Gallia had always loved Dura, ever since the first time she had seen its yellow stone walls all those years ago. Even before she entered the city she had fallen in love with it, its stout fortifications, the strong, square towers spaced along the perimeter wall, and the mighty Citadel, the brooding stronghold that was higher than any other part of Dura. In the long years since she had arrived her affection for the city had never dimmed. She had held it against Roman legions and rebel Parthians, had welcomed kings, princes and a king of kings to its Citadel, and had raised three daughters in its palace. And it was the only place she could truly call home. Even before she met Pacorus, the dashing, romantic prince from a far-off place she had never heard of over forty years ago, she had never felt at ease in the Senones heartland. No, that is wrong. She had been made to feel unwelcome by her father, King Ambiorix, who had resented her since her birth. Her mother had given her life but had paid with her own life, making her father bitter and resentful against her, culminating in him selling her to a rich Roman, the owner of a gladiator school in the city of Capua.
When she came to Dura she was an outcast, apart from the world, and so naturally took to a city full of outcasts and the unwanted, a place set apart from the rest of the Parthian Empire by the River Euphrates. Everyone had told her when she had lived for a brief time in Hatra that civilisation ended on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, beyond which was barbarism and chaos. But to her, it seemed the gods had fated her to live among the barbarians and chaos, and she in turn felt an immediate affection for the people of Dura. She felt at home and at ease in the city and its wild, untamed hinterland, which she and Pacorus set about making in their image.
Now the city and the kingdom prospered, succeeding beyond their wildest dreams, benefiting from the Silk Road coursing through it and the establishment of dozens of settlements in the desert south of the city, made possible by peace with the Agraci. Now the city teemed with shopkeepers, entertainers, painters, scribes, metalworkers, lawyers, farmers and priests. In the centre of the city, betraying its Greek origins, was the agora, meaning ‘open place of assembly’, which was in reality an open-air marketplace. It was the beating heart of the city, the abode of confectioners, vintners, fishmongers, dressmakers, cloth merchants, shoemakers, jewellers, potters, and sellers of leather goods. Everything could be purchased in Dura’s agora, everything except slaves.
The whole world was plagued by the spectre of slavery. Even Hatra, where Gafarn and Diana ruled, possessed thousands of slaves. Tradition had such an iron grip on that kingdom that her friends could not even banish slaves from their own palace. Every city in the Parthian Empire was infested with slaves – except Dura. Slaves accompanied the trade caravans, of course, but they were always quartered in the caravan park outside the city, and it was forbidden to bring slaves into the city itself. There were servants in the homes of the nobility, and they were probably beaten and abused like their servile counterparts in other cities. In this, Parthia was no different from Rome. But Dura was different. It was a place where slaves fled to and were given sanctuary, safe in the knowledge that their former masters and mistresses would not dare to pursue them to the kingdom where King Pacorus and his fearsome wife lived. Cruel tongues talked of Dura’s army being a force of slaves and they did nothing to contradict the rumours. The ‘army of slaves’ had never been defeated on the battlefield and with each victory its reputation had grown, until it had become a legend. Even the recent campaign, abortive though it may have been, had increased its aura of invincibility, for it should have been annihilated outside the walls of Kayseri, surrounded as it was on all sides. But it had triumphed and marched back to Dura intact. But there had been casualties.
As Gallia trotted into the city, she cast a glance at Minu beside her. The new commander of the Amazons was remote, withdrawn. She had survived the battle in the fog but had taken several blows to her body that had ripped her mail shirt and bruised her torso. She thought nothing of it, and in the mourning for Zenobia and the thirty other Amazons who had fallen, forgot about her battered body. But two days after the fight she began bleeding heavily. Sophus did everything possible to save her unborn child but failed. Talib tried to comfort her and reassure her they would have other children. But she had lost her first child and blamed King Amyntas of Galatia. She wanted revenge upon him, upon anyone allied with him.
They rode into the small courtyard to the rear of The Sanctuary, two stable hands, both female, taking their horses to the stalls. Formerly, the stables had housed the horses of rich clients come to taste the delights of the most famous brothel in Dura, the establishment where Roxanne, later Queen of Sakastan, had plied her trade. Now Amazons guarded every entrance and men were forbidden to enter the place where women had formerly been reduced to slavery, becoming the playthings of men.
The two Amazons standing either side of the door that led from the stables to The Sanctuary bowed, one knocking on the door behind her. Moments later, the door opened and a handsome woman with emerald green eyes and thick, golden hair stood in the doorway. She smiled and bowed to Gallia, her tall, slender frame hidden by the black robes she always wore.
‘Welcome, majesty, everything is ready for your inspection.’
She was unlike any Scythian Sister Gallia had ever seen, and that included her own daughter. But Claudia had told her she was the best at her craft, which she had been teaching those chosen to continue the war started by Spartacus.
But which she would finish.