Parthian Vengeance (21 page)

‘I use to pray to Zeus every day when I was young, asking him to protect my parents and my city. But my parents were killed and the Romans enslaved me and I stopped asking the gods for anything. I’m not sure they even exist.’

‘Of course they exist, Alcaeus. How else can you explain all that has happened to us, of our time in Italy and our journey back to Parthia? Then making Dura strong? There must be divine guidance involved.’

He smiled at me. ‘Or it could be that you are a great warlord who has done all these things on your own. But if it comforts you to believe that there is a god smiling down on you, then that is good.’

He suddenly looked very serious. ‘In case the opportunity does not arrive later, I want to thank you, Pacorus, for my time in Dura. It has been a privilege to be your friend.’

I had the feeling that he was saying goodbye. ‘None of that, Alcaeus, we are not dead yet.’

He looked around at the tents where the wounded were sleeping and the wagons standing ready to carry the seriously hurt. The sun was beginning its ascent in the eastern sky. The new day was dawning.

‘You know what gives this army strength, Pacorus?’

‘Ten thousand foot and four thousand horse?’ I replied.

He shook his head. ‘No. It’s pride. Every man is proud to be a part of your army. Numbers are irrelevant. Each man stands tall in the ranks beside his comrades, knowing that you will never be careless with his life, will never ask him to do what you yourself would not attempt. That is why this army is strong, because you treat your soldiers like men, not slaves. They are proud to serve in Dura’s army.’

‘Well, then, we have nothing to worry about. You said it yourself – numbers are irrelevant.’

A wry smile crept over his face. ‘Even men of iron need water, Pacorus.’

He offered me his hand and we clasped each other’s forearm.

‘They will not break us, Alcaeus. I swear it.’

But they tried. An hour later the enemy attacked us on all sides. First they sent in their horse archers, who once again rained arrows down on us. Yet again they did not shoot at the ring of shields but instead loosed their missiles in a high trajectory that fell behind the cohorts. And once again they slaughtered dozens of mules, the animals crying pitifully after they had been hit. We could do nothing but stand and listen to their squeals and moans. After a while the horse archers mercifully withdrew and a lull descended over the battlefield.

I was kneeling with the other archers in the rear of the cohorts deployed on the southern edge of our hollow square, holding a shield over my head. Its top edge was tucked under the shield of the man in front of me. Trumpets blasted to order the men to stand easy and a great clatter signalled thousands of men resting their shields on the ground. They had had their meagre ration of water earlier and there was none to spare until they wet their lips in the evening. Those that lived.

Domitus and Kronos came over to where I was standing, my shield lying on the ground. Domitus pointed at it.

‘Please pick it up and rest it against your body. It has just saved your life so treat it with some respect.’

I felt myself blushing as I bent down and did as I was told, resting the edge against my body. Around me other legionaries were nudging each other and grinning at my being rebuked.

‘That was short and sweet,’ said Domitus.

‘Yesterday they spent hours showering us with the bloody things,’ added Kronos, freezing the grinning soldiers with his iron stare. They quickly faced front.

I slammed the rim of my shield with my palm. ‘They’ve run out of arrows.’

‘What?’ Domitus was most surprised.

‘They have run out of arrows. That is the only reason they have pulled back the horse archers.’

In Dura’s army a great camel train carrying tens of thousands of spare arrows always accompanied the horse archers. But most Parthian armies save my own and Hatra’s did not bother to supply its archers with spare ammunition. After all the main striking power of an army was its cataphracts. The role of the horse archers was to weaken the enemy before the heavy horsemen attacked.

‘They will send in their heavy horsemen next,’ I said. ‘If they had not run out of arrows then they would have spent more time softening us up.’

‘There aren’t enough arrows in the world to soften up my boys,’ growled Domitus, prompting Kronos to smile in approval.

Their little mutual admiration society was interrupted by the sound of kettledrums to the south. Trumpets blasted and once again the legionaries dressed their ranks and stood facing outwards. With Domitus and Kronos I pushed my way through the ranks to see what was happening. Men were twisting arrows from their shields and the ground in front of the first rank was littered with missiles. I peered ahead and in the early morning light saw the horizon filled with horsemen riding knee to knee. Cataphracts!

Narses and Mithridates did not have enough heavy horsemen to assault our square on all four sides, so they were gambling on one large attack against one of its sides. If they broke through then they would destroy the army, for behind them would come thousands of horse archers. Domitus realised this also.

‘So,’ he said, ‘it all comes down to us holding off their heavy horsemen.’

‘Do you want me to reinforce this part of the line with some of my lads?’ asked Kronos.

Domitus shook his head. ‘No, if we weaken one part of the line they might throw in any reserves they have at it. We wait until they hit us and see what happens.’

He slapped me on the arm. ‘I wish we had Orodes with us.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

We went back through the ranks as the legionaries stood up and locked their shields together to present a wall of white shields once again. The horsemen became more widely spaced as they trotted towards us, each man bringing down his
kontus
on his right side and grasping it with both hands. The charge of thousands of cataphracts is a magnificent sight; the sun glinting off lance points, scale armour and helmets and the ground shaking as tens of thousands of iron-shod hooves race across the earth. It is also terrifying for those standing in its way. Ordinary Parthian foot soldiers would have crumbled long before the horsemen reached them. But the men standing in the path of the cataphracts were not ordinary soldiers. They had spent years training not only in perfecting their own drills but also working with horsemen, and they knew what it was like to face a charge of heavy cavalry.

At least once a month the whole army was taken out into the desert to the west of Dura to train in massed formations. At the end of the exercise the legions had been drawn up in battle array and had been charged by a thousand cataphracts. The charge had not been pressed home of course, but it had acquainted the legionaries with the sights and sounds of heavy horsemen hurtling towards them. So it was today, as upwards of five thousand armour-clad horsemen broke into a gallop to charge and thunder towards them. The enemy screamed and urged their horses to move faster as thousands of javelins were hurled at the oncoming horsemen.

In their defensive formation each cohort had a depth of four ranks, each rank made up of twenty men. It was the rear two ranks that threw their javelins as front ranks of the cataphracts tried to batter their way through the legionaries. Batter was the correct word for the charge, magnificent though it was, had already begun to falter before it had even reached the foot soldiers. No horse will run blindly into a solid object. Unable to turn aside or wheel about, the horses either tried to stop or slowed and reared up on their back legs. Some lost balance and somersaulted into the ranks of the packed legionaries, causing dreadful carnage. In those few seconds the Durans lost more men than they had in the first battle or in the previous few days. The javelin storm further interrupted the momentum of the charge but caused few casualties, the points mostly glancing off scale armour.

So a desperate mêlée began, cataphracts either trying to jab their lance points into the faces of legionaries or, abandoning the shafts, going to work with their maces, axes and swords. But the legionaries kept their discipline and fought back, the front two ranks keeping their shields tight to their front and jabbing at the horses and riders with their javelins. The gaps that had been created by the careering and thrashing horses had been sealed by reinforcements sent from the cohorts drawn from the other sides of the square, and those thrown riders who had not been killed when they had been crushed by their own mounts were quickly dispatched.

‘Archers!’ I screamed. I threw my shield to the ground and picked up my bow and the two full quivers lying at my feet. The other archers deployed in a single line either side of me did the same.

‘Shoot at the faces of the riders,’ I shouted.

I nocked an arrow in the bowstring and searched for a target. Dura’s armoured fist wore full-face helmets but most heavy horsemen in the empire sported open-faced helmets. They gave a rider a wide field of view and were not as hot to wear for hours on end in battle. The disadvantage was that they left the face exposed. I saw a rider stabbing at legionaries with his
kontus
and released my bowstring. I watched the arrow hurtle through the air to strike the man’s eye socket. He yelped and clutched his face with his hands, as he was pulled from his horse by a group of legionaries and disappeared from view beneath a flurry of
gladius
blades. I loosed another arrow that missed a rider who was hacking right and left with a mace. Then I shot three more arrows, one of which went through a rider’s mouth. I quickly used up my arrows as the rest of my archers also emptied their quivers.

‘Arrows,’ I shouted. The others also held up their bows to signal that they too required more ammunition.

In front of us riders were still trying to cut their way into the Duran ranks, flailing their weapons with frenzy. But our line was holding and it was becoming obvious that the enemy horsemen had been stopped. Domitus stalked immediately behind the rear ranks,
gladius
in hand, shouting encouragement. Wounded men were hauled from the ranks and attended by members of Alcaeus’ medical corps. The seriously injured were placed on stretchers and taken to where Alcaeus had established his hospital area.

Panting legionaries, Exiles sent to us as reinforcements by Kronos, ran along the line and dumped full quivers at our feet, no doubt enemy arrows they had picked up. We began shooting again. I saw a mounted enemy officer directing his men against us, calmly issued orders within feet of our front line. He was around a hundred paces from where I stood as I drew the bowstring back so the three flight feathers were by my right ear. I did not look at the arrowhead, only the target. The sounds of battle disappeared as I concentrated. My breathing slowed as I exhaled and let the bowstring slip from my fingers. The arrow sliced through the air over legionary helmets and hit the officer’s right eye socket. His arms immediately dropped by his sides and his head slumped forward. He remained in his saddle, just another dead man on the battlefield.

Above the clatter of weapons striking helmets and shields and the roar of men cursing and crying out in agony came the shrill sound of horn blasts. Slowly the cataphracts disengaged and retreated from our front line. The legionaries began cheering and banging their swords and javelins on their shields, chanting ‘Dura, Dura’. The enemy’s heavy horsemen reformed their line and then about-faced and withdrew. We had beaten them. Domitus came rushing over and we embraced each other like small boys who have just discovered a heap of freshly baked cakes.

All around men fell to their knees and gave thanks to their gods while others, racked with pain from wounds now the frenzy of bloodlust had left them, winced and leaned on their shields or their comrades for support. Others fainted from exhaustion, for they had been standing and fighting in the sun for hours now. We had been fortunate that the enemy had assaulted only one side of the square. If we had been attacked on all four sides then perhaps they would have broken us.

‘They knew their foot and horse archers couldn’t break our line,’ said Domitus, who had taken off his helmet and was wiping his sweat-covered scalp with a rag. ‘They gambled that their heavy horse could break through and they lost.’

He glanced at the sun and squinted. ‘What I wouldn’t give to dunk my head in the Euphrates right now.’

‘That, my friend,’ I said, ‘is our Achilles’ heel.’

My fears were confirmed by Marcus who reported to me as I lay on the ground, my right forearm across my eyes to shield them from the sun. I was exhausted from the exertions of battle and from having no sleep on account of the night raid on the enemy camp.

Domitus kicked the sole of my boot.

‘You awake, Pacorus?’

‘If I wasn’t before I am now.’ My limbs ached and with difficulty I sat up.

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Marcus. ‘But the water situation is most dire.’

‘How dire?’ I asked.

‘Enough in the wagons for only half a day.’

I held out an arm to Domitus who hauled me up. I picked up my helmet and bow.

‘Very well, I said. ‘Council of war in ten minutes. Assemble all the senior officers.’

As our precious water supplies were allocated in order or priority – to those who had been fighting, to the rest who had been standing in the ranks, and lastly to the wounded – Domitus, Kronos, Alcaeus, Marcus and the cohort commanders gathered in the centre of the camp. They sat down on stools arranged under a temporary awning Marcus had rigged up between two wagons, though it was now late afternoon and mercifully the sun’s heat was abating.

‘You and your men did well today,’ I told them. ‘There are very few soldiers who can hold their ground against the empire’s finest cataphracts, but they did and more.’

‘I thought Dura had the finest cataphracts in the empire,’ said Drenis, the others cheering at his words.

‘But we are still surrounded and far from home,’ I continued. ‘Marcus informs me that our water supplies will last only one more day. We cannot remain here if we are to live.’