‘We have the bastards. They are surrounded and short of missiles and they can’t go anywhere. They are helpless.’
‘That is precisely the point, Spandarat. Everything you say is true and I am sure that they are even more aware of their predicament.’
He threw out his arms. ‘So?’
‘So I would speak to them first.’
He dropped his arms to his sides. ‘Speak to them?’
‘Yes, Spandarat. And I can’t do that if you and your men are shooting arrows at them.’
He looked behind him, scratched his head and rode to the rear muttering to himself. During the next few minutes parties of horse archers, most with empty quivers, filed past us to muster once more around the banners of their lords.
I asked Nergal to take his men and form a cordon around the enemy’s foot, supported by the resupplied Duran horse archers, telling them to stay out of bow and sling range.
Orodes was impressed. ‘You show mercy in victory, Pacorus.’
‘Mercy has nothing to do with it,’ I grunted in reply.
Men on foot, surrounded and with no hope of relief, would be more amenable to surrendering than fighting on, and that meant Duran and Mesenian lives would be saved. The battle had gone better than expected, our losses had been light and the enemy had been routed. As Nergal’s horse archers cantered south to form a cordon around the enemy foot soldiers, I began to formulate a plan that could yet salvage the whole campaign and avenge Gotarzes.
The army of Narses was on the verge of being destroyed and once that had happened the road to Ctesiphon would be open. Mithridates himself had suffered great losses when they had engaged my legions near the Tigris, notwithstanding our own brush with calamity, and now the enemy had tasted yet another defeat. Mithridates had clearly fled the scene, no doubt scurrying back to Ctesiphon to seek solace from his poisonous mother, Queen Aruna. If we finished Narses’ forces here, today, then Susiana and perhaps Persis would be open to attack. Once they had been rested and refitted the legions could be recalled to join with my horsemen. I could field ten thousand foot and twenty-three thousand horsemen, more if I could persuade Nergal to help us. My father would not be a part of any plan, I knew that, but Vardan might be willing to lend me some horse archers at least, if only to repay Narses and Mithridates for the destruction they had visited on his kingdom. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It all seemed perfectly achievable. Then I opened my eyes and saw Byrd and half a dozen of his scouts riding towards us, and my plan began to disintegrate.
Dobbai had once told me that the gods cared nothing for the lives of men and that our prayers to them were wasted words. She said that they sent plagues, drought and famine to torment men to alleviate their boredom for it amused their cruel natures to see humanity suffer, much as a small child delights in pulling the wings off a fly or the legs off a spider. She said that some men were beloved of the gods, and included me in that number, but only because such individuals were warriors or tyrants who inflicted pain upon others and washed the land with blood. She said the notions of peace and prosperity, which most men craved, were anathema to the gods. They loved only chaos, despair and bloodshed, for in such tumults men fell on their knees in front of idols of their gods and begged for deliverance, and the divine ones responded by heaping more misery upon them to satisfy their cruel natures. And men wept and the land bled. And so it was now as Byrd brought his sweating horse to a halt before me.
‘Vardan dead at Ishtar Gate. Narses reveals his hand.’
I heard the words but did not believe them.
‘Dead?’ said Orodes incredulously.
Byrd nodded nonchalantly. ‘Great number of enemy horsemen attack from south. Narses leads them. I see his great banner.’
I felt sick to my stomach. How can this be?
‘We must aid your father,’ said Orodes.
I looked at him and then Byrd, unsure of what to do.
‘Pacorus, decide!’ shouted Gallia.
My cataphracts were tired, their horses blown, and my horse archers and those of the lords had already fought their own battle. Only Nergal’s men were relatively fresh. I looked at the expectant faces around me.
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘We must ride to the Ishtar Gate immediately. Nergal, will you ride with us as your men are the least tired among our forces?’
‘It will be an honour, Pacorus,’ he replied.
So I took my heavy horsemen, my own and Nergal’s horse archers, plus half the lords and their riders to the Ishtar Gate. Spandarat and the remaining lords were left behind to guard the enemy foot soldiers. We rode in haste across the battlefield to the blue-painted bricks of the Ishtar Gate, to find a scene of grim carnage but no Narses. Dead horses lay scattered all around, their guts ripped open and their legs twisted and broken, staring with lifeless eyes. Bones protruded from shattered ankles and blood oozed from gaping neck wounds. Some animals, still alive, groaned pitifully as pain shot through their punctured bodies. As we halted and slid from our saddles I could see that the path of dead and dying began around a hundred paces from the Ishtar Gate and led directly north.
Dead riders lay alongside their slain mounts and I saw that most of them wore the purple of Babylon. Some of Vardan’s soldiers were walking among the dead horseflesh, putting wounded animals out of their misery and retrieving any men still alive. Smashed shields and broken lances lay scattered on the ground along with abandoned swords and helmets.
As we led our horses in the direction of the Euphrates we came across a knot of officers from Vardan’s royal bodyguard, and among them my father and Vistaspa. Relief swept through me. I left Remus with my men and went to his side. We embraced and I thanked Shamash that he was safe and unhurt. I nodded to Vistaspa who bowed his head, and then saw Mardonius kneeling by the side of his dead lord. Vardan looked serene and untroubled in death, his eyes closed and not a mark on his face. His body was covered with a rich purple cloak edged with gold. There were a great many dead soldiers of the royal bodyguard in this particular spot, no doubt where fierce fighting had taken place. I also saw a number of slain cataphracts dressed in short-sleeved scale armour cuirasses, yellow shirts underneath — the colours of Persis. My father’s bodyguard waited on their horses two hundred paces away, their heads bowed with exhaustion.
I took off my helmet as Gallia embraced my father and Orodes bowed to him.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
My father, ashen faced and looking tired, shook his head.
‘What happened? I will tell you what happened. We advanced and engaged the enemy horsemen deployed in front of the Ishtar Gate, my soldiers on the right and Vardan’s men on the left. We cut our way through their spearmen and horse archers and reached the Ishtar Gate. That was easy enough. And in the moment of victory, when the soldiers of Hatra were finishing off the enemy and filling the city’s moat with their dead, Narses appeared at the head of a multitude of horsemen and hit the Babylonians in the flank.’
I could scarce believe it. ‘Appeared from where?’
‘From the Marduk Gate,’ answered Mardonius with a quivering voice as his lord and master, lifted onto a stretcher fashioned from lances lashed together, was carried into his city. Still wrapped in the purple cloak, his arms had been crossed over his chest and his sword lay on his body. The remnants of his bodyguard followed their lord on foot.
‘Narses kept his heavy cavalry in reserve near the Marduk Gate,’ continued Mardonius, ‘the main entrance into the city from the west, and led them against us when we and the Hatrans were disorganised following our first attack.’
‘It was clever,’ added my father, ‘very clever. He struck the Babylonians in the flank when they, just like us, were disorganised and compressed into a small area in front of the city walls. His men hit the Babylonians who had no time to turn and face them, herding them towards the river and preventing me from deploying my men.’