He stood up and I helped him regain his saddle.
‘I’m afraid Narses is elsewhere on the battlefield,’ he said.
‘Perhaps with those,’ offered Vagharsh, who was looking south at a great mass of horsemen approaching our position. They were around six or seven hundred paces away and moving at a steady pace as the remnants of the enemy’s heavy cavalry passed through their ranks. We may have defeated the opposition’s heavy horsemen but now faced being assaulted by a great many more mounted spearmen. These riders were Mithridates’ men judging by the huge banners fluttering among their ranks showing an eagle clutching a snake in its talons. Carrying round, red-painted shields and protected by leather armour around their torsos and helmets on their heads, at close quarters they were no match for cataphracts. However, we had lost our lances in the charge, had suffered losses and they outnumbered us by at least two to one.
As the men reformed their ranks behind us in preparation for another charge my father appeared with his bodyguard, Atrax alongside him.
‘Greetings, father, it is good to see you safe.’
He noticed my wound. ‘You are hurt.’
‘It is nothing.’
He then pointed with his sword at the approaching spearmen.
‘We must advance to meet those horsemen otherwise they will infiltrate our centre.’
‘I agree,’ said Orodes.
The kings dispersed and took up our positions in the front ranks of our men once more. We began to move forward but then a great mass of horsemen appeared on our left flank, moving across our front towards the enemy. In front of them fluttered the banner of a silver lion on a red background — Surena. We called a halt as his archers began shooting arrows at Mithridates’ men. The latter may have been wearing protection on their heads and torsos but they were wearing green tunics and brown leggings and thus their arms and legs were completely exposed. Their horses were also unarmoured and within minutes men and animals were hit and falling as Surena’s riders unleashed an arrow storm against them. Each rider was shooting up to five arrows a minute and there appeared to be at least three thousand horsemen under Surena’s command: two hundred and fifty arrows a second were being shot at the enemy.
The missile deluge immediately halted the advance of the spearmen, the front ranks being thinned considerably before they about-faced and retreated out of arrow range. Surena’s companies kept their cohesion and also fell back to a position around four hundred paces in front of us. He galloped across to me and saluted. I laughed.
‘You don’t have to salute me. You really must get used to being a king, Surena, but your presence is most welcome.’
‘Thank you, lord.’
‘What is the situation on the left?’
‘Lord Vistaspa has the measure of the enemy. We have more men than they do so when we advance they retreat, and when we fall back to entice them into a trap they advance but do not take the bait. Lord Vistaspa sent me to support you when he saw the spearmen advance.’
Once more the kings gathered around me to assess the situation. Dead horses and their riders lay around us as the order was given to fall back to our initial positions.
My father slammed his sword back in its scabbard. ‘Stalemate!’
He turned to me. ‘What is happening on the right wing?’
I had no idea, so after thanking Surena for his assistance I decided to ride over to where the legions and Babylonians were deployed to see for myself.
Judging by the sun’s position in the sky it was now late afternoon and in the centre and on our left wing the opposing armies remained in approximately the same position they had occupied before the fighting had begun. As I galloped across to the right wing I discovered a similar situation. The Durans and the Exiles were now each deployed in two lines, extending from the river inland, the Babylonians having withdrawn to take up position behind the Exiles. I could see arrows being shot from the ranks of the two huge blocks of enemy spearmen opposite the legions, the missiles arching into the sky before falling on the locked shields of the legionaries. And from within the ranks of the latter Marcus’ ballista were hard at work.
I found Domitus a hundred paces behind the second line of cohorts in conversation with Kronos, Marcus and a group of Babylonian officers, the latter trotting past me back to their men as I slid off Remus’ back in front of my senior commanders.
‘What is happening?’ I asked.
Domitus pointed at the Babylonians. ‘We had to pull their men back behind the Exiles when the enemy opposite began hurling arrows and sling shots at us. They took a fearful amount of punishment before we managed to rearrange our lines, though.’
‘The Babylonians have lost over a thousand men,’ added Kronos.
‘That many?’ I was amazed.
Domitus spat on the ground. ‘The enemy are no fools. They brought forward their archers and concentrated their arrows against the Babylonians, hardly gave us any attention at first. Just poured volley after volley at the Babylonians, knowing they would not be able to lock their shields as we do. Within minutes hundreds had been killed or wounded.’
‘We had to pull them back behind our lines and extend the front of the legions to prevent them being destroyed,’ added Kronos.
‘After that most of the enemy archers and slingers pulled back behind their own spearmen,’ said Domitus, ‘though as you can see a few are dispersed among the front ranks.’
I glanced over to where the cohorts stood in their ranks and saw arrows dropping onto their shields. The volume of arrows being discharged by the enemy was not intense but rather desultory.
‘Without the Babylonians we are spread a bit thin,’ continued Domitus.
‘Why don’t they attack?’ I asked.
‘They too have lost a lot of men,’ replied Kronos. ‘I doubt they have the will to get to grips with the legions.’
I was confused. ‘How so?’
Domitus nodded towards Marcus who had a self-satisfied grin on his face.
‘After their arrow storm and our reorganisation we brought forward Marcus’ machines and placed them in the front line and allocated them their own details of shield bearers for protection. They have been shooting for over an hour now.’
‘And doing very nicely,’ added Marcus.
His smaller ballista usually shot iron-tipped bolts that were three and half feet long or small stones and iron balls, but during the past few months Marcus and Arsam had been working on new missiles for the machines. This was the first campaign in which they had been used and the results were most promising. Marcus called them ‘shield piercers’, these eighteen-inch long arrow darts that were made from ash and had iron tips. Designed to punch through shields and armour, they had thinner fore shafts to aid penetration and short, stubby fins made from maple that were glued into grooves cut in the rear of the ash shaft. Light and compact, they had a range of around four hundred yards and their great velocity meant they could punch through wicker shields with ease. Each of Marcus’ dozen ballista could fire up to four darts a minute and thus far had fired nearly three thousand of them at the packed ranks of the enemy, though he had now reduced each ballista’s rate of fire to one bolt a minute to conserve ammunition.
‘And they are standing in their ranks and taking such punishment?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Narses does not care about the lives of his soldiers as you do,’ said Domitus. ‘The problem we have is that even with three thousands of them dead and wounded…’
‘Oh, they will be dead,’ interrupted Marcus.
Domitus tilted his head at him and continued. ‘Even with three thousand of them dead I reckon there are still a few thousand left, to say nothing of their slingers and archers.’
‘What about Duran losses?’ I asked.
‘Four wounded thus far,’ replied Kronos.
I was tempted to order an all-out attack by the legions against Narses’ spearmen but it was getting late and the men had been standing in their ranks for hours and would be fatigued. So I commanded Marcus to order his machines to halt their shooting to see what reaction it would have on the enemy. The result was that their archers and slingers also stopped their activity and so the legionaries were at last able to rest their shields on the ground as both sides observed each other warily across no man’s land. Parties were sent to the river to fill water bottles as the enemy spearmen inched back towards the date palm grove to increase the distance between them and Marcus’ killing machines.