‘I am Pacorus, King of Dura and a friend and ally of your queen. If there are any within the temple let them come forth in the knowledge that I am here to protect you.’
There was no reply to my plea.
‘I say again, my name is King Pacorus of Dura and I am a friend of Queen Axsen. The enemy has left your city. You are safe.’
I looked behind me to where Nergal was sitting on his horse beside Yasser, the latter smiling and shaking his head at me. I walked back down the steps.
‘What now?’ asked Nergal.
‘We will break down the doors.’
I called forward the commander of the horse archers who organised an empty stone water trough to be used as a battering ram. A dozen men, six on each side, supported the trough on iron bars and rammed it against the doors, which were eventually forced open after being struck a dozen times.
The pungent aroma of dead flesh and emptied bowels met our nostrils the moment we stepped inside the temple, shoving aside the tables that had been used to brace the doors. Light was still flooding through the windows, illuminating the interior where bodies lay on the marble-tiled floor. Only Nergal, Yasser and I entered the temple, picking our way through the dead towards the altar at the far end. I knelt down and examined one of the bodies. There were no marks on it, no signs of a violent struggle and no gaping wounds. The expression on the woman’s face was one of calm resignation. I went to another corpse, this time an old man in his sixties. Once again there were no marks on the body, no signs of violence. The eyes were closed and I saw an empty cup in his hand. Looking around I saw other cups scattered on the floor.
‘They took poison. Hemlock, probably,’ I said.
‘Suicide?’ Nergal was shocked. Parthians generally frowned on the taking of one’s own life, seeing it as a cowardly and disgraceful act.
‘The priests have also taken their own lives,’ I said, pointing to the high altar where white-robed figures lay on the dais. ‘They must have authorised the distribution of the poison and thus sanctioned the act. That being the case, I assume that the suicides were a way of protesting against submission to tyranny, and in the women’s case a way of avoiding the shame of rape. Shamash will care for their souls.’
I ordered that the bodies were to be removed from the temple and consigned to funeral pyres along with the other corpses in the city. That night we camped outside the city walls to sleep well away from so much death.
The next day I left the horse archers to garrison the city and rode on with Nergal and Yasser. Amazingly, as we journeyed south we encountered small groups of people who had come out of hiding and were making their way back to their homes. Some had fled from Jem det Nasr and were now heading back there, though perhaps it would have been better if they had not, such was the scene of desolation that awaited them.
As we rode from Babylonia to Mesene we left behind death and destruction and travelled through a countryside untouched by war. Nergal told me that Phriapatius had kept his men under control and his own attacks had confined them to a small corridor that extended from the River Tigris to Umma. We slept at the latter place the night before my meeting with the King of Carmania. Praxima had ridden to the city to await her husband and me, and I embraced her warmly, my face engulfed in her wild red hair. She told us that High Priest Rahim had things in order at Uruk and had delivered a sermon to thousands of people at the White Temple in the city, telling them that the retreat of Carmania’s army was a miracle worked by Anu and proof that Nergal and Praxima were beloved of the gods.
‘He told me that he frowns upon the Agraci being in Mesene,’ she said, smiling at Yasser as we were served roasted chicken coated in a delicious sweet sauce.
‘Let Rahim believe that the gods saved the kingdom,’ said Nergal, washing his hands in a bowl of warm water. ‘I am glad that eight thousand Agraci warriors are with me.’
‘You do not believe your gods are helping you?’ asked Yasser.
‘The gods help those who help themselves,’ replied Praxima.
‘It is as my wife says,’ added Nergal.
‘Then the gods must look favourably upon our alliance with your people, Yasser,’ I said.
‘That is one way of looking at it,’ he agreed. ‘If I had been told that one day I would be sharing a meal with Parthian kings…’
‘And a queen,’ interrupted Praxima. Yasser smiled at her.
‘Then I would have told them they were mad. And yet here we are, so perhaps the gods are indeed weaving their magic around us.’
‘How many men does Phriapatius have?’ I asked, turning to more practical matters.
‘Around ten thousand,’ answered Nergal.
‘A few less now,’ grinned Yasser. ‘Nergal wants to talk but I urged him to attack them. I can smell their fear from here. They are weak and should be slaughtered like lambs.’
I smiled thinly at him. I sometimes forgot that our Agraci allies were ruthless as well as cunning. They despised weakness and respected strength. Yasser did not become a lord by diplomacy and Haytham did not become a king of these fierce desert people by being merciful.
‘I think we shall hear what the Carmanians have to say before we put them to the sword,’ I said as Yasser screwed up his face at my words.
‘When words run out the conversation is carried on with weapons,’ he replied, holding a rack of lamb in his hand and tearing off a great strip of meat with his teeth. ‘It has always been so and always will be.’
He pointed at all three of us in turn.
‘You talk of peace but only when it suits you, and only from a position of strength. When you, Pacorus, were trapped in the desert before my king and your queen came to your aid, did you squeal like a little girl and ask for quarter? You did not. And you, Nergal, when the enemy invaded your lands did you lie down like a lamb and invite him to steal your kingdom? You are more like me than you like to think. Now that the enemy has retreated you wish to talk, but I know that you would both prefer war.’
There is an old road that runs from Uruk through Umma and across the Tigris to the city of Susa and thereafter to the east. From Uruk the road heads north into the Kingdom of Babylon and then into Hatra. It spans the Tigris between Umma and Susa by means of a multi-arched stone bridge that was built by Greek engineers after Alexander of Macedon had conquered the Persians over two hundred and fifty years ago. Ever since that time it had been maintained by engineers employed by the king of kings himself, for it was the only bridge south of the one at Seleucia and as such was strategically important. Though in summer the level of the Tigris drops considerably, below Seleucia the river is still at least twenty feet deep even in the hottest months and thus an army not in possession of the bridge would need a great number of rafts to get across the waterway.
Nergal had decided not to fight Phriapatius at the bridge but rather let him and his army cross into Mesene. Afterwards, as the Carmanians were advancing towards Umma, Nergal’s horsemen attacked and destroyed those enemy forces left behind to defend the bridge. Phriapatius was thus cut off and surrounded at the beginning of his campaign. He had negotiated a truce with Nergal soon after, one of the terms of which was that he and his army would be allowed withdraw to the east bank of the Tigris. We now dismounted and left our horses at the western end of the bridge and walked across the yellow flagstones that covered its surface.
The day was hot and airless, the waters of the Tigris below us brown and slow moving. I walked with Nergal, Praxima and Yasser as Nergal’s horse archers together with their Agraci allies lined the riverbank either side of the bridge. On the opposite bank the army of Carmania was drawn up to face them — a mass of cataphracts at the bridge, with horse archers and mounted spearmen carrying huge round shields on either side. Green dragon windsocks hung limply from their poles among the ranks of the horse archers but I knew that the symbol of Carmania was the golden peacock.