Companions (The Parthian Chronicles) by Peter Darman Page B

until suddenly there were hundreds of warriors flooding the ground directly ahead. They were leaving their boats on the canal to face the horsemen that had suddenly appeared immediately north of the canal. Good. That is what I had intended.
    I raised my hand to signal a halt as more and more warriors appeared like devils from the underworld as they clambered from their boats. I recognised them. These were not the soldiers of King Tiraios. They wore baggy yellow leggings, loose fitting red tunics and leather caps on their heads. They carried round ox-hide shields and were armed with a variety of sword and spears. These men came from Sakastan.
    ‘So Narses has not been quelling insurrections in Sakastan but gathering an army,’ I said aloud.
    Malik looked at me quizzically.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said.
    To add to the sounds of battle the noise of horns and drums suddenly erupted within the ranks of the warriors of Sakastan. The latter had now gathered into a brightly coloured block with a wide frontage. There were perhaps two thousand but scanning their ranks I saw no slingers or archers. The din of drums and horns increased as I called forward the company commander and gave him his orders.
    ‘Raking attack, left to right, half volleys only.’
    He saluted and trotted back to his men, relaying my orders as the red and yellow horde ahead began shouting war cries and banging their weapons against their shields in an attempt to intimidate us. A few left the ranks to run forward to open their arms to reveal their torsos to taunt us.
    What is war but a series of training exercises interspersed with death and gore? Dura’s army had been forged by Lucius Domitus, ex-Roman centurion and later commander in the army of Spartacus, a man who was as hard as the gladius he wore at his hip. There was nothing remarkable about Dura’s army. It was smaller than most armies fielded by the other kingdoms of the empire, but it was staffed by professionals, men who did nothing from dawn till dusk but train. Endless drills that made them as efficient as Marcus Sutonius’ machines. Every legionary knew his role and place in the century, cohort and legion, knew the meaning of every call made by the trumpets and every whistle blast that came from a centurion. It was the same among the horsemen: every horse archer practised drills and shooting on the training fields every day and the cataphracts trained to be the mailed fist of the army. And Domitus had integrated the horse and foot so they could work together on the battlefield, an apparently seamless amalgamation of legionaries fighting on foot and highly mobile horsemen. Dura’s army had a simple motto: train hard, fight easy.
    In most Parthian armies the horse archers would be unleashed against an enemy in a wild, disorganised charge: thousands of horsemen swarming around an enemy shooting so many volleys of arrows that they would black out the sun. Behind the armies would be dozens, sometimes hundreds, of camels loaded with spare quivers that the horsemen would ride to in order to replenish their ammunition. But eventually even camel trains ran out of ammunition.
    But we had no camel train and so we had to adapt our tactics accordingly. Raking attack, left to right, half-volleys only. Every man of the company understood the drill well enough: they had practised it many times on the training field. There was no need for a signal as the first rank wheeled their horses left and the company commander galloped to the head of the line to lead the attack. The enemy, seeing us seemingly immobile and intimidated, became louder in their war cries and taunts, walking forward and spitting in our direction.
    The commander directed his horse forward a few yards and then wheeled it right to advance towards the enemy warriors, several of whom had dropped their leggings to take a piss in our direction, to the great amusement of their comrades. The commander cantered forward and then broke into a gallop as he swung