I rode beyond our front line to take a closer look but saw no horsemen and no foot archers. A Parthian army without archers, very strange. Orodes, Vagises, Byrd and Malik joined me as I stared in disbelief at the meagre force that intended to fight us.
‘Are you certain that there are no more enemy troops nearby?’ I asked Byrd and Malik as I peered ahead and to the left and right of the enemy.
‘Unless they can fly,’ said Malik, ‘then those are the only ones we face today.’
Domitus trotted up, sweating in his mail armour and helmet.
‘Straight through them, then? Shouldn’t take long.’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘Vagises and his archers will destroy them. I see no reason to commit the legionaries when we can shoot them to pieces.’
And so it was. The Durans and Exiles stood and leaned on their shields and the cataphracts roasted in their armour as Vagises’ companies rode round the enemy and killed them with volleys of arrows. After an hour what was left of them threw down their weapons and surrendered. I had their surviving commanding officer brought to me as the rest were escorted from the scene of carnage and the army was stood down.
The man wore a linen tunic reinforced with bronze scales and a bronze helmet on his head, his scruffy black hair showing beneath it. He was armed with a sword though his men had carried spears and shields only and wore felt caps on their heads. He had the aroma of an old mule.
‘How did you expect to defeat us with so few?’ I asked him.
‘My general was ordered to stop you, majesty. We were camped thirty miles south of Seleucia and received an order from the governor of the city to engage you.’
‘How many men does your king, Narses, have in Babylonia?’ I asked him.
He looked at me blankly. ‘I do not know, majesty.’
He was probably telling the truth. He was, after all, but a low-ranking officer. I shook my head. It had been the most one-sided battle that I had ever taken part in: we had suffered fifteen casualties including one man who had grazed his arm during the act of pulling an arrow from his quiver and nocking it in his bowstring. By contrast the enemy had lost three and a half thousand dead and three hundred more wounded. Those who were not injured and who had surrendered were ordered to dig pits in which their dead comrades could be interred, as not even five thousand wicker shields were enough to burn three and a half thousand corpses. Besides, as it was now late and we had pitched camp two miles further east near the Tigris, I did not want the stench of roasting flesh filling my nostrils all night.
According to the rules of war I could have executed all the prisoners or kept them as slaves, but I decided that they should not only live but were to be set free the next day. They slept outside the camp perimeter that night, having been first escorted to the river to drink and wash the filth from their bodies. Alcaeus went among their wounded with his physicians and tended to their injuries — I saw little point in heaping cruelty upon their defeat and misery. The officer who had surrendered I had brought to my tent that evening to dine with my commanders and me.
When he first took his seat at the table he wore the look of a man who was expecting to receive a death sentence, but after a while and a few cups of wine he relaxed and became very talkative. He told us his name was Udall.
‘All the royal foot guards,’ he informed us as more wine loosened his tongue, ‘went to Babylon with the king. We stayed behind to guard the road back to Seleucia.’
I smiled and poured more wine into his cup.
‘And what do you hear about the siege of Babylon?’
He screwed up his face. ‘Only rumours that things are not going well and the two kings are arguing. Can’t scale the walls, you see.’
Udall finished his wine and belched.
‘Pardon, majesty, too much wine on an empty stomach.’
‘Rations are sparse?’ probed Domitus.
Udall laughed. ‘Sparse? They are non-existent. They ran out weeks ago. We have had to forage for ourselves as well as keep a lookout for enemy raiders.’
‘Raiders?’ asked Orodes, pouring more wine into Udall’s cup.
‘Yes, riders from Mesene. I spoke to a man from the garrison at Jem det Nasr who told me that some of his men had been killed by them, and he further informed me that there were Agraci among them, can you imagine that?’
He shuddered and drained his cup. His wine-soaked brain had failed to notice that Malik was an Agraci, but then like most Parthians he had probably never actually seen the feared and loathed people who lived in the great desert west of the Euphrates.
‘How large is the garrison at Jem det Nasr?’ asked Orodes, smiling and refilling Udall’s now empty cup.
‘Not sure, but the governor sent them a message that they too were to attack you, begging your pardon, majesty.’
‘You were doing your duty, Udall,’ I reassured him. ‘You have nothing to apologise for.’
After two more cups of wine he collapsed and I had him carried back to his men outside the camp, leaving us to mull over what he had blurted out.
‘It would appear that things are not going well for Mithridates and Narses before Babylon,’ said Orodes with satisfaction.
‘And it also appears that they have had to disperse their forces throughout Babylonia to keep their supply lines open,’ I added.
‘Lord Yasser must be aiding Nergal,’ said Malik.
‘If what Udall told us is true,’ I said, ‘then it means Nergal is raiding north of Babylon. No wonder the enemy are worried about their supply lines. It also means that the threat posed to Mesene by King Phriapatius must have greatly lessened.’
Suddenly the overall situation did not appear as bleak as a few days ago. Taking cities can be very debilitating for the besiegers as well as the besieged, and if supplies were not getting through to the army sitting in front of the city then that was good news indeed.
I was now more convinced than ever that if we stormed the city and took possession of its strategic bridge over the Tigris then we would deal the enemy a mortal blow. Babylonia had been pillaged but there was only so much a plundered country could supply to an invader.
An hour after dawn I had a bleary eyed, unshaven and dishevelled Udall brought to me, clearly the worse for wear after the copious amounts of wine he had consumed the previous evening. I told him that he and his soldiers would be deprived of their weapons but would be allowed to leave as free men. I advised him to avoid Seleucia, as the city was our destination. If he and his men were inside it when we attacked they would receive no mercy when I put the entire garrison to the sword. He asked me where they should go but I replied that it was not my concern.
‘Go where you will, Udall, for that is the prerogative of a free man.’
So they trudged east to the Tigris. At least they would have access to water and might find some rafters who could convey them to the eastern bank of the river.
The army began its march south towards Seleucia once more, but the last centuries were still waiting on the site of the previous night’s camp when Byrd and Malik returned with news that another enemy force was approaching, this time from the south.
‘Both horse and foot,’ said Byrd.
‘Numbers?’
‘Around five thousand foot, same number of horse.’
‘This must be the garrison of Jem det Nasr that our friend Udall was talking about last night,’ I said. ‘Give the order to form a battle line. Domitus, send word that the wagons and mules are to return to camp. We will be staying here for another night, it seems.’
As I watched the leading centuries of the legions fall back and form into their battle positions of three lines, the horse archers taking up position on their flanks, the enemy appeared on the horizon — a long black line that shimmered in the summer heat. I did not bother to don my scale armour as Orodes would command the cataphracts this day. When Byrd and Malik returned once more and reported that the enemy horse consisted of spearmen with no armour and horse archers similarly attired, I gave the order that the legions were to deploy in two lines to extend their frontage. My scouts also told me that the enemy had no camel train carrying spare ammunition for the archers. I assembled the senior officers of the army.