Peter Darman - Parthian Vengeance

‘He was pulled from his horse and injured,’ my brother said quietly.

I looked at the blood seeping through the bandages near his left shoulder and realised that his attacker must have delivered the strike under the arm.

My father opened his eyes. ‘Ah, Pacorus.’

His voice was very weak.

I held his right hand, the tears coming to my eyes.

‘I am here, father.’

‘You are king now, my son.’

I felt grief grip my insides. ‘Nonsense. We will get you back to camp, father, to tend to your wound.’

He smiled faintly. ‘Take care of your mother and tell her that I have loved her always and will wait for her.’

He looked at Gafarn, who stared unblinking at our father. ‘You must take care of your brother, my son, for he is apt to get himself into trouble.’

‘I shall, father,’ Gafarn replied, tears running down his cheeks.

‘All will be well,’ my father’s voice was very faint, ‘Shamash be with you.’

My father’s eyes remained open but they were lifeless as they stared into the blue sky. As tears blurred my sight I closed his eyes with my hand and kissed his forehead. I had been unaware of Vistaspa’s presence but now I saw him standing at my father’s feet holding his head in his hands, sobbing like a small child. Thus died Varaz, King of Hatra, and son of Sames. The others around us stood with their heads bowed in stunned silence as Gafarn gently laid my father on the ground and covered his body with his cloak.

With difficulty I rose to my feet and took a few paces to be by Gafarn’s side. I took his arm and raised it aloft.

‘The king is dead. Long live the king, Gafarn, King of Hatra.’

As one they shouted. ‘Hail King Gafarn.’

Gafarn looked at me with tears still coursing down his cheeks. ‘What madness is this?’

‘No madness, brother. I relinquish my claim to Hatra’s throne. You are now its king. Rule long and wisely.’

An arrow slammed into the ground at our feet and I became aware once more of the sounds of battles raging all around us.

‘Our grief will have to wait, Gafarn. We must get out of this death trap.’

Hatra’s cataphracts, largely immune from the enemy’s arrows, were tiring under the relentless onslaught of the hill men, their dead piled high around the ring of Hatran steel. A stretcher was fashioned from lengths of broken kontus shafts and then four of my father’s bodyguard carried their king’s body back to my camp. His heavy cavalry formed a rear guard as Surena’s horse archers poured withering volleys into the enemy mass. Mercifully the enemy horse archers had stopped their shooting, having expended their own supply of arrows, thus enabling us to escape relatively unscathed.

I rode in the rear guard alongside Vistaspa, who in his grief seemed determined to get himself killed. As companies of heavy horsemen formed into arrowhead formation and charged at groups of hill men, riding among them, slashing at them with swords and maces, moving at all times to prevent the exposed legs of their horses being cut by enemy blades, before turning and withdrawing, Vistaspa rode at an enemy group on his own.

There were a dozen of them, great hairy brutes stripped to the waist and carrying two-handed axes that they swung as though they were feathers. He rode straight at them, initially scattering them and then splitting one of their skulls with a back slash of his sword as he passed. But they chased after him and when he attempted to turn around when another group barred his way, a heathen in the first group grabbed the reins of his horse. Vistaspa severed the man’s hand with a downward cut of his sword but another axe man swung his weapon into his leg armour, denting the metal and causing Vistaspa to scream in agony and drop his sword. At that moment Surena released his bowstring and shot the man who had tried to sever Vistaspa’s leg, then killed another standing beside him and kept on shooting arrows at his assailants as I rode towards him.

Half of them were dead by the time I reached his side.

‘Lord Vistaspa, I order you to fall back.’ I looked at his dented leg armour that was now covered in blood.

‘Move!’

He nodded and rode away as a crazed hill man, all hair and muscles, ran at me with his giant axe held over his head. I charged and swung my sword at him, lopping off his head with a single stroke. As half a dozen cataphracts rode in front to give me cover, my would-be killer’s headless body lay twitching on the ground.

The enemy halted their attacks and withdrew sharply when Orodes appeared with his companies, having ridden to assist us when word reached him about what had happened. The fighting ceased abruptly as a great column of his men rode north to form a screen to allow the battered soldiers of Hatra to escort their dead king in peace. I dismounted and walked beside his body as it was carried back to camp, Gafarn beside me but saying nothing as we trudged disconsolately along. We were joined by Orodes who was likewise grief stricken.

We walked across ground that was strewn with dead: men, horses and camels, their bodies either ripped open by metal blades or pierced by arrows. Orodes answered the questions that were going through my mind.

‘The hill men sacked Surena’s camp after those inside had been evacuated. Gallia also managed to get many of the camels carrying spare arrows back to your camp, Pacorus, but not all. I am afraid to say that the Hatran, Median and Babylonian camps were also overrun before we forced the enemy back.’

‘There is room in my camp for everyone,’ I said without emotion.

As the long column of horsemen and their exhausted mounts walked to the eastern entrance to the Duran camp the sun began to set in the west, a great yellow ball of fire set against an orange background. I closed my eyes and prayed to Shamash that He would welcome my father into heaven and that he would be granted a place of honour at His table, for such a great and wise king deserved it. I opened my eyes as the sound of kettledrums once more sounded in the south.

They hit us at twilight, when the last vestiges of light were disappearing from the world, a demented rush of feral men who hurled themselves against all four sides of the camp. Having flooded Surena’s camp and destroyed the tents of the Medians, Babylonians and Hatrans, the hill men now concentrated their fury against my own camp, thinking that it too would easily succumb to their savage attacks. But they had reckoned without the skills of Marcus Sutonius.

The squires and civilians had originally erected the camp but Marcus had subsequently strengthened it further. The surrounding ditch was eight feet deep on all sides, having a width of four feet at the bottom and twelve feet at the top due to its sloping sides, and the bottom of the ditch was lined with blocks of wood fitted with iron spikes to impale anyone who fell on them. Behind the ditch stood an eight-foot-high earth rampart surmounted by a wall of stakes, with additional stakes set in the rampart pointing outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees to make it difficult to scale.

As the last horsemen rode into camp and the eastern entrance was barred with wagons and logs covered with many long iron spikes positioned in front of them, the Zagros tribes gathered in their war bands and then charged our defences. The ramparts were initially defended by squires before the horse archers dismounted and sprinted to reinforce them, Domitus also assigning legionaries to use their shields as a barrier against the hail of light axes, javelins and arrows that was being hurled against those standing behind the stakes. Fortunately there was a distance of one hundred paces between the tenting area and the perimeter rampart all round the inside of the camp, but even so missiles still landed among tents and animals to inflict wounds, some fatal.