by Ian Ross
‘What do you see out there?’ said Lycianus, the scout commander who had joined the party before they left Nisibis. He waved his arm at the emptiness.
‘Nothing,’ Castus replied as he rode. He wanted to spit, but his mouth was too dry. The air felt saturated with fine dust, and the sun filled earth and sky with heat. He twisted in the saddle, hot leather creaking beneath him, and narrowed his eyes. ‘Nothing at all.’
Lycianus made a rasping sound that might have been a laugh. ‘That’s the way it looks, eh?’
‘You see things differently?’
‘I don’t,’ Lycianus said. ‘But they do.’ He pointed to the pair of slim dark horsemen who rode ahead of them. Lycianus had twenty of his own men with him, to act as scouts and foragers. Equites Saraceni Indigenae, they were called: irregular cavalry recruited from the desert peoples. They wore no armour, just simple unbelted tunics and blanket cloaks, but each rider carried a bow and a long slender lance, and they looked more than capable of using them.
‘And what do they see, these Saracens of yours?’
‘They see, dominus,’ Lycianus replied, ‘a landscape as full and flourishing as the plains of Pannonia.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘They know every stone and every wadi. They read the sky and the wind. They know the good camping grounds, the places where a man can draw water from the earth, or find fodder for his horses. They know the places of battle, and the lines of retreat. The places sacred to the gods, and those haunted by demons!’
Castus sniffed, and rubbed his tongue over his teeth. Squinting again, he stared into the emptiness and tried to imagine it as something more than a wilderness. He could not. Granted, here and there he could make out clusters of dry thorny scrub in the crevices, even a few wiry clumps of tamarisk showing pinkish in the surrounding drabness. But there was nothing more. The hoof-beats of their horses crunched, loud in the surrounding stillness. A hot wind plucked twists of dust from the stony ground. This was a hostile place, he thought, a malevolent place. Lycianus’s mention of demons caused his shoulder blades to tighten.
He was riding with the vanguard of the column, as usual. Behind him the line of men and horses and camels stretched away into the pluming dust. It was easy to see why so many Roman armies had been beaten by the Persians and their nomad allies in this land: this was cavalry country. Any infantry force caught out in the open here would be surrounded and annihilated. Mysterious, Castus thought, why anyone would want to fight over such a desolate place.
Lycianus himself was a mystery too. How old was he? Castus could not tell. Perhaps fifty. A big man though, almost as big as Castus himself, and a fine horseman, with a look of tightly controlled power about him. His skin was burned almost as dark as the men he commanded, but his eyes were pale blue and his sandy hair bleached the colour of old ivory.
Before Lycianus had joined them, the tribune Egnatius had told Castus a little more about the man. He was not a native of this country, but came originally from Moesia on the Danube; he had joined the army under Galerius, and fought in the Armenian war as a trooper of the Scutarii under Maximinus Daza. A few years later he had been captured by the Saracens, and had spent nearly ten years as their prisoner. The experience served him well; by the time he was released he knew the language and culture of the desert peoples fluently, and had made important allies among them. Lycianus had risen fast in the army since then. Now he held the official rank of praepositus, but his actual role was harder to pin down. He ranged widely with his irregulars, all across the sweep of the desert frontier, and seemed to have little regard for military hierarchy.
A useful sort of officer, Castus thought, although a difficult one to manage.
By that evening they were in sight of the great barren ridge that screened Singara, and as the sun dropped they made camp below the northern slope, near the ruin of an old mud-brick castellum crumbling into dust. The scouts found tamarisk and thorn bushes for a fire, and as the light turned the flanks of the ridge to glowing copper-red they slaughtered a pair of gazelles they had brought down with their bows. Castus sat near the fire and watched the Saracens casting the chunks of meat into the embers to roast. Sabinus was with him; Egnatius and Diogenes too. Lycianus returned from his tour of the piquets and took a seat on the blanket beside them. Weary from the hot day’s travel, and lulled by the cool of evening and the smoke of the fire, for a long time none of them spoke. The slaves brought roasted meat, with bread and wine. Diogenes alone refused it; he had long ago given up eating flesh, for philosophical reasons that Castus did not even try to understand.
‘How many different tribes of Saracen are there?’ Diogenes asked at last.
Lycianus stared at the fire, unblinking. In the gathering darkness the camels roared as they were hobbled, and the troopers laughed and talked quietly as they ate their evening meals.
‘There are many tribes,’ the scout commander said. ‘As many as the birds in the sky, some say, and almost as many kings to rule them. But until recently they were all gathered under the rule of the Banu Lakhm, based at Hira, an oasis town far to the south.’
‘You’ve been there?’ Castus asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Lycianus said with the flicker of a smile. ‘I spent some time there. The Lakhmids paid tribute to the Persians, but while King Shapur was only a boy they became very independent. Too independent, the Persians thought. So, a dozen years ago, when Shapur reached manly age, he led a great campaign against them and conquered Hira. Many died, and many more were taken captive.’
‘He forced an alliance on the survivors?’ Sabinus asked, dry-voiced.
‘Some of them. Others wouldn’t agree to it. So Shapur made an example of them.’
They waited in silence for Lycianus to say more. Night had fallen now, and the flames of the fire had died down.
‘You see those long lances that my men carry?’ Lycianus asked. ‘Well, Shapur took each of the Saracen prisoners who would not submit to him – there were thousands of them – and he drove one of those lances through the muscle of their right shoulder, piercing them front to back. Many of them died of the wounds. Those that did not would never use a weapon again.’
Castus shuddered, feeling a sympathetic ache in his chest. Chewing at the half-raw gazelle meat, washing it down with vinegar wine, he tried not to imagine the scene. He had known many atrocities in war, but nothing so creative in its cruelty. ‘Better just to kill them,’ he said.
Lycianus shrugged. ‘Maybe so,’ he said. ‘But it was a terrible act, a fearsome act. The Saracens regard such things with awe, you see. Awe and respect. Dhu’l Aktaf, they call Shapur now – the Piercer of Shoulders.’ He gave a mirthless rasp of a laugh.
‘But I understand that they’re divided in their allegiances,’ Diogenes broke in. ‘Why do some still fight for the Persians? And which of them fight for us?’
‘There was a young prince of the Lakhmids who escaped the slaughter at Hira,’ Lycianus said. ‘A man called Imru al-Qays. He rode west across the desert and joined his mother’s people, the Azdites of the Banu Tanukh. Very soon he gained power over the Tanukhids, and proclaimed himself king of all the desert Arabs between Syria and the borders of Egypt. He was a great man, Imru al-Qays…’
‘You knew him too?’ Castus said.
Lycianus nodded. ‘He was… a friend, you could say. A friend and client of Rome too. The Augustus Constantine gave him the title of phylarch, military commander of all the Tanukhids and their allies, and he served us well. He even became a Christian!’
Sabinus made a choking sound as he ate, and gulped heavily. ‘There are Christians among these barbarians?’
‘Quite a few,’ Lycianus told him. ‘On our side at least. They had a bishop as well, although I don’t know what happened to him. Imru al-Qays died eight years ago, and left his realm to his three sons by his second wife. Sadly the sons soon fell to fighting among themselves. One, the eldest, rode back east and submitted to Shapur, who made him King of the Lakhmids at Hira. The other two warred for a long
time. One killed the other, and took the title of phylarch, but he died less than a year ago. A scorpion in his shoe, so they say.’
‘So who rules the Tanukhids now?’ Castus asked. It was an important question. Just as Nisibis and the Tigris fortresses guarded the north-eastern flank of the Roman domain, so the Tanukhid Saracens protected the desert routes south of the Euphrates. Their allegiance would be vital in the campaign to come.
‘Imru al-Qays had another son, by his third wife, a young princess of the Azdites,’ Lycianus said. ‘But his older sons never accepted her, and the boy was only born after his father died. There are many chiefs among the Tanukh who would set themselves up as regent until he comes of age to rule. But you’ll meet them soon enough, dominus!’
‘When?’
‘Around the time of next month’s full moon, if all goes well,’ Lycianus told him. ‘Plenty of ground to cover before then.’
The fire was dying down, and Castus stretched out and pulled a blanket over himself. Lying on his back, he gazed up at the brilliance of the stars, hazed here and there by smoke. A sense of emptiness came over him, as if the spirit of this desolate land had seeped into his blood. What was he doing here, so far from the place he called home? Why was he journeying through this empty landscape, this violent and demon-haunted world of alien peoples and strange gods? He should be far away, with Marcellina at his side…
As he drifted towards sleep he heard the voices of Lycianus and the others still sitting beside the glowing embers.
‘But why are they so addicted to war and strife, these people?’ Diogenes asked. ‘It seems to me that this land is broad and empty enough for any number of Saracens to wander at will.’
‘You don’t understand them,’ Lycianus said. ‘Few people do. I do, a little. They have a fierce regard for freedom, and a sense of honour that would leave the proudest Roman in the dust.’
‘But what are they fighting for? There are no cities out here, few enough places that you could call, well… places. Their allegiances seem to shift like the sand. What drives them to these endless feuds?’
‘What drives them?’ Lycianus said, and Castus could hear the smile in his voice. ‘The most important thing they know. Something they prize above all else, above even honour. The thing they call tha’rr.’ The word was a guttural sound in his throat.
‘What’s that?’ Sabinus asked quietly.
‘Hard to translate,’ Lycianus told him. ‘But we would probably call it revenge.’
*
Singara, Castus soon decided, was surely one of the hottest, dustiest and most flyblown garrisons on the entire Roman frontier. The fortress stood on rising ground below the great ridge, with the open desert stretching away to the south. More than three thousand men were based there, from the First and Sixth Parthica legions, a couple of cavalry units and a numerus of Gothic auxilia, and Castus pitied every last one of them. But the walls were strong, the fortress well provisioned, and after three days inspecting the troops and giving the officers the same orders he had given to Romulianus at Nisibis, Castus was glad to be on his way again.
The road ran south-west across the arid plain, towards the valley of the Chaboras River, which would lead them down to the Euphrates. It was an old road, little more than a track, but for the first few hours Castus picked out the weathered milestones still marking the distances. One of them still bore a faded inscription, naming the emperor Severus Alexander.
But a little further the milestones were gone, the ridge of Singara had sunk below the northern horizon, and there was nothing but bare sand and rock in every direction. Somewhere to the south, only a few miles away, lay the effective limits of the Roman Empire. No wall or ditch marked it, no river or natural boundary. The power of Rome just faded into the empty dust, and somewhere beyond that dust the realm of the Sassanid Persians, Iran-Shahr, began.
‘Scorpions,’ the orderly Vallio said, riding behind Castus. ‘Scorpions and flies. Flies and snakes, and nasty little spiky bushes. That’s all there is here… Why’d anyone want to live in such a ghastly place as this?’
‘Some find it beautiful,’ said Diogenes in a dubious tone.
There was a kind of beauty to it, Castus had to admit, especially in the evenings and the early morning, when the light played across the barren land and the sky glowed luminous blue. But it was an inhuman beauty all the same, and in the heat of midday it was hard to appreciate. Sweat was pouring off him as he rode, soaking his clothes. He had taken to wearing a thin scarf draped around his head, as he had seen the Saracens doing, but the sun reflected up from the stony ground and glared in his eyes all the same. He lifted his canteen and sucked a mouthful of warm water, sulphur-tasting from the springs at Singara, then swilled his mouth and spat.
‘Why is that crippled mongrel following us?’ Egnatius asked, riding up alongside. Castus looked back: a rangy-looking dog with three legs was hopping along the verge of the road, tongue lolling.
‘It’s been following me since we were in Singara,’ Diogenes explained. He was apparently oblivious to the heat, although he was sweating profusely, and his bald head was reddened by sunburn. ‘It appeared hungry, so I fed it, and ever since it won’t leave me alone! But I’ve come to rather like it – a most intelligent creature. I think I might observe it, for philosophical purposes.’
‘Certainly it’s got some notion of where it’s next meal’s coming from,’ Egnatius said. The dog looked up at him with a hopeful grin.
‘Keep it if you want,’ Castus told Diogenes. He had never been fond of dogs. ‘But it’s not getting any of our rations… And put something on your head before the sun boils your brains!’
Through the heat of noon they continued south-westwards. It was late afternoon, the light glaring in the faces of the riders, when Lycianus came galloping back to join Castus. ‘Dominus,’ he called, swinging his arm to the southward. ‘Company!’
Castus tugged the reins, slowing his horse as he craned up in the saddle and stared in the direction of the scout commander’s gesture. An empty horizon, bare grit and stones. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ he said through his teeth.
‘Dust,’ Lycianus replied.
‘I can see that!’
‘No, the cloud, there on the horizon. Many horses, so the scouts say, perhaps camels too, moving parallel to us.’
Squinting, face bunched, Castus tried to make out some telltale smudge in the air. But the faint eastern breeze was carrying the dust of his own baggage camels and cavalry horses up along the column, and compared to that the southern sky appeared clear. Just a slight discolouration of the blue, he thought, a yellowness just above the horizon. Sabinus rode up to join him with the other two Protectores; Egnatius was close behind.
‘A Persian patrol, do you think?’ Sabinus asked.
‘Maybe. Could just be roaming tribesmen,’ Castus said, almost to himself. ‘Or a merchant caravan, perhaps…’
‘No merchants use this route, dominus,’ Lycianus told him. ‘And if they did, they’d be up here on the road with us, not wandering about out there in the open qafr. The Sassanids don’t tend to range this close to our frontier either.’
‘So what are they?’ Castus snapped.
‘We’ll know soon enough,’ Lycianus said, glancing at the position of the sun. ‘If they’re friendly, they’ll send a party over to greet us. Probably ask to share our camping ground. Custom of the desert. If not…’
The scout commander appeared more annoyed than surprised, Castus noticed. Perhaps, he wondered, Lycianus blamed himself for not noticing the new arrivals sooner. ‘How far to the next fort?’
‘That’d be Praesidium Qatna, on the Chaboras. We could reach the river by nightfall if we rode hard, but we’d tire the horses, and our column’d be spread out along the road. Easy target. Riding in the dark’s out of the question in this rough country. So we’ll have to camp for the night, better sooner than later. Whoever’s out there’ll make their move before long, for good or ill.’
Castus was still staring at the horizon, expecting to pick out a line of horsemen dark against the glowing sky. He looked back at the column behind him. Egnatius had left small parties of his Armigeri troopers at various forts and cities along the road from Antioch, but he still had thirty with him, and with Lycianus’s Saracens that gave Castus fifty armed horsemen. More than enough, he guessed, to deter any but the most ambitious desert raiders.
‘Order your men to find us a camp ground,’ he told Lycianus. ‘We’ll set up our perimeter before nightfall – no tents, in case we need to move quickly – then let’s see what our friends out there want to do.’
They rode on in silence, every man in the column turning to scan the southern approaches as news of the interlopers spread among them. Lycianus told some of his men to keep a close watch in the opposite direction too, just in case.
‘It’s strange,’ he said to Castus a while later. ‘It’s not been thirty days since the spring equinox. The tribes always keep a truce for a month either side of it.’
‘A truce?’ Sabinus said, and snorted a laugh. ‘How very civilised!’
‘In honour of the goddess, Al-Uzza,’ Lycianus explained, turning to Sabinus. ‘Who we would call Lucifer, the morning star. I’m afraid plenty of the Saracens are still idol-worshippers, as you would put it!’
Castus shot him a glance, frowning. He had already determined that the scout commander had no love for Christians. ‘So, what?’ he growled. ‘They’re not supposed to fight anybody?’
‘Maybe they’re Christians out there?’ Sabinus said with a grim smile.
‘Or maybe they’ve been told that we’re Christians,’ Lycianus replied. ‘Or Romans, anyway, and somebody’s promised them a good bounty for our heads!’
They camped for the night on a broad expanse of flat sandy ground, just off the road, with a dry watercourse choked with thorn bushes marking one flank. The ground was too hard to dig trenches, but Castus ordered the troopers to cut the bushes and sharpen the spiny tips of the branches, setting them as a rough barrier on the other three sides of the position. On Lycianus’s suggestion, he also ordered fires lit around the perimeter, with sentries stationed between each one. Then, with the camels hobbled and the horses tethered in lines, Lycianus sent a party of his men out on a patrol to the south to try and discover who was shadowing them along the horizon. They returned as night fell, with nothing to report; whoever it was out there in the open desert had melted away ahead of them, and they had seen nobody.