Fire in the East (20 page)

Just when Maximus thought he might scream, Ballista said they would have to assume this and use the figures as a guide. ‘Now, the real question. How do we feed everyone from March to November when we are besieged? Let us start with existing food reserves.’ He looked at Acilius Glabrio.

‘Legio IIII has stockpiled grain and oil to last our thousand men twelve months.’ The young aristocrat was careful not to look smug. There was no need.

‘Things are far from so good with the nearly thousand men of Cohors XX,’ said Turpio with a wry smile. ‘There are dry supplies for three months and wet for just two.’

Ballista looked at Demetrius. The youth’s eyes were unfocussed, his mind elsewhere. ‘Demetrius, the figures for the municipal reserves and those of the three caravan protectors.’

‘Sorry,
Kyrios.’
In his confusion, the boy lapsed momentarily into Greek, before continuing in Latin. ‘Sorry,
Dominus.’
He consulted his notes. ‘The caravan protectors all say the same, that they have enough supplies for their dependants, including their mercenaries, for twelve months. Incidentally, all three claim to have about three hundred mercenaries. The municipal reserves hold enough grain, oil and wine for the whole population for two months.’

‘Obviously we have to make sure all our troops are supplied. And while the civilians must ultimately take responsibility for themselves, I think that we should try to provide a half ration to them throughout the siege,’ said Ballista. Forestalling the expected objection from Acilius Glabrio, he continued, ‘No law says we must feed them, but we will want volunteers to fight. We will press others into work gangs. Starving, desperate men are liable to turn traitor and open the gates. And of course there is basic humanity.’

‘Could we not arrange for supplies to be shipped to us downriver?’ Mamurra asked.

‘A good point. Yes, we should try that. But that relies on others, and on the Persians neither getting any boats nor besieging the places upriver that would be sending us supplies. I would rather keep our fate in our own hands.’ Everyone agreed. ‘Anyway, let us think about it as we inspect the storehouses.’

At least they were close, just by the palace in the north-east corner of the city. Seen one Roman army granary, seen them all, thought Maximus. Raised on a farm, the Hibernian rather admired the practicality of the great, long buildings. The Romans had taken the risk of fire, the need to keep rain and damp away from the walls and the need for air to circulate into account in their design. But he had never understood why they always built granaries in pairs.

A
contubernium
of ten legionaries under the eye of a centurion was unloading a wagon at the adjacent loading bay. As Ballista and his
consilium
climbed the steps into the first granary, two of the legionaries quietly but perfectly audibly howled like wolves.

‘Silence in the ranks,’ yelled Acilius Glabrio. ‘Centurion, put those men on a charge.’ The young patrician gave Ballista an odd look. The northerner glowered back.

The cool, airy dark of one granary succeeded another and another, and Maximus drifted off into thoughts of the woman who had given birth to a monkey. It was still occupying his mind after they had left the army granaries and arrived at the great caravanserai near the Palmyrene Gate which housed the municipal supplies. It was unlikely to be any form of portent or warning from the gods, he thought. Either she had looked at a monkey, or possibly a picture of one, at the moment of conception, or she had actually fucked a monkey. The idea that she had given birth to a very hairy baby that happened to look a bit like a monkey never occurred to the Hibernian.

‘Right,’ said Ballista, ‘here is what we are going to do. We commandeer this caravanserai and everything in it. We place guards both here and on the military granaries. We issue an edict of maximum prices for foodstuffs - Demetrius, can you find out a list of reasonable prices in this town? Anyone selling for more will be fined and what they are selling confiscated. We will announce that the
Dux
will buy foodstuffs at ten per cent over the fixed price. We keep on buying, using promissory notes if necessary, until we have enough to feed a full ration to our troops, plus however many militia we raise, and a half ration for the rest of the inhabitants for nine months.’

Ballista was livid, so furiously angry he found it hard to concentrate. That little bastard Acilius Glabrio had not wasted any time telling the story of the barbarian
Dux’s
werewolf father. He had grabbed the opportunity to undermine Ballista in the legionaries’ minds.

He forced his mind to focus on the matter of water supply. Almost every building with any pretensions to size in the city of Arete boasted a cistern into which the carefully collected rainwater was channelled. This was all very good as a reserve but, on its own, it would never hold out for more than a few weeks. High on its plateau, the town was way too far above the water table for wells of any sort. Its main supply of water had always arrived, and would always arrive, on the backs of donkeys and men, via the steep steps that led from the banks of the Euphrates to the Porta Aquaria or a series of winding passages and tunnels cut into the living rock. While the eastern walls were held, those that reached out into the Euphrates from the foot of the cliff, this supply could not be denied. These walls were short, each either side of a hundred paces. The approaches to them, along the floors of the ravines, were difficult and completely open to missiles from the main walls of the town. It should be safe enough, but it was to inspect it all that the angry northerner now set his feet.

Ballista climbed down the steps from the Porta Aquaria. He looked around the narrow plain between the cliffs and the water. He studied the entrances to the tunnels: two had gates and three were boarded up as unsafe. He considered the short walls and was reassured to note how each was dominated by a tower overhead on the circuit wall. Finally, he ran his eye over the wharves and those boats present. Back at the top, puffing slightly, he issued his orders.

No one was to draw water from a cistern without official authorization. All water used was to come up from the Euphrates. Guards were to be set on all the major cisterns in military buildings, and also on those in the caravanserai and the major temples. A century of Legio IIII was to be based in the Porta Aquaria. Among other duties to be assigned later, its men were to oversee the bringing up of water and the security of the tunnels. Those deemed unsafe were either to be repaired or securely sealed.

It was to the tunnels that Ballista, with serious disquiet, now turned. Lamps were produced, bolts drawn and a gate to one of the supposedly safe tunnels opened. Hoping that his extreme reluctance was not obvious, Ballista stepped into the rectangle of darkness. He stopped for a moment just inside, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. A short flight of steps ran away from him. Each one dipped in the centre where generations of feet had worn it down. After about a dozen steps the passage turned sharp right. Ballista repeated the line that had got him through many bad things: do not think, just act.

Stepping carefully, he walked down the steps. Turning the corner, he was confronted by another short flight of steps and another right-hand bend. Past this things changed. Underfoot, the steps gave way to a slippery ramp which fell abruptly away. Putting out a hand to steady himself, Ballista found the walls rough and streaming with moisture. No light from the gate penetrated this far. Ballista held up his lamp, but the passage seemed to stretch on for ever. Out of sight something squeaked and scuttled away.

Ballista very much wanted to get out of this tunnel. But he knew that, if he turned round, by nightfall every man under his command would know that their new big tough barbarian
Dux
was afraid of confined places. Suddenly the air round the northerner’s head was full of wheeling and flitting black shapes. As quickly as it had appeared the colony of bats vanished. Ballista wiped the sweat from his palms on his tunic. There was only one way that he could get out of this horrible tunnel. Gritting his teeth, he pressed on down into the cold, clammy darkness. It was like descending into Hades.

 

Ballista was tired, dog-tired. He was sitting on the steps of a temple at the end of Wall Street at the south-west corner of the town. Just Maximus and Demetrius were still with him but neither were talking. It was nearly dusk. It had been a long day.

Every day has been long since we got here, Ballista was thinking. We have been here only eight days, the work has barely started, and I am exhausted. What was it Bathshiba had said when he first saw this place? ‘Is it worth it?’, or something like that. Right now, the answer was no and it always had been in Ballista’s mind. But he had been sent by the emperors, and no would lead to death or imprisonment.

Ballista missed his wife. He felt lonely. The only three people in this town whom he could call friends were also his property, and that created a barrier. He was very fond of Demetrius; years of shared dangers and pleasures had drawn Maximus and him close together; Calgacus had known him since he was a child. Yet still, even with these three, there was the constraint of servitude. He could not talk to them as he could to Julia.

He missed his son. He felt an almost overwhelming, almost unmanning ache when he thought of him: his blond curls, so unexpected given his mother’s black hair, his green-brown eyes, the delicate curve of his cheekbone, the perfection of his mouth.

Allfather, Ballista wished he was at home. As he formed the thought he wished that he had not. As night follows day, the next insidious thought slid unwanted into his mind: where was home? Was it Sicily - the brick-built, marble-inlaid house high on the cliffs of Tauromenium? The elegant urban villa whose balconies and gardens gave views of the Bay of Naxos and the smoking summit of Aetna, the home that he and Julia had made and shared for the last four years? Or was home still far to the north? The big thatched longhouse, painted plaster over wattle and daub. The house of his father, built on rising ground just inland from the sand dunes and the tidal marshes where the grey plovers waded and the
kleep kleep
call of the oystercatchers sang through the reeds.

A middle-aged man wearing just a tunic and holding a writing block turned into Wall Street. When he saw Ballista waiting, he broke into a run.

‘
Kyrios
, I am so sorry to be late.’

Ballista was dusting down his clothes. ‘You are not late. We were early. Do not trouble yourself.’

‘Thank you,
Kyrios,
you are very kind. The councillors said that you wanted to be shown the properties on Wall Street?’

Ballista agreed that it was so, and the public slave gestured at the temple on whose steps the northerner had been sitting. ‘The temple of Aphlad, a local deity who watches over the camel trains. The interior has recently been repainted at the expense of the noble Iarhai.’ The man walked backwards up the street. ‘The temple of Zeus,
Kyrios.
The new façade was provided by the generosity of the pious Anamu.’ They reached the next block without the slave turning away from Ballista. ‘Private houses, including the fine home of the councillor Theodotus.’

You poor bastard, thought Ballista. You are a slave of the council of Arete. These people own you, probably don’t even know your name, yet you are proud of them, of their houses, the temples on which they lavish their wealth. And that pride is the only thing that gives you any self respect. The northerner looked sadly down Wall Street. And I am going to take it away. In a couple of months, by the
kalends
of February, I will have destroyed all this. All will be sacrificed to the great earth bank to shore up the defences of Arete.

A legionary hurtled round the corner. Seeing Ballista, he skidded to a stop. He sketched a salute, and tried to speak. He was out of breath, and the words would not come. He gasped in a lungful of air.

‘Fire. The artillery magazine. It’s on fire.’ He pointed over his left shoulder. The strong north-east wind was blowing the leading edge of a pall of thick black smoke over the many roofs of Arete, straight at Ballista.

Ballista pounded through streets filling with excited people. Swerving round the crowds, pushing past them, Maximus and Demetrius ran with the northerner. The already out-of-breath legionary soon fell behind.

By the time he reached the artillery magazine Ballista’s lungs hurt, his left arm ached from holding the scabbard of his long
spatha
away from his legs - and the building was well ablaze. Mamurra and Turpio were already there. The strong north-eastern wind which had been drying out the rain-sodden land was fanning the fire, driving it remorselessly onward. Flames were licking out of the barred windows and around the eaves, sparks flying high then being whipped dangerously away towards the town. Turpio was organizing a work party to clear a fire break and douse the houses to the south-west. Mamurra had a chain of legionaries passing material out of the doomed magazine. To encourage the men, he was conspicuously running the same risks they were, darting in and out of the southern door.

Ballista knew he could not expect his officers and men to do what he would not. He followed Mamurra into the building. It was so hot the plaster was peeling from the walls and; on the beams above their heads, the paint seemed to be bubbling and boiling. Scalding droplets fell on the men below. There was little smoke in the room, but that was probably deceptive. The fire was surreptitiously outflanking them, creeping high, unseen, and into the cavities of the walls. At any moment the beams could give, the roof come crashing down, trapping them, choking them, burning them alive.

Ballista ordered everyone out, shouting above the inhuman roar of the fire. He and Mamurra fled only when the last legionary reached the threshold.

Outside, all busied themselves moving the rescued stores to a position of safety upwind. Then they watched the fire rage. The building did not collapse immediately. Sometimes the fire appeared to be dying down, before bursting forth into ever more destructive life. At last, with a strange groan and a terrible crash, the roof gave way.