The Parthian (51 page)

I do not know how much time had elapsed, but I looked into the blue sky and saw that the sun was high in the sky. It must have been mid-afternoon now. The Roman army was no more. It had become a fleeing mob of terrified individuals, who were slowly and methodically being butchered by my horsemen and Castus’ Germans. My officers kept their men under a tight leash, moving them about the battlefield in companies to reduce any remaining pockets of Roman resistance, which in truth were few. In front of me, German centuries were being marshalled by exhausted centurions into a new battle line. But there was no need, there was no Roman army left to fight. I walked a tired Remus towards the German lines and saw Castus striding towards me. I dismounted and we embraced. There was blood all over him. He saw my look of concern.

‘Not mine, my friend. Are you hurt?’

I looked at my dust-covered tunic. ‘Not a scratch.’

‘You did it Pacorus,’

‘
We
did it,’ I said.

I suddenly realised that the air was no longer filled with screams and curses and that a hush had descended on this field of slaughter. Men were suddenly collapsing on the ground as their reserves of adrenalin and energy evaporated. I myself was suddenly gripped by a raging thirst, so I unhooked my waterskin from Remus’ saddle and drank with gusto. I passed it to a thankful Castus and then poured the remainder into Remus’ mouth. He had a small gash on his right thigh but was otherwise unharmed.

As I stood with Castus among the dead and the dying, I saw to my right a slumped rider in the saddle of a grey horse that was riding towards the river. The man, a Roman officer by the look of his cloak and cuirass, was clearly wounded. Helmetless, his light hair seemed familiar, but perhaps my battle-drunk mind was playing tricks on me. Then I realised who it was. He was only a couple of hundred feet away, an easy target. I ran to Remus and pulled my bow from its case. Lucius Furius was about to die at my hand, finally. I reached into to my quiver. Empty! I turned and screamed at anyone who was listening.

‘Stop that rider!’ pointing frantically as Furius’ horse slowed to a walk and then stopped. I was running towards it, gesturing to all and sundry that they should converge on the now stationary horse. I saw Nergal riding in my direction, followed by a score of his men, while behind me a panting Castus was trying to keep up as Lucius Furius dropped from his saddle onto the ground. I knelt beside him and felt at his neck for a pulse. He was still alive. Castus stood beside me, breathing heavily.

‘Is he dead?’

‘No,’ I said, seeing that he had been wounded in the side of his belly, ‘he lives.’

Nergal then appeared with his men.

‘Keep him under guard. Get someone to look at his wound and stitch him up if necessary. And see to it that he isn’t harmed. If anyone is to kill him, it will be me.’

‘Yes, highness.’

Castus looked perplexed. ‘You know this man?’ 

I smiled. ‘Indeed, he is an old friend.’

I walked back to Remus and rode him to the river. I sat gawping at the scene below me. Dozens of dead Roman soldiers were heaped at the foot of the riverbank and other bodies lay in the gently flowing river. On the opposite bank stood Gallia and her women, plus the company that I had sent to protect them. Behind the archers stood groups of horses being held by other soldiers. I recognised Gallia by her blonde hair showing beneath her helmet, standing proud with her bow. I waved at her and then rode downstream a few hundred feet to where the riverbank was not steep and crossed the river. Patrols of horsemen were also scouring each side of the river, looking for any legionaries that may have escaped. They saluted me as I encountered one patrol on the opposite side of the river, half a dozen riders led by a Dacian carrying a lance and shield, like his men. 

‘Have you found any?’

‘One or two, sir. We speared them so they won’t be giving us any more trouble. But some will have escaped and made it back to their camp. Do you want us to stay with you, sir, in case any of the bastards are lurking about?’

‘No, carry on with your sweep.’ They saluted and continued on their way east. I carried on upstream until I met Gafarn. I shook his hand.

‘I see that my orders were disobeyed again,’ I grinned.

‘Yes, highness. The Lady Gallia thought it cowardly to stand idly by while you were fighting for your life.’ 

‘I see, and you didn’t think to order her to stay out of the fight?’

He thought for a moment. ‘A hundred heavily armed women are not to be trifled with lightly, highness.’

‘And the other hundred men who were with you?’

‘They thought the same as I, highness.’

‘I’m glad to see that you are unharmed, Gafarn.’

‘You too, highness.’

I held Gallia in my arms for a long time as around us men and women cheered. 

‘You have won a great victory,’ she whispered in my ear, which caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. I wanted to hear more of her hero-worship of me. ‘Remus is hurt.’ She broke away from me and ran over to my horse, stroking his neck and telling him he was a beautiful boy. So much for me! 

It turned out that Remus’ wound was nothing more than a scratch, and once Gallia and Diana had seen this for themselves, everyone mounted up and we rode back downstream and across the river. I rode beside Gallia as we left the spot on the riverbank from where they had been shooting.

‘Fine shooting,’ remarked.

‘We nearly turned tail and ran when all these Romans started scrambling down the riverbank, until Gafarn pointed out that most had discarded their weapons and shields. Then we realised that they were fleeing, and all those hours spent on the training field were put to good use.’

‘So it seems.’

‘Afterwards, Praxima wanted to jump in the river and slit the throats of any survivors.’

I turned to see Nergal’s woman riding behind us, her hair wild and her face lit up with excitement. A shudder went down my spine. ‘I can imagine.’

It was early evening now but it was still light and warm, and so I moved the army two miles to the west, out of sight of the death and carnage of the battlefield and upstream where we could water the horses and refresh ourselves. We would burn the dead in the morning. We rode in silence, for men who have survived the cauldron of combat have much to reflect on — why they survived when others died, would death take them in the next battle and would they meet death with honour or, like they had witnessed today, with terror in their eyes and their bowels emptying without control? I sent Byrd and two of his riders north to take a message to Spartacus that we had defeated the Romans. I prayed to Shamash that he lived and that Byrd would not stumble upon a field of slaughter like the one we had just left, with a dead Spartacus staring with glazed eyes into the sky, or Claudia, or Godarz. I stopped myself entertaining such thoughts.

We pitched camp and ate our evening meal. Few fires were lit and the mood of the men was subdued. A veterinary attended to Remus and then I groomed and feed him. I instructed Nergal to post guards and relieve them every hour, though I doubted that there were any Romans within ten miles of us. Gallia came with Epona and I wrapped both of us in my cloak as we sat on the ground with our knees drawn up to our chins. It was dark now and the sky was cloudless, a myriad of stars flickering above us. There may have been nearly thirten thousand soldiers and their animals camped all around us, but there was little sound and we could have been all alone in the world.

‘They will keep coming back, you know.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘The Romans. They will send another army, then another, until we are no more.’

‘I know,’ I looked at her, her perfect nose and high cheekbones highlighted in the moonlight. ‘You know that I want us to be together, so come with me to Hatra and we can live our lives in peace.’

She turned to look at me. ‘And what of Diana, and Praxima and the rest. I cannot abandon them.’

‘They all have a place in my father’s kingdom, if they so choose.’

She sighed. ‘Do you think your mother and father will approve of me?’

I laughed. ‘They will think that you are adorable, and they will love you, just as I do.’

She rested her head on my shoulder. ‘Oh Pacorus, for a warrior you are such a dreamer.’

‘All will be well, I promise. We will leave this accursed land and then head east back to Parthia. There we will be safe.’

‘Can we ever be safe?’ Tonight Gallia had a heavy heart, a consequence, no doubt, of the slaughter she had witnessed this day.

‘Of course, the Parthian Empire is not some collection of stone huts. It is over a thousand miles across and stands unassailable like a rock in the face of its enemies. Do not think any more, rest my love.’

I held her close as she drifted off to sleep, and I stared at the night sky and prayed that my parents were safe and that I would see them again. And I prayed that I would also see my friend and lord, Spartacus, once more.

Chapter 12

T
he next day we went back to the corpse-strewn battlefield, to carry out the grisly task of stripping the dead of anything that might be of use to us. This included swords, javelins, bows, arrows, shields, helmets and mail shirts. I ordered more of my men to scour the battlefield and retrieve any undamaged arrows, for most of our quivers were empty. I sent Nergal with five hundred horsemen to find the Roman camp and take anything of use, and to burn what was left. The Germans and Dacians took great delight in hacking off Roman heads and mounting them on broken spear shafts and bent
pilum
and then planting them in the ground, until I ordered them to desist. Castus was taken aback, but I told him that we were there to take what would be useful and then march back north to Spartacus, not to indulge the worst aspects of our fantasies. He asked me what I was going to do with the captured Roman officer, who in truth I had forgotten about. As a vast pile of captured weapons and equipment grew by the side of the battlefield, Lucius Furius was brought before me. Despite his situation he still had that air of haughty arrogance that seemed endemic to all Roman officers. A small circle gathered round us as he faced me under a bright blue sky. Burebista stood behind him, Castus on my right, while a host of warriors gathered behind me. I had arranged for the captured legionary eagles to be held behind me as I spoke.

‘Well, Lucius,’ I said. ‘You don’t mind me calling you Lucius, do you? Only I’ve beaten you so often that I feel that we are friends.’

A ripple of laughter came from behind me. Furius stood motionless, his eyes full of hate. Burebista kicked the back of his knee, causing him to fall to the ground. 

‘On your knees when you talk to a prince of Parthia,’ my lieutenant sneered, drawing his sword and placing the point at the rear of the Roman’s neck.

Furius was on his knees but still defiant. ‘Kill me and have done with it,’ he spat.

I gestured to Burebista to put away his sword and motioned for Lucius to stand again. ‘I’m not a Roman, Lucius. I don’t kill people for the pleasure of it. I’m not going to kill you.’ There was a murmur of protest at this.

‘Silence!’ I shouted. ‘I want you to take a message from me to the senate in Rome.’

‘What message?’

‘I want you to tell them that we desire free passage out of Italy, and that if they send more armies against us then we will destroy those, too. Tell the old men who rule Rome that we do not fear them, but if they antagonise us further then we will turn our wrath on Rome itself and burn it to the ground.’ My men cheered wildly at this. I raised my arms to quiet them. 

‘Words are cheap,’ he taunted me.

‘Words are cheap but Roman lives are cheaper. Look around you, Lucius. It is not the bodies of slaves that are lying on the ground, but Romans. How many more times must you learn that we are soldiers, not a rabble? Your vanity does not permit you to believe that, does it? But let your eyes see the truth. Look at the captured eagles that are held before you. Be grateful that I let you live and deliver my message to your masters. Find him a mule.’

Moment later a rather sorry looking animal with not even a cloth over its back was brought before me. Lucius Furius was stripped naked, forced onto its back to face its hindquarters and then lashed out of camp. To the south a large column of black smoking was ascending into the sky. Nergal had obviously found the Roman camp. Burebista was very unhappy.

‘You should have let me kill him, lord,’ he said as Lucius Furius disappeared from view, heading east. ‘A man like that despises all enemies of Rome.’

‘You are probably right, but if I do kill him, it will be in battle with a sword in his hand.’

Castus shook his head. ‘You talk too much sometimes, Pacorus. Burebista is right, you should have killed him. He would have killed you if the places were reversed.’

‘You Germans are obsessed with killing,’ I chided him, ‘I find it hard to believe that there are any of you left.’

‘We only kill Romans,’ he looked at me and smiled. ‘And any Parthians who are foolish enough to wander into our territory.’

It took us the rest of the day to loot the Roman dead and organise the collection of their equipment. By the time we had finished Nergal had returned with dozens of captured Roman carts and several hundred mules in tow. The Roman camp had been deserted, though he believed that those who had fled from the battle had visited it during their flight, as there was nothing of value remaining. However, perhaps more valuable were the standards that we had captured: four legionary eagles and a host of banners. There were small pieces of red cloth attached to a cross-bar and carried on a pole. On each piece of cloth were gold Roman numerals and animals. There were other tall poles topped with various insignia, such as a silver hand, and many types of animals, with silver discs attached to the pole itself. Many of the standards carried the letters SPQR. I asked Castus what they meant and he told me it was Latin for
Senatus populusque romanus,
meaning the ‘Senate and people of Rome’. I had them all dumped in a cart and gave it to Castus. His men had won the battle and it was only right that he should be rewarded.