Spartacus stopped cleaning his blade. ‘She said that Assur was in great danger.’
‘What did she look like, this mystery woman?’ queried Gallia.
Spartacus thought for a moment. ‘Tall, thin, long black hair. It was a most curious thing. Even though I had never met her before she felt familiar. Her eyesight must have been poor, though.’
Gallia leaned closer to him. ‘Why?’
Spartacus grinned. ‘She called me “little one”.’
The next morning he and Scarab were mounted on their horses in front of the Amazons as I stood before an increasingly irate Domitus. Zenobia held the reins of Epona as Gallia, her hair tied in a plait behind her back, put on her helmet.
‘You are riding to where?’ asked my general.
‘Assur, Domitus, it is in danger.’
He looked behind him at Byrd and Malik who had been alerted that we were riding to Assur.
‘Have your scouts been riding near to Assur.’
Byrd shook his head, as did Malik.
‘Assur too far east,’ said Byrd.
Domitus turned back to face me. ‘Why would you want to go to Assur?’
‘It is in danger, Domitus.’
‘We have received no word from Herneus appealing for aid,’ he said, still disbelieving that I was riding with my wife, two squires and the Amazons to Assur.
‘We received word last night, Domitus,’ I replied.
Domitus would not let the matter go. ‘No one entered the camp last night or I would have heard of it.’
I walked over to him so that Spartacus would not hear me. ‘It was Claudia, Domitus, she was the one who delivered the message.’
He did not realise who I was alluding to. ‘Claudia?’
‘The wife of Spartacus.’
He went to laugh but then saw that I was deadly serious. ‘She is dead. I saw her body burn to ashes.’
‘Listen my friend. You will have to trust me in this. Get the army to Hatra and await me there. But I cannot ignore this warning.’
He looked at me and then Gallia and scratched his head. He then looked at Byrd and Malik. ‘These two and their scouts are staying with me otherwise this army is blind and one of us has to keep his wits about him.’
I smiled and slapped him on the arm. ‘I will see you at Hatra.’
It took us two days of hard riding to reach Assur.
A rider galloped ahead of us to announce our arrival as our tired beasts plodded their way along the dirt track, their heads bowed from exhaustion. A squad of foot guards from the gatehouse dressed in white leggings and shirts barged people out of the way with their spear shafts and shields to allow us to enter Assur. The city was its usual bustle of disordered activity on our right side, the southern part of the city where the general population lived and worked: a sprawling collection of one- and two-storey homes and businesses squeezed together alongside stables, brothels, market squares and animals pens. Overcrowded and noisy it also stank of animals, rotting food and sweating people.
‘I need a bath,’ said Gallia, stating aloud what I was thinking, and turning her nose up at the pungent aroma that was being brought to our nostrils by a southerly wind.
Our escort left us at the gatehouse of the governor’s palace, a large, three-storey building with shuttered shooting ports on every level. The palace was surrounded by a high stone wall with round towers positioned in each corner and along its length, though I saw few guards either on the walls or standing guard by the open twin gates. The palace itself was a single-story rectangular building arranged around two courtyards and as I dismounted in front of its steps the governor, Lord Herneus, escorted by three of his senior officers, descended them and bowed his head to me.
‘Greetings, majesty.’
Gallia also dismounted and handed the reins of Epona to a stable hand. The Amazons behind us did likewise.
I stretched out my arms as Remus and the other fatigued horses were led away to the stables.
‘Get their saddles off quickly and rub them down,’ I commanded, ‘they have had a hard ride.’
I turned to Herneus. ‘As have I. Are you well, Herneus?’
He nodded his bald head. ‘Well, majesty. This is a most unexpected visit, and it is good to see the Queen of Dura grace this city.’
Gallia had taken off her helmet and smiled wanly at him. She looked pale and tired, we all did.
‘We need to bathe to wash the grime from our bodies,’ I said, ‘but while we are taking advantage of the palace’s comforts you need to send couriers to your lords to order them to muster their men and bring them here, and fetch Lord Silaces also.’
He looked confused. ‘Lord Silaces is not here, majesty. He and his men left for Hatra a week ago, along with my lords and their horsemen.’
My legs suddenly felt weak. ‘Hatra?’
‘Yes, majesty. The king summoned all the horse archers in and around Assur to his side to meet the Armenian threat, foot soldiers too.’
I hardly dared to ask the next question. ‘How many men of the garrison remain?’
‘Five hundred.’
I looked at Gallia and then back at Herneus while the Amazons stood in tired groups.
‘Is there a problem, majesty?’ he asked.
‘Has there been any reports or sightings of Armenians in this area?’ I replied.
He looked at his men.
‘None, lord,’ said one dressed in a bronze and iron scale armour cuirass and a sword in a rich red leather scabbard at his hip.
I looked at Gallia and the Amazons, then at Spartacus and Scarab, all of them wearing tired expressions.
‘We will refresh ourselves, Herneus. Please arrange it.’
The guest quarters in Assur’s palace were even more luxurious than the ones at Babylon, though not as expansive. The walls were painted white and decorated with murals of Parthian victories over the eastern nomads, while the rooms were both airy and spacious. As we changed out of our dirty clothes slaves filled with water a great round bath sunken into the floor in a white-tiled room next to our bedroom. Throughout the palace grooves in the paved floor brought fresh water to the kitchens, latrines and private chambers, and other tiled channels beneath the floors carried wastewater to the city’s sewer and then to the nearby Tigris.
Slaves laid out fresh robes on our bed and took away our old ones to be cleaned as I eased myself into the clear, cool water as Gallia did the same opposite me. She had untied her plait and she slid under the water and then re-emerged and began to refresh her supple body with soap made from water, mineral salts and cassia oil. Despite giving birth to three children her belly was still flat and her skin did not bear any stretch marks or scars, unlike mine. By comparison I had scars on my back, one on my face, another on my leg and a new one on my left arm courtesy of Nicetas at Seleucia.
After we had bathed sweet-smelling slave girls wearing short white gowns massaged the aches and pains from our bodies with oil, their long fingers working the balm into my flesh and lulling me into a sense of utter calm.
We were awakened from our deep slumber by frantic banging on the door.
‘Majesties, the governor urgently requests your presence in the hall.’
We rose bleary eyed and dressed in our new robes; I in a white silk shirt and baggy red leggings and Gallia in a flowing white robe.
‘You look ridiculous,’ she told me as I pulled on my boots and buckled my sword belt.
‘And you look very feminine,’ I smiled.
She went to the door, opened it, told the guard to be silent and ordered him to fetch her a pair of leggings and a top. He returned breathless with brown leggings and a beige shirt. The slaves had taken away our silk vests so to hide her modesty she put on her mail shirt and then we went to see the governor.
The sight of guards and officials running round and the ringing of alarm bells outside told me that something was wrong before I set eyes on Herneus’ grim expression. He was a man of only medium height but his iron-like visage and deep, commanding voice gave him an air of authority. Now in his fifties, he had held the east of the Kingdom of Hatra for over twenty years.