Fire in the East wor-1

by Harry Sidebottom

  The wider picture grew worse after a private conversation over a few drinks with the legionaries from the boat put the 'wonderful news' into context. Far from crushing the barbarians on the Danube, Gallienus had had to buy peace from the Carpi, the tribe he had been fighting there, so that he was free to move to the Rhine, where the Franks and the Alamanni were causing havoc. The new Caesar was just a child, a mere figurehead left on the Danube, where real power was in the hands of the general Ingenuus. The flood waters of the Rhyndacus might have saved Cyzicus but nothing had stopped the Goths sacking Chalcedon, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Prusa and Apamea. The whole of Asia Minor was threatened. The general Felix, accompanied by the great siege engineer Celsus, had been sent to hold Byzantium. Valerian himself, with the main field army, had marched into Cappadocia to try to drive the Goths from Asia Minor.

  Bad as the news of public affairs was, Ballista was more disappointed that there was no letter from Julia. He missed his wife very much. It had not been beyond the bounds of possibility that a letter written by her in Rome or from Sicily could have found its way to the eastern extremity of the imperium, to Circesium and on to the boat. With any letter Julia wrote she was bound to enclose a drawing by their son, a scribble of such abstraction that only the boy himself could tell what it depicted. It was ten months since Ballista had seen his son. Isangrim would be growing fast. Changing quickly, but hopefully not out of all recognition.

  Battening down his disappointments, Ballista turned back to marshalling his meagre resources to defend the town. The ten new legionaries were assigned to the century of Lucius Fabius at the Porta Aquaria on the grounds that their experience as boatmen might be of more use there than elsewhere. Casualties had been surprisingly light on the day the great battering ram had been burnt and only a few had been lost to occasional Persian arrows or in unfortunate forays until the disaster in which the young optio Prosper died. The centuries of Legio IIII on the desert wall still mustered nearly fifty men each, the turmae of Cohors XX forty. Ballista had reinforced them with another hundred of the levy bowmen from the numerus of Iarhai. The northerner hoped that serving alongside the regulars would both instill resolve in the conscripted townsmen and encourage their expertise. He was very aware that it might go differently, that the lax discipline of the levies might infect the regulars. So far, things seemed to be going as Ballista wished, but he would have liked it if Iarhai would appear more often on the battlements. The grizzled caravan protector seemed ever less inclined to have anything to do with the military affairs of the siege.

  As the season advanced to high summer the temperature grew ever hotter. From the walls of Arete mirages could often be seen shimmering out in the desert, making distances difficult to judge, masking the movement of the Persians. For a northerner, the heat was almost intolerable. As soon as clothes were put on, they were soaked in sweat. Sword belts and armour straps chafed, rubbing skin raw. But that was not the worst of it. There was dust everywhere. It got into eyes, ears, mouths, down into lungs. Everyone who was not a native of the town had a persistent hacking cough. The dust somehow penetrated into the very pores of your skin. And then there were the flies and gnats, continually buzzing and stinging, covering any morsel of food, swarming on the brim of every drink.

  There were only two moments of the day when it was less than hellish to be outside. In the evening, the temperature dropped as a cooler breeze blew over the Euphrates and the sky turned briefly a lapis-lazuli blue. Just pre-dawn, the wild fowl flew and the bowl of the sky was a delicate pink before the sun was hauled free of the horizon to begin its task of punishing men.

  At noon on 6 July, the first day of the festival of the Ludi Apollinares, Ballista was lying in the pool of the frigidarium avoiding the heat of the day. As the bathhouse was the private one attached to the palace of the Dux Ripae, the northerner was on his own. Castricius, his latest standard-bearer, walked in and saluted smartly.

  'A large dustcloud has been spotted off to the south, our side of the river, heading this way.'

  By the time Ballista had reached his accustomed post on the Palmyrene Gate the dustcloud was unmistakable. A tall, dense, isolated column, it could be caused by nothing but an enormous train of men and animals marching upriver. Most likely, the vanguard would reach the Sassanid camp by early afternoon the next day.

  The Persian column made good time. By noon its forerunners could be seen approaching the camp. Line after line after line of camels stretched away as far as the eye could see. Swaying gently, all were heavily laden, some were hauling things along the ground. Ballista saw that there were next to no accompanying troops. The Sassanids were supremely confident.

  'What is it? There seem to be very few armed men. That must be good.' Several soldiers smiled at Demetrius's words.

  'Unfortunately not,' said Ballista. 'They already have all the warriors they need.'

  'Probably more than they want,' said Mamurra. 'They outnumber us by so many they actually could do with fewer mouths to feed. And the danger of plague is always greater with a really large army.'

  'Then those camels are carrying food?' Demetrius asked.

  'I do not think that we are going to be that lucky.' Ballista wiped the sweat out of his eyes. 'I am very much afraid they carry timber.' The soldiers within earshot nodded gravely but, seeing that the young Greek seemed none the wiser, Ballista continued. 'One of the things that has kept us safe, kept the Persians so quiet for the last couple of months, is the lack of timber around here. What little there was we burnt before they arrived. You need wood for pretty much all siege works – to build artillery, siege towers, battering rams, ladders, mantlets, tortoises and all types of screens. You need wood for pit props if you are mining. Taking a town calls for lots of wood – unless, of course, you just offer the defenders big sacks of gold to go away.'

  'If only, Dominus, if only,' said Castricius.

  'Yes, indeed, Draconarius, it is a pity that the Sassanids are such bloodthirsty fuckers that they would rather impale us than bribe us.'

  It took two full days before the last of the caravan arrived. The Persian camp now flowed over all the plain as far as the hills. Camels bellowed, men shouted, trumpets called. Although all seemed chaotic, some organizing principle must have been at work. Within a day, carpenters could be seen hard at work, the fires of mobile field forges were fired, and strings of unloaded camels were heading off to the north-west.

  The camels returned a day later. Gangs of men could be seen unloading bricks. This time it was the praefectus fabrum, Mamurra, who explained the finer points of siege engineering to the young Greek.

  'They are going to build a siege ramp to try to overtop the wall at some point. Now, a siege ramp, an agger, is mainly built up out of earth and rubble. But the soil round here is sand, spreads as easily as one of Maximus's women, so they need retaining walls. That is what the bricks are for. The reptiles have not been as idle as we thought. They have been making sun-dried bricks somewhere out of sight, probably up in one of the villages in the hills to the north-west. With all that wood they are making vinae, mobile shelters for the poor bastards who are going to have to build the agger, and artillery to try and fuck our ballistae and stop us killing them all.'

  'Thucydides tells that it took the Spartans seventy days to build their siege ramp at Plataea,' said Demetrius hopefully.

  'If we can delay them that long it would be good,' Mamurra replied.

  'Is there nothing we can do to stop them?'

  Ballista slapped a fly on his arm. 'No need for despair.' He looked closely at the squashed insect and flicked it away. 'I can think of something that might work.'

  During the night of ao July the Sassanids moved their artillery, thirty ballistae, into range opposite the southern end of the desert wall. Sunrise saw them emplaced behind stout screens some 200 paces out. The artillery duel began again. By lunchtime long chains of vinae were in place, making three long tunnels, at the front of which the beginnings of the ramp began to be evident
. The long period of inactivity was over. The siege of Arete had entered a new and deadly phase.

  'You look like a man offering a bun to an elephant. Come on, hand it over.' Although Ballista spoke with a smile, the doctor was plainly terrified. He was a civilian. His shabby tunic suggested that he was not at the peak of his profession. He held the arrow in both hands. Or rather, he had both arms held out, palms up, the arrow resting on them. His whole demeanour said, 'This is nothing to do with me.'

  Seeing that the doctor was not going to move, Ballista slowly stepped forward. Making no sudden movements, as if the doctor were a nervous horse, he took the arrow. The northerner studied it closely. In most respects it was unremarkable, about two and a half foot long, with a three-bladed and barbed iron arrowhead about two inches long. On this, blood and human tissue were still evident. As with most eastern arrows, the shaft consisted of two parts, a tapering wooden footing joined to a longer shaft of reed. For reinforcement, the join was bound with animal tendon. The shaft was decorated with bands of paint, one of black and two of red. What was left of the three feathers which made up the fletching appeared not to be coloured but a natural white. Possibly goose feathers, Ballista thought.

  The arrow shaft bore various cuts and nicks, no doubt the legacy of whatever hooked and hideous instruments the doctor had employed during extraction. But what made this arrow so unusual and potentially so significant was the strip of papyrus unravelling from it. The papyrus had been bound around the very end of the shaft. The feathers of the fletching had been glued on top of it. The papyrus was some three inches long and about half an inch wide. Its inner face was covered with Greek characters written in a small, neat hand. There was no punctuation, but of course that was quite normal. Ballista tried to read it, but he could make out no words. All that emerged was a random-seeming sequence of Greek letters. He detached the coded message and handed it to Demetrius.

  'Who did you dig this out of?'

  The doctor swallowed hard. 'A soldier from the numerus of Ogelos, Kyrios, one of the conscripted townsmen.' The man stopped. He was sweating.

  'Why did he come to you?'

  'Two of his fellow soldiers brought him, Kyrios. They had taken him to the doctor of the numerus, but he was drunk.' The man stood straighter. 'I never drink to excess, Kyrios.' He beamed at Ballista. He was still sweating.

  'And did you find out where he was when he was hit?'

  'Oh yes, his friends told me. They said that he had always been unlucky. He was not on the wall, not even on duty. They had been drinking in The Krater all evening. They were on their way home, back to the tower just east of the postern gate. They were crossing that bit of open ground when, whoosh, out of the darkness, the arrow came down over the southern wall and hit him in the shoulder.'

  'Did he survive?'

  'Oh yes, I am a very fine doctor.' His tone betrayed his own surprise at this outcome.

  'I can see that.' Ballista stepped towards him again. This time he came right up to him, using his size to intimidate. 'You will not mention this to anyone. If I hear that you have…' He let the threat hang.

  'No, no one, Kyrios, no one at all.'

  'Good. Give the soldier's name and that of his friends to my secretary and you are free to go. You have played the part of a conscientious citizen very well.'

  'Thank you, Kyrios, thank you very much.' He virtually ran to Demetrius, who had his stylus ready.

  There was a loud tearing sound of something big travelling fast through the air followed by a huge crash. The doctor visibly jumped. A fine trickle of plaster came down from the ceiling. The artillery duel had been going on for six days now. Clearly the doctor had no desire to be as near to it as this requisitioned house close behind the western wall. As soon as he had gabbled the names of the soldiers, he turned and fled.

  Demetrius folded his writing block and hung it back on his belt. He picked up the papyrus again and studied it. To give him time, Ballista walked across the room and poured some drinks. He gave one each to Mamurra, Castricius and Maximus, put one down near the secretary and, sitting on a table, began to sip his own.

  There was the awful sound of another incoming artillery stone, another crash, and again a fine drizzle of plaster. Mamurra commented that one of the Persian stone-throwers was overshooting. Ballista nodded.

  At last Demetrius looked up. He smiled apologetically. 'I am sorry, Kyrios. I cannot make out the code. At least not straight away. Most codes are really very simple – you substitute the next letter in the alphabet for the one you mean and the like; sometimes even simpler: you make a small mark by the letters that are meant to be read, or you write them at a slightly different level from the others – but I am afraid that this does not seem to be so simple. If I may I will keep it and study it when I have no other duties. Maybe eventually I will unravel it.'

  'Thank you,' said Ballista. He sat and drank, thinking. They all sat in silence. At intervals of about a minute there was another crash and more plaster drifted down to add to the fine dust which covered every surface.

  Ballista once more felt the lack of Antigonus; he would have been ideal for what Ballista wanted done. Mamurra was already too busy; Ballista wanted Maximus with him…

  'Castricius, I want you to talk to the three soldiers. Find out exactly when and where the man was hit. Swear them to secrecy. Threaten them a little to make sure they do not talk. You had better be quick talking to the wounded one before he dies of some infection.'

  'Dominus.'

  'Then pick three of the equites singulares and have them keep a discreet watch on the area. It is too much to hope that one of them will be hit by an arrow with a coded message tied to it, but I want to know who they see in that part of town.'

  Again the standard-bearer simply said, 'Dominus.'

  'Anyone hanging around there might be our traitor looking for the message he was expecting but never received. At least now we have positive proof that we still have a traitor among us.'

  A crescent moon hung low on the horizon. Above, the constellations slowly turned – Orion, the Bear, the Pleiades. It was the fifteenth of August, the ides. Ballista knew that, if they were still alive to see the Pleiades set in November, they would be safe.

  It was deadly quiet on the battered south-west tower of Arete. Everyone was listening. Usually it seemed unnaturally quiet in the evening when the artillery duel ceased for the day but, now, as they strained to hear one particular sound, the night outside the tower was full of noise. A dog barked somewhere in the town. Nearer at hand a child cried. Faint noises drifted across the plain from the Sassanid camp: the whinny of a horse, a burst of shouting, snatches of a plaintive tune picked out on a stringed instrument.

  'There, do you hear it?' Haddudad's voice was an urgent whisper.

  Ballista could not hear it. He turned to Maximus and Demetrius. In the dim light they both looked uncertain. They all continued to strain their ears. The night grew quieter.

  'There, there it is again.' The voice of Iarhai's mercenary captain was even softer.

  Now Ballista thought he half heard it. He stilled his breathing. Yes, there it was: the chink, chink sound Haddudad had described, gone as soon as the northerner heard it. He leant out over the parapet, cupping his hand to his right ear. The sound was gone. If it had existed at all, it was covered by the noise of a Persian patrol making its way along the southern ravine. The scatter of stones dislodged in the near darkness, the creak of leather, the clang of metal on metal – all rang loud. They must have reached a picket. The listeners on the tower heard the low challenge 'Peroz-Shapur' and the answer: 'Mazda.'

  Ballista and the others shifted their positions and breathed deeply as they waited for the patrol to pass out of earshot up on to the plain.

  The volume of the night resumed its normal elusive texture. An owl hooted. Another answered. And in the silence that followed, there it was: floating up from somewhere' down in the ravine towards the plain, the chink, chink, chink of pickaxe on stone.
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  'You are right, Haddudad, they are digging a tunnel.' Ballista listened some more until somewhere behind him in the town a door opened and a burst of laughter and raised voices obliterated any other sound.

  'We should send out a reconnaissance party. Find out exactly where it starts. Then we can estimate the route it will take.' Haddudad still spoke in a whisper. 'I would be happy to go. I can pick the men in the morning and go tomorrow night.'

  'Thank you, but no.' Ballista had been about to call for Antigonus. Then he remembered. He thought for some moments. 'We cannot wait until tomorrow night. If we make any preparations for a scouting party the traitor may find a way to warn the enemy. Our men would walk into a trap. No, it must be tonight, now. I will go with Maximus.'

  There was a collective intake of breath, then several voices spoke at once. Quietly but determinedly Demetrius, Haddudad and his two sentries in their different ways said that this was madness. Maximus said nothing.

  'I have made my decision. None of you will speak of this. Haddudad, you and your men will stay here. Demetrius, go and find me some ashes or burnt cork and meet Maximus and me at the southern postern gate.'

  Haddudad and his men saluted. Demetrius hesitated for some time before going down the steps.

  By the time Demetrius had fetched the camouflage from the requisitioned house that served as military headquarters and reached the postern gate, Ballista had told the plan to Cocceius, the decurion in command of the turma of Cohors XX stationed there. Ballista and Maximus were going to leave by the gate. It was to be left open until dawn. Then it was to be shut. It was not to be opened again unless the Dux Ripae and his bodyguard appeared before it in daylight, when the guard could be certain they were alone. In the event of them not returning, Acilius Glabrio was to assume command of the defence of Arete. Ballista had written a short order to this effect.

  'Sure, is that not enlisting the wolf to be your sheepdog, thinking as you do that he himself might be the traitor?' Maximus had said in Celtic.