Fire in the East wor-1

by Harry Sidebottom

  Ballista looked up at his draco flying above the gatehouse. With the south wind hissing into its metal jaws, its white windsock body was writhing and snapping like a serpent. The incoming missiles had slackened. Maximus had been joined by Mamurra and they were looking over the battlements. Demetrius and Bagoas were huddled on the floor. The Greek boy was very pale. Ballista patted him, as if he were soothing a dog.

  'They have had enough. They are running'. Maximus and Mamurra rose to their feet. Ballista stayed where he was.

  Inexplicably, a group of girls appeared on the roof of the gatehouse. They were wearing very short tunics and a lot of cheap jewellery. There were no more incoming missiles. Ballista watched the girls walk to the battlements. They stood in a line giggling. All together they lifted their tunics around their waists. Baffled, Ballista stared at a row of fifteen naked girls' bottoms.

  'What the fuck?'

  Mamurra's slab-sided face cracked into a great grin. 'It is the third of May.' Seeing complete incomprehension on Ballista's face, the praefectus fabrum went on, 'the last day of the festival of the Ludi Florales, when traditionally the prostitutes of the town perform a striptease.' He jerked his thumb in the direction the girls were facing. 'These girls are honouring the gods and at the same time showing the Sassanids what they won't be enjoying.'

  All the men on the gatehouse were laughing. Only Bagoas did not join in.

  'Come on,' said Maximus, 'don't be prudish. Even a Persian like you must fancy a girl now and then, if only when he runs out of boys.'

  Bagoas ignored him and turned to Ballista. 'Showing the bits that it is not proper to see is an omen. Any mobad could tell you. It portends the fall of this town of the unrighteous. As these women disclose their secret and hidden places to the Sassanids, so shall the city of Arete.'

  For a day and a night a column of black oily smoke streamed away to the north as the Khosro-Shapur, the Fame of Shapur, burnt. The flames from the great ram and its tortoise lit the dark.

  For seven days the Sassanids gave themselves over to their grief. Day and night the men feasted, drank, sang dirges and danced their sad dances, lines of men slowly turning, arms around each other. The women wailed, rent their clothes and beat their breasts. The sounds carried clear across the plain.

  Then, for two months, the Persians did nothing _ at least nothing very active in the prosecution of the siege. They did dig a ditch and heap a low bank around their camp; there was no wood to build a palisade. They stationed mounted pickets beyond the north and south ravines and on the far side of the river. Parties of cavalry rode out presumably to reconnoitre or forage. On occasional moonless nights, small groups would creep on foot close to the city and of a sudden release a volley of arrows, hoping to catch an unwary guard or two on the city wall or some pedestrians in the streets beyond. Yet, for two months, the Sassanids ventured no more assaults, undertook no new siege works. Throughout the rest of May, all of June and into July, it was as if the easterners were waiting for something.

  What am I doing here? The thoughts of Legionary Castricius were not content. It is the twenty-fourth of May, the anniversary of the birthday of the long-dead imperial prince Germanicus – to the memory of Germanicus Caesar a supplication. It is my birthday. It is the middle of the night, and I am hiding in some damp undergrowth.

  A cool breeze blowing across the Euphrates from the north-east rustled the reeds. There was no other sound but the great river rolling past, gurgling, sucking at the banks. There was a strong smell of damp earth and rotting vegetation. Up above, tattered clouds no more covered the moon than a beggar's cloak. Just in front of Castricius's face a spider's web was silvered in the moonlight.

  It is my birthday, and I am cold, tired, scared. And it is all my own fault. Castricius shifted slightly, lifting one wet buttock from the ground, and was shushed by the man behind him. Fuck you, brother, he thought, settling down again. Why? Why am always such a fool? A keen little optio like Prosper asks for volunteers – could be a bit dangerous, boys – and my hand goes up like a whore's tunic. Why do I never learn? Why do I always have to prove that I am the big man, up for anything, scared of nothing? Castricius thought back across the years and the many miles to his school-teacher in Nemausus. You will end on a cross, the paedagogus had often said. So far he was wrong. But Castricius had been sent to the mines. He suppressed a shudder thinking about it. If I can survive the mines, I can survive anything. Moonlight or no moonlight, tonight will be a walk in a Persian paradise compared with the mines.

  The soldier in front turned and, with a gesture, indicated that it was time to go. Castricius got stiffly to his feet. Crouching, they moved south through the reed beds. They tried to move quietly, but there were thirty of them: mud squelched under their boots, metal belt fittings chinked, a duck, disturbed by their passage, took off in an explosion of beating wings. And the wind is at our backs, carrying the noise down to the Persians, thought Castricius. Moonlight, noise and an inexperienced officer _ this has all the makings of a disaster.

  Eventually they reached the rockface. The young optio Gaius Licinius Prosper gestured for them to start climbing. If I die to satisfy your ambitions, I will come back and haunt you, thought Castricius as he slung his shield on his back and began to ascend. Since the young optio had foiled the plot to burn the granaries he had made little secret of his ambition. Down by the river the far cliff face of the southern ravine was quite steep. It was this that had attracted the attention of Prosper: 'The Sassanids will never expect a night raid from that quarter.' Well, we will soon find out if you are right, young man.

  Castricius was one of the first to the top. Heights held no fears for him and he was good at climbing. He peered over the lip of the ravine. About fifty paces away was the first of the Persian campfires. Around it he could see the huddled shapes of men wrapped in cloaks sleeping. There was no sign of any sentries. From some distance came the sounds of talking, laughter, snatches of song. Nearby, there was no sign of anyone awake.

  When the majority had caught up, Prosper just said, 'Now'. There were an undignified few moments as everyone scrambled over the edge of the ravine, rose to their feet, slid their shields off their backs, drew their swords. Miraculously, the Sassanids slept on.

  With no further word of command, the ragged line of volunteers set off across the fifty moon-washed paces to the campfire. Maybe, just maybe, this is going to work, thought Castricius. Along with the others, he accelerated into a run. He chose his man: a red cloak, hat pulled down over face, still not stirring. He swung his spatha.

  As the blade bit, Castricius knew that it was all about to go horribly wrong: they were in a trap, and he was very likely to die. The blade sliced through the man-shaped bundle of straw. Automatically, Castricius sank into a very low crouch, shield well up – and not a moment too soon, as the first volley of arrows tore through the Roman ranks. Arrowheads thumped into wooden shields, clanged off chainmail coats and metal helmets, punched into flesh. Men screamed.

  A blow to his left temple sent Castricius sprawling. It took him a moment or two as he retrieved his sword and got back to his feet to realize that it was an arrow, that they were caught in a crossfire.

  'Testudo, form testudo,' shouted Prosper. Bent very low, Castricius shuffled towards the optio. An arrow whipped past his nose. Near him a man was sobbing and calling in Latin for his mother.

  A trumpet sounded, clear and confident in the confusion of the night. The arrows stopped. The Romans looked around. There were about twenty of them left, in a loose knot rather than a parade-ground testudo.

  The trumpet sounded again. It was followed by a rising chant: 'Per-oz, Per-oz, Victory, Victory.' Out of the darkness swept a wave of Sassanid warriors. The firelight glittered on the easterners' armour, on the long, long blades of their swords, and in the murderous look in their eyes.

  'Fuck me, there are hundreds of them,' said a voice.

  Like a wave crashing on a shore, the Persians were on them. Castricius parried th
e first blow with his shield. He swung his spatha low, palm up in from his right. It swung under his opponent's guard, biting into the man's ankle. The impact jarred back up Castricius's arm. The Sassanid fell. Another took his place.

  The new enemy swung overhead. As Castricius took the blow on his shield, he felt and heard it splinter. From his left a Roman sword darted forward and tried to take the Persian in the armpit. Sparks flew and the point of the blade glanced off the easterner's mail. Before Prosper could pull back from the blow, another Sassanid blade flashed in and severed his right hand. Castricius watched horrified as the young optio spun round and sank to his knees, his left hand holding the stump of his right arm, his mouth open in a soundless scream. There was blood everywhere. The two Sassanids moved to finish the officer. Castricius turned and ran.

  Boots stamping on the rock, Castricius flew back towards the edge of the cliff. He threw away his shield, dropped his sword. As he neared the lip of the ravine he threw himself sideways and down, sliding the last few yards, swinging his legs out first into space, twisting his body, his fingers scrabbling for purchase. For a moment he thought he had misjudged it, that he would slip backwards clear over the edge. The cliff had a hundred-foot drop here. If he fell he was dead. Sharp strong pain as his fingernails tore, but he had a grip. Sliding, scrabbling, boots missing toeholds, legs often dangling, he shinned down the face of the ravine.

  High on the south-west tower of Arete, although he was at least 400 paces away, Ballista saw the trap close quicker than some of those caught in its jaws; the twang of bowstrings, the screams of men, the two clear trumpet blasts.

  'Bugger,' he said succinctly.

  'We must help them,' Demetrius blurted.

  Ballista did not reply.

  'We must do something,' the Greek boy continued.

  'Sure it would be good,' said Maximus, 'but there is nothing to be done. It will all be over by the time we get any troops there. And, anyway, we cannot afford to lose any more men.'

  Ballista watched for a while in silence, then said that they should go to the southern wicket gate, in case there were any survivors. Climbing down the steps from the Porta Aquaria, the northerner turned things over in his mind.

  Ballista had been driven by the words dinned into him by his mentors in fieldcraft: a passive defence is no defence at all. An inactive defence not only hands all the initiative, all the momentum to the besiegers, it undermines the defenders' discipline, their very will to resist. So, since the burning of the ram, Ballista had quite frequently sent out small nocturnal raiding parties. But his heart had somehow not been in it.

  The death of Antigonus had changed things. In Antigonus he had lost a master of clandestine operations. How the northerner missed him. Ballista thought back to the masterly way in which Antigonus had wiped out the Sassanids left stranded on the island in the Euphrates after the first failed assault on the city: twenty dead Persians, and not one Roman had fallen. Among the high reeds that night, death had come to the terrified easterners with bewildering speed and efficiency. The raiders Ballista had sent out since had tried their best, but the results had been mixed. Sometimes they were spotted and the mission abandoned near the start. As often as not they took as many casualties as they inflicted. And now, tonight, there was this unqualified disaster. Whatever the textbooks said, whatever the doctrines of his mentors, Ballista would send out no more raids.

  Ballista stood by the open wicket gate and thought of Antigonus. It was strange how in a very brief time he had come to rely on him. It was one of the strange things about warfare – it quickly formed strong bonds between unlikely men, then with death it could even more suddenly break them. Ballista remembered the artillery ball taking off Antigonus's head; the decapitated corpse standing for a few moments, the fountain of blood.

  Lungs burning, limbs aching, sweat running into his eyes, Castricius plunged on through the reed bed. He had hurled away his helmet, ripped off his mail coat when he reached the foot of the cliff. In flight lay his only hope of safety. On and on he ran, the date palms waving above his head, stumbling as roots twined round his legs. Once he fell full length in the mud, the breath knocked out of him. Fighting the exhaustion and despair that told him just to stay where he was, he struggled to his feet and plunged on.

  With no warning, Castricius was clear of the reed beds. Ahead in the moonlight was the bare rock floor of the ravine; on the far side of it a group of torches along the low wall and around the wicket gate. There was no sound of pursuit. He set off at a run nevertheless. It would be a shame to get this far, so close to safety, and then be cut down.

  They heard him coming before they saw him; the rasping breath, the dragging footfall. Into the circle of torchlight stumbled an unarmed man covered in mud. His hands were bleeding.

  'Well, if it is not the tunnel rat Castricius,' said Maximus.

  As spring turned to summer, deserters crawled through the ravines or slunk across the plain in both directions. It was a feature of siege warfare that never failed to amaze Ballista. No matter how futile the siege, some defenders would flee to the besieging army. No matter how doomed the fortress, some of the attackers would risk everything to join the encircled men. Demetrius said that he remembered reading in Josephus's Jewish War that there had even been deserters from the Roman army into Jerusalem just days before the great city was captured and burnt. Of course there was an obvious explanation. Armies consisted of a very large number of very violent men. Some of these would always commit crimes that carried the death penalty. To avoid death, or just postpone it for a short time, men would do the strangest things. Yet Ballista could not help but wonder why these men, especially among the besiegers, did not instead try to slip away and hide, try to find somewhere far away where they might be able to reinvent themselves.

  There was a trickle of Sassanid deserters into Arete, never more than twenty, although it was suspected that others had been quietly despatched by the first guards they encountered. They were a great deal of trouble. Ballista and Maximus spent a lot of time interviewing them. Bagoas was emphatically not allowed to talk to them. It proved impossible to distinguish between the genuine asylum seekers and the planted spies and saboteurs. In the end, having had a few of them parade along the wall in an attempt to upset the besieging army, Ballista ordered all of them locked up in a barracks just off the campus martius. It was an unwanted extra problem. Ten legionaries from the century stationed there in reserve, that of Antoninus Posterior, had to be detailed to guard them. They had to be fed and watered.

  Initially, larger numbers slipped out of Arete. This soon stopped. The Sassanids had a summary way with them. Along the plain, tapering wooden stakes were erected. The deserters were impaled on them, the spike through the anus. It was meant to be horrific. It succeeded. Some of the victims lived for hours. The Sassanids had placed the stakes just within artillery range, taunting the Romans to try to end the suffering of those who had been their companions. Ballista ordered that ammunition not be wasted. After the corpses had hung there for a few days the Sassanids took them down and decapitated them. The heads were shot by artillery back over the walls of the town, the bodies thrown out for the dogs.

  If there was a motive beyond an enjoyment of cruelty for its own sake, Ballista assumed that the Sassanids wished to discourage anyone from leaving Arete to keep the demand for food in the town as high as possible. If the Persians hoped in this way to cause supply problems, they would be disappointed. Ballistas' stockpiling in the months before the siege had worked well. With careful management, there was enough food to last until at least the autumn.

  The relative abundance of supplies was augmented by the arrival of a boat carrying grain. It was from Circesium, the nearest Roman-held town upriver. The passage of fifty or so miles had not been without incident. Sassanid horsemen were out in force on both banks. Luckily for the crew, the Euphrates, although winding, was wide enough to be beyond bowshot for most of its course here if one kept to the middle passage. The
boat tied up opposite the Porta Aquaria on 9 June, ironically enough the festival of the vestalia, a public holiday for the bakers.

  The crew was somewhat put out. Having run considerable risks, it had been hoping for a more voluble reception. Yet, in many ways, the arrival was something of a disappointment to the beleaguered garrison of Arete. Additional grain was welcome but not essential. When the boat was sighted the general expectation was that it was full of reinforcements. The crew of ten legionaries seconded from Legio IIII was a very poor substitute.

  Never really having expected more men, Ballista had been hoping for letters. There was one. It was from the governor of Coele Syria, the nominal superior of the Dux Ripae. It was dated nearly a month earlier, written en route for Antioch _ 'Well away from any nasty Persians' as Demetrius acidly commented.

  The letter contained self-proclaimed wonderful news. The emperor Gallienus, having crushed the barbarians on the Danube, had appointed his eldest son, Publius Cornelius Licinius Valerianus, Caesar. The new Caesar would remain on the Danube while the most sacred Augustus Gallienius toured the Rhine. In Asia Minor the gods had manifested their love for the empire, a love engendered by the piety of the emperors, by raising the river Rhyndacus in flood and thus saving the city of Cyzicus from an incursion of Goth pirates.

  There was nothing else in the governor's communication except platitudinous advice and encouragement: Remain alert, keep up the good work, disciplina always tells. Ballista had been hoping for a communication from the emperors, something in purple ink with the imperial seal that could be waved around to raise morale, something with some definite news of a gathering imperial field army, a relief column tramping towards them – possibly even something that contained a projected date for the lifting of the siege. Being informed that old-fashioned Roman virtus would always endure was less than enormously useful.