Carrhae (31 page)

A servant, a beautiful young girl with almond-shaped eyes and a lithe figure, walked over to him and offered him a cup from the tray she was holding, dazzling him with a smile, while another daughter of Ishtar filled it from a jug. He once again glanced at his sword.

‘The man you attacked today was the commander of Dura’s army,’ I said. He looked surprised. ‘Just because a man is not dressed in silver and bronze and does not have a plume in his helmet does not mean he is not important. As I told you, this is not Hatra.

‘You must learn to control your temper.’

I sipped at my wine and he did the same. ‘Lucius Domitus, my commander, was perfectly within his rights to slay you today. Lucky for you that he was only carrying his cane.’

‘He could still have you flogged,’ added Gallia, flashing me a mischievous grin.

‘You cannot fight the whole world, Spartacus,’ I said. ‘You must learn to be more tolerant, especially with regard to Scarab.’

‘He torments me with infantile questions,’ he replied.

‘He wishes to learn, that is all,’ Gallia rebuked him.

‘He was a slave until recently and has not had your privileged upbringing,’ I said. ‘He is my squire and so are you, unless you would rather be an orderly for my general?’

A look of alarm spread across his bruised face. I smiled.

‘I thought not.’

I stood up, picked up his sword and walked to the balustrade and peered at the boats on the river.

‘Soon the empire will be at war with the Romans, Spartacus, and the Armenians as well, probably. In that war we will need all the soldiers we can mobilise. So you can appreciate the importance of teaching Scarab the use of the bow and other weapons.’

I held out the sword to him.

‘You can help us win this war or you can wage your own private conflict against us all while Parthia is destroyed. It is up to you.’

He walked forward and took his sword from my hand.

‘I did not mean to disrespect you, uncle.’

‘We will say no more on the matter, Spartacus. But try to think before you assault anyone in future, especially crop-haired men shorter than you.’

He bowed his head to Gallia who smiled at him and then walked quietly from the terrace. I dismissed the servants and told them to leave the wine. I refilled Gallia’s cup and then my own and retook my seat.

‘It is hard to believe that it was sixteen years ago when we rode from the Silarus Valley with Diana cradling him in her arms,’ she reflected.

I rubbed my eyes. ‘They have passed in an instant, and once again we find ourselves about to fight Marcus Licinius Crassus.’

‘This time he will be the one fighting far from home,’ she said defiantly.

‘I wish I shared your optimism. The reality is that he will have many legions plus horsemen and auxiliaries, and to the north we will face the Armenians who will add their great numbers to his own.’

She looked surprised. ‘You think we cannot win?’

I emptied my cup. ‘I think, my love, that when war comes it may last a long time. Parthia has been weakened after many years of civil strife and the last thing it needs is more war.’

‘Perhaps Crassus will suddenly die as Tigranes did,’ she said.

‘Perhaps,’ I replied. I hoped that the magic of Dobbai would indeed cause him to drop down dead, for without a miracle I had grave doubts as to whether we would be able to defeat him when he came.

At least the next few weeks passed without incident as far as young Spartacus was concerned. He was still prickly and prone to angry outbursts, especially towards Scarab. But his mornings were filled with onerous duties and his afternoons were spent teaching my Nubian squire archery and swordsmanship. So his time was filled and his apparently limitless reserves of energy were expended. The situation was helped greatly by Peroz taking them both under his wing and spending most afternoons with them to act as a mediator between the two, patiently teaching the Nubian how to use a bow and proving himself a better shot than Hatra’s prince.

I had quartered the Carmanian horse archers in the ruins of Mari. Once, seventeen hundred years ago, it was a great city but had now become a collection of mud-brick ruins converted into stables for horses and barracks for their riders. Located south of Dura it had originally housed Silaces’ eight thousand horse archers from Elymais when that kingdom had fallen to Narses and Mithridates. Now Silaces and his men were in Gordyene assisting Surena. Strabo, the quartermaster responsible for the health and feeding of Dura’s horses, camels and mules, organised weekly deliveries of fodder from the royal granaries and Marcus, the army’s quartermaster general, supplied the Carmanians with food, clothing and horse furniture. Happily neither Aaron nor Rsan complained about their presence at the weekly council meetings because Phriapatius sent regular payments of gold to reimburse Dura’s treasury for the upkeep of his son’s soldiers.

I liked Peroz. He had an amiable, thoughtful nature and a mind with a thirst for knowledge. In fact he reminded me greatly of Orodes. By the autumn he had been accepted by the officers of the army as a valued ally and had seemingly managed to tame Spartacus and turn Scarab into a decent archer to boot.

During this time an eerie quiet descended over the empire as we waited for Crassus and his army. Byrd provided me with regular reports concerning the Roman governor of Syria who was still embroiled in Egypt’s affairs and enriching himself greatly in the process, while in the north Artavasdes stuck to the terms of the peace treaty. Orodes wrote that this was because he did not feel confident of launching a war against Parthia without the towering presence of his father by his side. But when Byrd came to Dura he reported that Artavasdes was recruiting great numbers of mercenaries in preparation for the final war against the Parthian Empire.

In Gordyene, meanwhile, Surena strained at the leash to attack Armenia from his kingdom. So concerned was Orodes that my protégé would initiate a war against Armenia that he asked me to go to Gordyene to reason with Surena.

I took Scarab and Spartacus with me in addition to a hundred horse archers and a hundred mules loaded with fodder, food and spare clothing. Because the year was drawing to a close the latter included woollen mittens, thick woollen tunics and heavy cloaks complete with hoods for the mountains and valleys of Gordyene are cold in winter. The high peaks were already blanketed with snow and a cruel wind blew from the north.

We rode east to the city of Assur, across the Tigris and then struck north along the eastern bank of the river before heading northeast towards the Shahar Chay River that marked the border between Media to the south and Gordyene to the north. Ordinarily I would have visited Atrax in Irbil, the capital of Media, but I was in a hurry and had no wish to see my sister Aliyeh, whose infantile hostility towards me was beginning to test my patience. We made the three-hundred mile journey in twelve days and arrived at the river to find the far bank lined with five hundred horse archers commanded by Silaces.

There was a bitter northerly wind blowing that swelled the huge white banner of Elymais sporting a four-pointed star so it resembled a great sail. A frozen Vagharsh, hood over his head and a scarf shielding the lower half of his face, held my fluttering griffin banner as I edged Remus into the grey, wind-ruffled icy water and led my horsemen across. Opposite the horse archers raised their bows in salute and Silaces walked his horse forward towards me, bowing his head as Remus trotted from the water.

‘Greetings, Silaces,’ I said, ‘I had forgotten how cold this kingdom could be.’

He looked into the leaden sky heaped with dark grey clouds.

‘Indeed majesty, some of the high passes are already blocked by snow.’

‘Well, at least that will stop Surena from waging war against the Armenians, then. How is he?’

He fell in beside me as we rode north to join the main road leading to Vanadzor, the kingdom’s capital, the rider carrying his banner falling in behind us.

‘He is a king with a mission, majesty,’ he replied flatly.

‘And what would that be?’

He smiled to himself. ‘To emasculate the Armenians.’

‘I am here to persuade him to delay his neutering,’ I replied.

The first night, we camped by the side of a luxuriant forest of oak and roasted the meat of two huge stags that Silaces’ men had shot that afternoon. On the second day we reached the town of Khoy, around which were several salt mines whose produce Silaces told me was traded with the kingdoms of Media, Atropaiene and Hyrcania for iron and bronze to make weapons and armour. In addition to salt Gordyene was abundant in cattle, sheep, horses and camels, which were also exported to nearby kingdoms.

‘Surena means to make Gordyene another Dura, majesty,’ said Silaces as we rode north towards Vanadzor, the wind having abated somewhat and a clear sky bathing the landscape in bright winter sunshine. Overhead a snowcock showed us its white flight feathers as it passed over our column.

‘He has turned Vanadzor into a giant armoury to equip his army.’

I had to admit that I was filled with pride at his words. Surena had once been nothing more than a wild boy who lived in the great marshes south of the city of Uruk, an uneducated half-savage of the Ma’adan.

Our paths had crossed when I had been captured by soldiers of the treacherous King Chosroes, at the time the ruler of Mesene. Surena and his band of young mavericks had fortuitously ambushed the column in which I had been a captive and had freed me. I had subsequently fled with them into the marshlands and afterwards Surena had joined me on my journey back to Dura. He had become my squire, had again saved my life in the battle against Narses and Chosroes before the walls of Dura and had then entered the ranks of the army’s cataphracts. He had been enrolled in the Sons of the Citadel scheme whereby the most promising individuals were groomed for command and had graduated to become an officer in the heavy cavalry.

Surena’s meteoric career had continued when I had given him command of half of my cataphracts at the battle near the Tigris against Mithridates and then command of a dragon of horse archers – a thousand men – in the subsequent retreat from the army of Narses. Surena never knew it but he was given command of an expeditionary force into Gordyene because Claudia, the dead wife of Spartacus, had talked of him in oblique terms when she spoke to me in the Temple of Ishtar at Babylon. I had expected him to be an irritant to the Armenians, who at the time were occupying Gordyene, but nothing more. But his leadership and courage had resulted in him liberating the kingdom and returning it to the Parthian Empire. A grateful Orodes had rewarded him with Gordyene’s crown and I felt very satisfied with myself for finding him.

Peroz was most intrigued by this grey, cold land filled with high, snow-clad mountains, rivers bloated with raging waters and seemingly endless forests of beech and oak and wind-swept mountain steppes. He rode on my right side with Silaces on my left; the banners of Dura, Carmania and Elymais fluttering behind us as we entered the wide, long valley before Vanadzor and saw a most wondrous sight.

Before us was arrayed the army of Gordyene: rank upon rank of foot soldiers in front of companies of horsemen, and before them all, mounted on a grey horse and surrounded by his senior officers, framed against a huge banner sporting a silver lion on a blood-red background, was Surena, Lord of all Gordyene.

‘Where is Viper?’ I asked Silaces.

Viper was a former member of the Amazons whom Surena had married and was now Queen of Gordyene.

‘Because she is pregnant, majesty, he has ordered her not to ride until the baby is born. He dotes on her greatly and loves her, too much perhaps.’

Surena urged his horse forward and cantered across the ground to bring it to a halt in front of me, flashing a smile.

‘Greetings, lord. Gordyene’s army stands ready for the inspection of the Lord High General of the Parthian Empire.’

I held out my arm to him and he clasped my forearm. ‘Greetings, Surena, I am here to convey the gratitude of King of Kings Orodes in making Gordyene once again the northern shield of the empire.’

Now nearly thirty, his youthful enthusiasm and arrogance had been replaced by determination combined with common sense and great tactical and strategic awareness. He also looked older and more careworn, but then the responsibility of administering a kingdom bore down heavily on all of us.

His officers, all of them young and very serious, were dressed in conical iron helmets, scale armour cuirasses, red long-sleeved tunics, baggy black leggings and boots. And as I rode slowly up and down the ranks of the assembled army I was struck by the age of the troops. This was a young army. The only middle-aged men I saw were among Silaces’ men from Elymais.

Looking at the army I could see the influence his time at Dura had made upon Surena because he had modelled his forces on my own, tempered by financial practicalities. Gordyene was not as wealthy as Dura. There were no cataphracts present but Surena had raised two dragons of medium horsemen, men in scale armour comprising rows of overlapping iron scales riveted onto thick hide and reinforced with scale armour shoulder guards. They also wore pteruges – strips of leather that hung from the waist and protected their thighs and upper legs.

These horsemen carried spears as their main weapons instead of the longer
kontus
, axes instead a swords, with daggers in sheaths on their right sides. Their round wooden shields were faced with hide painted red, each embossed with white lion’s head.

Surena’s horse archers wore no armour and had soft pointed hats on their heads, but each one was equipped with two quivers and a short sword for close-quarter fighting. There were eight thousand of them drawn up in their dragons and companies, the standard bearer in each of the latter carrying a lion windsock. The last dragon of horse archers seemed to be composed of particularly fresh-faced youths, as I remarked to Silaces.

‘Take a closer look, majesty,’ he said.

I peered at the front rank. ‘They are women!’

‘The queen’s dragon,’ stated Surena proudly. ‘My wife was in the Amazons and so to make her feel more at home I raised a thousand female horse archers in honour of her and the Amazons. They are called the Lionesses.’