Peter Darman - Carrhae

‘Miserable Armenian bastards.’

I kicked at the ground in frustration, stubbing my toe painfully as I did so. Having just returned from a costly campaign the last thing the army needed was another war. I kicked at another flagstone.

‘Treacherous Armenian bastards.’

Gallia, my wife, handed me back the letter from my brother King Gafarn, ruler of the Kingdom of Hatra, and raised an eyebrow at me while stable hands and the courier who had brought the bad news stared at me and then at each other.

‘Bastards!’

For some reason that was the only word I could think of. I saw Dobbai descending the palace steps and begin to amble towards me. She was the old witch who had been the sorceress of King of Kings Sinatruces, ruler of the whole Parthian Empire. Dobbai now resided in the palace with my family. She was coming to gloat no doubt. Marvellous!

‘Are you going to stand there kicking the ground all day long?’ asked Gallia. ‘Gafarn is requesting your aid.’

‘What?’

‘Did you read the entire letter?’ I had not, so incensed had I been by the first few lines informing me that the Armenians had declared war on the Parthian Empire. I quickly read all the words.

‘Problems, son of Hatra?’ Dobbai stood in front of me, a knowing expression on her face.

‘The Armenians have declared war on Parthia,’ Gallia answered for me. ‘Hatra is in peril.’ Armenia, now a client state of Rome, lay to the northeast of Parthian territory and directly north of Hatra.

Dobbai nodded as though this information was no surprise to her.

‘Why does this come as a shock to you? You are, after all, a warlord. Would you not seek to strike at your enemies when they were at their weakest?’

We were certainly that. The recent Battle of Susa that had finally ended Parthia’s civil war had been a draining three-day affair resulting in Dura’s army suffering heavy casualties. That was bad enough, but the armies of the other kings of our great alliance had also suffered substantial losses in the battle, none more so than the Kingdom of Hatra. It had lost its king, my father. And now Hatra was in danger from an Armenian invasion.

I looked at Dobbai, fixing her black eyes with my own. Sometimes I disliked intensely her ability to state the blindingly obvious.

‘You should have dealt with the Armenians two years ago when you had the chance,’ she continued. ‘Your failure to kill Tigranes now returns to haunt you.’

‘First of all,’ I said loudly enough for most people in the courtyard to hear me, ‘I did not fail to kill Tigranes. I was invited to support my father, may Shamash bless his memory, in his discussions with Tigranes. I was but one of the kings present that day.’

‘But it is common knowledge that you begged your father to launch an attack against the Armenians,’ she replied calmly. ‘You knew that not to fight them that day was merely postponing the inevitable. And so it is.’

‘Armenian bastards,’ I muttered.

‘I wish you would stop using such language, Pacorus,’ said Gallia. ‘Remember you are a king.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Dobbai.

That was a very good question to which I had no immediate reply.

‘There will be a council meeting in one hour,’ I announced.

As usual the meeting took place in the headquarters building standing opposite the palace inside the Citadel. This stronghold was perched on a high rock escarpment inside my capital city of Dura. On this occasion I had asked Strabo to attend in his capacity as quartermaster responsible for the army’s horses, camels and mules. He positioned himself in a chair opposite Gallia where he could spend the meeting leering at her lithe figure. I asked Rsan, the city’s governor, to start the proceedings. As usual he had brought two fresh-faced young clerks along to take notes of any decisions made. The offices of the building were stuffed full of parchments recording the details of every meeting since I had become King of Dura. To what end I never understood, aside from keeping the city’s parchment makers in business. Because the room was fuller than normal the air was stuffy and oppressive, made worse by the lack of any wind outside. Everyone drank copious amounts of water from the jugs on the table to quench their thirsts.

Rsan cleared his throat.

‘The king has called this meeting due to the unexpected news we have received from Hatra concerning the Armenian decision to commence hostilities against the empire.’

The two clerks scribbled furiously to write down Rsan’s exact words. Why did he have to have two sets of records? I smiled — no doubt to have a spare set in case one got destroyed!

‘King Tigranes is seeking to take advantage of the state of exhaustion the empire finds itself in following the toppling of Mithridates and Narses. He believes he has an excellent chance of seizing large chunks of the empire, specifically the Kingdoms of Hatra and Gordyene.’

‘I would say their chances of doing so are excellent,’ remarked Lucius Domitus, the army’s general.

‘We should have fought them when we had the chance,’ added Kronos, commander of the Exiles, one of the two legions of foot soldiers I had raised. Both legions, Exiles and Durans, were trained and equipped in the same way as their Roman equivalents. Dobbai smirked at his comment.

‘You are so right, Kronos,’ I agreed, frowning at Dobbai, ‘but we did not and nothing can alter the past. The Armenians will attack the Kingdoms of Hatra and Gordyene with the intention of conquering them. Gafarn has asked me for help and I expect Surena to do the same. The question is: can the army march north to reinforce and assist both Hatra and Gordyene?’

‘Not a chance in hell,’ remarked Domitus bluntly. ‘It will be at least three months before it is ready to march anywhere, and even then it will be under strength. We lost a thousand legionaries, a hundred cataphracts, six hundred horse archers and a hundred and fifty squires. All dead.’

‘And seventeen Amazons,’ added Gallia gravely.

‘Indeed,’ said Domitus, ‘and then there are the wounded.’

I looked at Alcaeus, our Greek chief physician who headed the army’s medical corps. He frowned.

‘I’m afraid it is not good news. Over two thousand legionaries have been treated for wounds received at Susa. Of those, around half have injuries that will take two months or more to heal properly, broken arms and wrists mostly. As for the horsemen, two hundred cataphracts were wounded in the battle, and of those over fifty require bed rest for a further month at least. Six hundred horse archers were also injured and around a hundred will not be back in the saddle for a minimum of five or six weeks.’

It was a most depressing summary and the only sound that filled the room after Alcaeus had finished speaking was the scribbling of the clerks as they noted everything down. The rest of us sat in silence, Domitus as ever toying with his dagger.

It was Gallia who spoke first. ‘What will the Armenians do?’

‘They will try to take Gordyene back first, no doubt,’ I surmised, ‘followed by an invasion of Gafarn’s kingdom to seize the whole of northern Hatra, which means Vata at Nisibus will feel the full force of their wrath first.’

The Kingdom of Gordyene had been lost to Parthia when the Armenians had occupied it. It had subsequently been repossessed by Surena, formerly my squire who had been tutored in the arts of war at Dura. He had matured into a fine commander and so I sent him into Gordyene with an expeditionary force to wage war against its Armenian occupiers. But his martial brilliance had resulted in the Armenians being expelled from the kingdom altogether, earning him Gordyene’s crown from a grateful King of Kings Orodes.