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Part 29: Slowdown
Meshan, December 2, 387
Though he had read the letter's contents several times, Kavad still couldn't believe the scale of the catastrophe that had taken place in the east: a force of eighty thousand men, led by the rightful Shah himself and some of the most experienced spahbeds, and including elite troops such as the cataphracts, composed of men who were some of the most esteemed members of the Iranian nobility, and the renowned Daylamite foot soldiers, had been completely annihilated only months after their initial, glorious victory at Ray. To make matters straight up insulting, the last survivors of this mighty army weren't slain in battle, but shamefully executed or sold into slavery. And Shapur was now probably rotting in Bukhara, if he was still alive that is.
The prince, now twenty-six years old, had served as governor of Meshan for two years now, was a profoundly different individual than he was before he was appointed to the office by the late Ardashir III. The once debauched, idle alcoholic had finally been given a healthy outlet for his seemingly limitless energy, and even though he wasn't particularly well educated (that was partly his own fault), he proved himself to be a fast learner and a clever, cunning individual who knew how to hide his true intelligence, a task made easier by his infamous reputation back at the capital, and allowed him to discover several spies who underestimated him.
Now he almost wished he hadn't changed.
Kavad would be lying to himself and his friebds if he denied that he wanted to take the throne, but he never thought such a thing was possible, and definitely not under such daunting circumstances. Two huge armies had been lost in the span of a year and now an ogre from the steppes was likely rampaging his way through the Plateau, and if the rumors of flaming rocks raining from the sky and huge pyramids made out of human heads were real, he seemed to be almost invincible. There were spies everywhere, even if Meshan was by now largely free from their presence, and there were strong suspicions that Farrukhan, a good friend he made during his more indolent days back at Ctesiphon (the more cynical side of him now believed that the noble was really after a puppet to control) was one of them.
Damn it, what was he supposed to do? Considering the amount of time that had passed between the events that ocurred and the when he received the precious message, there was a real possibility that Khushnavaz had already crossed the Zagros and reached Mesopotamia. Even if he hadn't, how was he supposed to fight him when he had almost no good soldiers left and a den of snakes that could easily stab him on the back?
"My Lord," Pabag, a scribe and one of the prince's closest confidants, entered the dimly lit room, which was full of disorganized documents everywhere, in a type of chaos that was oddly organized. "You have been awake without doing so much as taking a nap since long before sunrise, and it's well past nightfall now. And you didn't sleep well yesterday either..."
"Not yet." The tired prince replied, eyes still fixated on the letter, his mind clouded by the immense number of variables he was juggling with at the moment,
"If I may be so bold, sir, you will not make a sound decision without a few hours' bed rest first, along with a good meal and drink. Please."
Kavad sighed before getting up from his seat. "I know, I know..." The migraine plaguing his head at the moment wouldn't go away without some good wine, anyway.
He wondered what his mother, Shirin, would think of him after he returned to the capital. If he wasn't murdered before getting there, that is...
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Though the Sasanian position seemed to be on the brink of ruin, the Hephthalite one wasn't ideal, either. Despite delivering two devastating counterpunches and recovering the initiative on the military front, Khushnavaz soon realized that the treatment given to Shapur and his soldiers had been excessively cruel, for soon enough nobles who were once apathetic or receptive to his diplomatic advances now began to have reservations about whether or not he truly deserved their support, since many of the soldiers slain or taken captive came from their estates or were their colleagues in case of the cataphracts. Still, they were afraid of sharing the same gruesome fate, so there was no widespread resistance to his advance just yet.
Hoping to capitalize on his victories and aware that the Sasanians probably didn't have many soldiers left and were temporarily leaderless, Khushnavaz divided his army of 64.000 men into two forces of roughly equal size, so as to diminish the strain on their logistics and enable them to occupy as much land as possible. Both halves had the same destination in mind, the province of Adurbadagan, but they traveled on different paths, one of them (led by the king himself) marching through Mazandaran and Daylam, on the coast of the Caspain Sea, while the other marched further inland, through Ray. Once they combined themselves near Lake Urmia, the Hephthalites would then cross the Zagros and attack Mesopotamia before finally besieging Ctesiphon.
Though an extremely risky strategy, thanks to the possibility of being defeated in detail since both armies were separated from each other by the imposing Alborz mountains, it bore fruit since the advance of the two wings was, at first, practically unopposed, the southern one, led by a general named Khingila, took Qumis, Ray, Shahin (1) and eventually Ganzak, capital of Adurbadagan, with no resistance, sometime on October. Khushnavaz largely mirrored his southern subordinate's movements, but he suddenly faced an unexpected opponent right as he was about to meet up with him once more. That adversary was Urnayr, king of Albania.
A map of the Caucasus in the third century. Albania is in the northeast.
A vassal of the Sasanian monarchy, Urnayr saw a chance to secure his kingdom's independence and sent his army south to secure that chance, unexpectedly putting himself the middle of Khushnavaz's path. The two kings skirmished fruitlessly against one another near the town of Ardabil, and their armies, which were roughly equal in size, seemed to be on an inevitable collision course. However, the Hephthalite ruler opted to be diplomatic rather than fight, even though the scales were tipped heavily in his favor (his army was composed of hardened veterans, while the Albanian one was made out of peasant levies), and sent diplomats under a flag of truce. He couldn't affort to suffer any unnecessary casualties, and he desired to be seen as a reasonable ruler to his future Iranian subjects.
But Urnayr was skeptical of the invader's words. Shapur, who had surrendered his soldiers in the hope of sparing them from harm, suffered a horrible fate, one the Albanian was not willing to go through. He would much rather be killed in battle with his men rather than see them being decapitated en masse helplessly. Khushnavaz assured him that he would be merciful to those who didn't resist him (Shapur being the physical embodiment of such resistance), and that Albania's independence would be fully recognized, but negotiations still dragged on for weeks. It wasn't until Khingila, tired of waiting on the shores of Lake Urmia for his ruler to arrive, marched straight to Ardabil on his own, a decision that convinced Urnayr to surrender at last, in November.
By then, however, it was too late to cross the Zagros, for winter had set in and passing through those mountains was now suicide (2). Though infuriated at not being able to vanquish the Sasanians in one fell swoop, Khushnavaz could at least content himself with the fact that he had gone further into Iran than his father had ever been. Sadly, that was only the beginning of his troubles, for ruling an empire that stretched from Lake Urmia to the Hindu Kush and the Yumen Pass was not an easy task, and it showed: while he was in Tabriz, where he intended to stay until spring came along and allowed him to attack Mesopotamia, the Hephthalite king received word that a number of tribes were stirring up trouble back in Central Asia, and the local garrisons weren't strong enough to put them down.
He had no choice but to shelve his great ambition for the moment and make a long, time-consuming trip back to Transoxiana, detaching garrisons to defend strategic fortresses such as Tabriz, Ray and Gorgan in the meantime. By the time Khushnavaz entered Nishapur, sometime in March 388, the situation had escalated into an all out civil war, and the outskirts of Bukhara itself had been raided multiple times. The king saved the capital and defeated his adversaries in a series of battles, but then he realized that he had more enemies than he thought: a worrying number of nobles and traders were unhappy with the how long the war against Iran was becoming (since warfare disrupted the Silk Road), and a larger number still feared that they would lose their importance and status if Ctesiphon was taken, since the king would likely make said city his new capital.
Thus, Khushnavaz was forced to waste even more time than he anticipated, since his presence was critical in ensuring that order was maintained. He could not allow the empire that had been built by Mihirakula and expanded by him to fall apart due to some aristocratic conspiracy. In the following months, multiple prominent individuals suspected of being traitors were either imprisoned or executed. Feeling that his position was secured once more, the invader departed Bukhara in July, hoping to make it to the Zagros as soon as possible... before finding out that the Daylamites, who were always a fiercely autonomous people, decided that the Hephthalites had overstayed their welcome. Such a potential threat to his army's supply line could not be tolerated, and Khushnavaz embarked on another time-consuming campaign to bring them to heel.
The modern city of Ray, with the Alborz Mountains in the background. These mountains were the Daylamites' refuge from those they saw as foreign invaders.
After months of raids and counter raids that failed to subdue the Daylamites completely, but nevertheless diminished the threat they posed, the Hephthalites continued on their march west. By now realizing that he had likely lost a second opportunity to attack Mesopotamia, the Hephthalite king decided instead to expand and consolidate the area already occupied by his troops. Thus, he ordered them to take the imposing castle of Nahavand, which, if captured, would not only give him complete control over Media, but also open a new, shorter path to Ctesiphon, rather than the more northern passes, which led first to cities that could be potential obstacles, such as Arbela.
It was a much more difficult task than anticipated. The House of Karen, which controlled the fortress, was repulsed by Khushnavaz's treatment of the defeated Shapur II, and rejected all offers to surrender it peacefully, declaring that they would never bow to a foreign usurper. There was no alternative but to besiege Nahavand, starve its defenders and then take it by assault, a course of action that would take a long time to be completed and inevitably lead to multiple casualties that couldn't be replaced. The harsh, rugged terrain didn't help things either, and positioning the many formidable mangonels the invaders had would also be very hard to do.
Meanwhile, in Ctesiphon, Kavad was making the best of what time he had left before the war inevitably came to Mesopotamia. And although it had started two years ago, it clearly wasn't going to end any time soon.
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Timeline:
387 A.D.:
October: After a long march throughout northern Iran, Ganzak, capital of Adurbadagan, is captured by the Hephthalite general Khingila, who commanded half of the invading army. The other half, led by Khushnavaz, gets bogged down in Ardabil because of the interference of the king of Albania, Urnayr.
November: Urnayr agrees to return to his kingdom in exhange for a recognition of its independence, By then, it is too late to attack Mesopotamia.
December: Kavad I is acclaimed Shahanshah in Ctesiphon. Meanwhile, Khushnavaz is forced to march back to Central Asia in order to put down a revolt, leaving garrisons to prevent important strongholds from being retaken by the enemy.
388 A.D.:
March: The rebels, who at one point threatened Bukhara itself, are defeated in a series of battles. The king has to stay in the capital to prevent a similar uprising from happening.
July: Khushnavaz embarks on a new offensive against the Sasanians, but has instead to fight the Daylamites, who rose up against his authority. By the time a reasonable amount of order is restored, it is once again too late to cross the Zagros, or so he believes.
November: After a few months of resting, the Hephthalites begin their siege of Nahavand.
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Notes:
(1) Modern day Zanjan.
(2) To this day, many historians ITTL believe that Khushnavaz could've crossed the Zagros in the middle of winter. Hannibal crossed the Alps, after all, so why couldn't he do the same, considering how many years he spent fighting the Chinese? The answer is that he became more conservative and less reckless with age, perhaps too much so. Also, despite the huge empire under his control, the elite core of the army remained relatively small, and couldn't take severe casualties from either battle or worse, attrition.
