The ram arrived shortly after we lost Kronos and its iron head was soon smashing in the two gates. The soldiers in the gatehouse above tried to halt its progress by hurling spears and rocks against it but Marcus had also brought his smaller ballistae with him and they shot iron and stone balls to splinter the wooden shutters, and then dismounted companies of Vagises’ horse archers poured volley after volley of arrows at the firing positions. Very soon no missiles were coming from the gatehouse.
Like most of Seleucia’s defences the palace gates had not been maintained and though they looked impressive they were very old, over two hundred years at least, and when they were subjected to a fierce pounding they gave way easily enough. The defenders had had no time to reinforce them with braces or rubble and so, after twenty minutes of being battered, they were forced open.
The same orderly who had tried to save Kronos re-bandaged my wounded arm as the first of the Exiles forced their way through the gates and into the palace compound. Domitus had wanted to lead them but I had forbidden him to do so — I did not want to lose any more friends this day. So as the first shards of light appeared in the east we stood and watched as century after century raced into the palace to exact revenge for the death of their commander. Most of the Thracians and Cilicians were butchered without mercy whether they threw down their weapons and tried to surrender or not. A few Sarmatian horsemen attempted to mount their horses and cut their way through the mass of Exiles who flooded into the palace, but their horses panicked in the face of the dense ranks of the legionaries and their riders were soon dragged from their saddles and stabbed to death.
After the brief, violent battle was over I walked with Vagises and Domitus, escorted by a century of Exiles and a hundred horse archers, through the smashed gates and into the palace compound. The ground was sprinkled with enemy dead all around, mostly Thracians and Sarmatians but a few bodies attired in short-sleeved red tunics marking them out as Cilicians. There were some shouts and screams coming from inside the palace but most of the fighting was over. The gatehouse and all the towers had been cleared of enemy soldiers and groups of Exiles were standing guard on the walls, at the gatehouse and at the entrance to the palace itself.
We stood in the middle of the square in front of the palace as parties of Exiles began dumping enemy swords, bows, spears and armour in separate piles that would be examined by Marcus to see if any could be salvaged for further use. All the weapons and armour for Dura’s army were produced in Arsam’s armouries to ensure their quality, but captured stocks could always be sold on to third parties such as Alexander’s Jewish insurgents. His fighters had originally been armed with weapons produced at Dura but since then he had suffered a series of crushing defeats and he had used up all of his gold reserves. Perhaps I would send him the weapons that were being stockpiled in front of me free of charge. They would, after all, be used to kill Romans and the fewer Romans there were in the world would be of benefit to the empire.
Marcus sauntered over to where we stood and raised his right arm in a Roman salute. Dressed in simple beige tunic, sandals, leather belt and wide-brimmed hat, he looked like a gardener rather than a quartermaster. But he had one of the keenest minds in the empire and his organisational skills were second to none.
‘Terrible business about Drenis and Kronos,’ he said. ‘My commiserations.’
I nodded and Domitus stood by impassively.
‘Your engines did good work, Marcus,’ I told him.
‘Seleucia’s walls will need rebuilding and strengthening,’ he replied.
‘That is not our concern,’ I replied. ‘Once Mithridates has been captured Orodes can rebuild them at his leisure for there will no longer be any traitors to hide behind them.’
But a thorough search of the palace revealed that, just as I had feared, he had fled the city before we entered it. Some prisoners were taken, however, when a group of the enemy had barricaded themselves on the veranda in the north wing of the palace. They had shouted to the legionaries who were battering down the doors that they were men of importance who would command a great ransom and were known to the King of Dura. The latter declaration probably saved their lives as they were ordered to open the doors and surrender themselves immediately.
There were five of them: two Thracians, a bearded Sarmatian officer dressed in a magnificent scale armour cuirass, an unconscious and pale Nicetas whose shoulder wound had been bandaged but who had obviously lost much blood, and an individual whom I had met before.
‘Udall,’ I said to the man with the scruffy long hair who stood before me.
I had first encountered him when he had been a junior officer in a force of foot soldiers sent by Narses to intercept my army near Seleucia. Vagises’ horse archers had destroyed most of that force and Udall had been taken prisoner. I had let him and the rest of those men who had surrendered with him march away, after which he had spun a tale to his king about how he had slowed down Dura’s army. As a reward he had been made governor of Seleucia and was in that post when I had stormed the city as part of an alliance of kings led by my father determined to remove Mithridates and replace him with Orodes. After the city had fallen I had once again let Udall go free, and now here he was before me a prisoner for a third time.
‘I submit to your mercy, majesty,’ he said, bowing deeply, his hands bound behind his back like the others standing in a line in front of me.
I said nothing to him as I moved to stand before the Sarmatian. These people spoke Scythian, a coarse, harsh language that was spoken by the savage nomadic peoples who occupied the great northern steppes. As part of my boyhood education I had been tutored to speak and write it but had not spoken it in an age.
‘You are far from your homeland, Sarmatian.’
‘I go where there is work,’ he replied indifferently.
‘Where is Mithridates?’
‘Long gone,’ he smiled. ‘He has escaped you.’
I moved along the line to look at the Cilicians, both of whom were swarthy wretches who looked at me with hateful eyes.
‘What is your story?’ I asked one of them, to which he replied by spitting in my face.
Domitus standing beside me drew his gladius and thrust it through the man’s neck, after which my face was once more showered with gore as blood spurted from the wound. The Cilician collapsed as Domitus stepped over his body and rammed his sword into the side of his comrade, driving the blade up under the man’s rib cage to pierce his heart. He too collapsed to the ground. Domitus pointed at Udall.
‘This is the consequence of letting people go free instead of killing them, a mistake that Mithridates would not have made.’
I ordered the surviving prisoners to be taken back to the palace until I decided their fate and walked over to a water trough to wash my face. Domitus followed me.
‘What are you going to do with them?’ he asked.
I rubbed the stubble on my chin and saw that blood was seeping through the fresh bandage on my arm.
‘You cannot let them live,’ he continued before I could answer. I could tell that he was seething with rage over the deaths of Kronos and Drenis.
‘You are right,’ I said, ‘but first we have to attend to our dead.’
That afternoon, after Alcaeus had dressed my arm again and I had changed into a fresh tunic, most of the army was drawn up on parade to the west of the city wall. Two cohorts, one from the Durans, one from the Exiles, were left in the city to man what was left of the walls, guard the palace and the bridge over the Tigris and patrol Seleucia. The rest, including the squires, farriers, armourers, veterinaries, physicians and civilian drivers, plus the legions’ golden griffin and silver eagle standards, were drawn up to witness the cremation of our dead. We had lost only a hundred and fifty killed during the capture of Seleucia but it did not feel like a great victory, not with the bodies of Drenis and Kronos lying on their funeral pyres.