The Caspian Gates

by Harry Sidebottom

  ‘I am of a mind that one swallow does not make a summer,’ said Maximus.

  ‘For once, I am inclined to agree with you.’ Hippothous had pushed the bronze helmet to the back of his head. His eyes glittered.

  That is a man who enjoys killing, Ballista thought. ‘Hippothous, gather the bodyguard and round up about fifty of the regulars here. We need to get to the Lion Harbour.’

  As the men were collected, Ballista briefly inspected the artillery. As he had suspected, one of them had broken on its second shot. He praised the men there, and told them not to relax; the Goths might come again.

  They pounded down a dark street. At least the grid plan of the town made directions easy. After about three hundred paces they came to the south wall of the Bouleuterion. Ballista called a stop. He told them they needed to get closed up – who knew what they would find around the next corner? But, equally pressing, he had to get his wind back. Running in full armour was always exhausting, but he was far from campaign fit, and he was not so young any more. Forty winters were taking their toll.

  Turning left, the tall, many-columned edifices of the agora opened up around them. All was empty and quiet where they were, but the north end was a very different case. Men were fighting and dying along the battlements of the hastily constructed wall which blocked the quay of the Lion Harbour. The bowelclenching sounds of steel on steel, of agonized screaming, washed down the colonnades towards them.

  There were some two hundred paces to go. It was too far to run; they would arrive fragmented, out of breath.

  ‘Form up on me,’ Ballista said. ‘We walk until I give the order.’

  Nearly one hundred armoured men, close packed, stepped forward. Ballista was at their head; Maximus on his left, Hippothous his right. Going to meet something very frightening, it was hard to walk slowly. Every instinct screamed: run, get it over and done. Twenty paces gone, thirty – just let it be over.

  More Gothic warriors were appearing on the wall walk. A few had fought their way down some steps and were trying to cut their way to the gate. If they got that open, it was all over.

  Sixty paces, seventy. Unconsciously, Ballista quickened the pace.

  A knot of Roman auxiliaries was fighting with their backs to the inside of the gate. More Goths were pressing on them. Blades flashed, rising and falling in the eerie torchlight.

  Ninety paces gone, a hundred.

  The fight at the gate was nearly over, but a handful of Romans was still on their feet. They could not last more than moments.

  ‘Charge!’ Ballista drew his sword and launched himself forward.

  The paving stones hard under the soles of his boots, scabbard banging against his left leg, Ballista forced his legs faster. The weight of his shield was dragging on his left arm. Faster, faster.

  Ballista had pulled clear of the line; Maximus and Hippothous half a step behind. The charge was shaping itself into an arrowhead: the wedge or boar’s snout beloved of the northern sagas.

  The last Roman had been chopped down. Only twenty paces to go. Four of the Goths moved to lift the bar of the gate. The others, twenty or thirty, turned to face the onslaught.

  The warrior facing Ballista set himself, long braided hair and beard, eyes glaring above a red shield. Ballista, legs pumping, shield well out, crashed straight into him. The impact stopped Ballista. The Goth staggered a step or two back. Someone thumped into Ballista’s back. Knocked forward, the northerner’s shield dipped as he fought for balance. The Goth raised his blade for the killing blow. Dropping the shield, still off balance, Ballista side-stepped off his left leg. The Gothic blade thrummed just past his ankle. It rang, sparking on the stone. Feet slipping, still toppling forward, Ballista shot like a ferret between his opponent and the next warrior in line.

  Not glancing back, a hand to the ground, Ballista regained his balance and let his momentum carry him on.

  The Goths at the gate, their backs to Ballista, strained as one. The bar lifted a fraction. Ballista aimed at the nearest warrior. At the last moment, the Goth looked over his shoulder – too late. At a flat run, Ballista drove the point of his sword two-handed into the small of the man’s back. Mail rings snapped and the steel went deep. Ballista’s momentum crashed them both against the wooden boards.

  Ballista wrenched his blade free. Some instinct made him spin to his right, wheeling the blade backhanded. It deflected the thrust inches from his nose. The impact ran through his arms. He dropped to one knee and brought his blade back, scything at his opponent’s knees. The Goth leapt backwards.

  Ballista rose to his feet carefully. For what seemed an eternity, they watched each other, like fighting cocks after the first pass. Then a blow from behind took the Goth in the back of the neck. As he collapsed, Ballista heard the thump of the bar falling back into place.

  Maximus grinned at Ballista. The Hibernian’s front was a bloody mess, none of it his own. Ballista smiled back and took the shield proffered by Hippothous. The Greek had pushed his archaic helmet back again. He was whooping with joy. So much for your Hellenic self-control, thought Ballista. He looked around the shambles. There was not a Goth still fighting inside the wall. Those that still moved, and some that did not, were being cut to pieces.

  ‘I am thinking it is still not safe,’ said Maximus.

  From the top of the wall, Ballista looked out and recreated the events from what he saw. Just one longship was skewered and broken out in the standing. The stakes had failed. He remembered the men embedding them saying that while the Lion Harbour was shallow, its bottom was thick mud. The wretched stakes must have toppled or sunk.

  Sixteen double-prowed ships were moored at the dock, a skeleton crew on each. The majority of the Goths were just in front. They never liked to venture too far from their boats. The warriors on land had formed a shieldburg. The first rank was kneeling, their shields planted on the ground; the second standing, the bases of their shields resting on the bosses of those in front; the ones behind holding their shields overhead. It was a daunting sight, as firm and unyielding as a rock, virtually arrow proof.

  It was hard to count the Gothic warriors. There were some eighty shields overlapping in the front rank, but the shieldburg could be as many as ten or twelve deep. That was a lot of dangerous men.

  The twenty or so paces of the quayside between the Goths and the wall were littered with the dead.

  Nothing moved. It was one of those disconcerting calms that often punctuated a battle, when both sides, as if by mutual consent, drew back and waited. Seeing the Gothic corpses, Ballista knew it would take a lot to get them to assault the wall again. But if their reiks were determined, it would take a lot to stop them a second time.

  The sky was lightening with the false dawn. The torches along the wall were paling. Away in the distance to the right, from behind buildings on a rise in the ground, smoke chuffed up. The northernmost flotilla of the Goths had not been idle. The stalemate in the Lion Harbour did not favour the defenders.

  As he leant thinking, Ballista noticed that the battlement under his elbows was made from a block of carved marble. It depicted a triton holding a steering oar, his fishy tail long and impressive. It was ironic, the monument boasting of Pompey the Great sweeping pirates from the water smashed and reused for a makeshift defence against a new threat from the sea. All the deeds of men were transient. Ballista wondered if anyone in the future would see that stone and draw a similar conclusion.

  There was a stir in the Gothic phalanx. Some of the overlapping shields drew apart, and a helmeted head poked out. The man called, his tone taunting.

  ‘And listen, Miletus, perpetrator of evil deeds; that is when

  Many will feed off you and take you as their gleaming prize.’

  At the Greek verse, the Milesians on the wall muttered uneasily: Chrysogonus, the betrayer of Nicomedia.

  ‘Your wives will wash the feet of long-haired men,

  And others will have charge of my temple at Didyma.’

  Ballista s
tood straight and shouted back. ‘The prophecy of Phoebus Apollo played out long ago when the Persians came. Your words are as false as your actions – the sophistry of a traitor.’

  Ballista hoped he had identified the Delphic Oracle correctly. If he was wrong, doubtless Hippothous would put him right later. But it sufficed for now. The men on the wall jeered.

  No sooner had the renegade Greek ducked down than another man stood forth.

  ‘I am Tharuaro, son of Gunteric, leader of the Tervingi in this hansa. And I know you: Dernhelm, disgrace to his father Isangrim, the war-leader of the Angles. No one knows treachery better than you – oath-breaker, murderer of the defenceless. You are the asneis the Romans call Ballista.’

  On the wall, Ballista was silent, eating the insults and thinking Loki-like thoughts.

  ‘If you want men to think that you are more than a day-labourer hired for copper, the lowest asneis, if you have any honour left, you will come down and face me.’ Tharuaro stepped clear of his men, empty handed and contemptuous. Hoom, hoom; the Goths growled their approval.

  Ballista pulled Maximus close and whispered urgently. The Hibernian nodded. Ballista spoke in his ear again. Maximus nodded once more.

  ‘I will come down.’ Ballista and Maximus punched each other on the shoulder. The Angle moved to the steps. He stopped and turned. ‘Remember – afterwards, only the boats.’ He continued on down.

  The gate remained open behind Ballista. He walked a few paces and stopped. In the gathering light, the dockside seemed very open and exposed. All was very quiet. Behind him, the torches on the wall walk fizzed and crackled.

  Without glancing behind, Tharuaro held his arms out from his body. Two warriors came forth, placed a shield and spear in his hands, and faded back. Tharuaro remained, very still, arms outstretched – a parody of Christ crucified – armoured and, on his helmet, the snarling skull of a marten.

  With no warning, Tharuaro took two short, quick steps, then a lengthy lunge to his left. As he moved, the shield swung across his body and the spear arced into the air.

  Ballista did not flinch.

  Tharuaro gracefully caught the heavily turning spear; two short, quick steps back, a lunge to the right; feet slapping on the marble, the shield in motion all the time.

  Hoom, hoom; the Goths murmured their appreciation, boots beginning to stamp the rhythm of the dance – short, short, long.

  Ballista could feel his anger rise. Who did this Gothic reiks think he was facing? A green boy? A soft southerner? Many times, Ballista had faced warriors dancing before the shieldwall. He had first done so when little more than a child in Germania, and repeatedly as a man in Roman arms – up by the Danube, before the triumph of Novae and the disaster of Abritus. There had even been Gothic auxiliaries dancing in front of the lines of the pretender Aemilianus before the battle of Spoletium which had brought Gallienus and his poor, damned father Valerian to the purple.

  Tharuaro danced well. If the war dance had been in Ballista’s soul, he would have answered the Goth. It was not, so Ballista stood and watched. Over the years, the Angle had observed warriors who did not dance respond to its challenge in very different ways. Some edged forwards, rattling their weapons, even gnawing the rim of their shield, everything about them on edge and ready. Others attempted nonchalance, chatting to those around them, maybe even turning their back.

  Stock still, Ballista stood and watched. Tharuaro danced on, the pace increasing, the spear revolving higher, but he was not one of the Woden-inspired. Ballista knew their sort well. His own father, Isangrim, was a wolf-warrior – in front of the shieldwall, laying down his sword, baying, howling, unconscious of what he did, calling down the slathering power of the Allfather’s beast. Blind to pain, hard to stop; they were the ones you could not but fear.

  Tharuaro’s movements were growing faster. Behind him, the low rumble of the northern war cry was beginning. Soon the dancer’s limbs would become a blur, the barritus of the warriors would crescendo like a wave crashing on a cliff.

  It was time to end this. Time for Ballista’s Loki-plan. It would damn him in many men’s eyes, would damn him in the eyes of the Tervingi, of all the Goths. And in that it would serve its purpose.

  With no ado, Ballista raised his shield then threw himself sideways to the ground, curling under its wooden boards. Immediately, the air was full of violent sound, like the tearing of innumerable fabrics. Keeping very low, leaving the shield, Ballista scrambled back to the gate. There was a great, outraged roaring from the Goths. Missiles skittered off the pavement around Ballista. The gate slammed shut.

  Inside, Ballista took the steps two at a time, but when he reached the wall walk things were irrevocable. Tharuaro’s corpse, pincushioned with arrows, was being dragged away. The helmet with the feral skull had rolled off. The Gothic shieldburg had surged forward to the wall, intent on revenge. But already the warriors were falling back. The reason for their retreat was evident. Following Ballista’s whispered instructions to Maximus, now every archer along the defences was shooting fire arrows as fast as he could into the Gothic longboats. The scant crews left aboard were scurrying about, but fresh flames were blossoming out faster than they could be extinguished.

  Ballista watched the main body of the Goths tumble into the boats, hurl themselves on to their rowing benches. Unmoored, the double-prowed vessels pulled away from the dock, into the harbour, and out beyond the entrance where crouched the big carved lions which gave the haven its name.

  A messenger puffed up on to the battlements. The group of Goths that had rounded the peninsula and attacked from the east had set on fire the jetties and the huts of the fishermen, but now also were falling back.

  ‘Well,’ said Maximus, ‘if the lot in the south are content with looting a few homes and temples and do not want to try their luck against the land walls – and I am thinking they will not – that is that for today.’

  Ballista grunted.

  ‘Sure, two things accomplished: the attack driven off, and the Tervingi added to the many who will move heaven and earth to see you dead – the start of a new bloodfeud.’ Maximus grinned. ‘Everything you wanted.’

  X

  The emperor was in bed with his cinaedus when the rain came. Gallienus lay on his back listening to the first individual drops thumping into the garden outside the open window. Instantly, the air was full of the invigorating smell of clean earth.

  Gallienus had been looking forward to reaching Serdica. The comitatus had ridden hard across Thrace from Bergoule; thirty miles a day or more. He had announced there would be a break of three days to rest the men and horses, to let the stragglers catch up. Serdica was a town on the rise; full of confidence, new buildings going up, even a palatium. Although the imperial palace was unfinished, it was a fine place to relax. There had been no time on the journey east, so Gallienus had decided it would be pleasant to spend a day inspecting the nearby battlefield where, the year before, his general Aureolus had defeated the Macriani.

  All Gallienus’s feelings of ease had been vitiated by the news that had come as he approached the walls of Serdica. A messenger, grimed by tough travel along the cursus publicus, announced that Gothic pirates had sacked Ephesus eight days previously.

  Gallienus had done what he could. There was no question of turning back. The situation in the west demanded the presence of the emperor. He had to tour the provinces of the Pannonias and Noricum, ensure their loyalty, and reach Italy and Mediolanum as soon as possible, before the campaigning season was well under way. Gallienus had written to Odenathus of Palmyra; as corrector of the east, the Lion of the Sun should take whatever measures were possible. The fleets in the east were in such poor condition there was little to be hoped from them. Gallienus had also sent one of his protectores, the Italian Celer Venerianus, post haste ahead to Ravenna. The fleet there was in better shape. Venerianus had a reputation as an admiral. He was to assemble a squadron and proceed with all speed to the Aegean. Of course, by the time Venerianus got
there, the Goths would be long gone, back to the Black Sea with their booty. But something had to be seen to be done. The eastern provincials had to be reassured, had to be shown imperial solicitude, or they might think of taking things into their own hands. And, sure as night followed day, that would mean yet another pretender clad in the purple; yet another civil war, to further weaken the imperium.

  As often when perturbed, Gallienus had turned not to the consolations of philosophy, as a man of culture should, but to sex. In itself, that weakness in his character sometimes irritated him. He wished his German mistress Pippa, his sweet Pippara, were with him. A Marcomannic upbringing had filled her with nothing but contempt for philosophy and its sanctimonious adherents. But she had been left in Mediolanum. The journey had been too hard for a woman. At least he had Demetrius.

  The Greek youth was still asleep. It was the half-light just before dawn. Gallienus turned and gently brushed a stray tendril of hair from Demetrius’s face. The boy was beautiful and cultured as well as skilled in the ways of pleasure.

  Gallienus watched him sleep. The physiognomists were wrong. In bed, Demetrius might enjoy playing the role of a girl, but there was nothing effeminate about him. His eyes were not weak. Walking, neither did he mince nor did his knees knock like a woman’s. Gallienus had never seen him tilt his head to the right or adjust his hair with one finger. No palms-up, open-handed gestures. In the act of love, he did not ‘snort’.

  The physiognomists might be wrong but Gallienus wondered what made a fine youth such as Demetrius find his pleasures like a woman and run the risk of every man’s contempt. Astrologers would put it down to the conjunction of the stars at birth; if Taurus was rising, rear end first among the Pleiades – that sort of thing. Magicians might claim to have caused it. Scratch a drawing of a castrated man gazing at his own genitals on a piece of obsidian, put it in a gold box with the stone of a cinaedus-fish, trick the victim into carrying it – or, much more efficacious, into eating it – and a soul was deformed.