The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  I stepped away from the edge. There was another burst of cheering and a long wail of despair, as I suspect a new victim was hoisted into position over one of the fires. ‘How much more to do?’ I asked, raising my voice. I suspect Rado hadn’t noticed it, but I felt moderately pleased with my latest kill. All the same, where one had been there might be others.

  ‘All done,’ came the reply. ‘I’ve got everything I needed.’ I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting. I only knew it was more than this. In the next few hours, we’d be making a frontal assault on this lot with a pitifully small and untrained force. And Rado was giving his preparations less time and apparent detail than I’d seen from actors testing the acoustics in a theatre they knew. I swung abruptly from worship of my military hero to the fringes of panic over the madness of what we were doing.

  If Rado picked anything up from my tone, it didn’t show. ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘We can go back and try for some sleep. I want everyone in his place an hour before the dawn.’

  I scratched my head. What places was he talking about? He’d spent the remaining hours of light mumbling on and off in bad Greek over one of his pebble maps. Every so often, one of the half dozen young men listening had asked a question that bore no obvious relation to anything Rado was trying to say. Even with Antonia to interpret where his Greek failed him, the answers in turn bore no relation to the questions. And this had been before the pair of us had come out to see the topography for ourselves. Granted, those half dozen young men had gone off looking mightily pleased and had then visibly raised every spirit in the sections they were appointed to lead. Everyone had been cheered still more when Rado got us running about in groups while he shouted at us to move left and right. That was part of the reason for my depressive speech. Everyone was eager for the dawn. On the other hand, did anyone know better?

  ‘Is there any chance,’ I asked on our way back to the camp, ‘that you could get a couple of the bigger men to take Antonia back to where we camped last night?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘She’s the Emperor’s niece and everyone thinks she brings good luck.’ He sighed. ‘However, I have told Eboric to keep a close watch on her tomorrow morning. If things go wrong, he’ll get her to safety.’ He coughed, I think to cover a smile. ‘You do realise, though, that nothing will go wrong tomorrow?’

  I tried for a smooth answer but gave up. Rado laughed softly. ‘You’ll be surprised,’ he said. ‘What I realise more and more is that everything in my life has been a preparation for this moment.’

  Oh dear! It’s when someone comes out with this kind of lunatic remark that sensible men start looking round for an escape. But there could be no escape. I was the complete author of this madcap raid. All I’d needed to do was get the militias to guard the paths round the mountain. They could have fought defensive actions, on their own ground, against little bands not really inclined to push their luck so far from base. Instead, I’d called for another Marathon and was most likely to get another Thermopylae, though without actually buying time for a real defence. A further thought came into my head. Some of our horses were captured from the Persians. They could be expected to charge into battle. What about the others? What about mine?

  I was halfway down a spiral of misery when I heard a clomping of feet on turf somewhere on my right. Rado was already off the path and picking up speed. I drew my sword and waited. The moon was presently behind a cloud. There was nothing I could see, though what I heard suggested no serious problem. It was a faint squeal, followed by a louder cry of fear and then a savage laugh from Rado and a mouthful of obscene abuse in Slavic.

  ‘Is that Theodore?’ I asked.

  It was.

  ‘Don’t let big Rado kill me, Father,’ he cried in Greek, as he was tossed on to the path before me.

  ‘Don’t kill him unless you have to,’ I said. I thought quickly. ‘Take him back to the camp and wait for me there,’ I added. I turned my own horse off the path and cantered into the darkness. ‘Priscus!’ I cried softly. ‘Priscus! I know you’re out here. Why won’t you show yourself??’

  I fell silent. I bit my lip. I waited. I thought of riding back to the path. Then I heard the gentle stamp of a hoof behind me on the right. ‘So eager for my company, dear boy!’ he called mockingly. ‘If only that had marked our friendship from the beginning, how much better things would now be for all of us.’ He laughed. ‘Still, it’s never too late to mend.’ He laughed louder. ‘Any chance of a drink? That boy of yours is a rotten thief.’

  ‘The order was for dimmed lamps only,’ I said. From the illumination showing through the walls of our tent, Antonia had inherited something from her father.

  She ignored the rebuke. ‘Who’s that man with you?’ she asked in Latin, nodding towards the open flap of the tent.

  ‘That’s the demon I told you was living with us,’ Eboric said, crossing himself. He went placidly back to letting Antonia comb his hair.

  Priscus stepped fully inside. ‘I am delighted, Madam, finally to have made your acquaintance,’ Priscus said in Latin. How bowed. ‘I am Priscus, former Commander of the East, among much else.’

  Antonia raised her eyebrows. ‘I was under the impression you’d been dead for a year. Are you the swine who was spying on me in Alaric’s palace?’

  ‘It’s our palace,’ he replied with a smile – ‘our palace, please be aware.’ He sat on the ground and reached for a jug of the local red.

  I scowled at the pathetic dribble he’d left for me. He laughed and finished that as well. ‘Am I right in my suspicion, dear boy,’ he asked, ‘that you are proposing to lead an army of shepherds and beekeepers into action against the main Persian army? If so, you’ve gone fucking mad.’ He smiled at Antonia. ‘The young lady will, of course, pardon my Syriac.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, My Lord,’ Eboric said helpfully. ‘Rado’s in charge of everything.’ Antonia nodded and pushed him down again, to continue with the bow she was tying in his hair.

  Priscus grunted and put the jug down. He looked about for another. I hoped there was none. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘Alaric’s not as completely stupid as he often looks. If he’s let Rado take over, you’ve some chance of being alive and at liberty this time tomorrow.’ He reached into his sleeve and took out a lead pill box. ‘But where is the young hero?’

  ‘If you’re speaking of me, My Lord, I’m here.’ Rado stood in the doorway of the tent. ‘How long have you been following us?’

  Priscus got up and bowed again. ‘Not long at all,’ he said. ‘When I discovered that Shahin’s reception party was somewhat larger than we’d expected, I had the same idea as Alaric to snuff out the top man. Sadly, I’ve had no more success.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ I broke in. ‘The idea now is to scare them into a retreat. Rado will give you a listing of our forces. If you want to inspect them for yourself, we’ll get everyone out of his tent.’

  Still on his feet, Priscus looked at Rado. ‘I don’t think we need to disturb men on the eve of battle,’ he said. He walked across the tent. ‘Let’s go for a walk. We can discuss everything in private.’

  I made to get up. ‘I wasn’t speaking to you, my fine and pretty bean counter,’ he sneered. ‘You just wait in turn for your hair to be done. We’ll be back when we’re ready.’

  I broke the long silence that resulted. ‘I didn’t realise Priscus bothered much with the household slaves,’ I said.

  ‘Rado was always his favourite,’ Eboric explained. ‘They used to spend hours together when you were working or having sex.’ He twisted round and smiled shyly at Antonia. ‘My Lady will forgive me?’ She patted him on the shoulder and took up a mirror to show him with his finished red bow. He spent an age admiring himself, while I tried not to fidget. But he did finally put the mirror down. He kissed Antonia’s hand. ‘Yes, they always got on ever so well,’ he took up again. ‘They’d sometimes talk all night about war and fighting. It was Priscus who gave him the idea of building his muscles
up until you would think of letting him go into the army.’

  I tried my best not to notice how Antonia shook with laughter.

  It seemed like half the night, though it probably wasn’t that long, before I heard them walking back together. They shared a quiet joke in Slavic outside the tent, before the flap was opened wide and Priscus poked his head in. ‘Come out, Alaric,’ he said in Greek. ‘It’s time we had an honest word in private.’

  Chapter 68

  The moon was out once more from behind the clouds and its dim light shone over the quiet stillness of the plain where we’d set our camp. Priscus led me up a small hill and sat down on the grass. I sat beside him and refused the pill he offered – for what was to come in just a few hours, I needed my natural wits about me. Together, we looked for a while at the distant glow of the fires in the pass.

  ‘Rado’s plan is sound,’ he said abruptly. ‘That’s not to say it will work. But what he’s cobbled together to meet your strategic requirements is the best one for the circumstances. I suggested one change in a matter of detail – an important detail, I’ll grant – but you’ve no need to outrage the boy by asking me to take charge. Believe me that he’s the best man to do the job you’ve set him.’

  I said nothing. My earlier panic was over and I now felt ashamed. I patted the short grass, and thought of the hills in Kent. There was nothing for me to say. Priscus had brought me here for him to do the talking. It was for me to listen.

  ‘Do you recall how, when I was banged up in that monastery, I wondered if I hadn’t been reserved for some final achievement?’

  I nodded. ‘Something that would get you a better place in the histories than you were likely to get,’ I said.

  He sniffed. ‘On second thoughts, I think the histories can look after themselves. But I did spend a lot of time in the attic you gave me, thinking about one last thing I could do with myself. The trick with the silver cup seemed exactly the thing. I heard about it on one of my night wanderings. That was a while after I’d discovered that Shahin was sniffing about with Eunapius and Nicetas. I approached the old loons who had it and told them I had a commission from Heraclius himself. I got the box made, covered it with lies and got word to Shahin about its wondrous qualities. After that, it was largely a matter of letting events unfold without further intervention. I stole the cup and dumped it with you when something you don’t need to know about went wrong. It was somewhat ungrateful of me. But, so long as you keep telling yourself that the end justifies the means, you can’t deny that everything went absolutely swimmingly. By the time he took sail with the thing, Shahin had no reason to believe other than that we were desperate to keep it out of Persian hands. I could hug myself, thinking that I’d saved the Home Provinces and sent the Persian elephant charging at Egypt instead.

  ‘Then it all began to unravel. I should have expected you’d work out part of the truth about the box. I was hoping Eunapius didn’t know quite as much as he did. When you left earlier than I expected, I had to come after you and stop you from interfering with Shahin.

  ‘But you got here faster than I ever expected. By the time I’d realised that, of course, the box and its contents had been made largely irrelevant by some turn of the Royal Mind in Ctesiphon. So I decided to take out Chosroes. But he was too well guarded, even for me. I suffered the humiliation of learning from useless bloody Theodore that you’d nearly got there instead – and that you would have got there but for his own insane jealousy for the girl, or the boy, or whatever he had fixed in his diseased mind.’

  Priscus stopped. ‘Something I can’t work out is why you let me think you hadn’t got the real secret of the box. Did you want me to come after you?’

  I smiled. ‘Would you have let me come out here if you’d known the truth?’ I asked. ‘Even without the invasion, there was a chance I’d fall into Persian hands. Could you risk that I’d talk under torture? You let me go because, if I were taken, you thought I’d only reinforce belief in the magic cup and its true message of our strength in the Home Provinces. In the end, I suppose you followed me anyway, to see what would happen.’

  ‘Would you believe I followed you in case you needed to be saved?’ he asked. ‘You and somebody else?’ That thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I fell silent again.

  ‘I can’t recall how many times in the past I used the phrase “We stand or fall together”,’ he continued. ‘Too often, you took it as ironic. Perhaps it often was. I mostly uttered the phrase before or after trying to stitch you up. The Empire needs a genius to defend it and a genius to make it worth defending. It doesn’t matter who’s the Emperor, so long as those two are agreed on what needs to be done. You are the reformer – sound money, low taxes, honest government, quiet toleration of religious and other differences. I can’t be the defender. But I do ask you to look after young Rado. When he first tried to make me get up in the morning and wash, I saw he had unusual qualities. He’s shown these pretty well in the past few days. If he survives this battle, take him back to Constantinople. Get him into the Military Academy. Make Heraclius promote him as illegally as he promoted you. Give him five or six years of carving up the Lombards. Then turn him loose again on the Persians. He’ll astonish the world.’

  I pursed my lips. ‘That depends on my standing with Heraclius,’ I said.

  Priscus sniffed again. ‘There’s no doubt of that, dear boy. Before I left, he’d renamed a square after you and announced your marriage to his niece. He’s extended your land law to every province not under occupation and declared non-compliance punishable as high treason. He’s even sent an army to your assistance, such as that may be. It might be here within another ten days. Win tomorrow and you’ll go home as quite the golden boy.’

  ‘And what of you, Priscus?’ I asked.

  He stood up and looked harder at the continuing glow from the bonfires. ‘Oh, I’ll get my final achievement,’ he said. ‘General Rado’s idea was to concentrate most of his forces on the frontal assault. He did put some aside for a preliminary sideways attack – to cause panic and pull defenders away from the site of the main attack.’ He laughed. ‘Imagine digging a hot needle into a caterpillar’s side. It rears up and twists about. The problem with Rado’s original plan was that his needle wasn’t hot enough. He’s now agreed to group all the survivors of some Persian atrocity under my command. I’ll be leading them down into the pass. We’ll make it look as if we’re going for the True Cross. That should put Chosroes in a sweat.’

  ‘And how will you get men on horseback down the slopes?’ I asked.

  He sniffed louder still. ‘Who mentioned horses, my dearest? We’re going down on foot.’

  There was an obvious answer. I still asked the question. ‘How will you get out again?’

  ‘Dearest Alaric,’ he laughed, ‘you’ll just have to make a success of the frontal assault.’

  I got up and stood beside Priscus. Together, we watched the glow from the pass. Every so often, there was a snatch of voices lifted in rapturous song and of wind instruments.

  ‘Do you remember how we first met?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not something I’m likely to forget,’ I answered. ‘It was my second day in Constantinople. I was enjoying myself in a restaurant with Martin, when you walked in with half a dozen of your Black Officers. You clubbed someone to pulp while arresting him and finished him off in private when you discovered you’d got the wrong man. You arrested the pair of us and took us off to be tortured to death. It was a stroke of luck I’m still here.’

  ‘Oh, Alaric,’ he said, ‘I’ve always wished we could have got off to a better start. But who was it said “When error is irreparable, repentance is useless”?’

  ‘Thucydides,’ I said automatically.

  ‘Oh, such scholarship!’ he mocked. ‘And such a contrast to the battle speech you’ve taught to young Rado.’ He let his voice fall back. ‘Still, must be getting along. You won’t believe the work Rado and I have on our plates before dawn.’ He put his hand out. ‘W
ill you wish good luck to an old comrade?’

  ‘With all my heart,’ I said, taking his hand. As ever, it was cold and dry. He smiled and withdrew it.

  And that was it. He walked quickly away from me in the direction of Rado’s tent. I watched until I saw the faint brightness as the flap was opened and closed again. I stood a long time in thought. Still thinking, I walked back to my own tent. Antonia would be up and waiting for me.

  Chapter 69

  The sky promised a fine day. But it was cold at dawn. I don’t think anyone had slept in the end. I’d spent the rest of the night talking things over with Antonia. Rado and his deputies may not have once looked up from their urgent fussing over heaps of pebbles. Everyone else had gone through the later hours of darkness in a long religious service. With all the kissing and pawing, I could be surprised there was any paint left on our icons. And now the moment was coming inescapably forward. Almost before the eastern sky was pink, we set out for the junction of the two passes. We arrived as the pink was glowing brighter and brighter.

  With Rado, I poked my head above some bushes and watched Shahin’s slow procession to the appointed place. Still in its open box, I watch the cup glinting in the grey light. Right at the front, it was carried by Shahin himself. I spotted Simon beside him and a limping and somewhat slimmer Timothy close behind. At a distance of about ten paces, they were followed by what may have been their whole armed band. All were dressed in white. None was visibly armed. That surely meant they were to be ushered, at some point in the proceedings, into the Royal Presence.

  Once they’d all gone past and vanished round the last turn in the Larydia Pass, it was time for the scouts to go after them for a good look. It wasn’t long before they were waving up at us that everything was clear. At a signal from Rado, all of us who weren’t with Priscus, or waiting overhead, bows at the ready, dismounted and followed him. Still leading our horses, we crept forward till we were at the edge of the smooth ground. The right-angle turn that led to the junction of the passes was just over four hundred yards ahead.