The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  ‘I think we have, Master,’ Rado said, still in Latin. ‘You tell me the Persian’s legs are too short for him to ride a horse properly. If the Lord Prefect is with them, he can’t ride at all. That means they would have to come down the secondary road.’ He looked at me for support and ran his finger along a blue line. Either he was learning to understand the map or he’d got lucky. I nodded. ‘From the distance you told me the road covers, we must be three days ahead of them – perhaps more.’ I nodded again. The agreed plan was to intercept Shahin and his people as they moved through the narrow pass that Rado believed was the only one they would dare attempt. It joined at what the map said was a suspiciously exact right angle with a much wider pass that would, with a few detours, bring a small escort of honour directly from the zone of Persian occupation. They’d be worn out from their own dash southward. They’d be in no kind of formation. Carrying Timothy, and travelling over broken and nearly impassable ground, would soak up much of the effort that, on the road, would go into providing an armed escort. They’d be more focused on their triumphant meeting with the Great King’s representatives. The four of us stood no chance against an armed band hurrying along a level road but the night smash and grab I had in mind was just conceivable in the pass. Or so it had seemed in Constantinople.

  Eboric came and stood on the other side of the stone. He looked in awe at the broad linen square. ‘The streams show the valleys are descending the further inland we go,’ he said shyly. He ignored Rado’s look of outrage. ‘We’ve surely outrun them. But they might not be so far behind us.’

  I folded the map away. Rado could give the boy the kicking he’d earned while I was pretending to sleep. For the moment, I’d learned everything I wanted. I looked once more at the surrounding desolation. The mountain peaks were capped white with unthawed snow, their lower reaches green with scrubby trees. The valleys were hidden in mist or lost in the impenetrable shadows of late afternoon. Twelve days of fast and nearly continuous movement lay between us and the sea. Except the map told me otherwise, the mountain chain might stretch another hundred or even a thousand days to the south. I felt a returning attack of the horrors. Had Antonia refused to cooperate? Had she tried to escape? Had Shahin been his usual lying bastard self, and tossed her body overboard the moment his ship was safely out in the straits? Would I be left with nothing, when I finally caught up with him, but the cold satisfaction of tying his severed head to the mane of my horse?

  I looked at Eboric’s brother. He was fast with his knife. ‘It won’t be dark for a while,’ I said in Latin, so everyone could understand. ‘I think we should hold off from dinner till we’ve found somewhere to rest for the night.’

  Rado got in first with his reply. ‘But, My Lord, we can’t get to the next safe hilltop till long after dark. It’s best to camp here. If we start before dawn, we can be within a day of the Larydia Pass by late afternoon.’

  The two boys nodded in unison. I looked south-east at what seemed to be one mountain among many. Between us and that lay a jumble of other high and low places, some glittering bright in the late sun, others in total darkness. I could have told myself I was mad to trust three barbarians who’d never been here in their lives. Instead, I remembered something Priscus had once said about how every military art rested on the ability to look once at any terrain and see it as a series of points in three dimensions. ‘Either you’ve got that, dear boy, or you haven’t,’ he’d said dismissively. ‘You just go back to finding the money to pay for the fighting – and making sure that what we’re fighting for is actually worth defending.’

  I gave in. ‘Then we’ll keep the fire out of sight,’ I said. Three heads nodded politely. I sat down. ‘I’ll take the long midnight watch.’

  Chapter 53

  I dreamed that I was in a room filled with dazzling light. Except the light came from no particular direction, it was like the time when I was lost in the Egyptian desert. All about me, lines of poetry had been turned to balls of coloured light and revolved slowly in paths determined by their patterns of long and short syllables. It was very beautiful to watch and reminded me of something in my early childhood.

  At home and in bed, the dream could have gone on all night and given me something to think about in spare moments during the day. Here, it never effaced the fact that I was lying, cold and stiff, on top of a hill so windswept that the few bushes able to take root spread out over the ground, never more than six inches tall. Without needing to open my eyes and look at the moon, I could feel it would soon be my turn to get up and take my turn with the watch. For the moment, I lay still. The wind was up again. Its gentle and continuous moaning was something I now only noticed at times like this. I’d soon learned to accept it as a welcome blotting out of the distant and far more sinister howling of the wolves. In the summer months, I knew, there was safer prey for them than armed men huddled about a fire. Try believing that, however, when you’ve childhood experience of the creatures, and when you’re one of the huddled men. They were up and about, I could be sure. If I listened hard enough, I’d hear them. The wind was up, but not yet enough.

  I began to drift back towards the room filled with light. The dream hadn’t entirely faded, but coloured balls that had been resolving themselves, one after the other, into lines of text glowed brighter and brighter again. Then it was all gone and I was awake. ‘If you won’t let me come too,’ Eboric whispered in his sulky tone, ‘I’ll wake him up and tell him.’

  I think Rado poked him hard in the chest. He let out an obscenity in his own language I hadn’t yet heard. ‘And if it’s nothing?’ he asked, returning to Latin. ‘If it’s nothing, you’ll get him up for no reason? Stay here and look after things. If he does wake, tell him I’ll be back in time for my watch.’

  I threw the blanket aside and sat up into a blast of chilly air. ‘What have you heard?’ I asked.

  Rado wiped an angry snarl from his face and got up. ‘I don’t know, My Lord,’ he said evasively. ‘It may be something I’ve felt more than heard. It may be a trick of the wind.’ He stepped towards me and reached down for my blanket.

  ‘He said he heard horses, Master,’ Eboric said quickly. He twisted sideways to avoid being kicked into the embers of the fire. ‘I’m sure I heard a harness jingle.’

  Shahin, running far ahead of any conjectured time, and far from his only sensible route? Not likely. A local traveller about his business? I looked at Eboric’s childish pout. I looked at the dark shadow that was Rado’s face. ‘Where did you hear them?’ I asked. I walked with Rado to the ravine edge and followed his pointed finger down to the left. The moon was heading towards its midnight zenith. If with deceptive clarity, I could see for miles in every direction. Looking down, I stared into total darkness. I put aside the mournful sound of the wind. The wolves had run out of anything more to say to each other, or were out of hearing. I held my breath and listened hard.

  It was only the briefest snatch but you don’t mistake armed men on horseback. I turned and looked into the unearthly glow on Rado’s now tense and excited face. ‘Can you tell how far away?’ I asked.

  He went to the edge and leaned over. ‘Not far below us,’ he said after a long pause. ‘There’s three of them and I think they’ve come out with padded harness.’

  Eboric and his brother were already at work on their bootlaces. I raised a hand for attention. ‘The pair of you stay here,’ I said, quiet yet firm. I waited for their looks of disappointment to fade to sullenness ‘You need to keep an eye on the horses,’ I explained. ‘Be prepared to get them ready for an immediate retreat.’

  Rado looked for the right words. Not finding them in Latin, he went into Slavic. ‘You should stay here, Master,’ he said. ‘I might be faster on my own.’

  I frowned. ‘Whatever’s down there,’ I said, ‘I need to see for myself.’

  After so long of having to treat me like a mounted invalid, Rado could be forgiven for believing I’d been denatured by seven years of prosperity in the Empire. On two l
egs, I could be still as much the predatory barbarian as he was. To be sure, we had no hills in England like these. But there were animals to be hunted, and travelling strangers to be robbed; and I had grown up surrounded by mile-wide expanses of shingle. It was hard to say which of us was more silent and more unseen, as we hurried down the steep incline. We reached its bottom about a mile from where we’d left the boys in charge of the horses. Dark caps pulled on tight to cover our hair, we crouched together behind a large boulder and waited.

  We heard the muffled jingle of harness long before the three riders came in sight. They moved slowly, picking their way over the loose stones. From the first, I thought the horses were bigger than anything normally seen in the mountains. One look at how the moonlight glittered on their helmets and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

  ‘Persian regular army,’ I breathed into Rado’s ear. He stiffened beside me, the same thought probably going through his mind. I watched them come closer. There could be no doubt what they were. I could see their helmets and the fish-scale armour under their cloaks. I could see the outline of their leggings and boots. Still moving slowly, now and again letting the horses cool their hooves in the little stream, it was an officer in front and two men behind.

  ‘Night foragers?’ Rado whispered uncertainly.

  ‘I don’t see what else they could be,’ I said. ‘Though, if it’s at least a two-day ride to the Larydia Pass, and still more to the big pass, what are they doing here?’ I thought of my map. That might easily be wrong. But Rado and the boys knew where they were. The details might be less sharp in their minds than they claimed in front of me but that couldn’t put us two days south-west of where they said we were.

  I strained to hear the low conversation. From right to left, they were passing by not twenty feet away, and all I needed was for the officer to speak up a little or turn in our direction. I thought at first they’d pass completely out of hearing. But there was a sudden noise of more horses approaching from our left and the men sat up straight.

  Rado leaned closer. ‘How big were you told the escort would be?’ he asked. I pressed my head against his for silence. said the new arrivals were about a dozen men on horses similar to our own. So far as I could tell, they had no armour. The hairs on the back of my neck were beginning to stand up.

  The officer rode forward a few paces and raised his voice. ‘Have you found anything yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing to scare whatever old woman issued your orders,’ the man in charge of the larger band jeered in the rough Persian of a highlander. He leaned to the right and spat. ‘But we found a real old woman. She told us she saw two blond boys on horseback stealing a goat.’

  ‘Obviously not locals,’ the officer grunted. ‘They may indicate nothing but I’ll report back.’

  The highlander spat again. ‘Good riders, she said – too good for escaped slaves. But too young, I got the impression, to be western federates.’

  ‘You made sure to kill her afterwards?’ the officer asked anxiously. ‘You know the orders.’

  The highlander laughed unpleasantly. ‘We killed the whole fucking village. Shame we had to leave all their food behind.’

  ‘Good,’ the officer said. ‘Nothing must be left to chance.’ He stopped and looked sharply right. Someone or something had started a light shower of stones down the far wall of this minor pass. He clutched harder on his reins and got out his sword. He began a babbled charm to ward off evil. Even before I saw his sword’s dull glitter, the highlander and his men were dashing on horseback up an incline steeper and rockier than the one Rado and I had come down. Together, they reached a point about fifty yards up, before stopping for a quiet laugh. The highlander was first back to the officer, what may have been a rabbit skewered on his long sword.

  ‘Very good,’ the officer said with a recovery of dignity. He put his sword away. ‘Don’t bust a gut over it but if you find either of the blond boys, try to take them alive. And remember the order not to split up.’

  Eboric and his brother had the horses already loaded when we got back. Now, they were fighting tears of disgrace as they covered the fire with a mass of tiny stones. This wasn’t the time for flogging their arses raw. Nor would I punish them. ‘It was just bad luck,’ I’d said after telling all three what I’d heard. ‘And it may not even be that,’ I’d added. ‘After all, we have learned something.’

  I was right. We had learned something. If only I could be sure what it was. I put wilder conjectures aside and turned to Rado. ‘The questions are piling up,’ I said, wondering how to express them without sounding panicky. I looked at the pebbles he’d arranged on the flat rock. The moon was past its zenith and each stone and heap of stones cast a shadow. ‘It’s no surprise the escort should be made up of Persian regulars. But why night scouting parties, and why so far out? And who’s being chased by them?’ I fell silent. I’d thought at first they were after me. That would suggest Shahin had already met the escort and he was guessing I’d not be far behind. But the ruling out of blond hair had been too emphatic. Also, if they were just looking for me, why the murder of anyone who’d seen them?

  I reached forward to touch one of the double lines of pebbles at the top left extremity of Rado’s map. ‘Are you absolutely sure this is the only pass that Shahin can use?’ I asked in Slavic – I’d more chance of a frank answer if no one else could understand.

  He nodded. ‘I’ve been looking for days at the shape of the mountains,’ he answered in Latin. ‘Never mind your painted map – we’ve seen nowhere else they could use. As for the escort, there’s no other pass that makes sense.’ The two boys nodded vigorously. I could have interrupted here to ask how they knew anything about the location of the passes, let alone their width. But I’d chosen them for the skills they’d learned before they were taken. I’d seen no reason so far to doubt I’d chosen right. If Rado’s confidence weren’t enough, the boys had been scampering all over the place. While he’d been keeping me from falling off my own horse, they had been over every inch of the ground ten miles either side of our journey and ten miles ahead. I nodded grimly and waited.

  ‘The escort might be lost,’ he continued with a frown. ‘But those rough men on horseback are like my people. They can’t get lost – not enough to be this far off course.’

  We could stand here debating all night and still not get anywhere. I looked at the mounds of little stones and wondered which one represented our hill. ‘If, shall we say, a dozen of your people were hunting us,’ I asked, ‘what would they do?’

  Rado pointed at a different mound and turned matter of fact. ‘Given a few dozen of us, we’d keep a watch on these paths – here and here – and we’d send lines of horsemen over each of these hills. There’d be boys with dogs going before them. You’d need to be a mountain fox to escape that kind of dragnet.’ He began moving pieces of gravel about in a way that set my heart sinking faster than the moon. ‘Just a dozen, though – and without orders for an all-out search – and we’d scout round till morning in the most obvious places. After that, we’d keep to the highest points and look down to see if anyone was moving.’

  I moved to look at the shadowed pattern of stones from another angle and tried to superimpose on it my own compound map. I pointed to the intersection of the passes and traced a line to our hill. ‘We can take a risk once we’re out of this immediate area,’ I said. ‘Until then, we’ll see how far we can get by night. We can sleep once the sun is up.’ Rado nodded.

  I was about to issue another of my ‘instructions,’ when Eboric’s brother came and plucked at my cloak. ‘There’s a line of horsemen coming up from the north,’ he whispered. ‘You can’t hear them. But, if you look hard enough, you can see the moving shadows.’

  Chapter 54

  We spent the remaining hours of darkness jumping at our own shadows. Once or twice, we heard men calling to each other at a great distance. But, once Rado had guided us over a seemingly impossible ridge, we moved steadily forward, now enteri
ng one of the more sheltered upland areas. Here we passed over expanses of scrubby grass that soaked up the sound of hooves. There were even little copses of trees to hide us if required.

  Then, as the sky gradually turned blue and the sun began moving down the highest mountain behind us, Eboric’s brother hurried back to us.

  ‘Smell of burning ahead,’ he reported.

  I’d already noticed. ‘Was it round here that you stole the goat?’ I asked. He nodded. Rado and I looked at each other. He tickled the right ear of his horse and moved silently forward. I gave my own horse the slightest touch of spur and held on to avoid being thrown.

  We were going uphill again and we got off to lead the horses once we’d reached the line of stunted trees that hid from us the remains of the smoking village.

  ‘Well, someone had to carry all the food away,’ I said. I sat on the remains of a stone wall and tried not to look at the three children who’d been butchered a few yards from my outstretched feet. The smallest had been dashed, head first, against a rock. The grass was patchy with dried blood and gobbets of brain. The problem with war, I’ve always insisted, is that it substitutes too much chance for the game of skill that is diplomacy. The truth is I’ve never liked the random killing that war involves. Within reason, soldiers on the field of battle are fair game. It’s the non-combatants I feel sorry for. By the look of things, these villagers had been caught as they sat down to their evening meal. They’d all been killed without mercy. Some of them had tried to fight back. Some had been tortured. It had made no difference. They were all dead now.