Triumph in Dust

by Ian Ross

  ‘Gentlemen of Nisibis, greetings,’ Castus said, and gave them a tight smile. ‘As you know, King Shapur of Persia is marching on this city with a formidable army. In only a few days he will have surrounded us entirely, and will commence siege operations. It is vital to the security of the empire that Nisibis does not fall! Therefore, from this moment the city is under military control, and every men, woman and child within it is under my sole authority.’

  He paused, scanning the faces before him. Dorotheus the defensor had a sour, guarded look, but most of the rest appeared resigned to their fate. They would already have guessed what was about to happen.

  ‘The enemy will be sending scouts and spies to survey our defences,’ Castus went on. ‘So I’m ordering the gates sealed, and no one allowed into or out of the city. I’ll require your cooperation in keeping order. I’ll also need a full inventory of all food supplies, together with a list of the entire population by household and any resident strangers. Deliver the lists to my secretary.’ He gestured towards Diogenes.

  ‘We only need hold out for a short while,’ he told them, ‘before the imperial field army arrives to relieve us. There are already troops marching from Antioch, and from the Euphrates garrisons, and I expect them here very soon.’ Castus tried not to drop his gaze as he spoke; he did not expect many of them to believe him. He hardly believed it himself.

  ‘I was glad to see,’ he said, ‘that the standing crops in the fields have already been burned. Who gave the order to do that?’

  He glanced at Vorodes, expecting him to answer, but the curator just shrugged. The other men exchanged glances, but none spoke.

  ‘I gave the order!’ came a voice from the back of the hall.

  The ranks of councillors parted, and Bishop Iacob paced between. Two of his priests accompanied him, a younger man supporting the bishop by his elbow as he walked.

  ‘Very prompt,’ Castus said. ‘I thank you.’

  ‘I require no thanks from the likes of you!’ Iacob snapped, spittle flecking his chin. ‘Nor do my congregation recognise your authority! I am the appointed shepherd of the Christian flock of Nisibis. They recognise no other master but God, and the emperor himself.’

  Castus tightened his jaw, grinding his back teeth. The old bishop had a look of almost ferocious disdain on his face. The priests accompanying him just looked blankly pious.

  ‘Then, as you’ve already shown yourself capable of commanding them,’ Castus said quietly, ‘I suggest you command them to assist in the defence of their city. Shapur, I’m told, has no love for Christians.’

  ‘Shapur is God’s scourge!’ the bishop declared. ‘All happens as God wills it. If the barbarians come to Nisibis, they do so by the will of God. They come to punish this city for its sins, its perversions, its heresies!’

  ‘Blessed Iacob,’ the defensor broke in, fingering his holy amulet, ‘what punishment could the Almighty wish upon us? The Persians are the devil’s people!’

  ‘The devil is all around us now,’ the bishop muttered, in a low and threatening voice. ‘You know it, Dorotheus! You, who consort with pagans and Jews! You who consort with Manichees and Arians, and spend your afternoons tattling with women!’

  ‘Enough!’ Castus yelled, his voice echoing off the high vaulted ceiling. ‘Your religious squabbles are unimportant. But I tell you this…’ He paced before them, staring each man in the eyes. ‘Anyone who refuses his duty in defending the city, or works to undermine the morale and unity of the people, will be punished. Is that understood?’

  ‘We understand, strategos,’ Vorodes said. The councillors all made hurried noises of agreement.

  Iacob just tipped back his head, and appeared to close his eyes. ‘I shall seek the intercession of the Almighty in our deliverance,’ he said. ‘But all will happen as God alone decrees.’

  *

  Hours later, Castus stood alone on the flat roof of the Strategion, watching the last colour of sunset bleed from the western sky. Still no sign of the enemy. Below him the barrack lines of the military castrum glimmered with lights. When he looked to his left he could see the regular grid of city streets picked out with similar glowing flickers. Beyond the walls the land was falling into blackness, but within the circuit of the defences were tens of thousands of people, tens of thousands of individual lives packed together. Castus tried to picture them: families gathered in the lamplight around evening meals, refugees bedding down for the night in the public colonnades and the porticos of the temples and bathhouses. All of them fearful, anxious of what the coming storm might bring.

  In his mind he heard the questions that he had feared the city councillors would ask. Questions that he could not adequately answer.

  What experience do you have of defending a city under siege?

  None, he knew. He had once tried to defend a hilltop in Britain. He had watched the assault on the walls of Byzantium. He had seen the preparations for the siege of Massilia many years ago. But beyond the most obvious expedients, he was a novice.

  How do you know the city will be relieved?

  He did not. Every hour throughout the day he had gazed to the westward, hoping to catch sight of Mucatra’s approaching column, or Hind leading her Saracen horde. Pointless even to consider the imperial army at Nicomedia.

  And is the emperor really dead...?

  No, he could not bear to confirm that rumour; not yet. Squaring his shoulders, Castus tried to ignore the weight of his responsibilities. He held the lives of every single person in the city in the palm of his hand now. Their futures depended solely on his decisions, his wisdom.

  He glanced up at the vast blackness of the sky above him, and felt very small, overwhelmed by the immensity of what lay ahead.

  Then something caught his eye, away across the plain. A glint of orange light that came and went. He squinted, and the light reappeared. With a slow gasp he noticed another point of light away to the left, and then another beyond it. As he stared, narrowing his eyes, he picked out more of them, like sparks floating along the line of the horizon.

  Turning slowly, he scanned the distance to the west, and then the east. Sparks of flame everywhere he looked. He knew what they were now. The Persian outriders had moved up with the night, and they were burning the surrounding villages.

  In all directions, Nisibis was ringed by fires.

  XVII

  ‘Bring it all down,’ Castus said, leaning from the ramparts of the Gate of the Sun. ‘All of that, along the river – I need it cleared today.’

  Beneath him, at the foot of the city’s towering eastern walls, the River Mygdonius flowed along a deep bed. Dry earth bluffs rose steeply to either side, and the foundations of the wall stood directly above them. But the narrow sandy banks of the river were crowded with a mass of temporary structures, crude huts and shacks, canvas awnings and palm-roofed shelters. They housed a random population of drifters and peddlers, prostitutes and beggars drawn to the city’s riches; they also presented good cover to any attacker approaching the walls from the east.

  ‘I’ll send a party of troops to help your municipal slaves with the demolition.’

  ‘I think we can deal with it on our own,’ Vorodes said with a sniff. ‘I’ve been arguing for months that we should clear the riverside of vagrants.’

  A couple of women were gazing up at them, waving and calling out. They wore thin gaudy garments; prostitutes of the cheaper sort, Castus guessed, who plied their trade among the shacks. There were other women down by the river, kneeling as they scrubbed wet cloth over the flat stones.

  ‘It’s up to you to accommodate the people who live down there as well,’ Castus told the curator. ‘Don’t just drive them out into the countryside. The Persians’ll find uses for any they don’t kill.’

  In front of the gates the river was spanned by a five-arched stone bridge. On the far side lay the eastern suburb, enclosed by its own rough semi-circle of wall. The defences of the suburb were puny compared to the walls of the city itself, but Castu
s had sent Gunthia and his five hundred Gothic troops to defend them. He had considered abandoning the suburb, which mainly held workshops, warehouses and hostelries for the caravan traders, but even a slight defence might hold back the enemy on that side for a while.

  Descending the steps from the gatehouse roof, Vorodes following him with Sabinus and his bodyguards, Castus paced along the broad rampart walkway. He had almost completed his circuit of the city walls now, and they looked as formidable as Diogenes had reported, months before. All along the walkway there were soldiers waiting at their posts, legionaries and dismounted cavalry troopers, Arab irregulars and Armenian archers, all saluting smartly as he passed. Every fifty paces or so was an artillery emplacement, the big arrow-throwing ballistae each with stacks of ammunition laid ready. Some of the weapons had names carved into their stocks: Striker, Far-Darter and Sudden Death.

  Behind the wall, at further intervals, were massive masonry platforms that supported the single-armed stone-hurling catapults called onagers. The big machines had too fierce a recoil to be mounted on the ramparts; their crews had to shoot blindly, guided by the sentries on the walls, but Castus had watched them being tested earlier that day. The range and accuracy of their plunging missiles was impressive.

  Castus paused and stepped over to the battlements, peering out across the countryside beyond the fortifications. A party of Lycianus’s scouts were riding in from the east, but they showed no sign of particular haste. The enemy, for now, were still keeping their distance.

  There had been no sign, either, of any reinforcements approaching from the west. The scouts had discovered nothing of either Mucatra or Hind. But Castus was determined not to worry too much about them at the moment. He had slept unusually well the night before, deeply and without dreams, and woken refreshed and filled with a renewed sense of purpose. The city’s defences were strong, and while the troops were few in number their morale seemed high. The city’s population, for now, had accepted military government without complaint, and in some cases with obvious relief. Things, Castus told himself, could certainly be worse.

  He almost had a skip in his step as he descended the steep stairway from the rampart to the street below. But he was careful to keep his expression grave as he marched through the city, across the market district and the central avenue. His bodyguards and staff officers were formed up around him, his standard-bearer and trumpeters marching ahead of him, and the citizens of Nisibis hung back in the doorways and the porticoes and stared at him as he passed. Castus kept his neck stiff, glancing neither to one side nor the other, ignoring the occasional calls and cries. What did they think, these eastern civilians, when they looked at him? Did they see the living personification of Roman military power, or just a big old grey-haired man with a sunburnt face, sweating in his cloak and cuirass?

  There was a crowd gathered on the marble paving of the precinct around the Tychaeion. Castus was glad to see that so many had attended the summons promptly. The heralds had gone out at dawn, and the placards were fixed at every street corner in every ward: each household in the city was to contribute one able-bodied man to serve in the militia and help defend the walls. It had been Diogenes’s idea to link militia service with the food dole: a harsh ruling, but a necessary one. Only those who served would be fed at the city’s expense.

  The crowd parted as Castus and his entourage approached. They were a motley selection: field labourers and city tradesmen; merchants and caravan guards; some who looked like slaves or beggars. Most had improvised weapons, hunting spears or tools, while others were empty-handed, gawping and nervous. Castus noticed more than a few women among them too. In rough lines they filed up to the steps of the great temple, where the city clerks were recording their names in the ledgers.

  ‘Sabinus,’ Castus said as he reached the steps, ‘I’m giving you responsibility for organising the city militia.’

  His son straightened, squaring his shoulders, but he had a dubious look. ‘Yes, Father,’ he said. ‘I mean – Yes, dominus.’

  ‘You can draw a dozen or so soldiers to help. You’ll have to select the best men to act as unit leaders, weed out the unfit, see that all the rest are armed and given as much training as possible, and divided into numeri of around a hundred or so…’

  ‘I know what to do,’ Sabinus broke in.

  ‘Good.’ Castus gave him a cuff on the shoulder. He had to remind himself sometimes that his son was a grown man, and an experienced military officer. But Sabinus had no direct experience of command; he made a note to appoint one of the more able campidoctores, the veteran drillmasters of the legions, to assist him.

  Climbing the steps, he found Diogenes sitting beneath the tall statue of the emperor Severus. The secretary was eating an apple, and watching the slow assembly of the militia with open curiosity as his dog lounged beside him.

  ‘The population seem quite happy with the Rule of Mars, so far!’ he said with a smile.

  ‘So far,’ Castus repeated in an undertone. He stepped into the shade of the statue. ‘Mostly they’re just frightened of the alternative… But it won’t take long before they start complaining. Civilians always do.’

  Diogenes nodded, chewing. ‘It occurred to me,’ he said, ‘that we might order all private food stocks surrendered to the public storehouses. If there are shortages, any notions of inequality could easily breed discord.’

  ‘Do it,’ Castus said firmly. He was not sure how effective it might be, or how easy to enforce, but he needed to keep the city and its people on a short rein. ‘There’s something else I need you to do,’ he added quietly, stooping beside Diogenes. The dog gave a low whine and slunk away. ‘There are too many different factions here, too many strangers from different places… I need to know what’s happening in the city. What people are saying…’ He broke off, unsure how to phrase the request.

  ‘You need a secret network of informers to spy for you?’ Diogenes said briskly. ‘And you want me to organise one?’

  ‘Yes… yes, that’s it,’ Castus said. He was uncomfortable with the idea – spies and informers had always seemed odious to him. But without information he could only rely on blind trust. Sooner or later, he knew, that trust would prove misguided. Most likely there were already those in Nisibis plotting to hand the city over to the enemy.

  ‘I could certainly do that,’ Diogenes said. ‘It would take money, sadly. Such people as I would need to employ seldom act out of love for their polis.’

  ‘That’s not a problem,’ Castus said with an unexpected sense of relief. ‘You can draw coin from the treasury – I’ll give you the warrant. But I’d need to know everything, and up to the highest levels…’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, dominus,’ the secretary said with a glint of pleasure. ‘I’m sure the dignitaries of the city have plenty to hide, and as a student of human nature I shall enjoy uncovering it!’

  For a professed philosopher and intellectual, Castus thought, his old friend Diogenes had always taken an unusual delight in probing the sordid details of other people’s lives. Wealthy people especially. He assumed that it accorded in some way with the man’s eccentric political beliefs.

  Down in the open space of the temple precinct, the sun was blazing back off the marble paving. As Castus crossed to the far portico, the curator Vorodes fell into step beside him. ‘Everyone in the city is eager to help in any way they can,’ he told Castus. ‘My son Barnaeus will serve in the militia, of course. I’m sure you can find a suitable position for him?’

  ‘Oh, surely I can,’ Castus said, distracted. He was shading his eyes as he stared at the rooftops all around him.

  ‘And if you need to commandeer any of the city’s buildings, just let me know. Either public or private.’

  ‘I do,’ Castus told him. ‘I’ll need a central command post – a place that gives me a good view over the defences.’ The Strategion terrace provided an excellent vantage point, but the view to the north was screened by the other structures on the citadel mou
nt. Now, as he gazed in that direction, Castus made out one building that towered above the surrounding rooftops.

  ‘Well, if you need to requisition a suitable place,’ Vorodes said, ‘I can give the order for the residents to hand it over to you.’

  ‘No need,’ Castus said, and pointed to the tall building. ‘I’m taking your house.’

  *

  Towards evening, he was standing by the low wall of the curator’s rooftop garden when a messenger brought word that Romulianus was dead. Castus just nodded curtly; he could not bring himself to mourn the dead officer, but at least his sufferings were over. It was a callous thought, but sharing his quarters with a dying man had seemed a bad omen. How many of his officers and staff, listening to the anguished cries, must have wondered if they too were fated to meet such an end?

  But the city itself looked tranquil in the soft light, now the heat of the day had receded. Far away in the northern quarter, Castus could make out the tall pediment of the temple of Baal Shamin; Vorodes would be there now, leading the evening rituals to his god. And from away to his right Castus could hear the sounds of massed chanting from the Church of the Saviour, where Iacob’s Christian congregation had gathered to pray for deliverance from the Persians.

  And where were the Persians themselves? Except for the night raids on the outlying villages, there had still been no sign of Shapur’s advancing army. Nervous tension tightened Castus’s guts; had the Persian king decided to avoid Nisibis, and march west by a different route? Stifling a curse, Castus muttered another quick prayer instead. He thought of Marcellina and Aeliana, waiting for him back in Antioch, and hoped desperately that his actions had not left them defenceless before the enemy advance.

  A quiet footstep behind him, and he turned.

  ‘Am I disturbing your tactical deliberations, excellency?’

  Aurelia Sohaemia walked from the darkened arch of the dining pavilion, wrapping a shawl around her head and shoulders. There was a hint of warmth in her voice, but her expression was grave. She came and stood beside Castus, looking down at the city.