I had quartered the Carmanian horse archers in the ruins of Mari. Once, seventeen hundred years ago, it was a great city but had now become a collection of mud-brick ruins converted into stables for horses and barracks for their riders. Located south of Dura it had originally housed Silaces’ eight thousand horse archers from Elymais when that kingdom had fallen to Narses and Mithridates. Now Silaces and his men were in Gordyene assisting Surena. Strabo, the quartermaster responsible for the health and feeding of Dura’s horses, camels and mules, organised weekly deliveries of fodder from the royal granaries and Marcus, the army’s quartermaster general, supplied the Carmanians with food, clothing and horse furniture. Happily neither Aaron nor Rsan complained about their presence at the weekly council meetings because Phriapatius sent regular payments of gold to reimburse Dura’s treasury for the upkeep of his son’s soldiers.
I liked Peroz. He had an amiable, thoughtful nature and a mind with a thirst for knowledge. In fact he reminded me greatly of Orodes. By the autumn he had been accepted by the officers of the army as a valued ally and had seemingly managed to tame Spartacus and turn Scarab into a decent archer to boot.
During this time an eerie quiet descended over the empire as we waited for Crassus and his army. Byrd provided me with regular reports concerning the Roman governor of Syria who was still embroiled in Egypt’s affairs and enriching himself greatly in the process, while in the north Artavasdes stuck to the terms of the peace treaty. Orodes wrote that this was because he did not feel confident of launching a war against Parthia without the towering presence of his father by his side. But when Byrd came to Dura he reported that Artavasdes was recruiting great numbers of mercenaries in preparation for the final war against the Parthian Empire.
In Gordyene, meanwhile, Surena strained at the leash to attack Armenia from his kingdom. So concerned was Orodes that my protégé would initiate a war against Armenia that he asked me to go to Gordyene to reason with Surena.
I took Scarab and Spartacus with me in addition to a hundred horse archers and a hundred mules loaded with fodder, food and spare clothing. Because the year was drawing to a close the latter included woollen mittens, thick woollen tunics and heavy cloaks complete with hoods for the mountains and valleys of Gordyene are cold in winter. The high peaks were already blanketed with snow and a cruel wind blew from the north.
We rode east to the city of Assur, across the Tigris and then struck north along the eastern bank of the river before heading northeast towards the Shahar Chay River that marked the border between Media to the south and Gordyene to the north. Ordinarily I would have visited Atrax in Irbil, the capital of Media, but I was in a hurry and had no wish to see my sister Aliyeh, whose infantile hostility towards me was beginning to test my patience. We made the three-hundred mile journey in twelve days and arrived at the river to find the far bank lined with five hundred horse archers commanded by Silaces.
There was a bitter northerly wind blowing that swelled the huge white banner of Elymais sporting a four-pointed star so it resembled a great sail. A frozen Vagharsh, hood over his head and a scarf shielding the lower half of his face, held my fluttering griffin banner as I edged Remus into the grey, wind-ruffled icy water and led my horsemen across. Opposite the horse archers raised their bows in salute and Silaces walked his horse forward towards me, bowing his head as Remus trotted from the water.
‘Greetings, Silaces,’ I said, ‘I had forgotten how cold this kingdom could be.’
He looked into the leaden sky heaped with dark grey clouds.
‘Indeed majesty, some of the high passes are already blocked by snow.’
‘Well, at least that will stop Surena from waging war against the Armenians, then. How is he?’
He fell in beside me as we rode north to join the main road leading to Vanadzor, the kingdom’s capital, the rider carrying his banner falling in behind us.
‘He is a king with a mission, majesty,’ he replied flatly.
‘And what would that be?’
He smiled to himself. ‘To emasculate the Armenians.’
‘I am here to persuade him to delay his neutering,’ I replied.
The first night, we camped by the side of a luxuriant forest of oak and roasted the meat of two huge stags that Silaces’ men had shot that afternoon. On the second day we reached the town of Khoy, around which were several salt mines whose produce Silaces told me was traded with the kingdoms of Media, Atropaiene and Hyrcania for iron and bronze to make weapons and armour. In addition to salt Gordyene was abundant in cattle, sheep, horses and camels, which were also exported to nearby kingdoms.
‘Surena means to make Gordyene another Dura, majesty,’ said Silaces as we rode north towards Vanadzor, the wind having abated somewhat and a clear sky bathing the landscape in bright winter sunshine. Overhead a snowcock showed us its white flight feathers as it passed over our column.
‘He has turned Vanadzor into a giant armoury to equip his army.’
I had to admit that I was filled with pride at his words. Surena had once been nothing more than a wild boy who lived in the great marshes south of the city of Uruk, an uneducated half-savage of the Ma’adan.
Our paths had crossed when I had been captured by soldiers of the treacherous King Chosroes, at the time the ruler of Mesene. Surena and his band of young mavericks had fortuitously ambushed the column in which I had been a captive and had freed me. I had subsequently fled with them into the marshlands and afterwards Surena had joined me on my journey back to Dura. He had become my squire, had again saved my life in the battle against Narses and Chosroes before the walls of Dura and had then entered the ranks of the army’s cataphracts. He had been enrolled in the Sons of the Citadel scheme whereby the most promising individuals were groomed for command and had graduated to become an officer in the heavy cavalry.
Surena’s meteoric career had continued when I had given him command of half of my cataphracts at the battle near the Tigris against Mithridates and then command of a dragon of horse archers — a thousand men — in the subsequent retreat from the army of Narses. Surena never knew it but he was given command of an expeditionary force into Gordyene because Claudia, the dead wife of Spartacus, had talked of him in oblique terms when she spoke to me in the Temple of Ishtar at Babylon. I had expected him to be an irritant to the Armenians, who at the time were occupying Gordyene, but nothing more. But his leadership and courage had resulted in him liberating the kingdom and returning it to the Parthian Empire. A grateful Orodes had rewarded him with Gordyene’s crown and I felt very satisfied with myself for finding him.
Peroz was most intrigued by this grey, cold land filled with high, snow-clad mountains, rivers bloated with raging waters and seemingly endless forests of beech and oak and wind-swept mountain steppes. He rode on my right side with Silaces on my left; the banners of Dura, Carmania and Elymais fluttering behind us as we entered the wide, long valley before Vanadzor and saw a most wondrous sight.
Before us was arrayed the army of Gordyene: rank upon rank of foot soldiers in front of companies of horsemen, and before them all, mounted on a grey horse and surrounded by his senior officers, framed against a huge banner sporting a silver lion on a blood-red background, was Surena, Lord of all Gordyene.
‘Where is Viper?’ I asked Silaces.
Viper was a former member of the Amazons whom Surena had married and was now Queen of Gordyene.
‘Because she is pregnant, majesty, he has ordered her not to ride until the baby is born. He dotes on her greatly and loves her, too much perhaps.’
Surena urged his horse forward and cantered across the ground to bring it to a halt in front of me, flashing a smile.