Carrhae (40 page)

‘They are going to try to smash through the gates,’ said Herneus, pointing ahead at what appeared to be a great tree trunk mounted on a large four-wheeled carriage. I now understood why the Armenians had been using rafts on the Tigris: it was to transport their battering rams. One ram was drawn up directly in front of the Tabira Gate and I could see another opposite the Western Gate. A messenger confirmed that a third was being readied to smash through the South Gate.

‘When they get near the gates they will be cut down easily enough,’ said Gallia confidently.

But I could see frantic activity around the battering ram as its large crew assembled a protective roof of planks topped with iron sheets over the tree trunk and its carriage. And behind the ram I could also see foot archers in bright blue tunics and leggings. They would provide covering missile volleys when the ram approached the gates.

‘We must concentrate our forces at the three gates,’ I said. ‘Herneus, give the order to abandon the defences on the riverside. The Amazons and a hundred of your men will defend the Tabira Gate, the rest of your garrison will be divided between the other two gates.’

He nodded and then beckoned over another of his officers to convey my order.

‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘Send soldiers to the temples asking that anyone who can shoot a bow is to report to the walls immediately.’

Each of the gatehouses on the outer wall had two storeys, each one having shooting slits for ten archers, and now they began to fill with troops as the garrison was concentrated at the three entry points to the city. Slaves from the palace ferried quivers of arrows from the armouries as the Armenians completed their preparations and made ready to assault Assur.

After an hour the enemy began its advance. In the van were the battering rams – sharpened tree trunks mounted on sturdy carriages with four thick wheels fashioned from the same thick trees that had been used to make the rams, each of them protected by crude iron and wood roofs.

Men wearing no armour or helmets clustered all around the ram’s carriage underneath its roof. They strained to heave the heavy ram towards the Tabira Gate. The trunk was secured to the carriage by ropes so the Armenians would have to literally ram it against the gates, relying on its weight and momentum to smash through the thick wood.

Behind the ram were the foot archers and behind them blocks of spearmen who would force their way into the city once the gates had been smashed in. They looked very colourful in their red tunics and yellow leggings, though as far as I could see they wore no armour on their bodies or heads. Armed with short stabbing spears and oval wicker shields, they would be useless in a battle but very effective for butchering civilians if they got into Assur. The archers and spearmen were grouped in blocks that numbered around a thousand men: two thousand archers and five thousand spearmen in total. Seven thousand Armenians were about to assault the Tabira Gate.

Herneus received reports from the other two gates that approximately the same number of Armenians was deployed against them – over twenty thousand troops against six hundred.

‘Long odds, majesty,’ he said without emotion.

‘Hopefully we can thin their numbers before they reach the gates,’ I replied. The Amazons were now lining the walls either side of the Tabira Gate and were inside the gatehouse itself, ready to shoot at the oncoming enemy. Full quivers lay on the parapet behind each Amazon, though I was concerned that there appeared to be too few for our requirements.

‘My lords and Lord Silaces took many quivers with them when they rode to Hatra,’ reported Herneus.

‘We will need runners, then,’ I replied.

Gallia looked at me. ‘Runners?’

‘Boys, children, majesty,’ replied Herneus, ‘who run around picking up the arrows that the enemy shoots into a city under siege.’

‘They run the risk of being hit by other arrows while they do so, surely?’ she said.

I shrugged. ‘If the enemy captures the city they will be either killed or enslaved anyway. See to it Herneus.’

He bowed his head and left us at the same time as those who had answered my summons from the civilian population began to ascend the steps to the parapet. My heart sank when I saw them. Most of them were either very old or crippled and deformed in some way: humpbacked, bandy legged, crook-backed or one-eyed.

‘This lot would be better off dead,’ I mumbled.

Gallia jabbed me in the ribs. ‘As they have volunteered to stand against the enemy the least you can do is show some courtesy.’

I smiled at her. ‘If it will amuse you, my sweet, then of course.’

An elderly man, tall with sinewy arms turned dark brown by years in the sun, was brought before us by one of the garrison’s officers. He must have been over seventy at least and had a bow slung over his shoulder.

He went down unsteadily on one knee before us. ‘I am Asher, majesty, and have been instructed to report to you.’

Gallia walked forward and helped him to his feet. ‘Rise, Asher. We are glad you and your men are here, are we not Pacorus?’

‘Ecstatic,’ I replied without conviction, earning me a Gallic glare.

‘I served under your grandfather, King Sames, majesty,’ Asher declared with pride.

I nodded. ‘I am sorry that the Armenians have dragged you out of retirement, Asher.’

‘I can shoot a bow as well as any man, majesty,’ he said defiantly.

‘I have no doubt,’ I replied, doubting whether his aged eyes would be able to even see the Armenians let alone shoot at them. ‘You and your men will take up positions either side of my wife’s warriors.’

‘The famed Amazons,’ he beamed.

‘Indeed,’ I said.

‘They’re coming,’ shouted Spartacus behind me as suddenly the air was filled with the din of drums and horns.

I turned and walked to the steps next to the shooting position he was standing behind and stood on them so I could see over the battlements. Already arrows were hissing through the air and striking the walls as the archers behind the ram began shooting at us.

I jumped down. ‘To your positions!’ I shouted.

Asher and his hundred misshapen wretches were directed to their positions as Gallia kissed me on the lips. ‘The gods be with you.’

‘And you,’ I replied.

She stood next to Zenobia as I pointed at Scarab and Spartacus. ‘You two are with me.’

I ran into the gatehouse and then ascended the steps to the roof clutching my bow with two quivers slung over my shoulder. Each quiver held thirty arrows and on average a skilled archer could loose up to three aimed shots every seven seconds, but such a rate of arrow expenditure would soon exhaust our ammunition supplies and also our archers, particularly the Amazons. Like all Parthian archers they used recurve bows made from sinew, horn and wood, but because they were women their bows were slightly smaller and thus had a reduced draw weight so they would tire less quickly. It did not mean their arrows were any less deadly than those used by any of my other soldiers, though. A bow is, after all, no more than a spring whose power comes from its user and the springs of the Amazons were deadly.

I watched the ram edge closer to the walls and above the tumult of the horns and drums I could hear the curses of the officers who were in charge of it as they shouted at their men to redouble their efforts. Behind the machine the blue-uniformed archers maintained a steady barrage of missiles at the gatehouse and walls, and then the Amazons began shooting.

The ram was around six hundred paces from the walls when their arrows were shot from the battlements. Gallia had given orders that half the Amazons were to shoot at the men pushing the ram, the other half loosing missiles at the archers behind them. Above all they were to shoot accurately.

Loosing arrows at a steady rate of five every minute, soon unprotected enemy archers were being felled as bronze tips landed among their densely packed ranks: two hundred and fifty arrows being shot at them every minute. The other half of the Amazons, including all those in the gatehouse, shot at the approaching lumbering ram. I released an arrow then nocked another, my nephew beside me relishing the chance to show off his archery skills to Scarab beside him. He shot an arrow, nocked another, shot that and then strung another in the space of a few seconds.

‘Don’t waste arrows,’ I told him. ‘Choose your targets.’

He flashed a grin. ‘Even Scarab could not miss that ram, it is so large.’

Arrows clattered against the walls and hissed overhead as the Armenian archers tried to silence our shooting. But Assur’s defences had been well designed and it was all but impossible to shoot an arrow through the slits in its battlements from several hundred paces away.

Many of the ram’s crew were hit and disabled and killed, but replacements were sent from the ranks of the spearmen who were following the archers. Individuals ran forward holding their shields above their heads as they tried to reach the ram. Most did but some were hit and collapsed to the ground with arrows in them as more of their comrades were despatched to take their places. And all the time the ram got closer to the gates.

I left my position and ran to the right side of the gatehouse to check on Gallia. There she was, calmly selecting a target and loosing an arrow. I kept my head down for the volume of enemy arrows being shot at us was prodigious. I saw Asher pull back his bowstring and release it, and then watched the man beside him jump onto a step to look over the wall and being struck in the face by an Armenian arrow.

I returned to my shooting position and used another five arrows then reached again into my quiver. Empty!

‘Arrows!’ I shouted but there were none left and one by one those either side of me stopped shooting once they had exhausted their ammunition. After a while only empty quivers remained.

I looked ahead and could see the amount of missiles being directed at the enemy was dropping alarmingly as we ran out of arrows. I ran down the steps to the next level and out onto the parapet. Gallia and some of her Amazons were still shooting but the others were similarly out of arrows.

I ran to Gallia’s side. ‘Deserting your post, Pacorus?’

‘We have no arrows left. As soon as you are out withdraw to the inner wall.’

Above our heads hissed dozens of arrows being loosed by the Armenians, many more hitting the walls in front of us.

‘We are going to die here,’ she said, looking above at the hundreds of arrows in the air.

Suddenly slaves from the palace came up the steps to the battlements clutching large bundles of arrows and began dumping them on the parapet. Others carried bundles into the gatehouse. A man in a short-sleeved white tunic and sandals placed at least a hundred arrows behind Gallia and bowed his head.

‘These are arrows shot into the city?’ I asked.

‘Yes, highness.’

‘Have many boys died collecting them?’ asked Gallia.

‘Dozens, highness, both boys and girls.’

I touched Gallia’s elbow. ‘This is no time to die,’ and then I ran back into the gatehouse as other slaves brought more bundles of arrows to the outer wall. Our shooting re-commenced and felled dozens of enemy archers but now the ram was close to the gatehouse – no more than three hundred paces away – and though resembling a pincushion was slowly but inexorably rumbling towards the gates. I cursed the fact that the bridges across the moat were made of stone otherwise we could have fired them, but as it was even if we poured burning oil onto the ram its roof would have protected it.

Armenians archers were collapsing in heaps as Gallia’s women and the army of cripples shot them down but still the ram came on. Now it was less than two hundred paces from the gates and I could hear the men groaning as they hauled its bulk forward.

‘They will reach the gates soon,’ said a concerned Spartacus.

‘Then we will greet them with our swords,’ shouted Scarab, releasing his bowstring.

The roof at the front of the ram was angled down to prevent us shooting arrows into its interior as it got nearer and so our arrows became less effective as it closed to within fifty paces and stopped.

‘They are about to ram the gates!’ I shouted.

Though wagons and braces had been piled up behind the gates there had been no time to reinforce them with rubble to build a bank of earth. We heard a great collective groan and then the ram rumbled forward across the bridge and into the gates. There must have been forty or more men under its roof and they managed to give the ram enough momentum to splinter the gates and force them apart. The spearmen out of range of our own archers began cheering and hoisting their spears aloft as the ram was hauled back in preparation for another charge. By now my right arm and shoulder ached from shooting arrows and the inside of my fingers were red-raw from clutching the bowstring.

The Armenian archers were taking a fearful battering as every arrow loosed by the Amazons found its target, but to give them credit they held their ground and carried on shooting, though I noticed that the density of arrows being directed at us had dropped markedly since the start of the assault. They too must have been suffering ammunition shortages.

There was a great blast of horns and those archers still left standing about-faced and ran back towards the spearmen, while the latter lifted up their shields in front of them and began to march forward, just as the ram was once more hurled against the gates. This time there was a cracking sound and then a grinding noise as the ram prised the gates apart and forced the supports behind them back. The outer wall had been breached.

‘Back to the inner wall!’ I screamed as the spearmen approached the stone bridge.

I was nearly out of arrows again so I grabbed the three remaining behind me and gestured frantically to the others to get down the steps in the gatehouse and to the inner wall.

And then I heard a new sound.

Chapter 10

At first I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. But I stopped and cocked my ear to where the attackers were positioned and heard it again: a clear, pure sound that cut through the tumult of the Armenian drums and horns and the shouts and cries of their soldiers. I heard it again and this time it was louder and nearer and I knew that it was not in my imagination. I walked to the shooting slit and stepped onto the stone steps beside it to peer over the battlements. The shrill sound of dozens of trumpet blasts echoed across the plain once more and I saw the horizon filled by a wall of white shields and helmets as five thousand Durans and five thousand Exiles marched to our relief.