Menander beamed at him and chuckled. He saw the skull on the little ledge, and picked it up with an expression of distaste. ‘An unsuccessful predecessor,’ he murmured, gazing deep into its bony orbits. ‘No doubt climbed up here to survey the land around, like us.’ With a sudden flourish, he flung it out into empty space. As Flaminius watched the white shape plummet in a parabola towards the distant rock, the slave added, ‘Come with me, sir. You can meet your fellow survivors.’
‘But…’ Flaminius glanced back down the cliff to where Dido and the other two now waited patiently for his return. Amasis was staring, puzzled, towards the rocks some way off where the skull had landed, smashing into pieces as it did.
Already Menander had vanished round the corner. Flaminius hurried after him.
The ledge widened out as it curved round the cone, and an unstable slope of rocks led up the side towards the peak. Menander was already halfway up it. He looked back briefly at Flaminius toiling below, and his voice drifted down.
‘Make haste, sir,’ he called, then turned and continued his ascent.
Flaminius scrambled up after him, leaping from rock to rock, hunting for better routes up the slope. As he did so, other voices drifted down, engaged in relaxed conversation. He thought he heard Claudius Mercator’s fulsome tones, and Vabalathus’ boastful voice.
‘…who’s that, Menander?’ Claudius Mercator was asking as Flaminius pushed his way up between two baking hot black rocks. ‘That young fop? I thought he died in the sandstorm. No stamina, these young men about town…Oh.’
His voice broke off. Flaminius climbed up onto a long narrow ridge of rock to find Menander facing a small group consisting of the merchant, the Arab, and a semi naked Nasamonean who he didn’t really know, but who he remembered had been Gesco’s right hand man. All turned to stare at him.
‘So it’s true,’ said Vabalathus, lip curling. ‘The straggler returns. How you survived alone for so long…’
‘I’m not alone,’ said Flaminius, striding up to join them. ‘I’ve been travelling across this hellish wasteland with others…’
‘That catamite of yours survived?’ Claudius Mercator said sympathetically. ‘He must have been a great comfort in your loneliness.’
‘He’s not my catamite,’ Flaminius snapped. ‘He’s supposed to be your apprentice. And he hasn’t been my only companion. Demetrius the Greek and Dido were both with me.’
‘Dido lives?’ asked Claudius Mercator eagerly. ‘That is good! The rest of us are camped in the valley below.’ He gestured to the west.
From up here it was possible to see, far away in the heat haze of the west, across seemingly endless fields of ash, the shimmer of vegetation. Indeed, as Flaminius examined the awe inspiring view, he noticed spots of greenery amongst the basalt desert. Small lakes and ponds of trapped rainfall dotted the black stone floor, and around these grew shrubs and bushes. But these were occasional oases in an otherwise bleak expanse of black rock and ash. On the far horizon was something else, something green. An oasis, perhaps, but far larger than Ammonium or Augila.
Flaminius shaded his eyes and peered futilely into the haze. All he could make out from here were... fields? Forests? He couldn’t tell. But it was a large tract of fertile country in the depths of the desert.
‘Is that Phazania?’ he asked. ‘Menander told me you can see it from up here.’ He lowered his hand and looked about him. The ridge they stood upon was the lip of a great bowl of rock, like the cone of Vesuvius. Below him on that side the vent descended as if into the depths of Hades, but in its shadowed depths he thought he saw sand, as if the crater had been filled in by one sandstorm or other.
On every hand, the black waste swept away into the haze, range after range of similar peaks marching away like well-disciplined legions.
Claudius Mercator nodded. ‘That is the Garamantian country. And by travelling this way we have shortened the journey by several days. A pity that a most unseasonable sandstorm should have caught us napping.’ He looked bleak. ‘Half our merchandise was lost, most of our sheep and camels, and indeed many of the Nasamoneans, plus all the slaves bar Menander.’
Flaminius grinned bitterly, noting how the merchant prioritised these things. ‘And how did you escape the sandstorm?’ he asked curiously.
‘I was almost lost,’ Claudius Mercator said frankly, ‘as we thought you and the others were until now. Hamilcar here was very upset to think that Dido had been killed…’
The Nasamonean (was that a Nasamonean name? Flaminius didn’t think so) nodded darkly but said nothing. Hamilcar was a bearded man of Flaminius’ age, with wide, visionary eyes.
‘If it hadn’t been for Vabalathus,’ Claudius Mercator went on, ‘we might all have been drowned in the sand. It was he who encouraged us to ride onwards through the storm.’
‘We lost a few in the process, but it was every man for himself,’ Vabalathus added. ‘I remember a time in the Arabian Desert…’
‘So you just rode out on me!’ said Flaminius. ‘It’s good to know who you can trust on an expedition like this.’
Vabalathus smiled coldly. ‘What matters is that Phazania is opened up to trade and that we investors receive a steady return.’
‘Neither Demetrius nor I would have seen any return on our investment,’ Flaminius remarked, ‘buried in the sands of the Libyan Desert.’ He peered over the edge. A long way below, at the foot of the great slope, smoke was trailing upwards into the air, and he caught the briefest whiff of cooking fires. ‘Is that where you’re camped?’ he inquired.
Claudius Mercator nodded. ‘We came up here to see how far we had to go before we reached Phazania,’ he said. ‘This is not the route I took last time; that lay some distance to the north. It was Hamilcar who suggested I send Menander to look back and see if any of the others were still with us. You have him to thank. Otherwise you might have been wandering these barren wastes until the end of time.’
‘I left the others on the far flank of the mountain,’ Flaminius told them. ‘Are you going back to your camp now? I’d better go and collect them. I’ll meet you at the western foot,’ he added over his shoulder as he hurried towards the slope.
Brimming with excitement, he made his way back down. Only a short while ago, he had thought he was going to die here in the desert, far from any life or civilisation. He had thought the few survivors of the sandstorm doomed to wander until thirst and hunger finished them off, that they would never find the Garamantian kingdom, or anything else. But now that he had seen that far-off fertile land, that lost valley in the midst of the sands, he felt renewed hope.
Quite what would happen when they reached this mirage of a country, he didn’t really know. Claudius Mercator wanted to open it up for trade. That would entail some fierce negotiations, since it seemed that the king of the Garamantes wasn’t keen on foreigners. Maybe they would find supporters amongst discontented nobles or even an ambitious crown prince. Divide and rule was the Roman way.
Not that Phazania was ever likely to become a province of the empire. Whatever politicking the merchant would need to stoop to in order to fulfil his mission was of no great interest to Flaminius. His own mission was far more important.
It would take a long time before they reached the city of Garama, he was quite sure of that. Even now that they would be riding again, on camels or other mounts, it was still likely to take at least a ten days’ journey to reach the city—the temple—the veil of Tanit. And after that? After he had committed this sacrilegious theft (quite how he would pull that off, he had yet to determine), even if the curse of the goddess didn’t pursue him, the chances were that mad eyed fanatic priests would pursue him across the Earth to regain their relic.
‘Tiro!’
He looked up. Advancing towards him along the ledge was Dido. ‘Tiro!’ she said. ‘I thought you must have fallen! When you didn’t come back for so long I thought—that is, we thought… Did you climb right to the peak?’
He embraced her. ‘Good news!
’ he said. ‘We’re not alone in this wilderness. I met the others. At least some of them. Vabalathus, Claudius Mercator…’
She drew back and examined him closely. ‘Did any of my warriors survive?’
He nodded. ‘Some of them,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Hamilcar is with the merchant.’
They started walking along the ledge to the place where both of them had climbed up. ‘Hamilcar…’ he added slowly. ‘That’s not a very Nasamonean sounding name…’
She looked at him defiantly. ‘It’s not? How many Nasamoneans have you met?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe none at all,’ he told her. ‘Hamilcar is a Punic name. Carthaginian. Like your own.’
‘For your information,’ she said tartly, ‘Punic names are common amongst the nomads. Just as they sometimes worship Egyptian gods like Jupiter Ammon, they also sometimes adopt Punic names.’
‘Do the nomads worship Punic deities?’ he asked.
‘How should I know? What are you trying to suggest, Tiro?’
She was beginning to sound hostile. They halted at the edge of the ledge.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just curious.’ He gestured at the way down. ‘Let’s go and get the others.’
She studied him for a while. Then without speaking, she began the descent.
It was mid-afternoon before the four of them, Flaminius, Dido, Demetrius and Amasis, finally limped into the merchant’s camp at the foot of the black mountain. They were a bedraggled little group, stained with ash and dusted with sand, nursing cuts and bruises from falls sustained while crossing the rocks that littered the base of the slope.
It had taken a lot longer than Flaminius had expected, and partway through their journey the sun had risen so high and grown so hot, they were forced to take cover beneath a huge, house sized, fallen rock. Quite what the desert was like in the dog days of summer Flaminius had no desire to learn. He had some experience of the Thebaid in Upper Egypt, patrolling that desert against Libyan or Ethiopian raiders, and it had had been enough to have him pining for the heather clad peat bogs of Caledonia. Yet this ashen wasteland was even worse.
At the cool, shady base of the big rock they found a still pool. After some tentative investigation, Flaminius found no reason to think it poisonous. There was no smell of sulphur. He filled up their water skin.
‘When we finally get to the merchant,’ he told his companions, ‘we should have enough water to share. And when we reach Phazania, it looks like water flows in abundance there, going by the green of the vegetation.’
‘I wish I’d been allowed to climb the mountain with you,’ Amasis complained, after drinking his fill. ‘I’d like to see where we’re going.’ He looked balefully out at the basalt waste framed in the entrance to their little cave. ‘I’m sick to the back teeth of this desert.’
Even his seemingly irrepressible high spirits had been buoyed down by this infernal journey. It had been hard going, to say the least, particularly the last day or so. But now that they were reunited with Claudius Mercator—almost, anyway—they stood a chance. They were no longer alone in the wilderness.
It still took an absurdly long time before they got out of the waste of blackened boulders and came down into a sandy hollow beside a small lake of turquoise water. Baobab trees grew here, small beside some Flaminius had seen, but trees nevertheless, and scrubby grass swathed the edges of the pool. Encamped beside it in rush and asphodel shelters was what remained of Claudius Mercator’s caravan. A small pen contained the sheep, camels were tethered nearby, and three men in leopard skin loincloths sat by the pool.
They leapt up, seizing hold of spears, as the four stragglers came clattering down the rocky slope. One of them raised a hand. Flaminius recognised him as Hamilcar, the Nasamonean with the oddly Punic name. The others halted and lowered their spears, then lifted them high in the air with a resounding cheer.
Flaminius was baffled by this show of enthusiasm. When Dido strode proudly past him and went to talk to her warriors, everything became clear. They hadn’t been greeting him but her.
One of the shelters opened up and out crawled Claudius Mercator. He rose, brushing fragments of dust and chaff from his knees, and crossed over. ‘There you are, Flaminius,’ he said as Dido went to sit with her chattering warriors. ‘And Demetrius!’
The old man was hobbling along steadfastly. It was admirable, the iron will that propelled that withered, palsied old body. But his aches and pains had delayed them on the final leg, and Flaminius had found it difficult to suppress his impatience. He had taken it out on Amasis, who had been whining in less philosophical fashion.
‘All your investors are with you now,’ said Vabalathus, who had been tending to his tethered camel. ‘You will still have creditors at the end of the expedition, unless you are more successful in whittling us down later on.’
Claudius Mercator laughed uncomfortably.
‘What does he mean?’ Amasis whispered to Flaminius.
Flaminius grinned affably. ‘All Vabalathus is saying,’ he said loudly, ‘is that our caravan leader will make more money in the long run if a few of his investors die along the journey. Of course, it’s not true...’
‘No indeed,’ said Claudius Mercator, gesticulating in dismay as he waddled forwards. ‘I have no desire to see any of my investors departing for the shores of the Styx. By no means…!’
‘It’s not true,’ Flaminius went on, ‘because the monies accrued will still be posthumously owing to our various estates. I know that those who inherit from me will be most assiduous in pursuing such assets.’
He gave the merchant a cold smile. If that was indeed the plan, to leave the investors in the desert to die, Claudius Mercator would achieve nothing with him: the legion was providing his investment, and Avidius Pollio would hardly turn up his Roman nose at the profits that might result.
‘Of course,’ said Claudius Mercator, looking glum. ‘Of course.’
Having successfully sown the seeds of dissension, Vabalathus smiled coldly. ‘Now, gentlemen, I think it’s high time we made our way into this… Promised Land.’
—10—
Phazania, 10th December 124 AD
The fields of black rock and sand gave way to patches of greenery as they descended into the lush, fertile land beyond. The contrast between bleak, hostile desert and the vista of palm groves and ploughed fields could not have been greater. Big horned cattle grazed in the meadows, and here and there men in robes spread some kind of white marl on growing crops. Vineyards terraced the upper slopes, olive groves flourished in the lower valleys. Everything was lush and green despite the blazing sun, except for occasional stretches of arid land.
Flaminius wondered how such a paradise had come about in the midst of the desert. Was it a freak of the gods, or the work of men? Smoke trailed to the desert sky from small settlements among the palm trees. Far off in the distance, mountain peaks were visible. Somewhere in that direction lay the lost city of Garama.
The caravan was much smaller than it had been when it set out from Ammonium, or even from Alexandria’s Gate of the Moon. Half the merchandise had been lost in the sandstorm, and there were fewer people too, and only mounts enough for the most important. But Claudius Mercator led them into the great valley with pride in his gaze, in the tilt of his head. The others followed him, on camelback or on foot, looking about in mingled wonder and fear.
‘How could such a place exist, in the midst of the desert?’ asked Dido. ‘It’s impossible. It must be the blessing of the gods.’
Vabalathus gave a scornful smile. ‘Nothing more than good irrigation,’ he told her. ‘In Arabia and in the Parthian Empire too, they have wrested water from the very rock to feed crops and plants. Have you never heard of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?’
‘One of the Seven Wonders of the World,’ Flaminius remembered.
‘Rightly so,’ said Vabalathus, ‘since Mesopotamia is as arid a country as this.’
‘But in Mesopotamia they have two great rivers
to water their lands,’ Demetrius said knowledgably. ‘Just as in Egypt, the inundation of the Nile fertilises the countryside. I see no rivers of any size in this land.’
There were channels in the rock, low valleys where vegetation grew in galleries as if alongside rivers, but only occasional stagnant pools and reed beds were visible at the bottom of the mist hung valleys. Flaminius had seen the like in the Thebaid, and on the journey to Ammonium. He drew their attention to these anomalies.
‘Wadis, we call them in my land,’ said Vabalathus importantly. ‘During the rains, they flow like rivers in any northern country. But they will not be the sources of irrigation. My guess is that the natives use underground tunnels like the Parthians.’
They followed a narrow track alongside a wadi towards a settlement among the date palms. A scene reminiscent of Ammonium met their eyes at first: an overseer watched slaves as they dug salt from a rocky hill. But soon the travellers were passing agricultural land where colourfully robed women marled the fields using long mattocks. Dark faces looked up to watch them passing.
‘We’ll make friends in this village,’ said Claudius Mercator, gesturing at the settlement. ‘Win them over with gifts and presents. That will give us a foothold in the locality. Then we can go on to palaver with the local chiefs, and work our way up to the king of this country.’
In amongst the trade goods were oil lamps, ceramic tableware, and amphorae containing olive oil and wine, all of which the merchant had learnt went for a good price in this country. Not that the villagers were likely to have much of the famous gold, ivory, slaves or salt to trade. Such goods would be under the control of the local chief, Claudius Mercator explained.
‘Why did you not adopt this approach on your last journey?’ Vabalathus asked. ‘I assume you did not. Otherwise, surely you would not be repeating such tactics this time.’
The merchant shook his head. ‘Last time was a scouting mission,’ he said. ‘I took only a few goods, and made very little in return. But what was more valuable than profit was what I learnt of the country.’
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