Warrior of Rome III

by Harry Sidebottom

  Ballista shifted his position. The blank wall of well-dressed stone soared above him to a cloudless blue sky. A lot of money had gone into these tombs, which were built like affluent houses. The citizen of Sebaste who could afford one of them would have a townhouse and a residence in the country. Every time they rode from one to the other, they would pass this third house, the one in which they would spend eternity. Ballista wondered what they would feel. A warm glow of reassurance? Their social standing would transcend death. Did they fondly imagine they would gaze out from their final resting place and watch their sons ride past?

  It was hard to say. Certainly Greeks and Romans, at least some of them, believed in ghosts. But their afterlife, except for a lucky few who made it to the Isles of the Blessed, consisted of flitting and shrieking like bats in the dark halls of Tartarus. Perhaps they would hope to return, their shades more substantial, when blood offerings were made.

  Inexorably, Ballista’s thoughts turned back to where he did not want them to go, to the fight at the gate. He had not wanted to die, he had wanted to live. So much for his being devotus. True, his thoughts had not been worked out. There had been no understanding of why. But something had changed. He had desperately wanted to live.

  Perhaps, too late for his family, the curse had been lifted. He had sworn to return to the throne of Shapur. In the sacked camp outside Soli, he had returned. No, this was shallow sophistry of the worst sort. When he took that terrible oath, it had been in the thoughts of neither gods nor man that he should return bloodied, to defile the sacred fire, kill his defenceless servants and take Shapur’s favourite concubine over the ornate throne of the house of Sasan.

  He had been maddened then. Now he felt sanity returning. Now, almost against his conscious wishes, he wanted to live. Was this disloyalty to Julia and his darling boys? He would harrow hell to bring them back. But that could not happen. Should he persist as devotus – take what revenge he could then, falling, join them?

  But would they be reunited? Julia’s Epicureanism precluded an afterlife – all returned to quiet and sleep. And what of Isangrim and Dernhelm? What did eternity hold for innocent children? He had always half entertained the hope that, in the natural way, dying before them, the Allfather would accept him into gold-bright Valhalla. There, having proved his courage day on day in the fight in the courtyard, having shown his good companionship night on night in the feasting in the hall, he would intercede with the Hooded One. His boys would be allowed to pass through the western door and join him under the roof of shields. Woden’s power and longevity aside, the Allfather was a northern chieftain. He understood love and grief. He had lost his son Balder. At the end of time, at Ragnarok, the Hooded One himself would die, torn by the jaws of Fenrir the wolf.

  Perhaps I am still mad, thought Ballista. Perhaps my grief and the terrible things I have done for revenge have corroded, deformed my soul. And he had done terrible things. He thought of the teaching of Aesop. Man is born with two wallets tied round his neck. The one at his front contains the sins and crimes of other people – easy to take out and examine. The one on your back, open to everyone except yourself, holds your own – hard to see, painful to think about.

  The approach of Maximus broke into Ballista’s thoughts. With the Hibernian was a tall, thin young man wearing a goatskin cloak. It was one of Trebellianus’s dagger-boys, Palfuerius or Lydius – Ballista had no idea which.

  ‘Ave, Prefect.’ The youth did not wait for permission to speak. ‘I have good news from the governor of Cilicia.’ His pronunciation of Greek was atrocious. ‘Those Persians who evaded you’ – the stress sounded deliberately offensive – ‘have been captured by Gaius Terentius Trebellianus. The Vir Egregius suggests that you might like to see how we deal with poisonous reptiles here in Cilicia Tracheia.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They are at the town of Kanytelis – for the moment.’

  The young Cilician gestured for Ballista to accompany him right away.

  Ballista did not move. ‘You can guide us, when we are ready.’

  Calgacus jerked his thumb and, after holding Ballista’s gaze a moment too long, Trebellianus’s man moved out of earshot.

  Good job for you, goat-boy, that something of my self-control has returned, thought Ballista. If you had turned up a few days ago, things might have been rather different, even if your patronus is Trebellianus. Now there is a dangerous man; not sitting quiet in Korakesion but roaming the hills miles to the east.

  ‘It might be a trap,’ said Maximus.

  ‘Trebellianus may be a brigand in a toga, but he is unlikely to have deserted to the Sassanids.’

  ‘But he is a brigand,’ Maximus persisted. ‘We should at least arm ourselves.’ He pointed to the pile of their equipment, which, far too late, had been brought up from the triremes.

  ‘You are right,’ Ballista conceded. ‘And get Castricius to find about twenty legionaries who can ride. There are plenty of Persian horses about. We might do with the company.’

  The road meandered up the coast. To the left were the bare, banded rocks of the foothills; a thickish scatter of scrub and little patches of cultivatable soil, terraces cut with heartbreaking labour. To the right was the lovely blue of the sea.

  Seeing the small party of horsemen, one of the liburnians rowed close to the shore. Three more were further out. Recognizing Ballista’s white draco standard and the big figure in the distinctive horned helmet under it, the little galley sheered away.

  As they turned inland, the road became worse. Bare and dusty, it zigzagged wildly as it took on the climb. On either side of the narrow track were jagged, piled rocks and sharp thorns. Nothing apart from a goat could move there, certainly not a man on horseback. The true Cilicia Tracheia began the moment you left the coast road.

  Soon Ballista ordered the men to dismount and lead the horses. Loose stones scrunched under boots and hooves. The sun was near its zenith. It was incredibly hot. Occasionally the path would dip, only to resume its strength-sapping climb. All around was a wilderness of rocks. The crests in the distance were hazed with heat.

  A long black snake slithered across the road in front of them. They waited for it to pass. Beside him, Ballista heard Maximus muttering – prayers or threats. Pity the poor Persians who had come this way: an early-morning alarm, no breakfast for man nor horse, a desperate battle, the enemy at their rear, cutting a way clear, then this hellish climb – forcing their spent mounts forward, fear riding hard at their backs. At the end of this they would have surrendered to anyone, let alone a gang of Trebellianus’s murderous highlanders.

  At last they were there. Mounting up, they rode through another city of the dead. This necropolis was far less elaborate than the ones at Sebaste, fewer expensive house or temple tombs, mainly undecorated sarcophagi. The three miles or so they had covered from the sea made all the difference to the wealth of a community.

  The noise came to them as they entered the city of the living, the ugliest noise in the world – a mob baying for blood. The mob was at the foot of a tall tower. On horseback Ballista could see over their heads. Surrounded, huddled and cowed were a few hundred Sassanids on foot. Amidst them, one or two still stood proud. Ballista recognized a slim figure in a lilac tunic: a Persian noble – Demetrius could have told him the man’s name.

  ‘Ave, Marcus Clodius Ballista, I am honoured you could come.’ The mob quietened as Trebellianus called out. He stood on the battlements of the tower – lord of all he surveyed.

  Now the Persians had seen Ballista in his ram-horned helmet. A murmur ran through the prisoners: ‘Nasu, Nasu.’ They seemed no more frightened; if anything, more resigned.

  ‘Come close,’ Trebellianus urged. ‘See the men of Cilicia Tracheia take their revenge.’

  At a sign from their governor, a group of armed toughs dragged ten Persians out of the mass. Prodding them with the points of javelins, they forced them beyond the tower. Two of the Persians fell to their knees, arms behind their backs in sup
plication. One was kicked and jabbed back on to his feet. The other threw himself full length in the dirt and was finished where he lay. His companions were made to lift the corpse.

  Ballista and his group moved after them. Then they saw what awaited the eastern prisoners.

  The earth disappeared. There was a huge hole. Roughly oval, it had to be sixty, seventy paces across, fifty deep. Its sides were raw pinkish-white rock. There were vertical streaks of white, stalactites at the bottom where it caverned out. And now there were darker streaks and splashes.

  ‘Behold,’ called Trebellianus, ‘the place of blood.’

  The Sassanids were forced over the edge. Their screams were cut short as they smashed into the side wall, went tumbling, broken, to the floor.

  ‘You have to stop this.’ Maximus was speaking in his native Celtic tongue. Apart from Ballista, only Calgacus could understand.

  Another ten were being herded forward.

  Ballista looked over the edge. At the bottom, in the pile, one or two of the bodies were faintly moving. He could see an arm or a leg shifting in agony.

  The next batch was forced over the edge. Some way down the rock, Ballista saw a relief sculpture, a family group in Greek dress, the father and mother seated, the grown children standing. All held a hand to their chin in uniform thoughtfulness as the shrieking men fell past.

  ‘Trebellianus,’ called Ballista, ‘that Persian there.’ He pointed. ‘I need to question him.’

  Up on the tower, Trebellianus nodded.

  The Sassanid was hauled before Ballista. There were tigers or some other big cats embroidered on his torn tunic. Ballista had seen him before, more than once. Demetrius undoubtedly could have named him straightaway.

  ‘We were promised our lives if we surrendered.’ Behind the dust-stained beard, the young man addressed Ballista in Persian, his face angry and desperate.

  ‘You were fools to trust these Cilicians,’ Ballista replied in Persian. ‘You have killed and raped their kin.’

  The Sassanid made a gesture of contempt. ‘You are no better than them. The superstitious among my men think you are Nasu. But you are no daemon of death. I know you – from Arete, from your surrender outside Edessa. I saw you swear an oath in Carrhae. You are Ballista – the oath-breaker.’

  ‘I swore to return to the throne of Shapur. At Soli, I did.’

  ‘Just twisted words – you Romans lie and cheat as soon as you can crawl.’

  ‘And everyone knows Persians never lie. It is against your religion. Yet your priests flay men alive, pour boiling oil in their eyes.’

  The Sassanid spat. ‘And your men here are far less cruel.’

  ‘I know you now,’ said Ballista. ‘You are Valash, son of the King of Kings, the joy of Shapur.’

  The Sassanid sneered. ‘And like your kind, you see a way of making a profit. You think my father will pay a ransom for me.’

  ‘I am sure he would. But I am not going to ask him for one. Although you killed my friend Turpio, left his severed head on a pike, I am going to return you to your father for nothing. Pick six of your men. They can go with you.’

  The Persian looked horrified. ‘How can I make such a choice?’

  ‘War is a harsh teacher. Make the choice, or they will all die.’

  Once it was explained to him, Trebellianus acceded to this turn of events with outward good grace, but the throng of Cilicians were not so politic. They were clearly unhappy.

  As the selected Persians were bundled towards them, Maximus again spoke softly in his native language. ‘This is wrong. You cannot leave the other fuckers to this mob. I thought you were back to your old self.’

  ‘Maybe I am.’ Ballista’s face was set, impassive. ‘But, as I told the Persian, war is a harsh teacher. These Cilicians outnumber us – twenty to one or more. They will follow Trebellianus, not me.’

  Maximus looked round then nodded reluctantly.

  ‘Anyway, even if we could save all the Persians, we do not have troops to guard them all. And there are another three thousand of the bastards still to fight to the west at Corycus.’

  About three miles down the coast west from Sebaste was the town of Corycus. The most notable thing about it was the island lying offshore. It shared a name with other islets: Crambusa, the dry or parched one. It was indeed waterless, small – no more than two hundred paces by one hundred – and the majority of its shore was rocky. But when the mainland was in enemy hands, its utility to a fleet was immense.

  Ballista’s flotilla had sailed down from Sebaste the day before. Arriving, the ships had made a martial display close in to the walls of Corycus – nine triremes, ten liburnians and twenty transport vessels. The latter, to aid the bellicose impression, had been tricked out with military standards, and their decks had been covered with marines seconded from the warships. With luck, the Persians in the town would not realize the roundships were empty except for food and water but would think them packed with troops.

  Now, in full sight of the city, the ships were moored off Crambusa. The bare islet gave the rowers of the warships a chance to get away from their cramped benches, to stretch their legs, to cook, eat and sleep ashore. Admittedly, if a storm got up, the fleet would have to run for shelter, either east to Sebaste or west to the delta of the Calycadnus river. But the summer weather looked set fair.

  Indeed it was a beautiful night. High, benign clouds, backlit by the full moon. The sea was calm as a millpond, silvered by the moonlight. The ships, black silhouettes, rode easily at anchor.

  Ballista stood at the prow of the Lupa, the trireme that carried his standard. He gazed up at the sky. The clouds moving across the face of the moon made it look infinitely distant. In the face of such immensity, mankind seemed very small. It was the trick of most consolations to emphasize the so-called smallness of grief against the enormity of something else. Ballista thought with repugnance of Sulpicius Rufus’s famous letter on the death of Cicero’s daughter. Do not be profoundly affected by your private sorrow when men like us have lost everything we value: our honourable name, patria, dignitas, all our honours. Cicero had written back saying it had helped. How could even the narrow-minded leaders of a failing oligarchy have thought in such disgusting terms?

  Much better Plutarch’s consolation to his wife. Despite the tiresome repetition of the necessity of self-control, despite peddling the evident untruth that giving way to grief was as bad as giving way to pleasure, between all the philosophic platitudes, there was the true grief of a father for his lost child: the most delightful thing in the world to embrace, to see, to hear.

  Time is a great healer. Every one of them said it. All the great minds – Plutarch, Seneca, all the rest – reduced to the soothing of a nursemaid: there, there, time will make it better. And the sad thing was, it was partly true.

  Ballista was beginning to feel a little better. Julia and his sons were no longer in his thoughts all the time. Now he woke with just an unfocused sense of something wrong, before the loss of his wife and boys filled his mind. Here and there in the day, he did not think of them at all. Then he remembered, and felt guilty of neglect.

  At least he was not raving any more. His thoughts were no longer a seething, incoherent riot of pain, revenge and Euripidean tragedy. At Sebaste, Ballista had shaved, bathed, had his hair cut. Old Plutarch had written something along the lines of looking after the externals helping the inner man. Ballista wondered if it was possible to feel any emotion that was not filtered through the thoughts of others. Did the things one had read or heard just give words to one’s feelings, or did they shape them, twist them into different forms? Whatever, did it make the emotion less real?

  Behind Ballista came a stage cough. Calgacus had the Persian prince, Valash, with him. So far it could not be said that the King of King’s son seemed over-grateful for having his life spared. Perhaps, Ballista thought uncharitably, it had also occurred to the joy of Shapur that being returned to his father, with or without ransom, might not prove to be all tha
t easy. Or it could just be that he did not trust the man his troops – his troops who now lay massacred at the bottom of a chasm called the place of blood – had thought the daemon of death.

  ‘The Persians in Corycus are commanded by a framadar called Zik Zabrigan,’ Ballista said in Persian. ‘His position is untenable. In the morning we will go and talk to him.’

  Valash smiled in a superior way. ‘Now I see why you were keen to save me. You think I will help you persuade Zik Zabrigan to surrender. I will not.’

  ‘You mistake me.’ Ballista was not going to admit that he would have rescued all Valash’s men if he had felt able. ‘I do not give a fuck if you talk to him or not. And I do not give a fuck if his men lay down their arms or they all die.’

  Valash glowered silently.

  ‘But I thought,’ Ballista continued, ‘you might prefer them not to fall into the hands of Trebellianus and his rough Cilicians.’

  Valash made the sign to avert the evil eye. ‘You may not be Nasu, but you are a lover of the lie, a true follower of Drug. One day Mazda will deliver you again into the hands of the righteous.’

  Ballista was too tired, not physically but emotionally, to have the energy to be angry.

  Maximus stepped out of the shadows and did it for him. ‘You owe him your life. If you have any honour, you should keep a civil tongue in your head.’

  The tall, thin figure swung round, reaching for the long sword that was not on his hip. The sons of the house of Sasan were not reminded of their honour by others, never by non-Aryans. Valash mastered himself. ‘You are right.’ He turned back to Ballista. ‘Although I did not ask you, I owe you a debt.’ With an innate grace he performed proskynesis: a small, elegant bow, fingers brushing his lips. ‘But I will not seek to persuade framadar Zik Zabrigan to surrender. I know your transports contain no soldiers. I will not lie to him.’

  Ballista smiled. ‘To ride, shoot the bow and avoid the lie.’

  Valash nodded gravely. ‘Just so.’