Free Parthian Dawn by Peter Darman

into the city the next morning, walking through the bustling streets bursting with Hatra’s citizens and foreign visitors. The air was hot and filled with the smells of pungent spices from the East. The markets were heaving with people buying and selling garments, animals, pottery and exotic foods. The stalls were packed full of wares, customers haggling, shouting, cursing and laughing. Kogan’s guards kept order, but in general the atmosphere was good-natured although frenetic. I walked down to the southern part of the city, past brothels, inns and along litter-strewn streets. Beggars, their limbs distorted and their faces diseased, pot-marked and ugly, held out their filthy hands for money. I reached into my leather pouch and gave them some drachmas, for I too had been a penniless wretch once. I walked under an arch into a small square, around which more stalls were arranged. This was the poorer quarter of the city, and the wares on sale reflected that — coarse garments, poor quality utensils and thin loaves. Around the square were shops, mostly one-roomed affairs that opened out on to the square, their owners placing benches to separate the square from their abodes. I had consciously dressed in a simple white tunic, brown leggings and leather boots, but the sword hanging at my hip marked me apart from the dozens of others, some barefoot, all haggard, who were there to buy products.
    I walked up to one of the shops on the south side of the square, which like the others had a wooden bench placed in front of its entrance. The bench was piled high with earthenware pots, and behind it a scruffy man, tall with dark, shoulder-length hair, his face lean, was arguing with a portly man with thinning hair.
    ‘You no like, then don’t buy.’ The seller’s eyes, narrow and brown, fixed the customer with a cobra-like stare. The man threw his arms into the air and walked away.
    ‘You won’t become rich with that attitude, Byrd.’
    He recognised me instantly. ‘Lord, I not expect to see you in this part of the city.’
    He smiled, one of the few times I had seen him do so in the years that I had known him. He still looked the same as when I had first clapped eyes on him before the fateful raid into Cappadocia. He had been hired as a guide and my first impression of him was far from positive. Dressed in scruffy clothes, I had, I am ashamed to say, looked down on him. But he proved his worth in Cappadocia and afterwards the more so when he became the chief scout in the army of Spartacus. He collected a ragged band of like-minded and similarly attired individuals, fifty in all, who became the eyes and ears of the army. They operated in small groups, riding ahead and reporting back on Roman garrisons and any armies that might be heading our way. And then, after that terrible spring day when Spartacus fell in battle, the scouts had simply melted away like they had never existed. All except Byrd, who elected to travel back with me to Parthia. Since my return to Hatra I had seen him little.
    ‘I close early today, lord. Come inside.’
    He threw an old brown blanket over the pots on the bench and beckoned me to enter his shop, which in reality was a small space with a table on one side. A drawn curtain barred the entrance to what I assumed was a bedroom. He gestured at one of the stools tucked underneath the table. I pulled it out and sat down and he did the same. He filled a cup with water from the jug on the table and handed it to me.
    ‘You want to buy some pots, lord?’
    I laughed. ‘Not quite. I have come to see if I can interest you in coming on another journey.’
    He drank some water. ‘Journey?’
    ‘I have a new kingdom to go to.’
    ‘I know, lord. You travel to Dura soon.’
    ‘So, I see your old skills have not deserted you.’
    He looked disinterested. ‘It is common knowledge.’
    ‘I would like you to come with me, to be my chief scout, or anything else that you might like to be.’
    ‘You very kind, lord,