Carrhae (2 page)

It was a most depressing summary and the only sound that filled the room after Alcaeus had finished speaking was the scribbling of the clerks as they noted everything down. The rest of us sat in silence, Domitus as ever toying with his dagger.

It was Gallia who spoke first. ‘What will the Armenians do?’

‘They will try to take Gordyene back first, no doubt,’ I surmised, ‘followed by an invasion of Gafarn’s kingdom to seize the whole of northern Hatra, which means Vata at Nisibus will feel the full force of their wrath first.’

The Kingdom of Gordyene had been lost to Parthia when the Armenians had occupied it. It had subsequently been repossessed by Surena, formerly my squire who had been tutored in the arts of war at Dura. He had matured into a fine commander and so I sent him into Gordyene with an expeditionary force to wage war against its Armenian occupiers. But his martial brilliance had resulted in the Armenians being expelled from the kingdom altogether, earning him Gordyene’s crown from a grateful King of Kings Orodes.

‘Why did they declare war?’ asked Kronos. ‘Why not just launch an offensive? Seems odd.’

I thought of the Armenian King Tigranes, named ‘Great’ in some quarters, and his pompous son Prince Artavasdes.

‘I assume Tigranes is making a grand gesture to illustrate to the world how powerful Armenia is.’

Dobbai let out a low cackle. ‘You are wrong, son of Hatra. The Armenians wish to attract all attention to themselves so the empire’s eyes are diverted from another source of danger.’

‘What danger?’ I asked.

‘I see the eagles spreading their wings,’ she replied casually.

Rsan was both confused and alarmed. ‘Eagles? I do not understand.’

Domitus pointed his dagger at Dobbai. ‘She means the Romans.’

‘We have no reports of movements in Syria,’ I replied.

Dobbai looked at me with a self-satisfied expression. ‘You will. Like the Armenians they will have observed the empire tearing itself apart and will also conclude that it is the right time to strike, while it is weak.’

‘Crassus will not arrive in Syria for many more weeks,’ I assured her. ‘Byrd has kept us fully abreast of the situation in the Roman province.’

Byrd, the army’s chief scout, was also a successful businessman who lived in the great tent city of Palmyra. His offices in Syria supplied him with intelligence regarding Roman plans. We all knew that Marcus Licinius Crassus, Rome’s richest man, was on his way from Italy with an army to assume the governorship of Syria but he was marching overland and the journey was long and arduous.

She looked away to stare out of the window at the courtyard. ‘Have it your own way, son of Hatra.’

‘What are you going to do about Gafarn’s plea?’ asked Domitus.

‘Wait until I have heard from Orodes.’

Gallia looked most surprised. ‘You will not aid your brother?’

‘The Armenians will try to capture Nisibus first, but the city has strong defences and in Vata the region has a very able commander. Hopefully that will give us time to organise a coordinated response. It is better to wait until Orodes forms an alliance that we can join.’

‘He’s right, Gallia,’ said Domitus. ‘Dura’s army would be more effective as part of a larger force that can march north to confront the Armenians.’

‘Time is what we need to create a force large enough to defeat the Armenians,’ I said. ‘Vata will buy us time, and let us not forget that Surena in Gordyene will also be in peril.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about him,’ said Domitus, ‘he liberated the kingdom and he’s more than capable of keeping hold of it.’

‘You have changed your tune about him,’ remarked Gallia. ‘It was not long ago that you were calling him a puppy.’

Domitus nodded. ‘True enough. But the puppy has grown into a cunning dog with sharp fangs.’

‘Be that as it may,’ I replied, ‘he too will need assistance to battle a full-scale Armenian invasion, though I am sure Media and Atropaiene will send him help.’

‘We can always take the lords north with us,’ remarked Gallia. ‘They were most unhappy that they were left behind when we fought Narses and Mithridates.’

Domitus and Kronos nodded in agreement and in truth the addition of twenty thousand horse archers would certainly stiffen the army. Unlike most Parthian kingdoms Dura had a standing army. But like every Parthian domain it had lords who in times of war could raise their own troops from those who worked on their lands. These were mostly horse archers.

‘In fact,’ continued Gallia, ‘with the lords and their men we would not need to wait for Orodes.’

‘Do not leave the kingdom undefended,’ said Dobbai with force, ‘unless you want the Romans to pluck it like a ripe fruit.’

I frowned at her. ‘You keep going on about the Romans but as far as I know the border with Syria is quiet.’

Dobbai rose unsteadily to her feet and shuffled towards the door. ‘Did I say anything about the Syrian border? The army must remain here if the city is to stay safe.’

Domitus winked at Kronos and then tried to be clever. ‘I thought you said that as long as the stone griffin stood at the Palmyrene Gate Dura would never fall.’

The Palmyrene Gate was the main entrance to the city and above it stood a stone griffin statue that Dobbai had commissioned to safeguard Dura.

Dobbai spun round and pointed a bony finger at him. ‘Even though you have been in Parthia for many years you still retain the arrogance of your race, Roman. If the city is left undefended then it will fall.’

‘Then your words concerning the griffin were false,’ Domitus shot back at her.

She curled her lip. ‘Even the most simple-minded person knows that city walls need to be defended. Why would the gods help those who refuse to help themselves? Would you go into battle without your sword, Roman?’

Domitus looked around and smiled. ‘Of course not.’

Dobbai regarded him coolly. ‘Then Dura must remain protected at all times.’

‘And what of the Armenians?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘What of them? The old fool Tigranes believes that the empire is weak and will fall into his lap. He will soon be disabused of that notion.’

But the empire was weak, and even though I concluded the meeting by informing all present that we would wait until we received word from Orodes I worried that the Armenians would flood into Hatra and Gordyene with ease. Following the Battle of Susa the victorious kings badly needed a period of rest in which to rebuild their forces. The Kingdoms of Hatra, Gordyene, Babylon and Media, to say nothing of Dura, had suffered substantial losses, especially among their heavy horsemen. To wage another war would sap their depleted resources further. My spirits were not improved when I received a letter from Orodes at Ctesiphon, the palace of the high king, informing me that aside from royal bodyguards the Kingdom of Babylon would be able to field a mere ten thousand horse archers, two hundred mounted spearmen and no foot soldiers to counter the Armenian threat. Those few foot soldiers the kingdom possessed – five thousand – were needed to garrison the cities of Babylon, Kish and Seleucia and the royal compound of Ctesiphon itself. Just as I could not leave the walls of Dura undefended, so Orodes could not denude the cities of his wife’s kingdom of soldiers lest civil disorder broke out. The temples and palaces were a tempting target for organised bands of thieves and other undesirables who infested every city on earth.

‘He’s king of kings now,’ said Domitus, ‘so he can summon the forces of all the kingdoms in Parthia.’

The day after the meeting I had made an evening visit to his tent in the legionary camp located half a mile west of the city. Now that he had a wife – Miriam – and a residence in the city he usually spent the evenings inside the city walls, but he was sleeping in his tent as the army made ready to embark on a field exercise.

I poured myself a cup of wine and sat facing him at the table.

‘There are only two kingdoms that have been largely untouched by the recent civil war,’ I replied. ‘Carmania in the southeast corner of the empire and Nergal’s Kingdom of Mesene to the south. Carmania is around twelve hundred miles from Hatra and even if its king, Phriapatius, has been summoned it will take his army ten weeks to travel the length of the empire before it is any use.’

‘Nergal will come,’ Domitus assured me. Nergal was a Companion, one of those who like Domitus had returned with me from Italy following our time fighting by the side of Spartacus.

‘Nergal will come,’ I agreed, ‘and will join with Orodes and then we will join with them. Let us hope it will be enough.’

‘And the other kingdoms?’

I sipped at the wine. ‘Exhausted by years of strife they will be reluctant to send troops to the west and leave their own lands vulnerable to attack. The nomads of the northern steppes and the Indians would exploit any weakness along the empire’s northern and eastern borders.’

He leaned back in his chair. ‘It is down to us, then.’

I tried to smile. ‘It has always been down to us, my friend.’

‘It won’t take long to build up the army,’ he reassured me. ‘There is always an endless supply of young men presenting themselves at the gates of the Citadel to volunteer their services.’

Service in Dura’s army was open to anyone and advancement was dependent on merit alone. That said, there were certain qualifications that Domitus as its general had insisted on, which were the same as those applied in the Roman Army. These were: a healthy body with all limbs intact (it never ceased to amaze me the number of one-legged individuals who tried to enlist on the grounds that sitting in the saddle did not require the use of two legs!), unmarried, no dwarfs, good eyesight and a good character. All those initially accepted were inducted into the replacement cohort where a further weeding-out process began to determine their suitability for a life in the military.

‘It takes a year to turn a recruit into a fully trained legionary Domitus, and we do not have that length of time.’

‘Perhaps we could speed up the process,’ he mused, ‘seeing as a lot of those presenting themselves at the Citadel are runaways from Syria and have probably seen some sort of military service.’

I thought of the long line of scrawny individuals in threadbare clothing I had seen that very morning, some of them bearing brands on their foreheads signifying they had been Roman slaves – FUG,
fugitivus
– runaway; KAL,
kalumniator
¬– liar; and FUR,
fur
– thief. Others had ears that had been bored – the mark of a Mesopotamian slave, no doubt having fled from other Parthian kingdoms, perhaps even from Hatra that lay just across the River Euphrates. Others had made the journey from Egypt, runaway slaves who had worked in the pharaoh’s gold and copper mines.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘We stick to the system that has made Dura strong.’

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘that means the legions will be two thousand men down when we march.’

I finished my wine. ‘Can’t help that.’

‘And the horsemen?’

I stood up and walked over to the entrance of the tent. As it was summer and it was hot the flaps were tied back to allow what was now only a whisper of wind to enter. Outside was the parade ground and beyond it the camp’s central avenue that led to the main entrance flanked by neat rows of tents.

‘The older squires can be promoted to make up the losses among the cataphracts and Vagises will send messages to the lords asking that they spread the word among their retainers that I am looking for new horse archers. We should be able to replace the losses we suffered at Susa in three months.’

‘You think we have that long?’

The sky was pink as a yellow sun descended in the western sky to signal the end of another day.

‘I hope so. I sincerely hope so.’

I turned and walked back to the table.

‘The one thing in our favour, the only thing thus far,’ I said, ‘is that we have time to defeat the Armenians before Crassus arrives.’

The next day I sat in the throne room and dictated letters to Orodes, Surena, Atrax and Gafarn. Rsan fussed over the scribes like a mother hen while Gallia, sitting next to me, observed the proceedings.

I informed Orodes that Dura’s army would prepare to march north but would wait until he arrived with what forces he could muster from Babylon and Susiana. The latter kingdom was his own and ordinarily would have supplied a great many soldiers, but most of them had been slaughtered at Susa when we had defeated Narses and Mithridates. Those still alive would be needed for garrison duties, for to leave the kingdom’s towns and cities undefended would be to invite the hill men who infested the nearby Zagros Mountains to pillage them at will.

I pledged aid to both Surena and Atrax, King of Media. Media lay to the east of Hatra and south of Gordyene. But I informed them both that at present I was unable to offer any assistance, but hoped that they could assist each other. They could also call upon King Aschek of Atropaiene. The latter was always reluctant to embroil his kingdom in conflict but as his realm was positioned directly east of Gordyene he knew that if Surena fell then his lands would be open to an Armenian invasion. I also knew that Orodes would request the assistance of Nergal and so I also sent a letter to Uruk stating that I looked forward to linking up with him and his men when we assembled our joint forces.

As a scribe sitting at a desk in front of me completed each letter, the parchment was folded and then Rsan sealed it with hot wax, into which was pressed my griffin symbol. Then it was given to a waiting courier whose horse stood ready in the courtyard.

‘What are you going to say to Gafarn?’ asked Gallia.

‘That I will wait until I receive word from Orodes,’ I replied, and then pointed to a scribe waiting for instructions.

‘He will expect you to reply that you are marching to Hatra straight away.’

‘It would be better to wait for Orodes and Nergal,’ I reiterated. ‘Our combined forces joined with Hatra’s will be more than a match for the Armenians, who have yet to make any moves aside from declaring war on the empire.’

I again indicated to the scribe that I was ready to begin dictating when Dobbai ambled into the room, and proceeding to ignore us walked over to the table Rsan was standing by, a rolled parchment in her hand. Ignoring him she picked up the crucible of wax that was being heated over an oil lamp and poured some on the parchment to seal it, then took the wax stamp and pressed it into the hot substance. By now everyone in the room was looking at her as she went about her business seemingly oblivious to our presence.