‘Tomorrow we ride to Ceasarea. Byrd tells me that it has no walls and no garrison. Regardless, we ride in quick, cause as much damage as possible and then get out as fast as we can.’
‘Do we then return to Hatra, lord?’ asked one of the company commanders.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘after we have burnt Ceasarea to the ground we will have avenged Bozan and fulfilled our orders.’
They seemed pleased by this, and I was glad that they appeared to have accepted me as their commander. I was the son of their king, but I liked to think that they were riding with me out of respect and not begrudging duty. At least that was what I hoped.
We left just after dawn, four hundred horsemen, spare mounts and mules riding hard through a stark landscape. Cappadocia suited our mood — rocky, windswept and barren. Dotted with woods and grassy plains, the mountains and plateaus appeared to be never ending. Byrd told me that he had kept us away from the few towns out of security, and informed me that many people lived in dwellings carved out of the rocks, eking out a miserable existence.
‘And Rome wants this land?’
He shrugged. ‘Rome wants all lands, lord.’
After three days we reached our target — Ceasarea. I observed the town from the top of a nearby hill. Ceasarea stood in the middle of a wide plain that was flanked by low-lying hills. A single road ran through it from the south, running parallel to a small river that also flowed through the town. There was no cover to hide our approach, so we would have to cross at least a mile of open ground before we reached it. There was traffic doted along the road, passing both ways, mule trains, carts and travellers on foot, going about their everyday business. I could see no soldiers, no camp, no walls and no watchtowers. Byrd was beside me, lying on the ground watching the town. The afternoon was sunny, with a fresh northerly wind.
‘You were right, I can’t see any troops.’
‘No soldiers, lord.’
We made our final checks — weapons, saddles, straps and horses — before we moved out to attack the town. Our tactics were simple: we would advance in one long line and gallop through the town firing flaming arrows. This necessitated halting before we attacked, as the arrows had rags that had been dipped in pitch wrapped around the shaft, just below the point. They would have to be lit before they could be fired. Each of us had only one such arrow, because once buildings were set on fire the flames would soon spread to other dwellings. So we trotted across the plain until we were around five hundred paces from the outskirts. As we halted, I heard screams and shouts being carried on the wind. We had been spotted. Soldiers dismounted and lit torches, and then went from horse to horse so the riders could light their arrows. I cast a glance at Byrd, who sat stony faced in his saddle; Gafarn was beside him. I strung the arrow in my bowstring and shouted ‘For Bozan!’ at the top of my voice, then kicked my horse forward. My men cheered and followed. In less than a minute we were flooding through Ceasarea’s streets. Men. Women and children fled before us as we fired their town. Soon buildings were burning as our flaming arrows set alight wood and other flammable materials. I packed my bow in its leather case tied to my saddle and drew my sword. A man, wild-eyed, ran at me with a pitchfork. He died as my sword came down with full force and hacked half his face away. As the flames took hold, people forget about the mounted soldiers in their midst and tried to save themselves and their families from the inferno that was engulfing their world.
My men were now out of control. All discipline had gone as they cut down any who offered resistance and killed others who simply got in their way. Horses trampled screaming women and children, and I watched in horror as a man, his clothes burning on his back, ran from a house clutching a small child in his arms. Flames leapt into the sky and the sickening smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils. Gafarn rode up and halted in front of me.
‘This is slaughter, highness. You have to stop it.’
I stared at him, unsure of what to say. Behind me a multi-storey building collapsed, which spooked my horse. It reared up on its back legs and almost threw me.
‘Highness!’ shouted Gafarn.
But it was too late. Men possessed by a blood lust had been unleashed and were now visiting death and destruction on Ceasarea. They were scattered throughout the town, and in the confusion and terror no one man could stop it. Gafarn saw this in my eyes, spat on the ground in front of me and rode off. The killing continued for what seemed like an eternity, but then suddenly ceased abruptly, for the simple reason that there was no one left to kill. Those who could had escaped from our swords and arrows, but many had been killed or had perished in the flames. The heat was so fierce in some streets that it was impossible to ride down them, and many horses refused to go near the flames. I eventually found two officers and we moved in a group down the main road that ran through the centre of the town, shouting ‘rally, rally,’ to gather our horsemen. Small groups of riders, their faces blackened by soot and their horses streaked with sweat, appeared and dropped in line behind us. I ordered them to muster on the plain from where we had launched our attack and there await orders.
It took a long time to gather all the men. By now the blood lust had subsided and exhausted men lay on the ground beside their equally tired horses. Men gulped from their waterskins as their officers moved among them to determine who had failed to return. They reported to me half an hour later. We had lost twenty dead and thirty wounded. More than fifty horses had also died and a further twenty had to be put out of their misery due to their severe burns. The town formed a glowing red backdrop as the evening approached and we led our horses from the horror. The town of Ceasarea no longer existed.
I felt no elation or sense of victory after our attack. All we had done was assault an undefended town and massacre its inhabitants. A morose Byrd led us south, to Cilicia, the region that lay on Cappadocia’s southern border, from where we would cut east cross-country to the north of the city of Antioch, and then back to Hatra. He hardly spoke to anyone during the journey. He had led us to the town where he had lived before Cappadocia had been conquered by the Romans, and his reward was to witness its destruction. He must hate us now more than he did the Romans, I mused. At least my men’s spirits were rising with the promise of seeing their homes and families again. Gafarn, I noticed, attended to his duties diligently but rarely engaged in conversation and averted my eyes. No doubt he was still sickened by what he had witnessed at Ceasarea. No matter, he would get over it. My own mood lightened as we travelled south. The death of Bozan had been a blow, of course, but, I reasoned, he had been a soldier and soldiers get killed in battle. But we had defeated a detachment of Roman cavalry and had rampaged at will through Cappadocia. We were returning to Hatra as victors. Hopefully Rome would now think twice about raiding Parthian territory, for to do so would invite retaliation. It never occurred to me that the Roman cavalry we had defeated had been but one of the groups sent out to find us. It thus came as a nasty shock when we were pounced upon by Roman legionaries and cavalry on the Cilician border.
Chapter 4
It would have been convenient for me to report that I had decided to engage the Roman horse and foot, that I took a command decision after weighing up all the possible outcomes. But the reality was that I was caught totally unawares. Roman scouts had obviously been tracking us for a while, though our own scouts had failed to detect them. Worse, whoever led them had a more intimate knowledge of the country we were travelling through than we did. And so it was, that as we were journeying through Cilicia, moving in column between two widely separated woods through a field of lush grass, that we were confronted by a line of Roman cavalry that blocked our route. They looked the same as the ones we had defeated in Cappadocia. I gave orders to form a wedge, as the woods protected their flanks and we would be unable to sweep around them. No matter. We had beaten them once and we would beat them again.