“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I should have recognized you from your resemblance to your father, but I was otherwise occupied. Caesar Constantius and I served together once in Pannonia. He is a great general and a brave soldier.” His eyes suddenly twinkled. “But no greater, I am sure, than his son. The way you encircled those Persians and cut them to pieces was something to see. I wish I could have spared the time to really enjoy it.”
Constantine flushed at the words of praise from this subject king, who had earned the respect and admiration of the entire Roman Empire. But more than that, he felt an immediate liking for Tiridates, much the same sort of affection he felt toward Dacius.
“We are at your command, noble Tiridates,” he said.
Armenian king glanced
“Nay, let us share responsibility, particularly since neither of us knows where to go just now.” The Armenian king glanced up at the sky where the sun was about to set. “Dura is only a little distance away. Perhaps we can find shelter in the ruins there and in the morning we can decide how to go about finding General Galerius and his command, if any of them are left alive.”
“From the looks of the route of retreat, I would say not,” Dacius observed. “It’s too bad Galerius didn’t wait until Emperor Diocletian could reach Antioch and take charge of this venture. Then the attack would have been launched through Armenia, Your Majesty, as I’m sure you advised.”
‘We’d better get on to Dura while we still have light enough to find out whether any Persians are waiting for us there,” Tiridates said. “There will be time enough later to analyze the campaign.”
Dura proved to be largely a mass of ruins, but a number of the houses possessed walls that provided shelter for the weary soldiers and there was an ample water supply for both men and horses from a spring and brook that emptied into the Euphrates. The men of Tiridates’ command were exhausted from their hazardous retreat and the strain of swimming the river, so Constantine ordered his own troops to undertake the chores of preparing camp and stationing pickets to warn of attack under the cover of darkness.
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