Lion of the Sun wor-3

by Harry Sidebottom

  'Unless there are enough of them to rush us, we are safe enough here until the boys from the fleet come,' Maximus said.

  There was the sound of running feet.

  'Fuck,' said Maximus.

  Without a word, both men stepped out, drawing their bows. At least half a dozen Persians were coming. Ballista and Maximus released. They dropped the bows, drew their swords. Only one Persian had fallen. More were issuing from the peninsula.

  They heard the twang of bows above their heads. The arrows of Calgacus and the marines dropped another easterner. Not enough. The charge did not falter.

  The Sassanids were on them. At the last moment, Ballista sidestepped the first one. Too close to use his sword, he stuck his arm out. The straight-arm tackle caught the Persian under the chin. The man's legs shot out from under him. He crashed on to his back, armour clattering on the roadway.

  The next Sassanid thrust towards Ballista's middle. The northerner blocked it with his blade, forcing his enemy's weapon wide. He kicked the man's kneecap. Howling, the Sassanid doubled up. Ballista jumped back.

  For a moment, the men on the ground impeded the others. To Ballista's left, out of his vision, steel was ringing. Maximus was not down yet.

  Two Persians came for Ballista. They stepped carefully, swords ready. They knew what they were about. There were more behind them.

  There was no berserk madness upon Ballista this morning, no battle calm. Instead, nothing but cold, sinking fear. His devotion to death had left him. This could only end one way.

  The Sassanids struck. Ballista parried one blow, took the other on his shield. The light buckler splintered. One Sassanid aimed high, the other scythed his blade low at Ballista's shins. Somehow the northerner ducked one blade, got the shield in the way of the second. A big chunk flew out of the light shield. It was useless. Ballista threw the thing into the face of the opponent to his left. He thrust at the easterner to his right. The man stepped back out of range.

  The Sassanids pressed forward. Shieldless, Ballista relied on his years of training, the memory in his muscle. He acted without conscious thought. His blade weaved fast. Sparks flew. But he could not keep them out for long. Blow by blow, step by step, he was driven back.

  Ballista's right heel felt the wall behind him. Nowhere to go. Time nearly up. He was half aware of other easterners jostling behind his opponents. If there was an afterlife — Valhalla, whatever — he would soon be with his boys.

  The Persians closed for the kill. One jabbed at his face, one his groin. Ballista chopped down at the lower blade. Instinctively, eyes shut, he jerked his head to one side. Splinters of limestone cut his cheek. There was a sharp pain in his left thigh.

  The momentum of the Sassanids had driven them against Ballista. He could smell their sweat, the spicy food on their breath.

  The one to his left gasped. His body twisted, fell back. Without thought, Ballista rammed the fingers of his left hand into the other's face, clawing at his eyes. The man swayed back, then reeled. Calgacus's ugly face appeared. The Caledonian drove his blade into the Persian's chest.

  Pandemonium. The Sassanids were running back the way they had come. Ballista looked wildly around. There was Maximus. Allfather, Death-blinder, Deep Hood, they were alive. More figures were crowding into the gateway from outside.

  Ballista caught his breath. The cut to his leg stung, but it looked superficial. All around, Romans were finishing off the Sassanids on the ground.

  'Thank you,' Ballista said.

  'Hercules' big hairy arse, I thought it was too late that time. I thought you were fucked.' Calgacus smiled a horrible smile.

  'Me too.' Ballista laughed. He had to pull himself together. The job was not yet half done.

  'You' — Ballista pointed at an optio — 'take the first thirty marines through the gate. Follow the Sassanids. Secure the gate to the citadel. If you can, work through and clear the peninsula.'

  The optio shouted. The marines jostled and pushed. More were crowding in from outside.

  Ballista stepped out from the gate to the more open space in the street. He had to take charge. This could easily degenerate into chaos.

  'Everyone but the detailed marines, stay where you are.' Some of the confusion stilled.

  'Officers, to me,' Ballista shouted. 'Where the fuck is Rutilus?'

  'Here, Dominus.' The tall redhead calmly stepped out of the throng.

  Ragonius Clarus had insisted Ballista have Rutilus as his second-in-command. It was the emperors' explicit wish. Ballista had not wanted him, but there was no denying he was a competent officer.

  'Rutilus, you know the plan. Take the main body of marines straight down this road past the docks. Seize the gate at the far end. Draw your men up in line outside — two deep, open order.'

  With a minimum of fuss, Rutilus got on with it. The marines, nearly three hundred and fifty of them, began to rattle past.

  The trierarch elevated to Ballista's deputy for the next part of the plan appeared. What was his name? Ballista was about to ask Demetrius, then he remembered the boy had gone. He hoped he was all right.

  'Trierarch, are your men ready?'

  The trierarch shrugged. 'As ready as they will ever be.'

  Ballista had armed around a thousand rowers with a mixture of captured Persian weapons and antique arms from the temples of Soli. The trierarch, like all his kind a long-service centurion, had little but contempt for his men's fighting abilities. Unfortunately enough, Ballista thought he was probably right. Still, if it all worked, they might not actually have to fight.

  The last of the marines passed.

  'Time to go,' said Ballista. With Maximus, Calgacus and the trierarch flanking him and Gratius carrying his personal white draco behind, Ballista set off.

  At first they followed the retreating backs of the marines. Then Ballista led them into a sideroad to the left. Now he quickened the pace to a jog.

  It was hard going. The street twisted, twice turning back on itself. Past the theatre it began to climb steeply. Ballista's wounded leg hurt. It was getting harder to get his breath.

  About five hundred yards of this, and they reached the north-eastern gate out on to the main road to Soli. The whole way, they had not seen a single Persian.

  Emerging from under the archway, Ballista realized the sun was up. Still low, it cast long shadows but illuminated the scene. The yellow-green slopes of the mountain rose to the left. The sparkling sea lay to the right. And between, about half a mile ahead, the battle.

  Perfectly to plan, Castricius had arrayed his thousand infantry from the necropolis on the lower slopes to fill the four hundred or so yards down to the shore.

  The Persians, their backs to Ballista, wheeled in front of Castricius's position. Arrows flew, but the rough going and the innumerable tombs badly hindered their evolutions.

  Away to Ballista's right, Rutilus's marines were already mainly in line.

  Ballista roared orders, waved and gesticulated. The ragtag mob of armed rowers started off to link with the marines.

  The Persians had seen the threat to their rear. Officers, bright figures in silk flashing steel, rode here and there, regrouping the horsemen. They knew they were in a trap. It remained to be seen if they would realize how weak one side of the trap was.

  Ballista looked at his men. Rutilus's marines, in reasonable order, filled about half the space. In the other half the rowers, although clumped up, were in some approximation of a line.

  'Signal the advance. Slow walk. Keep together.'

  The line shuffled forward. From the start, some of the rowers were hanging back. Their part of the line bowed.

  Ahead, Sassanid banners waved, trumpets called. The Persians — there must still be nearly three thousand of them, formed into a deep phalanx.

  Allfather, Grey Beard, Fulfiller of Desire. The Persians were facing Castricius's men. The deep boom of a Sassanid war drum sounded. The horsemen accelerated away from Ballista. They charged Castricius's line.

&nbs
p; Through the fresh dust, Ballista could not see clearly what was happening. A roar like a thousand trees being felled at once echoed back from the mountain slopes.

  Most of the Sassanids had come to a halt. But in one place they still moved forward. From the flanks, others began to funnel after them.

  All the horsemen stopped. The gap that had opened in Castricius's line must have clogged with men and horses. It would not have taken much — maybe just one horse going down in the rough terrain.

  Panic gripped the Sassanids. Like animals before a forest fire, individuals darted this way and that, seeking an unattainable safety. Some must have broken through. But for those left, there was no way out. What remained was not fighting but slaughter. Ballista sat with his back to the tomb. He was in the shade and facing the mountains, away from the killing field. The Sassanid custom of carrying much of their wealth on their person probably put an edge on the Romans despoiling the enemy corpses, but they would have done it anyway.

  The battle won, Ballista had ordered Rutilus to keep a couple of hundred marines in hand to secure the town and Castricius to hold back about the same number of legionaries on the road. That the Sassanids who had escaped would rally and launch a surprise attack was highly unlikely. The liburnian galleys had tracked them up the coast. About three miles to the north-east, the Sassanids had turned off inland. But better safe than sorry.

  Ballista shifted his position. The blank wall of well-dressed stone soared above him to a cloudless blue sky. A lot of money had gone into these tombs, which were built like affluent houses. The citizen of Sebaste who could afford one of them would have a townhouse and a residence in the country. Every time they rode from one to the other, they would pass this third house, the one in which they would spend eternity. Ballista wondered what they would feel. A warm glow of reassurance? Their social standing would transcend death. Did they fondly imagine they would gaze out from their final resting place and watch their sons ride past?

  It was hard to say. Certainly Greeks and Romans, at least some of them, believed in ghosts. But their afterlife, except for a lucky few who made it to the Isles of the Blessed, consisted of flitting and shrieking like bats in the dark halls of Tartarus. Perhaps they would hope to return, their shades more substantial, when blood offerings were made.

  Inexorably, Ballista's thoughts turned back to where he did not want them to go, to the fight at the gate. He had not wanted to die, he had wanted to live. So much for his being devotus. True, his thoughts had not been worked out. There had been no understanding of why. But something had changed. He had desperately wanted to live.

  Perhaps, too late for his family, the curse had been lifted. He had sworn to return to the throne of Shapur. In the sacked camp outside Soli, he had returned. No, this was shallow sophistry of the worst sort. When he took that terrible oath, it had been in the thoughts of neither gods nor man that he should return bloodied, to defile the sacred fire, kill his defenceless servants and take Shapur's favourite concubine over the ornate throne of the house of Sasan.

  He had been maddened then. Now he felt sanity returning. Now, almost against his conscious wishes, he wanted to live. Was this disloyalty to Julia and his darling boys? He would harrow hell to bring them back. But that could not happen. Should he persist as devotus — take what revenge he could then, falling, join them?

  But would they be reunited? Julia's Epicureanism precluded an afterlife — all returned to quiet and sleep. And what of Isangrim and Dernhelm? What did eternity hold for innocent children? He had always half entertained the hope that, in the natural way, dying before them, the Allfather would accept him into gold-bright Valhalla. There, having proved his courage day on day in the fight in the courtyard, having shown his good companionship night on night in the feasting in the hall, he would intercede with the Hooded One. His boys would be allowed to pass through the western door and join him under the roof of shields. Woden's power and longevity aside, the Allfather was a northern chieftain. He understood love and grief. He had lost his son Balder. At the end of time, at Ragnarok, the Hooded One himself would die, torn by the jaws of Fenrir the wolf.

  Perhaps I am still mad, thought Ballista. Perhaps my grief and the terrible things I have done for revenge have corroded, deformed my soul. And he had done terrible things. He thought of the teaching of Aesop. Man is born with two wallets tied round his neck. The one at his front contains the sins and crimes of other people — easy to take out and examine. The one on your back, open to everyone except yourself, holds your own — hard to see, painful to think about.

  The approach of Maximus broke into Ballista's thoughts. With the Hibernian was a tall, thin young man wearing a goatskin cloak. It was one of Trebellianus's dagger-boys, Palfuerius or Lydius — Ballista had no idea which.

  'Ave, Prefect.' The youth did not wait for permission to speak. 'I have good news from the governor of Cilicia.' His pronunciation of Greek was atrocious. 'Those Persians who evaded you' — the stress sounded deliberately offensive — 'have been captured by Gaius Terentius Trebellianus. The Vir Egregius suggests that you might like to see how we deal with poisonous reptiles here in Cilicia Tracheia.'

  'Where?'

  'They are at the town of Kanytelis — for the moment.'

  The young Cilician gestured for Ballista to accompany him right away.

  Ballista did not move. 'You can guide us, when we are ready.'

  Calgacus jerked his thumb and, after holding Ballista's gaze a moment too long, Trebellianus's man moved out of earshot.

  Good job for you, goat-boy, that something of my self-control has returned, thought Ballista. If you had turned up a few days ago, things might have been rather different, even if your patronus is Trebellianus. Now there is a dangerous man; not sitting quiet in Korakesion but roaming the hills miles to the east.

  'It might be a trap,' said Maximus.

  'Trebellianus may be a brigand in a toga, but he is unlikely to have deserted to the Sassanids.'

  'But he is a brigand,' Maximus persisted. 'We should at least arm ourselves.' He pointed to the pile of their equipment, which, far too late, had been brought up from the triremes.

  'You are right,' Ballista conceded. 'And get Castricius to find about twenty legionaries who can ride. There are plenty of Persian horses about. We might do with the company.'

  The road meandered up the coast. To the left were the bare, banded rocks of the foothills; a thickish scatter of scrub and little patches of cultivatable soil, terraces cut with heartbreaking labour. To the right was the lovely blue of the sea.

  Seeing the small party of horsemen, one of the liburnians rowed close to the shore. Three more were further out. Recognizing Ballista's white draco standard and the big figure in the distinctive horned helmet under it, the little galley sheered away.

  As they turned inland, the road became worse. Bare and dusty, it zigzagged wildly as it took on the climb. On either side of the narrow track were jagged, piled rocks and sharp thorns. Nothing apart from a goat could move there, certainly not a man on horseback. The true Cilicia Tracheia began the moment you left the coast road.

  Soon Ballista ordered the men to dismount and lead the horses. Loose stones scrunched under boots and hooves. The sun was near its zenith. It was incredibly hot. Occasionally the path would dip, only to resume its strength-sapping climb. All around was a wilderness of rocks. The crests in the distance were hazed with heat.

  A long black snake slithered across the road in front of them. They waited for it to pass. Beside him, Ballista heard Maximus muttering — prayers or threats. Pity the poor Persians who had come this way: an early-morning alarm, no breakfast for man nor horse, a desperate battle, the enemy at their rear, cutting a way clear, then this hellish climb — forcing their spent mounts forward, fear riding hard at their backs. At the end of this they would have surrendered to anyone, let alone a gang of Trebellianus's murderous highlanders.

  At last they were there. Mounting up, they rode through another city of the de
ad. This necropolis was far less elaborate than the ones at Sebaste, fewer expensive house or temple tombs, mainly undecorated sarcophagi. The three miles or so they had covered from the sea made all the difference to the wealth of a community.

  The noise came to them as they entered the city of the living, the ugliest noise in the world — a mob baying for blood. The mob was at the foot of a tall tower. On horseback Ballista could see over their heads. Surrounded, huddled and cowed were a few hundred Sassanids on foot. Amidst them, one or two still stood proud. Ballista recognized a slim figure in a lilac tunic: a Persian noble — Demetrius could have told him the man's name.

  'Ave, Marcus Clodius Ballista, I am honoured you could come.' The mob quietened as Trebellianus called out. He stood on the battlements of the tower — lord of all he surveyed.

  Now the Persians had seen Ballista in his ram-horned helmet. A murmur ran through the prisoners: 'Nasu, Nasu.' They seemed no more frightened; if anything, more resigned.

  'Come close,' Trebellianus urged. 'See the men of Cilicia Tracheia take their revenge.'

  At a sign from their governor, a group of armed toughs dragged ten Persians out of the mass. Prodding them with the points of javelins, they forced them beyond the tower. Two of the Persians fell to their knees, arms behind their backs in supplication. One was kicked and jabbed back on to his feet. The other threw himself full length in the dirt and was finished where he lay. His companions were made to lift the corpse.

  Ballista and his group moved after them. Then they saw what awaited the eastern prisoners.

  The earth disappeared. There was a huge hole. Roughly oval, it had to be sixty, seventy paces across, fifty deep. Its sides were raw pinkish-white rock. There were vertical streaks of white, stalactites at the bottom where it caverned out. And now there were darker streaks and splashes.

  'Behold,' called Trebellianus, 'the place of blood.'

  The Sassanids were forced over the edge. Their screams were cut short as they smashed into the side wall, went tumbling, broken, to the floor.