‘I’ve missed you.’
Her eyes lit up. ‘Are you going to show me how much?’
Afterwards, as she lay naked on our bed, she ran a finger down my scarred cheek. ‘Soon I will be fat and ugly and you will not want me.’
I turned to face her. ‘I will never not want you, you are my reason for living.’
‘I will hold you to that.’
‘I think my father is angry with me.’
She raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Have you given any reason for him to be angry with you?’
I sighed. ‘He thinks that I lust for glory, and that we should not have given battle to Narses.’
‘And do you lust for glory?’
I looked at her and knew that I could not deceive her. ‘Yes.’
She smiled. ‘Perhaps he envies you and is angry with himself for feeling thus.’
‘Perhaps. I think he wishes that we were both back in Hatra under his protection.’
‘Or maybe he regrets not putting himself forward to be King of Kings.’
I smiled. ‘His pride would never allow himself to admit that he has made a mistake. But yes, I think he does now see that perhaps he, and not Phraates, would have been a better choice. But what is done is done.’
‘And now you are Lord High General of the whole Parthian Empire, for a courier arrived from Ctesiphon announcing your appointment before you returned. What does it entail?’
I rose from the bed and stood at the balcony doors, looking at the Euphrates below. ‘I do not know exactly, though I have a nasty feeling that I might become Phraates’ errand boy.’
Early the next morning I rode down to the Palmyrene Gate. When I arrived I handed a guard the reins of Remus and then climbed the stone steps inside one of the towers on to the arch to look at the stone griffin statue. The sky’s purple and pink hues were giving way to blue as the sun began its ascent in the east, while spreading our before me to the west was the great desert plain. The legion’s camp was already bustling with activity, the men rising before dawn and then eating their breakfast of porridge, bread and cheese, before assembling for parade. It was at morning assembly that any notices were read out, and I had instructed Domitus to pass on my gratitude to the men for their professional conduct during the campaign that had just finished, and to inform them that each would be receiving a bonus of a week’s pay. The legion’s clerks meticulously recorded each legionary’s pay, the documents being held in the headquarters building in the Citadel. The whole legion was run along Roman lines. ‘War is business,’ Domitus once told me, and he was right. When I was a boy I used to think that conflict was all colourful banners, shining armour, mighty steeds and personal combat, but the reality was that victory depended on discipline, endless drill, the right equipment and cool leadership in the heat of battle. Bozan, my old tutor in Hatra, had drilled it into me that the key was to make sure you were prepared for war, and that required hours and hours of training and drilling. Train hard, fight easy. And he was right, and so was Domitus, and that’s why the Romans were so successful. They didn’t care how many men an enemy brought to the battlefield because they knew that every man in every legion knew his task and could carry it out in his sleep. As I watched a century march at double time out of the camp I smiled to myself. Drill, marching and instruction, day after day, month after month, year after year. It was the same with my cataphracts, who every day rode out to the training fields and spent hours honing their formations, obeying the horns that told them when to turn, when to charge and when to retreat. Dura’s lords were not disciplined, and though wild and recklessly brave, against determined opposition, such as a Roman army, they would fail. No matter, I now had enough gold to raise a force of my own horse archers and Nergal would be their commander.
‘Daydreaming, son of Hatra?’
I was startled by the words, then saw the familiar dishevelled figure of Dobbai ambling towards me.
‘Your wife told me that you might be here.’
‘We missed you at the meal last night,’ I said.
‘Of course you didn’t. Two young newlyweds want to be on their own after being parted, so I made myself scarce.’
She laid her hand on the griffin statue. ‘Afraid he might have been stolen?’
‘No, I like the view, and it is also peaceful. Most of the time.’
‘Don’t be churlish, son of Hatra, it does not suit you. We heard of your elevation to be chief warlord in the empire. Well done, though I had hoped to see the heads of Narses and Mithridates adorning the walls of the Citadel this morning.’
‘Unfortunately, they got away.’
Her haggard visage frowned. ‘That is unfortunate, for you will have to fight them all over again. Cockroaches are difficult to kill, are they not?’
‘I met the wife of Phraates during my stay in Ctesiphon.’
‘Queen Aruna?’ Dobbai spat over the battlements. ‘She possesses the venom of a King Cobra and the malice of a demon from the underworld. She took a dislike to you?’
‘An instant one, as far as I could tell.’
‘You have won great victories but made powerful enemies. People may forget the victories but your enemies will not forgive you. What are you going to do with the gold that Phraates gave you?’
I bristled. ‘That’s an impertinent question.’
She pointed a talon-like finger at me and cackled. ‘Then have me flogged.’
‘Don’t be a fool. I will strengthen the army, if you must know.’
‘Very wise. You will need many warriors err long.’
‘I can command kings to send me warriors,’ I declared boldly.
‘You can command and they can ignore you. Trust only those who have sworn allegiance to you. Words are worth nothing.’
‘Narses and Mithridates cannot conjure up armies out of nothing. Even if they wanted to rebel again it would take them time to rebuild their forces. In any case, the other kings in the eastern part of the empire have sworn allegiance to Phraates.’
She scratched her beak-like nose. ‘They have done so because they fear you, that is the only reason. But if you are pre-occupied then they can change their minds. You want my advice?’
‘Not really.’
She ignored my words. ‘Send assassins to kill both Mithridates and Narses. Persuade Phraates to give you the throne of Persis and Orodes the crown of Susiana. In that way you will secure peace in the empire.’
‘Flights of fancy,’ I said. ‘Even if I wanted Persis, which I do not, Phraates would not sanction it, and he would have me executed if he discovered that I had had his son murdered.’
She smiled, her teeth black and foul, turned and shuffled away. ‘Very well, have it your own way. But war is coming, son of Hatra, war is coming.’
Despite Dobbai’s dire warning the weeks that followed saw a return to normality. Peace within the empire meant a return of trade along the Silk Road and the flow of caravans through Dura to and from Egypt, with more money pouring into Rsan’s treasury. The lords returned to their estates and Gallia and I undertook a tour of my kingdom while she had the energy to do so and was not too fat to fit in a saddle. She declared that she would never be transported in a cart, so it was on horseback or not at all. So that summer we visited each lord in his stronghold. I took all my cataphracts with me, though neither they nor their horses wore any armour or carried the kontus. Instead, they all wore white tunics and brown leggings and carried bows and swords. They also left their helmets behind, as the facemasks would terrify the locals. It was a happy time, for the ranks of my cataphracts contained the sons of Dura’s lords so each stronghold we visited turned into a homecoming for an eldest son. A great feast invariably followed, at which drunken oaths of allegiance were sworn to me and Gallia, to the amusement of my wife. The other sons of each lord begged their father to allow them to serve in my cavalry. The number of volunteers thus swelled after each visit, especially at the feasts. As the hour grew late Gallia would retire to her quarters. She did not complain but I could tell that her pregnancy was sapping her strength. And so she slept and each lord silenced the music and noise, leaving his eldest son to talk of the campaign that he had just fought in. I always made sure that I was just a face in the crowd at such events, for each man had earned the right to tell his story of the battles that we had fought. Eager faces hungry for news gathered round as he told how we had defeated Porus and his elephants. The logs on the great fires crackled and hissed as a new version of the story was told every time. The elephants, tall as three horses and blood-crazed, charged our lines, only to die on the points of our lances as we abandoned all hope and met the giant beasts head-on. Others told of hundreds of elephants as far as the eye could see, each carrying archers and spearmen who fired thousands of arrows that bounced off our scale armour as we rode among the tusked animals, hacking at their legs with our swords. Occasionally I would catch the eye of our host, invariably surrounded by his lieutenants and giant hunting dogs at his feet, and he would smile at me. He knew the truth, that the elephants had been scattered by a herd of pigs, and so did I, and for that matter so did the storyteller and many of those present. It didn’t matter. I smiled back and we both enjoyed the fiction. Then there were stories of our victory over Narses, of our crazy charge into the massed ranks of the enemy, and for once the orator told the truth for there was no need to embellish the tale. The enemy did indeed fill the horizon and we were but few in number.