Companions (The Parthian Chronicles) (12 page)

‘That looks like a Parthian bow,’ said Vagharsh. ‘I hope you didn’t steal it.’

‘I found it,’ answered Malik.

I was intrigued. ‘Found it?’

‘Before you were Dura’s king, Pacorus,’ replied Malik, ‘the high king of your empire sent Mithridates to rule your city. He believed himself to be a great warlord but my father destroyed his army. I took this bow as a trophy of our victory.’

Vagharsh laughed.

‘Let us hope you have more luck with it than its former owner,’ I said. ‘Keep yourself safe, Malik.’

I turned and signalled for the company commanders to come forward. The sounds of battle were getting louder and they were straining at the leash to get to grips with the enemy but I counselled caution.

‘I will take one company forward to reconnoitre,’ I told them. ‘You must impress on your men the importance of conserving their arrows. We have no supply train to draw on so when they empty their quivers there will no replacements. Aimed shots only. Now go.’

Each archer carried ninety arrows but they could be expended in around fifteen minutes of continuous shooting. Byrd had told me that the enemy army was large. Horse archers without any arrows were useless.

There was a succession of horn blasts followed by the companies deploying into line, each one of two widely spaced ranks. I reached down and uncorked the water bottle and took a swig. The liquid was warm and barely alleviated the dryness in my mouth. I replaced the cork. It was going to be a long, hot day and I would need its contents in the hours ahead. The lead company came forward and halted a few paces behind me. Each man took an arrow from his quiver and nocked it in his bowstring. I gave the signal to move forward. Malik was beside me and Vagharsh directly behind as our horses broke into a walk and then a canter, the low rumble to the rear indicating that the company was following.

We were now less than four hundred paces from the canal, the walls of Uruk perhaps a quarter of a mile on our left. Though I could clearly hear the noise of men fighting coming from the city walls the ground to our front was empty. It was most odd. Then I saw a few figures ahead, shimmering individuals on foot that appeared as if by magic. Then more and more until suddenly there were hundreds of warriors flooding the ground directly ahead. They were leaving their boats on the canal to face the horsemen that had suddenly appeared immediately north of the canal. Good. That is what I had intended.

I raised my hand to signal a halt as more and more warriors appeared like devils from the underworld as they clambered from their boats. I recognised them. These were not the soldiers of King Tiraios. They wore baggy yellow leggings, loose fitting red tunics and leather caps on their heads. They carried round ox-hide shields and were armed with a variety of sword and spears. These men came from Sakastan.

‘So Narses has not been quelling insurrections in Sakastan but gathering an army,’ I said aloud.

Malik looked at me quizzically.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

To add to the sounds of battle the noise of horns and drums suddenly erupted within the ranks of the warriors of Sakastan. The latter had now gathered into a brightly coloured block with a wide frontage. There were perhaps two thousand but scanning their ranks I saw no slingers or archers. The din of drums and horns increased as I called forward the company commander and gave him his orders.

‘Raking attack, left to right, half volleys only.’

He saluted and trotted back to his men, relaying my orders as the red and yellow horde ahead began shouting war cries and banging their weapons against their shields in an attempt to intimidate us. A few left the ranks to run forward to open their arms to reveal their torsos to taunt us.

What is war but a series of training exercises interspersed with death and gore? Dura’s army had been forged by Lucius Domitus, ex-Roman centurion and later commander in the army of Spartacus, a man who was as hard as the
gladius
he wore at his hip. There was nothing remarkable about Dura’s army. It was smaller than most armies fielded by the other kingdoms of the empire, but it was staffed by professionals, men who did nothing from dawn till dusk but train. Endless drills that made them as efficient as Marcus Sutonius’ machines. Every legionary knew his role and place in the century, cohort and legion, knew the meaning of every call made by the trumpets and every whistle blast that came from a centurion. It was the same among the horsemen: every horse archer practised drills and shooting on the training fields every day and the cataphracts trained to be the mailed fist of the army. And Domitus had integrated the horse and foot so they could work together on the battlefield, an apparently seamless amalgamation of legionaries fighting on foot and highly mobile horsemen. Dura’s army had a simple motto: train hard, fight easy.

In most Parthian armies the horse archers would be unleashed against an enemy in a wild, disorganised charge: thousands of horsemen swarming around an enemy shooting so many volleys of arrows that they would black out the sun. Behind the armies would be dozens, sometimes hundreds, of camels loaded with spare quivers that the horsemen would ride to in order to replenish their ammunition. But eventually even camel trains ran out of ammunition.

But we had no camel train and so we had to adapt our tactics accordingly. Raking attack, left to right, half-volleys only. Every man of the company understood the drill well enough: they had practised it many times on the training field. There was no need for a signal as the first rank wheeled their horses left and the company commander galloped to the head of the line to lead the attack. The enemy, seeing us seemingly immobile and intimidated, became louder in their war cries and taunts, walking forward and spitting in our direction.

The commander directed his horse forward a few yards and then wheeled it right to advance towards the enemy warriors, several of whom had dropped their leggings to take a piss in our direction, to the great amusement of their comrades. The commander cantered forward and then broke into a gallop as he swung his mount to the right again so he could ride from left to right across the front of the enemy formation. His and his men’s arrival was greeted with jeers and whistles from the enemy. Until he and they swung left in the saddle, pulled back their bowstrings and shot their arrows.

A Parthian recurve bow is so called because the central part of the limbs curve towards the archer while the tips of the limbs curve away from him. This shape gives more power to the arrow when it was released. And had the enemy been more attentive they would have noted that the bows equipping the horsemen riding across their front at a distance of just over fifty paces were short, had a setback centre section and had limbs that were thick in proportion to their width. The Sakastanis must have thought that we too were engaging in insults and taunting, until the archers released their bowstrings.

The whoosh of the arrows as they were shot was drowned out by the jeers of the enemy. But the high-pitched screams of men being struck by three-winged bronze arrowheads were clear enough above the din. The riders took their time shooting to conserve ammunition, letting loose only three arrows each before they wheeled right to take them back to their starting positions. But every arrow found its mark, some going through shields to strike unarmoured torsos and necks. Half the company had killed or wounded a hundred and fifty men by the time its second rank began its assault. Like their comrades the riders galloped across the enemy’s front, shooting arrows as they did so and keeping out of range of any spears that were hurled at them. The Sakastanis’ bravado had evaporated as they huddled together to present a wall of shields and levelled spears to my horsemen. But all this did was to make it easier for the archers to kill more of them, closely packed as they were and having useless headgear and no armour protection. The second rank likewise killed at least a hundred and fifty more of the enemy.

Three hundred Sakastanis had been killed or wounded for no losses.

The company made another attack, again raking the enemy formation with arrows that felled over two hundred more of the enemy. Each horse archer had now shot six arrows and I was considering letting them make a third assault when suddenly hundreds more soldiers appeared from the canal, and more importantly from near the city walls. This indicated that I had managed to draw the enemy away from where the fighting was taking place with the defenders. Perhaps the entire enemy army had been diverted to deal with my presence. I was feeling very happy with myself and was pondering whether to commit the whole dragon when the officer of the company that had been attacking the Sakastanis galloped up.

‘Enemy archers massing, majesty.’

I peered into the haze that was thickening as a result of the dust kicked up by our horses.

‘Where?’

He turned and pointed to the left of the Sakastanis where I could make out groups of individuals in the dusty dimness.

‘They are also from Sakastan, majesty. I recognise them from when we defeated Porus.’

I remembered too. Porus’ archers were equipped with long bamboo bows the height of a man, which required one end to be anchored on firm ground before they could be shot. But if they managed to release a volley their missiles would hit my horsemen easily. We had but moments to act.

‘Sound retreat,’ I ordered.

The officer saluted and galloped back to his men, his signaller blowing his horn to indicate an immediate withdrawal.

I turned to the officers of the other company commanders behind me. ‘You will also withdraw your companies immediately.’

They too saluted and rode back to their men.

‘Time to go, Vagharsh,’ I said, wheeling Remus around and digging my knees into his sides. He grunted and raced forward, his hooves churning up the dry surface as he did so. I turned and looked at the rapidly fading mass of archers grouping in front of the canal, my heart pounding in my chest as I waited for the arrow storm to engulf us.

If the enemy loosed a volley I did not see it as Vagharsh and I brought up the rear of the fleeing horse archers. They reined their horses to a halt when they ran into Gallia and her Amazons, the advance guard of the rest of the army. Her face was streaked with sweat when she removed her helmet to speak to me a few moments later.

‘Running away, Pacorus?’ she grinned.

‘A tactical withdrawal, my sweet.’

I looked past her to see a long line of white shields sporting red wings.

‘I hope we have enough men,’ I said.

‘And women,’ she added.

We rode to where Domitus was marching alone before his front rank of legionaries, vine cane in hand and appearing as nonchalant as he would be on a morning stroll in Dura. He raised his cane to signal a halt as we approached. I jumped down from the saddle.

‘The garrison is still fighting and I have managed to draw the enemy from their boats onto land to the north of the canal. That’s the good news.’

He took off his helmet, pulled a cloth that was tucked in his belt and used it to wipe his sweat-covered brow.

‘And the bad news?’

‘It would appear that we are heavily outnumbered.’

He gave Gallia a crooked smile. ‘We are always outnumbered.’

‘They have archers,’ I informed him, ‘so when you advance make sure your men are in
testudo
formation.’

I looked at the two thousand legionaries and the horse archers that were deploying on their flanks. I was concerned by our lack of numbers.

‘I hope our numbers are enough.’

‘We have enough,’ growled Domitus. ‘You should remember that the steel that runs through the veins of my boys is far more important that the steel they hold in their fists. And like a fist we will smash straight through them.’

Chapter 3

The dust haze still hung in the air as the cohorts made their way towards the canal, which was around five hundred yards away. The legionaries dumped their
furcas
and went into all-round defence mode, those in the front ranks forming a shield wall and those behind lifting their shields above their heads to create a roof of wood and leather. Domitus had grabbed a spare shield and stood in the centre of the battle line, which was composed of twenty-five centuries in a single line. Each century was composed of eighty men in eight ranks, each rank containing ten men. It was a thin line that had a frontage of around three hundred yards. But there was a substantial reserve – two thousand horse archers – because I could not commit the horsemen until the location and strength of the enemy’s bowmen had been determined.

Byrd and Malik wanted to take the scouts forward but I forbade it.

‘I do not wish to lose two friends and all my scouts,’ I told them, ‘so you and they will remain with me.’

We were advancing at a slow walking pace, which at least gave the horses some respite, the legionaries shuffling forward under the cover of their shields. An unnerving quiet had descended over the battlefield, which at least indicated that the fighting where the canal entered the city had halted. The archers on the towers would be able to see our presence by now, which would hopefully raise the garrison’s morale. I stared ahead and realised that at least the haze was diminishing now that the horses were no longer kicking up dust. The view was not reassuring.

The enemy mass had lengthened to not only match the frontage of Domitus’ men but also outflank them substantially. In the centre was a line of helmets, spear points and large round shields – the soldiers of Charax.