Fire in the East

by Harry Sidebottom

  ‘Shapur, the Mazda-worshipping divine King of Kings of Aryans and Non-Aryans, of the race of the gods.’ Bagoas prostrated himself on the battlements.

  When Shapur reached the Drafsh-i-Kavyan standard at its station in front of the centre of his army, he reined his horse to a halt. He dismounted, seemingly using a kneeling man as a step. A golden throne was produced and Shapur sat on it. A large number of other men ran about.

  ‘Enemy numbers?’ Ballista threw the question open to his consilium gathered on the roof of the gate tower.

  ‘I estimate about 20,000 infantry,’ Acilius Glabrio answered promptly. ‘Then about 10,000 heavy cavalry, 8,000 of them Sassanid clibanarii and 1,000 or so each from the Georgians and Sakas. There seem to be roughly 6,000 barbarian light cavalry at the front of the column, maybe 2,000 each from the Arabs and Indians and 1,000 each from the Georgians and Sakas.’ Whatever one thought of the young patrician, it could not be denied that he was an extremely competent army officer. The estimates mapped almost exactly on to those Ballista had made.

  ‘The Sassanids’ own light cavalry?’ The northerner kept the question short, business-like.

  ‘Impossible to say,’ answered Mamurra. ‘They are scattered all over the countryside burning and plundering. There is no way for us to estimate their strength. However many there are, the majority will be on our side of the river. There will be just a few across the river - the nearest ford is about 100 miles downstream and we have commandeered every boat for miles. They will not have committed many men across the river.’

  ‘What the praefectus fabrum says is true,’ said Turpio. ‘We cannot know their numbers. At Barbalissos there were somewhere between five and ten light cavalrymen to every clibariarius, but at other times their numbers have been said to be about equal.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ballista. ‘So it seems the enemy have somewhere between 40,000 and 130,000 men to our 4,000. At best we are outnumbered ten to one.’ He smiled broadly. ‘It is very lucky for us that it is a bunch of effeminate easterners who get scared at the sound of a noisy dinner party let alone a battle. We would not want to fight anyone with any bollocks at these odds.’ The army officers all laughed. Demetrius tried to join in.

  Ballista noted that the baggage train had caught up with the other columns, and that its first task was to erect a spacious purple tent just behind the centre of the army. The tent, which could be none other than Shapur’s, was being set up directly along the western road out of Arete, about 600 paces from the Palmyrene Gate.

  Men continued to rush around Shapur.

  ‘What is going on?’ Ballista asked Bagoas, who was still prostrate.

  ‘The King of Kings will make sacrifice of a kid to ensure that Mazda smiles on his works here, to ensure that this town of unbelievers falls to the army of the righteous.’

  ‘Get up off your belly, and mind what you say. You might push our patience too far,’ snapped Ballista.

  Despite his tone, the northerner was actually pleased with his Persian slave. Just as he had hoped, he was learning a lot about his enemy from the boy. There was the voluble religious fervour, linked to the awe of the king, and the fact that Bagoas had not considered the Sassanid infantry even worth mentioning. So, an army of fanatics of whom only the cavalry were any good at fighting. Ballista just had to hope that this individual Persian was not totally unrepresentative of his countrymen.

  As the boy got up, he briefly put his arms behind his back as if they were bound. Ballista knew that this was the Persian gesture of supplication - possibly the boy was begging Shapur not to blame him for being a slave of the King’s enemies.

  The sacrifice having been made, Shapur could be seen issuing orders to the nobleman known as the Suren. On being asked to explain, Bagoas said that the King of Kings would now send the Suren to Ballista. If Ballista and his men submitted and converted to the most righteous path of Mazda, their lives would be spared.

  As he watched the Suren walk his horse along the road towards him, Ballista’s thoughts were racing. While the horseman was still about 200 paces away, Ballista quickly issued orders to two of his messengers. All the ballistae on the western wall were to prepare to shoot at the enemy army. They were to take maximum elevation as if going for their greatest range but their crews were to loosen the torsion springs by two turns of the washers so that their missiles fell well short of their maximum range. Hopefully it would deceive the enemy about the true range of the ballistae. The messengers ran off along the wall walk; one south, the other, the one with the heavy accent from the Subura, north. With the Suren about a hundred paces away, Ballista told Mamurra to go below to the first floor of the tower and train one of the bolt-throwers on the approaching messenger. On Ballista’s command, a bolt was to be shot just over the head of the Suren.

  He was riding a beautiful Nisean stallion. It was jet-black, deepchested, no less than sixteen hands tall. Good job it was light cavalry that ambushed us, Ballista thought. Pale Horse would never knock a beast like that back on its hocks.

  The Suren reined in his horse. He had stopped about thirty paces from the gate. Ballista was relieved. The enemy nobleman would have detected two of the traps that Ballista had set. He had crossed over two pits in the road, one at a hundred and one at fifty paces from the gate. The pits were concealed from view, boarded over with sand thickly spread on top, but the hollow ring of his stallion’s hooves would have warned the Persian. Yet so far he should know nothing of the final pit, the crucial one, just twenty paces from the gate.

  The Suren took his time taking off a tall helmet in the shape of a predatory bird, possibly an eagle. His own features, once revealed, did not look greatly different. With the assurance of a man whose ancestors have owned broad pastures for generations without number, he looked up at the men on the battlements.

  ‘Who is in command here?’ The Suren spoke in almost unaccented Greek. His voice carried well.

  ‘I am Marcus Clodius Ballista, son of Isangrim, Dux Ripae. I command here.’

  The Suren tipped his head slightly to one side, as if better to study this blond barbarian with a Roman name and title. ‘The King of Kings Shapur bids me tell you to heat the water and prepare his food. He would bathe and eat in his town of Arete tonight.’

  Ballista tipped his head back and laughed.

  ‘I am sure that the bum-boy who passes for your kyrios would love to get in the bath and offer his arse to anyone interested, but I fear that the water would be too hot and my soldiers much too rough for his delicate constitution.’

  Seemingly unmoved by the obscenity, the Suren methodically began to undo the top of the quiver that hung by his right thigh.

  ‘What the hell is he doing?’ Ballista demanded of Bagoas in a whisper.

  ‘He is preparing formally to declare war. He will shoot the cane reed that symbolizes war.’

  ‘Like fuck he will. Quietly pass the word for Mamurra to shoot.’

  The order was muttered from man to man across the gate-house roof and down the stairs.

  Having extracted presumably the correct symbolic arrow, the Suren pulled his bow from its case. He was just notching the arrow when came the terrifying loud twang, slide, thump of a ballista being released. To his credit, the Suren barely flinched as the bolt shot a few feet above his head. Composing himself, he drew his bow and sent his arrow high over the walls of the town. Then he made his horse rear. The glossy coat of the stallion shimmered as it turned on its hind legs. The Suren called over his shoulder.

  ‘Do not eat all the smoked eel, northerner. My kyrios is very fond of smoked eel.’

  Ballista called for the rest of the artillery to shoot. As the Suren and his magnificent mount disappeared back up the road, the missiles arched over their heads but fell some way short of the watching Sassanid army.

  ‘Clever,’ said Acilius Glabrio. ‘Very clever to pre-empt their barbarian declaration of war with an impromptu version of our very own Roman ceremony of throwing a spear into enemy territory.
’ The ever-present sneer dropped from the tribune’s voice as he went on. ‘But if you have tricked them into thinking the range of our artillery is only about 300 paces, that is far cleverer.’

  Ballista nodded. Actually, he had been thinking of something else, of Woden the Allfather casting his spear into the ranks of the Vanir in the first ever war. And, from the very first war, it was a very small step to thinking of Ragnarok, the war at the end of time, when Asgard will fall and death come to man and gods alike.

  Ballista was leaning on the wall of the terrace of the palace of the Dux Ripae. He was looking down and across the river. He was looking at something horrible.

  Where had the woman come from? He had had cavalry methodically sweep the opposite bank, driving everyone they found down to the boats and back across the river. Peevishly he thought that it had not been easy getting two turmae of cavalry ferried back and forth across the Euphrates. Of course, some fools will always stay in the false delusional safety of their homes, no matter with what certainty you tell them of the horror that man or gods are about to visit on them. Maybe the Sassanids had brought her with them.

  Every now and then the horse archers would pretend to let her get away. She would run towards the river. Before she got there, the horsemen would ride her down. They would throw her to the ground and another two or three of them would rape her. There were about twenty of them.

  With none of his usual noises, Calgacus leant on the wall beside Ballista. ‘They are all inside. For once Acilius Glabrio was on time. So were Turpio, Antigonus and the four centurions you told to come. It was Mamurra who was late.’

  Both men looked across the river.

  ‘Bastards,’ said Ballista.

  ‘Don’t even think of trying to save her,’ said Calgacus. ‘It is just what they want. She would be dead by the time you got any troops into a boat, and then your men would land into an ambush.’

  ‘Bastards,’ said Ballista.

  They both continued to look over the river.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Calgacus.

  ‘What?’ The silence of the Caledonian’s arrival should have warned Ballista that something was coming.

  ‘What is happening to that poor girl over there ... the fact that this city is being besieged and, no matter what, lots of its people are going to suffer and die ... what happened to Romulus and those scouts ... none of it is your fault.’

  Ballista briefly pulled an unconvinced face but his eyes remained fixed over the river.

  ‘You have always thought too much. Since you were a child. I am not saying it’s a bad thing in itself, but it is no help to a man in your position.’ Ballista did not respond. ‘All I am saying is that if you give yourself over to sentiment, then you will not be thinking clearly, and then things will get still fucking worse.’

  Ballista nodded and straightened up. As he unclenched his hands from the wall, he saw his palms had brick dust embedded in them. He rubbed them together.

  On the other side of the river the men had encircled the woman. One of them was on top of her. Ballista looked away.

  ‘I suppose you are right.’ He looked up into the sky. ‘Only just over an hour to nightfall. Let’s go in and talk to the others. We have a lot to organize for the unpleasant surprise that is going to befall the King of Kings tonight.’

  XIII

  It was dark under the high barrelled arch of the Palmyrene Gate. The outer gate was still closed and, although the inner was open, little light found its way in. The larger-than-life personification of the Tyche of Arete painted on the northern wall was nothing but a blur to Turpio, and he could see nothing of the graffiti thanking her for safe journeys he knew to be scrawled below.

  Turpio had always had a particularly developed sense of smell. The prevailing smell here was of the cool, possibly even damp, dust which lay in the shade of the gatehouse and which the sun never reached. There was also the smell of the worked wood of the great gate in front of him and, surprising because it was so out of context, there was a strong, a very strong scent of perfume: oil of myrrh. The hinges of the gate were soaked in it to prevent them squeaking.

  Turpio was tense, but he was glad to be there in the dark waiting to lead the raid. He had had to argue his case hard in the consilium. Acilius Glabrio had pointed out that two centuries of his legionaries amounted to 140 men, while two turmae of Turpio’s auxiliaries came only to 72 troopers so, in fairness, it should be Acilius Glabrio himself who commanded. Turpio had been reduced to appealing to Ballista on the grounds that, while the northerner could not afford to risk the patrician commander of the legionaries in his garrison, an ex-centurion who commanded auxiliaries was more expendable. Eventually the Dux Ripae had given his assent.

  Turpio was aware that everyone in the consilium had known why he was just so keen to lead this raid: he still needed to prove his worth after the stain that Scribonius Mucianus had left on his character. Over the winter he had trained Cohors XX well. Certainly there was no corruption now. It was an efficient unit, a unit of which one could be proud. But if Turpio were to do well here in Arete, win the trust of Ballista, do everything that he wanted, he needed more. He needed a chance to prove himself in action. What could be better than a straightforward, desperate night raid into the heart of the enemy camp? Of course the risks were enormous, but so was the possibility of glory. ‘Decapitate the Persian reptile. Aim for the huge purple tent in the centre of the Sassanid camp. Catch the King of Kings sleeping or with his baggy trousers down. Bring me his head. No one will ever forget your name.’ Turpio was not the only one to have been stirred by Ballista’s words.

  Turpio detected another scent - cloves, or possibly carnations; a clean pleasant smell. It had to be Acilius Glabrio. The young patrician moved slowly, carefully, along the passageway. Turpio spoke his name quietly and held out his hand. The two men shook hands. Acilius Glabrio handed over some burnt cork, wished Turpio good luck, and left. As Turpio blackened his face and forearms, he wondered if he had misjudged the young nobleman.

  He smiled to himself in the dark. No, he had not totally misjudged him. The young nobleman was still a prick. Turpio could feel laughter bubbling up in his chest as he thought of the meeting of the consilium. When Ballista walked in Acilius Glabrio had approached him full of patrician self-importance. ‘A word if you please, Dux Ripae.’ The northerner had slowly turned on him his unsettling barbarian blue eyes. He looked as if he had never seen the speaker before. His reply had been couched in terms of the frostiest civility: ‘With pleasure, Tribunus Laticlavius, in just a moment.’ Ballista had asked his new standard-bearer, Antigonus, to attend him and had led the Batavian to the far corner of the room. There he had spoken in low, emphatic sentences. At the end Antigonus had saluted and left. Walking back, Ballista’s face was open and guileless. ‘What was it you wanted, Tribunus Laticlavius?’ The wind having been taken from his sails, the fuming young patrician had muttered that it could wait.

  A muted commotion in the passageway behind Turpio indicated the approach of the Dux Ripae. Against the gloom, the greater darkness of the northerner’s height and bulk, the strange bird crest above his helm could just be distinguished. The northerner seemed to have no smell at all. In his heightened, pre-battle state, Turpio wondered for a moment if that were like casting no shadow.

  ‘Everything is ready. Time to go,’ Ballista said quietly.

  ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’

  They shook hands. Ballista half turned, raised his voice slightly. ‘Try not to get too many of the boys killed.’ The nearer soldiers chuckled. Turning back, Ballista dropped his voice. ‘Remember, Turpio - straight in and straight out. If you reach Shapur’s tent, excellent, but if not no problem. Do not get into a fight. You have a couple of hundred men. They have about 50 ,000. If you can, surprise them, kill a few, burn a few tents, shake them up. But then get out quickly. Do not get trapped. At the first sign of organized resistance, head for home.’ They sho
ok hands again. Ballista stepped back to the side of the passage just below the pale shape of the Tyche. He called softly over the heads of the waiting soldiers.

  ‘Time to go, boys, time to start the venationes, the beast-hunts.’

  Despite the oil of myrrh the gates seemed to creak alarmingly as they ponderously opened. Turpio set off.

  As good luck would have it, it was the night before the new moon. Yet even lit just by starlight, the western plain looked very bright after the darkness of the gate. The road shone very white as it stretched arrow-straight ahead. The flickering campfires of the Persians seemed infinitely distant.

  For a time Turpio just concentrated on walking quickly. Soon he was breathing more deeply. The road under his feet felt smooth but unnaturally hard. Behind him the 140 legionaries of Legio IIII Scythica marched as quietly as Roman soldiers could. They were not talking and were taking care not to clash their weapons and armour. Some had even tied rags around their military boots to deaden the sound of their hobnails. Yet there was a steady series of small chinking sounds. Nothing could ever completely persuade Roman soldiers of the necessity of removing all the good-luck charms from their belts.

  Once he had remembered to do so, Turpio counted off 200 paces and then stepped to one side and looked around to take stock. Ten wide and fourteen deep, the small column of legionaries appeared tiny in the immensity of the plain. Turpio looked back at the town. True to his word, Ballista had managed to persuade the priests to organize a religious ceremony at the Temple of Bel. Designed to draw any sleepless Sassanid eyes and ears, a big procession with bright lights and loud chanting was making its way slowly along the extreme northern end of the city wall. To help the raiding party orientate itself, a single torch burnt over the Palmyrene Gate and another on the last tower to the south. The rest of the wall was in darkness.