Read Online The Parthian by Peter Darman - Free Book Online

exhausted comrades. It felt as though my chest was in a vice that was being closed shut. I couldn’t breath, my vision went black and I couldn’t feel my legs. I saw a group of camels ahead and figures scurrying around them, and then all was black.
    I was awakened by water being poured over my face. I opened my eyes and saw Vistaspa holding the leather water sack from which the fluid poured. Beside him stood my father. I tried to get up but my limbs refused to move.
    ‘Will you excuse us, Vistaspa,’ said my father.
    ‘Of course, sire.’
    Vistaspa walked away as my father knelt beside me.
    ‘Give your body time to recover. Compose yourself. While you are doing so, you might to reflect on your behaviour last night. You embarrassed your mother and I but, far worse, you embarrassed yourself. You must be an example, my son, not a figure of derision. If you want to be a peacock, go back to Zeugma and live with Darius and his young boys. You are a son of Hatra and are expected to act as such. Remember that, above all.’
    I felt crestfallen. After a few seconds of awkward silence he handed me another canteen. I drank greedily and gradually feeling returned to my arms and legs. I was helmetless but still wore my scale armour. Vata helped me up, a wide grin on his big, round face.
    ‘How do you feel?’
    ‘Terrible,’ I replied. ‘How long was I unconscious?’
    ‘Not long, and you weren’t the only one, so don’t worry.’
    I looked around and saw the company sat on the ground, eating rations that had been brought from the city. They looked dirty and exhausted, a stark comparison to the impeccably attired other soldiers of my father’s bodyguard who sat at tables beneath a large canvas awning that had been erected to shelter them from the sun. My father sat at the top table, with Vistaspa beside him, dressed in a fresh uniform. Servants prepared and served a light meal of roasted lamb and rice, washed down by water. We ate hard biscuits, but at least we had water. After thirty minutes Vistaspa ordered us into two columns once again. It was now an hour past midday and the sun was at its most brutal. The march back to the city was hard in the searing heat, though at least we had been watered and fed, of sorts. There were no mad charges, though, just a steady march back to the city. I slept like the dead that night.
    The next few weeks were spent undergoing the perennial training routines that I had grown up with: rise before dawn, route marche on foot in full war gear for two hours, breakfast, archery practice for two hours, wrestling and other unarmed combat for one hour, a two-hour break for lunch and to let the daytime heat subside, then mounted manoeuvres in the late afternoon. The latter could last for up to three or four hours, depending on where they took place. Usually we rode out of the city into the northern desert where the terrain was mostly flat and free of wadis. The surface was hard-baked earth rather than sand, and was thus ideal for cavalry training. All Parthian nobles were taught to ride a horse in childhood. As the years passed we learned all the skills needed to fight war on horseback: how to jump obstacles, gallop over uneven terrain, and to execute circles, turns and stops. Once I had reached adulthood I became a cataphract and learned heavy cavalry skills. These included opening and closing ranks, charging, pursuing, turning and wheeling. Sometimes we went into more hilly terrain to learn how to charge uphill and downhill. It was an unending cycle of practice followed by yet more practice. Once finished for the day we would ride back to the stables where each of us would groom and feed our mounts, the stables themselves having been cleaned by the young stable hands. The royal stables bloc in the palace quarter was spacious and luxurious, as befitting the home of the most highly prized horses in the kingdom, but in truth all the army’s stables were well appointed. Parthians loved their horses,