Parthian Vengeance (31 page)

Chapter 8

As both sides eyed each other warily across the featureless stretch of desert that would soon become a blood-soaked killing ground, an eerie silence descended over the battlefield. Horses scraped at the ground impatiently, chomped on their bits and flicked their tails to swat away flies. Men pulled on their bowstrings to test the draw weight, others checked their quivers and the cataphracts rested their great lances on their shoulders, their helmets pushed back on their heads. The breeze ruffled windsocks and banners and offered slight relief to men sweating in armour. Most of the clouds had disappeared by now to leave a clear blue sky. It was a beautiful spring day, and for many their last one on earth.

I was suddenly gripped by a fear that Narses would request a parley and escape our clutches, but my concern was allayed when a great noise suddenly erupted from the enemy ranks. The accursed kettledrums began to beat and then the shrill sound of horns pierced the air. Horses whinnied and some reared up in alarm but Remus merely stood unconcerned. He had heard these sounds many times before. Behind me men pulled their helmets down and wrapped their reins round their left wrists. Orodes offered me his hand.

‘God keep you safe, Pacorus.’

‘And you too, my friend.’

In front of us the foot soldiers of Narses were beating their spear shafts against their wicker shields, producing a great rattling sound that mixed with the noise of the kettledrums and horns to produce a dreadful din. How I regretted that Domitus was not here – his legions would reduce those wicker shields to wood shavings!

‘The enemy is moving,’ shouted Orodes, pointing over to the left to where the enemy’s right wing of horsemen appeared to be shifting further right. Were they fleeing?

Closer inspection revealed that the horsemen were actually moving in an ordered fashion and not in flight. I glanced at the mass of enemy foot. They were still rooted to the same spot. As the right wing of enemy horsemen continued to shift right more riders appeared to fill the gap that had appeared between the foot soldiers and the horsemen on the enemy right wing. Now our own left wing was greatly overlapped by the enemy opposite that began to advance against Nergal’s outnumbered horse archers.

It suddenly became horribly clear that the enemy had also been closely observing us just as we had been scrutinising them. Narses would have seen the banner of Mesene and would have also spotted my heavy cavalry positioned near the centre and not on the flank. He therefore believed our left wing to be weak and would throw his mounted spearmen and horse archers against it. If he succeeded then he would be able to drive back or even rout Nergal’s men and get his riders behind our army. A potential disaster was unfolding before my eyes.

I looked to my right to see Gallia leading Dura’s horse archers against the enemy foot. The companies rode towards the enemy in single-file columns, twenty in all, each rider at the head of the column loosing his arrows high into the sky at a distance of around four hundred paces from the front ranks. He then wheeled his horse to the right to return to the rear of the column. In this way a withering rain of arrows was directed at the enemy, while Dura’s horsemen stayed out of the range of enemy arrows and slingshots. I did not have to worry about the centre.

Meanwhile the enemy horsemen were now moving at a canter towards Nergal’s men, arrows arching into the sky from the horse archers behind their front ranks of spearmen. There were frantic horn calls coming from Nergal’s ranks as the Mesenians about-turned and began to retreat, the rear ranks turning in their saddles and shooting their bows over the hind quarters of their horses. Many enemy spearmen were felled as Nergal’s men loosed arrow after arrow at the oncoming enemy. He had obviously trained his men well.

‘Wedge, wedge. Follow me!’ I shouted and pulled my
kontus
from the earth. I dug my knees into Remus’ flanks and shouted at him to move forward. He reared up on his back legs and broke into a canter, then a gallop. In seconds Orodes was next to me and behind us over twelve hundred riders followed.

A cataphract is the most expensive soldier on earth, a man dressed in the finest and most effective armour and armed with an array of weapons made from the finest materials. As well as his
kontus
his weapons included a sword, mace, axe and dagger. He and his horse were encased in scale armour, steel leg and arm armour and a helmet that offered protection to the head, neck and face from arrows and blades. Yet all this lavish equipment counts for nothing if the man wearing it is not thoroughly trained.

Just as Domitus had honed his legions into fearsome machines, so had I, assisted by Orodes, moulded my cataphracts into a battle-winning force. As hundreds of iron-shod horses thundered across the ground the ten companies that made up the dragon, plus Orodes’ men, instinctively adopted the wedge formation. The first company formed up behind me, a hundred men forming the tip of the wedge widely spaced in two ranks, and behind them a second company and Orodes’ men mirroring the wedge arrangement of those in front. Either side of these companies, each one riding behind and in echelon of the one in front, were four companies to make the rest of the wedge. Years of practise on the training fields came down to these few moments on the field of honour, when twelve hundred horsemen can be transformed into a battle-winning instrument seemingly in a blink of an eye.

The scale armour, bulky and uncomfortable before battle, becomes as light as a feather in the cauldron of combat. I screamed my war cry and brought my
kontus
down on the right side of Remus, clutching it with both hands as we galloped headlong into the dense ranks of the enemy horsemen.

When we hit them a sickening scraping noise was heard as the cataphracts ground their way into the enemy’s left flank. They were still moving forward to get to grips with Nergal’s men when we struck, driving into the packed ranks of their horse archers and skewing horses and men with our lances. The horse archers wore no armour and had only soft caps on their heads. Ordinarily they would have fled before a cataphract charge, but though many did try to turn their horses away from us, there was nowhere for them run to. The packed ranks of their comrades were to their front, right and rear, and so they were forced to face the armoured monsters that had suddenly appeared in their midst. And then the killing began.

Remus galloped into a gap between two ranks of enemy horse archers and I buried my
kontus
in the first target that presented itself, a bowman dressed in nothing more than a beige kaftan and leggings. He turned in the saddle and stared wild-eyed as the metal tip of the
kontus
went into his sternum and out through his back. Whether he was alive or dead when I released the shaft that had penetrated his body up to half its length I did not know, but in the mêlée there is no time to sit and make judgements. Quick reflexes and speed are the keys to survival. I drew my sword and slashed at the head of a rider who appeared before me, inflicting a deep gash in his jaw. I screamed at Remus to move forward as I advanced deeper among the enemy, hacking left and right with my sword at heads and torsos. Orodes clung to my side like a limpet on a piece of rock, swinging his mace in his hand, the horsemen behind us using their maces and axes against the cloth caps of the enemy horse archers. It was carnage. Skulls were split like a grapes being stepped on as mace blows were rained down on hapless victims. The enemy spearmen had stopped their attack against Nergal’s men and had about-turned to get to grips with us, but between us and them was a great press of horse archers trying to flee for their lives.

After what seemed like only a few seconds but was probably half an hour, as if by magic the enemy horse archers disappeared. We then faced a charge by the enemy spearmen but it was not pressed home with any great vigour. Having seen the remnants of the horse archers flee into the desert, only small groups of spearmen attempted to charge us. Orodes rode up and down the line waving his mace in the air, shouting orders for the ranks to reform to face north where the bulk of enemy spearmen sat on their horses. I rode to the centre of the line, Vagharsh holding my banner and the standard of Orodes being held by another rider beside him. I tried to make a quick tally as officers arranged their companies in two ranks. It appeared that our losses had been slight, which was more than could be said for the enemy. The ground was carpeted with their dead as far as the eye could see, with dozens of slain horses also lying on the ground.

My own and Remus’ scale armour was smeared with blood but it was not my own, and a closer inspection of my cataphracts revealed that they too were daubed with enemy gore. It had been one of the most one-sided victories that I had taken part in. All that remained were the disorganised and no doubt dispirited enemy spearmen who were now grouped to our front. Their officers were riding to and fro, cajoling and threatening their men to move forward. But then arrows began falling among their ranks and many saddles were suddenly emptied. This was the final straw for the demoralised spearmen who suddenly broke and fled east into the desert in the wake of the surviving horse archers.

My men whooped and cheered as the enemy ran, pursued by companies of Nergal’s horse archers. Seeing the charge of the enemy horse stopped and then their whole wing largely destroyed, he had halted the retreat of his horse archers and brought them back onto the battlefield. He and Praxima now rode over to where we stood among the enemy dead and dying. I clasped his forearm when he arrived at our position.

‘My thanks, Pacorus,’ he said, grinning.

‘My thanks to you, my friend,’ I said.

‘You have won a great victory, lord,’ said Praxima, which elicited cheers from those men within earshot.

Nergal looked east to where his men pursued the enemy.

‘Not many will get back across the Tigris,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘Our men are under orders to take no prisoners,’ said Praxima sternly. I smiled at her. Even after all these years she still had the power to unnerve me.

‘That’s one part of Narses’ army dealt with,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope my father and Vardan have broken through to the Ishtar Gate.’

I saw Praxima pull an arrow from her quiver and nock it in her bowstring. Around fifty paces from us a wounded enemy soldier had staggered to his feet and was limping away east, into the desert. His right leg was obviously injured as he could barely put any weight on it. Just a few feet away, men on their horses watched him making his escape. They could have ridden him down with ease but saw no honour in killing such a pathetic figure. Sweating profusely from their exertions in battle, most had pushed their helmets back up on their heads. I saw their expressions change from unconcern to horror as Praxima’s arrow hit the poor wretch in the right leg, causing him to yelp in pain and collapse on the ground. He groaned in agony for a few seconds then, with great effort, managed to get back on his feet, almost hopping as his right leg hung uselessly. There was another twang and a second arrow hit him square in the back, pitching him forward face down on the ground. He made no further movement as Praxima calmly replaced her bow in its case.

She spat on the ground. ‘No pity for the soldiers of Narses.’

Suddenly the ground shook and I heard a deep rumble – the sound of thousands of horses charging. I gave the order to wheel left and face the direction of the sound, hoping that it was not more enemy horsemen mounting another attack against us. Within minutes we had reformed our line facing west and moved forward. Nergal, meanwhile, had brought his horse archers forward and deployed them either side of my cataphracts to provide missile support should we need it. We did not, for ahead I saw a most imposing sight – the lords were leading their men against the now isolated enemy foot soldiers.

A rider, one of Dura’s horse archers, arrived at my position with a message from Gallia that she had committed the lords and their horsemen against Narses’ foot soldiers. She had received news that the Babylonians and Hatrans had routed the enemy horsemen in front of them and had pushed back the remnants to the Ishtar Gate. The battle was as good as won and all that remained was the destruction of the enemy’s foot. Twenty thousand horse archers were now enveloping those troops as the lords and their horse archers emptied their quivers against them. The air was thick with arrows as Narses’ men were assailed from all directions.

I rode over to where Gallia had halted with her Amazons observing the scene unfolding before her, a great cloud of dust now obscuring the distance as Dura’s lords directed their assaults against the enemy. I reached over and kissed her on the cheek, my vest and shirt drenched with sweat. In comparison she looked as though she had just washed and dressed. There wasn’t a speck of dirt on her or Epona and her bow was still in its case. Behind her the Amazons appeared just as fresh and unruffled.

She smiled warmly at Nergal and Praxima as they joined us. She laid a hand on Orodes’ arm.

‘It warms me to see you all unharmed, especially you, lord prince.’

He took off his helmet and bowed his head solemnly. ‘Your servant, lady.’ Ever the gallant knight.

I also took off my own helmet, my sweat-soaked hair matted to my skull.

‘Spandarat insisted on getting involved, then,’ I said to Gallia, observing horse archers riding towards the enemy mass, shooting their bows and then wheeling sharply away.

‘I ordered him and the rest of the lords to attack,’ she replied. ‘Word reached me from your father that the enemy horsemen in front of him had been dispersed, and with you and Nergal scattering those on the other wing, it seemed an opportune moment to unleash the lords.’

‘You have impeccable timing, lady,’ remarked Orodes, wiping his brow with a cloth.

‘Now we can watch them being slaughtered,’ said Praxima with relish.

Dura’s horse archers were now reforming in their companies behind the Amazons, having retreated to the camel train stationed in the rear to obtain fresh quivers of arrows. To our left the tired cataphracts and their blown horses were forming into line, and beyond them the Mesenians. We had returned to our original positions.