Carrhae

Chapter 4

The office was empty and I was alone with my thoughts staring at the map of the empire. They were not good company. I glanced to my right, at the chair that my father had always occupied at the meetings of Hatra’s council. How we needed him now. I looked back at the map. The Armenians controlled the whole of northern Hatra; there was a Roman legion at Zeugma poised to join with their Armenian allies. There were Armenian troops in Gordyene. Roman cavalry and another legion at Emesa still threatened Palmyra, and now Mithridates was marching with an army towards Seleucia. Orodes had sent a courier to the city to warn its governor, the aged General Mardonius, of the approaching threat. His small garrison of a thousand men would not be able to withstand a determined assault, especially as the city’s defences were in a state of disrepair.

I looked at the empty chair. What would you do, father?

‘I’m glad he is not here to witness our misfortune.’

I turned to see Gafarn standing behind me, his slim frame silhouetted in the doorway.

‘Hatra was the strongest kingdom in the empire once, a bulwark against external foes and a stabilising factor in Parthia’s internal affairs, and now it lies prostrate and helpless like a new-born lamb.’

I walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘We are not beaten yet, brother. Remember Rhegium.’

He looked perplexed. ‘Rhegium?’

‘Yes, when Crassus had Spartacus and his army penned in like cattle ready for slaughter with their backs against the sea. Well, we turned the tables on Crassus and can do the same again.’

He smiled. ‘Same old Pacorus — defiant in the face of impending doom. You should rule Hatra; it is your birthright.’

He looked directly at me. ‘I would gladly relinquish the throne if it meant that this city and its kingdom were saved.’

I grabbed his shoulders with both hands. ‘You are Hatra’s king, Gafarn, no one else. It is your destiny, just as it is mine never to wear its crown. You have suffered a setback, that is all, but if I have learned anything from the Romans it is not to sit and wait for an enemy but to take the fight to them.’

‘What are you thinking?’

I smiled slyly. ‘That the time for talking is over.’

An hour later everyone was assembled in the office as I stood before them in front of the map. Couriers had arrived from Babylon, Seleucia and Assur with news of the army of Mithridates and its progress. It was marching down the west bank of the River Tigris towards Seleucia, which it would reach in around nine days.

I began pacing up and down. ‘The immediate threat is Mithridates, he obviously intends to capture Seleucia and use it both as a base and a rallying point to mount a challenge against Orodes.’

I nodded at my friend.

‘He seeks to take advantage of our current predicament to become high king once more.’

‘He has no support,’ said Atrax. ‘How then does he intend to capture the high crown?’

‘With the help of his Roman and Armenian allies,’ replied Orodes, his face a mask of anger.

‘That is correct, lord king,’ I continued. ‘We now know that the meeting with Tigranes was a decoy so Mithridates could sneak past us. But we may yet prevail if we act quickly.’

‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Orodes.

I suddenly became aware that I was no longer speaking to my friend, Prince Orodes, but the king of kings of the empire, and that it was not my place to lecture him.

‘It is only an idea, lord king,’ I started to say.

His brow furrowed with annoyance. ‘This is not the time to be standing on ceremony, Pacorus. What use is protocol if there is no Parthian Empire left? Please speak your mind.’

Atrax, Gafarn, Nergal and Praxima nodded in agreement while Gallia looked at me in exasperation.

‘Very well. My plan is to bring the legions from Dura to link up with my horsemen west of this city and then march to Seleucia to fight Mithridates. Hopefully Mardonius will be able to hold the city, but if it falls then I will use Marcus’ engines to batter my way in. Either way, I intend to hunt down and kill Mithridates once and for all.’

‘If you withdraw the legions from Dura,’ said Gallia, ‘you will leave the city undefended. There are still Roman troops at Emesa.’

I looked at Nergal. ‘Not if the King of Mesene takes his army to the city.’

Nergal looked surprised.

‘You were my second-in-command, Nergal,’ I continued. ‘You have also fought beside Malik and Spandarat. They know you and trust you. Who better to be in charge of Dura in my absence? And who better to be the guardian of my family?’

Praxima smiled and Nergal nodded. ‘I accept this responsibility, Pacorus. But what of Hatra? You will be stripping it of the troops we have brought here.’

I tilted my head at Kogan. ‘The garrison can be reinforced by Hatra’s own horse archers, but there is no point in other horsemen being cooped up inside a city. Therefore I propose that Atrax and Orodes concentrate at Assur, which is only two day’s ride from Hatra, but which has ample grazing for horses and camels. Orodes should also assume command of Hatra’s heavy horsemen. They are wasted here. If the Armenians assault the city a relief force can be hastily assembled at Assur, and once I have dealt with Mithridates I will bring Dura’s army back north.’

‘I wish to accompany you south, Pacorus,’ declared Atrax. ‘I have no interest in idling away at Assur while you fight Mithridates.’

I smiled at him as Gallia rolled her eyes.

‘We need you here, my friend,’ I said to him. ‘The Armenians pose the greatest threat to the empire, notwithstanding Mithridates’ inconvenient appearance.’

‘What about the Romans?’ asked Nergal.

‘At the moment there is only one legion at Zeugma and another at Emesa,’ I said. ‘They have already been frustrated in their attempts to capture Palmyra. I see no reason why we cannot do the same with their desire to seize the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates.’

‘So,’ said Orodes, ‘are we all agreed on Pacorus’ plan?’

Atrax nodded, as did Nergal and Gafarn.

‘It is settled then,’ he said. ‘One more thing, Pacorus. You are henceforth lord high general of the empire.’

I went to protest but he held up a hand to me. ‘It is not a request it is a command, unless you would defy your king of kings.’

I bowed my head. ‘As you desire, lord king.’

Though I was pleased that my plan had been adopted I was less so by my new appointment. I had held the post before when the father of Orodes, Phraates, had been king of kings and had not particularly enjoyed it. Still, it gave me control over all the armies that Parthia could put in the field, theoretically at least. Orodes had my appointment proclaimed to the whole city and despatched couriers to the far corners of the empire to spread the news. No doubt it would be received coolly by the empire’s eastern kings whose armies had been worsted at my hands in the past. That did not matter. What did was to stop them thinking that there was any merit in supporting the returned Mithridates.

I said my farewells to an emotional Diana that afternoon in her private chambers in the palace, young Pacorus in attendance. The son they had named after me was seven years old now and had inherited his father’s slender frame and his mother’s amiable disposition. We were soon joined by Gafarn, Nergal, Praxima and Gallia, the latter embracing her friend and telling her not to worry.

‘Now that Pacorus is lord high general I will not worry,’ she said.

‘I hope I will be able to repay your faith in me,’ I replied.

‘I wish I was coming with you,’ remarked Praxima, ‘to kill Mithridates, I mean.’

‘Do not worry,’ I assured her, ‘there will be enough killing to go round before long.’

‘Will you see your sisters before you leave?’ queried Diana. Ever the peacemaker.

‘No,’ I stated flatly. ‘But I would advise you to encourage Adeleh to join Aliyeh when she goes back to Irbil to get them both out of the way.’

‘Adeleh would never leave her mother and Hatra,’ said a horrified Diana. ‘This is her home.’

I sighed. ‘Her home was Nisibus, but she lost that when she encouraged Vata to fight the Armenians, and am I right in thinking, Gafarn, that she pestered you to march against Tigranes as well?’

Gafarn looked uncomfortable but said nothing.

‘I will take your silence as confirmation of this. Clear heads and hard hearts are what are needed at this time. Sentimentality will get us all killed.’

‘Thank you Pacorus,’ said Gallia, ‘we are not a group of your officers.’

‘More’s the pity,’ I mumbled.

Later I sent a courier to Dura to alert Domitus to my intentions and to order him to bring the legions over the Euphrates and head for Seleucia. I also told him that Nergal was marching to the city to reinforce Haytham in the event of the Romans once more advancing from Emesa. Gallia informed me that she and the Amazons would also be travelling back to Dura with Nergal and Praxima.

‘You could stay here,’ I said as I finished a letter to Surena informing him of the decisions taken at Hatra.

‘I would only come to blows with your sisters if I did and that would upset your mother and Diana, so it is best I return home to be with the children.’

That afternoon we both went to see my mother in her garden. We found her sitting in the pagoda with a ghost from another time. My mother, dressed in a simple white gown with her hair gathered behind her head held in place by a large gold clip, was cleaning the fingernails of a woman we had brought back with us from Italy.

‘Rubi?’ Gallia scarcely believed her eyes as the ghost turned to look at the strangers who approached her.

She had been a slave whom we had rescued near the town of Rubi in Italy, after which Gallia had named her. The Roman slave catchers had cut out her tongue and so the only sounds she could make were grunts and hisses. She recognised Gallia instantly, jumped out of her seat and threw her arms round my wife.

‘Hello Rubi. It is good to see you.’

‘Rubi,’ snapped my mother, ‘please come and sit down.’

Rubi looked at my mother with a hurt expression and then slunk back to her chair and held out her hand to my mother.

‘How are you Rubi?’ I enquired.

She saw me and hissed, baring her teeth.

‘Don’t upset her, Pacorus,’ said my mother.

Slaves standing at the edge of the pagoda positioned two chairs near my mother for us to sit in as others brought fruit juice and pastries.

‘How has she been?’ Gallia asked my mother, smiling at Rubi.

‘She likes it here, among the flowers and trees. I have the Sisters of Shamash bring her here as much as possible.’

The Sisters of Shamash were an order of virgins who had pledged their lives to the Sun God. In addition to their religious duties they cared for the mad, orphans and cripples who were brought to the gates of their walled sanctuary positioned behind the Great Temple.

‘You are leaving, then?’ said my mother.

‘The affairs of the empire demand my attention, mother.’

She smiled at Rubi. ‘Well, when you return you must bring my grandchildren. I have not seen them in an age.’

‘We will bring them soon,’ promised Gallia.

We sat with them both as my mother finished cleaning Rubi’s fingernails. She immediately went back to the flowerbeds and began pawing at the earth with her hands. My mother shook her head.

‘Poor Rubi, she doesn’t understand.’ She sighed. ‘It seems like yesterday when you brought her here. So much has happened since then. Things have never been the same since Sinatruces died.’

‘Sinatruces?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she rebuked me, ‘he was the king of kings and since his death things have taken a turn for the worse.’

‘I hope things will return to as they were, mother.’

She frowned at me. ‘Don’t be absurd. Things can never be as they were. I hope you have not brought any more Agraci here. People took a very dim view of it.’

We left her in the company of Rubi and returned with sad hearts to our quarters. The death of my father had affected her deeply and I worried that she was losing her mind. She was like a lost soul and there was nothing I could do.

We left Hatra the next day, Gallia and the Amazons riding west with Nergal and Praxima towards Dura while I journeyed south with my horsemen to rendezvous with Domitus in southern Hatra, at a spot on the Euphrates some one hundred miles southwest of Dura and around eighty miles from Seleucia. We had heard from Babylon that Axsen was safe in the city and had sent troops of the garrison to reinforce Mardonius at Seleucia. I was not unduly worried about Orodes’ wife — Babylon’s walls were high and were surrounded by a deep moat. Narses himself had twice tried to storm the city and had failed. Seleucia was a different matter, though. Its defences were average at best and Marcus’ machines had done much damage to them during our recent assault on them.

The road was devoid of caravans and the small mud-brick forts that my father had established throughout his kingdom were also standing empty. Their garrisons had been sent north to the city. Just as the old year was dying so the Kingdom of Hatra appeared to be ailing — an indication that the empire itself was in a fragile state.

I rode at the head of our column of horses and camels in the company of Vagises, Scarab and Vagharsh, who carried my griffin banner in its wax sleeve. Ahead and on our flanks rode parties of horse archers to ensure we did not run into any of Mithridates’ soldiers, who were no doubt plundering far and wide anything of value. Beyond them Byrd’s men scouted our route. In his and Malik’s absence they became even more elusive and distant. Their commander, a gruff Agraci warrior with a thick black beard, rode in every night to report to me. He told me that that the land was empty and there was no sign of the enemy. Hardly surprising: we were moving in a southwesterly direction towards the Euphrates.

I had been tempted to strike southeast with just my horsemen to try and catch Mithridates before he reached Seleucia but the reports sent by Herneus at Assur estimated Mithridates’ army to be around fifty thousand strong — too many for four thousand horsemen to fight.

‘We should have killed Mithridates at Susa,’ complained Vagharsh bitterly. ‘We march to deal with him instead of fighting the Armenians.’

‘Mithridates is the biggest immediate threat,’ I said. ‘His return to the empire may encourage the eastern kings to waver in their allegiance to Orodes.’

‘He may flee to the east anyway,’ remarked Vagises, ‘to be among his allies.’

‘He may,’ I agreed, ‘but I believe he will wish to stay close to the Romans and Armenians. If the Armenians and Romans defeat Orodes they will sweep into Hatra and Babylonia to link up with him. Then the Romans will have another client king and Parthia will be no more. No wonder they provided him with a substantial army. The costs of furnishing him with so many men are as nothing compared to the riches they will gain if they seize the empire.’

‘One thing I do not understand,’ said Vagises. ‘Why didn’t they wait until Crassus arrived with his army to improve their chances of victory?’

‘Roman vanity,’ I replied. ‘I remember Byrd telling me that the Roman governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, is an avaricious man. Therefore he wishes to achieve glory and riches before Crassus arrives.’

‘Scarab, did you ever see the Roman governor of Syria?’ I asked him in Greek.

‘He visited the king at Emesa a number of times, lord.’

At least he had stopped calling me ‘divinity’!

‘He is a man who likes rich living.’

‘Which is why he wants control of the Silk Road,’ I said. ‘I should thank him, really.’

Vagises and Vagharsh, who both understood Greek, looked at each other in confusion.

‘That’s right,’ I continued, ‘for if Aulus Gabinius was a rational and modest man he would have waited for Crassus to arrive so the Romans would have his troops in addition to his two legions.’

‘You will be visiting Antioch in person, then, to convey your thanks?’ joked Vagises.

On the fourth night we made camp eight miles north of the Euphrates. Though the men pitched their tents in neat rows we did not have any entrenching tools with us and so were unable to dig a surrounding ditch and build a rampart. Though we were in Hatran territory it felt odd not to be surrounded by a wall of earth and so every third man was always on guard duty. The squires and veterinaries attended to the horses and camels and Strabo’s small logistical corps allocated fodder for the beasts.

It had been another uneventful day and at the end of it I was sitting in my tent in the company of Vagises while Scarab was in a corner rubbing lanolin into my leather cuirass to preserve it. Though the climate of Mesopotamia is generally hot and dry, the sweat from my body and the dust in the air meant it had to be cleaned every night to stop it rotting.

‘I never thought we would be fighting Crassus again,’ mused Vagises, staring into his cup of water.

‘Nor me. But at least we will be fighting him on our own ground instead of in Italy.’

‘He’s a cruel bastard,’ spat Vagises. ‘He had six thousand crucified after Spartacus was killed.’

‘Afranius!’

He looked at me quizzically. ‘What?’

‘Afranius,’ I replied. ‘There’s a name that has come tumbling from the past. You must remember him, surely? A fierce Spaniard who dreamt of marching on Rome and took command of the remnants of the army after Spartacus’ death in the Silarus Valley.’

Vagises racked his brains for a few moments and then nodded. ‘I remember him — hair cropped, stocky, full of anger.’

‘I hope he died with a sword in his hand and not nailed to a cross.’

‘We all hope for that,’ said Vagises darkly.

Outside I heard hooves on the ground and horses snorting and then the guards opened the tent’s flap to allow two dust-covered individuals to enter. We stood up as they pulled aside the head cloths covering their faces and smiled.

‘You didn’t think we would let you fight Mithridates on your own, did you?’ smiled Malik.

I laughed and embraced him, then Byrd, and told Scarab to serve them water as they took the weight off their feet. They took off their headdresses and stretched out their limbs.

‘Hard ride?’ I enquired.

‘Byrd has some welcome news,’ said Malik.

Byrd took a gulp of water. ‘Romani not invade Parthia. Aulus Gabinius is heading for Egypt.’

I looked at him and then Malik in disbelief.

‘It is true,’ said Malik. ‘The Romans are invading Egypt instead of Parthia.’

I could not believe it. ‘Why?’ was all I could utter.

Byrd smiled. ‘Gold. Egyptian pharaoh offered Romani governor ten thousand talents to put him back on his throne. My sources in Antioch report Aulus Gabinius has forsaken Mithridates and hurries south.’

I slapped Vagises on the arm and then remembered Dobbai’s ritual at Dura. Pure coincidence I told myself. And yet…

‘What about the legion at Emesa?’ I asked.

‘Already marching towards Egypt,’ said Byrd. ‘Pharaoh Ptolemy friend of Pompey and Romani. A few years ago he was forced into exile in Rome after his people rebel. Now he bribe Aulus Gabinius to get back his throne.’

Ten thousand talents was a huge amount of gold. I had heard stories of the fabulous wealth of Egypt and how its rulers covered their pyramids with gold, but I thought they were myths. Clearly not. But whatever the truth, Egypt’s pharaoh had unwittingly done Parthia a great favour.

‘Dura already knows the news,’ reported Malik, ‘so Nergal and his army are also marching with Domitus.’

With the Roman threat to Palmyra and Dura removed there was no need for Nergal to remain in my city. His additional numbers would be welcome in the fight against Mithridates.

Four days later, having arrived at the Euphrates, we linked up with Domitus, the King of Mesene and the Amazons. Our combined forces now totalled twenty-four thousand fighting men as we struck west towards Seleucia. The army marched at a rate of twenty miles a day since we had Marcus’ machines with us in case we needed to storm the city. They were loaded on slow-moving wagons pulled by oxen. I prayed that Mardonius still held out.

I had tried to dismiss from my mind the notion that Dobbai’s ritual was responsible for the Roman withdrawal from Parthia but Domitus was having none of it. The day was hot and windless and in the early afternoon we had dismounted to save the horses’ stamina. We had made good progress during the morning but now our pace slowed as the sun beat down on us from a clear blue sky. As usual a pall of dust hung over our long column as we trudged towards Seleucia.

‘Looks like that old witch Dobbai has used her magic to good effect,’ said Domitus, sweating in his helmet.

‘You really think that, Domitus?’ I asked.

‘Of course, how else can you explain the Romans withdrawing?’

‘It is a coincidence,’ I assured him, ‘nothing more.’

‘A very convenient one,’ said Gallia.

‘What did Dobbai say about it?’ queried Domitus.

‘She said that the gods give but they also take and that we should have a care,’ replied Gallia.

‘Strange about those statues, though,’ reflected Kronos.

‘What statues?’ asked Nergal.

So an eager Domitus told him and Praxima about the night we carried the clay statues down to the banks of the Euphrates, the cold mist that appeared from nowhere and the mystery the next morning when the statues had disappeared.

‘They were probably stolen,’ I said. ‘Someone at the caravan park probably spotted us and waited until we had returned to the palace before taking them.’

‘And made all those scratch marks in the ground?’ retorted Domitus. ‘I don’t think so.’

I looked at him. ‘I thought Romans were a practical people and didn’t believe in myths and monsters.’

‘So we are,’ he said, ‘but like all peoples we like to have the gods on our side.’

‘How many gods do the Romans have?’ asked Kronos.

Domitus put a hand to his chin. ‘Let’s see. Around twenty major gods and fifty minor ones.’

‘Is that all?’ remarked Gallia dryly.

I looked up at the cloudless sky. ‘It is appropriate that the sky is so vast, otherwise there would not be room to accommodate all the gods that people worship.’

‘Aaron’s people believe that there is only one god,’ said Gallia.

‘Aaron?’ said Nergal.

‘My treasurer,’ I replied, ‘and a Jew.’

‘Domitus is a Jew as well,’ added Gallia.

Everyone turned and looked askance at him.

‘I am not!’ he protested. ‘I am married to a Jew, that is all. I have prayed to Mars all my life and I don’t see any reason to change now. It is a ridiculous idea that there is only one god.’

‘When we have to fight Crassus,’ said Nergal, ‘who will your god Mars decide to help, Domitus, us or him?’

‘Us of course,’ he replied without hesitation.

‘You sound very certain,’ I said.

‘In ancient mythology Mars laid with a nymph named Harmony and fathered a race of warrior women called Amazons. So you see, Mars will protect his children in the coming war.’

But before that war we had to deal with a more pressing conflict, so I asked Byrd to acquaint me with the composition of Mithridates’ army. Byrd, the Cappadocian pot seller and once a penniless Roman slave, was now the owner of a transport guild that operated in Syria, Judea, western Parthia, Cilicia and Cappadocia. His close bond with Malik had made him a friend of the Agraci. His marriage to Noora and the gold that Dura paid to a faithful servant provided him with the funds to procure a great number of camels. And the esteem in which he was held in Dura and among the Agraci ensured that his beasts could travel freely throughout the Arabian Peninsula and along the Silk Road in the Parthian Empire. It was not long before his camels were being hired by merchants in Syria and Judea to transport goods from Mesopotamia and Agraci lands to the ports along the Mediterranean coast. Soon Byrd had set up offices in Antioch, Damascus and Emesa as his transportation empire expanded. And now he had opened a further two offices, in Tyrus in Cilicia and in Caesarea in Cappadocia. His camels were always in demand to transport timber, textiles, silver, wine, bitumen and lead, much of which was then transported by ship to Italy. I often wondered what the Roman authorities in Syria and Judea would have thought if they knew that the man who controlled this vast transport network had been Spartacus’ chief scout. Now he was sitting with us all in my command tent after another day’s march at the head of his ragged band of scouts. His swarthy features and dirty Agraci robes gave him the appearance of a penniless vagrant, an individual you would pass in the street without giving him a second glance. But this ‘vagrant’ probably possessed more gold than Dura had in its treasury.

We were just over ten miles west of Seleucia and had yet to encounter any opposition.

‘We rode to within two miles of the city today,’ said Malik. ‘We saw nothing on the roads and no patrols, enemy or Babylonian.’

‘How many troops does Mithridates have?’ I asked Byrd, eager to know if Herneus had exaggerated.

‘My office in Tarsus tell me that for foot soldiers Mithridates has over twenty thousand Cilician warriors and a further twenty thousand Thracian mercenaries. He also has over ten thousand Sarmatian horsemen.’

‘Where did he get the money to raise that many troops?’ asked Domitus, who had taken to his usual habit of playing with his dagger.

‘Loans secured on seizing Parthia,’ replied Byrd.

‘Who are the Sarmatians?’ asked Gallia.

‘A wild people who live north of the Caucasus Mountains,’ I replied. ‘I see the hand of Tigranes in this. He must have suggested bringing these heathens into the empire.’

‘Perhaps Mithridates has crossed the Tigris,’ suggested Nergal, ‘and is heading for Susa.’

Susa was the capital of the Kingdom of Susiana and his homeland, but Susa was garrisoned by troops loyal to Orodes and after our great victory there the gold that remained after Mithridates had fled to Syria was conveyed back to Ctesiphon.

‘No,’ I said, ‘his objective would have been Seleucia and Ctesiphon just across the river where the gold is stored. Besides, the further east he goes the greater distance between him and his new friends, the Armenians and Romans.’

‘And his mother,’ quipped Domitus, ‘unless the old hag is with him.’

I looked at Byrd. He shook his head.

‘Queen Aruna stay at Antioch with her ladies and courtiers. Palace there very grand.’

‘I cannot believe that Mithridates is commanding the army,’ remarked Nergal. ‘He must have a Roman general with him.’

‘No Romani general with him,’ said Byrd with certainty.

‘Mithridates is no commander,’ said Domitus, ‘notwithstanding how many men he has.’

‘The question is,’ interrupted Kronos, ‘where are they?’

No one had an answer to that question and when the army broke camp the next morning, the first day of the new year, Byrd, Malik and their scouts were already looking for the enemy, having left in the darkness of the early hours. As soon as the legionaries filed out of the camp’s eastern entrance they adopted their battle positions: the Durans on the left, the Exiles on the right, each of them in three lines. While ten thousand hobnailed sandals tramped towards Seleucia the squires helped their masters and their horses into their scale armour and then a dragon of cataphracts rode out to take up position on the left flank of the Durans.

Nergal and his horse archers followed the cataphracts, riding south to deploy on the right wing, next to the Exiles. So ten thousand horsemen were arranged in two great blocks, fifty companies in each.

Vagises and his three thousand Duran horse archers galloped north to deploy on the left wing of the army, adjacent to the cataphracts. The latter had their full-face helmets pushed back on their heads as the temperature was already rising, though today at least there was a pleasant northerly breeze to abate the stifling heat.

The last to leave camp were the camel trains of Dura and Mesene, each one composed of a thousand beasts carrying spare arrows. Behind them the squires, veterinaries, farriers, physicians, the Roman engineers and their machines remained in camp under the command of Marcus Sutonius. The camp was not disassembled and in our absence the squires manned the ramparts with their bows — I would not put it past Mithridates and his men to spring from the desert to attack us from behind.

I rode a hundred paces in front of the army in the company of Gallia, Nergal, Praxima, Vagises, Domitus and Kronos, the latter two on foot. The pace of our march was slow to reflect our caution as we headed towards Seleucia. Behind us the banners of Dura and Mesene fluttered in the breeze and behind them came the Amazons holding their bows with arrows nocked. After an hour the yellow mud-brick walls of Seleucia loomed into view.

Now two hundred and fifty years old, Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander of Macedon’s generals, who had founded the Seleucid Empire, had originally established the city. Seleucia had been the first capital of that empire and its walls encompassed the city in the shape of an eagle with outstretched wings. Those walls had originally been strong but now they were in a state of dilapidation after years of neglect. They had been made more derelict by our recent assault in which the gatehouse had been demolished along with several of the adjoining towers dotting the perimeter at regular intervals. As we got nearer to the city I saw that there were additional great gaps in the wall where the masonry had been demolished. I signalled a halt. We were now some seven hundred paces from the city’s gatehouse.

‘Something is wrong.’

Domitus looked up at me. ‘Those breaches in the wall are new.’

‘Curious that there is no rubble where sections of the wall have collapsed,’ pondered Kronos.

‘Or were knocked down,’ suggested Domitus.

‘Why would Mardonius knock down sections of the wall?’ asked a confused Gallia.

‘He wouldn’t,’ I replied.

And where was Mardonius? As I scanned the surviving sections of the wall and towers the second-line cohorts of the Durans and Exiles moved forward to form an unbroken first line, while behind them the third lines moved forward to provide support. Either side of the shattered remains of the gatehouse were two demolished sections of wall, each one roughly a hundred paces wide. Aside from the standards fluttering and horses chomping on bits there was no noise. Seleucia was supposed to have a population of eighty thousand citizens but today it appeared to be a ghost city. There were no guards at the city’s main entrance and none on the walls. By now the appearance of twenty-four thousand soldiers standing in front of the city would have been noticed by even the most short-sighted sentry but still there was no activity.

‘I have a feeling that Mardonius no longer commands here,’ said Gallia.

Before anyone could answer a rider appeared at the city entrance, a man in a helmet mounted on a large light bay horse that suddenly galloped towards our position.

‘Amazons!’ shouted Gallia and her warriors flanked left and right and brought their bows up, ready to shoot at the approaching horseman. Gallia and Praxima pulled their bows from their hide cases and nocked arrows. When he got to within two hundred paces from us the rider slowed his horse to a trot and then a walk as he held out his arms to indicate he held no weapons. He wore a short-sleeved suit of leather lamellar armour over a blue shirt edge with yellow. He halted his horse a hundred paces from us.

‘My lord high general wishes to meet with King Pacorus of Dura,’ he shouted.

‘Does he mean Mithridates?’ asked Domitus.

I nudged Remus forward a few feet.

‘Careful, Pacorus,’ said Gallia, ‘it may be a trap.’

I looked at the man who still had his hands spread wide and his palms open.

‘I am confident that the Amazons will drop him before he can try anything.’

‘We may drop him anyway,’ added Praxima menacingly.

‘I thought you were the lord high general of the empire?’ said Domitus.

‘It appears I have a rival,’ I replied. ‘I am King Pacorus,’ I cried out. ‘Who is your lord high general?’

‘King Nicetas,’ he shouted back.

I looked back at the others who stared back at me with blank faces. I had never heard the name and neither had they.

‘If you assent, majesty,’ the soldier continued, ‘he will meet you alone at the midpoint between your army and the city walls.’

‘Do you want me to kill him, Pacorus?’ offered Praxima.

‘No thank you,’ I replied.

I had to admit I was curious to know the identity of the man who claimed the title I held.

‘Very well,’ I called back. ‘Go and tell your general to show himself.’

The soldier bowed his head and then turned his mount to gallop back to the city. The Amazons lowered their bows as Gallia rode up to me. Meanwhile, the walls of Seleucia still appeared devoid of any life.

‘Mithridates has captured the city,’ she said sternly.

I nodded. ‘It would appear so. Whoever this Nicetas is I assume he is in his service.’

Behind us Byrd and Malik brought their horses to a halt and then walked them forward.

‘No enemy within twenty miles,’ said Byrd.

‘The land is empty of all life,’ added Malik.

I kept looking at the city. Had Mithridates massacred the population? The absence of any crows or buzzards circling overhead suggested that the streets were not piled high with corpses. The mystery deepened.

‘Not quite empty,’ remarked Domitus, pointing at the walls.

I looked to see that another figure had appeared at the remains of the gatehouse, a man mounted on a black horse wearing what appeared to be a silver cuirass over a bright yellow tunic.

‘That must be Nicetas, whoever he is,’ said Nergal.

‘Time to solve the mystery,’ I said, nudging Remus forward as the individual who apparently had the same title as me approached.

‘Do not go, Pacorus,’ called Gallia, ‘it is obviously a trap.’

‘She is right,’ added Domitus, but I merely raised my hand at them. I was too curious to see this man up close and solve the riddle we faced.

As Remus walked forward I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Domitus and Kronos hurrying back to their men. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I suddenly felt tense, and yet there were no soldiers on the walls and silence still enveloped Seleucia. Ahead the man in the silver armour continued to move towards me, his left hand holding his horse’s reins and his right arm hanging by his side.

We were now less than a hundred paces apart and I saw that his cuirass was made up of dozens of overlapping rectangular silver scales that shimmered when he moved. His head was encased in a gilded helmet with large cheekguards hiding some of his features. And yet, as he came closer, there was something about his fair skin, powerful frame and neatly trimmed beard that was familiar. He halted a few feet from me, his magnificent stallion flicking its long black tail.

‘King Pacorus of Dura.’ His tone was both aggressive and slightly condescending.

‘And you must be Nicetas,’ I replied, ‘though your name was previously unknown to me before today.’

‘King Nicetas, and it is known to you now,’ he growled. I kept looking at his young face and saw in it a resemblance to someone I had known. But who?

His brown eyes burned with contempt as he looked past me. ‘So this is the famed army of Dura, the instrument by which Orodes has usurped the throne of the rightful king of kings.’

He looked back at me. ‘Men say that it is invincible, that it is protected by the magic of a sorceress. And yet it seems ordinary enough. Perhaps the stories have been exaggerated.’

He really was full of his own self-importance.

I had no time for his strutting. ‘You are here at the behest of Mithridates, so state what you have to say.’

He was momentarily nonplussed by my manner but then his insolence returned.

‘King of Kings Mithridates demands that you and the rabble of Dura leave this place and withdraw back across the Euphrates. The army of Mesene will likewise withdraw to Uruk, there to await the high king’s pleasure.’

I was beginning to lose my patience. ‘First of all, boy, you will answer my questions rather than dictate terms. Firstly you will inform me what has happened to Lord Mardonius, whose city this is. And secondly you will reveal the whereabouts of Mithridates so that justice can be served upon him.’

Nicetas smiled evilly to reveal a row of perfect white teeth, fixing me with his stare before raising his right arm. The walls beyond the left of what had been the gatehouse were suddenly lined with soldiers, two of them holding an elderly man — Mardonius. I looked on in horror as they hurled him over the battlements and then saw his body jerk violently as the noose around his throat snapped his neck.

‘Lord Mardonius was judged, found guilty of aiding traitors and sentenced to death,’ said Nicetas without emotion.

I was stunned by what I had just seen and still staring at the dead body of Mardonius when I caught a grey blur out of the corner of my eye.

‘King Mithridates wishes you to withdraw but I suggested to him that your death and the destruction of your army would serve our interests better and he agreed.’

He had hoisted his sword above his head and now dug his knees into his horse, which bolted forward. I instinctively yanked on Remus’ reins and he turned to the right as Nicetas came alongside and swung his sword at me, the blade cutting deep into my left arm. I screamed in pain and drew my own sword, wheeling Remus away from him as he turned his own horse to face me once more.

‘I am the rightful King of Persis and the son of King Narses who was murdered by your own hand at Susa, and I will have my revenge.’

He raised his sword and I prepared to meet his attack, but instead there was a blast of noise as thousands of men suddenly charged from the city. From the remains of the gatehouse and from the two breaches in the walls on either side they flooded out — a great mob of warriors on foot wielding axes, javelins and small wicker shields. They had no organisation or discipline but headed for the legions like a great herd of maddened animals, piercing the air with their feral screams. There were thousands of them.

Nicetas shouted in triumph and raised his sword once more, before letting out a groan when the arrow slammed into his shoulder. He grimaced in pain and then wheeled his horse away as the unstoppable wave of oncoming warriors threatened to engulf me.

‘Move, Pacorus!’ screamed Gallia as she rode to my side with the Amazons forming a screen in front of us. She grabbed Remus’ reins and then shouted at Epona to move as we galloped back to the Durans, the Amazons turning in the saddle and shooting arrows at the oncoming enemy over the hindquarters of their horses.

‘Let them through,’ I heard a voice in front of me shout as the ranks of the legionaries opened to allow us to pass through them. We halted in the space between the first and second lines of cohorts as a loud scraping noise filled our ears. The enemy wave had hit the breakwater that was the legions. The air was thick with javelins as the Cilician warriors hurled their missiles at the locked shields of the Durans and Exiles, then they went to work with their axes, literally trying to hack the legionaries’ shields to pieces.

The wild charge buckled and bent the front line of the legionaries but did not break it, and as the Cilicians spat and cursed and hacked with their axes, the rear ranks of the first-line centuries hurled their javelins forward into the stinking, seething mass of enemy warriors.

The Cilicians wore no armour or helmets and so every javelin found flesh and bone, felling hundreds in the densely packed press. The line had held.

I rode north along the rear of the Duran first line to where the cataphracts were deployed in two lines, each one of two ranks.

Vagises galloped over as the Amazons deployed in three ranks behind us.

‘You should let Alcaeus see to that arm,’ said Gallia. ‘I told you it was a trap.’

But my attention was focused on what was happening directly ahead as horsemen began pouring through the gaps in the city walls — Sarmatian horse archers wearing ox-hide corselets and helmets — grouped round their chiefs and their dragon windsocks.

I pointed at them. ‘Destroy them, Vagises.’

He saluted and galloped back to his horsemen. Moments later three thousand horse archers had deployed into thirty columns as companies charged at the disorganised mass of Sarmatian horsemen and began discharging arrows, the men at the front of the columns shooting their bows and then wheeling right to gallop to the rear of the formation as their comrades behind shot their bows in turn and likewise rode to the rear of the column.

Vagises’ men were outnumbered by the Sarmatians but the latter lacked discipline and cohesion and never recovered from being assaulted by horsemen who directed a withering arrow storm against them. A few loosed their bows and attempted to charge but too many of their comrades had been hit by missiles and so they began to disperse, most back to the city. A few fled north into the desert.

To my right the Cilicians were still hacking at the Durans and Exiles but were suffering fearful casualties as the legionaries went to work with their short swords and began pushing them back towards the city. In the ever-increasing cloud of dust that was being kicked up by thousands of men and horses’ hooves I could not discern what was happening beyond the Exiles, on the army’s right wing, but felt certain that Nergal’s men would be holding their own at least.

I felt a surge of pain shoot through my left arm and looked down to see the whole of my ripped lower sleeve was covered in blood that had dripped onto my leggings.

‘Get that wound seen to,’ commanded Gallia as arrows thudded into the ground a few paces from her — the parting shots of the Sarmatian archers.

‘I’m fine,’ I insisted, wincing from the pain coming from my arm.

She reached over, grabbed my reins and led me to the rear.

‘Take command of the Amazons,’ she said to Zenobia, leading me through the cataphracts and then behind the battling Durans. The men of the second line stood with their javelins in their right hands and their shields on their left sides, ready to reinforce their comrades in the first line. Men ferried the wounded on stretchers to the rear where Alcaeus and his physicians were waiting to treat them. Gallia led me over to our Greek friend. He was standing with his canvas bag slung over his shoulder, running a hand through his black wiry hair. Gallia called to him.

I slid off Remus’ back as he approached and saw my bloody arm.

‘Sword cut,’ said Gallia.

‘It’s nothing,’ I protested.

Alcaeus reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of sprung scissors to cut away the bloodied sleeve of my shirt just below the shoulder.

‘It doesn’t look like nothing,’ he scolded me as he put the scissors back into his bag and examined the wound.

‘Fortunately for you your opponent chose to slash instead of stab. Looks worse than it is, though you appear to have lost a deal of blood.’

He pulled a small clay pot from his bag and removed the cork, then poured some of the watery contents onto my arm. It felt as though he had laid a red-hot iron on my flesh. I winced.

‘Acetum to clean the wound,’ he said.

He took another pot from his bag of wonders, this one containing honey, which he applied to the wound before binding it with a bandage.

‘You should go back to camp, really,’ he remarked, ‘but I suppose there is little chance of that.’

‘Thank you, and no, I will not be going back to camp.’

I hoisted myself back into the saddle and went to find Domitus. I discovered him standing behind the first-line cohorts with Kronos and a group of their senior officers. He saw my bandaged bare arm.

‘You and the other lord high general ran out of words, then?’

‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

‘What’s left of them are falling back to the city. Do you want us to pursue them?’

‘Not yet,’ I replied. ‘Casualties?’

‘Very light. They gambled on their mad charge breaking us but we stopped that easily enough.’

‘Nergal sent a rider over to report that he had thrown back the horsemen that had assaulted his wing,’ added Kronos.

I looked up at the sun and judged the time to be midday. It was now very warm and legionaries were drinking from their water bottles to quench their thirst.

‘Are we going to storm the city?’ asked Domitus.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘but send for Marcus and his machines. I think we will need them.’

A lull descended over the battlefield as the fighting petered out and the remnants of the Cilicians withdrew to the relative safety of Seleucia. With Gallia I rode back to where my heavy horsemen remained in their initial positions, having been nothing more than front-row spectators to the carnage. As usual the Durans and Exiles had been very efficient in their work, the ground in front of their positions carpeted with Cilician corpses and the badly wounded. Already parties of legionaries were going among the fallen looking for those still alive, slitting their throats when they found them to put them out of their misery.

The shrill blast of whistles followed by trumpets called them back as fresh troops marched from Seleucia. There was a rapid reorganisation among the Durans and Exiles as the rear centuries in each front-line cohort swapped places so that fresh legionaries stood ready to receive a new enemy. Whereas the Cilicians had hurled themselves against the legions in a disorganised, feral rush, these soldiers — Thracian mercenaries — emerged from the city and deployed into battle formation before they advanced.

The assault of the Cilician foot and horse had been designed to soften us up before the Thracian attack, to thin our ranks and shake our morale to make the task of the more heavily armed soldiers who now flooded the ground in front of the city easier. If that was the plan of Nicetas then it had failed as our losses had been light and he had greatly underestimated the professionalism of Dura’s army. But then this was hardly surprising if Mithridates had been whispering in his ear about my army of slaves.

In the vanguard of the Thracian contingent were élite troops equipped with the fearsome rhomphaia, a weapon that had a long, slightly curved, single-edged blade attached to a much shorter pole. Held with both hands, it was essentially a battle scythe that could slice through helmets and armour and was also used to chop through horses’ legs if cavalry got too close to their users. These men wore helmets, bronze breastplates and metal greaves.

Behind these élite troops came more Thracian foot armed with the shorter, one-handed rhomphaia and carrying large oval shields called thureos. Like our own shields they were made of wood, faced with leather and had a metal boss over a central handgrip. They also wore helmets and studded leather armour vests.

I sent a rider to our right flank to ask Nergal to direct his horse archers against these Thracians before they had a chance to attack our own foot soldiers.

More and more Thracians were coming from the city until there must have been upwards of twenty thousand of them arrayed in front of the legions, and then they began to move forward.

Domitus had pulled the Durans and Exiles back around a hundred paces so that our wings of horsemen were advanced of the centre, and from the flanks companies of horse archers rode forward and inwards to shoot volleys of arrows against the Thracians, who suddenly charged.

They covered the seven hundred paces of ground between them and the front ranks of legionaries in around two and a half minutes, the first four ranks of élite troops sprinting forward and becoming separated from those behind who tried to retain their cohesion. But all of them ran into the hail of arrows that was shot at them from both flanks. This not only killed and wounded hundreds but also disrupted their momentum. And as the survivors got to within fifty paces of the legions the first five ranks of legionaries ran forward and hurled their javelins.

From our first line of fourteen cohorts standing shoulder to shoulder came sixteen hundred javelins thrown at the oncoming enemy. Hundreds of iron points found their target and cut down most of the front rank of Thracians, those behind tripping and stumbling as they tried to pick their way through the newly laid field of carrion.

Those Thracians following behind hauled their shields above their heads as protection against the arrows being shot at them. However they were moving too quickly and their ranks were too ragged to form an unbroken roof of leather and wood. So arrows plunged from the sky to hit arms and legs and pierce sandal-clad feet.

There was an ear-piercing crack as the élite Thracian troops collided with the front ranks of the legionaries and began wielding their fearsome rhomphaias, slashing and hacking at shields and helmets. I was thankful that the legionaries in Dura’s army had their helmets strengthened with forehead cross-braces designed to offer additional protection against men on horseback wielding swords. They were just as effective against a Thracian rhomphaia.

As the shouts and screams of thousands of men locked in combat echoed across the battlefield, I heard fresh trumpet blasts and then saw a volley of javelins coming from the rear ranks of our front-line centuries to land among the great press of Thracians. Hundreds more of the latter were killed and wounded but still they pressed on, hacking and thrusting with grim determination, actually forcing the cohorts back.

I sent a courier to the cataphracts to order them to wheel inwards to their right to attack the rear ranks of the Thracian foot, at the same time ordering Vagises to deploy his horse archers forward to give protection to the cataphracts. I had no idea what was happening on the right flank but knew that Nergal would have his men under tight control.

I could see the unbroken line of the cohorts being forced back under the ferocious pressure that the enemy was subjecting it to. But it did not break. Then the cataphracts launched their charge. They drove deep into the rear ranks of the enemy, spearing dozens on the end of kontus points before hacking at men on foot with their swords and maces. As they had been trained to do the hundred-man companies darted into groups of the enemy, killed as many as they could and then withdrew quickly to reform out of harm’s way. Their horses may have been covered in scale armour but the animals’ lower legs were still vulnerable to scything rhomphaia strikes.

The cataphract action lasted for perhaps ten minutes at most but it shattered the Thracians’ morale. Attacked from the rear by armoured horsemen, the rear ranks began to disengage and retreat back towards the city. And like an invisible wave the faltering morale rippled through the enemy soldiers. Small groups initially peeled off the main body to scurry back to Seleucia, running a gauntlet of arrows as they did so, then more and more Thracians locked shields over their heads and shuffled back to the city.

In the mêlée, meanwhile, the legionaries gained the upper hand. The hate-filled men in front of them began to tire as the legionaries they had been battling were replaced by soldiers from the rear ranks, matching their frenzy with their close-quarter weapons. And volley after volley of javelins was launched against the Thracians as fresh missiles were ferried from the cohorts in the second line. Then the Durans and Exiles began to press forward.

I leaned across to grab Gallia and kissed her as I heard a chant resonate across the battlefield — ‘Dura, Dura’ — and knew that the fight had been won. Then, suddenly, like a dam bursting, the Thracians gave way and ran for their lives. Many were cut down by a withering rain of arrows as they turned tail and fled back to the city, hundreds discarding their shields and weapons as they did so. The Durans and Exiles did not follow.

Hundreds of satisfied cataphracts rode past me to deploy once again to the left of the Durans. I rode with Gallia and the Amazons to find Domitus to congratulate him on his victory.

We cantered past members of Alcaeus’ medical corps tending to the wounded and organising their transport on wagons back to camp. I saw the colour party of the Durans guarding the golden griffin and caught sight of a white transverse crest on a helmet nearby and headed towards it. I saw also saw a helmetless Thumelicus shaking his head and knew that something was wrong.

I jumped from the saddle and pushed my way through a throng of soldiers who had gathered around Domitus, most of them stepping aside when they recognised me. Thumelicus said nothing as he walked away, holding his head in his hands. I froze when I looked down to see Domitus cradling the head of Drenis in his arms, tears running down his cheeks. Drenis, a Thracian and former gladiator who had shared the same ludus in Capua as Spartacus, a Companion whom I had fought beside for nearly twenty years, a man who had helped to turn Dura’s army into one of the most fearsome fighting machines in the world, was dead.

He had been killed fighting in the front rank where he could always be found, cut down by a plethora of rhomphaia blades but slaying many of the enemy before he fell. I could not believe what my eyes were revealing to me as Domitus stood up and wiped away his tears.

‘Take his body to the rear,’ he commanded, his voice firm and deep, ‘we will burn it tonight.’

I stood, numb, as a stretcher was brought and the gashed body was placed upon it, before being covered with a white cloak. Domitus laid a hand on his dead friend.

‘We will meet again, my brother.’

His face was a mask of grim determination as he came over to me.

‘They will regroup in the city. We need to get inside before they have a chance to reorganise.’

‘We can get in using those breaches they have made in the walls. It won’t take long.’

There was no emotion in his eyes just a cold anger. He said nothing about Drenis and neither did I. What was there to say? There was still enough of the day left to take out our hurt and anger on the enemy.

As Marcus and his men unloaded their machines from carts pulled by oxen the Durans and Exiles lent on their shields or lay on the ground. Nergal and Praxima came from the right flank and I told them about Drenis. We stood in a circle drinking water and holding the reins of our horses while the Amazons rested on the ground behind us. It was now mid-afternoon and there were still a few hours of daylight left.

‘Will you wait for the new day before you assault the city, Pacorus?’ asked Nergal.

‘No,’ I answered. ‘The attack will commence as soon as Marcus has set up his machines.’

‘What if Mithridates escapes across the Tigris into the east of the empire?’ said Praxima.

I had also considered that possibility, and in truth that is what he would probably do. He might have already fled Seleucia as far as I knew. It did not matter.

‘We will take Seleucia,’ I said, ‘and then we will hunt down Mithridates no matter how long it takes or how far he runs. This time he will not escape.’

An hour elapsed before Marcus’ machines were ready to commence their deadly work, by which time the wall breaches and gap where the gatehouse had been had all been sealed by locked Thracian shields. In addition, the surviving sections of the walls had been lined with archers, no doubt the survivors of the Cilician horsemen who had been dispersed earlier. Ordinarily an attacker would suffer heavy casualties crossing open ground under arrow fire to force an entry to the city, though a testudo formation would be largely immune from enemy missiles. Nevertheless the enemy would also throw rocks from the walls when my men were within range, which would inflict casualties. But I had no intention of exposing my men to enemy missiles.

Marcus had positioned one of his larger ballistae opposite each of the breaches in the walls, at a distance of six hundred paces away, a century of legionaries providing cover while his engineers set up and sighted their pieces. But the enemy were content to stand and watch as the strange machines that resembled giant bows laid horizontally on wooden frames were assembled. Marcus also had fifty smaller ballistae, each one operated by two men, which were positioned between the larger ones, ready to shoot at the men on the walls.

While Marcus and his men laboured to get their machines ready legionaries and horsemen withdrew out of the range of the archers on the walls. The city defenders took this as a sign that we were withdrawing for the night and started jeering and whistling and congratulating each other. Below them the Thracians who were defending the wall breaches remained immobile and silent. And in no-man’s land between the walls and our forces lay thousands of corpses, either cut down by Dura’s heavy horsemen or killed by arrows. But not all were dead: there were many injured whose bodies had been slashed and hacked by swords and maces or hit by arrows. The badly injured lay on the ground and moaned and sobbed, some crying out pitifully to their gods to save them, though most just called for their mothers.

Those who were able either staggered unsteadily to their feet to attempt to get back to the city, or crawled on the ground to try and reach safety. Seeing this, Gallia and the Amazons stood up and began shooting at these poor wretches. As they were using their bows at long range and the light was beginning to fail it required considerable skill to hit their targets. But my wife’s warriors were nothing if they were not accomplished archers. Soon they were joined by Vagises, Nergal, Praxima and several of the officers of Dura’s horse archers, their men sitting on their horses and cheering when one of the wounded was hit.

The jeering and whistling coming from the walls soon changed to cries of rage as they watched their wounded comrades being slaughtered. I wondered if it might provoke an assault by the Thracians who stood in the wall breaches, but they retained their discipline and kept their anger in check as Gallia hit a hobbling figure who spun round before collapsing on the ground. Arrows hitting targets at the furthest extent of their range would rarely inflict a fatal wound but would only add to the victim’s pain and misery, but this thought suited my mood at that moment as I watched my wife and her Amazons empty their quivers.

The sun was falling in the western sky behind us by the time Marcus ambled over to where I waited on Remus observing the walls.

‘We are ready, Pacorus,’ he said.

‘Begin,’ I ordered, ‘and do not stop until I tell you.’

He saluted then trotted back to the first large ballista that was pointing at the breach to the left of where the gatehouse had been. It was completely filled with locked shields, behind which I could see rows of helmets. I smiled.

‘This is for you, Drenis,’ I muttered as a loud crack announced the shooting of the first projectiles.

The ballistae were remarkable weapons of war, their projectiles shot by torsion produced by two thick skeins of twisted cords through which were thrust two separate wooden arms joined at their ends by the cord that propelled the missile forward. The large ballista could fire one missile a minute up to rage of around thirteen hundred feet, the smaller ones around four shots a minute up to range of around a thousand feet.

The first projectiles fired by the larger models were clay pots filled with the thick white liquid that came from China, though Marcus and Arsam had been perfecting their own variety at Dura for a number of years now. They kept the exact composition a closely guarded secret, but did tell me that the ingredients included naphtha, the thick black liquid that seeps from the earth throughout the Arabian peninsula and Mesopotamia, soap and oil derived from palm trees.

The pots were sealed and then coated with pitch, which had been ‘cooking’ over a brazier nearby, before being placed on the ballista and then set alight. On the ballista it sat in a cradle of chrysotile, the wondrous material that does not burn, so the flames would not incinerate the propelling cord, before it was shot towards the enemy.

We watched the flaming pot hurtle through the air and smash into the shield wall to produce a huge yellow and orange fireball as the contents ignited. We heard high-pitched screams as the burning liquid splashed faces, necks and arms. It burned fiercely and was almost impossible to extinguish and so the previously disciplined formation of soldiers dissolved as individuals’ flesh melted.

A minute later the ballista shot a solid stone ball weighing fifty pounds that smashed through torsos and skulls as it careered through the now faltering Thracian ranks. Then another volley of fireballs was launched at the wall breaches to inflict further horrendous casualties as men were tuned into human torches. The Thracians were beginning to melt away, many literally as their flesh was coated with the burning liquid that could not be put out.

And while the Thracians were being subjected to this torment the smaller ballistae were sweeping the walls with more diminutive missiles, mostly stones and iron-tipped projectiles that speared archers and crushed skulls with ease. Soon the walls were devoid of enemy soldiers.

Marcus’ machines kept shooting for nearly an hour until there were no longer any Thracians left guarding the wall breaches. It was early evening and what was left of the enemy had retreated from the city walls to the palace next to the Tigris, or perhaps across the stone bridge that spanned the river to seek refuge in Ctesiphon. Or perhaps they had only retreated a short distance from the city walls and were waiting for us to enter Seleucia. It was time to find out.

Domitus formed his men into four huge columns, two of Durans and two of Exiles, each one ten men across, and then directed them into the city via the breaches in the wall. I dismounted, acquired a shield and joined one of them with Domitus standing beside me in the front rank. News of the death of Drenis had spread through the army to produce a mood of grim determination among the men.

As soon as the ballistae had stopped shooting the columns advanced across no-man’s land, the men in the first five ranks with their swords drawn and those following clutching fresh javelins brought from camp. The columns had been issued with torches but the flames in and around the breaches made by the fireballs cast the corpse-filled ground in a red glow and allowed us to pick our way through the bodies. When we reached the walls our eyes beheld fresh horrors and our nostrils filled with the nauseating aroma of roasting flesh as we stepped over dead Thracians.

We moved into the city, past charred and disfigured bodies, to find that the enemy had fled. Seleucia is divided into two halves: north of the main street that runs from west to east is where the palace, temple district and government officers are located; to the south is where the crowded dwellings of the citizens are sited. After a quick assembly of senior officers half the Durans secured the area around the gatehouse while the rest undertook a sweep of the population’s homes to search for enemy soldiers. The Exiles pushed on towards the palace that overlooked the Tigris and the harbour area at the river.

The stone bridge across the river was secured easily enough, Domitus deploying men on both sides of the structure to ensure no one escaped the city. Ctesiphon was within striking distance but I decided to wait until Seleucia had been thoroughly searched before we captured the court of the king of kings and its treasury. I stood with Domitus on the western side of the bridge staring at the black waters below.

‘Mithridates is not here,’ he said. ‘He probably ran away as soon as the fighting started.’

He looked across the river.

‘He won’t be at Ctesiphon either.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘we will organise a pursuit in the morning.’

But I was troubled by the thought that we would not be able to follow Mithridates, especially if Tigranes launched an assault against Hatra. If that happened I would have to take the army back north and Mithridates would be free to create mischief in the eastern half of the empire once more.

At that moment a legionary, a member of the Exiles, arrived with news that Kronos’ men were being shot at from the palace. I slapped Domitus on the arm.

‘Or perhaps Mithridates is trapped in the palace.’

Though I had been in the saddle since the early morning and had fought a battle during the day, any tiredness left me instantly at the prospect of cornering Mithridates. The messenger escorted us to where the Exiles were taking up positions around the palace prior to an assault.

Seleucia’s palace was built in the Greek style reflecting its heritage. A large, square building, it was enclosed within a strong circuit wall that had square towers at regular intervals along its length. These towers had tiled roofs and square windows fronted by wooden shutters, from which archers, slingers and spearmen could launch missiles at an attacker. The large and impressive gatehouse on the south side of the wall also had wooden shutters on each of its two storeys above the huge twin gates to rain down missiles upon a foe.

Though Ctesiphon was thought of as the greatest palace complex in the empire, Seleucia’s royal residence was also an impressive structure. Its east wing housed the vaulted throne room, the south wing the royal suites whose floors were decorated with rich floor mosaics and columned courtyards. The banqueting hall was located in the west wing, while in the north wing there was a high, open veranda that gave spectacular views of the Tigris to the north of the city. Around the palace were granaries, barracks, stables, armouries and storerooms.

We found Kronos three hundred paces from the gatehouse giving directions to his senior officers. His men were deployed in their centuries all around the wall beyond the range of enemy missiles. They carried no torches now so as to deny the foe any aiming points but they were still visible in their white tunics and carrying white shields sporting griffin wings. Kronos dismissed his officers before we reached him.

I looked at the walls that appeared empty of any soldiers. In fact I could see no torches on the walls and no lights beyond them.

Domitus read my thoughts.

‘Looks deserted.’

‘It is not,’ replied Kronos. ‘I sent a couple of centuries forward to the gates but they were shot at before they got near them. The enemy are behind those shutters.’

‘Did you lose any men?’ I asked.

Kronos shook his head ‘They were in testudo formation. One man broke an ankle when they fell back. I have sent for the ram to smash those gates open.’

In addition to the ballistae that Dura’s army had gained when I had defeated a Roman army before the walls of my city, at the same time it had also captured a battering ram. This ram comprised a large tree trunk that hung from chains fixed to the top of a sturdy arched frame. Over this frame were fitted wooden boards, protected by hide, clay and finally iron plates. The thick roof was designed to defeat enemy missiles and the clay was a fireproof barrier. The ram was mounted on four large wooden wheels to allow it to be pushed forwards and backwards. On the end of the tree trunk was a massive iron head cast in the shape of a snarling ram that the troops had nicknamed ‘Pacorus’.

Men standing either side of the log operated the ram, which had leather straps fixed to it that allowed them to pull it back and then hurl it forward to smash the iron head against the target.

After their experience at the walls, what was left of the enemy was clearly weary of our machines and so had hidden themselves in the gatehouse and in the towers. It was suddenly eerily quiet as we waited for Marcus and his ram.

‘Do you think Mithridates is in there?’ asked Kronos, tilting his head towards the palace.

‘I hope so,’ I replied, though I did not think so. In addition to being a murdering wretch the stepbrother of Orodes was also a coward and my gut told me that he was long gone.

I heard a crack and felt a slight breeze on my face, which was then showered with liquid. I heard a groan and saw with horror that an arrow was stuck in Kronos’ neck. He collapsed to the ground.

‘Shields, shields!’ screamed Domitus as he grabbed Kronos’ right arm and began to haul him away from the walls. I took his other arm and we pulled him across the ground as a century of men rushed forward and formed a wall of shields around us.

Blood was spurting from the arrow wound as Kronos looked up at me and tried to smile.

‘Don’t talk, keep still,’ I told him.

A medical orderly knelt beside him, took a bandage from his bag and applied it to the wound in an effort to staunch the flow of blood, but the arrow had penetrated too deeply into his neck and Kronos was dead within seconds. The fountain of blood subsided as life left the commander of the Exiles and I stared in disbelief at my dead comrade. This was the man who had marched all the way from Pontus when that kingdom had fallen to the Romans; who had helped me raise a legion of his exiled countrymen and forged them into an élite fighting formation. He had fought beside me at Dura, the Tigris, Babylon, Makhmur and Susa and had not suffered a scratch. And now a single archer had killed him.

Domitus commanded the orderly to remove the arrow from the wound and then had the body covered with a white cloak and taken to the rear where it would be cremated alongside Drenis when the fighting was over. They would burn with Mardonius, whose body I had ordered to be removed from the walls. My hatred for Mithridates burned with a white-hot intensity for what he had been responsible for at this place. I vowed to hunt him down even if it meant going to the end of the world to find him.

The ram arrived shortly after we lost Kronos and its iron head was soon smashing in the two gates. The soldiers in the gatehouse above tried to halt its progress by hurling spears and rocks against it but Marcus had also brought his smaller ballistae with him and they shot iron and stone balls to splinter the wooden shutters, and then dismounted companies of Vagises’ horse archers poured volley after volley of arrows at the firing positions. Very soon no missiles were coming from the gatehouse.

Like most of Seleucia’s defences the palace gates had not been maintained and though they looked impressive they were very old, over two hundred years at least, and when they were subjected to a fierce pounding they gave way easily enough. The defenders had had no time to reinforce them with braces or rubble and so, after twenty minutes of being battered, they were forced open.

The same orderly who had tried to save Kronos re-bandaged my wounded arm as the first of the Exiles forced their way through the gates and into the palace compound. Domitus had wanted to lead them but I had forbidden him to do so — I did not want to lose any more friends this day. So as the first shards of light appeared in the east we stood and watched as century after century raced into the palace to exact revenge for the death of their commander. Most of the Thracians and Cilicians were butchered without mercy whether they threw down their weapons and tried to surrender or not. A few Sarmatian horsemen attempted to mount their horses and cut their way through the mass of Exiles who flooded into the palace, but their horses panicked in the face of the dense ranks of the legionaries and their riders were soon dragged from their saddles and stabbed to death.

After the brief, violent battle was over I walked with Vagises and Domitus, escorted by a century of Exiles and a hundred horse archers, through the smashed gates and into the palace compound. The ground was sprinkled with enemy dead all around, mostly Thracians and Sarmatians but a few bodies attired in short-sleeved red tunics marking them out as Cilicians. There were some shouts and screams coming from inside the palace but most of the fighting was over. The gatehouse and all the towers had been cleared of enemy soldiers and groups of Exiles were standing guard on the walls, at the gatehouse and at the entrance to the palace itself.

We stood in the middle of the square in front of the palace as parties of Exiles began dumping enemy swords, bows, spears and armour in separate piles that would be examined by Marcus to see if any could be salvaged for further use. All the weapons and armour for Dura’s army were produced in Arsam’s armouries to ensure their quality, but captured stocks could always be sold on to third parties such as Alexander’s Jewish insurgents. His fighters had originally been armed with weapons produced at Dura but since then he had suffered a series of crushing defeats and he had used up all of his gold reserves. Perhaps I would send him the weapons that were being stockpiled in front of me free of charge. They would, after all, be used to kill Romans and the fewer Romans there were in the world would be of benefit to the empire.

Marcus sauntered over to where we stood and raised his right arm in a Roman salute. Dressed in simple beige tunic, sandals, leather belt and wide-brimmed hat, he looked like a gardener rather than a quartermaster. But he had one of the keenest minds in the empire and his organisational skills were second to none.

‘Terrible business about Drenis and Kronos,’ he said. ‘My commiserations.’

I nodded and Domitus stood by impassively.

‘Your engines did good work, Marcus,’ I told him.

‘Seleucia’s walls will need rebuilding and strengthening,’ he replied.

‘That is not our concern,’ I replied. ‘Once Mithridates has been captured Orodes can rebuild them at his leisure for there will no longer be any traitors to hide behind them.’

But a thorough search of the palace revealed that, just as I had feared, he had fled the city before we entered it. Some prisoners were taken, however, when a group of the enemy had barricaded themselves on the veranda in the north wing of the palace. They had shouted to the legionaries who were battering down the doors that they were men of importance who would command a great ransom and were known to the King of Dura. The latter declaration probably saved their lives as they were ordered to open the doors and surrender themselves immediately.

There were five of them: two Thracians, a bearded Sarmatian officer dressed in a magnificent scale armour cuirass, an unconscious and pale Nicetas whose shoulder wound had been bandaged but who had obviously lost much blood, and an individual whom I had met before.

‘Udall,’ I said to the man with the scruffy long hair who stood before me.

I had first encountered him when he had been a junior officer in a force of foot soldiers sent by Narses to intercept my army near Seleucia. Vagises’ horse archers had destroyed most of that force and Udall had been taken prisoner. I had let him and the rest of those men who had surrendered with him march away, after which he had spun a tale to his king about how he had slowed down Dura’s army. As a reward he had been made governor of Seleucia and was in that post when I had stormed the city as part of an alliance of kings led by my father determined to remove Mithridates and replace him with Orodes. After the city had fallen I had once again let Udall go free, and now here he was before me a prisoner for a third time.

‘I submit to your mercy, majesty,’ he said, bowing deeply, his hands bound behind his back like the others standing in a line in front of me.

I said nothing to him as I moved to stand before the Sarmatian. These people spoke Scythian, a coarse, harsh language that was spoken by the savage nomadic peoples who occupied the great northern steppes. As part of my boyhood education I had been tutored to speak and write it but had not spoken it in an age.

‘You are far from your homeland, Sarmatian.’

‘I go where there is work,’ he replied indifferently.

‘Where is Mithridates?’

‘Long gone,’ he smiled. ‘He has escaped you.’

I moved along the line to look at the Cilicians, both of whom were swarthy wretches who looked at me with hateful eyes.

‘What is your story?’ I asked one of them, to which he replied by spitting in my face.

Domitus standing beside me drew his gladius and thrust it through the man’s neck, after which my face was once more showered with gore as blood spurted from the wound. The Cilician collapsed as Domitus stepped over his body and rammed his sword into the side of his comrade, driving the blade up under the man’s rib cage to pierce his heart. He too collapsed to the ground. Domitus pointed at Udall.

‘This is the consequence of letting people go free instead of killing them, a mistake that Mithridates would not have made.’

I ordered the surviving prisoners to be taken back to the palace until I decided their fate and walked over to a water trough to wash my face. Domitus followed me.

‘What are you going to do with them?’ he asked.

I rubbed the stubble on my chin and saw that blood was seeping through the fresh bandage on my arm.

‘You cannot let them live,’ he continued before I could answer. I could tell that he was seething with rage over the deaths of Kronos and Drenis.

‘You are right,’ I said, ‘but first we have to attend to our dead.’

That afternoon, after Alcaeus had dressed my arm again and I had changed into a fresh tunic, most of the army was drawn up on parade to the west of the city wall. Two cohorts, one from the Durans, one from the Exiles, were left in the city to man what was left of the walls, guard the palace and the bridge over the Tigris and patrol Seleucia. The rest, including the squires, farriers, armourers, veterinaries, physicians and civilian drivers, plus the legions’ golden griffin and silver eagle standards, were drawn up to witness the cremation of our dead. We had lost only a hundred and fifty killed during the capture of Seleucia but it did not feel like a great victory, not with the bodies of Drenis and Kronos lying on their funeral pyres.

The shields of the Cilicians and Thracians had been collected to make individual pyres that had been soaked in oil, and now they were lit to consume the bodies on top of them. Thumelicus, tears streaming down his face, lit the pyre of Drenis while Domitus did the same for that of Kronos. I held a torch and lit the heaped shields beneath the body of Mardonius and then watched as the flames took hold and black smoke ascended into a clear blue sky as the souls of our comrades were welcomed into heaven.

Afterwards we marched back to camp to ponder our next move. The spirits of the army were downcast as both Drenis and Kronos had been popular figures. Nergal and Praxima were similarly dejected as they had both known Drenis from our time in Italy. Our mood was not improved when Byrd and Malik rode into camp just before sunset to report that an army was on the other side of the Tigris and was heading for Seleucia.

‘Our scouts ran into its vanguard earlier,’ reported Malik as we relaxed in my tent.

‘They come from the direction of Susa,’ added Byrd.

‘Did you see any banners?’ I asked.

Malik shook his head. ‘Only horse archers who shot at us from a distance.’

‘Does Mithridates have another army?’ queried Nergal.

‘Perhaps the eastern kings have renounced Orodes and are marching to put his stepbrother back on the throne of Ctesiphon,’ added a concerned Praxima.

I tried to allay their fears. ‘The eastern kings are as weary of war as we are. In any case we would have heard something from Khosrou if the eastern kingdoms were rebelling against Orodes.’

Their stern-looking faces told me that I had failed to reassure them and in truth I too was full of doubts. Why would they plunge the empire into another civil war, especially as both the Armenians and the Romans threatened Parthia? But then, the western kingdoms, my own included, had slaughtered many of their men over the past few years. Perhaps their only desire was revenge.

‘The only way to end our doubts,’ said Domitus, ‘is to march east to meet this new army and defeat it. I suggest we all get some rest. Tomorrow might be a long day.’

With that he rose, nodded to everyone and then took his leave of us. Looking at the tired faces and puffy eyes around me I realised he was right. We had not slept for two days and I suddenly felt very tired. I yawned and stretched out my arms, wincing as pain shot through my left arm.

‘Does it hurt?’ asked Gallia.

‘No,’ I lied, though at least the wound had finally stopped bleeding.

Nergal and Praxima rose and embraced us before they too left and rode back to their camp with their escort. Gallia kissed me and withdrew to the sleeping area, leaving me alone with Scarab who was clearing the table of cups and jugs.

‘You were victorious today, highness,’ he said, flashing a row of white teeth at me.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘though victory was bought at a heavy price.’

He looked concerned. ‘You lost many men, highness?’

‘Our casualties were light, but among them were two men for whom I would swap all my victories to have back.’

‘They were your friends, highness?’

‘Yes, they were my friends.’

‘Perhaps you will meet them again, highness, in the next life.’

I looked at him. ‘You believe that we all go on to another life?’

He stopped his cleaning and pondered for a moment. ‘When you are a slave, highness, the only thing that gets you through each day of torment is the thought that there is a better life after this one.’

I rose from my chair and picked up my sword that was leaning against it.

‘Let us hope you are right, Scarab.’