‘Drop the weapon,’ Ballista said. ‘Let me go.’
‘Fucker!’ The watchman lunged, the torchlight glittering on the naked steel.
Ballista stepped inside the thrust. He caught the man’s wrist with one hand, his elbow with the other. Pivoting on his left foot, he brought his right knee up hard under his assailant’s forearm. The watchman dropped the blade, but got Ballista around the throat with his free hand. Grappling, they stumbled back, almost on top of the man on the ground.
Resisting the urge to try to claw at the fingers choking him, Ballista punched the man in the stomach with his left, then threw a short right to the kidneys. The watchman released his hold. The breath wheezed out of him. But he was not done yet. His dagger was in his right hand.
Only a pace apart. If Ballista turned and ran, the dagger would find his back.
Ballista feinted to the right, the tip of the steel following, then sidestepped to the left, and kicked. His heel hit the man’s right knee. Ballista heard a crack. Still the watchman did not fall. Instead he slashed the dagger in a wide arc. Ballista jumped backwards, the wicked steel hissing past. A fraction slower, half a hand closer, and it would have been over. His stomach sliced open, intestines sliding out, he would have been gasping out his life in the dirt.
The watchman came on again, limping, but undefeated. Some men, maddened by anger, no longer feel pain. This bucket man would be hard to stop. But it needed to be ended quickly. The others were off the bridge, approaching the restless bullocks. A clear head and quick thinking won more fights than brute strength. Ballista’s advantage was mobility.
Ballista crouched, as if to charge, then set off to the man’s right. Impeded by his knee, the watchman could not turn fast enough. Ballista launched a flying kick. Again his heel found its mark. A terrible splintering sound, like a door kicked open. The watchman screamed, crumpled to the floor, his right leg at an improbable angle.
Ballista picked himself up.
The rest of the squad were pushing past the first of the cattle.
‘Sorry, Grandfather.’ Ballista yanked the cudgel from the old man’s hands.
Roaring, Ballista whacked the nearest bullock on the rump. The beast kicked and jumped, rolling its eyes. Ballista hit it again. The beast bellowed and charged. In a heartbeat, the rest of the herd broke into a veering, switching run towards the still closed stock pens. The customs officer hurdled the gate to safety. Turned by the rails, the bullocks swerved. Heads ducking, horns weaving, they thundered towards the bridge. Cornering, the back legs of one skidded out from under. It slid for a moment on its flank, then with a twist it was back on its feet. Another, baulked by a cart, tried to jump the obstacle. Its great weight sent the cart crashing over. Bundles of artichokes spilled across the roadway, to be pounded and thrown into the air by stamping hooves.
The squad of watchmen fled before the stampede. One, too slow, was bowled over. The beast stopped. Frisking, almost playful, it nudged the unfortunate along the ground, seeking to get its horns under to toss and gore.
Dropping the cudgel, Ballista turned and fled south along the embankment.
The quayside ran straight. To his left was the river, bulky grain barges moored for the night, lashed fast against the current. On his right ramps led up to tall detached warehouses. Within a few strides his damaged ribs were agony, each breath like a knife thrust. The tumult behind spurred him on.
The dock was near-deserted, just a few people someway downstream by the fishermen’s huts. The path was cluttered with impedimenta of the working day. Ballista swerved around cranes and winches, coils of rope and iron stanchions. The black mouths of alleyways, firebreaks between the warehouses, flashed by on his right.
The pain in his chest was mounting, his breath coming in sobs. There was no way he could keep running. When a stack of barrels blocked the view from the customs post, Ballista ducked into one of the dark alleyways.
To protect the contents from damp, the floors of the warehouses were raised. There was a gap of several paces between the pillars, but the clearance was low, less than two feet. Ballista dropped to the ground. He was a big man. Painfully, shoulders scrapping against the boards, he wriggled backwards, feet first, into the pitch blackness under the building.
Ballista had always had a horror of confined spaces. Siege tunnels, catacombs and the like were anathema to him. Now he could sense the immense weight suspended above him, pressing down on his shoulders, waiting to crush him.
Years before, perhaps ten years now, at the siege of Arete, he had been forced to abandon a friend in a tunnel under the walls. It still haunted his dreams. Trapped in the dark, unable to move, waiting to die. Ballista could imagine no worse fate.
Boots thudding on the quayside broke his unhappy reverie. He crawled a little way forward. Shielding his face with his sleeves, fearing the pale glimmer might betray him, he peered out.
The watchmen paused. They had torches, and peered into the alleyway. There were five of them. Not enough to search each passage, they pressed on.
Ballista listened to them moving on to the next ally. Five watchmen. He had taken down two, the bullock a third. That accounted for all of them. There would still be customs men at their post, but they did not count. The bridge might be unguarded.
Marcus Clodius Ballista, you are under arrest. The watchman had known his name. That answered one question. The Prefect of the City Watch had issued orders for his arrest. Scarpio was part of the conspiracy against Gallienus. The meeting with the informant in the Mausoleum of Hadrian had been a trap. Kill two birds with one stone; the eavesdropper who threatened to expose the plot, and the loyal friend of the emperor.
The noise of the search was receding.
Scarpio could not order the men of the City Watch to kill Ballista. The bucketmen were not hired murderers. But once confined, Scarpio would find a way to ensure that Ballista did not leave alive.
A sword with a hairline, a coiled snake, the pillow talk of a bride; things not to trust. The sayings of his childhood came back to him. Scarpio would not be alone in the conspiracy. A Prefect of the City Watch could not hope to overthrow an emperor on his own. More powerful men must be involved. Ballista could trust no one.
There were no sounds now but those of the river; the suck of the water, the creak of mooring ropes, the click-click of lanyards against masts.
Using his fingers and toes, Ballista worked himself out of his hiding place. He got to his hands and knees, then hauled himself to his feet. The soles of his feet hurt, but as nothing compared with the left side of his chest. The Stoics said pain was an irrelevance. What did philosophers know?
Stumbling slightly, Ballista moved back to the end of the alley.
Nearby, the quayside was empty. Far off to the south, down among the huts of the fishermen, Ballista could see the yellow halos of the watchmen’s torches. To the north, the torches were burning along the parapet of the bridge. They were at least two hundred paces away. He had run further than he had realised.
Cautiously, moving from shadow to shadow, flitting from crane to stanchion to barrel, Ballista began to work his way back towards the bridge. It came as second nature to him to move quiet and unseen in the dark, using every scrap of cover. As a boy, following the custom of the North, he had been fostered with another tribe. The Harii were famed night fighters; even the historian Tacitus had known of them. Ever since his time in their halls, Ballista had worn black clothes. It was useful now, as it had been so many times before.
Halfway there. Concentrating on his craft made the discomfort recede. His spirits were lifting. After what had happened, there was no hope of crossing the bridge unnoticed. But, with no goods to declare, he was beyond the remit of customs. Even unarmed and in his weakened state, should an officer or two try to detain him, he thought that he could deal with them. Customs men were not fighters. They might be reluctant to intervene. Certainly they would have seen what he had done to the watchmen. Once over the river, Ballista could vanish
into the metropolis. The Palatine was no great distance. There was plenty of time to reach the emperor.
His fond imaginings sank like a stone when he saw the men on the bridge. They were marching from the city. There were twenty, thirty, and more of them. They carried torches, and the buckets hanging from the axes over their shoulders betrayed their trade. Ballista could not remember the location of the nearest barracks of the City Watch. It made no difference. Scarpio had his men out in numbers.
Ballista watched from behind a ramp leading up to the door of a warehouse. After a few moments, he turned, and slipped into the nearest alleyway. The wall to his right was buttressed with brick columns. He slid from the shelter of one to another. The warehouses here stood two deep from the docks. A street ran between them, parallel to the quayside, with another beyond which was fronted with more buildings, indistinct in the darkness. He would move away from the river, then work his way north, coming back to the Tiber upstream at the Aelian Bridge by the Mausoleum of Hadrian.
He felt a stab of pain as his bare foot trod on the shards of a broken amphora. Silently cursing himself, he brushed the sharp terracotta from his sole. The alley was strewn with rubbish. The stench of cat piss overlaid the smell of grain and chaff. He went on more carefully, eyes down, watching where he put his feet in the ambient light.
By the last buttress, he halted, and took stock. The first street was quiet and empty, but now there were lights on the one further away, beyond the second row of warehouses. In itself that was not alarming. They were close to the tenements of Transtiberim. The buildings fronting the street might be dwellings or bars or brothels. But the torches were not moving. They were not held by men trudging home or out seeking nocturnal pleasures. The ones that he could see were spaced a few paces apart. In the guttering torchlight, was the glitter of swords and axes. Ballista looked north. There were more armed men on the road that led to the bridge. Scarpio had acted quickly, and with thoroughness. The Prefect of the City Watch had thrown a cordon around the area.
Ballista stepped back, and rested his back against the buttress. He needed somewhere to go to ground. All warehouses shared the same construction: a myriad of small chambers opening off a central courtyard, and internal stairs to identical levels above. These big warehouses were built on three or four levels. Openings for ventilation connected the chambers, and made the interior into a rabbit warren. Judging by the smell, these buildings were granaries. From childhood games in his father’s barns, Ballista knew that sacks of grain could be shifted to make ideal hiding places.
Yet by their nature warehouses contained valuables. They were designed to keep out thieves. The few external windows were narrow, shuttered, and situated far above the ground. The walls were smooth brick, unscalable. There were only two doors, one in each of the end walls. They were solid, locked and bolted. There would be a nightwatchman, perhaps more than one, in every warehouse. Apart from the doors, there was no entrance.
Ballista looked back to the river, where the black waters rolled. Pinpricks of light showed on the far bank. So close, yet as distant as Bactria or the fabled Isles of the Blessed. From the other side a walk of half an hour, and he would reach Gallienus in the Imperial Palace. From the Palatine less than an hour would bring him to the Bronze Gate in the south-east of Rome. There, in the House of Volcatius, his household would be settling in for the night. Having bathed and dined, his two sons, and Julia, his wife, would be preparing for bed. Most likely the four northern warriors of his hearth-troop, his bodyguards as the Romans considered them, would be playing dice. Maximus and Tarchon, Rikiar the Vandal and Grim the Lame would be sharing a drink, flirting with the maids. The warriors had not wanted to let him go alone. They had given him the sword-oath, were his sworn men. Ballista had ordered them to stay. True to his word to the Prefect of the City Watch, Ballista had not told them where he was going, only that he would not be back until late. He had implied that it was a thing of no danger. All unaware, his household would not miss him for hours.
He thought of his sons. In some ways they had grown to be very different. Isangrim would turn thirteen on the Kalends of the next month. He was tall for his age, quiet and given to introspection. Dernhelm was just six, would not be seven until November. He had a slighter build, and was always talking, always in motion. Both had inherited their father’s pale skin and fair hair. Like all Roman citizens they had three names. Although their first two were impeccably Roman – Marcus Clodius – Julia had objected to the final names. Men descended on their mother’s side from consuls should not sound as if they were barbarians. Through the frigid disapproval, and the outright arguments, Ballista had insisted. His sons must know their paternal heritage. They were as much diplomatic hostages as Ballista himself. A turn of the stars, a shift in the tide of imperial politics, and either might be sent to the distant North as an imperial-sponsored candidate for the throne of the Himlings of Hedinsey. Given his own recent visit to the lands of his ancestors, Ballista doubted that all their countrymen would welcome his sons to the shores of the Suebian Sea.
Looking back, the differences over the naming of their children had been nothing, a passing squall in an otherwise happy marriage. Something had changed, perhaps five years before, when they were in the East. Julia had changed. Before their silences had been companionable. Afterwards they seemed to hold a secret. Julia had become withdrawn, as if locking him out of a part of her existence. Discreet inquiries, prompted by jealousy, had revealed no evidence of another man. Often Ballista thought that it must be his fault. He had had an affair. But that was after things were different, and he doubted that Julia knew. In any case, outside the babbling of a few philosophers, no Roman wife would be brought up to expect sexual fidelity from her husband. It was his own sterner northern morality that objected.
He wondered how they would get the news of his death. If the plot against Gallienus failed, there would be an inquiry. If the Prefect of the City Watch managed to distance himself from the failed coup, he would describe it as a terrible mistake. Scarpio would weep crocodile tears. The noble Ballista was killed resisting arrest or trying to escape; a tragic case of mistaken identity. If the prefect was implicated, the truth would come out in the cellars of the Palace under pincers and claws wielded by the skilled hands of men without compassion.
If the emperor was assassinated, troops hammering on the doors of the House of Volcatius would be the only warning the household would receive. Rough men, lamplight shining on leather and steel, harsh voices calling for the family of the traitor. Maximus and Tarchon would not stand aside, nor would Rikiar or Grim. The former two considered that they owed Ballista their lives. They would pay that debt trying to protect his family. Yet numbers would tell, and when they were dead . . .
It was all his fault. Three years he had been away. Three years since he had parted from his family on the quayside at Ephesus. It was less than a month since he had returned to Rome. If he had still been abroad, his family would not be in danger. His friendship with Gallienus would have been immaterial. He would have been out of sight, somewhere beyond the frontiers, and out of mind. If he had not sent a fast message ahead by the imperial posting service, summoning his wife and sons to meet him in Rome, they would still be in Sicily. Even if he were killed, the distance might have saved them.
Ballista gazed down the length of the alleyway at the river. The dark waters looked almost inviting. Better that than being hauled from a futile hiding place under this warehouse, dragged out like a rat from its nest, then quietly butchered. He had always been strong in the water. Perhaps it was not impossible to brave the flood, and reach the far shore. Perhaps some god might carry him across.
CHAPTER 4
The Warehouses
‘O
PEN IN THE NAME OF the city watch!’
The shout carried through the night.
Ballista levered himself off the brickwork. Watching where he put his feet, he made his way back to the end of the alley. Stooping, cove
ring his face with his forearm, careful to make no sudden movement, he peered around the corner.
Neither the torches upstream nor those away from the river had moved. To the south, the line of the City Watch had moved up, and blocked the street at the last pair of warehouses. Men hammered on the doors.
So that was how they would draw the covert; one line of beaters driving the quarry into the waiting cordon. It was a pity. If they had all set off at once, in the confusion of the darkness, a gap might have opened through which their prey could have escaped. The Prefect of the City Watch was quite the huntsman. If it was Scarpio in charge here. It had not been the prefect urging the men on at the Mausoleum. Having met Scarpio just once, Ballista would still have recognised his disembodied voice. The voice he had heard from down below was someone else’s, and, of course, the figures coming up the stairs had not been the firemen of the City Watch but hired killers.
One of the doors opened. A nightwatchman came out. The City Watch pushed past him, hardly glancing at the figure in the hooded cloak, carrying the crook and shuttered lamp of his profession. The bucketmen were going to search each pair of warehouses as they worked their methodical way north. These granaries were not as huge as the Galban warehouses downstream on the other side of the river, but they were still substantial. They must contain dozens of chambers. There were five pairs of warehouses between the searchers and Ballista. He still had some time.
‘Open in the name of the City Watch!’
The other door finally opened. The City Watch, intent on their task, again put down the buckets and axes with which they fought fires, and drew the swords they used to detain malefactors. They brushed aside the hooded figure who emerged from the granary.
Ballista slipped back into his malodorous lair. Cowards! Kill the barbarian! Ballista turned over in his mind the shouts which had echoed up the Mausoleum. Recognition swam just below the surface. A voice accustomed to command, yet not cultured. A junior officer, perhaps a centurion, risen from the ranks? The knifemen themselves had served in the army. Ballista knew that voice, but it was like trying to grasp the fleeting remnants of a dream. He put the speculation aside.
The Last Hour: Relentless, brutal, brilliant. 24 hours in Ancient Rome Page 4