Parthian Vengeance (The Parthian Chronicles)

by Darman, Peter

  I directed Remus against a horseman, veered him right, brought up my kontus and then plunged it into the target, the long point easily piercing the man’s scale armour. Remus’ momentum meant the shaft continued to disappear into his chest half its length, swatting him from his saddle before I released. I grabbed my mace to swing it at a kontus that was being aimed at me by a rider in the enemy’s second rank. I managed to deflect the blow as the horseman passed me and I swung my mace at his helmet, but he ducked, released his lance and in one slick movement drew his sword and directed a backswing at me that glanced off my leg armour. Then I was behind the enemy lines, which appeared to have been two ranks only.

  I wheeled Remus around and rejoined the mêlée – a frenzied maelstrom of mace, axe and sword blows. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the great yellow banner of Narses to my right and so I dug my knees into Remus who bolted forward. I raised my mace above my head as I closed on the figure of Narses who was finishing off a horseman with his sword, driving its point through the victim’s exposed neck. He whooped in delight as the man fell from his horse and had just enough time to turn to see me attack him, striking his armourless left arm with my mace. He yelped in pain as I passed him, brought Remus to a halt and wheeled him around. As I did I was surprised to see that Narses had followed and now swung his sword at me, the blade striking my arm armour and denting it. Then he was beside me and we were attacking each other with a superhuman rage, oblivious to what was happening around us. He moved his sword with the deftness of a juggler throwing a ball, one horizontal cut knocking the mace from my hand. I drew my sword and swung it at his head but missed. He kept his horse moving around Remus, aiming a series of downward swinging cuts with his sword at my neck and face, the only exposed parts of my body.

  But by now the yellow sleeve of his left arm was soaked in blood and his movements were more laboured as I aimed a vertical cut at his helmet in an attempt to split it. He brought up his sword to stop the blow and then flicked his wrist to swing his blade horizontally at me. The point of his sword nicked my neck as it passed in front of me, but before he could aim another blow I instinctively thrust my sword forward and drove it through his neck. I yanked it free and he toppled onto the ground. Narses was dead!

  ‘Narses is dead, Narses is dead!’ I screamed, holding my sword aloft in triumph.

  No one heard me as I looked around to see hundreds of men engaged in their own personal combat, hacking and stabbing at each other, trying to find weak spots in their opponent’s armour. As I sat on Remus panting and soaked in sweat I saw small groups of horsemen with yellow sleeves leaving the mêlée and falling back. The enemy was breaking; victory was ours.

  Vagharsh came through the fighting with an escort of my men and rode up to me. I pointed at the dead body of Narses lying on the ground and spat at it.

  ‘Behold, the King of Persis and Parthia’s lord high general.’

  More and more enemy horsemen were now fleeing and around us horns were sounding to reassemble the ranks.

  ‘Congratulations, lord,’ beamed Vagharsh, who also spat on the body of Narses.

  Then Orodes appeared, his leg and arm armour looking as though it had been struck many times by a large hammer. He stared at my bleeding neck with alarm.

  ‘You are hurt, Pacorus.’

  The elation of killing Narses had blocked out all other feelings, including pain, so I slid my sword into its scabbard and felt my neck. The wound was not deep and I felt nothing, though my neck was smeared with blood. It obviously looked worse than it was.

  ‘Just a scratch. Narses is dead, Orodes.’

  He looked down at the corpse on the ground, slid off his horse and knelt beside it. He turned it over, ripped off its helmet and sighed.

  He looked up at me. ‘It is not Narses, Pacorus; it is his eldest son, Nereus.’

  The energy drained from me and suddenly my neck ached with a vengeance.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said, but looking at the blood-smeared face I knew the answer before he spoke. Despite its fair hair, broad forehead and powerful frame I could see that it was the face of a young man.

  He stood up and I helped him regain his saddle.

  ‘I’m afraid Narses is elsewhere on the battlefield,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps with those,’ offered Vagharsh, who was looking south at a great mass of horsemen approaching our position. They were around six or seven hundred paces away and moving at a steady pace as the remnants of the enemy’s heavy cavalry passed through their ranks. We may have defeated the opposition’s heavy horsemen but now faced being assaulted by a great many more mounted spearmen. These riders were Mithridates’ men judging by the huge banners fluttering among their ranks showing an eagle clutching a snake in its talons. Carrying round, red-painted shields and protected by leather armour around their torsos and helmets on their heads, at close quarters they were no match for cataphracts. However, we had lost our lances in the charge, had suffered losses and they outnumbered us by at least two to one.

  As the men reformed their ranks behind us in preparation for another charge my father appeared with his bodyguard, Atrax alongside him.

  ‘Greetings, father, it is good to see you safe.’

  He noticed my wound. ‘You are hurt.’

  ‘It is nothing.’

  He then pointed with his sword at the approaching spearmen.

  ‘We must advance to meet those horsemen otherwise they will infiltrate our centre.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Orodes.

  The kings dispersed and took up our positions in the front ranks of our men once more. We began to move forward but then a great mass of horsemen appeared on our left flank, moving across our front towards the enemy. In front of them fluttered the banner of a silver lion on a red background – Surena. We called a halt as his archers began shooting arrows at Mithridates’ men. The latter may have been wearing protection on their heads and torsos but they were wearing green tunics and brown leggings and thus their arms and legs were completely exposed. Their horses were also unarmoured and within minutes men and animals were hit and falling as Surena’s riders unleashed an arrow storm against them. Each rider was shooting up to five arrows a minute and there appeared to be at least three thousand horsemen under Surena’s command: two hundred and fifty arrows a second were being shot at the enemy.

  The missile deluge immediately halted the advance of the spearmen, the front ranks being thinned considerably before they about-faced and retreated out of arrow range. Surena’s companies kept their cohesion and also fell back to a position around four hundred paces in front of us. He galloped across to me and saluted. I laughed.

  ‘You don’t have to salute me. You really must get used to being a king, Surena, but your presence is most welcome.’

  ‘Thank you, lord.’

  ‘What is the situation on the left?’

  ‘Lord Vistaspa has the measure of the enemy. We have more men than they do so when we advance they retreat, and when we fall back to entice them into a trap they advance but do not take the bait. Lord Vistaspa sent me to support you when he saw the spearmen advance.’

  Once more the kings gathered around me to assess the situation. Dead horses and their riders lay around us as the order was given to fall back to our initial positions.

  My father slammed his sword back in its scabbard. ‘Stalemate!’

  He turned to me. ‘What is happening on the right wing?’

  I had no idea, so after thanking Surena for his assistance I decided to ride over to where the legions and Babylonians were deployed to see for myself.

  Judging by the sun’s position in the sky it was now late afternoon and in the centre and on our left wing the opposing armies remained in approximately the same position they had occupied before the fighting had begun. As I galloped across to the right wing I discovered a similar situation. The Durans and the Exiles were now each deployed in two lines, extending from the river inland, the Babylonians having withdrawn to take up position be
hind the Exiles. I could see arrows being shot from the ranks of the two huge blocks of enemy spearmen opposite the legions, the missiles arching into the sky before falling on the locked shields of the legionaries. And from within the ranks of the latter Marcus’ ballista were hard at work.

  I found Domitus a hundred paces behind the second line of cohorts in conversation with Kronos, Marcus and a group of Babylonian officers, the latter trotting past me back to their men as I slid off Remus’ back in front of my senior commanders.

  ‘What is happening?’ I asked.

  Domitus pointed at the Babylonians. ‘We had to pull their men back behind the Exiles when the enemy opposite began hurling arrows and sling shots at us. They took a fearful amount of punishment before we managed to rearrange our lines, though.’

  ‘The Babylonians have lost over a thousand men,’ added Kronos.

  ‘That many?’ I was amazed.

  Domitus spat on the ground. ‘The enemy are no fools. They brought forward their archers and concentrated their arrows against the Babylonians, hardly gave us any attention at first. Just poured volley after volley at the Babylonians, knowing they would not be able to lock their shields as we do. Within minutes hundreds had been killed or wounded.’

  ‘We had to pull them back behind our lines and extend the front of the legions to prevent them being destroyed,’ added Kronos.

  ‘After that most of the enemy archers and slingers pulled back behind their own spearmen,’ said Domitus, ‘though as you can see a few are dispersed among the front ranks.’

  I glanced over to where the cohorts stood in their ranks and saw arrows dropping onto their shields. The volume of arrows being discharged by the enemy was not intense but rather desultory.

  ‘Without the Babylonians we are spread a bit thin,’ continued Domitus.

  ‘Why don’t they attack?’ I asked.

  ‘They too have lost a lot of men,’ replied Kronos. ‘I doubt they have the will to get to grips with the legions.’

  I was confused. ‘How so?’

  Domitus nodded towards Marcus who had a self-satisfied grin on his face.

  ‘After their arrow storm and our reorganisation we brought forward Marcus’ machines and placed them in the front line and allocated them their own details of shield bearers for protection. They have been shooting for over an hour now.’

  ‘And doing very nicely,’ added Marcus.

  His smaller ballista usually shot iron-tipped bolts that were three and half feet long or small stones and iron balls, but during the past few months Marcus and Arsam had been working on new missiles for the machines. This was the first campaign in which they had been used and the results were most promising. Marcus called them ‘shield piercers’, these eighteen-inch long arrow darts that were made from ash and had iron tips. Designed to punch through shields and armour, they had thinner fore shafts to aid penetration and short, stubby fins made from maple that were glued into grooves cut in the rear of the ash shaft. Light and compact, they had a range of around four hundred yards and their great velocity meant they could punch through wicker shields with ease. Each of Marcus’ dozen ballista could fire up to four darts a minute and thus far had fired nearly three thousand of them at the packed ranks of the enemy, though he had now reduced each ballista’s rate of fire to one bolt a minute to conserve ammunition.

  ‘And they are standing in their ranks and taking such punishment?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘Narses does not care about the lives of his soldiers as you do,’ said Domitus. ‘The problem we have is that even with three thousands of them dead and wounded...’

  ‘Oh, they will be dead,’ interrupted Marcus.

  Domitus tilted his head at him and continued. ‘Even with three thousand of them dead I reckon there are still a few thousand left, to say nothing of their slingers and archers.’

  ‘What about Duran losses?’ I asked.

  ‘Four wounded thus far,’ replied Kronos.

  I was tempted to order an all-out attack by the legions against Narses’ spearmen but it was getting late and the men had been standing in their ranks for hours and would be fatigued. So I commanded Marcus to order his machines to halt their shooting to see what reaction it would have on the enemy. The result was that their archers and slingers also stopped their activity and so the legionaries were at last able to rest their shields on the ground as both sides observed each other warily across no man’s land. Parties were sent to the river to fill water bottles as the enemy spearmen inched back towards the date palm grove to increase the distance between them and Marcus’ killing machines.

  Thus did a cessation of fighting take place across the whole battlefield. It had been a disappointing end to a day that had begun with so much promise.

  Dura’s camp was sited some five hundred paces to the rear of the legions’ battle line. While archers and slingers were shooting at the legionaries the squires and civilian drivers had been busy digging a ditch and using the earth to erect a rampart immediately behind it. As the legions marched back to camp they were finishing driving stakes into the rampart to create the palisade. The legionaries erected their tents as Strabo oversaw the stabling of the horses and camels within the camp’s perimeter. The camp’s western entrance was located next to the river and so Strabo organised the watering of the animals while Marcus assigned parties of legionaries to fetch water for human consumption further upstream from where the animals were drinking, pissing and spreading their dung.

  I sent couriers to the other kings inviting them to bring their own men into camp but they declined.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ remarked Marcus as he sat in a chair in my command tent. ‘It would be a very crowded camp with the forces of the other kings inside.’

  After Alcaeus had bandaged my neck I had called a council of war to take stock of our situation after the day’s inconclusive fighting. At least the reports were heartening. Vagises and his horse archers had seen almost no fighting though much riding to and fro as Vistaspa sought to outmanoeuvre the enemy’s horse archers. The only casualties he suffered were a handful of men with broken legs as a result of being thrown from their horses. Gallia had, mercifully, spent the whole day immobile, sweating in her armour and helmet along with the unused reserve of her Amazons and Babylon’s five hundred royal guards. I already knew that casualties among the legions were insignificant and so the heaviest losses were among my cataphracts – fifteen dead and twenty wounded. Normally these figures would be a cause for celebration after a battle but all the faces round the table wore expressions of indifference, with the exception of Marcus, who was delighted with the success of his ‘shield piercers’.

  ‘Mithridates and Narses will be happier than we are,’ said Domitus, yawning. ‘They have essentially fought us to a standstill.’

  ‘But have lost most of their cataphracts in the process as well as Narses’ own son,’ I said.

  ‘They still have a lot of horsemen left,’ remarked Vagises.

  ‘The legions should attack first thing tomorrow, Pacorus,’ said Domitus. ‘That might stiffen the resolve of the Babylonians. I doubt they will be able to withstand another day of being pelted with arrows and stones, and we cannot protect them and fight the enemy at the same time.’

  It made sense. In terms of equipment, training and tactics the Babylonian foot were second rate compared to the legions.

  ‘How many enemy spearmen did you face today?’ I asked Domitus.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Thirty, forty thousand.’

  I was surprised. ‘That many?’

  ‘Plus archers and slingers,’ added Kronos.

  ‘After we get to grips with them at close quarters numbers won’t matter,’ said Domitus. ‘But what we don’t want is another day standing around under a hail of arrows and stones.’

  Kronos nodded in agreement and Marcus looked disappointed, no doubt eager to unleash his new invention against the enemy once more.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Tomorro
w we attack.’

  Two hours later I received an invitation from Orodes to attend a meeting of the kings in his camp. It must have been nearly midnight when I left my tent to ride to the Babylonian camp located next to Dura’s army, a vast, disorganised sprawl of tents, corrals, wagons and temporary stables that stretched into the distance. And beyond the Babylonians were the tents of Hatra, Media and finally Gordyene, the latter encompassed within a square earth rampart like my own. To the south the campfires of the enemy dotted the landscape to resemble a multitude of stars that had fallen to earth. It was clear that the enemy was also determined to fight on the morrow.

  When I arrived at Orodes’ tent I found the other kings already there. Atrax nodded to me as he filled a cup with wine and then limped back to his chair. My father looked angry and Surena tired as I greeted them. Orodes held out a full cup for me to take. He appeared to be his usual unruffled self. We sat in a circle as Vistaspa, who appeared remarkably fresh considering his age, recounted the day’s events. His horse archers on the left wing had achieved little save stopping the enemy horse archers directly opposite influencing the battle. Surena’s intervention had halted the charge of the enemy’s mounted spearmen against our cataphracts, who had engaged and destroyed the enemy’s heavy horsemen, the son of Narses having been killed in that particular engagement. Vistaspa smiled at me as he relayed this news. To complete the debriefing I informed them that my legions had initially been subjected to an enemy missile storm that had proved ineffective.

  ‘Though at a cost of over a thousand Babylonian dead, I am sorry to say,’ reported Orodes.

  Fortunately the other kings reported minor losses among their contingents, which meant that hostilities could be continued with the coming of the new dawn.

  ‘We must attack the enemy along the whole line tomorrow,’ I stated.

  ‘I agree,’ said my father. ‘We must finish this once and for all.’

  ‘Then my suggestion,’ I continued, ‘is for the legions to attack on the right to shatter the enemy’s left wing. After Narses’ foot soldiers have been destroyed my men will advance on Susa.’