by Peter Darman
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.’
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p; 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 m
e. ‘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.
