The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  I stood up and reached for the horse. It whinnied suddenly and reared away from me. The sooner I could get rid of it, the happier I’d be – happier and safer. I still hadn’t tried mounting it. Nor would I. Rado soothed it down. Walking slowly, I led the way along the narrow path to where Eboric was hiding with the horses in a sort of cave with an open roof. On our left, the eunuchs were deep into a song that celebrated the many virtues of Chosroes. You could hear the Great King’s fingermarks all over it – hardly surprising he had to write his own praises if you bear in mind how many court poets he’d murdered over the years. You couldn’t call it bad exactly. No one could deny that Chosroes had better taste than Nicetas and more technical skill in Persian than Leander had in Greek. But the overall effect was still absurd and it must only have been fears of the impaling stake that kept the eunuchs from being pelted with filth by everyone who had to listen to them.

  As we approached the hiding place, the path turned sharply away from the pass and the sound of the choir no longer blotted out all other noises. I could hear the universal patter of rain and the gurgling of the many little streams in which it was collecting. I could hear Eboric’s whispered complaint that he was hungry and Rado’s sharp reply that the last remains of the goat couldn’t be scoffed till evening. ‘Get the horses ready,’ he said in a softer tone. ‘We’re moving out.’

  We were back on the main path when a Persian voice called from behind me: ‘What the fuck have you been playing at?’ I turned and saw a dismounted officer making his way towards me. There was no doubt he’d been speaking to me. I gave my best effort at a Persian salute and stood to attention.

  I’d still been dithering. Rado and Eboric together might have been able to tip the scale in the balance of fears and uncertainties. There’s nothing like having your mind made up for you. ‘Carry on past me,’ I said to Rado in Latin. ‘Remember what I said.’ Eboric’s mouth fell open with shock and I worried for a moment that he’d insist on a futile gesture. But Rado kept him moving. Another few moments and they were both leading the horses round a big rock that had bushes growing from it.

  Water squelching from his open boots, the officer hurried across the last few yards that separated us and poked me in the chest. ‘What do you think you’ve been doing half the sodding afternoon?’ he asked in the tone you put on for an idiot child. He poked me again, before lapsing into a manner more anxious than angry. ‘If we aren’t there soon, we’ll be lucky to get off with a flogging.’

  ‘I think my horse is a bit lame,’ I said in an Armenian accent so strong, the officer had to listen hard to me. I stumbled through a few set phrases in Persian, ending with a look of blank stupidity.

  ‘Oh, for an army filled with natives!’ the officer cried. But I’d explained my appearance and enough of my absence from whatever I was supposed to have been doing. With an impatient snort, he waited for me to get the horse turned round and to follow him over to the file of other dismounted horsemen. One of these gave me a funny look. But the officer was almost shaking with impatience and we set off as fast as we could lead the horses. We passed by the eunuchs again and the steep incline Rado had chosen for our departure from the pass. We picked our way steadily past the stationary mass below us on the right.

  Chapter 57

  Even at fifty yards, I could see that Chosroes was out of sorts with the world. His throne had been set up on a broad and reasonably flat rock that overlooked the pass. In the harsh sunlight of these mountains, he would have been a glorious sight. His throne was of white marble. He was dressed in his favourite yellow. The idea was plainly to have had Shahrbaraz and his other generals standing behind him, and behind them a few dozen priests of their fire-worshipping faith. The thousands upon thousands in the pass could have looked up to behold their Lord and Master arrayed in all His Majesty.

  Of course, the rain had spoiled everything. The tall hats of the priests had collapsed over their faces and robes that should have flowed clung in a less than flattering manner to their bodies. Chosroes was more or less dry under his canopy. But this was only kept from sagging inward and leaking over the royal head by regular poking with a rod, so that water splashed on the silvered armour of the Royal Guard. The Great King and latest alleged posterity of Cyrus slumped on his throne. As ever, the old fraud Urvaksha was huddled on the ground before him. His hat too had fallen down his face. But you couldn’t mistake the golden collar about his scrawny neck, or the golden chain which led from the collar to the Royal Hand. Nasty creature, I’d always thought him. Though blind, he’d sized me up soon enough and thought the same of me. Luckily, Chosroes had broken with his general custom and paid no attention to the gibbered warnings of betrayal. A shame the poison he’d accidentally eaten on my behalf hadn’t finished him off.

  The Persian officer slammed his fist against my leather breastplate. ‘Move yourself, fuckwit!’ he groaned. ‘Must I tell you everything? Where were you this morning, when Shahrbaraz spoke to the army?’ Looking vacant, I let my mouth sag open. The officer swore again. He looked quickly about and leaned closer. ‘You don’t have security clearance,’ he whispered, leaving a gap between each word. ‘If you don’t want to be thrown head first over the edge, give me your sword. You can have it back afterwards.’ With another slap of his hand on leather, he pushed me towards the back of the disorganised and shivering mob of guards. ‘Go on, then – just get over there. Stand at the back and try not to look like a moron. Leave the horse for the grooms.’

  I shuffled across to stand in place. I counted a dozen Royal Guards. These still had their weapons and stood in formation close beside the Great King. The rest of us, it was clear, were there to fill up the numbers. It was a bit of a come down from public appearances in Ctesiphon, where Chosroes wouldn’t have thought to show himself without the whole of the Royal Guard. How many had he brought with him? I wondered. The plain answer was that he must have brought all of them. The question, then, was where they were. Guarding the harem, perhaps? I had one answer as we were pushed and nagged by a couple of eunuchs into a more regular formation. Each of the Royal Guards was given his own sunshade bearer. The rest of us were left to get even wetter. Silvered armour doesn’t come cheap. When you’re already spent out on a gigantic invasion, a bit of rust on iron underlay becomes a serious concern.

  One of the senior eunuchs now set about arranging us in detail. Speaking a Persian so rarified even the natives didn’t understand all of it, he poked and prodded with a cane until we bore some resemblance to a guard of honour. ‘Taller men at the front,’ he shrilled quietly at me and then at a hulking beast whose beard was so dense it made his face look like the back of his head. I gave up the pretence of not understanding and let myself be pushed into a standing place one away from the front, and perhaps fifteen men along from Chosroes on my left.

  So long as the bearded one next to me didn’t breathe too hard, I could hear snatches of the conversation with the Grand Chamberlain. ‘If it isn’t in the iced compartment,’ Chosroes said in the silky drawl that, once heard, no one ever forgot, ‘it must have been stolen.’ He snatched up an ivory scratching stick and pushed it inside the front of his robe. Grunting like an ape that’s being fed, he rubbed it back and forth. He finished and took it out. He leaned forward to sniff the teeth. Displeased with the smell, he tossed it aside. ‘Why is no one looking for it?’ he asked.

  The Chamberlain darted forward to pick up the scratching stick. ‘If I might suggest, Your Majesty,’ he wheedled, ‘somebody, somewhere in the baggage train must have a replacement. I can send out a demand once the review is finished.’

  I couldn’t see him but Shahrbaraz now spoke. ‘Everything’s ready, Your Majesty,’ he said gruffly. ‘If we don’t start soon, the rain will get worse again.’ It wasn’t the hushed, deferential tone most would use to a borderline lunatic vested with absolute and arbitrary power. Then again, whether or not he was actually mad, Chosroes wasn’t stupid. If the only military leader of any talent thrown up on either side by ele
ven years of war didn’t choose to address the Great King in a deferential squeak, he’d not have a bowstring tied round his neck.

  Chosroes held up a hand for attention. ‘My dear friend, Shahrbaraz,’ he cried sternly, ‘when Xerxes sat on a throne such as this at Abydos, it hadn’t been pissing down all day. He could see his entire fleet and army in one glance. If that mist comes any closer, the best I’ll be able to do is smell the assembled swine who call themselves my army.’

  The reply was something I didn’t catch. Nor could I hear what Chosroes said after that. But the polite laughter from the Chamberlain and the other eunuchs told me it wasn’t relevant. Chosroes raised his hand again. ‘Enough, enough!’ he said. ‘Be seated beside me, O greatest of my generals. The army has been brought together and must see us together and at one in all our deliberations.’ He wriggled upright on his throne. Eunuchs ran forward to catch the loose cushions before they could hit the ground. ‘Where is my fucking melon?’ he suddenly spat. ‘I’ve been fancying it since breakfast.’ He took his scratching stick from Shahrbaraz and set about his calves.

  Urvaksha looked up from muttering over his tangled strings. He turned conveniently sightless eyes in my direction. ‘The knots tell me one of the serving boys ate it,’ he cackled. ‘The knots are never wrong – just let them be read by one who understands them. The knots are never wrong, I tell you!’

  They hadn’t served him well in the matter of the pickled goat’s brain I’d let him pilfer from my dish. But Chosroes was leaning forward and slapping his thigh. ‘Brilliant, Urvaksha!’ he called out. ‘Why is no one else willing to speak truth to power?’ He tugged affectionately on the golden chain, catching his seer off guard and pulling him into a puddle. ‘I will address the army on my feet,’ he said, getting up and stepping forward to where he had his best view of the tired and perhaps nearly mutinous assembly in the pass. If only I could have got past the armed guards to give him one hard shove – if only one of the sodden eunuchs hurrying forward with the canopy had stumbled in the right direction – it wouldn’t have been another missed chance of ending the war. But it was missed. As if he’d heard what I was thinking, he looked suspiciously round and stepped away from the edge.

  ‘Time, I suppose, to weep,’ he said in Greek. ‘A hundred years from now, not one of these men will be alive.’ He stopped for a low peal of thunder to roll down from the mountains. ‘If I have any say in the matter,’ he tittered into his sleeve, ‘a hundred years will be more than pushing it. Ten is too many for this assembly of human trash.’ He turned to Shahrbaraz. ‘I’m ready to face my loving people,’ he said in Persian.’

  Somewhere behind me, a gigantic gong rang out, louder than the renewed thunder that accompanied it. I couldn’t see into the pass from where I was standing but there was a ragged blare of trumpets from down there. After a long silence, the eunuchs struck up in unison:

  Dārom andarz-ē az dānāgān

  Az guft-ī pēšēnīgān

  Ō šmāh bē wizārom

  Pad rāstīh andar gēhān

  Agar ēn az man padīrēd

  Bavēd sūd-ī dō gēhān

  Their voices and the bell-ringing accompaniment died away to reveal more thunder. This was blotted out again by a roar of cheering from below. While this continued, Chosroes mounted a small platform that had been carried forward. How the canopy bearers kept him dry was a tribute to the education of his court eunuchs. The rain was coming on harder and beat against us in great, heavy sheets. But Chosroes had now put on his biggest crown and, his unwetted beard poking forward, he raised both arms to take in the adulation of his army. He spun round and round, the heavy silk of his robe spreading out to make him look like a cone. The priests stood up and bowed. The Royal Guardsmen roared and beat their swords on their shields. We, the military rubbish, let out an inarticulate cheer. Far above, the clouds lit up in a dim flash. This time, the thunder rolled on and on. Depending how wet you were, you could take this as a further nuisance or as a dramatic accompaniment. Chosroes was able – and, I suppose, required – to take it as the latter. He raised his arms and walked quickly up and down his platform.

  The cheering reached its end. Chosroes stood at the front of the platform and looked steadily at a depression in the far wall of the pass.

  ‘Men of Persia,’ he began, ‘I have allowed you into my presence so that I may share with you the plans I have been revolving in my mind.’ Whoever was in charge of the acoustics had messed up badly. His voice sounded weak at twenty yards. Through rain and thunder, how much of what he was saying could be heard down below was hard to say. The Persians never had been much good at the technical side of things. But this was a failing that, in itself, might tell something about the planning behind the invasion.

  Chosroes stroked his beard in a manner that must be striking terror into his acoustics adviser and raised his voice to an undignified shout. ‘There are those, men of Persia, who say that we are weak. They say that our crops blacken in the fields, and that our men sicken and die of the sweating pestilence. They say that our victories are a product of Greek failure – that the Greeks are badly led and that they have too many other frontiers to guard.

  ‘But I tell you, men of Persia, that we are strong. We are the children of destiny. We are the ones whose glory shall be remembered at the end of time.’ I was right about the acoustics. There’d be no free places on his impaling stakes once this was over, and once he’d laid eyes on whoever had told him to speak towards the far wall of the pass. He stopped for applause. Because he had stopped he got the applause, but it was more polite than frenzied. Everyone round him, to be sure, cheered himself hoarse. It was the wise thing to do. I think it took every mind off a sky that had turned the colour of lead.

  Chosroes gave another glare over his shoulder and raised his voice to a scream. ‘When my royal ancestor, Xerxes, invaded Greece a thousand years ago, he made one fatal mistake. That was to leave the Greeks he had conquered with their lives. In every age of their history, the Greeks have been an irreverent, faithless race. Whether in philosophy or theology, they go out of their way to unsettle every mind. The Greeks cannot be conquered until they are silenced. They cannot be silenced until they are dead.’

  He stopped to clear his throat and for the praise of those who could hear him. ‘Oh, bravo, bravo,’ we cried. ‘Death to the Greeks. What have they ever done for us?’ and so on and so forth. Down in the pass, the only noise was of raindrops on spread canvas. A couple of eunuchs hurried forward to place covered lamps about the Great King. They made it easier to see him, though the upward lighting did nothing to remove the impression that we were being addressed by the monster from a particularly lurid nightmare.

  Chosroes turned and spoke directly to us in his normal voice. ‘I have given orders for every Greek we encounter on our march to be put to the sword. We left not one living creature in the cities of Pentopolis and Alanta. Every farmer, every shepherd on our march, has been hunted down and killed without mercy. That is the policy we will adopt as we press through the Home Provinces of the Greek Empire. Constantinople itself will be taken and it will be sacked till not one stone is left standing on another. We will kill its people. We will demolish its buildings. We will burn its libraries. When we have dealt with the great city of filth and corruption that sits upon the two waters, we will race forward and take Athens and then Rome. I will, on my return to Ctesiphon, give supplemental orders for the cleansing of Antioch and Jerusalem and every other Syrian city of the Greek pollution. It will be the same for Egypt, once it is returned to its ancient loyalty.

  ‘And we will spread our message of cleansing wider yet. The lands and islands of the remotest West shall not be suffered to harbour one student of the accursed civilisation. It is my intention that no record shall be left to future ages of the Greek and Latin races. Their books and languages will be wiped from the face of the world.

  ‘But let us return to present concerns. In every step of our progress to Constantinople, let our
army wade knee-deep through the blood of slaughtered Greeks. None must be spared. Compassion for those we conquer is treason to me.’

  He stopped, realising perhaps he was drifting away from the big themes. He turned back to face his army and took a deep breath. ‘I, Chosroes the Mighty,’ he bellowed, ‘will take final revenge for the outrages heaped upon our nation by Alexander the barbarian.’

  I doubt if it mattered whether the army could hear him. Probably everyone in the pass had heard of Alexander, though not of who he really was. As for Xerxes and his failed invasion, and all the other ancient Kings of Persia, perhaps one in a hundred down there had heard their names. I’d soon learned in Ctesiphon that Chosroes had Herodotus on the brain. Those Persians who didn’t know any Greek had no history but childish chronicles with notions of dating that changed from one chapter to the next.

  He’d finished – and there was no point in continuing. Down below, the eunuchs had started an impromptu medley of war ballads. There were limits to how those of us about him could express our delight at the Royal Eloquence and strategic wisdom. With a face as dark as the sky, the Great King walked from the platform. He didn’t wait for the eunuchs to get their canopy over him.

  ‘Chosroes,’ I called out in a voice that was surprisingly calm. There are times when fear leaves you paralysed. Then there are times when you realise what you had always intended and what has to be done. ‘Chosroes,’ I called again, this time in Greek and using the Greek version of his name, ‘can I have a moment with you?’