Sands of Egypt

by S. J. A. Turney

  There were more nods now. She smiled again. She’d discussed this with the remarkably clever Ganymedes, a giant whose martial brute appearance belied the shrewd mind within. It sounded as though she had come to these conclusions, and not the big general beside her.

  ‘I am not disposed to wasting our forces,’ she said quietly. ‘Throwing wave after wave of men at their walls and watching them burn is pointless. This was the tactic of a fool,’ she said, indicating the pool of blood at her feet. ‘We must change. We must reassess and find a new way.’

  She fell silent, and after a pause Ganymedes spoke, his tone as large and powerful as his body.

  ‘We cannot waste time,’ he said, ‘as the queen suggests, throwing men wastefully at defences we now know will not be readily overcome. Unfortunately, we are also aware of the limited time we can enjoy. Sooner or later reinforcements will arrive to bolster Caesar. We know that two legions are on their way from Syria already. With two more legions we can still overcome them, but victory becomes far less certain. And when any more than that arrive, we may as well kiss their eagle and hand over our birthrights. So we need to do something different, something that changes the whole course of this war, and we need to do it soon.’

  The big man smiled. ‘A substantial gift of coin will be made to you all in recognition of your service and loyalty. The size of that gift can differ. Find me a way to break Rome and we will be yet more generous.’

  There was a tense, somewhat avaricious pause as every officer digested this information and began to wrack their brains for an idea that might make them rich.

  ‘Cut off their supplies,’ one said.

  Ganymedes sighed. ‘A basic strategy and one we all know. But how?’

  Another frowned. ‘We have the numbers, and their defences are poor on Pharos. If we press on the island, push forwards, we may take the Pharos fort. If we do so we can prevent the Romans from receiving supplies and reinforcements by ship. With command of Pharos we could sink any incoming vessel.’

  Ganymedes shared a look with the queen and nodded.

  ‘This notion is of value, yes. It alone does not provide our answer, but as part of a grand plan it is worth noting. Good. This thinking is useful. Rather than throw men at their triple walls around the palace, we attack the old fort on Pharos, which will be harder to defend. Then we begin to strangle their food supplies. What else can we do?’

  ‘We need to prevent them gaining any supplies from the south, outside the city,’ another man said. ‘It is only so much use cutting off their shipping if they are still somehow sneaking supplies in by land, and we are sure that is happening.’

  Ganymedes nodded again. ‘We are already doing what we can in that regard. The former queen has allies and contacts who seem able to slip supplies to her past our forces. We have many men, but the entirety of Alexandria is hard to keep patrolled sufficiently to prevent supplies leaking through. The simple fact is that with Cleopatra and Ptolemy both within that palace, many of the people will try to aid them, for they cannot abide the idea of starving the children of Ptolemy Auletes, even if that is what is required to remove the Romans.’

  ‘Sow misinformation,’ another man offered. ‘Tell the people the Romans have already executed the king and queen.’ He noted Arsinoë’s expression, and quickly corrected himself. ‘Former king and queen.’

  Again, Ganymedes nodded. ‘There are already rumours that Cleopatra is gone. Her army at Pelusium has disintegrated. These rumours will not be hard to spread, and in doing so we can turn the people against the Romans all the more. Good. This all helps. Anything else?’

  ‘Water,’ said a figure near the back.

  ‘Explain.’

  The officer pushed his way to the front. ‘As sons of the Black Land, we are all aware of the value of water. Men can eke out grain and make it last for a surprisingly long time, but without water a man thirsts swiftly. Water is the answer.’

  Again, Ganymedes looked at the queen, who smiled.

  That officer stepped forwards. ‘I have looked at the places the Romans ripped up our streets, leaving sewers and cellars open to the air. There are certain areas they carefully left, where fresh water is channelled into the palace region along subterranean channels.’

  ‘But we cannot cut off their water supply,’ the general reminded him. ‘The Canopus Canal runs right past them, which is fresh water from the delta, not salty water from the ocean.’

  The officer shook his head. ‘Much of that water is unhealthy, having eddied in marshy lands before reaching this far. Men do not drink from the waters of those channels for it brings with it disease and illness. If the Romans drink such waters, they will win our war for us by dropping dead of the bloody flux without a fight.’

  Ganymedes laughed. ‘How good to have such knowledge among us. Then we must cut those channels that feed the palace with fresh water and drive them all to rely upon poisons. This is a good plan. This is what will win us our war.’

  Arsinoë cleared her throat. ‘Better still, cut just some of those channels and narrow the sources upon which the Romans rely, and then ruin the rest.’

  Slow realisation dawned on the general until he gave a malicious chuckle. ‘Divert the sick-making waters into their drinking channels. This is excellent. We shall work slowly and carefully, trying not to waste troops, to take Pharos Island and to remove any source of grain from inland, and while we do that we will kill them with thirst and disease. I approve this plan. My queen?’ he added, turning to Arsinoë.

  She smiled. ‘Let disease carry the Roman dogs away to their afterlife. See to it.’

  Chapter Seven

  Alexandria palace, 10th December 48 BC

  Fronto followed Carfulenus down the short flight of stairs, his spirits sinking as they descended. He had no need to be told how bad things were for already, merely on the approach, he could hear the low murmur of myriad groans and moans, and the smell that washed back up from below was like the breath of a sewer demon.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘One hundred and eighteen suspected. Over a hundred confirmed. Of course there will always be a small margin of misdiagnosis and the requisite number of malingerers.’

  Fronto nodded, pulling up his scarf to cover the lower part of his face and hold back the worst of the miasma. The smell of his own sweat was far preferable to the air here. He was finally grateful he’d continued to wear the scarf despite the heat, while many of the soldiers had discarded theirs. It had uses other than warmth, after all.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned a corner, dancing light from oil lamps illuminating the ancient corridor, its ceiling painted blue and gold and red with images of broad-winged birds and stylised kneeling men. As they rounded that corner, the fresh blast of stink almost floored Fronto.

  ‘Minerva’s bollocks, can’t you get some fresh air down here somehow?’

  The officer frowned. ‘That is fresh air, sir. You should have smelled it when they were enclosed.’

  Frowning his disbelief, Fronto followed the man to the end of the corridor. There a large door bore some arcane local text, over which a helpful legionary had painted a rough version of the caduceus, the winded serpent staff that denoted, among other things, medical professionals. The centurion rapped neatly on the door and now pulled his own scarf up over his nose as there was a click and the door swung inwards.

  The smell that wafted from the open doorway hit Fronto between the eyes like a mallet, a solid wall of stench that nearly floored him. It was almost indescribable, but if Fronto had to try, it would include Cerberus’ sphincter, a flood of shit the size of the Euxine Sea, a corpse drowned in fresh vomit, and the sickly-sweet smell of rotting matter.

  He paused in the doorway, forced to wrench down his scarf and expose himself to the worst of it all for the simple expedient of not throwing up inside the material. He coughed and spat bile to the floor, which seemed to be half-coated in such matter anyway. Gagging and shuddering, he pulled his scarf ba
ck up, grateful for the smell of sick that drowned out what was far, far worse.

  The man was right. This hastily-assembled quarantine section was open to the air. What must it have been like when they were in an enclosed room? This place seemed to be some sort of warehouse below the palace, a colonnade open to the air connecting it to the royal harbour. The meagre sea breeze wafting in and out of the columns did little to overcome the miasma, though, more stirring it around in eddies than actually clearing it.

  Cots had been set up in neat rows, many of them occupied, and as he moved into the room, Fronto could now see that wide square vestibules connected this former warehouse to other rooms both left and right. Moans emanating from them suggested that those other two rooms were much the same as this.

  ‘Gods, but this is bad,’ he muttered, muffled in his scarf.

  The centurion with him nodded and gestured for him to follow. As they threaded their way between the sick beds, Fronto tried to look encouraging and sympathetic at the figures in them – soldiers they had brought with them, their skin a pale olive colour now turned waxy and green-tinted, a sweating rubberiness to their faces.

  Each man lay in a sodden mess of sheets, sweating and writhing, moaning and groaning. Most beds had a simple bowl next to them and a cheap wooden bucket. The bowl held water and a cloth, the bucket something unmentionable. It was clear as he walked past the invalids that some of the men had been too weak to rise from their bed and reach the bucket to release their latest foul explosion, whatever orifice it came from.

  He gagged once more inside his scarf as Carfulenus finally led him to an Aegyptian in a white and gold robe with a strange, smooth white skull-cap, the odd cross-with-a-loop symbol Fronto kept seeing hanging on a thong around his neck.

  ‘You’re the medicus?’ Fronto mumbled loudly into his scarf.

  ‘I am the royal physician,’ the man said in a haughty tone, his voice unhindered by material. How he managed to work without throwing up, Fronto could not imagine. He looked about. Numerous palace slaves dashed this way and that helping the sick, and among them moved the two capsarii, one from the Sixth and one from the Twenty Seventh.

  The centurion gestured towards the colonnade and the physician nodded, leading them all from the ward and out into the air of the royal harbour’s quayside. Fronto waited until they were safely away from the room before pulling down his scarf and heaving in lungs full of sea air, cleansing the stink from his body.

  ‘Gods, I’d heard the situation was bad. but I’d not realised just how bad.’

  The physician nodded. ‘We are admitting new cases every hour.’

  ‘And what’s causing it? Is it a disease? Can we catch it by being in the room?’ Fronto asked nervously, suddenly aware that he’d walked through the foul air all the way across the chamber.

  The physician shook his head. ‘The illness seems to be coming on in a matter of hours in all cases, and both my staff and your combat medics have been treating them for two days, three even, since the first case showed up. If it were contagious we would have caught it by now. No, this is ingested.’

  ‘Food?’ Fronto asked uncertainly. It seemed unlikely. Their food supplies were low, and mostly consisted of bread, fruit and a little salted meat, but nothing had been rotten as far as he was aware.

  ‘No, cases like this are almost universally the fault of contaminated water.’

  Fronto’s frown returned. ‘But we were fine for months, and now this all of a sudden?’

  The physician nodded. ‘I have questioned the men over their water intake and I cannot readily identify the source. Some of the soldiers, men you brought with you who have no clue as to the ways of the Black Land of course, had taken water from the Canopus Canal. This channel can cause dreadful illnesses as it is fed by waters that have passed through marshes and latrine outfalls. Locals, though, know better than to drink the water of the canal, and that includes the palace guards. They have been in this city long enough to know what is safe, and none of them have slaked their thirst from the canal, relying upon the sources we know are secure, yet they suffer similarly. As you see, it is a puzzle.’

  Fronto nodded, cursing silently.

  ‘I’ll report to the general. Keep me updated.’ With that he nodded to the centurion and decided to take a different route back despite the distance, walking the length of the harbour and climbing the staircase there. At least there he could breathe, though that did little to comfort him in the grand scheme of things. Ten days ago things had become more troublesome than ever in the redoubt of Alexandria.

  Word had swiftly seeped in that there had been a coup in the enemy ranks and that Achillas was no longer in command. While a few of the officers had welcomed the news, and it had lifted spirits a little, Fronto, Caesar and a few of the others had been sceptical, an attitude that now seemed to be being borne out. Far from the army now having come under the command of a clueless girl as some expected, it seemed that it had been focused by the will of a sharp princess and the talent of her pet general. They had put an end to their costly forays, which could only mean they were putting a lot more thought into the campaign. And worst of all, with Arsinoë now leading them and claiming the throne in spite of her siblings, it meant that there was no longer the need for the fiction that they served the pharaoh currently lounging in an apartment in this palace. This made Ptolemy henceforth pointless as a bargaining tool.

  Further bad news had come with the discovery of rumours circulating the city claiming that both royal siblings in the palace had been executed by their Roman ‘captors’. This made securing the aid of any supposedly loyal locals in the region more and more difficult.

  Then the new focus of the enemy plan had become apparent. Over the succeeding days, thirst began to present a distinct problem. There were four channels of good water coming into the palace area underground, all of which had remained untouched by the Roman engineers. Two were large, high-pressure conduits that filled fountains and basins, baths and pools, a third was a lesser channel that fed the kitchens of the palace and the slave quarters. A fourth, distinctly minor, channel fed a small bath house down near the palace theatre, apparently on a separate system to the rest and from a different source.

  The first grand channel ran dry two days after Arsinoë’s coup. The timing made it clear that it was no accident. Then, the next day, the other large channel dried up. Certain that it was the work of the enemy, Roman engineers had climbed down into the ancient conduits and crawled along them in search of a way to clear the blockages, but had only confirmed with dismal voices that the channels had been totally sealed with rubble which went for some distance and would be a massive job to clear, even if they could do so with ease, but since the channels ran through territory heavily manned by the princess’ army, that would not be possible anyway.

  Then the service channel had run dry and with the loss of the third source, panic had begun to manifest itself among the defenders. It seemed a boon that the small theatre bath channel was apparently unknown and remained untouched. Consequently, while the palace ran dry, men began to rely entirely on that one small source which was vastly inadequate for the number of people using it.

  Alexandria began to thirst.

  Fronto had to acknowledge the bright new approach to the war by the princess and her general. Achillas had not thought to do as much.

  And as men began to grow weak and worried, the enemy began to increase their numbers on the Heptastadion, forging a bridgehead onto Pharos Island and apparently preparing for a major push there. The fort by the lighthouse was poorly-constructed, which was, of course, how they’d managed to take it so easily in the first place. Unfortunately that same weakness would make it an easy target for the enemy, and there simply were not the resources to seriously strengthen the defences, especially lying across the harbour as it did. The men there had done what they could, but it would only hold for so long. Moreover, the gradual weakening of the army over the last few days of increasing thirst threaten
ed to deplete the force enough to leave the fort dangerously undermanned.

  Whoever was planning the enemy’s new campaign was worryingly bright.

  Now, though, Fronto had fresh worries. Over and above the dearth of reinforcements, the lack of word from any of the dispatched vessels, the loss of local support, the devaluing of Ptolemy’s value and all the rest, Fronto had a nagging feeling that the one boon to which they had all clung had in fact been a nightmare in disguise.

  He had to confirm his suspicions before making them known, though.

  Rather than climb to the top of the stairway and join the grand approach to the palace’s main harbour entrance with its glorious columns and statuary, he slipped down a side alley, heading towards the theatre. The bath house beside the theatre was only a small example, and meant for functionaries and ordinary folk, not the rich and influential up in the palace. But despite its minor importance, it currently claimed the second strongest guard unit after the queen and the consul’s headquarters. As the only source of fresh water now in the entire area it was of great value, and men were often caught and punished for desperately trying to break in and secure extra water.

  As if there was any. The minor flow was little more than a trickle and was constantly at work filling barrels that could be moved around to help water the men and animals. There was no more to be had than was being distributed anyway.

  But Fronto had a worrying notion.

  Waving to the guards, he watched them step out of the way and leave the door open. Passing inside, he went into the third chamber, where the flow had been diverted into the barrels, a dozen men here waiting for it to fill so they could swap for an empty cask and send the full one to where it would be useful.

  Nodding at them, he crossed the room, reached up to a shelf and grasped one of the jugs from it. Motioning the soldiers out of the way, he placed the jug under the flow, watching as the trickle slowly filled it. Once it was slopping at the brim, he thanked the men and then headed for the open air once more, moving down the alley to a place where the sun shone in. Frowning his worry, he pulled out his own water flask with the other hand, unstoppering it with some difficulty, and then lifted both vessels, one in each hand.