‘Greetings, majesty,’ said one, a swarthy man with a long moustache and untidy beard, ‘my name is Kaspar. I was sent by my king, Chosroes, to escort you south.’
He led a company of ragged riders, one hundred men dressed in similar attire to their commander. One carried a long staff from which hung a banner sporting the viper symbol of Chosroes.
‘How long until we reach the rendezvous?’ I asked Kaspar who rode beside me.
He smiled at me, his teeth as brown as his shirt. ‘Not long, majesty. Two hours at most.’
‘How many horsemen has your king sent to the rendezvous?’
Once again he smiled like an imbecile. ‘Many companies, majesty, enough to do you honour.’
Eventually we reached a collection of mud-brick huts located a mile from the Tigris, a desolate place that was deserted as far as I could see.
‘We are here, majesty,’ said Kaspar, who halted his horse and nodded to himself.
‘I see no horsemen,’ I said.
‘They will be here, majesty, that I promise. Would you like to rest out of the sun?’
It was certainly hot and my tunic was drenched with sweat, but I was more annoyed that there were no troops waiting for me. But then, this was the army of Chosroes and it was probably futile to get annoyed with Kaspar, so I gave the order to dismount and led Remus over to one of the water troughs while others gathered round the well in the centre of the village and hoisted up the bucket to quench their thirst. My men took off their helmets and I did the same. It was midday now and the sun was burning the earth, made worse by the lack of any wind. Once Remus had finished drinking I led him over to the shade of some stables located behind one of the buildings. Kaspar followed me and tethered his mare next to Remus.
‘Where are the villagers?’ I asked.
Kaspar lowered his head. ‘I do not know, majesty.’
I turned away from him and stared at his men and mine intermingling in the centre of the village. ‘Well, I hope we will not be here long. We have a long journey north ahead of us.’
I suddenly felt a sharp pain on the side of my head and then all was black.
Chapter 14
I slowly came out of unconsciousness to discover that I had been propped up against a wall of one of the village huts with my wrists tied behind my back. At length I regained the focus in my eyes, the side of my head throbbing with pain from where I had been struck. I leaned back against the wall, my wrists burning from the cords that had been wrapped tightly around them. I had been stripped of my cuirass, belt, sword and boots. My mouth and throat were parched, though mercifully I was out of the sunlight. I squinted in its intensity, and then saw with horror the bodies of dead men arranged in a neat row a few feet in front of me. I recognised them as the corpses of my escort, each of which had been stripped of their weapons and armour but not their white tunics. Like me they had also lost their boots. I closed my eyes and prayed to Shamash that they had had quick deaths and that He would be merciful to their souls. Then someone spat on me, causing me to open my eyes.
‘Wake up, majesty.’
I looked up to see Kaspar standing before me. He had shed his own ragged attire and replaced it with the items he had stolen from me. I recognised my boots, cuirass, helmet, belt, my spatha in its scabbard and my dagger fastened to the right-hand side of his belt.
‘How do I look?’ He raised his arms to invite me to admire him.
‘Like a thief,’ I answered, which earned me a vicious kick in my stomach.
‘You should be more polite to me, as you are no longer a king.’
He drew my sword and admired the handle and blade. ‘Maybe I should kill you now and save my king the trouble.’
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Then you can be a murderer as well as a thief.
He replaced my sword in its scabbard and kicked me again, causing me to bend forward in pain. For good measure he also slapped my face hard with the back of his hand. He then stepped back and stood before me with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He looked ridiculous with his ill-fitting helmet and cuirass that was too large for his scrawny torso. Nevertheless, he wore the look of a man who had suddenly won a great fortune in a game of chance. Behind him his men were squabbling over the weapons and clothes of my dead escort, whose corpses were now swarming with flies attracted by the freshly spilt blood. One or two were coming to blows and Kaspar turned and watched the fracas with amusement. Eventually, after a few split lips and black eyes, his men settled down to drinking from their waterskins. Soon most of them were sitting on the ground or leaning against walls, laughing loudly and boasting, and I assumed that the liquid they were drinking was wine not water. Kaspar went among his men and helped himself to their drink, then returned to face me once more.
‘Wine?’ He spat the contents of his mouth onto me then grinned as his men fell about laughing.
I must have been tied there for at least two hours, during which time several of Kaspar’s men stumbled over and directed kicks and punches against my body and face. They split my left cheek and my lip, and soon my face throbbed with pain and blood was running down my neck. As most of them were by now very drunk many of the blows missed their target or were administered half-heartedly, but enough connected to send spasms of pain shooting through my body. Kaspar thought the whole exercise hilarious and he roared his approval and encouragement to his men. My right eyebrow was now cut and blood began tricking into my eye. My breathing was heavy and I was thirsty, so very thirsty. One of Kaspar’s men stood before me and emptied the contents of his bladder over my bowed head, then spat on me before he walked away. Then another sauntered up and grabbed my urine-soaked hair, yanking it back so force me to look up at him. With his other hand he pulled a dagger from his belt.
‘Let’s lop off an ear. He don’t need two, do you your majesty?’
He leered at me, his breath stinking of wine. I stared into his eyes, unblinking. I was not going to give him the satisfaction of begging him not to disfigure me.
‘Now don’t you worry, your majesty, this won’t hurt me a bit.’
He laughed aloud and then suddenly released my hair. He straightened his body, coughed and then crumpled on the ground in a heap, an arrow in his back. Seconds later horsemen thundered into the village. Kaspar and his men staggered to their feet as more and more horsemen appeared around them, all of them horse archers with arrows in their bowstrings. Whoever these soldiers were they were superbly equipped and mounted. The horse archers of Dura wore no armour, but these men were attired in scale armour — short-sleeved leather garments reaching down to the thigh and covered with rectangular metal scales arranged in horizontal rows, with each row partly overlapping the row below. Most scale armour was made with iron segments but these men were wearing bronze scales, and on their heads they all wore steel helmets with leather neck guards and embossed metal decoration.
Kaspar’s men now stood and grouped around their commander, looking in confusion at each other, and at their dead comrade lying at my feet. I coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood at him. Then I heard the shrill sound of a cavalry horn being blown and yet more horsemen rode into the village. These were cataphracts, each one wearing armour of bronze scales like the archers, though unlike the archers their horses wore armoured skirts that covered their shoulders and hindquarters, though not their necks or heads. The cataphracts slowed and then halted, and from among them rode a large man on a beautiful black steed whose head and neck shone in the sunlight. One of cataphracts dismounted and held the reins of the horse as its rider jumped to the ground. He was dressed in a suit of scale armour of alternating bronze and silver scales that glittered in the sunlight. He was a tall man with wide shoulders wearing a long-sleeved red tunic beneath his armour, baggy red trousers and a steel helmet inlaid with gold leaf whose cheek guards were tied together. The man unfastened the thick leather thongs and removed his helmet. My heart sank and I prepared for death, for Narses himself stood before me.