King of Kings

VIII

'Hercules' hairy arse… our heroic general, mooning over a letter like a lovesick girl… lost like a man in the Highlands with the fog coming down, oh shite, what chance have we got… doomed, we are all fucking doomed.' Then, at the same volume but in a somewhat different tone, Calgacus continued, 'Gaius Acilius Glabrio awaits your pleasure. He is outside in answer to your summons.'

The Caledonian's voice rang round the main room of the post-house of the cursus publicus in the town of Batnae, which had been taken over as Ballista's temporary headquarters at the end of the eleventh day's march out of Antioch.

'Well, are you going to fucking say something?'

Although taciturn to the point of monosyllabism when asked about his dominus in public, over the years Calgacus appeared to have developed the strange conceit that if, when in private with Ballista and the intimate members of his familia, he spoke in a self-reflective tone, as if just thinking aloud, his querulous mutterings would be perfectly inaudible. Volume did not come into it.

'Thank you very much. Once you have shown him in you can go back to bothering the baggage animals.'

Calgacus' thin, shrewish face gazed at Ballista for a few moments then turned away. 'Bother the baggage animals, and when would I find time to get my leg over anything, woman or beast, working my fingers to the bone night and day looking after you?' The tirade was cut off as Calgacus shut the door behind himself. Smiling, the object of his complaints slid the letter, seal untouched, under the daily log of Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi, one of the several that he had been working through. The further postponing of the reading of it merely served to heighten his anticipation.

'Gaius Acilius Glabrio, Dominus,' Calgacus announced. A chamberlain at the court of their sacred majesties could not have sounded more graceful. With a bow, the Caledonian backed out of the room. Ballista stood up and formally welcomed the young nobleman.

'Ave, Marcus Clodius Ballista, Dux Ripae.' The patrician officer replied with equal formality, and snapped a sharp salute.

Ballista returned it. 'Wine? Well, if you are quite sure?' Although he did not want it, he poured himself a drink rather than be left ineffectually holding the jug.

'The messenger said you wanted to see me, Dominus.'

'Yes,' said Ballista. He indicated a seat. Acilius Glabrio declined, saying he had to see to his men. This was not going to be easy. Ballista took his time. He sipped his drink and studied the young patrician. He was an elegant arrangement of scarlet and gold, muscled cuirass gleaming, his paludamentum, military cloak, draped just so over his shoulder. The posthouse only ran to clay and logs and no decoration. Acilius Glabrio was dressed as if he were made for an altogether grander stage.

'Before we left Antioch I gave instructions that no wheeled vehicles were to accompany the army.' Ballista paused, then continued with studied civility. 'I must have worded it badly. The order was intended to include everyone. We have only been marching for a few days, the easiest of stages, and already the wagons carrying your possessions have delayed things several times. Admittedly, the road has been surprisingly bad, part hill and part marsh, rocks thrown here and there in the marsh, no order at all, but it is unlikely to get much better.' Acilius Glabrio stood at attention, not responding in any way. Ballista smiled, but as he did so he knew that it would convey no warmth. 'I am sure that you would agree that those of us appointed to high command directly by the emperor must set an example.'

'When I can find suitable alternative means of transport I will send the wagons back.' Acilius Glabrio was tight-lipped. 'Now, if there is nothing else, I must see to the billets of my men.' Ballista nodded. Acilius Glabrio saluted and left.

Ballista watched the space where the young man had been. His elder brother, Marcus Acilius Glabrio, had been insufferable but he had proved himself a good officer and a brave man. So far, this stripling had shown evidence that he was like his sibling only in the first of those things. And who could be better described as 'a young eupatrid' than Gaius Acilius Glabrio, the end result of centuries of high birth?

To drive such thoughts out of his mind, Ballista poured himself another drink. He sat down and pulled out the letter. He looked for a time at the seal, the duplicate of his own, a cupid winding back the levers of his namesake, a torsion-powered piece of artillery, a ballista.

He opened the letter and scanned it once quickly, fighting down his anxieties, alert for bad news. He reached the end and, reassured, he settled to read it through slowly and thoroughly. Julia opened with the customary greetings, then she told the latest about the assassin with the scar on his hand. The one of the Epimeletai ton Phylon who had been on duty had shown some cunning. Rather than announce that the corpse of the would-be killer had been discovered murdered, he had given out that an unknown man had been found drowned in one of the storm drains. Sure enough, within two days, a distraught woman had come to view then claim the body. In this way, it became known that that the man had been one Antiochus, son of Alexander, a small-time criminal from the tanners' quarter. Despite rigorous questioning, it became apparent that the widow knew nothing of what she called her husband's trade. They were no nearer finding out who had hired the man. The man left three children, all girls.

The remainder of the letter set out clearly some domestic affairs, before closing with a simple sentence saying that she loved and missed him. It was partly her brisk underplaying of sentiment that had made Ballista fall in love with her. He smiled as he tried to imagine her writing flowery, feminine terms of endearment.

There was another sheet of paper in with the letter. Ballista picked it up. It was a drawing by Isangrim: two vertical lines; towards the top, two horizontal lines; and what looked like two wheels near the bottom — a ballista. In crude letters, it was signed. The big northerner put it to his lips and gently kissed it.

Carrying the picture and his drink, Ballista stepped outside. Bats hunted through the bare fruit trees in the middle of the small walled garden. Around the walls stood rows of cypresses. The evening breeze rustled through their leaves. It reminded him of the sacred grove of Daphne. His eyes became hot with unshed tears. They travelled for another eight days. From Batnae to Hierapolis, and from there to Caeciliana on the Euphrates, the road ran straight and true across the red-brown plain. Orchards and vineyards came down on either side. But it was winter. The leaves had long since fallen from the fruit trees, their trunks were black with rain, and the vines were thin and stark, savagely cut back.

There was mud, but nothing like before. On this stage of the journey, it barely splashed the knees of the infantry, seldom even touched the boots of the cavalry at all. The five carts of Acilius Glabrio's possessions became stuck fast only infrequently. Even someone as impractical and bookish as Demetrius could see that this was more down to the natural drainage of the high plain than the efforts of the road builders.

On the morning they reached Caeciliana, the weather lifted. They marched into the small town under a cloudless sky. Beyond the mud-brick walls, at the foot of the cliff ran the mighty Euphrates. Here it was divided into several channels, enclosing several greater and lesser islands. Under the cold winter sun, the river was an intense blue.

The small army made a reasonably brave show as it followed the white draco, the personal standard of Ballista, through the gates. A few handfuls of locals had turned out, and cheered with some enthusiasm. In accordance with orders issued long ago, a vexillatio of a thousand men of Legio IIII Scythica had marched downriver from their base at Zeugma and was drawn up, waiting, in the agora. Much more surprising was the identity of the centurion in command. At first, Demetrius did not recognize him under his helmet. The young Greek was surprised when Ballista threw himself off his horse and hugged the man. There was a dull metallic clash as their helmets met. Laughing, both men stepped back, took off their helmets and tried again.

'Castricius, you old bastard,' Ballista roared. 'I thought you were dead in Arete or a slave in Persia.'

The thin, lined face smiled wryly. 'It takes a lot to kill me.'

'I would bloody say.' Ballista tipped his head back, eyes almost disappearing in laughter. 'A bugger who can survive the imperial mines can survive anything.'

Demetrius winced. Tact was not always the strongest asset of his kyrios. It was far from sure that Centurion Castricius would want his legionaries or anyone else to know that, before he had joined the army, he had been found guilty of a crime serious enough to warrant being committed to the living hell of the mines. Demetrius himself had always had the greatest difficulty in reconciling himself to having been enslaved at all. It was somehow easier to pretend to have been born a slave. The young Greek knew he would not have wanted anyone to know if he had been in the mines. Not, of course, that the issue could ever have arisen. He would not have survived.

Castricius just laughed. 'As I tell this rabble, the good daemon that watches over me never sleeps — keeps them on their toes. Let me present the boys.'

'Yes, that would be good. And then, afterwards, you must tell me how you got out of Arete. You shall do so over a proper feast to celebrate. We will kill the fatted pig — or whatever it is the Christians say.'

'The Christians to the lion,' said Castricius as he turned to lead the way.

The inspection passed well. Silent, serried ranks of men. One thousand large, red, oval shields, on each the golden lion and eagle, the latter crowned by two winged personifications of victory. The symbols of Legio IIII Scythica were repeated on the scarlet vexillio on its crossbar above their heads. Hoplites, thought Demetrius, 'armoured men'. Possibly not quite the same styles of armour as one found on the pots and bas-reliefs of the ancients, but undoubtedly the spiritual descendants of the heroes of Marathon, Thermopylae and Plataea: the embodiment of western freedom once again called on to defy the countless barbarian hordes from the east.

The feast also started quite well. The official house of the cursus publicus was, if anything, more spartan at Caeciliana than it had been at Batnae. But at least the main room was warm; a fine fire burned at one end, and braziers placed here and there throughout kept the early evening chill away. The dining room was just big enough. The Dux Ripae had invited his three senior officers, the commanders of cavalry, infantry and the baggage train and the commanders of the individual units under them. There were thirteen dining. There should have been fourteen, but Gaius Acilius Glabrio had sent to announce that he was too busy to attend.

First, they stood, sipping a glykismos. The sweet aperitif did little to take a certain stiff formality out of the air. The non-appearance of Acilius Glabrio made the three cavalry commanders uncomfortable. It was not really the place for the prefects of the Armenians, Saracens, Itureans or Arab and Armenian slingers to hold forth, good Romans though they all considered themselves, irrespective of the ethnicity of their men.

Things did not improve immediately when they reclined at table. Hard-boiled eggs with salted catfish and spicy black pudding appeared. Then a light, very easy-to-drink white wine from Ascalon went round, Castricius got into his stride with the story of his escape from the fall of Arete, and things began to flow more easily.

By the time the few remnants of the first course had been removed, all had had the chance to exclaim at the Odysseus-like cunning and fortitude of Castricius' escape: the arrows whistling out of the dark, the screams of horses and men, the fall — so he thought — of Ballista, the surge of Sassanid warriors, the flight through the chaos to the tunnels which brought water up from the river, Castricius' employment of the knowledge gained when he had surveyed those self-same tunnels to hide in a dead end in one of the furthest recesses — three, maybe four, days in the dark, licking moisture from the rock walls, at last hunger driving him above ground, into an empty world which smelled of wood smoke and something revoltingly like burnt pork: the moonlit shell of a sacked city.

The main course was served. In accordance with prevailing medical opinion, as it was winter there were few vegetables, just a couple of cabbages — it was important to prevent the inner man from becoming damp and cold. There was a Homeric quantity of meat: beef, pork, mutton, and one of a pair of ostriches that the officers of Legio IIII Scythica had caught on the march down. There was a great deal of a strong red wine from Sidon — most doctors held that wine warmed the blood. Momentarily, the conversation became general, if not inspired: the ostrich was tough, the wings a bit better, the only good way to eat it was air-dried.

Then, as is the way, the hubbub died down to a respectful silence as the commanding officer began to talk. Ballista told the tale of the fall of Arete. He told it well, turning to Turpio and Castricius to confirm points of detail; it seemed to be relived before their eyes. The numbers of the Sassanids; the dust darkening the sky. The skill of their siege works; the towers, the great ram, the ramp and mines. The horrible ingenuity of the tortures inflicted on prisoners, the blinding and impaling. The fanaticism of their assaults; the thousands who died before they were thrown back. The god-given zealotry of Shapur, the King of Kings; his mission to conquer the world, to make all peoples worship the Bahram fires, the sacred fires of his god Mazda. Finally, when the dangers seemed overcome, the shattering betrayal by Theodotus the Christian.

It was a subject that Demetrius preferred not to think about. As a slave standing at the foot of the couch of his kyrios, naturally he was not brought into the conversation. He envied the others their easy familiarity with Ballista. It was not just that they were free and he was a slave. There was a sense of a hard to define but evident relaxed comradeship between them. Possibly, he thought, it came from the largely unreflective nature of military life, and possibly it came from a sense of dangers shared.

As Demetrius poured more drinks, his thoughts wandered to Hierapolis, the holy city through which they had passed a few days earlier. For once, there, the military itinerary had given him two days of rest. Pleasant images drifted into his mind: the beautiful Ionic temple with its golden doors, the exquisite, lingering aroma of incense inside, the eyes of the cult statue of the goddess following him around the sanctuary, the fire jewel on her brow lighting the gloom; sitting by the sacred lake with its bejewelled fish, which came when called, meeting the stranger Callistratus, walking back through the gardens to his house, the long afternoon behind the shuttered windows.

'Demetrius, you are dreaming, boy.' The voice of his kyrios cut not unkindly into his consciousness. 'We all need more to drink.' The others cheered.

'Absolutely arseholed, every one of them,' Calgacus whispered in his ear. 'Our revered leader the worst of the lot.'

More drink in their hands, more drink inside them, half a dozen conversations flourished. Sandario was telling a long story about a young noble Tribune who found a camel on parade when he arrived at a lonely desert outpost. Again Demetrius' thoughts wandered back to Hierapolis, this time less pleasantly, to the hordes of Galli, the eunuch devotees that thronged the precincts. He was glad his visit had not coincided with the hideous ceremony when worshippers maddened by the goddess Atargatis seized their own manhood and, the obsidian knives glittering in the pitiless sun, publicly castrated themselves. Self-mutilated and shameless, they would run through the streets of the town until they chose into which house they would hurl their bloody, severed genitals. It was unspeakably barbaric. Demetrius wondered if these eastern provincials had less in common with Hellenes and Romans than with the Sassanid Persian enemy. In a war, how loyal would they prove to the imperium?

'No, my dear Tribune, the men use the camel to ride to the nearest brothel.' Sandario's joke was hardly novel but, helped by the wine, it won a hearty burst of laughter. The officers were still grinning, the Tribune of the Saracens shaping to tell the story of the ass and the murderess, when Calgacus ushered one of the Equites Singulares into the room. The cavalryman spoke quietly to his unit commander. It seemed it took a moment or two for the message to get through, but when it did Mucapor's bovine face darkened with anger.

'How bloody dare he… outrageous… teeth before tail, every fucking time.' Mucapor slammed his cup down and rose, none too steadily, to his feet. He addressed Ballista. 'A bloody outrage… my men are cavalry, fuck all use if their horses are fucked.'

'Whoa, whoa.' Ballista made soothing noises, exactly as he would to a horse. He smiled. 'Back up and try the fence again — I have no idea what you are talking about.'

'Gaius Acilius Glabrio has just ordered some of my men's mounts turned out of the barn I have stabled them in so that those fucking carts which carry his possessions can be sheltered.'

Ballista's smile was frozen for a moment. Then his face changed. 'Has he indeed.' The big northerner took a drink. The others were silent. There was expectation as well as alcohol in the intensity of their gaze. 'Calgacus, Demetrius, fetch torches.' Ballista smiled in the direction of Demetrius, although largely unseeing, his eyes glassy. 'We are going to form a comus.'

With a sinking heart, Demetrius went to do as he was told. It was seldom that anything good came of the Greek tradition that, at the end of a party, drunken revellers formed a torch-lit procession through the streets. The comus was nothing but trouble.

Ballista led them through the dark streets. Their progress was slow and noisy. One or two missed their step, even staggered a bit. Demetrius thought that they would be fortunate not to injure each other with the burning torches. In a strange mixing of cultures, they began to sing a marching song from the legions of Rome, one as old as Julius Caesar: Home we bring our bald whoremonger Romans, lock your wives away. All the bags of gold you sent him Went his Gallic whores to pay. By the time they reached the barn they were being trailed by a crowd of the curious, civilians and soldiers alike. Ballista roared at a small group of soldiers to open the gates. They stopped staring incredulously and obeyed. The gates swung back, and there, polished wood softly gleaming, were Acilius Glabrio's wagons. Ballista asked one of the soldiers if they were unloaded. The man stammered that he thought so.

'Haul them out, boys.' Ballista's voice carried well. 'Haul them out and push them together in the middle of the agora.'

Demetrius could feel the way that this was going. It was not well. The wagons, their shafts up in the air, were crammed up tight together in the centre of the open space. Ballista stepped forward from the gaggle of the comus. He called for oil. While he waited, he swung his burning torch through the air. The oil arrived. Ballista tossed his torch to Maximus, who had appeared from nowhere. Ballista sloshed the oil over the nearest wagon and threw the empty amphora into another, where it shattered into a hundred shards. He gestured to Maximus, who handed him back the torch.

'No one in this army disobeys orders.' Ballista swung back the torch and threw it overarm. It whooshed through the air towards the oil-soaked wagon. It landed, and instantly, with a crump, fire broke out. A cheer went up and the torches of the others were arcing through the air. The first thick, black coils of smoke went up into the clear night sky.

Demetrius sensed a movement in the crowd at the edge of the agora. Ballista and the officers around him were oblivious to it, passing a wineskin from hand to hand. Demetrius saw Gaius Acilius Glabrio, his face immobile, like that on a portrait bust in the atrium of a great house, watch his wagons catch and begin to burn.

Demetrius turned back to the crowd around Ballista. They had not noticed Acilius Glabrio. Ballista was laughing at something Aurelian was saying. There was much about his kyrios that reminded Demetrius of his boyhood hero Alexander the Great. There was the courage, the openness, the impulsive generosity, but there was also the darker side, the dangerous, often drink-fuelled, violence, seldom far from the surface. Today Ballista was not the good Alexander who had put the first torch into his own wagons to lighten the baggage train in distant Bactria. Instead he was the drunken Alexander torching the palace of the Persian kings at Persepolis at the suggestion of a whore.

Demetrius looked back at Gaius Acilius Glabrio. The young patrician was staring at Ballista with open loathing. Whether or not he was the young eupatrid who had set assassins on Ballista, there could be no doubt that Acilius Glabrio hated the big northerner. After a time, without a word, the nobleman turned and left.

Nothing good could come of this, thought Demetrius, nothing good at all.