Parthian Dawn (6 page)

We began walking back to the centre of the camp as the sun began turning to a red ball in the sky. ‘Quite straightforward, sir, I’m only interested in those who are single, have good eyesight and decent characters, and we don’t take any who’ve had their balls lopped off, begging your pardon, ladies.’

On the way back to Hatra, I rode between Balas and Gallia as the sky turned a deep red with the approach of the evening.

‘I like your Roman,’ said Balas.

‘He’s a good man,’ I agreed.

‘Does he miss his home?’

‘No, majesty,’ I said, ‘when we found him he was condemned to be a slave in their silver mines.’

‘He has no love of Rome,’ added Gallia.

‘Does he love Parthia, then?’

‘No, lord,’ replied Gallia, ‘he has a love for Spartacus.’

‘But Spartacus is dead, is he not?’

Gallia looked directly ahead. ‘Not his memory, or his son, and I think that we are the only true family Domitus has ever known.’

Balas nodded. ‘When I heard that you had returned, Pacorus, and listened to the tales that were spreading about you and your wild woman from a far-off land, I thought that they were stories to impress children and old women, but now I begin to think otherwise. I have seen many things in my life, some great, most terrible. But I have never heard of a slave general such as this Spartacus. I have seen the loyalty that he engenders still, and I marvel that an army has appeared in the desert, an army that follows you because its soldiers believe you to be beloved of the gods, an army that is led by a Roman, your most hated foes. And you, Gallia, you who are so beautiful yet fight as fiercely as any man and who leads a band of women warriors, who has fought and killed without mercy. We live in strange times, I think.’

‘Let us hope we also live in peaceful times,’ I said.

Gallia scoffed at this. ‘Pacorus is a dreamer, my lord. He dreams of a world that will never be. The avarice and corruption of men will ensure that there will always be war.’

‘I fear you are right, my lady. What can be done?’

Gallia looked at him, then me. ‘We can keep our bowstrings tight and our sword blades sharp.’

Balas laughed. ‘Forget Dura, Gallia, come back with me to Gordyene and be the commander of my bodyguard.’

In the days following Gallia grew very fond of Balas, the old warhorse who liked to have a pretty woman to impress. He would tell us how he had fought the Armenians and made his capital, Vanadzor, a stronghold that no army could take. We were walking in the royal gardens through a long arch formed by palm trees, Gallia linking her arm in his.

‘There were so many of them that they were like an army of locusts, masses of infantry, plus cavalry, chariots and camels. It seemed as though they had brought every animal in Armenia to lay siege to my city. But we threw them back, and then I led my cavalry out onto the plain and scattered them. It was a long, bloody day, but at the end of it we stood triumphant and they skulked back to their homeland.’

‘Then you had peace?’ asked Gallia.

Balas shook his big head. ‘Not for many a year, because they kept coming back, tens of thousands of them. And each time we gave them battle and threw them back, but it was hard and I lost a lot of good friends. And then they sent their secret weapon, their most terrible adversary.’

‘Who?’ I too was enthralled.

‘A woman. Isabella her name was and she was the eldest daughter of the Armenian king. She was tall, beautiful, proud and strong, and she told me that her father wished for an alliance between our two kingdoms, and that he offered the hand of his daughter in marriage to cement our alliance.’

‘And you refused his offer?’ I asked.

‘That was my initial intention, but you see her father was clever. He realised that Isabella was more formidable than any army he could throw against me, and so it proved. I fell in love with her and we were married, and so I became my enemy’s son. And thus we had peace and I had Isabella, and it was the happiest time of my life. She had a big heart and my people took her into their own hearts and Gordyene seemed blessed.’

‘Why didn’t you bring her to the wedding?’ asked Gallia.

‘Because she died over ten years ago, child.’ A mask of sadness came across his face. ‘Taken by a plague that ravaged my city.’

Gallia rested her head on his shoulder and tightened her grip on his arm. ‘I’m sorry.’

Balas shrugged. ‘It was the will of God, but I know that she is waiting for me and that we will be together again. Actually, you remind me of her, all zest and fire.’

‘What about the Armenians, majesty?’ I enquired.

‘Their border is quiet these days. Their eyes are on the west, where the Romans will come from.’

‘What about Mithridates?’ I asked. Mithridates was the King of Pontus, a land that lay to the south of the Black Sea and a kingdom that had been at war with the Romans for nearly twenty years.

‘Who’s Mithridates?’ asked Gallia.

Balas sighed. ‘A great warrior and a man who has held back the Romans for a generation, but now his armies are largely scattered and he is all but beaten. And Armenia is next to Pontus, and when Pontus falls the Romans will be on the Armenian border.’

He said no more. There was no need, for he knew that if Armenia fell then the Romans would be on the borders of his land. But I comforted myself with the knowledge that he did not stand alone, for Gordyene was a kingdom in the Parthian Empire and behind Balas stood the other kings of the empire.

Balas took his leave of us two days later, his lion banner fluttering behind him as he led a column of horsemen out of the city’s northern gates back to Gordyene.

‘I would like to go to his homeland and see him,’ said Gallia.

‘It’s all mountains and trees,’ said my father. ‘Good country for hunting.’

‘We will go, my love,’ I took her hand, ‘I promise.’

The next day Farhad and Gotarzes also left Hatra for their homelands. As we said our farewells I caught sight of Farhad’s son, Atrax, giving Aliyeh a brooch. He then took her hands in his and kissed them. We all pretended not to notice the tears in her eyes as his father’s retinue of armoured-clad horsemen, one carrying his king’s banner of a white dragon on a black background, trotted away to Media. The last of the kings to leave was Vardan, along with his daughter Axsen. She was a hopeless and incurable romantic, but we liked her all the more for it. She saw love and hope everywhere, and did not have a bad bone in her whole body. She made Gallia and me promise that we would visit her in Babylon, and gave Gallia a ring with an inlaid ruby gemstone.

‘It is the stone of life and energy, and also of wisdom.’

‘Really?’ Gallia looked at me.

‘Perhaps you should give it to Pacorus, he could do with some wisdom.’

Axsen hugged me, a big smile on her face. ‘I hope one day to have my own king and I hope he will be like you.’

‘I will pray for your happiness, lady, for you truly deserve it.’

‘And we promise,’ added Gallia, ‘that we will come and see you in your home soon.’

‘I will look forward to that day, my friends.’

We watched Vardan, Axsen and their royal guards trot away from the palace, and we waved when Axsen turned in the saddle and raised an arm to us both in salute.

‘I like her,’ said Gallia.

‘So do I.’

Chapter 3

T
he departure of Vardan and Axsen was the signal that we too had to prepare for our journey to our new home. The training of the legion went on apace under the watchful eye of Domitus, while Nergal took his horsemen out of the city every day to keep their skills sharp. As well as the fifty Parthians of the Companions, there were sixty others who had volunteered to come to Dura with us, mostly the younger sons of the landowners of my father’s kingdom. Hatra’s kings originally owned all the land in the kingdom, but over the years tracts of it were given to vassal lords in return for military service. These lands were mostly along the fertile banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The lords in turn granted small plots of their territory to their servants and others who were landless, in return for which they paid a portion of their yearly crops to their lord. The rest of their crop they used for food or sold in the markets. The areas around the two rivers are fertile, made more so by the irrigation ditches, dams, canals and dikes that are used to control the spring floodwaters that come from the mountains far to the north. This results in great surpluses of wheat, barley, millet, beans, sesame seeds, dates, grapes, figs, melons and apples. As well as working his land, every farmer has to maintain his skill with a bow and practise with it on a regular basis. Every Parthian boy is given a bow before he can walk, and so by the time he becomes a man at sixteen he is an expert archer.

Most farmers were able to purchase their own horse, and when their lord called upon them for military service they rode off to war on their own mounts. The lords, of course, had their own herds of horses for themselves their sons and their guards. And when the call to arms came from my father, thousands of horse archers answered that call.

Horse archers could harry and wear down an enemy with their incessant volleys of arrows, always remaining beyond the spears and swords of opposition cavalry and infantry. But the most highly prized cavalry in the Parthian Empire were cataphracts — fully armoured men riding on armoured horses. Cataphracts were organised into formations called dragons, which numbered a thousand men divided into hundred-man companies, but very few of the empire’s kingdoms could muster a dragon of cataphracts.

Each cataphract wore a rawhide, thigh-length coat on which was fastened dozens of overlapping iron and bronze scales, the different coloured metals glinting and shimmering in the sunlight. On his head he wore a steel helmet with steel cheekguards, and nose and neck guards. His arms and legs were protected by rings of overlapping steel plates, while his horse also wore a rawhide coat covered in armour. In this way the beast’s whole body and neck were protected from enemy spears, swords and arrows. Even the horse’s head was covered in armour, including its eyes that were protected by metal grills.

The primary weapon of the cataphract was a long lance called a
kontus
with a shaft as thick as a man’s wrist and tipped with a heavy steel point. When levelled, the lance required both hands to hold it secure either on the right or left side of the saddle. Upon impact the momentum of horse and rider could propel the lance through two enemy soldiers. The rider released the lance and then went to work on the ranks of the enemy with his sword, axe or mace, the latter a brutal weapon that could cave in a man’s skull even if he was wearing a helmet. The cataphract was truly a fearsome warrior and my father had fifteen hundred of them. But weapons, horses and armour for both man and beast were expensive and required constant maintenance. Thus the royal stables and armouries at Hatra were staffed by hundreds of squires, craftsmen, blacksmiths and armourers, all working constantly to ensure horses were groomed, fed, watered and shod with iron shoes, that armour was repaired and new suits made, plus the fixing and production of swords, axes, maces, spears, lances, arrows and bows. Any kingdom would find such an endeavour financially crippling, but Hatra was fortunate that it was beloved of Shamash, who had gifted it the Silk Road.

The Silk Road was the name of the trade route that connected China in the east with the kingdoms on Parthia’s western frontiers, including Rome. It was so named because the most precious commodity that was transported along the route, and which Rome had an insatiable desire for, was silk. And so great quantities of the precious material were transported by caravan from China through the Parthian Empire, and the Silk Road ran straight through Hatra, to the city itself and then north and west to the city of Antioch. From there it was transported by sea across the Mediterranean to Italy and Rome. The kings of the empire guarded the Silk Road jealously, establishing military strongpoints along its whole length across Parthia, and in return for their safety the merchants who used the Silk Road paid customs duties levied on their goods. In this way they profited handsomely when their wares arrived at their destinations unmolested, and Hatra grew rich from the unending number of caravans that traversed the kingdom each year.

‘But Dura is not Hatra,’ said my father.

He had asked me and Gallia to attend the weekly council meeting that was held in a small antechamber at the rear of the palace’s throne room. It was a plain room with a large table and chairs with a hide map of the Parthian Empire on one wall. Those present were my father, Kogan, Addu, Assur, Vistaspa and Vata in his capacity as the governor of Nisibus. Gallia’s presence was most unusual as women were forbidden to attend the royal council, at least until today. The expressions on the faces of Kogan, Addu and Assur conveyed their disapproval of this blonde-haired foreigner being seated among them, but Gallia ignored their frowns. Vistaspa wore his usual cold, aloof expression.

‘I know that, father.’

He lent back in his chair and regarded me for a moment. ‘Do you? Then what do you know about Dura?’

I shrugged. ‘It is a city on the west bank of the Euphrates. The opposite bank belongs to Hatra, so we shall be neighbours, father.’

A thin smile creased his lips. ‘While you have been here I took the trouble to find out a little more about Dura, and as Gallia is now your queen I thought it fitting that she hears what I have discovered.’

Gallia smiled at him, Assur frowned again and my father nodded at her. ‘Dura occupies a thin strip of land along the western bank of the Euphrates, as you say. The city was originally established by the Greeks over two hundred years ago, by the followers of Alexander the Great. It has been part of the Parthian Empire for less than fifty years, and in that time it has been more like a fortress outpost than a city. It was captured by Sinatruces when he was much younger than he is now, and ever since that time it was the domain of the King of Kings, to do with as he saw fit.

‘No one wanted to live in Dura or along the western bank of the Euphrates, so Sinatruces sent adventurers, exiles and those he wanted to be rid of to settle this new land. The result is that those who are now landowners view themselves as a separate people from the rest of the empire. They are sullen and resentful, and you, my son, are their new king. And if that was not bad enough, the desert that borders Dura’s lands are the territory of the Agraci.’