Thunder of the Gods

10

Dawn found the Night Witch far down the river from Nisibis, the ship’s speed the result of both the strong southward current and continuous rowing in which Martos and Lugos took their turn while the crewmen took food and water, and relieved themselves over the boat’s side.

‘It is fifty miles from the city to the Khabur river as the birds fly, but the Mygdonius takes many turns on the way, and so it is in truth double that distance. We have covered perhaps one half …’

Marcus looked down at the mast, still lying flat across the rowing benches.

‘Why do you not use the sail?’

The master shrugged, putting the rudder over to guide his vessel around yet another bend.

‘This river meanders like the path of a snake in the desert, Tribune. If I were to order the mast raised then much work would be required to continually trim and re-trim the sail. Rowing is easier. And besides, see how flat the land is to either side of the river as far as the eye can see? The sail will be visible for miles, and might betray our position to a horse patrol – and we have far to go before we can forget the danger of the Parthian cavalry. Although that worries me more …’

He pointed back to the north, and Marcus saw a distant mass of dark cloud on the horizon directly above the river’s course, a bruise in the sky’s otherwise clear blue vault.

‘If that storm’s coming south we could be in trouble. The Mygdonius floods quickly, when the water from the mountains is swollen by rain on the plain, and it could run so fast as to be impossible to navigate. We should all pray to our gods to send it away to rain on someone else and not us.’

Scaurus and Petronius struggled onto the windswept parapet at first light, both men huddled into hooded woollen infantry cloaks thick with the natural oils that made them the best protection against the rain that was lashing down on Nisibis. Down below, the river was already significantly higher than had been the case the previous evening, swollen by run-off from the mountains to the north. Petronius pointed at the closest of the city’s roofs, water cascading from a drainpipe unable to cope with the flow of rainwater.

‘Things are going to get interesting for the crew of the Night Witch, I’d imagine.’

After another hour or so of steady progress, one of the vessel’s sharper-eyed crewmen called out, pointing to the northern horizon. Marcus saw what it was that had caught his attention, an almost invisible cloud of ochre dust, barely visible against the oncoming storm’s dark grey wall as it swept down from the north in pursuit of the fleeing vessel.

‘Riders. Only a few, but even one is sufficient to bring more of them.’

They watched grim-faced as the thin plume thrown up by their pursuers’ horses grew steadily thicker, deviating to neither left nor right, and Thracius shook his head in disgust.

‘As if that bloody storm wasn’t enough. They’re riding down the line of the river.’

He paused for a moment, rubbing his chin and staring back at the oncoming riders.

‘Perhaps they’ve worked out that last night’s attack was a deliberate distraction. Or perhaps it’s just a patrol.’

‘But if they see us?’

The master stared at the horsemen’s dust for a moment before answering, and Marcus guessed that he was working out distances and travel speed.

‘We’re still hours from the joining of the two rivers, Tribune, and even then the Khabur winds just as bad as this. We need to buy ourselves more time, or they’ll catch us before we make the turn. You, Tribune, will have to make sure the king’s man doesn’t try to escape, or to draw attention to us.’

While he issued a string of orders to the crew, then steered the boat into the shelter of the right bank where the river swung to the west, Marcus went forward to join the king, Lugos looming behind him.

‘My apologies, Your Majesty, but I must restrain you both.’

Osroes nodded wearily, his eyes still dull and the set of his body listless.

‘I was wondering why your captain has pulled into the bank. You have seen some sign of my people?’

‘A patrol. Lugos?’

The big Briton stepped forward, Martos close by with a hand on the hilt of his sword, much to the amusement of Gurgen who held his hands out to be bound at the wrists.

‘Whatever it is that makes you think I might resist this monster without so much as a toothpick, Prince Martos, you are much deluded.’

Martos waited for Marcus’s translation, his face unchanging as he listened to the words.

‘I sense danger in you, Parthian, and the last time I ignored that sense it cost me my wife and children.’

The noble shrugged, settling into the boat’s curved side and closing his eyes.

‘Wake me when you’re ready to release me.’

Several of the crew had busied themselves anchoring the vessel to the bank’s grass-covered earth, while others had brought forth several bows from a wooden box in the vessel’s stern, each with a thick sheaf of arrows attached to the curved wooden staves, their strings kept safe from moisture in sealed waxed leather pouches. Stringing the bows and taking cover at the top of the bank, they peered over its lip across the flat ground beyond, and the plume of dust that was now close enough for the riders to be clearly visible.

‘Four men.’

Thracius nodded at Marcus’s count, waving his men down below the bank’s lip and speaking loudly enough to be heard by everyone, his voice hard with command.

‘They must all die here. If any of them escape to raise an alarm, then their mates will catch up with us within hours, most likely before we reach the Khabur. We’ll only have one chance to finish them all without leaving any survivors, and that means waiting until they are close enough that we can’t miss.’

Listening intently as the distant patter of hoofs on the hard baked earth gradually hardened to a drumbeat, the riders drawing steadily closer to their hiding place, the sailors waited with arrows nocked to their bowstrings, each of them looking to their leader for the command to attack. What it was that betrayed their presence was never clear to Marcus, perhaps a swift impatient glance over the bank’s lip at the wrong time born of fear, or nerves, or perhaps one of the riders sighted the boat’s black outline peeking from the bank’s cover, but whatever it was that alerted the Parthian scouts, their reaction was instant. Shouting a warning that had his comrades reaching reflexively for arrows, their bows already strung and out of their bow cases, the closest of them hurled his spear at whatever it was that he had seen, the long iron blade catching one of the crewmen squarely in the throat as he rose to shoot an arrow at the scouts, sending him toppling back down the bank to fall backwards into the boat at Gurgen’s feet with blood pouring from the deep wound.

The crew rose from their hiding places with brave determination and loosed their first arrows with more speed than accuracy, dropping one of the riders with the fletched end of a shaft protruding from his chest, and hitting two of the horses, but the Parthians’ response was swift and deadly. Another of the crewmen jerked back with an arrow in his chest, as the scouts’ return shots whipped into the ambush with the accuracy of men who had been using bows on horseback for most of their lives. Martos snatched the bow from his spasming fingers, nocking a shaft and rising from his place in defiance of the risk, sighting down the arrow for a moment before putting its wickedly barbed iron head squarely into the closest man’s chest. The master loosed his second attempt with equal nerve, ignoring a shot that whistled past his ear and pinning a rider’s thigh to his beast’s flank with a deliberately aimed arrow. The last man fell with a pair of Roman arrows in his side, toppling out of the saddle to land on his head with a distinct snap of breaking bone.

The surviving scout turned his horse and spurred it away, ducking under the arrows that were sent wildly after him, both horse and rider badly wounded by the arrow protruding from his left thigh to judge from the beast’s uneven gait and its rider’s stiff, agonised posture. Martos loosed again, putting his last shot into the man’s right shoulder and almost knocking him over the horse’s neck, but by some miracle the Parthian stayed on his mount and rode on, too distant for any realistic attempt to bring him down. Marcus leapt to his feet, sprinting towards the spot where the only unwounded horse stood nudging its fallen rider with a gentle muzzle, uncomprehending of the fact that the man was already dead, his head canted at an unnatural angle. Snatching up the dead man’s spear with his good left hand he stabbed it into the ground beside the horse, heaving himself into the saddle and then pulling the weapon’s blade free of the earth in which it was buried, transferring it to hang from his right hand before wheeling the beast around with the reins gripped in the other, digging his heels into its flanks.

The wounded rider had a quarter-mile start, but his horse was clearly struggling with the effects of the arrow wound it had sustained in the short bloody fight, its pace slowing as the blood loss that painted its flank and its rider’s leg dark red weakened its muscles. The Parthian looked back, and on seeing Marcus bearing down upon him raised his bow, blood-covered fingers groping for an arrow. Putting the shaft to the bow’s string he drew it back as far as his weakened arm could manage, but the resulting shot was both weak and misdirected, the arrow striking the ground a dozen paces to the right of the oncoming Roman. He reached for another, but as he was struggling to nock the arrow, his hand shaking visibly with the shock of his wounds, Marcus dropped the reins and gripped the spear in his left hand, leaning in to stab the long blade into the hapless rider’s chest, punching him out of his saddle to lie broken and bleeding in the plain’s dust.

Reining the horse in and dismounting, he walked slowly back towards the fallen Parthian, looking down the spear’s shaft at the dying man. The scout stared up at him uncomprehendingly, muttered something unintelligible and then spasmed, his body tensing for a moment before collapsing back onto the dry earth with a death rattle in his throat, the life leaving his eyes as the last breath sighed from his body.

The Night Witch’s crew were already hard at work digging a grave for their comrades when he reached the river, Thracius nodding his respect as the Roman pushed the bloodied spear’s head into the ground, dropped the shield he had taken from the dead man beside it and dismounted. They dug in silence, Martos and Lugos taking spades from the first men to tire and working alongside the sailors to deepen the hole until the master judged it sufficient to protect their comrades from carrion animals.

‘Get them in and fill it up. We’ll say the words later, when we know we won’t be joining them for a quick trip across the Styx.’

Marcus made his way down to the Night Witch, releasing Gurgen from his bonds and placing the shield beside the king, who had fallen into a deep sleep despite the hectic events taking place around him.

‘This may prove useful for the king’s protection.’

The noble looked dourly at the blood speckled across the Roman’s tunic, then at the pool of blood left in the boat’s curved bottom by the crew member who had fallen to the thrown spear.

‘His blood, or another’s?’

Marcus looked down at the stains.

‘One of yours, a wounded scout. He probably wouldn’t have lived long, there were two arrows in him.’

‘A mercy killing then.’

The Roman looked up, but where he had expected to find a stare of irony, Gurgen’s face was sympathetic.

‘Perhaps. He was still trying to kill me, when I put him down.’

‘No man can do any more to bring honour to his name. He would have been grateful for the speed of your strike, at the end. As you may come to understand, when we reach Ctesiphon …’

Bodies buried, and with the dead Parthians and their horses left to lie where they had fallen, the vessel’s crew reboarded and cast off, raising the sail at the master’s command.

‘They’ll be too tired to row after that, and I reckon the river’s running too fast for oars in any case. I’ll let half of them get some sleep while the rest help me steer this bitch.’

Marcus watched while he skippered the boat through the seemingly unending succession of bends in the river. Those crew who hadn’t rolled themselves into their hides and immediately fallen asleep worked constantly to adjust the sail’s angle to the wind, while Thracius steered the vessel expertly around the river’s meanderings. He looked round to find Marcus studying his expert use of the rudder to cut each bend in the river as closely as he dared, and pointed back at the storm-laden northern horizon.

‘If you want to do something useful Tribune, you could keep an eye open back the way we came? I’d like some warning if we’re going to be run down by several hundred of those bastards, because being taken alive by those animals isn’t on my list of good ways to die. And wash that blood out of your tunic before it dries hard, you’re supposed to be a Roman emissary but you look more like a river pirate.’

‘A pirate? There are bandits on the river?’

The master laughed tersely.

‘Why else do you think we carry weapons? You’re not sailing the Middle Sea now, young sir, the river we’re heading for carries enough wealth to make an unscrupulous crew who aren’t afraid of the sight of blood rich very quickly indeed, if they don’t pick the wrong ship to attack. And trust me, when you consider just how much fun it is to earn a living from fishing, it’s no surprise that more than one village on the Euphrates harbours pirates.’

The Night Witch ran south before a freshening northerly wind, the oncoming storm’s gusts bellying her sail, and after a while the master told his men to bring down the canvas and raise a smaller sheet in its place.

‘The wind’s getting too strong, the mast’ll break if I leave that sail up! And the river’s running so fast that all I really need is enough of a push to keep control of her heading!’

The shouted words were torn from his mouth by the wind’s scream, barely audible to Marcus from less than a foot away, the two men watching the crew fight to pull the sail down without losing it.

‘If it gets much worse we’ll have to take shelter against the bank!’

A yell from behind made them both turn, to find a sailor pointing back up the river into the mass of darkness that dominated a third of the sky, his eyes fixed on the horizon. Against the brooding tower of iron-grey cloud, the smudge of ochre dust was almost invisible as it blew straight towards them, and Marcus shook his head as he realised that their pursuers were almost certainly riding into the gritty, choking fog churned up by their horse’s hoofs. The master looked at the dust plume for a moment, then turned back to the river ahead of them, turning the rudder to accommodate yet another bend.

‘That puts mooring up out of the question! There’s another two or three miles to run before we reach the Khabur, so it’s going to be a close thing whether they catch us before we make the turn, from the look of it! But if we do get there first, the river runs straight and true for a few miles, pretty much, a chance for us to lose them by running as fast as this bitch’ll go when she doesn’t have to make a turn every few dozen paces!’

Cupping his hands he bellowed an order at the struggling sailors.

‘Leave that sail up! I want every last bit of speed out of the old cow!’

Listing violently under the wind’s harsh treatment, with the crew taking turns to lean out over the hull’s side to keep the Night Witch from turning over, Thracius guided his vessel through the Mygdonius’s remaining bends with cool-headed precision, never once looking back to check on their pursuers’ progress, so intent was he on cutting each turn as finely as possible. After a few moments Marcus saw a second, smaller dust plume separate itself from the main body and begin to outpace the larger group. He shouted to the master, pointing back to the north.

‘They’ve detached a party of outriders on the fastest horses! How much more of this river do we have to cover?’

The older man shrugged, putting the rudder over and aiming for the apex of the next bend.

‘A mile or so? I’ve been concentrating on not sinking, not bend counting!’

The enemy advance party came on swiftly, thrashing their horses mercilessly as if they knew that they would lose the chance to stop the boat’s escape if they didn’t reach a shooting position before the Night Witch made her imminent turn south into the Khabur’s course. Marcus momentarily considered getting Martos to string a bow and ready himself to shoot back at them, then realised that with the wind so strong in their faces the effort would be futile. The master shouted encouragement to his crew, pointing to a massive rock on the riverbank as he guided the vessel round the next bend so tightly that Marcus could have reached out and touched the enormous boulder.

‘We’re almost there! I recognise that rock! Just three more bends!’

The boat was heeled over in a turn to the west, and in the moment before the master snapped the rudder over to haul her around the river’s bend to the east, Marcus stared over the vessel’s right-hand side at the oncoming riders. The main body were too distant to be any threat, but the outriders were close enough that he could make out individual horsemen, spectral figures engulfed in the dust of their passage. Thracius flicked a swift glance over his shoulder.

‘How close are they?’

‘A mile or so!’

The older man’s scowl of concentration hardened, his eyes locked on the next bend, and with nothing to contribute the Roman stared back over the stern, attempting to calculate the fast closing distance between the hunters and their intended prey.

‘I’d be amused, if it weren’t for the fact that I’ll soon be dead if we don’t outrun them!’

Martos had come to stand next to him, bracing himself against the boat’s side as the master threw his rudder over and slewed the vessel into another hard turn.

‘No means of shooting back at them! No way to protect ourselves against their arrows! We can only hope that the captain there has it right when he says we are almost at the next river.’

Cutting the bend’s apex so close that Marcus could see the sand beneath them through the river’s water, Thracius pointed forward, bellowing an order at his crew.

‘Row! Row for your worthless lives!’

Marcus and Martos looked forward, realising with rising hope that the river before them ran straight for a quarter of a mile before seeming to meet a dead end, the junction with the Khabur. The crew threw themselves at their oars, pulling with all their might at the shafts in one last frantic effort, and the two friends turned back to stare at the oncoming riders, now less than half a mile distant. As they watched, the foremost rider loosed an arrow, the iron head a bright flash of polished metal against the looming storm’s dark grey curtain.

‘Is he mad?’

Martos’s comment died in his throat as the shaft soared improbably high into the air, literally carried on the storm’s arms, then tipped over at the apogee of its flight and flickered down towards them, vanishing into the water a hundred paces back in the vessel’s wake. The two men looked at each other in dismay, Martos shaking his head. The entire group of horsemen loosed their arrows, which were lifted and strewn by the storm’s fury to land in a wide scatter, none any closer to the Night Witch than fifty paces, but the next volley, sent skywards straight after the first, fell closer still. Flicking his gaze back to the junction with the Khabur, Marcus watched as Thracius eased his rudder over to the right, expertly leaning his vessel into a steadily tightening left turn designed to put them into the Khabur’s wide main channel as swiftly as possible. He looked back with a grin, still unaware of the Parthian archers’ threat.

‘The Khabur’s running fast! Once we’re round this bend we’ll be out of range so quickly that-’

A windblown scattering of arrows speared down across the Night Witch’s course, a pair of shafts seeming to spring out of the boat’s deck less than a foot from one hapless rower, and while the master goggled at them, another arced down out of the black sky with the cruel accuracy of the random shot, stabbing deep into the space behind his collarbone with barely more than its fletching still exposed. With an upward roll of his eyes he sagged onto the rudder, forcing it hard over and sending the speeding boat curving round to the left, the taut sail’s driving force throwing it bodily onto the mud beach where the two rivers joined. With a rasping grind of wood against gritty sand the boat ran hard aground, stuck fast in the deep mud where river and land met.

Shorn of their leader the crew dithered momentarily, long enough for another volley of arrows to fall in their random scatter across the beach. Most of them overshot the stranded vessel, but three struck the boat’s wooden planks with dull thumps, further terrifying the sailors. Seeing the rising panic in their faces, and, as the first of them dropped their oars and stood with the clear intention of running for their lives, Martos jumped over the side onto the soft mud below, ploughing through the morass to firmer ground and then striding up the bank before turning to draw his sword, bellowing a warning down at them.

‘Any man who tries to run, dies here!’

The crew turned to face Marcus, who had drawn the eagle-pommelled gladius and was looking down it at them with a furious scowl. He gestured to the stricken master, lolling against the rudder with the ashen face and quick, panting respiration of a man with little time left to live.

‘Who’s his deputy?’

The biggest of them raised a hesitant hand, flinching as another shower of arrows hissed down into the water off the boat’s right-hand side.

‘Get your men ready to row us off this sandbank, and get that sail down, it’s holding us against the beach! Do it!’

Not giving the sailor time to question his orders, he turned to Lugos, who nodded his massive head and strode to the boat’s bow, vaulting over the raised wooden prow and placing his massive hands on the wooden hull, straining his bulging muscles in an attempt to push the boat off the mud. Behind Marcus a deep commanding voice rose above the wind’s bestial howl.

‘He’s not enough on his own!’

Marcus swung to face the Parthian captives, finding Gurgen on his feet and pointing at the recumbent Osroes.

‘My only responsibility is to protect my king’s life, and to stay here is to die here!’

The Parthian hurried up the ship’s length and jumped over the side, ranging his strength alongside that of the massive Briton. Martos sheathed his sword and ran down the bank to join them, the three men heaving at the ship’s hull with the corded muscles in their necks standing proud. A faint shiver ran through the boat’s frame, and Marcus called out to them as he realised what had caused the slight movement.

‘The river’s rising fast! Keep pushing and she’ll float off!’

Lifting the dying master away from the rudder, he laid the stricken sailor to one side, wincing as the pain of the movement contorted Thracius’s face into a silent scream, then crouched into the stern’s slight protection and looked across the river. The huge towering mass of dark cloud loomed almost vertically above them, flickers of lightning illuminating it from within and sending booming crashes of thunder across the empty landscape. Beneath it on the Mygdonius’s far bank, the Parthian horsemen had dismounted, and were loosing arrows as fast as they were able, the shafts blown in every direction by the gusting wind. The Night Witch lurched again, lifted slightly by the river’s inexorable rise, and the three big men at her bow threw their full strength against the deadweight of her massive timbers. Still the sandy mud’s sucking grip held the vessel fast, and Marcus pointed his gladius at the crew with a barked command that had them moving before they had time to think.

‘We need to lighten the boat! Over the side!’

Swarming over the Night Witch’s side, they slid into the water with terrified stares towards the bowmen on the far bank who were still shooting steadily at a target that was, were it not for the wind playing havoc with their archery, too large to miss.

‘Heave!’

Lugos’s voice rose over the wind’s din, and the three men arrayed on the boat’s left side strained their sinews again, Martos bellowing as his feet pumped in the mud that was denying them a clean purchase on the ground beneath them. The deck beneath Marcus’s feet lurched as the Night Witch slid a foot down the beach, and all three of the big men threw themselves at the boat’s side with roars and curses as her hull, lifted fractionally by the rising river, slid slowly back down the muddy slope. With a scrape of gravel that was more felt than heard, the boat eased her bulk gratefully down into the deeper water, drifting out into the fast-flowing water with a slow, uncontrolled pirouette that was turning her bow to point back up the river.

‘Oars!’

The crew pulled themselves over the Night Witch’s side, one man jerking as he heaved himself out of the river, an arrow’s long shaft protruding from his back. He stayed where he was for a moment, balanced between the effort that had lifted him out of the water and the iron’s agonising intrusion deep into his body, then fell back into the racing water and was lost to view. The rest of the crew threw themselves at their oars, knowing what to do without having to be ordered, backing water on the right side while the opposite bank pulled mightily to swing the boat’s prow back round to the south. Marcus sighted down the boat’s length, waiting for the prow to clear the riverbank to the left before bellowing his next command, pointing with gladius down the vessel’s length.

‘Row!’

Another scattering of arrows fell like iron sleet as the crew strained their bodies at the oars, their bodies stretched back over the men behind them with each stroke in an explosive effort inspired by the prospect of escape from the murderous rain of arrows from the far bank. A man close enough for Marcus to reach out and touch screamed as an arrow pinned his foot to the deck, but kept rowing despite the sudden horrific pain of the shattered bones. Realising the danger to Osroes, Martos snatched up the Parthian shield that Marcus had taken from the initial skirmish, holding it over the unconscious king to protect him from the arrows’ random paths.

With the river’s spate at their back, the Night Witch gained speed quickly, spearing out into the racing current where the Mygdonius and the Khabur’s courses met with her hull bucking against the chop, and Marcus threw the rudder over to his right to sling her into a sharp turn to the left, into the bigger river’s stream. More arrows fell around them, but the shooting was growing wilder as the distance between bowmen and target lengthened, the gusting storm winds toying with the lofted arrows and dropping them across the Khabur’s racing waters without regard to the archers’ aim.

Marcus realised that while Martos had managed to climb aboard as the boat’s stern had slid back into the river, Gurgen and Lugos were still clinging to the vessel’s bow.

‘Get them aboard!’

A pair of crewmen pulled their oars on board, rose and took a grip of Gurgen’s arms, pulling him over the boat’s side to flop exhausted on the deck in a pool of water from his soaked clothing, gasping for breath just from the effort of clinging onto the bow’s timbers as the river had pulled at his body. As they were struggling to drag Lugos’s massive weight on board, a final flight of arrows arched down out of the blackness that pressed down on the river from the north, one last volley loosed at a far greater distance than would have been possible without the wind behind the archers. One of the men hauling at Lugos’s arms released his grip and scrabbled with both hands at the arrow buried in his back, dropping to his knees with his spine arched and his mouth open in a scream that was lost in the wind’s howl. The big Briton pulled himself over the bow, his teeth gritted against the pain of his own wound, standing on the deck with blood running down his leg from the shaft protruding from the side of his thigh.

A bright flash of sheet lightning lit the bruised sky a sudden livid orange, the clap of thunder that followed an instant later seemingly loud enough to split the world in two, and with a hissing fury that tore the river’s roiling surface into watery chaos, a sheet of rain ripped across the landscape, instantly reducing visibility to a hundred paces and putting paid to any further archery. The boat’s exhausted crew slumped over their oars, the man closest to Marcus staring at his ruined foot in silent horror as the teeming rain washed away the blood that was still oozing around the arrow’s shaft, his comrades’ attention fixed on Thracius’s corpse. The big man who had declared himself the master’s second in command stood, walking down the boat’s length and bending to speak into Marcus’s ear.

‘Best if I steer her now, sir. We need to moor up until this rain lets up, or we’ll risk running into a rock and ripping her bottom out.’

The Roman stood, gesturing to the rudder.

‘As you think best. I doubt the enemy will be doing anything more constructive under this deluge.’

‘What the bloody hell do you think they’re up to?’

Scaurus looked out over the city’s northern wall, shading his eyes with a raised hand. The Parthian line that surrounded the fortress was unchanged, the soldiers busy at work deepening and extending the entrenchments that had been dug in a complete circle around the walls. A massive white tent had been erected across the Mygdonius’s course just outside the range of Nisibis’s bolt throwers, presumably to act as Narsai’s headquarters and makeshift palace, a stream of officers coming and going while smoke from cooking fires hazed the air above it.

‘King Narsai’s not a man to forego his luxuries, is he? How many other men have a river running through their tent?’

The prefect pulled a face.

‘If I could just get another fifty paces range out of the bolt throwers, I’d give that bastard the shock of his bloody life.’

Petronius had ordered his first spear to limit the bolt throwers to occasional harassing shots, not wanting to waste their stock of missiles, and so the enemy had dug more or less without interference while the prefect had laughed at their efforts.

‘Completely without any military value, given they’ve no means of putting a hole in the walls. Whereas whatever it is that they’re up to over there in the hills looks somewhat more interesting, don’t you think?’

The legatus nodded slowly, staring out over the enemy lines to a spot a mile or more distant, where the walls of the river’s valley ran down to merge with the plain, leaving the Mygdonius to run across the plain’s open expanse. The repetitive sound of axes striking wood echoed distantly across the landscape, and as they watched, a tree on the river’s banks toppled to the ground, the creaking roar of its fall reduced to a sigh by the distance.

‘They want wood, and in some quantity given they’ve been cutting trees down all morning. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’re building something … but what? As you say, siege engines might be their best bet, if they want to have any chance of putting a big enough hole in the city wall to attack through.’

‘Indeed. Towers wouldn’t be any use, because the moat’s too wide for them to get close enough to the wall. And what else would they want all that wood for?’

Scaurus stared out at the mystery Parthian activity for a moment longer before replying.

‘Damming the river?’

Petronius shook his head briskly.

‘What would be the point? It’s a well-known fact that the city has several fresh water springs within the walls, that’s the reason why it was built here in the first place. They can piss in the river, float dead cows down it and yes, they could even dam it without my losing any sleep. No, it’ll be something much more sinister than that, I’d imagine. I just wish I could work out what on earth they’re intending do with all that wood.’

After an hour or so the rain abated from its constant roaring deluge to a relatively gentle downfall, and Marcus ordered the crew to stop bailing out the water that had been threatening to swamp the Night Witch. The sailors slumped exhaustedly onto their rowing benches, and the young tribune took a head count while they were temporarily still.

‘Six men.’

He turned to find Gurgen behind him.

‘And there were twelve of them when we left your fortress. Barely enough to handle the boat, I’d guess.’

Marcus shrugged.

‘Barely enough will have to do. I’m not going to give up now, not having got this far.’

‘And the horsemen pursuing us? What if they-’

‘Cross the river while it’s in flood? They won’t dare that feat until the water’s receded a good deal, and stopped flowing quite so fast. And their bowstrings will have been soaked in that downpour. No, we’re safe from Narsai’s men, for the time being. But we do need to put some distance between ourselves and the last place they saw us.’

He beckoned Thracius’s deputy over.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Tertius, Tribune.’

‘Well then, Tertius, we need to move from here, or the Parthians may appear over that hill to finish the job.’

He pointed over the sailor’s shoulder at the shallow rise in the ground that ran down to the Khabur’s left bank.

‘Not too far, just enough to convince them we’re long gone, when they manage to cross the Mygdonius.’

‘I don’t know, Tribune.’

The bearded crewman shook his head with a look of exhaustion.

‘The lads’re pretty much all done …’

He waved a hand at the remaining crew members, half of whom were already asleep where they had slumped. Marcus stepped closer to him, lowering his voice.

‘You have food and water?’

The sailor nodded.

‘Not that anyone’s going to want water, after that.’

‘Wine?’

A knowing calculation crept over the other man’s features.

‘A little.’

‘Then here it is. Get them awake, get them fed, and give me twenty miles, and then they can sleep for an hour or two. And you, Tertius, will be master of the Night Witch, if you think you can manage the added responsibility. Of course, you could just name Thracius’s successor, if you’re not sure you’ve got it in you?’

The crewman grinned at him, his fatigue forgotten.

‘I’m your man, Tribune. Appoint me master and I’ll have these lazy bastards on their feet and pushing us south before you’ve got time to work out my pay rate.’

Marcus nodded, holding out his hand for the Night Witch’s new master to clasp.

‘Wake up, you rough-arsed refugees from a Syrian prick doctor’s waiting room!’

The crew stirred, turning indignant faces to stare at their erstwhile comrade.

‘Get your fucking feet on the deck, we’ve a sail to raise! You …’

He pointed at the youngest of them.

‘You, open the food locker and make sure every man gets a double ration of bread, and a cup of wine as well! We need to get twenty miles between us and those dick-beating horse humpers before we can sleep, unless any of you helmet polishers wants to risk having your foot nailed to the deck like poor old Tarsus there!’

All eyes turned to the stricken sailor whose foot had been freed swiftly but brutally once the immediate danger was past. The new master, with a swift and decisive approach to the problem, had pulled a pair of pincers from the tool chest and taken a deceptively experimental grip of the arrow’s iron head, as if sizing up the task at hand while the wounded sailor had moaned with pain at the arrowhead’s slight movement. Raising his eyebrows at the men behind the sailor, he’d waited until they had taken a firm grip of their comrade’s arms, wrapped a big hand around his ankles and, ignoring his mate’s bulging eyes and babbled entreaties, clamped the pincers hard to the arrowhead and torn it free. The wounded man was now asleep on his bench, his foot wrapped in a bloody length of cloth, exhausted by the ordeal but still moaning with the pain.

After a moment of lethargic thought, the remaining crew members turned to their tasks like sleepwalkers, too tired to contest their new master’s flatly stated orders.

‘You chose well.’

Marcus shrugged tiredly at Gurgen’s statement as the vessel cast off once more, slipping out into the middle of the Khabur’s stream and heading south and east down the river’s winding course.

‘The man who taught me to fight was a retired gladiator. He showed me how to fight and kill an opponent with any weapon that comes to hand, but the most important thing I learned from him was always to watch the other man’s eyes.’

‘He was right. And in that man’s eyes you saw …?’

‘The same flat-eyed lack of interest in anything other than getting the job done that I look for in my officers. The look of a man who wouldn’t care what his friends thought of him if there was a promotion in it for him.’

The Parthian grinned.

‘And what is it that you see in my eyes, Tribune?’

Marcus looked back at him levelly, but before he could answer a weak voice from behind them snatched the Parthian’s attention from the conversation.

‘Where are we?’

Osroes was awake, blinking painfully in the afternoon’s dull iron light, and Gurgen hurried to him as the king’s face creased in puzzlement at the hard wooden surface beneath him.

‘On the river Khabur, my king, heading south to join the Euphrates. We managed to give our pursuers the slip.’

He helped the weakened king to sit up against Night Witch’s side, taking a water bottle from Marcus and lifting it to Osroes’ lips. The bidaxs covered the king’s legs with a thick cloak, the heavy wool still damp from the deluge, steam rising into the thick, humid air.

‘We were blessed, it seems, and yet cursed at the same time. The gods sent a storm to cover our escape from your cousin Narsai’s pursuit, but that same storm gave their arrows unnatural reach. Some men died.’

He waved a hand in dismissal of the fact, and Marcus’s lips narrowed in anger.

‘Forgive me, Your Highness. I have wounded to attend.’

He found Martos and the new master examining the wounded, the Briton’s eyes alive with concern for his friend. He looked down at the unconscious sailor.

‘This one will live to pull an oar, although whether he’ll ever prance around the ship with the rest of these water rats is less sure. There’s nothing we can do but let him sleep and see what state the wound’s in tomorrow. Whereas this monster …’

He gestured to Lugos, who sat in silence contemplating the arrow shaft that protruded from his thigh with stoic disregard.

‘This, I will admit, worries me. Their arrows are barbed, and this one is stuck deep in the meat of his thigh. I fear that its removal might well open a blood vessel and cause him to bleed to death.’

Marcus nodded thoughtfully.

‘He needs a trained medic. How far are we from Dura?’

Tertius thought for a moment.

‘At least one hundred miles, Tribune, perhaps another twenty or thirty besides.’

He shrugged.

‘I was not responsible for navigation. With the river in spate we will cover perhaps ten miles in each hour, with the sail raised.’

‘Gurgen?’

The Parthian stood, walking across the boat’s deck to his side.

‘Roman?’

‘You said you have studied maps of your empire. Where are we? Is this still Adiabene?’

The noble shook his head.

‘No. Where the Mygdonius and the Khabur meet is the point where Narsai’s rule ends, and thereafter it is the King of Kings who is master. This, Roman, is Parthia.’

As the sun dipped to meet the horizon, Tertius shook his men awake from their two-hour sleep, ignoring their exhausted curses and groans and setting them to work to raise Night Witch’s black sail. The vessel was quickly moving as fast as a distance runner’s best pace, the fresh northerly wind bellying her sail out. Marcus looked about him as the vessel ran out of the cover of the raised riverbanks, relieved to find the golden-hued landscape empty of the pursuing forces he had feared might be within sight.

‘We may stick out like a bridegroom’s prick now, Tribune, but give it an hour and we’ll be nothing more than a black hole in the river.’

He nodded at Tertius’s confident words, but the master beckoned him closer with a conspiratorial expression.

‘But you should be aware that the crew ain’t happy to be making this run in the darkness.’

‘Why? Isn’t this the entire reason that the boat’s painted black?’

The soldier chuckled quietly.

‘It ain’t the darkness that scares them. It’s the spirits.’

‘Spirits?’

The sailor laughed again.

‘Judge for yourself, Tribune. We’ll be there soon enough.’

The boat ran south at a brisk clip, riding the Khabur’s flow with the breeze filling her sail and, with little else to do, her crew watched with obvious concern as the sun sank slowly down onto the western horizon.

‘There! Shadikanni!’

A sharp-eyed sailor pointed south, and Marcus followed his arm to find a barely discernible cluster of ruined buildings in the dusk’s gloom. The man made a warding gesture with his index and ring fingers raised, his face pale in the gloom.

‘We should not pass through Saddikanni after nightfall. It is a place of evil!’

Staring at the ruins, Marcus shook his head.

‘Our wounded cannot afford to wait another day. If we wait for daylight before passing this place, we will then be forced to wait for nightfall before we try to sail through the Parthian settlements to the south. And besides …’

He looked to the west, where the sun was sinking beneath the horizon.

‘It won’t be dark for a while yet. If you want to be through the city before then I suggest you row.’

The man stared at him for a moment, then hurried to his bench and took up his oar, shouting imprecations at his comrades as he urged them to do the same. Propelled to the speed of a sprinting athlete by the oars’ additional thrust, the Night Witch flew across the water, Tertius grinning at his mates’ discomfiture as he steered her through the river’s bends towards the ruined city.

‘I know a little of the history of this place.’

Gurgen was at Marcus’s shoulder, his face unreadable in the growing gloom.

‘The name for it these days is Horaba, but when this was a great city of Assyria it was named Saddikanni. This place was built when your great city of Rome was no more than a collection of savages living in huts made of mud, and the empire of which this city was only a very small part endured for two thousand years, from the time when a weapon made of bronze was the deadliest thing a man could put in his hand. The men that built this city conquered Egypt, Babylon and Persia. They ruled the Phoenicians, the Syrians, the Jews and the Arabs. They defeated the Hittites, the Ethiopians, the Cimmerians and the Scythians. They rose to rule the world, Roman, in the same way that your empire aspires to control everything it touches, but it crumbled to dust, as all empires must when they no longer produce men with the strength and will to keep them vital. They became soft, and were overrun by the younger and more vital peoples around them, and now we do battle over the scraps of what was once the mightiest power in the world. Such is the way of all kingdoms, unless the strong act when they have the chance.’

He fell silent, and both men stood in silence as the boat rounded the last bend and slid into the ruined city’s deep shadow. The wind gusted, rippling the Night Witch’s black sail, and while the crew stared at it aghast, their oars momentarily forgotten, the breeze suddenly fell away to no more than a zephyr, leaving the canvas dangling emptily. The ship’s new master snarled an order at his men.

‘Row! Row like fuck!’

Even the previously amused Tertius seemed to have taken his crew’s nervousness to heart, bellowing at his men to put their backs into their rowing. On both sides of the river the wreckage of a once proud city rose above the river’s banks, themselves lined in the remnants of what was once a stone dockside. On the eastern bank rose a single tall column, above which stood the silhouette of a winged bull, still visible as a black outline against the deep purple sky behind it, and the nearest sailor to Marcus quailed at the sight.

‘It has no power! I am an acolyte of the light bearer, he who slew the bull and feasted in heaven above with the Sun God himself! The Lord Mithras will protect us from any evil that dwells here!’

The crew rowed even harder, caught between the ancient city’s terror and the hard-voiced tribune’s cast-iron certainty in his own god, but where several of them muttered their own prayers to Mithras, Gurgen simply shook his head and laughed aloud.

‘My god is Ahura Mazda, which means “the light of wisdom” in your barbarous tongue. All other deities are subservient to his will, and the sun and moon dance to his command. And this?’

He waved a hand at the ruins passing on either side of the vessel. ‘This is a warning, nothing more and nothing less. All empires come to dust in their time, when strong men are no longer to be found. Wake me when we reach anything of note.’

He sat alongside the once more recumbent Osroes, pulling the hood of his cloak down over his head and, it seemed, falling asleep almost immediately. With a final spurt from the oarsmen, the Night Witch left the last of the ruins behind her, columns and shattered walls almost invisible against the sky as dusk deepened into night, and Marcus stared back over the ship’s stern with a thoughtful expression.

‘You chose not to wake me, I see?’

Marcus shrugged at the big Parthian.

‘You asked to be alerted if we passed anything of interest. Are you especially interested in fishing villages?’

Gurgen grinned at him.

‘And it saved you having to bind me again.’

‘Quite so. Although if you’d asked nicely I would happily have put you ashore to spend the rest of your days eating fish and making little warriors with the local women.’

The nobleman shook his head, raising a hand in mock terror.

‘Spare me! A few days of untroubled wenching perhaps, but a lifetime?’

Marcus grinned back at him.

‘Quite so.’

‘So, master of my destiny, where are we now?’

The Roman stretched his weary body, pointing back up the river.

‘Back there is Sirhi, the last Parthian outpost on the river before we re-enter imperial territory-’

‘This is the Euphrates?’

The smile broadened a little.

‘Yes. After our encounter with the spirits of long-dead Assyrians at dusk last night, the crew kept rowing for much longer than seemed likely. And the Khabur was running faster than any of them has ever seen before, doubtless something to do with the huge amount of rainwater that has fallen across the mountains to the north. So, whatever the reason, we passed through Sirhi before dawn, not that there was much to see, and we’ll reach Dura soon enough.’

The desert fortress stood high on an escarpment above the river’s western bank, and Gurgen stared up at its high walls with thinly disguised irritation.

‘Everywhere on our empire’s borders with Rome we are confronted by naked force. Do you wonder that men like Narsai dream of taking your boot off our throat?’

Marcus nodded equably enough.

‘I understand. Just as I’m sure you know that this was a Parthian fortress, until the present King of Kings started the war that led to its capture.’

‘And having taken it from us, you keep it for no better reason than its position astride a major trade route. Palmyra is a hundred miles that way …’ He pointed to the west. ‘Which means that your empire takes two bites at the caravans before their goods can enter Roman territory.’

‘We probably also keep it because we’re quite attached to Palmyra, I’d imagine, since the crossing here is equally as passable to your cataphracts as it is to baggage animals.’

The two men fell quiet as the Night Witch coasted up to the city’s stone wharf, the exhausted sailors slumping at their benches as dock workers tied the boat to the quayside. An official came bustling along the wharf in high dudgeon, raising a hand to point at the disreputable-looking craft.

‘You can’t just turn up and moor up, you scruffy shower of-’

He took a step back as Marcus turned to face him, taking in the young Roman’s bronze breastplate and deliberately aristocratic mien.

‘Ah … my apologies … Tribune?’

Marcus nodded brusquely.

‘Tribulus Corvus, Third Gallic.’

‘The Third? You’re a long way from home sir. I-’

‘Quite. And you are?’

‘A humble slave, Tribune, dockyard overseer. I report to-’

‘Fetch him, please, whoever he is. I need this vessel resupplying with food and water, and I need a doctor immediately. There are wounded men aboard.’

Gurgen grinned at him as the slave turned tail and hurried away.

‘You know how to treat your underlings, I see.’

The Roman pulled a face.

‘It’s not to my taste, I have to say, but there’s no time to be lost. And no …’

He turned to face Tertius, who was hovering expectantly behind him.

‘You cannot give the crew leave to go ashore, nor do you personally need to go up into the fortress for supplies or equipment of any nature. The local whores will doubtless manage well enough without your custom, and not only do your men need a few hours’ sleep, but were we unwise enough to allow them off this vessel, I don’t expect we’d see half of them again.’

When the doctor arrived he took one look at the sailor with the wrecked foot and ordered him to be carried away to the fortress’s infirmary.

‘I’ll have a proper look at that horrible mess later, although there’s probably not much I can do for him other than keep it clean and give it time to heal the best it can. Now, what have we here?’

He squatted down alongside the uncomplaining Lugos, pulling a thoughtful face as he unwrapped the bandage that Martos had put around his thigh the previous afternoon.

‘You’re a big bastard, aren’t you? Thracian?’

‘Briton.’

The deep rumbling reply caused him to raised his eyebrows again as he bent to sniff the wound.

‘Smells sweet enough to me. Let’s have that arrow out, shall we?’

He worked quickly, first pushing in the curved blades that would prevent the arrow’s barbs from snagging the flesh inside the wound, then positioning a pair of hooked blades over them ready for the extraction.

‘Ready, big man?’

‘Ready.’

Marcus nodded his appreciation as the medic smoothly drew the arrowhead from his friend’s thigh, the Briton’s jaw clenching at the pain as the pocket in his flesh was forced wider to allow for its removal.

‘It’s usual to pack the wound with honey once the missile has been removed, but I have a preference for one small variation on that method.’ He reached into his pack and drew out a small bottle. ‘Vinegar. It’ll hurt.’ The Briton stared back at him impassively. ‘But it seems to clean the wound out better than anything else. My father used it, and so do I, if you’re willing?’

Lugos nodded, and the doctor clapped him on the shoulder, pulling a short length of wood from the bag and handing it to him.

‘Good man. Here, bite on this and it’ll be over before you know it.’

The Briton positioned the sawn-off piece of spear shaft between his teeth, biting down experimentally as the medic uncorked the bottle and positioned it over the wound.

‘Ready?’

A nod was his only reply, and with a quick jerk of his wrist he doused the wound with the pungent brown fluid. Lugos’s entire body convulsed with the sudden agony as the sour wine mercilessly stung his raw flesh, his biceps swelling like melons as he rode the pain, snarling as he bit down hard into the wooden shaft. As the pain lessened the Briton’s eyes opened and he took the wood from his mouth, handing it to the doctor who stared at it in bemusement, his eyes widening at the deep gouges torn in the wood by his patient’s massive jaw.

‘I don’t think that’s going to be much use to anyone else …’

Tossing it over the side, he spooned honey into the wound, then wadded and bandaged the big man’s thigh.

‘I’ll have some linen sent down. Make sure you change the dressing once a day until it’s completely scabbed over, and the patient is to avoid physical exertion that might reopen the wound until the scab drops off.’

As he walked off the ship, a man in his late twenties wearing a bronze chest plate like Marcus’s arrived on the quayside, deliberately waiting until the young tribune walked up the gangplank to greet him.

‘Tribune Corvus?’

Marcus nodded, taking the offered hand.

‘I’m Porcius, Legatus commanding the Sixth Ironclad.’

He acknowledged the younger man’s crisp salute with a wave of his hand.

‘Here with a five-cohort detachment of my men, which makes me responsible for the security of this outpost. This is a very sensitive and commercially important fortress, Tribune, which Governor Dexter believes merits the presence of a legion commander and half its strength to safeguard the trade route to Palmyra and ensure that the Parthians don’t try to get clever with this particular frontier. And now here you are, with no warning, in a vessel painted black, which I’m told you’ve sailed here from Nisibis. When I found Nisibis on the map I was intrigued to discover that it’s over two hundred miles from here, up a tributary of the Khabur river that isn’t even marked as navigable. You’ve landed wounded, requested supplies and, I’m told, you intend to continue down river until you run into Parthian forces.’

He raised an eyebrow at Marcus.

‘So, would you care to enlighten me as to why I shouldn’t have you detained as a risk to peace and stability in the border area?’

Martos watched as the two men talked, smiling to himself as the detachment’s commander followed Marcus’s pointing hand and looked down at the sleeping figure of King Osroes with a startled expression.

‘Gods below! That’s the King of Media? The King of Kings’ son?’

Porcius shook his head in wide-eyed amazement.

‘And you’ve got him lying on the bare boards of a river barge? Surely …’

He fell silent as Marcus raised an apologetic hand.

‘With all due respect, Legatus, this man has led a deliberate invasion of Osrhoene, and his ally, the king of Adiabene, has laid siege to Nisibis with the clear intention of expelling Rome from a possession ceded to the empire as the consequence of our beating them in a war for which we weren’t responsible. My legatus has ordered me-’

‘Your legatus? Which legion?’

‘Legatus Scaurus, commander of the Third Gallic.’

‘I thought my colleague, Magius Lateranus, commanded the Third. Scaurus … The name seems familiar, but that’s not a family name I recognise as senatorial.’

Marcus nodded crisply.

‘The legatus is a member of the equestrian order, sir.’

‘An equestrian, commanding a legion? Whose fool idea was …’

He fell silent at the sight of the younger man’s grim smile.

‘The appointment was made by the emperor, Legatus. I believe it was suggested by the imperial chamberlain, as a reward for services rendered with regard to matters concerning the praetorian prefect and a charge of treason.’

Gauging that he’d said enough he stopped talking, watching as his words sank in.

‘I see. And your orders are …?’

‘To take this man to Ctesiphon. Legatus Scaurus hopes that this intercession will provoke the King of Kings to call off the army laying siege to Nisibis, and restore peace to the Syrian frontier.’

Porcius shook his head.

‘From the little I know about their imperial court politics, I’d say that’s a slim hope. King Arsaces isn’t really in control of the empire, it seems.’ He shrugged. ‘But, if you’re acting under the command of a fellow legion commander, and a well-connected man to boot, it’s not my place to put obstacles in your way. Your vessel will be resupplied shortly and I’ll provide you with a safe conduct to show the centurion in command at the next fort down river.’

He raised an eyebrow at Marcus.

‘Have a care though. He might not be quite as impressed by your legatus’s connections as I am.’

‘At least they’ve stopped felling trees.’

Scaurus nodded, staring out over the Parthian lines to the north. At the edge of visibility he could just make out a camp of tents clustered around the spot where the Mygdonius emerged from the foothills that fed it.

‘It has to be a dam. Why else would they be felling trees there?’

Petronius shook his head in equal bemusement.

‘Agreed. But why? I can only think that they don’t know we’ve got enough spring capacity within the walls to provide more than enough fresh water for every man, woman and child in the city.’

‘The only way we’ll find out is to put a man in that camp. And that’s …’

The prefect shook his head again grimly.

‘Impossible. They may not be able to break down the walls, but we’re not going anywhere until this siege is raised.’

Both men looked out at the force surrounding Nisibis, and the encircling trenches that had been dug just outside of bolt-thrower range. The river’s path through the Parthian forces to the south had been barred with tree trunks set in the riverbank on either side of the route the Night Witch had used to make her escape. Petronius sighed and turned to look over the city behind them.

‘No, either Narsai gets bored and rides away …’

Scaurus gestured to the scene on the plain before them.

‘Which looks unlikely. I’d say he’s settling in for a long siege.’

‘Or someone else comes along and tells him to desist. I think we’re going to be here for a while.’

Tertius looked out over the Night Witch’s bow with a grim expression, spitting into the water that was relentlessly driving the vessel ever deeper into Parthian territory. Another day’s voyage had taken them past the last Roman fort on the Euphrates, and the master was clearly troubled at the impending moment of their surrender to the enemy.

‘You’re still sure you want to do this, Tribune?’

Marcus turned a wry smile on Tertius.

‘Starting to wonder how the Parthians will treat you?’

The sailor nodded.

‘The thought had crossed my mind. The crew’s wondering more than a little bit too.’

Gurgen stood up from his place beside Osroes.

‘I’d say you’ve little to lose, and much to gain.’

Both men turned to look at him, the sailor bowing his head slightly.

‘How might that be, if I might ask?’

The Parthian grinned wolfishly.

‘Have you ever bedded a Parthian woman?’

Tertius shook his head. ‘Once had a couple of whores who said they were Parthian. Their pimp promised me the pleasures of the exotic east.’

‘And?’

‘One of them pulled me off while the other tickled my arse with a feather. I told him I didn’t find it all that exotic, once I’d broken his nose and taken my money back.’

‘Ah …’

The sailor stared at him for a moment.

‘Ah?’

Gurgen smiled at him.

‘I’m sorry. I was simply reflecting on the pleasures that lie just around that bend in the river.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Far be it from a man of my status to discuss matters of the flesh with a barbarian such as yourself, but I can assure you that real Parthian women are very different from any experience you may have enjoyed before. And of course with you being … different … they’ll be all over you from the moment you step ashore. Women, eh?’

Tertius thought for a moment.

‘And they’re not going to want to take us to this city of theirs then?’

Gurgen laughed.

‘A handful of sailors? I’d have thought not. It will be the tribune here who has the opportunity to enjoy imperial hospitality, and possibly his escorts. The court does so enjoy being treated to the sight of men from far-off kingdoms. Especially men as … colourful … as these. You, I expect, will be required to wait for them to return, with nothing better to do than entertain a succession of curious females. I expect it will become boring eventually …’

‘I think we can take that chance.’

Tertius turned to his crew.

‘You heard the man. Get rowing!’

Marcus leaned closer to Gurgen.

‘Really? It all sounded a little unlikely to me.’

The Parthian grinned back at him.

‘Your crew needed motivation – I provided it. In truth, since the port of Idu is, I believe, the highest point on the river that is navigable to ships from the ocean to the south, it is already well populated by seafaring men from far more interesting places than Syria. I suspect your sailors will very quickly come to realise that when it comes to female company, they will be paying customers like every other man in the port. Let us hope they have heavy purses.’

If Marcus had expected any sort of reception, hostile or otherwise, he was swiftly disabused by the sight that greeted them as they rounded the river bend and came in sight of Idu.

The Night Witch’s crew stared open-mouthed at the port’s crowded wharves, both sides of the river solid with moored shipping from which bales, crates, bundles and casks were being loaded and unloaded by an army of toiling dock workers.

‘This is the last port on the navigable stretch of the river. Some of these ships have sailed here from ports too distant to be recorded on any map you Romans will ever have cause to use, bringing goods for shipment on to your empire that will make the merchants involved, and many men besides, rich.’

Gurgen pointed to a stretch of dock where several smaller vessels were being unloaded.

‘Put us in there.’

Tertius frowned.

‘But there’s no space.’

‘Get me close enough, and there soon will be.’

Once Night Witch was within hailing distance, he shouted a peremptory order at the closest of the supervisors, pointing at the recumbent Osroes. The man on the dockside visibly blanched, turning tail and running for the office where the cargoes were tallied and taxes levied. He returned a moment later with an official who was clearly his superior, and whose evident belief in that superiority, already tottering, was punctured equally swiftly by whatever it was that the Parthian noble said to him. As the crew watched with increasing amusement, a man wearing a sword strode down the dock and pushed his way through the gathering crowd, waving away their protests and directing the half-dozen soldiers following him to push them back out of the way. Turning to the river he called out a challenge in slow and heavily accented Greek, clearly still of the belief that the whole thing was a simple misunderstanding between the dock officials and a hapless trader.

‘State your business!’

Gurgen replied with equal pugnacity, his patience clearly at its end.

‘The man lying here is King Osroes of Media, beloved son of the King of Kings, may Ahura Mazda bless him with continued good health. If you do not clear a stretch of dock to enable me to bring him ashore immediately, then your master will be given the choice as to whether it is your head or his that adorns the gates of this city, when I finally find someone to speak to who is not an idiot. Perhaps this will help you to decide …’

He fished Osroes’ crown from the bag in which it had been carried from Nisibis, holding it aloft.

‘This is the crown of Media! And that man is the son of your emperor!’