Parthian Dawn (58 page)

I rolled onto my back and reached into my quiver. The arrows had been bound together to stop them rattling during the journey. I slowly untied the twine and pulled an arrow out and placed the nock in the bowstring. Then I very slowly assumed a kneeling position, my right knee on the ground. I peered head and saw a guard’s head and shoulders directly in front of me. I drew back the bowstring, keeping my eyes on the target. It would be a difficult shot because the only real target was his face. I slowed my breathing and focused entirely on the target; nothing else existed at that moment. Subconsciously I had already made allowances for the wind and distance. The bow was not a weapon; it was a part of me, at one with my senses and instincts. Time slowed as I released the string. I heard a twang and low hiss, then a dull thud as the arrowhead struck the sentry and he fell to the ground. The others took their shots as I strung another arrow and loosed it. The air was filled with hissing noises as my companions searched out targets, and then other sounds were carried on the wind — trumpet blasts and shouts as the camp was awoken from its slumber.

‘Time to go,’ I said, releasing another arrow at a centurion, his telltale crest betraying his rank, who was standing behind the palisade barking orders.

We ran as fast as our legs would carry us, my heart pounding in my chest as I strained every muscle to get back to the safety of the forest. We must have covered that two-mile stretch of ground in a time that a Greek Olympian would have been jealous of, because when we entered the trees we all collapsed on the ground, gasping for air. Some of my cataphracts had been posted there as a rearguard should we be pursued, and now they helped us to our feet. For a while I had difficulty standing upright and it was painful to breathe, but eventually our hearts returned to normal and anxiety and stress were replaced by boyish enthusiasm as we congratulated ourselves on a job well done. Back at camp we sat on the ground until the grey light of dawn came, exaggerating our feats wildly. Once again we had given the Romans a bloody nose.

In the morning we broke camp and rode to the edge of the forest. The Romans had also left their camp and were forming into ranks on the steppe in front of us. We moved out of the trees and faced them, though they were well over a mile away and we were beyond the range of their archers and slingers. Their cohorts were arrayed in the centre and the light troops — spearmen with shields but no armour, archers and slingers — were deployed on the flanks. A blast of trumpets signalled their advance. Thousands of men began a steady march towards us. I saw few horsemen among their ranks save a small group behind their centre wearing red cloaks and surrounded by standards. The commander and his senior officers, no doubt.

There were only two hundred of us arrayed before the Romans, deployed in one long line at the tree line. But we raised a great clamour and hurled insults at the enemy as we fell back into the trees.

The Romans followed us, sending forward their lightly armed spearmen and archers first. Those of us on horseback withdrew into the vastness of the forest, but always letting the enemy see glimpses of us as we did so. The enemy thought that their light troops, used to operating in open order, would be more than adequate to deal with a few horsemen among the trees. The spearmen entered the trees gingerly, the archers and slingers positioned on their flanks to offer them protection. They shot a few arrows at the fleeting shapes of horsemen among the trees, but the day was overcast and the foliage diminished the light still further. The spearmen kept moving forward, their shafts levelled and their round shields held in front of their bodies. The archers and slingers, carrying no shields to protect them, crouched low in an effort to reduce their silhouettes. Those of us on horseback put away our bows as we kept out of range of the enemy bows and slings. Further we retreated into the forest, back towards our camp. Then our trap was sprung.

Hidden among the trees were the rest of my men, seven hundred archers behind cover waiting for the enemy. The remaining hundred Parthians remained in camp tending the horses and mules, and would form a reserve if we needed them. A Parthian recurve bow has a greater range than its Roman equivalent with its straight limbs, but today my men let the enemy archers get close to them. On horseback a Parthian horse archer can shoot between five and seven arrows a minute; on foot this increases to up to ten arrows a minute. When the enemy had closed to within fifty paces a horn blew and Parthian bows began shooting. My men were hidden and stationary and their first volley was deadly accurate — seven hundred arrows sliced through the air and buried themselves in flesh and bone. After half a minute three and a half thousand arrows had been shot at the Roman archers and slingers, who suffered horrendous losses. Most had been hit and either killed or wounded by the first two volleys, but my men kept on firing until the survivors fled. Two horn blasts signalled that the enemy was now running. I turned and gave the order to sound the advance. Now it was our turn to move forward.

The plan was for those on foot to stay where they were as the horsemen counterattacked. We drew our swords and moved forward, cantering through the trees. The enemy spearmen had been left alone while their archers had been dealt with, but now my archers began directing their arrows at them. Ahead I could see the spearmen, their ranks being thinned by arrow fire, then I signalled the charge. Horns blasted and we screamed our war cries as we galloped at the enemy. Gaps had already appeared in their ranks where dead spearman lay on the ground, and in any case among the trees it was difficult to form an unbroken shield wall. A few threw their spears at the onrushing horsemen and one or two found their target, but many had already turned tail before we made contact. And then we hit them like a thunderbolt.

Had they stood firmed in solid blocks we would not have been able to defeat them, but these men were auxiliaries, not legionaries. They were not trained to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with shields locked facing the enemy, to withstand arrow fire and spear storms and the charge of enemy horsemen. And the rout of their archers and slingers had shaken their morale. I slashed left and right at heads and torsos, taking care to avoid spear points, for neither our horses nor we wore armour. On we rode, hacking and thrusting, splitting thin shields with swings of our swords. Many of the enemy had thrown away their spears and shields and were running as fast as they could to escape us. We pursued them to the edge of the forest and beyond, catching some as they fell to the ground and began retching due to their exertions. They just had time to look up before a swing of a sword blade ended their life. Dozens fled back to the safety of the cohorts deployed on the steppe, which were now advancing towards the forest. I chased after one man who still carried his shield. I held my sword arm straight as I closed on him, then brought it up as I rode past him and slashed down, knocking him off his feet as my blade bit deep into the left side of his skull. I slowed Remus and then wheeled him right, then heard a hiss as a javelin flew past me. In concentrating on my quarry I had ridden dangerously close to a Roman cohort that was closing on me. I yelled at Remus and urged him forward, out of javelin range.

‘Sound recall,’ I shouted, as some of my riders got too close to the enemy and were felled by javelins.

I rode back to the edge of the forest, to be joined by Orodes and Atrax. As the men reformed either side of the royal standards I saw Surena riding up and down in front of the Roman front line, loosing arrows at them.

‘Stay here,’ I shouted to Orodes and Atrax, then rode back towards the advancing enemy. I halted when I was within shouting distance of Surena.

‘Get back, you young idiot. Obey orders for once or I will shoot you myself.’

I turned and galloped back to the men, followed by Surena. His eyes were wild with the excitement of battle.

‘Listen for the horns next time,’ I said. ‘I was nearly killed because I got too close to them.’

In front of us five cohorts of legionaries were getting ready to attack. We had won one relatively bloodless victory; the next fight would be much harder.

‘Back into the trees,’ I said, ‘same tactics as before.’

Except this was not the same as before. These Romans were obviously veterans, because they seamlessly advanced into the forest and then deployed into their centuries, shields locked to the front, overhead and sides.

They moved slowly to maintain their formations and our arrows could make no impression on them. Eventually I gave the order for those on foot to get back to camp as quickly as possible while those of us on horseback maintained a steady fire against the Romans. We did manage to inflict some losses on the Romans when some of them fell into the traps that we had dug, men screaming as they were impaled on stakes in the pits. Their
testudo
formations were momentarily broken, allowing us to shoot at exposed bodies, but then the Romans would lock shields once more and continue to advance. As they were doing so the rest of the men were evacuating the camp via the other side. Thus ended our fight with the garrison of Vanadzor.

We lost fifty men killed in the action and a further forty wounded, and had shot a great many arrows. We carried on moving east through the forest until we came to a vast expanse of grassland. It was now nearly dusk, but we rode across the plain for another two hours until it was dark and then made camp. We kept the horses saddled in case we had to make a quick escape, for I did not know if there were other Roman garrisons in the area. Fortunately we were not pursued, and so the next day we moved further east once more and pitched a new camp in another great forest that bordered Lake Urmia.

We stayed in Gordyene for six months, operating around Vanadzor and Lake Urmia, launching raids against the Romans and fending off the parties of horsemen they sent against us. After a while we split into three groups, Orodes leading one, Atrax the other and myself the third, riding far and wide to attack isolated Roman outposts and sometimes putting their small garrisons to the sword, at other times being beaten off or unable to storm the wooden towers that had sprung up all over Gordyene. We ambushed supply columns, taking any food the wagons carried. We killed the guards and drivers and torched the wagons, but when the snows came the tracks became impassable and there was no traffic on the roads. As it grew colder we were forced to build huts in the forest to house men and horses and rarely ventured out. We became unshaven, lice infested and filthy. My helmet lost its feathers and rusted, our boots were holed, but we kept our bows and arrows dry and our swords clean and sharp. During the winter we forgot about the Romans and concentrated on keeping our horses and ourselves alive. At the turn of the year Byrd and Malik actually travelled to a small town and purchased fodder from a corrupt Roman official, no questions asked.

When spring came the Romans once again sent out cavalry patrols to hunt us down, so we moved further east out of Gordyene and into northern Atropaiene. The Romans followed us. We were down to six hundred men by this time and were woefully short of arrows. We had eaten all of our mules and many of the men had sores on their faces and bodies due to the cold that we had endured during the winter. Occasionally we laid an ambush for our pursuers, killing a score or more before riding away. But such minor victories only reduced our numbers and ammunition still further. In truth we had become nothing but a group of bandits trying to stay one step ahead of our hunters. My plan to wear down the Romans had turned out to be a flight of fancy — it was we who were being ground down. As we moved further east we reached the shores of the great Caspian Sea, part of the northern frontier of the Parthian Empire. We continued our retreat, striking southeast but still pursued by the Romans.

To save the horses’ strength we were forced to spend days walking them instead of riding, the lack of good fodder having weakened them considerably. Most of them, including Remus, had become skin and bone. Only the horse of Byrd remained unchanged as it had always been a scrawny, thin beast. One day, as we were resting in a canyon by a shallow stream under a warm sun, Byrd and Malik rode into camp. Many of the men had stripped off and were washing or lying in the cool water, their first soak in weeks.

Byrd was agitated. ‘Romani cavalry very close.’ He pointed to the direction from where they had ridden.

‘How many?’ I asked.

‘I estimate two thousand,’ said Malik, now sporting a thick black beard, his robes torn and holed.

‘How long before they get here?’

Byrd shrugged. ‘An hour, perhaps less.’

I called everyone together — five hundred tired men and their equally tired horses. Some were lame and could not carry a man anyway, so I knew that this was the end. They all gathered round me in a big semi-circle; Orodes and Atrax were beside me. The prince was no longer the fired-up youth of last year; rather, he had become a more sober individual, thoughtful though still brave and loyal. I told them what Byrd and Malik had told me. A show of hands revealed that fifty of them had lame horses, which meant that they would not be able to ride to safety, and I also knew that none of us would abandon our comrades.

‘We have failed to stay beyond their reach,’ I said, ‘so the only course of action is to stand and fight them here.’

‘Well,’ said Orodes, ‘I for one am tired of running.’

There were murmurs of agreement.

Atrax smiled at me. ‘We’ve beaten them before.’

‘So we have,’ I replied.

We had no armour, many had lost their helmets and we averaged three arrows per man. Nevertheless, we saddled our horses and formed up into three groups, each one numbering a hundred and fifty and led by myself, Orodes and Atrax respectively. The remaining men and their lame horses were positioned to the rear. All our remaining arrows had been distributed among those who were in the front ranks. Our tactics were simple — we would charge the enemy and kill as many as we could before going to work with our swords. And after that… I smiled to myself. There would be no ‘after that’. I look around. So this is the barren place where I would breath my last. I reached inside my vest and touched the lock of Gallia’s hair. Together for all eternity.