‘He used the Babylonians as a wall of flesh between them and us,’ said Vistaspa undiplomatically.
‘Their first charge inflicted many casualties, including the king,’ said Mardonius.
‘Where is Narses now?’ I asked.
‘Fled north,’ replied my father. ‘I sent my horse archers after him but he will be miles away by now.’
It was a catastrophe. Two of the empire’s kings, both of them allies, had been killed in the space of two weeks. My plans evaporated and the gods laughed. On the heels of Vardan’s death came more grievous news when a rider came from Spandarat informing me that the enemy foot that I had left him to guard had escaped and were marching towards the Tigris.
When I rode back to my lords and demanded an explanation I learned that not all of Narses’ reserves had been committed at the Ishtar Gate. I found Spandarat sitting on the ground when we arrived, his dead horse laying a few paces away, a lance through its body, and one of his men bandaging a nasty gash to his scalp. After the bandage had been tied off he was hauled to his feet. I slid out of my saddle and stood before him. Gallia did the same.
‘Are you hurt, Spandarat?’ she enquired with concern.
‘Nothing a bellyful of beer won’t cure,’ he replied, blood already seeping through the bandage.
I looked around and saw more than a few dead Durans on the ground. Spandarat saw my concerned look.
‘A great load of horsemen, men armed with shields and spears, came from the south and charged us. We emptied a few saddles with our bows but there were a lot of them, we had empty quivers and they were fresh. They charged us a couple of times and I was nearly turned into a kebab,’ he nodded at his dead horse. ‘They kept us occupied long enough for the foot soldiers to escape. I reckon they are about five miles away by now.’
‘They are falling back on Kish,’ I sighed. Kish was a city less then twenty miles northeast of Babylon that had been captured by Narses. I laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You and your men did well today. Take them back to camp and get that wound stitched.’
There was nothing to do except consign our dead to the flames, tend to the wounded and recover our strength. By the position of the sun in the sky I estimated that it was now late afternoon. I gave the order to retreat back to camp and thousands of tired, thirsty and hungry horse archers led their exhausted horses on foot back to their tents. In the elation and frenzy of combat scale armour and steel leg and arm armour feels as light as a feather; in the aftermath of battle they feel like they are made of lead. Every sinew and muscle in my body ached and it required two of Spandarat’s men to get me back in the saddle, so weak did I feel.
Remus, still in his scale armour, plodded back to camp like the rest of the horses carrying cataphracts, each man sitting listlessly in his saddle. It was a most curious thing, this afterglow of slaughter. It was as if each man was filled with a fire that gave him god-like strength in battle, but as soon as the fighting stopped it disappeared like the flame of a candle when it is snuffed out. In its place is lethargy and slow-wittedness. As we trudged back to camp Narses himself could have galloped among us and not one man would have had the strength to raise his sword against him.
In fact I learned later, when two farriers were unstrapping Remus’ scale armour, that Narses’ column of horsemen had ridden directly north and through the Babylonian camp, firing the tents, scattering camels and killing most of the camp guards and the small army of servants and hangers-on that always accompanied Vardan on campaign, before swinging east to head for Kish. It was a blessing that Vardan had not brought the half-naked teenage slave girls who served his guests food. Their lives had at least been spared. My own camp escaped any destruction, as did those of my father and Nergal.
There was no pursuit of Narses.
The next morning’s roll call revealed that the heaviest of our losses had been among the lords’ retainers: five hundred killed, three hundred wounded and a hundred and fifty horses slain. The cataphracts had suffered fifteen dead and forty wounded with no losses among their horses. A fair amount of leg and arm armour was dented and many iron scales had been dislodged from scale armour but that was a small price to pay for so few casualties. When we got back to Dura the armour could be repaired and squires would be busy over the next few days fixing iron scales back on rawhide. The horse archers had suffered a score killed and fifty wounded.
During the morning I received an invitation from Princess Axsen to attend her at her palace in Babylon and at noon rode with Gallia and Orodes and an escort of a hundred Babylonian horse archers to the city.
The signs of the previous day’s battle were all around as we rode to the city. The area in front of the Ishtar Gate and east of the city was filled with carts being piled high with the slain for transportation to great funeral pyres that were already roasting dead flesh. The sickly sweet smell of burning carcasses entered my nostrils and made me feel nauseous. I saw slain horses being hauled by their legs towards the raging fires and soldiers with fishhooks pulling bodies from the city’s moat. The buzzing of a plague of flies added to the horror of the scene as we trotted over the wooden bridge that spanned the moat and entered Babylon via the Ishtar Gate.
The gate itself, now over five hundred years old, was a most wondrous thing. More than forty feet high, it was made of bricks fronted with a copper turquoise glaze alternating with unglazed bricks covered with gold leaf. Either side of the arch itself were base reliefs of animals — lions, the symbol of the goddess Ishtar, horned bulls — gauws — and dragons, the symbols of the god Marduk, the deity whose city this was. There appeared to be no damage to the gate itself or the surrounding walls, which suggested that either Narses intended to starve the city into surrender or he had attempted an assault against another sector of the walls.
We rode through the gate and onto a paved road that the commander of our escort informed me was called the Processional Way. In the centre of the road were laid great limestone flagstones, either side of them smaller red flagstones. The way itself was lined with the statues of one hundred and twenty lions made from glazed bricks.
We turned off the road when we reached the gates to the royal palace and entered the huge compound, which was surrounded by a wall of great height and strength with guard towers positioned along its circumference every fifty paces. We rode into a great paved square surrounded on two sides by barracks and stables. The large gatehouse behind us filled another side and a second gatehouse occupied the fourth side. We made our way across the square and through the second gatehouse to reach a second square that fronted the palace.
The palace guard stood to attention on the square to receive us, at least five hundred purple-dressed warriors armed with thrusting spears, wearing bronze helmets and carrying round wooden shields faced with bronze and bearing Vardan’s gauw symbol. We dismounted and Mardonius walked over and bowed his head to all three of us as slaves took our horses to the stables.
‘Greetings King Pacorus, Queen Gallia and Prince Orodes,’ he said formally. ‘Princess Axsen awaits you in the palace. If your majesties would follow me.’
He strode purposefully in front as a guard of honour fell in behind us and we walked to the steps of the royal palace. There, standing at the top of the steps at the entrance to the palace, stood Axsen. About my age and shorter than me, she had always been a sturdy girl having inherited the physical characteristics of her father. Usually of a cheerful disposition, she mostly wore her long brown hair in two plaits. Today, though, she wore it free with black ribbons tied in it. Her round face was full of sorrow and her brown eyes were puffy from weeping over the death of her father. She looked like a lost and lonely child despite being surrounded by priests, slaves and her father’s commanders and advisers. My heart went out to her. Ignoring all protocol and royal etiquette, Gallia raced up the steps and threw her arms round her friend. The tall severe-looking priests, sporting thick, long black beards and adorned in red robes, frowned and mumbled disapprovingly among themselves, but Axsen hugged her friend and thanked her for her show of affection.