‘It looks like we go on,’ he said, coming to sit down beside them.
Dido looked up. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘My warriors would not wish to run away with their tails between their legs because of a minor problem, Tiro. They are desert folk. They are not afraid of a small thing like this well.’
A cloud of dust on the eastern horizon represented the retreat of the Rhampsinitus caravan. ‘It deterred their fellow countrymen,’ said Flaminius wryly. ‘And I can’t say I blame them. They leave us with a mystery. Who filled in the well? The Garamantes? Do they operate all the way out here, out in Nasamonean country? And if so, why is Claudius Mercator so sanguine about winning through to Phazania? Besides, if the Garamantes are so hostile, what hope do we have of opening up a trade route? Won’t the king of the Garamantes disapprove? Claudius Mercator didn’t do very well last time…’
‘If you’re so full of misgivings,’ said Dido, ‘why are you backing this expedition?’
Flaminius shrugged. ‘I have my reasons,’ he said cagily.
‘Yes,’ said Dido coldly. ‘And knowing what kind of man you are, Tiro, I can be certain they’re not straightforward. Still,’ she said, relenting, ‘I understand what you mean. Either Claudius Mercator is keeping something back, something that neither we nor Rhampsinitus knew—some secret that will make getting to Garama a genuine possibility…’ She broke off.
‘Or?’ Flaminius promoted her.
She looked levelly at him. ‘Or our bones are destined to bleach beneath the desert sun. We have water supplies only for a few more days. Unless we can find wells to provide drinking water, or unless Claudius Mercator truly can provide us with a short cut, we’re doomed.’
Flaminius nodded. ‘What Claudius Mercator has in mind remains to be seen,’ he said. ‘Naturally he’s been guarded, to frustrate chancers like Rhampsinitus. But your own reasons for joining the caravan must be very pressing,’ he probed, ‘if you’re willing to trust your life to the claims of a known fantasist.’
Dido didn’t reply.
Amasis looked up from where he was practising the fighting technique Dido had been showing him. ‘Are we going to get in any more fights, Uncle Gaius? Do you reckon? Do you?’ He thrust the reed at Flaminius, who snatched it from his hand.
‘I sent you to the back of the caravan, boy,’ he said. ‘And what did I see? You fighting two nomads. You could have been killed! Several men were. Did you see them? Blood and guts on the sand? What will your aunt say to me if I go back and tell her that it’s your bones bleaching in the desert sun?’ Angrily, he shook the reed. ‘I should beat you with this for your disobedience, boy.’
Instead he snapped it over his knee.
‘He fought well,’ Dido protested, ‘for an Egyptian. You can’t cosset and coddle the lad forever. We’re out in the desert now. Only the strong survive. There will be many more fights like that one before we reach the temple, and you won’t be able to save the day with your usual sneaky tricks.’
She rose and walked away. As she joined her warriors Flaminius watched her in silence.
‘Temple? What did she mean, temple?’ Amasis asked, looking mournfully at the fragments of reed.
‘Just what I was wondering,’ said Flaminius thoughtfully.
—7—
Libyan Desert, Nasamonean territory, November 124 AD
The journey continued across the wind-blown sands, where mirages gave the illusion of rivers winding across the horizon, only to vanish as the travellers drew closer. Fear of further attack receded as the dusty days and chilling nights passed by. Whoever had filled in the well made no attack on the caravan, although on the second and the fourth day out, Flaminius thought he saw distant dust clouds, suggesting many horses and men at their rear. For a while he was anxious, expecting their mysterious shadows to attack whenever they made camp for the night, but nothing happened. He almost forgot about the sight, although he did mention it to Dido.
‘You think we are being trailed?’ she asked as they rode along together.
‘It seems likely,’ said Flaminius. This was after the second appearance of the dust clouds. As on the previous day, the source of the dust was beyond the horizon, but it was moving, for certain, and it was heading in the same direction as their caravan. ‘After all, why would nomads, whether wide ranging Garamantian robbers or Nasamoneans, fill in a well and not make an attack?’
‘But Claudius Mercator, all due respect to him, brought enough water from Ammonium to last us a week,’ said Dido, indicating the bulging water skins that still weighed down many of the camels. ‘Where other merchants would depend on the wells and use their beasts of burden to transport merchandise, Claudius Mercator concentrates on keeping us alive.’ She patted the case at her saddle bow, which contained a hunting bow. ‘Enough game is available, even out here, to supplement our provisions.’
Flaminius nodded. ‘But the robbers don’t know that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Unless they have inside information.’ She returned his gaze blandly.
‘Do you think someone among us is a traitor?’ asked Amasis suddenly, in a loud, penetrating voice. He was sitting pillion with Flaminius, and had been unusually silent throughout the exchange. Flaminius scowled at him to be quiet and glanced around at the other riders. No one seemed to have overheard the boy, which was a mercy. Unless they were concealing their reaction. Which would suggest that they were traitors indeed…
Dido shook her head. ‘We’ll face whatever comes when it comes,’ she said decisively. ‘No need to conjure up terrors where there are none. This desert has evil spirits enough without evoking more.’
She spurred her mount and galloped up the line to speak with Gesco and another Nasamonean called Hamilcar. Flaminius watched her go. Had the talk of traitors unnerved her?
The following day, the tenth since they left Ammonium, the land began to change. Although no less barren and arid, it was now beginning to rise, as if they had reached the shores of the sea of sand and were now travelling into a rocky hinterland. Crossing a rocky ridge they came down into a fertile valley where date palms towered from amidst verdant vegetation. It seemed momentarily as if they had left the desert behind them. Flaminius glimpsed the roof of a temple amongst the trees some way off.
‘Is this the Garamantian kingdom?’ asked Amasis, wide-eyed.
Claudius Mercator was riding past, and he laughed, overhearing the boy’s words.
‘No, lad,’ he said. ‘Remember your geography instruction? This is Augila, the chief oasis of the Nasamoneans, only halfway on the journey. What did I teach you?’
‘“Next to the Ammonians, at the distance of ten days’ journey along the ridge of sand, there is a second salt-hill like the Ammonian, and a second spring. The country round is inhabited, and the place bears the name of Augila. Hither it is that the Nasamoneans come to gather in the dates…”.’ the boy began, parrot fashion.
Before Amasis could continue his recital, a group of men rode up. They outnumbered the expedition three to one.
‘You must pay the tax, Romans,’ said their leader in broken Greek. ‘You are no longer in the empire. Pay us a talent in gold, or goods to that value, or you will progress no further.’ His men underlined the threat by drawing swords.
‘Robbers!’ said Amasis in wonder.
‘What right have you to demand tax from peaceful travellers?’ called Vabalathus.
‘You are foreigners,’ said the leader. ‘You may stay at Augila and refill your water skins, but first you must pay us the tax. We are not robbers, as the boy claims, but the rightful owners of this country. And since the Romans have driven us out of our hereditary pastures, we must raise our own taxes however we can.’
‘Augila was the most important town of the Nasamoneans,’ Claudius Mercator told his fellow travellers, after handing over a payment in merchandise, ‘but after the tax revolt, it became their only centre. The Nasamoneans came here for the date harvest, in the old days, yet now it has become their base for their depredations. But
there is a temple to Jupiter Ammon, twin to that in Ammonium. In its heyday, Augila was a counterpart to Ammonium. Isn’t that right, Gesco?’
The one eyed Nasamonean leader glanced at him, startled, and gave a quick nod, then muttered something in his beard. Like the other Nasamoneans, he had made no attempt to speak to the Augilans.
He led the way through the palms. Beyond stretched open fields where women tilled the soil, and on the far side was a lake, on whose shore a great temple stood. Houses lay on every hand, and the oasis was busy with travellers. When they rode into the temple precincts, they found the place quiet apart from a few worshippers and a couple of priests who wore expensive robes and expected rich offerings.
‘We’ll make camp by the lake,’ the merchant decided, looking around the fertile area, ‘and offer up sacrifice to Ammon for a successful journey. Then we’ll continue in the morning.’
He went to chivvy the slaves into filling the empty water skins down by the lake.
The next morning, they departed the oasis and began to make their way through the barren hills. They were now travelling west-south-west, having been heading due west since departing Ammonium. All was still and quiet. There was no sign of other merchants. Antelopes grazed on sparse vegetation, pheasants were to be seen among the rocks, and the Nasamoneans spent much of the day hunting them while giving wild whooping cries.
Flaminius felt strangely uneasy at this noise, which seemed to defy the sombre spirits that hung over the land. Perhaps the Nasamoneans felt the same, and this was their way of defying the unseen presences. The air was still, but seemed to be filled with grains of sand. Looking back over his shoulder as they climbed out of a defile near sunset, he saw, very distantly, perhaps as far back as Augila, the same dust cloud that had dogged them for much of their desert journey.
They camped that evening and went on in the early morning. This time greater dust clouds were visible on the horizon ahead of them. So many that at first Flaminius was afraid that an entire army was massing. But when he heard the truth from Claudius Mercator, he did not feel any easier in his mind.
‘It’s not the season,’ the merchant said darkly. ‘I ride in winter to avoid such problems.’
‘What is it?’ Amasis asked. ‘It looks like Alexander the Great and his whole army is on the march!’
Claudius Mercator shook his head. ‘Those are no ghosts,’ he said ominously. ‘It is a sandstorm.’
Flaminius turned to look again. Now the entire skyline was boiling with great clouds of brown and grey, swirling and rolling across the rocky hills towards them. His mouth felt dry, drier than the desert wastes that surrounded them. He could feel it in the air, although even the outliers of the storm had yet to reach them, tiny atoms of dust, stinging against his face. As they plodded on into what seemed like certain doom, the first gusts of wind stirred up dust devils.
‘We can’t ride into this,’ Dido announced, looking up from a muted conversation with Gesco, who trotted at her side. ‘Merchant, that storm is big. What provision have you made for this?’
Claudius Mercator shook his head, repeating his assertion that this was not sandstorm season. ‘If you had ever been as foolish as to cross the desert in spring, you would know that those months are plagued with storms that come up from the interior. No one crosses the desert in spring unless they have good cause. But this is winter. There should be no storms.’
The dust devils were growing, demon princes of sand that tugged insistently at the manes of horses, the cloaks of travellers, the tails of sheep and camels. It felt like a hailstorm, but the air was hot. Hot and dry and sterile.
Still the clouds of dust rolled over the craggy hills towards them. Fear clutched at Flaminius’ heart. He glanced nervously at Claudius Mercator to see the man’s lips moving as if in prayer.
‘The gods can’t help us now,’ he shouted above the growing roar of the storm. ‘You fool! We’ve got to get into shelter.’
Galvanised by his voice, Claudius Mercator pointed towards the little valley below. A line of rocky cliffs might provide some kind of protection. His headdress was whipping wildly in the wind. He opened his mouth to shout something then fell back, choking, as sand filled it.
Flaminius whipped up his mount and galloped towards the low valley. In a frightened rout, the rest of the caravan followed him. Even as they came down to the valley floor, the outliers of the sandstorm poured over the hills like an invading army, and descended upon them.
The universe seemed to plummet into the chaos from which it arose. Shouting futilely against the deafening roar of the storm, Flaminius urged his mount on, but it was blown off its hoofs. He found himself flying through a cataclysm of flying sand, to hit the hard ground so hard he was momentarily stunned.
When he came back to himself, the storm was fully upon them. Wailing, disembodied voices shrieked and cackled all around him—the voices of spirits? Every superstitious fear ran rampant through his mind. All he could see was a fog of flying sand in which struggled dark figures of men and beasts. Someone grabbed hold of him and he turned to see Dido, hands gripping his tunic, her eyes wide with terror, her mouth opening and closing. Flaminius pulled her down into the shelter of a ledge of rock.
She thrust her lips to his ear and shrieked, ‘We’re going to die! This is it, Tiro! This is the end!’ Then she seized his head and turned it. He felt the hot warmth of her lips upon his. ‘Love me!’ she wailed. ‘Love me!’
She seemed to have lost her mind with fear. Tightly she clung on to him. He was sure she was sobbing. He had seen her fight in the arena before immense crowds. And yet she was terrified. Frightened for her life.
But that made sense, really, because surely she was right. They were going to die.
She clung to him and he held her close. She smothered him with kisses. Her body was warm and soft against him. He found himself responding. He tugged at her loincloth, she at his tunic. Free at last, they sank into the boiling sand together…
Flaminius woke again to stifling hot, blind nightmare. He was buried beneath what felt like tons of sand. Wildly he struggled. Something else was there in the choking darkness, struggling like him. He panicked, lashing out.
In a spray of sand he sprang out into bright sunlight. Gasping for breath he looked about him.
The level sands burst open and out came Dido, choking and wheezing, her face blue. Flaminius seized her and hauled her and himself from the sand where they had been entombed. Panting for breath, brushing sand from their bodies, they peered around.
The sand lay flat and wide on all sides. In places, large hummocks showed where rocky hillocks had been. Dotted around them nearby were smaller hummocks. The closest one, in the lea of a rock, was a camel, its fur thick with sand. It looked like it had asphyxiated.
‘We were almost the same,’ Flaminius murmured.
He heard noises from behind the camel, coughing and wheezing. Seizing the carcase in both hands he rolled it over bodily. Later on, thinking back, he marvelled that he had been able to do this, but somehow fear had given him Herculean strength.
Trapped in the space between the camel and the rock was a small figure tucked in a foetal position. Two beady eyes peered up from a face dusted with sand. Flaminius reached in and helped Amasis clamber out into the sunlight.
The boy brushed himself down vigorously. He looked at Flaminius then at Dido. ‘What were you two doing?’ he asked. When neither answered, he scanned their sandy surroundings. ‘Are we in the same place? Where is everyone?’
Dido was investigating another hummock. She brushed sand away to reveal a face. It was Gesco. Gently, she closed his madly staring eyes. She rose, and dusted herself down.
‘No need to bury him,’ she said. ‘He’s already interred.’
A shadow slid across the sand. ‘I read that the Nasamoneans insist on being buried in a sitting posture.’
Flaminius whirled round to see Demetrius standing atop a hillock. His clothes were also in tatters, and he leant on the
broken shaft of a spear.
‘You’re alive,’ Flaminius exclaimed as the old man limped down to join them. It seemed miraculous that the Greek scholar of all people should remain while tough old Gesco was dead. ‘Have you seen any other survivors?’
Demetrius shook his head. ‘I found many bodies,’ he said, ‘but most were of livestock. I also found some slaves, some other Nasamoneans.’ He looked curiously at Dido. ‘It is strange that you are so ignorant of your own warrior’s burial rites.’
‘Never mind that now,’ said Flaminius. His tempest of superstition at the height of the storm had blown itself out, and practical matters were more pressing. ‘We must find the others, if any survive. We must also find supplies.’ He gestured at the endless sands. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, and it’s getting hot. We’ve got to find shelter and food and water.’
‘We should go back to Augila,’ said Amasis. ‘They can’t rob us this time, we’ve got nothing.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Flaminius. ‘I’m glad someone’s using their brains.’ He looked uncertain. ‘Does anyone know which way we should go?’
‘We came from the east-north-east,’ said Demetrius. He glanced at the sun. ‘Depending on the time of day, that could be… this way,’ he pointed in one direction, ‘or that. Is it morning or afternoon? Does anyone know? I must have lost consciousness at the height of the storm and all sense of time has left me.’
‘Same here,’ said Flaminius. ‘And Amasis never knows what day it is.’ He aimed an affectionate mock punch at the boy.
‘Going by my belly,’ Dido patted it, ‘it’s a long time since we last ate. From what the merchant was saying, we had only a few more days’ journey to the borders of the country of the Garamantes. I vote that we go that way instead of turning back. Let’s look around for supplies and survivors.’
After some debate they agreed to this course, though Flaminius had misgivings. They found no survivors, man or beast. They did find one full water skin, however, and a bag containing dates. Flaminius had his sword, Dido her bow. The latter would be useful for hunting game, the former for fighting off robbers.
The Kingdom That Rome Forgot Page 6