Peter Darman - The Parthian

‘I trust you, Godarz.’

‘Very well.’ He was obviously possessed of a great purpose, though what it was I could not discern.

Byrd dismounted and ambled up to us. Godarz frowned at the state of his horse and his appearance.

‘You remember the spot, Byrd?’

‘I remember, of course. Can find easily.’

Godarz smiled contentedly. ‘Good.’

‘Would one of you care to explain what this is about?’ I asked.

‘Our way out of Italy, highness,’ replied Godarz. ‘I believe that I can get us passage out of this accursed land and back to Parthia. If you are in agreement.’

In truth I had no plan to get us through the next day, let alone get us out of Italy. ‘Our fate is your hands, Godarz.’

It took us most of the day to get organised, to load mules with food for men and horses, and to burden others with spare weapons and arrows. Godarz insisted that the only shelters we should take were papilios , the eight-man oiled leather tents of the Roman Army that we had captured. There were to be no command tents, ovens, braziers, kitchens or field forges. Weapons and food were the priorities. One of Byrd’s scouts, a local man named Minucius, would lead us into the Apennines and through to the other side. He had lived all his life in these hills and knew every track, gully and valley. He had joined Spartacus because his master had refused to purchase a new cloak to see him through the winter, and I privately thanked his master for his parsimony.

And so it was, on a warm spring afternoon in the upper Silarus Valley, that I began my final journey through Italy. We were a motley collection of different races, all bound together by loyalty to Spartacus and Claudia and their living child, whom we had sworn to protect and lead to safety. It was a strange fate that a swaddling babe could command the lives of those who took him into the mountains. We were but a handful, but not since that day have I travelled with such cherished companions. Accompanying me were Gallia, Gafarn, Diana, Byrd, the scout Minucius, Godarz, Nergal, Praxima, Domitus, Alcaeus, fifty Parthians, twenty Amazons, a score of Thracians, thirty Dacians and five Greeks. All my Parthians and Gallia’s Amazons were mounted, the rest walked. As they set off in a long line pulling a host of ill-tempered and heavily laden mules, I rode Remus over to where the Germans were about to strike northwest into the hills. They had placed the deathly pale Cannicus on a sled, which they fastened to a horse, though that was the only one they took. There were five thousand of them, all that remained of Castus’ legions, and I tried to shake the hands of as many as I could before they departed. They wore their hair long and their language was coarse, but they had met and bested the finest that Rome could throw at them.

I knelt beside Cannicus. ‘So, my friend, you go back to great forests of Germany.’

He looked at me with eyes filled with resignation. ‘To hunt boar and bear, and spread my seed among the young women.’

‘Your fame will make you a king among your people, or the young women at least.’

‘I feel that we let him down, Pacorus.’

He was talking of Spartacus. I felt the same. ‘I know, but he will forgive us.’

‘The child?’

‘Is safe.’

‘Promise me that you will tell him about us all and what we did, Pacorus.’

I took his hand. The grip was weak. ‘I promise, my friend. He shall hear of his father and mother and all those who were their friends and who fought beside them. And especially of the fierce and wild Germans led by Castus and Cannicus.’

He smiled and let go of my hand. A giant man with a shaggy beard and thick black hair stood beside me.

‘We have to be going now, sir.’

I shook Cannicus by the hand once more. ‘We will meet again, my friend, but not in this life.’

I watched as he and his men began their ascent. I stayed there until the last group had disappeared into the trees and then there was silence. Remus chomped on his bit and scraped the earth with his hoof. I rode into the camp that had been the home of my lord and that was now deserted. The tent of Spartacus, the smaller tents of his troops, arranged in neat lines, the captured Roman standards planted in the earth for everyone to see, mute testimony to the brilliance of the man I had followed. I halted Remus in front of his tent and sat in silence. For a brief moment I thought I saw Spartacus and Claudia both standing arm-in-arm at the tent’s entrance, both smiling at me, her head resting on his muscled shoulder. But then the wind blew and the vision was gone and I rode away to rejoin my comrades, and the tears ran down my cheeks.

The rest of that day we walked on foot and led our horses, all except Diana who rode carrying the infant in her arms. We maintained a brisk pace, lest the Romans sent patrols after us. I doubted that they would, though. For one thing many groups, both large and small, had scattered in all directions that morning, some heading south to the wild hills of mountainous Bruttium, others going north to find sanctuary among the Gauls living on the other side of the Alps. Others had a desire to seek a glorious death under Afranius. Ironically, most of the surviving Thracians had elected to join him, though I suspected that it was their desire to die fighting rather than serve under the young Spaniard.

Soon we were moving along a narrow track through a dense forest of fir trees, occasionally coming across grassy clearings and lightly wooded ridges filled with wild pear and apple trees. After two hours we came to a saddle in the mountains and descended out of the trees to skirt a hillside filled with scented broom, and then down still further to travel beneath a ceiling of cypress trees. It was a beautiful and peaceful country and I almost forgot about the Romans, though I was mindful to always have at least a dozen men as a rearguard, just in case we had unwelcome visitors. The dense woodlands masked our group, though Godarz prohibited the lighting of any fires for the first five days of our journey, which was a pity because we saw brown bears, deer and boar, and I would have loved to have killed some game so we could eat some hot meat. But we were in Godarz’s hands so we ate bread and hard biscuit instead. After ten days he relented, though, and so Gafarn and myself left the party camped in the lee of a cliff face near to a fast-running stream and took our bows to find some prey. We rode through broom and juniper brushes and then woodland until we came to a group of old oaks, through which ran a well-used animal track. There was no wind to carry our scent and betray us to the keen senses of any prey, so we tied the horses behind a tree, crouched in the undergrowth and waited. After half an hour five red deer ambled into view, two stags, their antlers beginning to show, and three hinds. The stags were big, standing at least seven foot high and weighing around four hundred pounds, I guessed. They could not see us but stopped and stared all the same, their noses twitching. We were about two hundred feet from them.

‘You take the stag on the right and I’ll drop the one on the left,’ I whispered to Gafarn.

Seconds later the two stags were dead and the rest had bolted away, as Gafarn and I walked our horses over to the carcasses and tied them to our mounts’ saddles.

‘You and Diana should look after the child,’ I said to him as we rode back to camp hauling our prizes behind us.

‘Did not Spartacus and Claudia wish for you to take him?’

‘I vowed I would take him back to Hatra, but when I do, I don’t think my father would look favourably on me raising the child of a slave general.’

‘I suppose not. You think it better that two slaves should look after him?’

I halted Remus and looked at him. ‘You stopped being a slave long ago, Gafarn. And Diana I class as a friend. You and Diana shall live like royalty when we get back, that I promise you. And,’ I hesitated, ‘I would like to be considered your friend.’