Only seventeen of Parthia’s eighteen vassal kings were present; Tiridates of Armenia alone had not been invited. As uncle to the King of Kings, brother to the late king, Vologases of blessed memory, he was not perhaps yet sufficiently recovered from his mourning to enjoy the company of his nephew.
And besides, the Roman general Corbulo was camped with six legions on Armenia’s western borders. He might have been fully occupied in putting all thirty thousand men through winter fatigues that made war look like a day of rest, but a king could be excused for choosing to stay and defendhimself and his integrity, at least until the new King of Kings had concluded this war council and launched his own attack on the mewling, pale-skinned braggarts who so offended the integrity of his empire.
The war council had been conducted over the roast buck. A horde of mounted men to whom fighting was as necessary and integral as breathing did not take long to decide on a new war. When the King of Kings had suggested they make a late autumn attack on the Roman camps, long after the end of the fighting season had notionally ended, he had been roundly cheered by his vassals.
The seventeen client kings had fallen over themselves in the following discourse to promise horse-archers, heavy cavalry, light cavalry, infantry and, from the one who ruled the far eastern border with Mathura, elephants with which to grind Rome into the ground.
Weaving through their midst at his most effacing, and most efficient, Pantera had taken a dozen different commissions to source fresh mounts of sound stock at a good price for the coming battles. I, as his clerk, had written each one down. Against my better judgement, I found myself listening hard, making other, inner, notes of the tactics they proposed, and how much they knew of the strength of each legion.
They knew of the Vth, my legion, of their skill in battle, of how they had won Antium for Octavian, and then fought against Parthia for Tiberius; they were glad the Vth was not yet on their borders, although concerned that it was camped so close in Moesia. I may have loathed the Vth on principle when I was forced to march in its company, but here it was my legion; the men were my brothers. I caught myself smiling broadly once, or rather, Pantera caught me, and threw me a look that ensured I didn’t smile again for the rest of the meal.
It was a rowdy, enthusiastic council; each man was testing his standing with the new King of Kings, and none had yetgained ascendancy. With all to play for, and the king known to favour courage in the hunt above all else, the lesser kings had moved their mounts swiftly away from the pavilion and towards the forest when the horns summoned them to the hunt, the mind of each bent on the ways he might outshine his brothers.
Still, when the boar charged from the forest, none of them moved fast enough to stand in its way.
I was one of the many who had shouted a warning as the beast hurtled from the thick, scrubby forest. I jerked my horse round, thinking to throw it forward and take the body of men with me, and at least look as if I was doing something useful.
A calloused hand fell on my wrist, skin on skin, holding me still. Vilius Cadus shook his head, and jerked his chin sideways to where Pantera had lifted his bow from his saddle horn. The usual pall of envy and resentment began to poison my reason — yet again, Cadus had been privy to our business when I had not — but then I caught sight of Pantera’s bow for the first time, and was lost.
My great-uncle Demetrios, the last conscript in our family, had such a bow, and had brought it back home when he had retired after the Thracian campaign.
I may not have wanted to be a legionary, but all my childhood I had yearned to hold and to shoot such a weapon. It was of Scythian type, a war bow as much as a hunting bow, small, deeply curved, with a full belly, richly decorated, and polished horn at the tips.
With unhurried speed, Pantera leaned back and reached for the quiver that hung from his hip.
Three arrows sang in the clean, cold air.
Soaring high across the iron sky, they held their own fine tune; a chord played so close together as to make almost a single note. There are men who will tell you they could nothave come from the same bow, but they had; with my own eyes I saw Pantera shoot them.
I did not shout now; nobody did. Even the King of Kings sat in measured silence, watching their flight. Afterwards, that was what the gathered kings remembered most clearly: that alone among the party, their king had not cried out.
The first arrow struck the boar behind its shoulder and sank deep, so that only the peacock flights stood blue-green against its steaming hide.
The beast barely slowed its charge, but then I had been taught that nobody had ever stopped a boar but with a ten-foot spear with a good broad blade and a crosspiece one third of the way down the haft — and a lot of luck.
The second arrow struck the beast in the eye and sank as deep as the first; the raven flights were lost against the black bristle, which meant that the heavy iron barbs had penetrated the bone of the beast’s skull, exactly as they were supposed to.
The boar grunted once, a sound so like a man disturbed in slumber that I nearly looked away to see who else had made the sound. But I did not, for Cadus’ hand tightened on my wrist, holding me steady.
Thus it was that he and I witnessed together the moment when its haunches ceased to power the boar towards the King of Kings and it toppled sideways to the turf.
‘Good shot! What a shot! Did you see that? Did you-’
All around, seventeen minor kings gave enthusiastic vent to their relief, none more so than Ranades IX, the bluff, broad-shouldered king of Hyrcania, in whose country they hunted, and under whose hospitality the King of Kings had so nearly met his end.
If Vardanes had died, Ranades would have been required at the very least to take his own life. He might also have had to hand over his kingdom first, thus ensuring the deaths ofall six of his sons. Such were the rules of sovereignty in the empire of Parthia.
The royal shouts ricocheted off the forest wall and rolled out across the sea. Shore birds fled, and a single raven rose from far back in the forest. As if at its command, the shouts of the kings halted, severed so suddenly, so completely, that the silence fell like a hammer.
I did not see the third arrow strike, but, forewarned, I turned to my right in time to see Vardanes II, King of Kings, by right of birth, war and parricide supreme ruler of Parthia and all her kingdoms, slide sideways on his magnificent bay mare.
There he hung, half dismounted, held by the trappings of gold about his thighs, with the third of Pantera’s arrows protruding from the mail shirt above his heart, its raven flights black against the bright silver of his chest, its barbed point bloody at his back, where it came out a hand’s breadth to one side of his spine.
‘ Run! ’ This time I did slew my horse sideways. ‘That mad fool has ruined us! Run for your- Oof! ’
That mad fool — Pantera — had slammed his elbow into my solar plexus, robbing me of breath, words and movement. From my other side, Vilius Cadus grabbed my mount’s reins, so that even when I could breathe again, I could not escape.
Cadus’ voice wove over my head, fine as a breath. ‘Demalion, be still. Smile. Particularly smile at the king of Hyrcania. Do this, and we will live. Fail and we will die in exactly the manner you fear most.’
‘And watch the kings,’ Pantera said, from my other side. ‘See who takes command. It may change what happens next.’
I knew what was going to happen next; it involved razor-knives and hot irons and hammers and pain made to last for days on end. I eased my free hand back, towards the dagger at my waist, trying to work out whether I had time to draw itand plunge it into my own neck before the men on either side could stop me.
Even as I did so, I found myself absorbed in the developing tableau ahead, where the seventeen client kings gathered about the bay mare, none knowing which amongst them had the authority to touch the sacred body of their supreme ruler.