Free Carrhae by Peter Darman Page A

commercial activity.
    ‘What will you do now, Scarab?’ I asked after we had dismounted to walk alongside our animals to conserve their strength.
    Throughout the journey his eyes had always been cast down to avoid our gazes, and it was so now as we walked along the dusty track.
    ‘I am your slave, divinity,’ he replied, ‘it is for you to decide.’
    ‘You are a free man, Scarab,’ said Gallia, ‘you may go where you will.’
    Scarab looked at her in confusion, then cast his eyes down when she smiled at him.
    ‘I do not understand, divinity.’
    ‘It is as my queen says,’ I replied. ‘You are no longer a slave and are free to decide your own destiny.’
    ‘There no slaves in our palace,’ said Gallia.
    Scarab was even more confused. ‘No slaves?’
    ‘It is true,’ I assured him.
    ‘But who prepares your food and serves it to you, divinity?’
    Gallia smiled. ‘We have servants, it is true, but they are free and are paid for their work.’
    ‘They are paid?’ he said incredulously.
    ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Why else would they work for me? Perhaps you would like to work for me?’
    ‘I would consider it a great honour, divinity,’ he replied.
    ‘You could do with a squire,’ suggested Gallia.
    I had not had a squire since I had found Surena among the marsh people, the Ma’adan, all those years ago and he had gone on to become a king himself. I doubted Scarab would follow the same path but he was young, strong and rode a horse well enough. He would do.
    Our leisurely ride back to Dura was interrupted a day out from the city when we were met on the road by Domitus leading a party of cataphracts. Even before I spoke to him I knew that something was wrong and my stomach tightened. Gallia and Vagises sensed it too as the commander of the army brought his horse to a halt in front of me and raised his hand in salute.
    ‘You had better hurry back to Dura,’ he said. ‘There has been a great battle in the north of the Kingdom of Hatra.’
    The knot in my stomach tightened some more and my heart began racing. ‘Battle?’
    ‘Vata engaged Tigranes and a great host of Armenians near Nisibus. We heard the news yesterday and I thought I should convey it to you myself.’
    I sighed. ‘What happened?’
    ‘Vata was killed and his army scattered. Nisibus has fallen to the Armenians who now hold the whole of northern Hatra.’
    ‘What of Adeleh?’ asked a shaken Gallia.
    Adeleh was my youngest sister and the wife of Vata. Domitus shook his head.
    ‘I do not know.’
    We rode the rest of the day and through the night to arrive back in Dura as the new dawn was breaking. Tired, unwashed, our clothes covered in dust, I immediately convened a meeting of the council to decide our next course of action. After a wash and a change of clothes I went to the barracks in the Citadel and sought out the officer in charge. This long building located in front of the southern wall housed a century of legionaries, a company of horse archers and another company of cataphracts. Companies and centuries were continually rotated through the Citadel and city to undertake guard duty, which usually meant nothing more than standing sentry in the palace and treasury and manning the walls and gates of the Citadel and Dura, the horsemen providing escorts for myself and Gallia when we left the palace.
    The commander, who fortunately spoke Greek, was ordered to allocate our Nubian recruit a bed and find him leggings, tunic and a pair of boots and then get a meal inside him.
    Two hours after riding into the city I was seated in the headquarters building staring at the hide map of the empire hanging on the wall of the room we used for these meetings. It made depressing viewing as Domitus stood by the side of it with letters that had been arriving at the city.
    ‘We know that three Armenian armies have invaded Parthia,’ he said, ‘one under Tigranes that defeated Vata and captured Nisibus, another led by his son Artavasdes that