Every horse in the army consumed around thirty pounds of fodder a day, the camels being able to subsist on a reduced quantity of ten pounds a day (their diet also included dates and fish meat). When the army marched it did so with over six thousand horses and three thousand camels in addition the legions’ mules. The horses alone required eighty tons of fodder a day and the camels thirteen tons a day and Strabo was the individual responsible for making sure they received these amounts. He did and so everyone forgave him his idiosyncrasies, galling though they were at times.
The water consumption of the army was vast but as long as it stayed near a river or other major water source it was not a problem. That is why the Euphrates and Tigris were of such strategic importance and that is why most marches were nearly always conducted along their length. It was so this time as the army commenced its journey south to the rendezvous point. As usual Byrd, Malik and their scouts rode far ahead to ensure our journey was uneventful. I had worried that now Malik was married he would not wish to leave his new wife but he told me that he would not have missed this campaign for anything. Like many he sensed that it was the final showdown between myself and Mithridates and Narses. He also had a personal grudge against Narses, who had promised to rid the earth of the Agraci people. Gallia thought the same and that is why she was riding beside me with the Amazons behind us — she did not want to miss out on the downfall of Mithridates.
‘It might be our downfall,’ I said, thinking about how I had previously failed to defeat them.
She shook her head. ‘No, this is the final war between you and them. Dobbai told me.’
‘What else did she tell you?’
‘Nothing. She has been unusually withdrawn of late as if something has alarmed her.’
I dismissed the notion. ‘She is probably feeling her age. How old is she, has she ever told you?’
‘Never. But we are all getting old, Pacorus.’
I looked across at her. Her face was still flawless and her eyes were as blue as the clearest skies. ‘Not you, my sweet.’
But she was in a wistful mood. ‘The world turns, Pacorus, even though we do not discern it. Have you noticed that over the years how many of our friends have left us.’
‘Left us?’
She sighed and looked away into the desert on our left. ‘When I first came to Parthia it was in the company of Gafarn, Diana, Nergal and Praxima. Now they are all gone.’
‘Nergal has become a king and Praxima is a queen. Gafarn and Diana are at Hatra. We should be happy for them.’
But she did not hear my words. ‘Godarz as well. All gone.’
‘What is the matter?’
She smiled wanly. ‘I suppose I want the way things were, for us all to be together again.’
‘We will be, at the next gathering of the Companions,’ I said.
‘It is not the same.’
We rode on in silence, babblers and warblers flying high above us as we headed south at a steady pace of twenty miles a day.
On the fifth day out from Dura a courier arrived from the city carrying a message from Aaron that he had received word that Alexander Maccabeus had launched his rebellion against the Romans in Judea. When I told Gallia her spirits rose because it meant that the likelihood of a Roman attack against Dura was now a remote possibility. I took it as a sign that the gods were smiling on Dura and its army. Malik was also delighted because if Judea threw off its chains then the Romans would not pose a threat to Agraci lands. When I told Domitus, however, he was unimpressed.
‘I give the Jews two months before half of them are dead and the other half are wriggling on crosses.’
The next day the army of Hatra linked up with us after marching directly south from my father’s capital. Gallia’s melancholy lifted as we greeted my father and Gafarn and rode alongside them. My father was cheerful and confident, the world-weariness that had possessed him these past few years having been banished by a desire to see affairs in the empire settled once and for all. He had thrown himself into the current venture with all his energy, organising the formation of the alliance of kings in the aftermath of Vata’s wedding, formulating the plan of campaign and now in effect, notwithstanding the election of Orodes as king of kings, becoming the commander-in-chief of all the armies. I was glad that he was for it meant that the King of Hatra, one of the most respected rulers in the empire, had grown tired of the treachery of Mithridates and was now his declared enemy. His old allies, the kingdoms of Babylon, Media and Atropaiene, having also endured the aggression of Mithridates, had joined him and in the north Khosrou and Musa had taken up arms against the false high king. I was pleased above all because the distance and unease that had existed between my father and me had disappeared. We were united in a common cause and stood shoulder to shoulder as father and son once more.
It took ten days to reach the rendezvous point and when we arrived the army of Babylon was already camped inland from the Euphrates. There were surprisingly few tents in the camp, Orodes explaining that he had brought only seven hundred and fifty horsemen: his own bodyguard of two and fifty cataphracts plus five hundred of Babylon’s royal guard. The rest of his army — ten thousand men — were foot soldiers armed with spears and carrying wicker shields. That was all an impoverished Babylon could spare. The horsemen and their squires had tents but the foot soldiers slept out in the open. Domitus established Dura’s camp five miles inland of the river, as usual a great rectangle surrounded by a ditch and earth rampart surmounted by stakes. I invited my father to camp his own army with mine inside our ramparts but he declined, instead establishing Hatra’s army five miles north of the Babylonians. Vistaspa sent his own patrols east towards the Tigris as Byrd and Malik also scouted the area around Seleucia while we waited for the forces of Atrax and Surena to join us.
Their horsemen arrived two days later, those of Surena following a huge banner sporting a silver lion on a red background. Atrax flew the dragon standard of his now dead father. That night my father gave a great open-air feast in honour of the kings, the meat of four slaughtered bulls being served to us by the squires of Hatra’s royal bodyguard. A nice touch I thought. I had also noticed that there was no great pavilion to house the ruler of Babylon, Orodes being content to sleep in a modest-sized campaign tent. Unfortunately there were also no half-naked Babylonian slave girls to dazzle us with their smiles and entice us with their oiled bodies.
‘I left them with my wife and Mardonius at Babylon,’ said Orodes, his fingers dripping with beef fat.
‘I am surprised he did not accompany you, highness,’ I said.
He licked his fingers. ‘Very amusing. The truth is that he can hardly walk without the aid of a stick and so I ordered him to stay in the city and guard Axsen.’
‘Soon your wife will have a new throne to sit on.’ I grinned at him. ‘Highness.’
He frowned. ‘I wish you would stop calling me that.’
‘Why? You will have to get used to it soon enough when you have all those courtiers at Ctesiphon grovelling at your feet and whispering honeyed words in your ears.’
A squire offered us more meat from a silver tray.
‘I intend to get rid of most of them,’ he declared, ‘and have men of integrity and honesty around me.’