fell to his knees and then collapsed forward with an arrow lodged in his guts. Around us, legionaries and Amazons cheered at the twitching figure lying face-down on the ground. His comrades, in comparison, fell silent. Then they charged headlong at us, prompting other hill men nearby to join in. In less than a minute thousands of them were racing across the ground screaming war cries at the tops of their voices. On the ramparts there was silence as legionaries pulled short swords from scabbards and tightened their fingers around the handgrips of their shields. Their orders were very specific – protect the archers with their shields and use their swords if the enemy crossed the ditch, scaled the rampart and breached the palisade. The archers would be shooting missiles, thus saving the javelins for later.
The hill men ran headlong into a storm of arrows that felled dozens before they got within a hundred paces of the ditch. Many had no shields and thus no protection from the arrows being shot at them, relying on speed and courage alone to traverse the killing ground. I aimed the arrow, shot it and pulled another from the quiver on my back, nocking it in the bowstring and shooting it at the figures rushing towards us, those in the front pitching forward as they were struck. Many of those behind stumbled and tripped over their prostrate comrades, slowing them down and making them easier targets. It was slaughter. But Tirid
ates was no fool and though the mad charge of the hill men had probably surprised him as much as us, he took action to halt the butchery.
‘Arrows!’
The cry was heard up and down the ramparts and every Duran archer ceased shooting and knelt down, the legionaries flanking him or her raising their shields above their heads and huddling tight to the archer between them to protect all three from the arrows that arched high into the sky before dropping on to us. Tiridates had ordered his horse archers forward to provide missile support for the hill men, and now they shot at us from a range of around two hundred paces.
Thud, thud, thud.
The arrows slammed into the shields, dropping like deadly rain drops on the ramparts.
Thud, thud, thud.
The hill men were at the ditch now, still shouting their obscene oaths and threats and scrambling up the rampart. The enemy archers abruptly ceased their shooting for fear of hitting their own men. Still kneeling, I pulled back my bowstring and shot an arrow into the face of the first hill man to show himself, the point going into his left eye socket and exiting the rear of his skull. He fell backwards on a man behind, the living and the dead tumbling back down the slope. All along the rampart kneeling archers were shooting at the bare heads and unprotected torsos of tribesmen, killing dozens and demoralising the rest. The attack faltered and then ended as hill men scrambled back across the ditch and dashed away to get out of range of our arrows.
‘Have a care, have a care.’
The warning was well timed for as the hill men withdrew the rampart once again became the target of enemy horse archers, who began shooting their bows, volley after volley being loosed against us. But the Roman scutum and its Duran copy are marvellous things: three layers of wood glued together with grains at right angles for additional strength, faced with hide on the front and back and edged with an iron rim. It was an effective barrier against arrows, stones, swords and spears and negated the enemy volleys.