I ran to Gallia’s side. ‘Deserting your post, Pacorus?’
‘We have no arrows left. As soon as you are out withdraw to the inner wall.’
Above our heads hissed dozens of arrows being loosed by the Armenians, many more hitting the walls in front of us.
‘We are going to die here,’ she said, looking above at the hundreds of arrows in the air.
Suddenly slaves from the palace came up the steps to the battlements clutching large bundles of arrows and began dumping them on the parapet. Others carried bundles into the gatehouse. A man in a short-sleeved white tunic and sandals placed at least a hundred arrows behind Gallia and bowed his head.
‘These are arrows shot into the city?’ I asked.
‘Yes, highness.’
‘Have many boys died collecting them?’ asked Gallia.
‘Dozens, highness, both boys and girls.’
I touched Gallia’s elbow. ‘This is no time to die,’ and then I ran back into the gatehouse as other slaves brought more bundles of arrows to the outer wall. Our shooting re-commenced and felled dozens of enemy archers but now the ram was close to the gatehouse — no more than three hundred paces away — and though resembling a pincushion was slowly but inexorably rumbling towards the gates. I cursed the fact that the bridges across the moat were made of stone otherwise we could have fired them, but as it was even if we poured burning oil onto the ram its roof would have protected it.
Armenians archers were collapsing in heaps as Gallia’s women and the army of cripples shot them down but still the ram came on. Now it was less than two hundred paces from the gates and I could hear the men groaning as they hauled its bulk forward.
‘They will reach the gates soon,’ said a concerned Spartacus.
‘Then we will greet them with our swords,’ shouted Scarab, releasing his bowstring.
The roof at the front of the ram was angled down to prevent us shooting arrows into its interior as it got nearer and so our arrows became less effective as it closed to within fifty paces and stopped.
‘They are about to ram the gates!’ I shouted.
Though wagons and braces had been piled up behind the gates there had been no time to reinforce them with rubble to build a bank of earth. We heard a great collective groan and then the ram rumbled forward across the bridge and into the gates. There must have been forty or more men under its roof and they managed to give the ram enough momentum to splinter the gates and force them apart. The spearmen out of range of our own archers began cheering and hoisting their spears aloft as the ram was hauled back in preparation for another charge. By now my right arm and shoulder ached from shooting arrows and the inside of my fingers were red-raw from clutching the bowstring.
The Armenian archers were taking a fearful battering as every arrow loosed by the Amazons found its target, but to give them credit they held their ground and carried on shooting, though I noticed that the density of arrows being directed at us had dropped markedly since the start of the assault. They too must have been suffering ammunition shortages.
There was a great blast of horns and those archers still left standing about-faced and ran back towards the spearmen, while the latter lifted up their shields in front of them and began to march forward, just as the ram was once more hurled against the gates. This time there was a cracking sound and then a grinding noise as the ram prised the gates apart and forced the supports behind them back. The outer wall had been breached.
‘Back to the inner wall!’ I screamed as the spearmen approached the stone bridge.
I was nearly out of arrows again so I grabbed the three remaining behind me and gestured frantically to the others to get down the steps in the gatehouse and to the inner wall.
And then I heard a new sound.
Chapter 10
At first I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. But I stopped and cocked my ear to where the attackers were positioned and heard it again: a clear, pure sound that cut through the tumult of the Armenian drums and horns and the shouts and cries of their soldiers. I heard it again and this time it was louder and nearer and I knew that it was not in my imagination. I walked to the shooting slit and stepped onto the stone steps beside it to peer over the battlements. The shrill sound of dozens of trumpet blasts echoed across the plain once more and I saw the horizon filled by a wall of white shields and helmets as five thousand Durans and five thousand Exiles marched to our relief.
I ran to the right side of the gatehouse and shouted at those below.
‘Domitus is here! Relief has arrived!’
Gallia and Zenobia looked up at me in confusion and then both peered through their shooting slits and then hoisted themselves onto the battlements and raised their bows in the air and began shouting ‘Dura, Dura’. Soon all the Amazons were chanting the same followed by Asher and his ragged recruits.
Below us the Armenian spearmen, on the verge of forcing their way into Assur, halted their advance as their officers received word that a hostile army had suddenly appeared in their rear. The Armenian archers were already reforming to shoot at the oncoming mail-clad soldiers, but they were short of ammunition, tired and their numbers had been drastically thinned and they were no match for Domitus’ men. They loosed one volley, which thumped harmlessly into the wall and roof of locked shields, and then melted away as the legionaries abandoned their testudo formation and increased their rate of advance.
Beneath the gatehouse there was silence as the ram’s crew abandoned their monster and hurried back to what they perceived to be the safety of their spearmen, but not before a few were felled by eagle-eyed Amazons who had some arrows left. There were still five thousand Armenian spearmen remaining and as they shuffled into position to form one great block to face Domitus’ men, half of the latter suddenly veered to their right to swing round the left flank of the enemy spearmen who had been facing the Tabira Gate.
I saw the light catching a golden emblem and knew that it was the Durans who were going to attack the spearmen below us. The latter were now moving slowly towards the legionaries, their densely packed formation resembling a great rectangle. Moving closer towards their destruction.
I stood from my vantage point and thanked the gods that they had given me an opportunity to witness Parthia’s finest soldiers in action. The Durans were drawn up in two lines, each one made up of five cohorts, but it was only the first line that was sent in against the Armenians: two and a half thousand men against twice their number. I felt sorry for the Armenians.
Each cohort was made up of six centuries — three in the first rank and another three behind — each century made up of eight ranks, each rank containing ten men. But on this occasion the Duran front line was reorganised to extend each cohort so that all six centuries were in the first line. Ordinarily this would take some time but Dura’s army was so well trained and drilled that it took only a few minutes before there was a frontage of thirty centuries advancing against the Armenians.
The Duran line was now only eight ranks deep and was mighty thin but it made no difference. A blast of trumpets signalled the attack and the legionaries increased their pace. The first two ranks hurled their javelins at the advancing Armenians at a range of around thirty paces — six hundred long, thin iron shanks attached to a heavy wooden shaft arching into the air before smashing into enemy shields, flesh and bone. These ranks then drew their swords and sprinted at the enemy as the legionaries in the third and fourth ranks behind them, as they had done many times before, launched their javelins over the heads of their comrades in front before also drawing their short swords. Train hard, fight easy.
The first two ranks of the Durans used their shields as battering rams against the ill-equipped and poorly trained Armenians, smashing steel bosses into faces or toppling over hapless spearmen before stabbing at them with frenzy. The Armenians, their front ranks almost annihilated by Duran javelins, began to give ground immediately as gladius blades cut through wicker shields with ease and pierced torsos, sliced open bellies, put out eyes and mutilated groins. Then the spearmen ran.