False God of Rome

CHAPTER III

‘Siwa, Siwa!’ Ziri shouted, sending his arms and legs flying out at all angles in a wild, capering, silhouetted dance on top of a sand dune.

Vespasian looked up at him wearily through eyes squinting against the sun’s midday ferocity; his lips were cracked and his head throbbed from the heat beating down directly onto it in the absence of his hat.

It was the second day after the sandstorm and they were all in a weakened state having only had three cups each of their precious water on the previous day and one cup each at midmorning today. Only Ziri seemed to be unaffected by the conditions and he carried on his exuberant jig as his companions struggled up the dune.

‘Not a moment too soon,’ Magnus croaked, working his feet hard to get purchase in the soft sand. ‘I’ve been dreaming all morning about drinking my piss.’

‘That’s a coincidence,’ Vespasian replied with as much of a grin as his parched lips would allow him, ‘I’ve been dreaming all morning about drinking your piss too.’

‘You’d have had to fight me for it.’

Vespasian’s reply stuck in his dry throat as he crested the dune. Two miles in front of him, stretching away beyond the horizon, was nothing but green; an oasis of life in an otherwise barren and hostile terrain. Fifty miles long and over ten wide it covered the desert floor like a lush, verdant carpet.

Corvinus stopped next to Vespasian. ‘Thank the gods, we’ve made it.’

‘Yes, but how do we get back?’ Magnus muttered.

As they stood marvelling at such an expanse of fertility after days of nothing but brown, wasted land and intense blue sky, the distant sound of rhythmic drums, sonorous horns and clashing cymbals drifted up through the air.

‘What’s that?’ Vespasian asked.

‘Dunno,’ Magnus replied, ‘but it sounds as if someone’s having a party.’

Having drunk the last of their water, the final couple of miles felt easier and within an hour they passed under the first date palms. The sound of the music grew steadily but there were no other signs of human habitation. The temperature started to drop considerably until it felt like no more than a scalding hot summer’s day in Rome.

Working their way forward for another mile through the gradually thickening trees, enjoying the ever growing shade, they came suddenly, and unbelievably, to a lake. Without hesitation all of them rushed forward and plunged into the cool, life-giving water and drank their fill while submerging their overheating bodies in its fresh depths, diffusing, at last, the sun’s relentless intensity.

Refreshed, they made their way deeper into the oasis in the direction of the music. Coming upon a well-used track they followed it; the sound of chanting could now be heard under the drums, horns and cymbals. After a few hundred paces they passed a couple of low, flat-roofed, mud-brick houses. Vespasian and Magnus looked through the open windows; they were deserted.

‘I suppose everybody’s at the party,’ Vespasian observed as they carried on towards another larger collection of similar dwellings.

The music was now very close. The road turned sharply to the right and passed between two more houses, then opened up into a huge, crowded, square agora surrounded by mud houses seemingly piled one upon the other. The music and the chanting came to a crashing crescendo; everyone in the agora jumped into the air raising their arms above their heads.

‘Amun! Amun! Amun!’ they shouted to the crash of cymbals and the beating of drums.

Then silence.

At the far end of the agora a priestly-looking man, dressed in a leather kilt with a broad, golden belt, stood on the steps of a small temple; on his head he wore a tall, brimless, black leather hat with golden images of the sun fastened to it. He lifted a crook into the air; his congregation prostrated themselves.

He began to incant a prayer and then stopped abruptly as he noticed Vespasian and his comrades still standing. Pointing his crook at them with a shout he indicated that they too should get down onto their bellies. Over a thousand heads turned to stare at them.

‘However bad this will feel I think we’d better do as he says,’ Vespasian said, getting down onto the ground. Magnus, Corvinus and the troopers followed his lead.

Grovelling in the dust was not a natural thing for a Roman to do: more used to mastering others, they were accustomed to looking down rather than up, and Vespasian, Magnus and Corvinus prostrated themselves reluctantly. Ziri and the Libu troopers followed their lead without humiliation.

Once satisfied that the whole congregation was showing due deference the priest carried on his incantation for what seemed like an age.

‘Amun!’ he called to the sky finally.

‘Amun!’ the crowd repeated.

With the prayer session evidently at an end the people got back onto their feet.

Vespasian rose and tried to wipe the dirt off his wet tunic with little success.

The priest strolled through the crowd towards them and stopped in front of Vespasian.

‘What are you doing here, stranger?’ he asked in Greek.

‘I’m no stranger,’ Vespasian replied with as much dignity as was possible covered in wet dirt, ‘I am Titus Flavius Vespasianus, quaestor of the province of Creta and Cyrenaica of which this is a part.’

The priest bowed. ‘Quaestor, you and your men are welcome.’

Vespasian could feel the release of tension among the troopers behind him.

‘My name is Ahmose,’ the priest continued, ‘priest of Amun, He who is hidden, He who came first. You will find us loyal subjects to Rome here and I will assist you in any way I can. I think that first you need to eat and then you can tell me how you managed to appear out of the western desert on foot.’

Sitting rather uncomfortably on the carpeted floor, Vespasian, Magnus and Corvinus joined Ahmose in his surprisingly richly decorated house for a meal of bread, olives, dates and a roasted meat that none of them had tasted before; although slightly tough they were all hungry enough to eat it without worrying too much about its provenance.

‘So you’re looking for the Marmaridae’s slave caravan,’ Ahmose said, having listened to the tale of their journey. ‘They will still be here; a party of them arrived only four days ago, that’s why the camel tastes so fresh.’

‘This is camel?’ Magnus exclaimed, looking at the cut of meat in his hand.

‘Most certainly. The Marmaridae always pay for the right to use our water with camels each time they pass through; we also give them bread, dates and olives as part of the exchange.’

‘Well, they don’t taste as bad as they smell,’ Magnus commented before taking another bite.

‘Yes, it’s quite flavoursome; their milk is good to drink too.’

Magnus screwed up his nose. ‘Now that is disgusting.’

‘Don’t you have trouble with the Marmaridae taking your people as slaves?’ Vespasian asked, trying to get the image of drinking camel’s milk out of his mind.

‘No, they need us for water and supplies before they set off to Garama; if we denied them that then the journey would be even more hazardous than it already is.’

‘They could just take it,’ Corvinus pointed out, taking a bite of a large green olive.

‘There are over ten thousand people living in the oasis, we could fight them off; and if we were having trouble we could appeal to Caesar as we used to appeal to the Pharaohs when we were a part of the Kingdom of Egypt.’

Vespasian doubted very much that any sort of an army would be sent to defend this outpost of the Empire, but he kept his thoughts to himself. ‘How do we find the Marmaridae’s caravan?’

‘They’ll be at the last lake in the southwestern corner of the oasis, about six miles from here.’

‘We’ll need horses.’

‘I’m sure you would requisition them if we didn’t give them freely.’

‘I’m afraid we would; as the quaestor I have that power.’

‘As the quaestor you also have the power to make those horses part of the tax that we pay each year.’

Vespasian smiled at the old priest. ‘If you include javelins and enough supplies to take us back to Cyrene, then I’m sure that that could be arranged.’

‘Done, quaestor.’ Ahmose spat into his hand and proffered it; Vespasian took it rather gingerly. ‘But that is all the help that I can give you; if I give you men it might upset the delicate balance that we have with the Marmaridae.’

‘I could requisition them as well.’

‘You could but I think you would have a problem: we are celebrating a festival of Amun at the moment, it runs from today for three days, in memory of Alexander coming here three hundred and sixty-seven years ago to receive the wisdom of Amun. There will be a feast tonight in honour of him; you are welcome to join us. I will have the horses and weapons ready by dawn; you can leave then.’

Vespasian opened his eyes; it was thick night. His head spun slightly from the effects of the date wine that had been served in copious quantities during the feast. Magnus had been able to consume cup after cup without too many ill-effects but Corvinus and all of the troopers had drunk themselves, very quickly, unconscious. Vespasian had not been surprised, it was heady stuff and he had limited himself, very early, to just a cup every so often; even so he was still less than sober. Ziri had not touched a drop all evening as he waited upon Magnus’ every need; he now lay curled up, sleeping at his master’s feet.

A metallic clink from outside the window caught Vespasian’s attention; he was sure that it was the same noise that had just woken him. He listened intently trying to filter out Corvinus’ snores and Magnus’ heavy breathing. There it was again; there was someone or some people just outside the window, he was sure of it.

He reached with his left hand for his spatha on the floor next to his mattress and eased it onto his chest; his right hand gripped the hilt as he listened again.

Nothing; he started to relax.

A distant, sudden crack of wood breaking followed by shouts jerked him upright; he unsheathed his spatha.

‘Magnus!’ he shouted but got no further.

The door crashed to the floor; moonlight and dark figures spilled in.

With a roar he leapt to his feet and hurled himself at them, spatha in the air. Briefly aware of Magnus drawing his sword and Ziri jumping up, he slashed wildly in the dark, felt his blade make contact and was rewarded with a shrill scream and a jet of blood in his face. He kept his forward momentum going and with a backhand cut felled another of his shadowy assailants; Magnus hurtled into the man next to him, flooring him with a body-check and a jab to the belly. Ziri threw himself at another of them, crunching his forehead into the man’s nose, taking him down. Driving his left foot forwards, Vespasian brought his right knee up, squelching into the groin of the next figure who dropped like a dead man to the ground with a guttural roar that was stifled as he started to hyperventilate with pain. Strangulated gurgles came from the floor as Ziri despatched his opponent with his bare hands. Magnus’ straight thrust into the right eye of his next opponent was enough to convince their attackers to withdraw at speed.

‘What the fuck was that all about?’ Magnus asked, breathing heavily.

‘Don’t know, but we certainly should get out of here; help me with Corvinus,’ Vespasian replied, thrusting the tip of his spatha into the throat of the man clutching his crushed testicles.

Finding Corvinus in the dark from the direction of his snoring proved easy enough; what was not easy was waking him.

‘Shit, we’ll have to carry the bugger; Ziri, here,’ Magnus said after a third sharp slap had proven fruitless.

Magnus and Ziri quickly slung an arm over each shoulder and dragged Corvinus to the open door.

Peering outside into the moonlit agora, Vespasian could see no one close by, but their attackers were running over to the other side of the square where a group of figures surrounded the storeroom to which the comatose troopers had earlier been dragged to sleep off the date wine.

‘There’s nothing that we can do about them,’ Vespasian hissed, turning away and grabbing Corvinus’ ankles, ‘they’ll have butchered them by now. Let’s get out before those bastards get their reinforcements.’

Running as fast as possible with the dead weight of Corvinus between them, they skirted around the edge of the agora; coming to an alley leading away, they turned up it as an almighty shout came from over by the storeroom.

‘Shit! That’s them after us,’ Magnus said as they raced up the dark alley. Corvinus started to moan; his head lolled from side to side. ‘I fucking wish old matey-boy here could hold his drink.’

Suddenly the alley opened onto a main street; they paused and looked each way, it was deserted. Darting across the road they found another alley and sprinted up it. Behind them they could hear the shouts of their pursuers growing closer.

Almost a hundred pounding heartbeats later the mean houses on either side of the alley abruptly ended and they came out into a date palm forest.

‘Straight ahead!’ Vespasian puffed. ‘And keep an eye out for somewhere to hide; we’ll never outrun them with him dragging us down. Let’s pray that they didn’t see which alley we went up.’

‘Why don’t we just leave him?’

‘If it comes to a choice between all four of us getting killed or just him, we will.’

‘I think we’ve just reached that point, sir,’ Magnus observed as a horde of silhouetted figures flooded out of the alley, just over a hundred paces behind them.

With a quick glance between them they dropped Corvinus and sprinted away.

Weaving through the moonlit palms they managed to put on a good turn of speed but their pursuers, more used to the terrain, were gaining on them.

‘Split up,’ Vespasian shouted, veering left, ‘we’ll meet up back at that lake soon after dawn.’

With a grunt of acknowledgement Magnus ran off to the right, taking Ziri with him, leaving Vespasian pelting through the night on his own; his legs were beginning to ache with the exertion. His chest started to tighten and his heartbeat thumped in his inner ears. The shouts of the pursuers told him that they were following him and catching up.

He burst out into a clearing, cursed himself for breaking cover and sprinted towards the far side.

Ten paces before gaining the comparative safety of the palms an ear-splitting cry stopped him in his tracks; he fell to the ground, hands over his ears. The cry then turned into a wailing note, mid-range and wavering at first, like a beautiful, mourning hymn of the gods; it worked its way ever higher until it reached peaks of such a piercing intensity and clarity that all other senses retreated as Vespasian listened to the sublime sound. Gradually it started to slow and ease down in pitch, as if the singer, tired by the emotion of the song, had decided to bring the piece to a close with a series of exquisite notes, ever lowering, ever softening, until, after one final gentle breath, there was silence.

Vespasian got to his knees, stunned by the aural experience that he had just been subjected to. He looked back; his pursuers were all grovelling on the ground on the far side of the clearing.

A sudden, golden flash caused him to shut his eyes tight and lower his head; he felt a warmth on his skin that began to grow gradually. He opened his eyes; the clearing was awash with light, gaining in intensity as if it were imitating visually the song just sung.

‘Bennu! Bennu!’ the grovelling men cried.

Vespasian looked up and, shielding his eyes, saw that the source of the light was a beacon perched implausibly on top of a tall date palm close to him on the edge of the clearing. Golden sparks fell from it, turning orange and then red as they floated to the ground to collect in an ever growing pile of glowing embers at the base of the tree.

Burning with increasing ferocity the flame became pure white at its peak; heat from it scorched Vespasian’s face and hands as it bathed him, kneeling on the ground, in a pool of light.

Cries of ‘Bennu! Bennu!’ filled the air.

With a sharp crack, like a Titan crashing two boulders together, the fire was suddenly extinguished as if it had unexpectedly consumed all its fuel, leaving no morsels with which it could die down gradually.

The last of the sparks fell to the ground and the light died.

In the dark the mound of embers glowed softly, like an untended campfire in the cold hours before dawn.

Vespasian turned to see his pursuers on their feet, still chanting ‘Bennu’, halfway across the clearing, walking towards him.

As he turned to run a cloud of hot ashes exploded over him from behind; a cry rose to the sky. He swivelled to see the mound of embers gone and replaced by a mist of glimmering red dust.

The cry ceased and the red mist started to swirl as if it were being wafted from above by a giant fan. Vespasian felt a wind beating towards him; it grew stronger with every pulse as if a great bird were swooping down on him from the dark. He ducked away from the unseen threat as a colossal gust caught him off-balance and threw him to the ground.

The air went still.

After a few moments Vespasian opened his eyes to see a pair of feet in front of him; he looked up.

‘You will not be harmed,’ Ahmose said, holding out his hand to help Vespasian up. His men surrounded him, looking at Vespasian with a mixture of fear and wonder. Ahmose’s eyes, wide with religious fervour, sparkled down at him in the moonlight. ‘You are blessed of Amun; you are safe.’

‘What about my comrades?’ Vespasian asked, getting to his feet.

‘They are still alive; we will sell them as slaves to the Marmaridae.’

‘Fuck your blessings,’ Vespasian spat, jabbing the priest with his right fist in the solar plexus. ‘We had a deal, you little shit.’

Ahmose doubled over as a half a dozen restraining hands grabbed hold of Vespasian.

After struggling a few moments for breath Ahmose looked up at him. ‘Do you really think that we could stop the Marmaridae picking off our people and sending them as slaves to Garama? We’re not warlike as they are, we are farmers; we have to sell them some slaves every year to keep them happy. Your friends will do nicely, but you won’t go; as a priest of Amun, it’s my duty to take you to His Oracle in the heart of Siwa where, if you are truly blessed by Him, you will, like Alexander himself and a few other chosen ones through the ages, hear His wisdom.’

Vespasian looked at the treacherous old priest with loathing. ‘Why is it your duty?’

‘You have been touched by the Wind of the Bennu and have bathed in the light of its fire. Amun knows that I have witnessed it.’

‘What is the Bennu?’

‘The sacred bird of Egypt whose death and rebirth marks the end of one age and the start of a new. A man who has bathed in its light and has felt the wind of its beating wings as it flies to the holy city of Heliopolis to lay its nest on the altar of Ra is destined to play a part in the new age. You know this bird in your language as the Phoenix.’

Vespasian was led east for the remainder of the night and all of the following morning. His sword had been taken from him but his hands were not bound; however, he made no attempt to escape, surrounded as he was by a dozen armed men. Even had he just been accompanied by the double-crossing Ahmose he would have followed willingly, saving his vengeance for another time, curious to hear what the Oracle of Amun would tell him; curious whether it would throw light upon the prophecy of the Oracle of Amphiaraos.

As they travelled deeper into the oasis they passed more bodies of water, much larger than the lake that he had bathed in only the day before. Irrigation channels had been dug to siphon the precious liquid to the smallholdings cultivating olive groves, chickpeas and vegetable gardens that clustered near them; sheep and goats grazed on rough pasture around the shores. People grew more numerous. Men in headdresses worked in the fields, tilling, picking fruit or loading their produce onto carts; women washed clothes and children at the lakes’ shores, fetched water in earthenware pots that they carried on their heads, or cooked over open fires outside their mud huts. It looked far more prosperous to Vespasian than the tax receipts from Siwa had led him to believe; evidently a quaestor had never visited to make a proper tax assessment. Making a mental note to review the demand on his return to Cyrene as part of his revenge on the people for so barbarously abusing the laws of hospitality, he calculated that the wealth of the oasis would go far to improving the province’s struggling finances.

Shortly before midday they came to a mud-brick wall and passed through a wide gate into a town brimming with life. His escort was forced to push its way through the crowded streets lined with farmers selling their produce on blankets or palm-frond mats laid out on the ground. The smell of exotic spices and human sweat filled the air.

On a hill at the town’s centre stood a temple, built of sandstone, with a tapered tower protruding from its northern end. As they approached it Vespasian could see that rows and rows of tiny figures were carved into the stone walls.

‘What are they?’ Vespasian asked Ahmose, his curiosity outweighing his antipathy.

‘They are hymns to Amun, lists of priests and records of kings who have visited since the temple was built over seven hundred years ago.’

‘That’s writing?’ Vespasian was amazed that these strange depictions of animals and curious signs could be strung together to form coherent sentences.

Ahmose nodded as they mounted the steps leading to the temple’s door together, leaving their escort at the bottom.

The temperature drop was considerable as they entered the building. Symmetrical rows of columns, three paces apart, supported the lofty ceiling, giving the impression of an ordered stone forest. From a few windows, cut high in the south wall, shafts of light, with motes of dust playing within them, sliced down at a sharp angle through the gloom of this interior, petrified grove. The musky residue of incense and the cloying smell of ancient, dry stone replaced the fresh scents of woodland in bloom. The clatter of Vespasian’s hobnailed sandals resounded off the flagstone floor.

A raised, disembodied voice in a language that Vespasian did not understand stopped them by the first row of columns.

‘Ahmose, your fellow priest of Amun,’ Ahmose replied in Greek so that Vespasian could understand.

‘And who accompanies you?’ the voice continued, switching to the same language.

‘The Bennu flew last night.’

‘We do not understand the reason for its coming here. We heard it pass over the temple and have checked the records; it is exactly five hundred years to the day since it was last seen in Egypt but it is five times that number since it was seen so far in the west here in Siwa.’

‘This man felt the heat of its fire and the downdraught of its wings.’

There was silence.

Vespasian looked around; there was no sign of the source of the voice.

Presently he heard the soft patter of unshod feet on smooth stone and two priests appeared in different directions from the depths of the forest of columns. Both were dressed similarly to Ahmose except that they each had two long feathers stuck into the tops of their tall hats.

Walking side by side down a straight, columned path they stopped in front of Vespasian and examined him closely with wide-eyed wonder. He felt very uneasy under the close scrutiny of the priests, one of whom was, now that he could make out their features in the gloom, very old indeed; yet he had the bearing of a young and healthy man. The second priest was in his twenties.

The old priest who had spoken spread his hands, palms up and called to the air. ‘Thou wilt find him who transgresses against Thee. Woe to him that assails Thee. Thy city endures, but he who assails Thee falls. Amun.’

‘Amun,’ intoned the second priest and Ahmose.

‘The hall of him who assails Thee is in darkness, but the whole world is in light. Whosoever puts Thee in his heart, lo, his sun dawns. Amun.’

‘Amun.’

‘If this man did not indeed feel the Wind of the Bennu and bathe in the light of its fire, Amun, the inapparent and apparent, the omniform, will not speak to him and he will be banished from His sun and see no more the dawn. And you, Ahmose, will share his fate.’

‘I saw it with these eyes, may they be taken from me if what I say is not true. He knelt in the light of the Bennu’s fire and then was blown by a wind so strong as the Bennu passed over him that he was cast down into the sand. Amun, whose name is not known, will speak to him.’

‘Very well,’ the second priest said, ‘we will prepare for the Oracle.’