Fire in the East (44 page)

Nothing threatening could be seen on the floor of the ravine. Nothing heard, and nothing smelt. Ballista gave the sign. As before, they set off at a slow jog.

The two men were halfway across when they heard the approaching Sassanid patrol. They froze. The sides of the ravine were too far to make a run for it. There was nowhere to hide. The noises were getting louder: the crunch of stones under numerous boots, the slap of weapons against shields and armour.

Leaning very close to his bodyguard, Ballista whispered. ‘There are too many of them to fight. We will have to talk our way out of this. You had better not have forgotten your Persian.’ The Hibernian did not reply, although Ballista was sure that he was grinning. The Persian patrol was emerging from the darkness that lay down towards the river, a dim blur, darker than its surroundings.

Suddenly, without warning, Maximus stepped forward. In a low voice but one pitched to carry he called ‘Peroz-Shapur.’ A surprised silence succeeded the noises of the advancing Sassanids. The patrol must have stopped. It had not been expecting to be challenged at this point. After a few moments a voice, slightly uncertain, called back, ‘Mazda.’ Without hesitation, Maximus called in Persian, ‘Advance and identify yourselves.’ The noises of armed men moving resumed.

Now the dark blur began to be recognizable as made up of individual warriors. Ballista noted two on either side detaching themselves from the main body and fanning out. Admiring as he was of Maximus’s bold stroke, he did not intend to trust his life to the Hibernian’s talking. When the patrol was about fifteen paces away, Ballista stepped to the front and called, ‘Halt there. Identify yourselves.’

The Sassanids stopped. The four on the wings had arrows notched, their bows half bent. There looked to be about ten in the main body.

‘Vardan, son of Nashbad, leading a patrol of the warriors of the Suren.’ The voice was one used to authority. ‘And who are you? You have a strange accent.’
^I

‘Titus Petronius Arbiter and Tiberius Claudius Nero.’ At the sound of the Roman names the starlight glittered on the swords which the Sassanids drew, from the flanks bows creaked as they were pulled to maximum draw. ‘Mariades, the rightful Emperor of the Romans is our master. Shapur the King of Kings himself decreed that his servant Mariades send men to reconnoitre by stealth the postern gate of the town of the unrighteous.’

There was silence for a while. Ballista could feel his heart beating, his palms sweating. At length Vardan replied. ‘And how do I know that you are not deserters from the Great Emperor Mariades?’ There was a wealth of scorn in ‘Great Emperor’. ‘Roman scum running to its own kind?’

‘If we were fools enough to desert into a doomed town we would deserve to die.’

‘There are many fools in the world, and many of them are Romans. Maybe I should take you back to camp to see if your story is true?’

‘Do that and I will come and watch you impaled tomorrow morning. I doubt that the Mazda-worshipping Shapur, King of Aryans and Non-Aryans, will take kindly to his orders being countermanded by an officer of the Suren.’

Vardan walked forward. His men were clearly taken by surprise. They started walking hurriedly after their commander. Vardan held his long sword at Ballista’s throat. The others closed round. The commander put his sword aside and peered closely into Ballista’s face. The northerner returned his gaze.

‘Uncover the lantern. I want to see the face of this one.’ A Persian behind Vardan began to move.

‘No. Do not do that.’ Ballista put all his experience of command into his voice. ‘The great King’s mission will fail if you show a light. The Romans up on the wall could not fail to see it. Shapur will not get the information, and we will meet our deaths at the foot of that wall.’

There was an awful moment of indecision before Vardan told the lantern-bearer to remain as he was.

Vardan brought his face so close that Ballista could smell his breath; a waft of some exotic spices. ‘Even in the dark with your face blackened like a runaway slave I can still see you well enough to recognize you again.’ Vardan nodded to himself. Ballista did not move. ‘If this is a trick, if you are in the town when it falls, I will seek you out and there will be a reckoning. It will be I that watches you writhe on the stake.’

‘Mazda willing that will not happen.’ Ballista took a step backwards, keeping his hands well away from his sides. ‘The night is advanced. If we are to return by dawn we must be going.’

Ballista looked over at Maximus, jerked his head towards the wall and walked to the edge of the circle of Sassanid warriors. The two blocking his way did not move. He turned back to Vardan. ‘If we do not return tell our master Mariades that we did our duty. Remember our names: Petronius and Nero.’

Vardan did not reply. But at his sign the two men blocking Ballista’s way moved aside. Ballista set off.

It is very difficult to walk normally when you think that someone is watching you and even more difficult when you think that someone might try to kill you. Ballista forced down an urge to break into a run. Maximus, Allfather bless him, had fallen in directly behind his dominus. The Hibernian would take the first arrow. Yet Ballista’s back still felt terribly exposed.

Fifty paces was about the real limit of accurate bowshot, less in a dim light. How far had they walked? Ballista started to count his steps, stumbled slightly and went back to concentrating on walking as normally as possible. The walk seemed to last for ever. The muscles in his thighs felt twitchy.

In the end, the wall of the ravine came as almost a surprise. Both men turned, crouching, making themselves the smallest target possible. Ballista realized that he was panting. His tunic was soaked in sweat.

‘For fuck’s sake,
Petronius
and
Nero?’
Maximus whispered.

‘It’s your fault. If you ever read anything apart from the Satyricon some other names might have appeared in my mind. Anyway, let’s get the fuck out of here. We are not home yet. The reptiles might change their minds and be after us.’

 

Demetrius was standing just outside the postern gate. He was surprised to find himself there. Admittedly Cocceius the decurion and two of his troopers were there as well. But even so Demetrius was surprised by his own bravery. Part of his mind kept telling him that he could hear and see just as well, maybe better, up on the tower. He pushed such thoughts away. There was a strange exhilaration in being outside the walls after so many months.

Demetrius stood with the three soldiers, listening and watching. The dark was alive with small sounds; the scurrying of nocturnal animals, the sudden rush of wings of a night bird. The gentle wind had moved round to the south. Fragments of sound, voices, laughter, the cough of a horse, drifted across from the Persian pickets on the far side of the ravine. Once, a jackal barked and others joined in. The chink of pickaxes came and went. But there was nothing that betrayed the progress of Ballista and Maximus.

The young Greek’s thoughts drifted far away to the dark plain before the walls of Troy, to the Trojan Dolon slinging his bow across his shoulders, pulling the pelt of a grey wolf around him and stealing forth to spy out the Greek camp. Things had not gone well for Dolon. Out there across the dark plain he had been hunted down like a hare by cunning Odysseus and Diomedes of the great war cry. In tears, begging for his life, Dolon had revealed how the Trojan pickets lay. It had done him no good. With a slash of his sword Diomedes had cut through the tendons of his neck. His head dropped in the dust, and his corpse was stripped of his back-strung bow and the grey wolf-pelt.

Demetrius fervently prayed that Ballista and Maximus did not share the fate of Dolon. If the young Greek had had the poetry of Homer to hand he would have tried to see how things would fall out. It was a well-known method of divination to pick a line of the
Iliad
at random and see what light the divine Homer shed on the future.

The thoughts of Demetrius were dragged back to the present by the sounds of a Sassanid patrol making its way along the ravine up from the river. He heard the challenge ‘Peroz-Shapur’ and the response, ‘Mazda’, then a low exchange in Persian. Demetrius found himself, like the others, on the lip of the ravine, leaning forward, straining to catch the words. It was pointless. He did not know a word of Persian.

Demetrius physically jumped as a flood of light came from the postern gate. He spun round. In silhouette in front of the gate stood Acilius Glabrio. The torchlight caught the nobleman’s gilded cuirass. It was moulded to resemble the muscles of an athlete or hero. Acilius Glabrio was bareheaded. The curls of his elaborate coiffure shone. His face was in shadow.

‘What in the name of the gods below is happening here?’ The patrician tones sounded angry.
‘Decurion,
why is this gate open?’

‘Orders,
Dominus.
Orders of the
Dux.’

‘Nonsense, his orders were that this gate remain shut at all times.’

‘No,
Dominus.
He told me to keep the gate open until dawn.’ The junior officer was cowed by the seemingly barely controlled anger of his superior.

‘And why would he do that? To make it easy for the Persians to get in?’

‘No ... no,
Dominus.
He and his bodyguard are out there.’

‘Are you mad? Or have you been drinking on duty? If you have I will have you executed with old-fashioned severity. You know what that entails.’

Demetrius did not know what that entailed, but presumably Cocceius did. The
decurion
started to shake slightly. Demetrius wondered if Acilius Glabrio’s anger was real.

‘Even our beloved Dux is not such a barbarian that he would desert his post to run around outside the walls in the middle of the night.’

Acilius Glabrio half turned. He pointed to the gate. ‘You have moments to get inside and return to your post before I have this gate shut.’

Arguing with senior officers did not come easily to Cocceius.
‘Dominus,
the
Dux
is still out there. If you close the gate he will be trapped.’

‘One more word from you and it is mutiny. Inside now.’

The two troopers sheepishly went inside. Cocceius started to move.

‘No.’ Demetrius almost shouted. ‘The Dux heard the sounds of tunnelling. He has gone to spy out where the Persian mine is being dug.’

Acilius Glabrio rounded on him. ‘And what have we here? The barbarian’s little bum boy.’ He stepped close to Demetrius. He smelt of carnations. The torchlight highlighted the little ruffs of beard that were teased out in curls from his neck. ‘What are you doing here? Selling your arse to this decurion and a few of his troopers so that they open the gate and let you desert?’

‘Listen to the boy,
Dominus.
He is telling the truth,’ Cocceius said.

The intervention attracted the full attention of Acilius Glabrio. Now the young patrician’s anger was palpably genuine. Turning from Demetrius, he approached the
decurion.
‘Have I not warned you? Inside now.’

Cocceius dared a final appeal. ‘But
Dominus,
the
Dux
... we cannot just abandon him out there.’

Forgetting the sword at his side, Demetrius bent down and picked up a rock.

‘Are you disobeying a direct order,
Decurion?’

Demetrius felt the rock sharp and gritty in his hand. The curls on the back of Acilius Glabrio’s head shone in the torchlight.

‘Ave, Tribunus Laticlavius.’
A voice came from beyond the torchlight.

Acilius Glabrio whirled round. His sword rasped from its sheath. He crouched, his body tense.

Two ghostly figures, blackened and streaked with dust, emerged into the circle of light. The taller pulled a cloth from his head. His long fair hair fell to his shoulders.

‘I must congratulate you,
Tribunus,
on your diligence. Patrolling the ramparts in the dead of night, most admirable,’ Ballista said. ‘But now I think that we should all go inside. We have much to discuss. We have a new danger to face.’

Ballista went to take a last look at the Persian siege ramp. He peered out from behind the makeshift parapet. Virtually every day the Sassanid artillery smashed the parapet to pieces. Then that night the defenders rebuilt it.

Despite the thick cloud of dust the progress of the ramp was clear enough. The Persians had begun work thirteen days before the
kalends
of August. It was now nine days before the
kalends
of September. Counting inclusively, that was thirty-six days’ work. In thirty-six days the ramp had inched forward some forty paces and been slowly lifted up almost to the level of the parapet of the town wall. The ditch in front of the wall, which had taken the defenders such trouble to dig, had been packed with rubble. A gap like a canyon still separated the ramp from the defences. But the canyon was only about twenty paces wide, and it was partly filled by the defenders’ own earth bank up against the wall. When the canyon was filled the Sassanid storming party would have a final approach over a level land bridge some twenty-five paces wide.

The progress of the siege ramp had been bought at the cost of the back-breaking labour of thousands. Every morning in the grey light of pre-dawn the Persian
vinae,
the mobile shelters, were pushed forward and joined together to form three long covered walkways. Under these, lines of men laboured to bring up the earth, rubble and timber that those at the front, protected by stout screens, dropped down into the space before the ramp. At the sides of the ramp more workers, again protected by screens, levered and mortared into place the mud bricks which formed the retaining walls.

The ramp’s progress had been bought at the cost of the lives of many, many men in the Sassanid ranks. Soon after work had begun Ballista had sited the town’s four twenty-pounder artillery pieces behind the wall in line with the ramp. Several houses had been demolished to create the new artillery emplacement. Those property owners that could be found had been promised compensation - should the town not fall. Every morning the
vinae
had to advance on the same lines, and then stay in place throughout the long day. Every morning the
ballistarii
in charge of the twenty-pounders, having checked the settings of their weapons, could fire blind at a high trajectory over the wall, reasonably confident that, sooner or later, with help from the spotters on the wall, one of their smooth round stones would hit one of the
vinae
at terrifying speed; would smash its wood and leather and reduce to a sickening pulp the men labouring in the illusory safety beneath.