King of Kings wor-2

by Harry Sidebottom

  Valerian sent a herald to the front of the royal box. The herald raised his arm. The crowd fell silent. The herald read out the words of the emperor: 'The race stands. Prandium. Time for the midday meal.' The mob bayed.

  The lunchtime entertainment made things worse. Some acrobats erected two tall poles on the central barrier. A high wire was strung between them. The acrobats walked the wire and struck some attitudes. The crowd jeered and chanted: 'Gladiators. We want gladiators. Blood on the sand.'

  Again the herald came forward. This time the imperial words were not listened to in silence. The herald persevered: 'There will be blood on the sand next summer. The blood will be Persian. Your emperor needs all the money he can get for the coming war. Gladiators are expensive.'

  The message could not have hit a worse note. The crowd howled. A chant emerged in unison from thousands of mouths: 'Everything available, everything expensive, cheap corn now!' It was only too true that the presence of the imperial court and a field army in the city of Antioch had dramatically driven up the price of corn, the staple of life. The chant was taken up by more and more of the crowd.

  Ballista felt a stab of apprehension. This could quickly turn very ugly. He glanced up at the imperial box. While the emperor worked on, the praetorians at the back were shifting on their feet, hefting their shields tightly, checking their weapons. Ballista looked all around. There was a definite air of unease among the senators and equestrians. The stairs at the top of the stand were a long way away. The ones they had entered through at the bottom were much nearer. The noise from the crowd was increasing.

  Yet again the imperial herald appeared. He raised his arm. The chanting faltered and died into silence. 'That is what he wants — silence,' the herald said. There was a stunned silence, then the crowd erupted in fury. The first shower of stones dashed across the front of the imperial box. The crowd had become a mob, surging, baying for blood. The herald scuttled away. The praetorians rushed forward, erecting a testudo, tortoise, of shields around the emperor.

  Ballista knew it could only get worse. He had to act quickly. Already stones were flying up into the seating reserved for the elite. The heads of the first of the mob were appearing over the low dividing wall at the bottom. They were climbing over, intent on robbery, assault and rape. Senators, equestrians and their families were running up the steps, scrambling over the seats trying to get away, to reach the stairs at the top of the enclosure. Telling Julia to keep a close hold on their son, Ballista started to strip. He struggled out of his toga, wrapped its voluminous folds around his left arm and gripped his corona muralis in his left hand.

  'Follow me. Carry Isangrim. Keep close.'

  Julia started to edge backwards.

  'No, we go down.' There was a momentary doubt in her dark eyes, but she made to follow him as he jumped to the step below. The steps were too deep for her to jump while carrying the boy. She had to sit down, swivel, swing her legs over, stand, step forward, then repeat the manoeuvre.

  There were ten seats down to the walkway then, some twenty paces to the right, was the entrance to the lower stairs by which they had arrived. They had only descended two steps when two of the mob reached them. They both had knives. The first lunged at Ballista. The northerner caught the knife in the folds of his makeshift shield. He twisted the man's arm outward. With his right hand he lunged forward and gripped the man's throat. He lifted him off his feet and threw him backwards. The man's feet missed the step. He landed on the one below, lost his balance and tumbled backwards, screaming. He disappeared down the hard, unforgiving stone steps. Ballista rounded on the other man.

  'Want some?'

  Almost politely, the man said no and, giving them a wide berth, clambered away up the seats, looking for easier pickings.

  They climbed down another two seats. Their progress was painfully slow. To their right, the steps up across the face of the seating were choked with the mob. From above came a confused roar and high-pitched screams.

  'Follow me.' Ballista moved to within a few paces of the mob on the steps. He stopped. He waved the corona muralis above his head. The mob stopped.

  'Solid gold. A king's ransom,' he called. 'Who wants it?' The mob stared, open-mouthed with avarice. Before they could move, Ballista drew back his arm and threw the golden crown in a high, long arc over their heads. In a second, the steps were empty.

  Ballista turned, scooped up his son and yelled for Julia to follow.

  They plunged down the steps. In moments they were on the walkway, the entrance to the exit just a few paces away.

  Ballista skidded to a halt. There was a man with a knife blocking his way. Julia ran into his back. 'Behind us,' she panted. Ballista turned. At the foot of the steps they had just left was another man with a knife. They were trapped.

  Ballista handed Isangrim back to Julia and pushed them both on to the seat behind him. He span round to face the track, watching the men out of the corner of each eye. Ballista adjusted the toga hanging from his left arm. His mind was calm, crystal clear, but it was racing, working out the possibilities and the angles.

  For a time they were all frozen like a statue group; the two men with knives facing in towards the unarmed barbarian at bay, his wife and child huddled behind him.

  'Wait,' Ballista said loudly in Greek. Quickly, but with no sudden movements, he untied the purse from his belt. He tossed it in the air, letting it fall heavily into the palm of his right hand so the knifemen could hear the weight of the coins. Ballista addressed the man to his right, the one blocking their escape, 'Take the money and let us pass.' The man looked to the other knifeman, obviously the leader. Ballista half-turned.

  'Oh, we will, Kyrios, we will.' The man on Ballista's left grinned. His teeth were blackened and tangled. 'Just leave the woman with us — it's been a long time since we had an equestrian bitch.'

  Ballista's arm was a blur as he threw the purse. The knifeman jerked back but could not avoid the missile, which smashed into his face with a sickening sound of breaking teeth and bones. Ballista swung round and launched himself at the man on his right. Enveloping the man's weapon with the toga hanging from his left arm, Ballista dragged the blade out wide and punched the man hard in the face with his right. The man staggered back a pace or two, but did not go down. The knife came free. It glittered in the sun as the man raised it to strike. Desperately, Ballista caught the man's wrist with his left hand. The man swung a punch with his left. Ballista blocked it with his right forearm and seized his assailant's throat, squeezing hard.

  A noise behind him made Ballista glance over his shoulder. The other knifeman, his face a bloody mess, was moving forward, breaking into a run. Ballista started to swing the man he had by the throat around, to block the new threat. The man was struggling. He was too heavy. Ballista could not do it in time. His side and back were open to the knife.

  As the bloodied knifeman ran past, Julia tripped him. It was the lightest of taps, but it destroyed the man's balance. Toppling forward, arms flailing, he ran a few more steps, then crashed on his face. The knife skittered out of his grasp as he slid on the hard, marble walkway. In an instant Ballista released the man he was holding, who crumpled, hands clutching his bruised throat. Ballista swivelled rapidly and threw himself on the man on the floor. His weight came down through his knees into the small of the man's back. The breath wheezed out of him as if he were a broken wind instrument.

  On his hands and knees Ballista scrabbled after the knife. Its worn leather hilt was warm in his hand. He got to his feet. The tripped man tried to rise. Ballista stamped his left heel down on an outstretched hand. Putting all his weight on his left leg, he swivelled again. There was a terrible scream over the sound of splintering bones.

  The half-choked man was up again. Stepping carefully over the prone attacker, now curled into a foetal position and whimpering quietly, Ballista moved forward. He swung the knife from side to side. The other man's eyes were as if mesmerized by the blade. He edged backwards past Julia and Is
angrim.

  As the knifeman reached the foot of the steps down which Ballista and his family had come, a rioter clambered over the low dividing wall into the elite enclosure. Another two, then another three followed. In some inexplicable dynamic of the mob, a horde of men poured over the wall. The man with the knife was gone, swept away up the stand by its momentum.

  Ballista threw away the knife to scoop up his son. One arm clasping Isangrim secure to his chest, he took Julia in his other hand and ran to the head of the exit. There were the stairs, lit here and there by lamps in niches. In strange contrast to the crowded chaos of the seating enclosure, they were completely empty. The way to the safety of the corridor at the bottom was clear. Holding Isangrim gently, the boy's blond curls against his shoulder, Ballista began to descend as fast as he could without risking a fall.

  They had gone some way when a change in the light warned him that something was wrong. He looked up. There, at the head of the stairs, blocking much of the daylight, he saw a man — or the hooded silhouette of a man. A weapon shone in his right hand. This was not a mundane knife to peel apples, this was a man-killing blade, an old-fashioned legionary short sword, a gladius.

  Ballista handed his son back to his wife.

  'Go.'

  'I cannot.'

  'The boy…' Ballista gestured. 'Go now.'

  Julia turned to leave.

  Very deliberately, in a fighting crouch, on the balls of his feet, the man began to descend the stairs. Cursing himself for a fool for throwing away the knife, Ballista again rearranged the toga over his arm. He began to retreat down the stairs slowly, one careful step at a time.

  It was very quiet in the stairway. Ballista could hear Julia's retreating steps, heavy with the weight of their son, the son he would not see again. The man was closing the distance quickly, taking two steps to every one backward of Ballista. The reckoning would be soon.

  Ballista could hear the oil fizzing in the lamps. Typical, he thought. In my barbarian northlands, the lights would be solid torches, useful weapons for burning a hall or ramming into a man's face, and here civilization has given me delicate little pottery lamps. Still, the hot oil might have a use if he could surprise the man with it. He stopped by one of the niches where a lamp burned.

  The man was getting very close now. Ballista caught the glitter of his eyes under his hood. Ballista watched the blade of the gladius. The man moved like a fighter. There was a scar on the hand that gripped the blade. Julia's footsteps were growing fainter. The hissing of the lamp seemed unnaturally loud. Ballista could hear his own breathing, harsh, laboured.

  The man was just three or four steps away. Watch the blade, watch the blade.

  Another sound broke into Ballista's concentration. The sound of running feet. Boots pounding up the stairs behind him. Watch the blade. Ballista could not turn. His assailant flicked a glance over Ballista's shoulder. The northerner saw recognition on the nondescript face under the hood. Without hesitation, the man turned and ran. In seconds he had reached the top of the stairs and, sheathing his sword, was gone.

  Moments later, Maximus reached Ballista.

  'Are you all right?'

  'Never better. Like a slave at Saturnalia.'

  'Sure, but you are a cruel man to be reminding me of my servile status.' Maximus grinned. 'Julia and the boy are safe enough for the moment with Calgacus down below. Want me to go up and look for him?'

  'No, he will be long gone, and it's dangerous up there. I do not want you getting hurt by any rough men. Let's all get out of here.'

  Maximus turned to go. Ballista paused.

  'What is it?'

  'Probably nothing,' said Ballista. 'It is just that the others wanted to rob and rape, and that one… I think that he was only interested in killing me.'

  IV

  Solid-looking shafts of light came through the windows of the great apse and shone on to the floor of the audience chamber. Ballista stared at them, his face carefully composed into a look of thoughtful attention. The glass of the windows gave the light a strange, underwater look. Thousands of motes of dust and the odd oily flick of incense smoke moved in it. Ballista thought about the paradox of Heraclitus: no man can step into the same river twice. The imperial council was ever changing, always the same. For some time, the praetorian prefect Successianus had been telling the members of the consilium a story they all knew, except for the ending.

  The outrages of three days earlier had been confined to the island in the Orontes. As soon as the disgraceful scenes in the hippodrome had begun, troops had sealed off the five bridges that led to the city and the one that led to the suburbs. In fact, the unrest had been contained in only a small part of the island — as ever, the imperial palace had been well garrisoned, and a sweep by Batavian auxiliaries supported by Dalmatian cavalry had dispersed any looters, at the cost of only one burnt bath house and four burnt dwellings. In the hippodrome itself, the praetorians had promptly escorted the emperor and imperial party to safety. After his sacred majesty had left, there were scenes of the most appalling depravity — four equestrians had been killed, several beaten and robbed, and six women of the equestrian order raped. Much worse than all this, wooden pictures of the imperial family had been stoned, the mob jeering when they splintered, and a bronze statue of the ever-victorious imperator Valerian had been toppled from its pedestal, beaten with shoes, broken apart, before street children had dragged the pieces through the dirt. Although the people of Antioch had always been notorious for their unruliness and lack of respect for their betters, it was clear that the outbreak was the work of a handful of brigands — foreigners, for the most part. Selected squads of soldiers had been sent in to arrest the ringleaders. The unpleasantness had lasted just a few hours, having ended soon after dark. It was estimated that some two to three hundred rioters had been killed. All the surviving ringleaders were in custody — forty-five men, seven women and four children. They awaited the emperor's infallible justice.

  Words are slippery things, thought Ballista, and these were weasel words. No one who had been there and had a less than blinkered view could believe that the riot had been instigated and carried on by only a few foreign brigands. How, in that seething mass of humanity, had the troops identified these supposed ringleaders? Above all, how in the name of the Allfather, could children have been involved its organization? These were the weasel words that one heard in the consilium. Free speech, freedom itself, the much-vaunted libertas of the Romans, the eleutheria of Greek philosophy — how could they exist when one man was all powerful? How could they exist when one man was, depending on your viewpoint, either the vice-regent of the gods on earth or a living, walking god himself?

  In the silence that followed the praetorian prefect resuming his seat, all eyes turned to the emperor. Seated high above his councillors, Publius Licinius Valerianus remained immobile. He stared over the heads of all, into the distance. Eventually the heavy head nodded, the golden wreath rustling in the unnatural quiet. The emperor spoke.

  'We are renowned for our clemency. But clementia must not be confused with weakness. It is a stern virtue. Severitas is its other face. We Romans did not win our empire by weakness. We have not held our empire for over a thousand years by weakness. In the beginning, the gods themselves charged us to spare the humbled but also to crush the proud.'

  The emperor paused to let his words sink in. The heads of the councillors nodded approvingly at the echo — the so very apt echo, they might have said — of the Roman imperial epic, the Aeneid of Virgil.

  'The unbearable superbia, arrogance, of Shapur the Sassanid threatens war. This is not a moment to show weakness. The wickedness of these malcontents, if not inspired by Shapur himself, would at the very least bring him joy, confirm him in his arrogance, were it not punished. An example must be made.'

  Again Valerian paused. Again his councillors nodded. Belatedly Ballista thought it best to join in.

  'We Romans are the children of the wolf. We are a hard race. When
our soldiers betray cowardice we decimate them; one man in ten is beaten to death by his comrades. Justice demands that we must not be harder on our own men than our enemies. The prisoners of high status will be beheaded in the hippodrome, the scene of their depravity, and their heads exhibited on pikes across the river in the suburbs. Of the rest, some will be crucified outside the various gates of the city, some burnt alive in the agora, and some reserved for the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. The praetorian prefect will see to the arrangements. This is our judgement, against which there can be no appeal.'

  Bastard, thought Ballista. You callous old bastard. You want to play the stern old Roman, the man merely following the ways of your ancestors, following the mos maiorum, yet surely somewhere in over a thousand years of Roman history there must be an example to follow which would allow you to spare at least the women and children.

  The praetorian prefect got back to his feet, saluted and intoned the standard army response: 'We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.'

  Successianus remained on his feet. He had a broad, flat face like a shovel. It was the face of the simple peasant turned soldier he had been a long time ago. No one on the consilium would consider that Successianus' face was a clear window on to his soul. The praetorian prefect cleared his throat and spoke again.

  'There is something else that we must discuss. Yesterday, a messenger arrived from Aelius Spartianus, the tribune commanding Roman forces in Circesium. On the tenth of October, six days before the ides of the month, Sassanid cavalry appeared before the city.'

  Ballista felt the air thickening around him. Whether they were looking directly at him or not, for every one of the other fifteen men in the imperial council, he was suddenly the centre of attention. To his discomfort, the northerner realized that this included the emperor himself. Make that sixteen men.