by Peter Darman
‘I heard Marcus Roscius boasting,’ said Spartacus, looking very much like a prince in his white silk shirt, tan leggings and black boots. ‘He killed Scarab and I am going to kill that bitch.’
Diana frowned. ‘Language, Spartacus, please.’
‘We should have killed her before we left Syria,’ he hissed.
‘Who?’ asked Gafarn.
‘Queen Aruna.’
‘The mother of Mithridates?’ Gafarn seemed surprised.
‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘She has made her home in Syria and Marcus Roscius was her lover. I have no doubt that she instigated the attack on our column.’
‘Her temperament has not mellowed, then,’ commented Gafarn dryly.
‘Having failed to kill me she is irrelevant to the current situation,’ I said.
‘She still deserves to die,’ seethed Spartacus.
‘There are many people worthy of a death sentence,’ I remarked, ‘but right now we must concentrate on an Armenian army intent on putting us all to the sword.’
‘And if Apollonius returns to the city with his men?’ queried Assur in his deep tone.
‘Then, sir,’ I replied, ‘I will apologise for the gross disservice I have done him.’
But it was too much of a coincidence that he was out of the city, the more so having taken most of the city’s soldiers with him. That night I stood on Hatra’s walls and looked north but saw no glow on the horizon to indicate an army’s campfires. Later, in my old room, I wrote a letter to Orodes informing him of the danger that threatened Hatra and that Crassus had rejected his offer and would be launching his campaign soon.
The next morning I rose early and joined a war council convened by Gafarn. Hatra’s king still did not believe that Apollonius had betrayed him but agreed with his being recalled to clear up any uncertainty. I suggested that it might be prudent to impose a curfew as Apollonius could have friends inside the city who might try to seize any of the four gates to allow the Armenians to enter.
‘I think you are letting your imagination run wild,’ commented a slightly annoyed Gafarn.
‘I will double the guards at the gates, majesty,’ stated Kogan. ‘I can vouch for the loyalty of all my men.’
Vistaspa said nothing but nodded approvingly at my suggestion. I did not wish to undermine my brother’s authority but I kept thinking of Spartacus’ words regarding murmurs of discontent among Hatra’s lords concerning their low-born king. It was but a short journey from discontent to outright treachery, especially in times of uncertainty and strife.
‘Still,’ I said, trying to be optimistic, ‘at least my army and Silaces’ men will be arriving soon, and after them Orodes, Nergal and Atrax.’
‘As lord high general,’ said Vistaspa, ‘what will be your plan, majesty?’
‘I would have liked to have engaged Crassus first before the Armenians,’ I replied, ‘but now we have no option but to give battle to the Armenians before the Romans.’
‘The Armenians are more numerous,’ said Vistaspa, remembering the hordes that Tigranes had brought to Nisibus when my father had requested a meeting with them.
‘That they do,’ I concurred, ‘but the Romans have always presented the greatest threat and that has not changed. The Armenians are mere puppets of Rome. If we had stopped Crassus then Artavasdes would have yielded to our demands, of that I have no doubt.’
There were voices outside and then the doors of the meeting opened and a guard entered. He bowed to Gafarn and then spoke into Kogan’s ear.
‘Let them in,’ he commanded.
The guard exited and seconds later a dust-covered Byrd and Malik entered and nodded to Gafarn. A wave of relief swept through me as I rose and embraced them both.
‘Your army half a day’s march away,’ said Byrd.
I closed my eyes and thanked Shamash for safeguarding a small pigeon that flew from Andromachus’ villa to Palmyra.
‘Gallia leads the army,’ reported Malik.
I slapped Byrd on the arm. ‘Your brother-in-law has saved the day for without him I would be either dead or in a Roman prison.’
‘He was under orders to keep an eye on you,’ replied Byrd nonchalantly.
‘Who guards Dura?’ I asked.
‘Spandarat,’ replied Malik, ‘much to his frustration, especially as Claudia told him that she was perfectly capable of organising the city’s defence. However, she has appointed him her official military adviser to keep him happy.’
‘At least I do not need to worry about my city,’ I said. I turned to Gafarn. ‘And, my brother, Hatra now stands a fighting chance.’
I made my apologies and left the meeting to summon Vagises before going to the stables to saddle Remus. Byrd and Malik acquired fresh horses and the four of us rode south into the desert to go and find my wife.
Two hours later on a small hillock we saw a party of Byrd’s scouts sitting on their horses. They observed us warily before recognising their commander as we drew closer to them. They trotted down the hillock and their leader, a lean man with a straggly beard, reported that the army was five miles to the south. We left them to continue their scouting duties and continued on, fifteen minutes later encountering a company of Vagises’ horse archers who formed part of the army’s forward screen. Finally we saw a vast cloud of dust in front of us and then a great column of horsemen and foot soldiers that seemingly had no end. A group of riders left the column and galloped towards us – figures wearing helmets, mail shirts and white tunics. I slowed Remus and waited as Gallia pulled up Epona beside me and removed her helmet.
‘I thought you might miss the war,’ she grinned.
I leaned over, pulled her to me and kissed her on the lips. ‘Never has a sight been more welcome.’
She glanced at Remus. ‘Where is Remus?’
‘This is Remus,’ I replied.
She was confused. ‘Why is he brown?’
‘I will tell you later.’
I returned with her and the Amazons to the front of the column where we were joined by Domitus and Chrestus, both of whom were on foot. He immediately noticed the colour of my horse.
‘Where’s Remus?’
I sighed. ‘This is Remus.’
‘Why have you painted him brown?’
‘I will tell you later.’
It took four more hours to reach Hatra, the army pitching its camp on the hard-packed dirt half a mile from the city’s southern gates. I sat down with Gallia and the others in the command tent and told them what had happened in Syria, and specifically Crassus turning down Orodes’ offer.
‘I could have told you that and saved you a journey, plus the lives of a hundred horse archers,’ remarked Domitus, chewing on a piece of cured meat. ‘All your trip will have achieved will have been to make Crassus more eager to seize the great riches he believes are at Ctesiphon.’
‘He is as arrogant as ever,’ said Vagises bitterly, who looked at me. ‘Tell them what he offered you.’
‘He wanted to make me king of kings of a Parthia that was a client state of Rome.’
‘You mean he wanted to enslave you,’ hissed Gallia.
I smiled at her. ‘That is what I told him.’
‘And that bitch Aruna tried to have you killed,’ said Domitus, smiling. ‘You made a lifelong enemy there. You should have heeded Dobbai’s words and killed her long ago. You still might have to.’
‘I have bigger things to worry about than an embittered mother,’ I told him. ‘The Armenians for one thing.’
I informed them of my concerns about Apollonius, his departure from Hatra with a large number of soldiers and how I believed that an Armenian army was on its way to Hatra.
‘I thought you said Byrd’s brother-in-law told you that Artavasdes was at Antioch,’ said Domitus.
I nodded.
‘Seems highly unlikely that his army would be making its way south without him,’ he continued, finishing off his strip of meat. ‘And you base your theory on what Marcus Roscius spouted at you
before you killed him.’
I nodded again.
‘That’s a lot of assumptions.’
‘You may be right,’ I agreed, ‘but I just cannot reconcile how Apollonius escaped with his life last year without making some sort of agreement with the Romans.’
Domitus stuck out his lower lip. ‘That is strange, I agree.’
‘What does it matter?’ said Gallia. ‘We are going to have to fight the Armenians and Romans anyway.’
Domitus and Malik laughed and Chrestus smiled.
‘Succinct as ever, my love,’ I said.
‘Have the Armenians any siege engines?’ asked a perplexed Marcus.
‘Not as far as I know,’ I replied. ‘Why?’
He ran a hand over his nearly bald crown. ‘Well, even if the Armenians are advancing on Hatra, how will they capture it without siege engines?’
‘They do not have to,’ I answered him. ‘All they have to do is sit in front of the walls while Crassus is free to run amok between the Euphrates and Tigris. And don’t forget that the Romans do have siege equipment. You are an engineer, Marcus, how long can a city of one hundred thousand people hold out for without hope of relief?’
‘Orodes and Nergal have been alerted and will bring their armies here, as will Atrax,’ said Gallia determinedly.
‘Let us pray they arrive in time,’ I added.
‘Orodes will be here in two days,’ said Domitus, ‘and Nergal will hopefully be with him.’
‘Atrax might take longer to get here,’ I said, ‘especially if he has taken his army to Media’s eastern border to support Aschek.’
Domitus frowned. ‘I thought Peroz’s father was marching to aid Aschek.’
‘He is,’ I agreed, ‘but Aschek is apt to panic and so it is wise to support him in his hour of need.’
‘I don’t know how he became king,’ sneered Domitus.
‘The same way my father and Atrax did,’ I replied. ‘Their fathers died and they inherited the throne.’
Domitus pulled out his dagger and began toying with it. ‘The Romans did away with their kings over four hundred years ago. Their republic is much more efficient.’
Peroz was shocked. ‘Rome killed its kings?’
Domitus smiled maliciously at him. ‘That’s right, and since then Rome has gone from strength to strength.’
‘Even though Domitus has lived in Parthia for twenty years there is still a part of him that is forever Roman,’ remarked Gallia, ‘is that not correct, Domitus?’
‘Old habits die hard,’ he replied wistfully.
‘You can take the man out of Rome but you cannot take Rome out of the man,’ I added mischievously.
Domitus bared his teeth and pointed his dagger at me. ‘What will you do if the Armenians do not turn up and this Apollonius turns out not to be a traitor?’
‘In those happy circumstances,’ I replied, ‘then we will meet Crassus and after we have defeated him we will march north, retake Nisibus and then invade Armenia to teach Artavasdes a lesson in manners.’
Peroz thumped the table in triumph and Malik smiled at him.
‘He reminds me of Surena,’ said the Agraci prince.
Domitus placed the point of his dagger on the table and began turning it. ‘Talking of him, can we expect your former squire to make an appearance in our hour of need?’
I held out my hands. ‘I have no answer to that.’
‘Impudent boy,’ snapped Gallia, ‘you should order him to attend you here.’
‘I could do that,’ I smiled at her, ‘and he would probably ignore me. He stormed out of a meeting with the high king so I hardly think he is going to obey a command from his lord high general.’
Gallia shook her head. ‘You say this Apollonius is a traitor but Surena’s actions are just as criminal. His troops could be the difference between defeat and victory.’
Domitus stopped turning his dagger. ‘She has a point, Pacorus.’
‘Surena, for all his faults, liberated Gordyene, raised an army and now spends his time killing Armenians. For all his insolence I cannot find it in myself to condemn him for his actions.’
‘That is because you found him, raised him up from the swamp he was living in, made him a warlord in your own image and unleashed him into the world,’ said Domitus. ‘I admire you for your loyalty, Pacorus, but he has reverted back into a wild savage, only this time he has an army and a kingdom to back him up.’
‘Surena is loyal,’ I insisted.
‘To you, yes,’ said Gallia, ‘but not to Parthia.’
Her hostility towards Surena had not abated since the first time she had met him and he had inadvertently touched her hair, so fascinated had he been by her blonde locks. Their relationship had deteriorated further when he had pursued Viper, one of her cherished Amazons. That he had gone on to marry the girl had infuriated my wife further but I knew Surena to be both brave and capable and I had viewed his achievements with a mixture of pride and admiration. If that was construed as weakness on my part by some then so be it.
The rest of the meeting was more agreeable, with Marcus reporting that his siege engines were all in working order and the camel train was loaded with not only replacement bronze-tipped arrows but also quivers full of Arsam’s new steel-tipped missiles. I gave orders that the latter were to be issued only when we faced Crassus, when we would put the theories of my chief armourer to the test. The arrival of Dura’s army meant that there were twenty-five thousand troops at Hatra, not including Kogan’s garrison of two thousand. To the west were Herneus’ ten thousand horse archers and another seven thousand under Silaces, which would swell our numbers to just over forty thousand men, enough to at least hold the Armenians until Orodes, Nergal and Atrax arrived.
At the end of the day, as I lay beside a sleeping Gallia in the palace, much of the anxiety that had gripped me since my journey from Syria had disappeared. The arrival of my troops and old friends had done much to dissipate it and the fact that no enemy army had been detected made me think that perhaps I had indeed let my imagination run away with me. I had, after all, based all my assumptions on the words of Marcus Roscius, the lover of Queen Aruna who had no doubt tutored him in the arts of deceit. What were the words of a Roman to me? Outside the warm night air was scented with the nectareous fragrance of the palace gardens where peacocks strutted, white doves roosted and fountains gushed sweet water from the eternal springs that gave the city life. This was Hatra, the impregnable fortress in the middle of the desert whose walls had never been breached by an enemy. As my wife’s chest rose slowly and subsided as she slept beside me I drifted into a sleep of contentment.
The next day the Armenians arrived.
I was standing in the palace’s large throne room in the presence of Hatra’s king and queen seated on their thrones with my mother looking very regal on the other side of Gafarn. She was wearing a long white gown with a crown on her head. Her black hair was loose and hung around her shoulders and she was had a gold belt around her waist and gold jewellery on her fingers. To the right of the dais upon which all three of them were seated was the severe Assur and his white-robed priests, and to the left Vistaspa and the commanders of the Royal Bodyguard and horse archers, plus Kogan and his senior officers. Diana’s son, Prince Pacorus, now thirteen years old, stood nervously next to Spartacus. Tall like his father, he had brown shoulder-length hair and a kindly face like his mother. When he caught my eye I smiled at him.
I stood beside Gallia in front of the dais and bowed my head at my brother and his wife, Diana rising to embrace her friend and Zenobia standing next to her. Diana also kissed Byrd and Domitus, much to the discomfiture of the latter, who stood as straight as a spear shaft beside me in his full armour, helmet in the crook of his arm. The hushed room was filled with the aroma of incense that had a calming effect. Spartacus smiled at Peroz who faced him.
‘Welcome Prince Peroz,’ said Gafarn, ‘brave son of King Phriapatius, our ally who holds the east of the empire.’
> Peroz bowed his head. ‘Thank you, majesty.’
‘And welcome Pacorus, King of Dura,’ continued Gafarn, ‘whose martial fame is known throughout the world and who brings the great and undefeated army of Dura to stand by our own.’
‘It is an honour to be here, brother,’ I replied.
The exchanges were all highly formalised but Hatra was a very traditional city where Assur and his priests held great sway, believing that adherence to time-honoured rituals would win the favour of Shamash and benefit the city and its rulers. My father had been a stickler for rules and regulations just as his father before him and I realised that Gafarn had followed in their footsteps. Some of the city’s nobles may grumble but while Gafarn had the support of Assur, whose priests controlled the masses, there would never be an outright challenge to his rule. Most of the city’s great nobles were standing near him now, in the uniform of the Royal Bodyguard, while their sons rode in the ranks. But I did not see any sign of Apollonius among them, the man responsible for losing the west of my brother’s kingdom. Despite the despatch of couriers no word had reached the city of the errant lord’s whereabouts, or the twenty thousand horse archers he had led out of the city, but at least news had reached us that Silaces was on his way from the city of Assur.
The high priest who had been named after the city where Herneus was governor had just finished reciting a prayer when the doors of the throne room opened behind me, and all eyes focused on the guard who marched stiffly towards Kogan. Even before the contents of the sheet of folded papyrus that he carried in his hand were read I knew that something was awry. Where before there was calm and reassurance there was suddenly apprehension. With every step that the guard took towards Kogan the tension palpably rose until it became almost unbearable as he handed the note to his commander. Kogan did not read it but instead walked in front of the dais, bowed and then held it out for Gafarn to take. My brother did so and read its contents, then handed it to Diana to peruse.
