I relaxed slightly. He wouldn’t be able to read the tiny script that covered both sides of the parchment sheet. But it confirmed in outline everything he could describe in his own words, and gave him plenary authority to command whatever assistance he felt he might need. ‘Show that to any of the postal officials and you’ll be hero of the hour,’ I said. ‘Use your common sense with the gold.’
There were other things I wanted to say. But none of them amounted to more than an excuse for delay. The light was good. The rain was manageable. The Persians weren’t about. It was time to go. The boy leaned forward for me to embrace him. Eboric and Rado patted him gruffly on the back and shared a joke with him – incomprehensible even in Latin – about picking mushrooms on a mountain top.
The boy set off and let his horse carry him slowly to the first stage in the long climb. He turned and looked back at us. ‘I won’t fail you, Alaric,’ he called back softly. ‘But I want you to know that we’re doing this for you, not a bunch of shitbag cowardly Greeks. You just get the Lady Antonia and don’t stop running away from this lot till you’ve joined me in Trebizond.’ With that, he wheeled round and, with a jump forward that reminded me of a ball shot from a catapult, was almost immediately lost to sight.
‘He won’t be stopped,’ Eboric said with easy certainty. ‘The Greeks only caught us when we came back for our mother’s body.’ He pushed his chest out. ‘We were only boys then,’ he added. I nodded and continued looking at the last place his brother had been visible. There were great banks of mist rolling down from the mountains. If they reached the pass – especially before nightfall – we could look forward to a still slower and more chaotic progress of the army. That was what we needed. Leaving aside the general considerations, we had to get through that struggling mass of humanity to continue our journey to the right interception point. A touch of mist would do us no harm.
I wondered again just how many men Shahin had with him. I’d told Rado the boys hadn’t come along to help in the fighting. But, if we couldn’t creep in by night and do our business, what use would the two of us be? Whatever use all four of us might have been, there were now just the three of us. The whole journey here, I’d been racking my brains for any better plan than I’d made up in Constantinople. Nothing so far had occurred to me.
Rado swore suddenly in Slavic. ‘Patrol in sight down below, and I think they’ve seen us,’ he said in Latin. I looked round. Three men in uniform were leading a horse over an expanse of jagged stones. I’d taken it for granted no horses could be got across that. So, it seemed, had Rado and the boys. By tacit agreement, we’d gone round it ourselves. I nearly felt cheerful at the thought of their joint failure. But, from the direction they were taking, I found it hard to believe the men had seen us. Even before the mist arrived, the rain had softened everything to a gentle blur. How visible were we – unmoving and against a background of colours that blended with our clothing? The three men looked more interested in taking a short cut than in flushing out possible spies.
Oh, but one of the men had now seen us. Pointing and waving his arms, he was jabbering to the others in the shrill argumentative whine usual among the Persian lower classes. The other two stopped and looked in our direction. If we looked back and didn’t move, they might move on. But they’d finished their deliberations and were coming in our direction. We could make a dash for it. They were a quarter of a mile away and the horse wasn’t bred for mountain work. There was no chance they’d catch us. But they might then raise an alarm that would force us into another detour – and how many more of these could we afford?
‘Let’s see how well we’ve rehearsed,’ I said. I put up a hand to check that the turban we’d made from one of the blankets was still in place. The appearance of ochre that Eboric had made on my face with a burnt twig had probably turned to black rivulets, running down cheeks whitened with cornmeal. Not that it mattered how sordid I looked – that was the desired effect. The men had found their way to smoother ground and were coming rapidly closer. I waited till the man in front had stopped and mounted the horse. It was time for action. I waved my arms theatrically and pushed Rado to the ground.
‘What are you doing out of the pass?’ the mounted man asked in a voice that was plainly intended to sound both gruff and haughty, but that managed neither. It was low-grade provincial. It even had a tinge of Syriac – he was dark enough for south-east of the Euphrates. He looked thoughtfully at our horses. ‘I asked you a question,’ he said, raising his voice.
I stopped pretending to thrash Rado and made a perfunctory bow. ‘Greetings, O Master of all creation,’ I said in a Persian that sounded both greasy and heavily Armenian. ‘Will you honour me by taking your ease with one of my brothers?’
The mounted man shifted on his saddle and looked at his two companions. His uniform aside, there was no sign of the martial virtues in him. The companions were about as low as you can get once you hit the dregs of an army. Not even a morning of driving rain had washed all the dirt from their faces. The weeping scabs about their lips were hideous things to behold. Their shapeless, stunted bodies made the wretches who’d rioted outside my palace robust by comparison. They clutched at each other, whispering and giggling, now looking at Eboric, now pointing at me. Their conference over, they plucked at the mounted man till he bent down and listened to their urging. ‘We’ll be late,’ he whispered down at them. ‘Orders are orders and it’ll be flaying alive if we don’t get there in time.’
There was more whispering. The nastier of the companions pointed at the three of us, his tongue darting from side to side of his revolting mouth. The mounted man looked at me again. His face twisted into a crooked smile. ‘If you really are a pimp,’ he said, ‘you won’t get much custom up here.’ He waved for support at the rocky waste that lay all about. ‘Why aren’t you down in the pass with everyone else?’
‘We come all the way from the great city of Tibion,’ I whined, twisting my face to make the coating of burnt twig run in nastier rivulets. ‘Yet who will buy my boys? Surely, we should have offered ourselves to the Greeks, for all the fortune I shall make among you worshippers of the female parts.’ I clapped my hands. After a shrill curse in Armenian, I kicked Eboric between his shoulder blades. He got slowly up and began an insultingly feeble rendition of one of his bathhouse dances. There wasn’t much he could do about his pretty face. But the slow, plodding movements in wet clothing might not have raised interest in a profligate high on hashish.
That, however, is what the companions showed various signs of being. Giggling and rolling his eyes, one of them sat on a low stone and began rubbing at his crotch. The other turned his attention back to the mounted man. There was more whispering and pointing. But the mounted man shook his head. He leaned forward. ‘How did you know we were coming?’ he demanded. ‘How could word go round, as far away as Armenia, of an invasion we still haven’t been officially told about?’ He sat upright again. ‘Did you see any Greeks on your way through the mountains? If you did, you’d better tell me. I’m on my way to the Great King himself,’ he finished with a toss of his head.
I stretched open hands towards him and simpered like a eunuch. ‘Would I be here had I found Emperor’s gold to be earned?’ I asked in return. My sword was out of sight. But I had a knife up my left sleeve that I could probably get straight in his throat. Still on the ground, Rado was no longer pretending to whimper but was looking steadily at the larger of the two footmen. We could take them out, I was sure. We should do it sooner rather than later – for how long would it be just the three of them? Ideally, though, we needed that man off his horse.
The mounted man sat back, his mouth turned down in disgust too severe to be genuine. He looked again at Eboric, who’d made sure to fail in his hopping pirouette and was struggling to get up again. He turned to the companion who wasn’t rubbing himself off and who now whispered harder from behind both hands. They spoke back and forth, with much sniggering and nudging at each other and endless gloating looks at th
e three of us. I knew what was coming but made sure to continue looking scared and uncertain.
I was right. The mounted man finished his whispered conversation. They had time, I’d heard him agree. Biting his lip, he stared at me. ‘How much?’ he asked.
I spread my arms wide and smiled in a manner that suggested my teeth weren’t up to viewing in daylight. ‘For you, My Lord, three silver dirhams – five if you want the boy to take off his clothing.’
The mounted man looked into my face. ‘I don’t care for boys,’ he said. ‘I want you!’ Both companions burst into a high whining snigger. They ended with more fluttering of tongues.
All very flattering, I suppose – though my flesh crawled at the thought of touching any of them. That poor diving boy in Constantinople might not have had worse teeth than this lot – and his face hadn’t been covered in sores that glistened red in the continuing drizzle. But I broadened my smile. I bowed and touched my forehead. ‘If it is hips or lips My Lord is desiring,’ I smarmed, ‘I shall not be found wanting. But I can also divert, if My Lord so commands, with the masculine office.’ I flexed my hips and tried to look wanton through burnt twig and a seventeen-day growth of stubble.
‘Lips only,’ he breathed in an ecstasy of lust long unsatisfied. He checked himself and looked once more at the horses. ‘I’ll pay you by letting you go.’ He pointed at a large boulder. ‘Take your clothes off,’ he groaned. ‘Do it to me naked.’ He closed his eyes and shuddered. He opened them again and looked at Eboric. ‘I want to watch the boy piss on you afterwards.’ He pointed at Rado. ‘Kill him if he moves,’ he said to his companions.
One of the footmen got his sword out and poked Rado in the chest. He made a cry of inarticulate triumph and got his free hand under his leather breastplate to scratch one of his nipples. Rado played along, dropping on all fours and starting a terrified plea in Slavic. Looking both suspicious and lustful for his own turn with me, the other companion squatted on his haunches and clutched hard on his spear. Their leader was too far gone to do other than retire out of sight and wait for me. With more sniggering, and clutching of weapons, these two watched me undress. Don’t ask how a man with my physique managed to look submissive out of his clothes. No doubt, the rain helped. I’d been wet through all day. Now, I was cold as well.
Chapter 56
You can be sure I didn’t stay submissive. The foul-smelling pig was no sooner lying beneath me, gasping and running his hands up and down the muscles on my back, when I snapped his neck, and Eboric sat on his legs to stop them from kicking any stones loose. I didn’t even have to kiss those putrid lips. By the time I looked out, shivering in the rain, Rado was casually sitting on a rock with his feet raised in the air. One of the footmen was curled in a ball and dead. The other was choking his last with my steel knife in his throat.
‘Good lad!’ I said, slapping Rado on the back. He really had been wasted as a dancing boy. Eboric too. I kissed him on the cheek. What better sons could any man desire? I looked down the incline. There was no one coming. Rado shook his head and smiled happily. I stretched my arms and looked up at the sky. Now I was used to the cold, I felt deliciously sensual in the rain.
But I pulled myself back to the matter in hand. ‘We’d better get rid of the bodies,’ I said. I thought about the boulder. My own kill was already there. We could dump the other two on top. I thought again. I looked at Eboric. ‘If you can strip them, we’ll cover the bodies with stones.’ He nodded eagerly and vanished behind the boulder. The wolves would have them out soon enough. By then, though, there’d be no one about to make a fuss. Just in case, we’d hide the clothes separately.
I sat on a stone and reached for my trousers. I noticed an ingrowing hair on my right thigh and picked at it. Rado put his legs down and turned his head slightly. I’d heard it already. ‘I shouldn’t worry about the noise,’ I said.
‘What does it mean?’ he asked. The dying man had stopped twitching. He reached forward and recovered my knife.
‘Do keep the knife,’ I said. ‘You’ve earned it.’ He perked up at once. It was a lovely object. He’d been admiring the thing since Trebizond. He cleaned it on the dead man’s jacket and balanced it in his hand. More of the faint but massive roaring drifted up from the pass. ‘Singing eunuchs,’ I explained. ‘The Great King keeps a choir of a thousand. If memory serves me right, that’s one of the audience anthems they’re practising.’ I stretched both legs out and wiggled my toes. I suddenly realised that Rado had been copying me. I smiled. ‘Eunuchs have a tendency of melancholia that needs to be carefully managed,’ I explained further. It was one explanation – one among several. A gust of wind caught my upper back. I put my trousers down and reached for my undershirt. Everything was soaked through. I twisted the linen until water splashed over my knees.
I glanced at the dead man. ‘It would have been useful to question him,’ I said.
Rado stood up. ‘Why?’ he asked sharply. He twisted in the direction of the singing eunuchs. ‘What is there to learn?’ He looked at me, suspicion on his face.
Eboric came from behind the boulder. He turned the dead man’s leggings inside out and held them up for inspection. ‘He lost a lot of mess in these,’ he said.
‘It’s often the case when you break a neck,’ I said. ‘I believe it’s the same with garrotting.’ I looked at my own stiffy. I got up and stretched again. Eboric smiled expectantly but I shook my head. This wasn’t the time or the place. Besides, I was thinking very hard. Rado had said seven days, going direct, from here to Trebizond. How long would it take a fast horseman – not able to make use of the postal stations – along the road from wherever Shahin had put in on the Black Sea coast to here? I could suppose a few days longer than we’d taken. Then again, Shahin had set out a day earlier than we had and must have landed a couple of days ahead of us. A direct messenger could do it. But why do it? There was no reason to suppose Shahin had known about the invasion. Why send anyone ahead, only to make contact with a small escort that might easily be missed? Why risk even one man who might be better employed on protecting Shahin and his precious cargo? Correction – why do without a man who might be better employed keeping Shahin’s skin intact?
I noticed that Rado was still staring at me. ‘Why not give the crotch a rinse in that little puddle there?’ I asked Eboric. ‘And let’s have a look at his other clothes.’
You do get used, after a while, to wearing someone else’s dirty clothes – even when you’ve just caused him to die in them – though it never gets easier once you’ve known better. The dead man had been smaller than me in every dimension. But Persian uniforms were made to be a baggy fit. So long as I didn’t try for any sudden or ambitious movement, this would do.
I looked at my reflection in the puddle. There was nothing I could do about my face, but the head covering under the helmet sorted the problem of my hair. I straightened up. The dead man’s horse would be a bigger problem. There was a look in its eyes that suggested a certain dislike.
Even if you can tolerate them individually, massed choirs of eunuchs are an acquired taste. Eunuchs obviously think otherwise. And, looking down at the beardless, radiant faces, who could blame them? So far as I could tell, all real movement along the pass had come to a stop. The occasional splashing forward through two foot of increasingly sewery rainwater was best explained as a closing up of gaps.
Rado pointed at a spot point about a hundred yards forward. ‘That will be the best exit,’ he said into my ear. I looked at the sheer opposite wall of the pass. I’d already seen how the gentle inclines on this side gave way on the other to much steeper, rougher places. My map showed the tapering gap between the passes as a standard blob of colour. To get from one pass to the other, though, would mean going over a smallish mountain.
The eunuchs suddenly turned their faces to the sky and buried the sound of their voices in a long clashing of cymbals and little bells. Alone among the grey multitudes brought to a halt along the pass, they had contrived at least to lo
ok happy.
I noticed Rado was looking at me. I smiled and shuffled forward on my chest, pretending to look for a less uncomfortable leaning position in my Persian clothes. ‘What are you planning, My Lord?’ he asked in a low, implacable voice.
I pretended not to understand him ‘Getting into the pass will mean going back a few hundred yards,’ I said. ‘It’s then a matter of forcing a way through a dense and mostly ill-tempered mass of humanity. Best avoid the eunuchs – they won’t shift for anyone. Their baggage carriers will be much easier.’
Rado slapped his hand impatiently against a stone. ‘And you’ll be coming with us?’ he demanded.
I took a deep breath and pulled myself away from the edge. Two weeks with Rado really had been like watching a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. He hadn’t understood those dead Persians, but he knew me well enough. ‘I want to see what’s happening,’ I said, carefully choosing my words. ‘I know the King of Persia, and I can tell when he’s planning to show himself to the people. We need to know what course the army is taking and anything else that Chosroes cares to reveal.’
Rado was silent a moment. Then – ‘But you can see him from the other side of the pass,’ he said. ‘We’re sending word to Trebizond. What more is there to do? We came for the Lady Antonia. We’ll soon be running out of time.’ There was a sound of alarm, and of horror, in his voice that indicated he wasn’t only thinking of Antonia.
I slithered down and looked at the horse I’d inherited. It was proving an unbalanced liability. If I went down into the pass, the first thing I’d do there was to be parted from it. I waited for Rado to come and sit beside me. ‘I’ve sworn fealty to the Emperor,’ I said. ‘I’m one of the rulers of the Greek Empire. I won’t go into detail again but these duties override all others.’ I ignored Rado’s cry of anger, and hurried on. ‘Be at the highest point across the pass at dawn tomorrow. I’ll meet you there. If I’m not there, press on with Eboric to intercept Shahin. You’ve been reverting by the day to mountain raiders. I’m little more than surplus baggage. Shahin won’t be expecting trouble. Creep in by night, if you can – and only if you can – and snatch Antonia. Explain everything to Antonia. She’ll understand.’
The Curse of Babylon Page 41