I smiled at Praxima. ‘Tigranes thinks he has already won, no doubt, but that may be his undoing. His aim is to march south beyond Hatra but cannot while the city is still Parthian, for to do so would leave a mighty hostile citadel in his rear. He must take the city if he is to advance further.’
‘The Armenians have no siege engines,’ said Nergal.
‘But the Romans do,’ added Gallia, ‘and if they join with Tigranes then Hatra will be in great danger.’
‘Not necessarily, my sweet,’ I replied. ‘Hatra’s walls are strong and high and the nearest water supply is over fifty miles away, at the Tigris. Not only that, a besieging army would have to fend off forces sent from Media, Dura and Babylon. What Tigranes needs to achieve is to crush us in battle in the hope that a demoralised Hatra opens its gates to him in submission.’
‘That will never happen,’ growled Praxima.
I stood and went over to her and kissed her on the cheek.
‘Perhaps we should make you the city governor, then Hatra could hold out for a hundred years.’
She threw back her head and laughed, shaking her mass of long red hair, then instinctively sprang to her feet and clutched the hilt of her sword, as the calm of the night was interrupted by shouting. I turned to see three of my horse archers approaching on foot, two of them holding the arms of a tall, well-built youth with long black hair.
‘Let go of me, barbarians. I am a prince and will have you flogged for your insolence.’
‘And I’m the King of Babylon. Now be quiet,’ said the unimpressed officer in charge.
We all stood as the group approached and the officer saluted, holding a sword in a scabbard in his right hand.
‘Apologies for the interruption, majesty,’ he said to me, jerking a thumb at the boy. ‘A patrol found this one trying to enter our camp. He says you are his uncle.’
I looked at Gallia and smiled at Nergal and Praxima and then waved the two guards holding the youth forward. The fire illuminated his square jaw and thick neck and the fire in his eyes reminded me of his mother.
‘You can let him go,’ I said to the guards, ‘he is family.’
He yanked his arms free and then glared at the officer holding his sword.
‘That’s mine,’ he snapped.
I held out my hand to the officer who passed me the sword. He bowed then he and his men left us. I drew the sword from its scabbard. It was a beautiful piece, finely balanced and exquisitely made. The long, straight blade was double edged and the hilt comprised a steel cross-guard, a grip wrapped in leather strips and a silver pommel in the shape of a horse’s head.
‘A fine sword, young Spartacus,’ I said.
I slid it back in the scabbard and handed it back to its owner. We retook our seats as he buckled his sword belt round his waist.
‘You should not try to enter my camp unannounced,’ I reprimanded him. ‘It may be your father’s land but my men will still put an arrow in you if you try to sneak past them.’
‘I wished to see you, uncle,’ he protested. ‘Mother told me that you had decided not to stay in the palace. Have you come to fight the Armenians?’
‘I have come to support your father,’ I corrected him. ‘This is King Nergal and Queen Praxima of Mesene, who have also come to support your father.’
He bowed his head to them as Scarab brought a stool for him to sit on and offered him a cup of water.
Spartacus watched him go.
‘Is he your slave?’
‘We do not keep slaves,’ said Gallia.
‘I have heard this. In the palace we have many slaves. They are treated well,’ he said firmly.
‘Not all slaves are treated kindly,’ said Praxima with bitterness.
‘I have heard that your army is made up of former slaves, uncle.’
‘Not all of it,’ I replied, ‘but there are many who have escaped from bondage.’
‘My aunts do not approve of it,’ he said.
‘I can imagine,’ I smiled.
‘They do not approve of me,’ he said softly.
Gallia looked at me and then at Praxima.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Because my father, my blood father, was a slave. And my current parents were also slaves. I may be a prince but it makes no difference. The other squires call me servus, which is Latin for slave. By doing so they insult me twice, by reminding me that I was born to slave parents and that they were both killed by the Romans. The gossip in the city is that because the present king and queen were slaves Shamash has abandoned us and will continue to do so until a Parthian noble sits on the throne.’
‘You should be proud of your real father and the parents who have adopted you,’ said Nergal.
‘They say that he was a great leader, the man I am named after.’
‘Perhaps one of the greatest who has ever lived,’ I said.
We spent the rest of the evening regaling him with tales of Italy and Spartacus. I am sure that he had heard them a hundred times before but never from our mouths. So Gallia told him of the founding of the Amazons and how she had maintained their numbers at one hundred ever since, of how she had rescued me on a beach near Thurii and how I had returned the favour later when her father had kidnapped her. He sat open mouthed as Praxima told him about the Battle of Mutina and how we slaughtered the Gauls and Romans and then afterwards marched south instead of north over the Alps. We told him of Domitus, Thumelicus, Drenis and Vagises. He want to bed happy, while I made a promise to myself that I would do everything I could to turn back the Armenian tide.
To that end we rode with young Spartacus back into Hatra the next morning to attend the council of war. It was held in the office next to the throne room, a great hide map of the empire hanging on the wall. Waiting for us was Orodes, Gafarn, Vistaspa, Kogan, Herneus, the man with the black beard and Atrax, the latter shaking my hand and saying nothing of what had happened the day before. I walked over to Vistaspa and clasped his forearm. He tried to get up but his injured leg was still in splints so I told him to stay seated. He looked pale and in pain and I wondered if he would see the new year.
The doors were closed and the meeting got under way with Gafarn introducing the severe-looking man with the beard as Lord Apollonius, the governor of western Hatra who held the towns of Ichnae, Nicephorium, Carrhae and Zenodotium; all of which were under threat of being assaulted by the Romans. No wonder he looked serious!
‘What strength can the Kingdom of Hatra muster?’ asked Orodes.
A grim-faced Gafarn pointed at Apollonius first, who stood and cleared his throat.
‘If I brought all the garrisons of the towns together the number would total two thousand foot and five thousand horsemen, majesty.’
‘And you, Herneus?’ asked Gafarn.
‘There is at Assur ten thousand horse archers and a thousand foot soldiers.’
Gafarn smiled at Vistaspa. ‘There is in this city a thousand cataphracts, twenty thousand horse archers and the garrison of two thousand foot soldiers.’
‘Twenty-one thousand horsemen,’ I said, ‘plus those who have arrived from Media, Dura, Mesene and Babylon.’
These amounted to an additional two thousand heavy horsemen and twenty-two thousand horse archers.
‘Forty-five thousand men in all,’ remarked Orodes with satisfaction. ‘Enough to convince Tigranes not to provoke us, I think.’
‘When we last encountered Tigranes at Nisibus,’ I said, ‘his army was deficient in heavy horsemen so we need to increase the number of our cataphracts to impress him.’
Vistaspa winced as pain shot through his leg and there were beads of sweat on his forehead.
‘Hatra and Dura can muster a thousand each, while Babylon and Media have five hundred apiece. Three thousand men,’ he said. ‘There are no more.’
‘There are another six thousand we can put into the field,’ I replied.