Peter Darman - Carrhae

Three days later, on a sunny morning, we said goodbye to our friends in the courtyard inside the Citadel. A company of cataphracts stood on parade and the route from the Citadel to the Palmyrene Gate was lined with legionaries to honour our guests’ departure. Grooms held the reins of horses as we all gathered at the top of the palace steps and said our goodbyes.

I can see their faces now — Haytham, Malik, Jamal, Byrd, Noora, Surena, Nergal, Praxima, Gafarn, Diana, Orodes, Axsen and Gallia — all full of life and happy that the great time of trial was over. Haytham and Malik left first, their black-clad bodyguard trotting after them as they rode through the gates of the Citadel and down the city’s main street to the sound of cheers and applause from the crowds that stood either side of the road.

Orodes and Axsen followed them, the dragon-skin armour of their bodyguard shimmering in the sun as they followed the high king and his pregnant wife back to Ctesiphon and its treasury full of Armenian gold. Surena embraced me and then Gallia, whose animosity towards him had finally died, and then rode form the Citadel with a score of his spearmen. At the gates he turned his horse, drew his sword and saluted me, or perhaps he was paying homage to the place where his dead wife had been one of the Amazons, before cantering into the city.

The six of us who remained, who had known each other since our time in Italy, stood in silence and looked at each other. There were few of us left now, the Companions who had escaped from the clutches of Crassus and made our home in Parthia, fewer than forty out of the one hundred and twenty that had taken ship from Italy.

I looked over to the granite memorial in the wall next to the gates that held the names of those Companions who had fallen and shivered. There was space enough for forty more names and I wondered whose would be the last to be carved in the stone.

We embraced our friends and watched them depart the Citadel and then Gallia walked to the stables to fetch Epona for her morning training session with the Amazons. I walked up the steps and turned to observe a scene that was played out every morning of every day. Legionaries patrolled the walls, sentries at the gates directed visitors to report to the guardroom and squires and stable hands carried out their mundane duties. The commander of the parade of cataphracts drew his sword and saluted me as he gave the order for his men to be dismissed. A breeze blew across the courtyard and ruffled the pennants on the end of each kontus . I caught a brief glimpse of a red griffin against a white background and then turned and walked back into the palace.

After he had returned to Ctesiphon Orodes sent a steady stream of couriers to Dura requesting that I send forces into Syria to throw the Romans off balance and prevent them from rebuilding their legions and launching a fresh invasion of Parthia. I wrote back informing him that I had excellent intelligence via Byrd’s network of informers that not only were the Romans not preparing a fresh invasion of Parthia, but that there were hardly any Roman troops left in Syria. Around ten thousand legionaries, many wounded and without weapons, had escaped in the aftermath of Carrhae and now waited behind their walls for a Parthian invasion of Syria.

After a few weeks of Orodes’ continual pestering I gave up and summoned Spandarat to the palace to inform him that I was authorising him and his lords to raid Syria. He was delighted and within a week had amassed nearly ten thousand horse archers, who promptly rode across Dura’s northern frontier and spent three weeks plundering anything in their path and destroying property. I had warned Byrd of the impending invasion and he had alerted all his agents and allies in Syria, who took themselves off to Antioch and Damascus along with all their possessions.

Once the Romans realised that the great Parthian assault was nothing more than a band, albeit large, of plunderers, they despatched parties of horsemen to chase away Spandarat and his fellow robbers. They achieved this without much difficulty but Spandarat returned to Dura delighted with himself, boasting of bringing back wagons loaded with statues, marble and jewels that he had plundered. It was all very unedifying but I comforted myself with the thought that at least I had satisfied Orodes’ wishes.

Life at Dura went on as before. The caravans transported goods from the east and the west and paid their tolls, the farmers worked the land and paid their lords their rents who in turn paid tribute to the crown, the treasury filled and the army drilled and prepared for the day that the Romans returned. Phriapatius was made lord high general of the empire at a grand ceremony at Ctesiphon where he met Roxanne for the first time. If he had any misgivings about his future daughter-in-law he did not make them known and treated her with great respect and affection. He could afford to be magnanimous as his family’s star was in the ascendant. He himself held the highest military position within the empire and his youngest son was the king of neighbouring Sakastan. And so he and Peroz returned to Puta, his father’s capital, where the former prostitute Roxanne became a Parthian queen.

The gathering at Ctesiphon was a happy occasion where I renewed my friendship with Khosrou and Musa. They were both old and grey now though Khosrou had lost none of his ruthlessness and delighted in telling me that he had sent the head of Attai to Orodes as a gift.

‘I did not see it above the gates when I arrived,’ he complained.

‘It probably rotted in the sun,’ I said.

‘Just like the bodies of all the other nomads,’ grinned Musa.

He linked arms with Gallia and began to lead her away. ‘It is very remiss of Pacorus to keep you all to himself, my dear. Come with me and let me show you my bodyguard. They collect the scalps of the enemy and tie them to their lances. They will be diminished next to your beauty, of course.’

Gallia smiled girlishly at him. ‘You flatter me, lord.’

Khosrou shook his head. ‘He never changes. Queen Sholeh keeps him in check, rules him and his kingdom like a rod or iron.’

‘I trust your wife, Queen Tara, is well, lord?’

Tara hardly ever left Merv, his capital. I had met her once, at Hatra when my father had assembled the other kings who were fighting Mithridates. Like Khosrou she had a hard countenance but was actually a thoughtful and charming woman.

‘She’s well but has little time for the conversations of kings. But what about you, Pacorus, will you lead this great expedition west that Orodes is planning?’

My heart sank. ‘I hope not.’

My reply surprised him. ‘You are Parthia’s greatest warlord, the slayer of Narses, Mithridates, the Armenians and the Romans. It will be expected that you will lead the army that extends the empire to the shores of the Mediterranean.’

‘Is that what Orodes has told you?’ I asked with alarm.

He shrugged. ‘Not in so many words, but Syria lies open like a whore’s legs and Orodes wants to be the bull who has her.’

‘What of the northern nomads?’ I asked, changing the subject, ‘are they now subdued?’

He gave me a world-weary look. ‘For the moment. But they breed like cockroaches and will return to torment me. Of that I have no doubt.’

He cast me a sideways glance. ‘You might be fighting in Gordyene first, though.’

The last time I had seen Surena was at the wedding of Spartacus and Rasha and afterwards relations between him and Orodes deteriorated markedly. Having been left out of the treaty negotiations between Parthia and Armenia, Surena had continued to unleash his Sarmatian mercenaries against Artavasdes’ kingdom, burning villages and taking Armenians as slaves, those he did not impale that is. Artavasdes complained to Gafarn who sent remonstrations to Vanadzor, which resulted in Surena’s horsemen launching raids into the Kingdom of Hatra itself. Atrax rode to Vanadzor to plead personally with Surena but the King of Gordyene would not be reasoned with and afterwards sent a great raiding party south to burn Irbil. Fortunately it was intercepted and turned back at the Shahar Chay River but it confirmed to Orodes that Surena had to be dealt with.