The Better of Two Men

by JD Smith

  ‘I have already told him that I will not. He will go in my place. Shapur does not hold position to make demands and I would have him know it. I will not humour him.’

  ‘I hold no blame after what happened the last time, but are you not afraid that Shapur will tell Odenathus what happened to you? What Jadhima did? There is no reason why he should not.’

  ‘I will deny it if he does. And you must agree to that lie. It is best for everyone. No good can come of speaking the truth now.’

  ‘He will discover it eventually, one way or another.’

  ‘Never,’ she said, her voice angry and determined, a hint of fear that surprised me. ‘He must never know.’

  ‘Odenathus would not be angry with you for something that happened against your will. With Jadhima and with Shapur, of course, but not with you. It was he who sent you to the meet, after all. If anything he will feel guilt at having put you in danger and subjecting you to the actions of others.’

  Sands whistled across the ground between our camp and Nisibis. Leaves and twigs carried on the cold winter wind. The dark and the light of the moon cast shadows beneath the movement, making the debris of our lands flicker silver and black.

  Zenobia was silent. She looked out into the night and she too glowed.

  ‘I am with child,’ she said.

  Time dragged slowly, pulling with it thought of Zenobia giving birth to a boy with Jadhima’s face, pinched eyes and cruel mouth, Odenathus’ rage at his wife’s secrets and where her determination led her, and the fear of what would become of us all.

  Zenobia’s face was blank and as empty of expression as the bleak sands upon which we sat. She looked back into my eyes, her own black as the Stone of Elagabal, the depth of them hiding so much. I could scarce believe her words, no more their meaning.

  ‘Jadhima’s?’

  It was all I could utter, the only thing that seemed important, the health of the child irrelevant. Should I have asked if she was well, if she thought the baby growing strong? Or should I wish for it to wither and die in her belly as her first had? The crimson of her sheets, of her robes, lying in the pools of her own blood, shook me.

  ‘I do not know. That is why I am torn,’ she said, her voice matter of fact.

  ‘Torn between what?’

  ‘Allowing it to grow or ensuring it never takes breath. After the struggle to bring Vaballathus into this world, and the time it has taken me to conceive again, I feel unable to choose death for this unborn child.’

  What of her own feeling towards it? What of the natural bond between mother and child, did that have no say in the matter? Was she to see it as the wild beasts do, to live or die by nature’s law? I thought the questions but dared not speak them. Not because I was afraid of Zenobia’s reaction or her anger, but because I was not that person, I was still a young man struggling to find his voice in a country of men and warriors and generals with more knowledge than I, more experience of the world.

  She looked away from me back out toward the city of Nisibis.

  ‘Odenathus is not my father. He would never accept what has happened. Never entertain the thought of me giving birth to a child that is not his own. It is not in his nature. My father knew my mother was raped by Roman soldiers and carried you in her belly when he met her. He felt only pity. He went to great lengths to seek you out when he thought you lost to slavery. But Odenathus is not capable of such understanding. You will not tell him.’

  I hesitated. The thought of Julius and his affection warmed my heart and at the same time the reality of my father being a Roman who raped Meskenit brought a fresh wave of sickness. I thought of Zenobia and Jadhima. I was the only person to have knowledge of his actions and felt great discomfort.

  ‘Does Odenathus know you are with child at all?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘What if it is Jadhima’s child and grows in his father’s shadow, a child the same as the man?’ I said, then realised that I was no Roman soldier and would never rape a woman. I was more Julius’ son than any other man’s. Could this child be good and honest and true? Could it be all mother and nothing of its father?

  ‘Then it is a question of my will and my nature overcoming that of its father,’ she replied, speaking my mind. ‘I must raise this child as mine, in my way, to be a Palmyrene and son or daughter to the King. Beyond that it is in the hands of the gods. If this child is not to be, if it is a Tanukh, they will do what needs to be done.’

  I grasped to the image of Aurelia almost come to term, willed myself by her side to witness the first days of my own infant. I felt tears threaten, but they did not come, and my heart settled back into a steady rhythm.

  I dreamt of Aurelia: the huge swell of her stomach, her soft lips. Cries during childbirth. Blood and sweat and screaming. Zabdas, Zabdas, she gasped. Zabdas. Her eyes pleading. Her mouth distorted. Wet hair clinging to her neck and face as I tried to brush it from her but could not. I was too far away. Too distant. My hands were slick with sweat. She screamed again and I reached out to her but my fingertips groped at nothing. Aurelia, I called. Aurelia, I am here. I am with you. You are safe. But even as I spoke she began to fade, vanishing slowly, then suddenly she was ripped from sight and I was left awake, startled and gasping for breath.

  ‘Zabdas, come and see.’

  I opened my eyes to find a soldier crouched beside me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come and look.’

  I rubbed my face with my hands, plucked my sword from among furs lining my tent, and followed him out into the dark.

  Stars shone bright in the night sky. The moon cast an ethereal light. The gods were watching us. They looked down on this clear night to see our troubles and our success; to keep an eye upon their games and know who held the better cards.

  I was not the only man woken from slumber. Throughout the camp men stumbled from their tents and into the cold.

  We reached the edge of the camp. Nisibis stood before us, some few hundred paces away, dark and rising from the black sea of sand as if growing up through the ground. The tops of the walls were lit by the moon. I saw no soldiers upon them, just as there were none in the light of day.

  ‘What are we here to see?’

  ‘There,’ he whispered. He pointed to the right of the city.

  My eyes strained in the dark. Looking, searching, trying to see whatever it was he saw in the grey of night.

  There, in the distance. Movement.

  ‘It is as if the ground shifts,’ I said.

  ‘Not the ground, but the people upon it.’

  ‘Gods, they are coming out. People are leaving the city. Wake Odenathus and Zenobia. Rouse the camp. Do it now.’

  I saw them clearly now I knew they were there, trailing a path from the city north. Thinking themselves concealed by darkness, shrouded in the ghost of day.

  The King joined my side, Zenobia a moment later.

  ‘Soldiers or citizens?’ Odenathus asked.

  ‘The citizens would not leave under the cover of darkness,’ Zenobia said. ‘Why would they?’

  ‘True,’ Odenathus replied. ‘Then we are to assume they are soldiers.’

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Pouja hissed, joining us.

  Despite his general’s tone, Odenathus put a hand genially on Pouja’s shoulder and pointed to the Persians leaving the city.

  ‘See them?’

  ‘Gods give me strength,’ Pouja said. ‘They could be abandoning the city. Or they could be looping around the back of us, intending to fucking strike. Fuck the gods, they are playing with us.’

  ‘They move north,’ I said. ‘I think they intend to reach a place to cross the Khabur before heading south. We need to get riders on the road to warn Zabbai in Singara. They will have to pass him if they head immediately south.’

  Odenathus nodded.

  ‘And if they are looping back, we must be ready.’

  We were prepared for their sudden strike at our rear all night, waiting in the dark, not kn
owing if the Persians would come, half wanting to finish this battle, half wanting never to engage them again. Perhaps they waited for dawn to approach, but as the sun broke on the horizon I heard no battle cry, no drums, no thudding of horses’ hooves.

  Odenathus left two hundred soldiers in Nisibis to reinforce the defences and ensure that should the Persians return they would not retake the city. We broke camp, taking everything with us, and left in pursuit.

  ‘You should tell Odenathus of the baby,’ I said to Zenobia as we rode.

  ‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘He would want me to return to Palmyra, and I do not wish to go just yet. I want to see this through, one way or another. I need to see us victorious before I can rest before the birth.’

  I almost scoffed at the idea of Odenathus making Zenobia do anything she did not want to. Then I reflected she was right. They would argue and she would be defiant and the cooperation I had seen, the alliance and bond between husband and wife, King and Queen, would disintegrate just as we were about to engage the enemy.

  Zenobia rode her camel, hair pulled back from her face, leather armour strapped tight across her breast. No swell could be seen beneath it, not yet.

  ‘What if we chase Jadhima now and not Shapur?’ I said. ‘Perhaps we pursue both. What would you do to him given the opportunity? That is why you stay with the army, is it not? You want him dead.’

  I knew it was not the reason Zenobia stayed. She needed none beyond her thirst for progress, for Syria to be safe and the Persians gone from our lands.

  Zenobia squinted into the distance. We did not chase the enemy as such. We hung back, seeing where they went, which route they would follow. Our scouts relayed back and forth, telling us of their progress, how many they numbered. Twenty thousand Persians fell back from the city of Nisibis. Twenty thousand men in one night. We suspected they had been leaving in smaller numbers for a week or more, sneaking out from behind the walls as our men slept, our watch unable to see them in the dark.

  ‘Does it matter what I would do?’ Zenobia asked me.

  ‘I was curious.’

  Indeed I was. The thought of Zenobia’s revenge both excited me and unnerved me. I knew her capable of many things. She had betrayed one emperor as she charmed another. She seduced Odenathus and made an enemy of his son. She killed Teymour in her attempt to avenge her father’s death. What would she do to the man who raped her, whose seed possibly now grew life in her belly?

  Zenobia shrugged. ‘I have yet to decide.’

  Our army moved quickly as Odenathus encouraged the Romans to shed their heavy armour for our lighter Bedouin leather. We held the advantage of speed over the Persians encased in their heavy metal, and he refused to lose it, no matter the origin of the men now beneath him.

  Zabbai sent a message to Odenathus as we neared Singara, the Persians between us, attempting to move south. We caught sight of them ahead of us, for they had little lead on us. But Odenathus wanted to hold back before striking, to ensure Zabbai’s position and that we would not jeopardise the safety of the general’s men.

  Zabbai’s message read:

  Odenathus,

  I have secured Singara. We have rid the city of many Persians and Herodes takes a good portion of our men in pursuit as we were concerned for the safety of the surrounding villages and towns. He pushes them due south down the west side of the river Tharthar.

  My scouts see the enemy approach from the north and I will move to block their path and force them to retreat down the opposite side of the Tharthar. We will together block their rear, pushing them south between the Tharthar and the Tigris, toward Ctesiphon. All being well, Herodes hopes to move between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates, effectively securing the north, for they will have no choice but to face us, retreat south toward Babylonia, or cross the Tigris and seek sanctuary behind the walls of their own capital, Ctesiphon.

  This is our chance to push them back beyond our frontier, back into their own lands. There is no better time to achieve the peace we all crave.

  I shall see you soon beyond a running enemy, or I shall wave to you over the bodies of their dead.

  Stay safe, my friend.

  Zabbai

  Odenathus nodded to himself.

  ‘It seems Zabbai has half the Persians on the run already,’ he said.

  ‘And we can see the rest from here,’ Zenobia replied.

  I looked into the distance, following her gaze, and saw their army creeping away over the desolate lands close to the river. They needed water. We poisoned the wells of Nisibis from outside the walls, cutting off what supply we could. They could not have left with enough provision to last them south. This march would be hard on them and they knew we were on their heels. They could see us as we saw them.

  We followed, winding our way, always near but never close enough to force them to turn on us, to panic and fight, until darkness crept upon the lands once more.

  ‘We keep moving,’ Zenobia said. ‘We cannot afford to let them out of our sight.’

  ‘The men need to rest,’ Odenathus replied.

  ‘We have done nothing but rest.’

  ‘You cannot march our own men until they fall.’

  ‘The Persians will fall first. They have fewer provisions than we do,’ Pouja said.

  I nodded agreement and we marched on, the night cold and full of trepidation. The Persians did not stop. They hoped to outrun us in the night. As we stood outside their walls of Nisibis, no messenger could have reached them, warned them, that the rest of our army had retaken Singara and their fellow countrymen were also running. That Zabbai would block their path and force them the other side of the Tharthar from their fellow soldiers.

  Or so we prayed to whichever god did not sleep that night, for they must have been awake. They could not have slept at such a moment as this, their plan, their curation of our armies coming together, came to fruition.

  Morning light crept upon us and I saw once more the tail of the enemy in the distance. A shadow on the sands. Running. We had not lost them.

  Horns. Distant. Then riders.

  ‘Zabbai,’ Odenathus murmured, his voice edged in delight and the beginning of a euphoria I found familiar.

  ‘Gods pray it is him and not the Persians,’ I said.

  They came in sight, and we knew then they were not simply Zabbai’s men. It was Zabbai himself riding across the sands as if he had no care in the world. Armour covered his torso and his arms and legs, but he wore no helmet. His hair, pulled back and tied at the back of his head, shone with oil, the tail of it fluttering like a banner in the breeze. It was unlike him, the careful general. He rode towards us knowing we were winning.

  Mounted on their warhorses, his men streamed in beside ours. Those on foot followed, cheering and screaming their welcome to our men. They were joyful to see us, and that joy was not fuelled by fear, glad to see one another at last because we did not wish to face the enemy alone, but because we were brothers and we rode on the sands beside one another as we pushed the Persians further back than ever before.

  ‘You received my letter?’ Zabbai shouted as he approached.

  ‘We did, my friend,’ Odenathus replied. ‘Have you word from Herodes?’

  I sensed the sudden fear in Odenathus’ voice and knew he worried for his son, despite his displeasure in the past. Herodes had been a youth, fiery and inexperienced, driven by glory and self-importance. He was still in many ways, but it did not change the fact he was the King’s first born son. Even so I wondered if he were mine, would I not be sick on the knowledge of the ill decisions and loss Herodes had demonstrated before, unable to face the Persians and stand.

  ‘Nothing since my correspondence with you,’ Zabbai replied.

  Odenathus grunted acknowledgement.

  Zabbai’s men slowed to our pace; a huge mass of soldiers making their way down the side of the river Tharthar, herding the Persians ahead of us like goats on a desert plain.

  We followed them, knowing or rather hoping as we
did so that Herodes would block them from edging back into our homeland.

  My legs ached, the riding taking its toll, sun and heat reflecting on the river running beside us. It did not stop me or any of us. I was thirsty for Persian blood, hungry to see an end to them, and so my stamina never waned.

  By nightfall we had slowed further still, matching the pace of the Persians.

  ‘Why do they slow?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re tired and starving,’ Pouja said.

  A white flag flickered above the heads of the enemy, glowing in the darkness. It grew larger as the rider carrying it approached us.

  ‘They surrender?’ I asked.

  ‘It is not one rider,’ Zabbai said. ‘That is Shapur himself.’

  True enough, as the small company approached I made out the imperial horsemen, armour shining in the coming moonlight, and Shapur, fat atop his warhorse, jewels weighing him and the beast down.

  He did not smile as Odenathus, Zenobia, Zabbai and I rode out to meet him, Pouja shaking his head at the prospect of meeting with the King of the Persians. I knew why. I knew Pouja could not trust himself to stand before the enemy and not to draw his sword and send them to the Otherworld. He would throw all pride and etiquette to the winds to see Shapur bloody and lifeless.

  ‘He knows better than to see a Persian king dead,’ Odenathus said. ‘There are too many to rise in his place. Too many sons and kings and warlords. We need to secure our lands with strength and promises and oaths. With treaties of peace. In death there is only unrest.’

  I nodded. Where once I would not have understood, now I did. Death was no end, but a beginning. The start of something new.

  A hundred paces more and the skies echoed with the thunder of a thousand horses beating the dusty ground. Riders shrieked and yelped. The earth rumbled and shook and my own horse whinnied and pulled on his reins as I tried to keep him steady.

  It was too late. Shrieks of panic filled the evening as an army of warhorses crossed before us. They crashed into the Persian ranks, a thud and clash and roar of battle that would wake any god who might slumber.