And here, for a Shahanshah with little choice but to devote his energies to combating the Hephthalites, was a most awkward complication. The urgent need to strengthen imperial defences along the north-east frontier, whether by buttressing existing cities or by raising new ones, hardly sat well with the time-honoured policy of not treading on Parthian toes. For all his swagger, Peroz was highly sensitive to this problem. While Hephthalite support had been useful in helping him claim the throne, the decisive blow had actually been struck by a Parthian warlord: Raham, of the family of Mihran. It was he who had defeated, captured and executed Peroz’s elder brother and then crowned Peroz as his “protégé.”20 Twenty-five years on, the Persian king’s ambitions still rested on the support of the Parthian dynasts. Without it, he had no chance of defeating the upstart Hephthalite kingdom. Simultaneously, however, there could be no prospect of ultimate victory without marching his armies and labour-gangs directly across Parthian land. A most awkward circle to square.
But not, perhaps, wholly impossible. Peroz was subtle as well as bold; and he knew that the pen might, on occasion, be wielded alongside the sword. Even while summoning his warriors and engineers to the defence of his empire, he had also been busy mustering his minstrels, his bards and his scribes. Conscious that the days when it had been sufficient for the House of Sasan to trumpet an exclusively Persian descent were gone, Peroz had settled upon a simple but audacious expedient: he had ordered its past rewritten.
A new family tree, one more acceptable to Parthian sensibilities, more inclusive, more multicultural, was now required. So it was, obedient to their master’s requirements, that scholars in the royal service had set themselves to a comprehensive upgrading of the Sasanian lineage. Fortunately, preserved in ancient texts and in the memories of priests and poets, the perfect ancestors had been waiting shimmeringly to hand. The Kayanids—like Kava, the blacksmith from whom the Karin claimed descent—were heroes from the fabulously distant past, with biographies that featured talking birds, flying chariots, fortresses raised by demons and other fantastical wonders. Unlike Kava, a mere blacksmith, however, they had all of them been graced with the farr—since so impeccably royal had been their dynasty that even its very name derived from the antique title of “Kai,” or “King.” This, however, was not the main reason why Peroz was suddenly so keen to claim descent from them. Rather, the true appeal of the Kayanids lay in the location of their realm—which had lain, not in Persia, but in Parthia and, northwards, into Gurgan. It was here that the Kayanid kings, the tireless guardians of their people, had made heroic stand after heroic stand, fighting in defence both of their kingdom and of their farr, resolute against savage enemies whose fiendish ambition it had been to filch both. As Peroz advanced northwards from Parthia against the Hephthalites, he made sure to do so as the self-proclaimed heir of the Kayanids: as a king whose ultimate roots lay in the self-same lands he had come to defend.
“Airan,” these had anciently been called: “the realm of the Aryans,” or “Iran.” The Persians, who traced their own origins back to this primordial north-eastern kingdom, and therefore regarded themselves as being not a whit less Aryan than the Parthians, had always been keen on the name. Long before the time of Peroz, the House of Sasan had been making great play with it in their inscriptions, their titles and all their endless bragging. They had even termed their own empire Iranshahr—“the Dominion of the Aryans.” Now, though, under Peroz, the manufacturing of links between the Sasanian monarchy and the fabled Kayanid homeland had become an obsession. As the king gazed into a perilous and uncertain future, so had he sought to influence it by sponsoring an official systematisation of the past. Blatant fabrications had enabled Ardashir to be enshrined once and for all as what Peroz so desperately needed him to be: a descendant of the Kayanids. Meanwhile, in order to buttress the plausibility of this fraud, centuries of history were simply erased. The end result was a lineage that perfectly served the desperate needs of the time. No less than a stockpile of weapons on the great north-eastern trunk road, or a raw new fortress on the red wall beyond the Alburz Mountains, it spoke of both a crisis and an implacable determination to resolve it.
Battle-hardened pragmatist and self-appointed heir to ancient kings who had fought demons: the Shahanshah rode to war as both. That Peroz had resurrected the antique title of Kai; that he had named his eldest son “Kavad,” after the first of the Kayanids; that he had stamped his coins with any number of allusions to the legendary dynasty: here were no mere idle self-indulgences. Rather, they served as potent markers of his utter seriousness of purpose. He had a dual strategy: to win the hearts and minds of his Parthian subjects even as he met the Hephthalites with an iron fist. And it seemed to be working. The decisive adventure had been launched. Peroz and his army had passed through the gates of the great red wall and headed out on to the steppes. Advancing on the nearest Hephthalite stronghold, just beyond the frontier, they had found it abandoned.21 Clearly, the terror of the royal name had rendered the savages too terrified to stand and fight. Peroz ordered the settlement razed to the ground. Meanwhile, behind him, in Parthia, everything appeared calm. Now, all that was needed was to track down the enemy, corner them, and wipe them from the face of the earth.
Then the Shahanshah received the news he had been yearning to hear: the Hephthalites were ahead of him. Their outriders had been spotted, and their main army was drawing near. Peroz issued brisk orders, summoning the champions of Iranshahr to battle. At once, the stir of preparation spread across the camp: archers oiled and tested their bows, drivers heaved war-towers onto the backs of their elephants, and footsoldiers dusted down their wicker shields. Most urgent of all, however, was the need to ready the expedition’s ultimate killers: the deadliest strike-force in the world. A one-piece helmet, “skilfully crafted to look exactly like a man’s face”;22 iron plates, greaves and gloves; whips and maces, slung from the belt; a lance so long and heavy that it could be handled only if first secured to the side of a mount: these were the tools of an armoured horseman in the service of the Shahanshah. Barely human such a warrior might appear, when fully furnished: “a moving image wrought by a hammer.”23 Lifted up into their saddles on the shoulders of attendants, urging forward steeds that were themselves sheathed in mail and plate, forming themselves into a glittering line in the front rank of the army, the heavy cavalry of Iranshahr could know themselves worthy heirs of their ancestors: heroes of steel, just as the Kayanids had been.