Parthian Vengeance (56 page)

The mace is an effective and brutal impact weapon ordinarily used after the charge, but today there would be no charge. Some men preferred to use axes, which were also solid steel instruments with a head comprising a blade and a point on the opposite side.

I nudged Remus forward and the others followed, walking to the edge of the riverbank and then down its side and into the water. In front of me the front rank of the enemy’s horsemen threw their lances into the water and armed themselves with their own maces and axes. And thus began a grim close-quarters battle. There were no battle cries or thunder of horse hooves, just a great clatter as each side began hacking at the other with their weapons.

In such a mêlée the ability to avoid blows is as important as the skill to deliver them. I leaned to my left to avoid a scything blow from a man holding an axe that would have lopped my head off had it hit me. His horse stopped beside Remus as he brought the axe in front of his body then swung it up and then down to split my helmet and then my skull. I deflected the blow with my mace, forcing his axe away from me. But he attacked me with its point using a backswing that I stopped with my mace only inches from my face. I grabbed his axe with my left hand and he grabbed my left wrist with his free hand, and so we pushed and pulled each other like a pair of has-been wrestlers.

He was strong and the only thing that weighed our private war in my favour was the leather strap wrapped round my wrist. His axe had no such attachment and I eventually managed to wrench it from his hand and throw it into the water. I brought my mace back and then with all my strength swung it against the side of his helmet, splitting the metal and causing him to let out a groan. I swung the mace again and again at the same spot, penetrating the metal and his skull. One of the blows must have driven a steel flange into his brain, for he slumped in the saddle and then slid off his horse into the water without making another sound.

I looked left to see a horsemen coming directly at me with his mace held high above his head, ready to bring it down on my head. But before he could reach me one of my own men attacked him and they became embroiled in their own personal fight. I transferred my mace to my left hand and pulled my
spatha
as another rider attacked me on my right side. This time I blocked his overhead swing with my own mace and drove the tip of my sword into his exposed right armpit, driving the blade deep into his flesh. He gave a high-pitched scream as I forced the blade forward and yanked it back. I was prevented from finishing him off by a mace blow that dug into the steel rings on my left arm.

I instinctively swung my mace back with my left arm and felt it strike something, then turned to see a horse rear up and throw its rider into the river. I must have hit it on the head with my weapon.

And so it went on, men hacking and slashing wildly in all directions in a huge disorganised mêlée that seemed to go on forever. I do not know how long we were in the water. It seemed like hours but in reality was probably around thirty minutes. But as Remus moved back and forth in the brown water streaked with blood it became apparent that the enemy’s greater weight of numbers had not achieved a breakthrough, at least not yet. But their numerical superiority meant that they could feed in more and more men against our tiring ranks, replacing their own injured and exhausted riders with fresh reinforcements. And yet it did not seem so because after what seemed like an eternity, following which my arms and shoulders ached, a gradual lull descended over the two sides. As if by mutual consent each side withdrew from each other, revealing a river filled with armoured corpses, most lying face down in the blood-streaked water. Some men had been unhorsed and these now waded towards the safety of their own lines. My arm armour was battered and dented though it had saved me from serious injury. I looked at the head and neck of Remus, then at his sides and rear. Not a mark on him; indeed, looking up and down the line it appeared that no horses had been killed at all.

Orodes came to my side, his armour missing several metal scales and his helmet’s right cheek guard almost hanging off where a blow had smashed the hinge. He was breathing heavily.

‘Are you hurt?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘Exhausted would be a more accurate description. I don’t know if we can hold them if they attack again.’

Around us men had pushed their full-face helmets up on their heads and were breathing in great gulps of air. By contrast their horses appeared relatively fresh. At least they would be able to carry their riders back to the city if we were forced to retreat.

‘They are they falling back.’

I looked at Orodes. ‘Who?’

He pointed with his mace towards the enemy horsemen whose front ranks were now backing slowly away from us, the ranks behind having about-faced and were exiting the water. To the south the mass of enemy light horsemen who had been riding up and down the riverbank in preparation to cross once the cataphracts had scattered us were also pulling back.

‘My father’s army,’ I said, grinning at him.

The army of Hatra had marched fifteen miles upstream to cross the Tigris at a shallow spot that Byrd and Malik had scouted during our march from Nisibus. My father had earlier sent horsemen to the exact same spot to ensure that the enemy did not use it to cross the river and then take us unawares. But the enemy’s attention was focused on the Plain of Makhmur and its wide ford, wide enough for a great army to move across with ease. So my father had marched his horsemen north, crossed the river and then headed south while the enemy attacked Dura’s army. And now Hatra’s horsemen smashed into the enemy’s unguarded right flank.

After the battle I heard from Byrd and Malik, who had ridden with my father, what had happened. It was mid-morning before Hatra’s cavalry were safely across the river and had deployed into their battle formations – cataphracts in the centre and horse archers on the wings. They then rode directly south towards the Plain of Makhmur, driving deep into the mass of unsuspecting horsemen who were waiting to cross the river.

The initial clash cut down thousands of light horsemen, but so many were the enemy that the charge slowed and then stopped as Hatra’s horsemen were literally swallowed by the hostile mass. My father was contemplating ordering a withdrawal but his unexpected arrival on the battlefield had panicked Cinnamus and Vologases, who ordered a general retreat, hence the withdrawal of the cataphracts from the river.

As the horsemen in front of us left the river and then rode away I sent a rider to Herneus with orders for him to bring his men to the river. Notwithstanding that our horses still had their legs their riders were in no fit state to conduct a pursuit. Ten minutes later he arrived.

‘The enemy appears to be retreating. Get your men across the river and harry them. If they reform and attack, fall back.’

‘Yes, majesty. I assume your father, the king, has achieved success.’

‘It would appear so,’ I agreed.

He raised his hand in salute and then rode back to his men who had formed into columns and were now filing into the river, threading their way between dead horsemen floating in the water. I gave orders for a general retreat back to our initial position behind the Exiles. I stayed with Orodes and the rear guard as Vagises and a company of his men joined us.

‘Some of their light horsemen got over the river,’ he reported. ‘We killed most of them before the rest retreated back to the east bank.’

‘What are your losses?’ I asked him.

‘Light, although we have yet to take a roll call.’ He looked at the dead bodies in the river. ‘And yours?’

‘It was a long fight,’ I answered grimly.

Two hours later I was standing with Domitus and Kronos behind the rows of stakes that had served them so well that day. In front of us was a great heap of enemy dead – men and horses victims of the legions’ javelins.

‘They tried another assault after their first one,’ he said disapprovingly, ‘but failed to get even near the stakes, let alone us. They were limited to hurling their spears at us, so we hurled a few more javelins back.’

‘After we emptied many more saddles they fell back,’ added Kronos.

‘What are your losses?’ I asked.

‘Four dead and seventy wounded,’ answered Domitus.

‘And yours, Kronos?’ I asked.

Kronos looked at Domitus. ‘Four dead and seventy wounded are our combined losses.’

It had been an amazingly one-sided fight, the consequence of well-trained men standing behind a wall of impenetrable stakes. My cataphracts had not been so lucky. A roll call revealed that a hundred had been killed and a further two hundred wounded, though at least Vagises’ horse archers had suffered only fifty dead and a hundred and fifty wounded.

The sun was abating in its fury now it was late afternoon but I was still glad to take off my scale armour and leg and arm armour. Already the squires, who had been lining the walls of Assur with their bows to cover any retreat we may have had to make to the city, were stripping their masters’ horses of their scale armour and loading it back onto their camels, as well as collecting the
kontuses
that had been dumped on the ground earlier. Losses among the cataphracts would be made good by promoting the eldest squires, and when we got back to Dura fresh squires would be inducted into the army.

Orodes had four squires, two for himself and two for me as he was always letting me know, and they now assisted me in unfastening the armoured suit that had protected Remus so well during the battle. As his squires packed his scale armour away, Alcaeus, who with his physicians had been treating the wounded, examined Orodes. Those seriously injured were taken back to the city on wagons where they could be treated more thoroughly.

Alcaeus gave Orodes a bandage to hold next to his wounded face. ‘Nothing serious, you’ll live. Just keep it clean.’

‘Make sure it does not leave a scar, Alcaeus,’ I said. ‘His future bride won’t like it.’

‘Future bride?’ said Alcaeus, mildly interested.

‘Orodes is to marry Queen Axsen of Babylon.’

Orodes looked daggers at me. ‘It is still uncertain,’ he snapped.

‘My congratulations,’ said Alcaeus. ‘I’m sure there will be no scar.’

He looked at my arm that was bleeding from where my armour had been dented by a mace, the white sleeve of my shirt showing red.

‘What about you?’

‘It’s fine, Alcaeus, I hope to have another scar to add to my collection.’

Alcaeus nodded slightly and then looked at the piles of dead horse carcasses and bodies intertwined on and in front of the stakes and then to the bodies floating in the river.

‘What about them?’

I shrugged. ‘What about them? They are dead.’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘Notwithstanding your god-like powers of observation, the bodies need to be collected and burned quickly to avoid sickness spreading to the city.’

‘Oh, the city authorities can deal with that,’ I replied casually.

Alcaeus raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I would advise you to assume the responsibility. You can use those stakes for fuel. It would be a pity if having fought a battle to preserve this city, it was devastated by a plague.’

‘He’s right Pacorus,’ said Orodes, ‘I have seen with my own eyes what pestilence can do to cities.’

‘Very well,’ I agreed, ‘I will detail Domitus to organise it, seeing that his men were responsible for most of the carnage.’

In fact the city garrison did assist the legionaries in their grim task of piling dead horses and men onto a dozen pyres that were erected near the riverbank, but not before they were stripped of anything that could be reused: spearheads, helmets, scale armour and swords.

That night I stood on the walls at the Southern Gate with my father and watched the fires burn, an easterly wind fortunately saving our nostrils from the stench of roasting flesh. Thankfully there was not a scratch on him and losses among his men had been light like my own.

‘Herneus will snap at the enemy’s heels,’ he said, looking south at the funerals pyres that illuminated the night. ‘Tomorrow I will organise the dead on the Plain of Makhmur to be burned.’

‘How many dead are there?’

He smiled. ‘During our initial charge we must have been killing them at a rate of a thousand every minute. There’s probably around twenty thousand dead on the plain.’

‘We counted ten thousand corpses,’ I said. ‘A great victory, father.’

He screwed up his face. ‘They still have seventy thousand horsemen, Pacorus. I have prevented them from invading Hatra but they are still a threat.’

‘Herneus will inflict more casualties on them.’

‘Yes, he will harry them and hopefully force them further east but he will not be able to destroy them, and if he himself is under threat of being destroyed he will retreat.’

‘And then what?’

He spread out his hands. ‘Then we will have more war. I pray to Shamash that Farhad and Aschek still have their armies, for if they fall then Hatra is surely doomed.’

I was shocked. I had never heard him talk with so much pessimism before. But if the worst happened and Media and Atropaiene fell, then Hatra would face two great armies in the east, a hostile Armenia to the north and perhaps another enemy to the south, for Babylon was still in peril.

‘I would like to stay and assist you, father, but I must try to help Axsen. If Babylon falls then so will Mesene, and after that…’

He smiled thinly. ‘I know. Mithridates and Narses have played their hands well. They stand on the brink of victory. What happened here today will not matter if Babylon, Media and Atropaiene all fall.

‘For myself, I must march east to assist Farhad and Aschek.’

I tried to be positive. ‘The game is not yet up, father. If you can prevail with Media and Atropaiene and I can relieve Babylon then…’

‘Then we are back in exactly the same position we were in at the beginning of the year. There can now never be peace between Mithridates and us. It is a war to the death. Well, so be it. I have tried to walk the path of peace and diplomacy, to respect the office of the king of kings as in the old days. And my reward? To see my kingdom threatened.’