Thus did a cessation of fighting take place across the whole battlefield. It had been a disappointing end to a day that had begun with so much promise.
Dura’s camp was sited some five hundred paces to the rear of the legions’ battle line. While archers and slingers were shooting at the legionaries the squires and civilian drivers had been busy digging a ditch and using the earth to erect a rampart immediately behind it. As the legions marched back to camp they were finishing driving stakes into the rampart to create the palisade. The legionaries erected their tents as Strabo oversaw the stabling of the horses and camels within the camp’s perimeter. The camp’s western entrance was located next to the river and so Strabo organised the watering of the animals while Marcus assigned parties of legionaries to fetch water for human consumption further upstream from where the animals were drinking, pissing and spreading their dung.
I sent couriers to the other kings inviting them to bring their own men into camp but they declined.
‘Probably for the best,’ remarked Marcus as he sat in a chair in my command tent. ‘It would be a very crowded camp with the forces of the other kings inside.’
After Alcaeus had bandaged my neck I had called a council of war to take stock of our situation after the day’s inconclusive fighting. At least the reports were heartening. Vagises and his horse archers had seen almost no fighting though much riding to and fro as Vistaspa sought to outmanoeuvre the enemy’s horse archers. The only casualties he suffered were a handful of men with broken legs as a result of being thrown from their horses. Gallia had, mercifully, spent the whole day immobile, sweating in her armour and helmet along with the unused reserve of her Amazons and Babylon’s five hundred royal guards. I already knew that casualties among the legions were insignificant and so the heaviest losses were among my cataphracts — fifteen dead and twenty wounded. Normally these figures would be a cause for celebration after a battle but all the faces round the table wore expressions of indifference, with the exception of Marcus, who was delighted with the success of his ‘shield piercers’.
‘Mithridates and Narses will be happier than we are,’ said Domitus, yawning. ‘They have essentially fought us to a standstill.’
‘But have lost most of their cataphracts in the process as well as Narses’ own son,’ I said.
‘They still have a lot of horsemen left,’ remarked Vagises.
‘The legions should attack first thing tomorrow, Pacorus,’ said Domitus. ‘That might stiffen the resolve of the Babylonians. I doubt they will be able to withstand another day of being pelted with arrows and stones, and we cannot protect them and fight the enemy at the same time.’
It made sense. In terms of equipment, training and tactics the Babylonian foot were second rate compared to the legions.
‘How many enemy spearmen did you face today?’ I asked Domitus.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Thirty, forty thousand.’
I was surprised. ‘That many?’
‘Plus archers and slingers,’ added Kronos.
‘After we get to grips with them at close quarters numbers won’t matter,’ said Domitus. ‘But what we don’t want is another day standing around under a hail of arrows and stones.’
Kronos nodded in agreement and Marcus looked disappointed, no doubt eager to unleash his new invention against the enemy once more.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow we attack.’
Two hours later I received an invitation from Orodes to attend a meeting of the kings in his camp. It must have been nearly midnight when I left my tent to ride to the Babylonian camp located next to Dura’s army, a vast, disorganised sprawl of tents, corrals, wagons and temporary stables that stretched into the distance. And beyond the Babylonians were the tents of Hatra, Media and finally Gordyene, the latter encompassed within a square earth rampart like my own. To the south the campfires of the enemy dotted the landscape to resemble a multitude of stars that had fallen to earth. It was clear that the enemy was also determined to fight on the morrow.
When I arrived at Orodes’ tent I found the other kings already there. Atrax nodded to me as he filled a cup with wine and then limped back to his chair. My father looked angry and Surena tired as I greeted them. Orodes held out a full cup for me to take. He appeared to be his usual unruffled self. We sat in a circle as Vistaspa, who appeared remarkably fresh considering his age, recounted the day’s events. His horse archers on the left wing had achieved little save stopping the enemy horse archers directly opposite influencing the battle. Surena’s intervention had halted the charge of the enemy’s mounted spearmen against our cataphracts, who had engaged and destroyed the enemy’s heavy horsemen, the son of Narses having been killed in that particular engagement. Vistaspa smiled at me as he relayed this news. To complete the debriefing I informed them that my legions had initially been subjected to an enemy missile storm that had proved ineffective.
‘Though at a cost of over a thousand Babylonian dead, I am sorry to say,’ reported Orodes.
Fortunately the other kings reported minor losses among their contingents, which meant that hostilities could be continued with the coming of the new dawn.
‘We must attack the enemy along the whole line tomorrow,’ I stated.
‘I agree,’ said my father. ‘We must finish this once and for all.’
‘Then my suggestion,’ I continued, ‘is for the legions to attack on the right to shatter the enemy’s left wing. After Narses’ foot soldiers have been destroyed my men will advance on Susa.’
‘The cataphracts will drive through the enemy’s centre,’ added my father, ‘with Vistaspa once again deployed on the left with the horse archers.’
‘With their left and centre destroyed,’ I continued, ‘the enemy’s horse archers will either have to intervene or flee.’
‘It is strange that the enemy remained on the defensive despite their superiority in numbers,’ mused Surena.
‘Narses is obviously not the great general he thought he was,’ was my father’s only comment.
By the time I had ridden back to camp, unsaddled Remus and walked to my tent there were only four hours of the night left. The tents were filled with sleeping men and it was ominously quiet. I slipped into my tent’s bedchamber and lay beside a sleeping Gallia, then stared at the ceiling and heard Surena’s voice. Why had the enemy remained on the defensive? I dismissed them from my mind.
When the dawn came the armies once more marched out to take up their battle positions, the legions deploying in two lines to extend their frontage, their right flank again anchored on the river and the Babylonians once more massed on their left. It took two hours before the latter were in their positions, during which time the two great masses of enemy spearmen once again filtered through the neat rows of the great date palm grove to face the Durans, Exiles and Babylonians. In the centre armoured riders gathered around the kings once more, while on the left Vistaspa gathered his contingents of horse archers.
The day was again dry and sunny, though there was no wind and the temperature was already rapidly rising despite the early hour. The area presented a grisly spectacle as the dead from yesterday’s fighting still lay on the ground where they had fallen, the deployment of the two armies at first scattering the hordes of crows, buzzards and vultures that had been having a feast for breakfast, who then returned to their meal as both sides halted and dressed their lines. The birds pecked at the skulls of fallen soldiers and tore at the flesh of slain horses as they gorged themselves on the dead flesh in no man’s land.