Ballista laughed. ‘The old Greek Herodotus was right: everywhere, custom is king.’
‘Come, let me help you out of the bath. I will call my servants to dry you. There is time for a few hours’ sleep before you are taken to the King of Kings.’
‘Shapur really wishes to see me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘That is not for me to say.’
It was dark, a warm Mesopotamian spring night. Ballista was taken out on to the top of the citadel of Carrhae. At the eastern end of the terrace, off to one side, stood two iron tripods. Cledonius was sitting on one of them. Ballista was led to the other. He sat down with relief. Even in delicate silk slippers, it hurt to walk. As Ballista waited, he watched the eastern sky slowly pale to an eggshell blue.
The King of Kings came out of the palace and stopped in front of the high golden throne. The entourage that flanked him arranged itself into two divisions. On his left were the priests, on his right the high nobility and his client kings. Among them, Ballista saw, was Valerian. The Roman emperor stood some way from Shapur. The King of Iberia, Hamazasp, was significantly nearer the throne.
The great orb of the sun broke the line of the distant hills. Gracefully, the King of Aryans and non-Aryans sank down until he was full length on the ground, prostrating himself before the newly risen deity. There was complete silence as, from the very tips of his fingers, he blew a kiss. Then he stood up.
A pure white stallion was led before Shapur. High-stepping, its neck arched, the beautiful Nisean went consentingly to its fate. The King of Kings rubbed its nose, whispered into its velvet ears the message it would take then, suddenly, struck the sharp blade deeply into the base of the stallion’s neck. With the deftness of long practice, he swiftly pulled the knife out and stepped to one side. A stream of blood as thick as a man’s arm spouted out.
The horse stood quite still as its life blood pumped away. Everyone watched. For what seemed a long time, nothing moved, except for the gushing blood and the spreading dark, cloudy pool. Then, without preamble, the horse collapsed.
When the horse was dead and the communion between Shapur and his god complete, all the members of the court, Valerian included, performed proskynesis.
Shapur settled himself on the throne. A scribe moused forward. Giving the impression of keeping low to the ground, he began to read from a book. Although the Persian king’s hands toyed with a strung bow, his eyes were attentive. The sound did not carry, but Ballista knew the dibir was reading the words spoken by Shapur the night before when he had been drinking.
At length the scribe had finished and was dismissed. Ballista and Cledonius were gestured forward. They got down on their bellies by the carcass of the horse, the smell of its blood strong in their nostrils.
‘Rise.’ The Sassanid king’s jewels and crown glinted in the morning sun. His dark, kohl-lined eyes regarded them.
‘But what is to be done? The will of heaven must be endured.’ Shapur recited the Greek verse with but the slightest hint of an eastern accent. Recognition swam just below the surface of Ballista’s thoughts.
‘But how to ask what I want to know without causing you any pain, that is my dilemma. And yet I long to be satisfied.’ Shapur raised his hands in mock-uncertainty.
Cledonius replied. ‘No, ask your question; leave no desire unfulfilled. Your wishes are also what my own heart desires, Great King.’ Only the title broke the metre.
Shapur smiled. He pointed his bow at Ballista. ‘And does a barbarian from the quarter of the world not to be named by the pious know the works of the troglodyte of Salamis?’
‘A man has to bear the senseless acts of his rulers.’ As Ballista finished the quotation from Euripides, a terrible stillness spread across the terrace.
Shapur clapped his hands, threw his head back and laughed. Quickly, but more quietly, those around him joined in.
‘The power of Euripides transcends all.’ The courtiers fell abruptly silent as the king spoke. ‘Last night, we diverted ourselves with his poetry. Everyone finds what he wishes in it. Truly, there are as many interpretations as readers.’ The long line of heads nodded to acknowledge the profundity of the monarch’s words.
‘Now to affairs of empire.’ Shapur still spoke in Greek, but his tone became brisk. ‘It was the will of heaven for me to capture in war, to seize with this, my right hand, the emperor of the Romans. Now my prisoner Valerian begs for me to reinstate him on his throne. It is his heart’s desire to become my vassal. He wishes to arrange his ransom.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Ballista looked at Valerian. The heavy old face was immobile.
‘Valerian assures me that no one has more influence with the crippled servant he left in charge of those troops fortunate enough to have remained in Samosata than the two of you.’ Shapur paused. ‘As a messenger to Macrianus the Lame, the name of Cledonius was received with pleasure by my ears and those of my court. Who could be more fitting for the task than the faithful doorkeeper, the man who once said come and men came, who said go and they went.’ A polite titter at the king’s playful words ran through his entourage.
‘But many were shocked, no – many were angered at the name of Ballista, the unrighteous man who offered me futile defiance at Arete, who tricked my loyal warrior Garshasp the Lion into defeat at Circesium, who there defiled the purity of fire with the corpses of the slain. Even our majesty was surprised when the mobads led by Kirder our high-priest spoke in favour of letting you go.’
Ballista glanced at the priests. There were two distinct groups, one ranked around a priest with a long nose and a jutting chin, with Hormizd standing at the shoulder of what must be Kirder the Herbed; the other gathered about a figure wearing a sky-blue cloak, yellow-and-green-striped trousers and carrying a long ebony cane. Between the two groups there was a palpable animosity. In every monarch’s court there are factions, Ballista thought.
‘Yet the arguments put forward by Kirder and the mobads were telling,’ Shapur continued. ‘A man to whom Mazda has not shown his face cannot know the ways of righteousness. How could a barbarian born in the cold quarter of the world where lies the gate of hell discover Mazda?’
Shapur leant forward and closely scrutinized Ballista. ‘And it is as Hormizd said: you have one or two of the marks of the Evil One on your face. It is certain that Mazda will not reveal himself to a man with freckles.’
Ballista fought down a suicidal urge to laugh.
‘Now, to the question I must ask you,’ said Shapur. ‘Will you, of your own free will and following the custom of your people, swear a binding oath, a great and terrible oath, to carry out this task and, in success or failure, return to perform proskynesis before my throne?’
When Ballista and Cledonius gave their assent, Shapur commanded the things necessary for the ritual to be brought forth. The priests came forward carrying several bowls and two lambs. Ballista wondered what exactly was behind all this. What was Valerian thinking? It would be hard to find two Roman officers more detested by Macrianus the Lame. And what game was the King of Kings playing? Macrianus had betrayed Valerian to Shapur. He was hardly likely to want the old emperor freed and returned to power.
Hormizd handed a heavy knife and one of the lambs to Ballista. The young Persian explained in Greek the form the oath would take and said that Ballista would swear first. The northerner’s heart sank at the weight of the words. An oath was an oath. But there was nothing else for it.
Crouching, Ballista pinned the lamb between his thighs. It bleated piteously. With one hand he gently pulled up its chin. With the dagger he cut some tufts from its head. He tossed the tufts in the air. They floated away in the quickening breeze. Lifting his arms to the sky, he began to speak.
‘Zeus, be my witness first; the highest, the best of gods! Then the Earth, the Sun, and the Furies who stalk the world below to wreak revenge on the dead who break their oaths – I swear I will carry out my task in good faith. I will travel to Macrianus and s
pare no effort to arrange the ransom of Valerian, emperor of Rome. I swear, in success or failure, I will return to perform proskynesis before the throne of Shapur, the Mazda-beloved King of Aryans and non-Aryans.’
Again Ballista pulled up the lamb’s head, roughly this time. He dragged the ruthless blade across its soft throat. The little lamb fell at his feet, dying, gasping away its life breath.
Ballista took a silver bowl in one of his bloodied hands. ‘Zeus, god of greatness, god of glory, all you immortals.’ He tipped out some of the wine. ‘If I break my oath, spill my brains on the ground as this wine spills, my brains and the brains of my sons too.’
Calgacus and the others rode up to the walls of Zeugma late in the morning. It had all taken far longer than they had expected.
After the landslide, the Caledonian and the three cavalrymen had climbed down from where they had levered the rocks from the cliff. Demetrius and the other Dalmatian were where they had left them holding the horses. They had all mounted and waited.
Maximus had walked his horse up to them. The Hibernian was powdered white like a man who has worked a long day on the threshing floor. A cut showed bright red in the dust on his cheek. His face was motionless, drained. He had thanked them, haltingly, in a monotone.
Calgacus had seen the like before. A man who has resigned himself to death is unexpectedly saved but, instead of revelling in the reprieve from execution, in a released-from-gaol euphoria, the man is overcome by his troubles and fears, things he thought he had left behind him. Calgacus was not unduly perturbed. He knew that Maximus’s moods changed like the weather in springtime. In no time the Hibernian would be his usual self.
Almost as soon as they set off, Calgacus had noticed a track leaving their path and running off to the left between a fold in the hills. Not long after, he saw another climbing the slope to the right. As the stars had paled and the sky lightened, track after track appeared.
The sun had risen as they came down from the hills, revealing a broad plain heavily worked by man. It was dotted with barns and farms and, here and there, hamlets, and even small villages. Although some of the buildings had been burned, it had not been done recently. Most showed signs of repair. In all probability, the destruction dated back to the previous Persian invasion, the so-called ‘time of troubles’, seven years earlier. Stretching away on either side of the path were thick groves of trees, mainly olives and pistachios, vineyards in leaf and corn standing tall even this early in the year.
Calgacus looked over at Maximus. The Hibernian’s face still wore the blank thousand-pace stare of a man back from near-death in combat. If Maximus had not realized his stand may have been unnecessary, Calgacus was not going to tell him.
The horses were done in, so Calgacus had ordered the men to dismount. Leading their tired mounts, they had trudged across the plain. The last stage seemed to take for ever. In the distance, on the other side of the Euphrates, was the rounded mound of the citadel of Zeugma. The outlines of the city were clear in the bright spring air: the red roofs of the close-packed houses climbing the slopes, the sharp line of its wall, some type of tree dotted above and, on the very summit, the great temple and the palace. Gradually, they had been able to make out the details, but for a long time it seemed to come no nearer.
Finally, they were only half a mile or so from the city walls. They had reached the outskirts of the eastern necropolis. Calgacus gave the order to remount. They trotted past many types of tomb, bearing many gloomy images in stone. Among the heavily sculpted swags of flowers framing baskets of offerings to the dead and the eagles which the pious hoped would carry their souls to a better place, there were portraits. The men depicted stood, respectable in Hellenic cloak and tunic; the women sat demurely. Children clutched their toys. The paint was flaking from quite a few. Some of the tombs had been broken open and not resealed. Their doors gaped open, the interiors loomed black in the sunshine.
None of it depressed the spirits of the riders. They were almost at safety. The walls of the town were no further away than a goatherd could throw a stick. Calgacus flexed his wounded right arm. He had taken a sword cut in the final fight before they had escaped from the valley of tears. The wound hurt like a bastard. Still, here they were: safety in their grasp and the welcome hope of a fat reward from a grateful town councillor for returning his lost son. Calgacus glanced at the boy, who was fast asleep in the saddle in front of Demetrius. The Caledonian momentarily wondered how the family reunion had gone when the mother had returned without the child. Well, that was their concern. It would be an unfeeling sort of father who did not reward, and reward to the limit of his means or even beyond, a man who brought his son back from a fate that unmans one for ever, or maybe death itself.
Get hold of a decent reward, have a bath, a long sleep, clean clothes, then off for a drink and a girl. Maximus could always be relied on to sniff out the latter two. But their old companion Castricius, centurion of Legio IIII Scythica, was stationed at Zeugma. He had the inside knowledge. On the march out, he had taken them to a couple of places. The upmarket one on the Apamea side of the river had been horribly expensive. The other, the bar near the military base, had been fine.
Calgacus thought of Castricius in quite a fond way. The centurion had a thin little face, all lines and points, like that of a mythical creature dreamed up to entertain children with its mischievous tricks. But before he had joined the legions Castricius had been condemned to the mines – surely there was a law that stopped ex-slaves enlisting in the legions? – and he had survived. And not only that, he had lived through the fall of Arete. It would be a bad error to mistake Castricius for something harmless that entertained children.
‘Virtus.’ The challenge rang out from the walls. The gates were shut.
Calgacus moved his mount forward. He called up that they did not know the day’s password – they were come straight from the field army north of Edessa.
‘Identify yourselves,’ shouted the guard.
‘Marcus Clodius Calgacus.’
‘Marcus Clodius Maximus.’
‘Marcus Clodius Demetrius.’
Calgacus identified the boy – Antiochus, son of Barlaha, member of the Boule of Zeugma – and the four Dalmatian troopers gave their names, rank and unit.
‘Wait there,’ came the response.
As he waited, Calgacus thought of Marcus Clodius Ballista. When the Angle had given them their freedom, he had also, in legal terms, given them Roman citizenship. They, as custom prescribed, had taken both his praenomen and nomen as their own. For the rest of their lives, two-thirds of their names would bind the four men together.
Calgacus climbed down from the saddle. He pulled Pale Horse’s ears, scratched its nose. Ballista loved the animal and, in an awful moment of clarity, Calgacus felt how much he loved Ballista. The Caledonian had been little more than a child himself when he had been taken as a slave north of the wall. A quick succession of owners – thank the gods his looks had forestalled any of them taking too close an interest in him – and he had found himself in Germania, in the hall of Isangrim, warleader of the Angles. Ballista had been just four when Isangrim had instructed Calgacus to serve as his son’s manservant. Ballista had been a rather shy, sensitive child. Calgacus had watched Ballista as a youth trying to be brave on the training ground, in the hunting field and, eventually at the age of fifteen, in the battle line. Calgacus had been there on the dreadful day when the Roman centurion had ridden up and announced that the emperor Maximinus Thrax had demanded one of Isangrim’s sons as a hostage. Of course there had been no question that Ballista’s elder brother could go.
Calgacus had watched Ballista face down his misery. He had ridden at Ballista’s side into the alien world of the Romans. On any reckoning, Ballista had done well in the service of the imperium. Yet Calgacus had always felt sorry for the young Angle, as surely torn from his people as the Caledonian himself. Whatever was thrown at him, Ballista tried to be brave. And now he was a captive of the Sassanids.<
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Calgacus buried his face in Pale Horse’s flank. If all the miseries of the world had been set before him, it would not have touched him. He was already too full. Soundlessly, he mouthed some prayers to the half-forgotten gods of his childhood, to the gods he had never really believed in.
‘Let them in.’ The voice of the centurion broke into Calgacus’s unhappiness. He straightened up.
The gates swung back. They led their horses in. Moorish auxiliaries, weapons drawn, swarthy faces mistrustful, ringed them. The gates slammed shut.
The centurion stepped down from the wall walk and appraised them closely.
‘You are deserters.’
‘No,’ said Calgacus. ‘Our patronus, the commander of these Dalmatians, ordered us to leave.’ The Caledonian decided to take the initiative. ‘If you could direct us to the house of the member of the Boule called Barlaha, we will return his son to him.’
‘Oh no.’ The centurion grinned. ‘I can take care of that.’
Beside him, Calgacus felt Maximus stiffen. Calgacus put out a hand to restrain him.
The centurion gestured for the child to come to him. Unaware of the tension, the boy walked over to the officer. Reaching him, he turned and, in formal Attic Greek, thanked his rescuers. The centurion motioned a soldier to lead him away.
Calgacus was not ready to give up yet. ‘We must see the governor Valens straightaway. Our patronus, Marcus Clodius Ballista, is an amicus of his, and we have much information about the Sassanids.’
‘Oh, you will see the governor, but not the traitor Valens.’ The centurion smiled unpleasantly. ‘Valens fled to the west when ordered to report to Samosata. Given the emergency, Macrianus the Elder, as Comes Sacrarum Largitionum and the commander of what remains of Valerian’s field army, has been forced temporarily to assume maius imperium over the whole East. Macrianus has appointed his amicus, the noble ex-consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, to be governor of Syria Coele.’
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