Surena held up his hands. ‘I apologise for my enthusiasm. I prefer fighting to talking and only war will remove the enemy from the empire’s lands. The fact is that every day the Romans and Armenians piss on Parthian land the more we appear weak and helpless. Only by striking at the enemy’s lands can we reassert our greatness.’
‘We will take back all our lands,’ promised Orodes, ‘but to wage two wars at once is folly.’
‘No,’ said Surena firmly, ‘your plan is folly.’
There were murmurs from the others that he had spoken to the high king so but Surena was unconcerned.
‘Crassus will reject your offer of gold for a truce,’ he continued. ‘It will serve only to make him more determined to launch his war sooner so that he may take possession of all the empire’s riches. He sits in Syria and prepares his army and we do nothing. It is better to kill an enemy than to talk with him, that much I have learned.’
I stared at him and saw a man eaten away by bitterness and anger: bitter that the woman he adored had been cruelly snatched from him and angry against the whole world because of it.
‘Perhaps,’ said Orodes calmly, ‘another high king might agree with you, Surena. But I do not and while I am high king we will follow my plan. If Crassus rejects my offer then you will have your war but we will attempt to buy time first, which will ultimately serve our purpose more.
‘In addition, I have no desire to add Syria to the empire. If we invade Syria; what then?’
‘Then it becomes a wasteland and a buffer between the empire and Roman territory,’ replied Surena casually.
‘We are not Romans, Surena,’ I told him. ‘We do not create a desert and call it peace. What about the thousands of people who live in Syria? Will you kill them or sell them into slavery? I have spent all my life opposing such things and I tell you that I will have no part of a war with such objectives.’
‘It is as Pacorus says,’ added Orodes.
‘You will not be attacking the Armenians and Romans?’ he asked.
‘Not yet,’ answered Orodes.
Surena looked resigned. ‘I see that my words have fallen on stony ground, which is a shame.’ He suddenly stood up. ‘I see little merit in remaining here if all we are to do is talk about appeasing our enemies.’
‘Yet again you show disrespect to your high king,’ remarked Gafarn disapprovingly.
‘You should concern yourself more with defending your kingdom, Gafarn,’ said Surena dismissively, ‘before more of it is eaten up by our enemies.’
‘Is your memory so short, Surena,’ growled Gafarn, ‘that you have forgotten who created you a king? It was Orodes. Or the man who raised you up from living among marsh dwellers and gave you an education in the military arts? It was Pacorus. Do you not think that you are in their debt?’
Surena pointed at Gafarn. ‘I brought Gordyene back into the empire and have been drawing Armenian soldiers to the north to defend their borders when they could have been marching south to Hatra. Given support I could defeat Artavasdes and retake Nisibus, something that you appear incapable of. So in answer to your question I think I have more than repaid any debts I may have accrued.’
He bowed his head ever so slightly to Orodes and then walked from the room, throwing his empty cup at a slave standing near the door.
‘Surena,’ I said before he disappeared into the corridor, causing him to halt and face me. ‘I hope I can rely on your support when the fighting begins.’
‘The fighting has already begun,’ he replied sullenly.
‘If we all go our separate ways,’ I told him, ‘in the end we will all go the same way.’
He turned on his heels and walked briskly from the room, the guards outside closing the door as he left.
‘Arrogant little bastard,’ seethed Herneus, looking at Orodes. ‘You should let me take some men and I’ll bring him back from Vanadzor in chains so he can be punished.’
Herneus was a man of iron and an excellent governor of Assur but he grossly underestimated Surena, a man who had liberated an enemy occupied Gordyene single-handedly.
‘We cannot spare you, Lord Herneus,’ said Gafarn, ‘much as I concur with your proposed course of action.’
‘Surena is intemperate, I agree,’ said Orodes, ‘but his rashness is a result of his immaturity and eagerness to wage war against the enemy. His behaviour was unacceptable and men have lost their heads for less, but right now I cannot afford to lose him or his army.’
‘When the war begins he will bring his army to fight by our side,’ I said, ‘of that I am certain.’
Orodes nodded. ‘Notwithstanding Surena’s opposition to the idea, I would still like you to go to Syria, Pacorus, to offer Crassus my proposal.’
‘You have been to his house before,’ Gafarn said to me, ‘so he should be amenable to hearing what you have to say at least.’
‘That was a long time ago,’ I replied.
‘What is he like, this Crassus?’ asked Herneus.
I thought for a moment. ‘Generous, polite and hospitable are words that could be applied to him.’
‘And merciless. Don’t forget he had six thousand of our comrades crucified in Italy,’ said Nergal bitterly.
‘He is ruthless, certainly,’ I agreed, ‘like most Roman leaders, but Crassus is also greedy. He not only covets land for Rome but also wealth for himself. Twenty years ago he was perhaps Rome’s richest man and the passing of time has not reduced his appetite for gold, his looting of the temple at Jerusalem is testimony to that. It is as if he has to accumulate wealth in the same way that a man needs air to breathe and that may be his undoing.’
‘How so?’ asked Atrax.
‘Because,’ I replied, ‘his perception that Parthia is overflowing with gold may lead him to make rash decisions that will play into our hands.’
‘It is agreed, then,’ said Orodes. ‘Pacorus will go to Antioch and play the role of peacemaker.’
I left Assur the next day, Orodes having sent a courier to Phriapatius at Persepolis requesting him to march north at speed to the Caspian Gates and thence to relieve King Musa who was in his capital of Hecatompylos. Thus did I lose forty thousand well-trained and led soldiers, who would be campaigning in the northeast corner of the empire for at least six months, perhaps longer. It would take Phriapatius three weeks alone to reach the Gates, a strategically important pass that runs east and west through a spur of the Alborz Mountains that lay below the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. If Aschek was a competent commander then he could have led the relief expedition but as it was he would be supporting Phriapatius. I cursed the memory of Mithridates and hoped that he was enduring torments in the underworld because he had been responsible for inciting the northern nomads to strike at the empire.
Khosrou and Musa had always had volatile frontiers but any violence was usually restricted to minor raids and looting. When I had first met Khosrou at the Council of Kings at Esfahan all those years ago he had told me that he had encouraged the nomads to try trade instead of raids and had had some success, and had even enticed some of them into the ranks of his army. But Mithridates had bribed the nomads’ chiefs with gold to attack Margiana and Hyrcania during the civil war and their appetite for plunder had returned with a vengeance. Worse, new tribes came from the steppes in the far north, enticed by tales of easy plunder and untold riches. And now they had been united under this Attai. The last thing the empire needed was hordes of barbarians pressing on its northern borders as the Romans prepared to renew hostilities in the west.
‘It is a mistake, Pacorus.’
Domitus reclined in his chair after I had briefed him on what had been decided at Assur. We were sitting in his tent in the legionary camp as the late afternoon was giving way to early evening. I had arrived back at Dura that morning and went to see him after he returned from the exercise that he had been taking part in. It had involved the two legions plus all the cataphracts and two thousand horse archers and had ended with a mock battle five miles south in the desert, in which the legions had drawn up in a hollow square formation and had been assaulted all day and into the night by the horsemen. I picked up the sheet of papyrus from the table and looked at the ‘casualty’ figures for the exercise.