It must have been some kind of animal, hopefully not something that would threaten him. There would be snakes and scorpions among these rocks, and that was dangerous enough. But what he had glimpsed had been bigger. Perhaps a leopard. He swallowed uneasily, and forced himself to go on.
Half an hour later, as the sun set luridly over the western cliffs, he reached a wide ledge two thirds of the way up the rock wall. The chariots were visible in the darkening desert, and they seemed to be bearing down on his very position. Had they followed his tracks across the sands? They could hardly know where he was. He barely knew himself.
He heard movement from behind him and turned. Something vanished out of sight round a curve of rock.
Between his pursuers below and whatever it was up here he seemed to be surrounded by enemies. What was stalking him through the rocks? Beast or man? Friend or foe? He doubted he had any friends in Phazania, except perhaps Amasis, assuming the boy still lived.
He continued his ascent, treading as softly as possible, but it was getting dark and the wind blew cold. He needed somewhere to sleep, somewhere out of the wind. He was sure that his Garamantian pursuers had no notion of where he might be, but what of his unwanted companion or companions up here?
Turning a corner he saw a wide sweep of rock before him which, to his amazement, held a kind of primitive fresco showing huge, round headed men hunting beasts with spears. Transfigured, he gazed at the rock carvings in awed silence. Only the fall of night deterred him.
Voices drifted up from below. He tore his eyes away, and peered down into the shadowed valley. His blood ran cold.
Parked in the sandy valley floor were four or five chariots.
Had they decided to make camp for the night? He crouched down behind a spur of rock and watched as figures jumped down from the chariots and cast about them. Had they followed him here by some arcane arts, or was it simply a coincidence? He bit his lip. Surely they had no idea that he would be up here, so high above.
A light glimmered in the gloom, a red light. A campfire. They had stopped to make camp. If only he could afford that luxury himself! But he had no option other than to freeze up here on the cold desert cliff. The wind moaned through the rocks and he shivered.
He rose. He must seek shelter from that bitter wind.
Stepping carefully, he made his way past the great cliff face of the rock carvings. The ledge narrowed, then widened out into a little bay. On the far side rose another cliff. In it, darker than the gathering darkness, yawned a narrow cave mouth.
Invigorated by his discovery, not pausing to consider that it could be the lair of some beast, not heeding the shadows that crawled after him in the darkness, he scrambled up towards it.
The echoes told him that the darkness hid a narrow space, about as narrow as the tunnel he had traversed earlier that day. Hands outstretched, he shuffled down a passageway, slipping and stumbling on sandy rock. Then he turned a corner, and a cavern opened out before him, fire lit, its walls intricately carved with scenes of hunters and warriors.
Sitting beside a fire in the centre of the chamber was a small group of figures. Flaminius halted. This cave was inhabited. Who these troglodytes were he did not know, but he didn’t want to risk their wrath. He turned to leave.
Crouching in the mouth of the narrow tunnel were three other men, lean, dark skinned Ethiopians with close cropped curly black hair, naked but for loincloths. Over their shoulders hung bows, and quivers of arrows hung from their loincloths. In their hands they held flint tipped spears.
They advanced towards him in menacing silence.
—19—
Phazania, 18th December 124 AD
‘Greetings!’ Flaminius said in Greek, the only language he knew that might possibly be spoken within a thousand miles of here. He raised a hand to show he was unarmed. ‘I seek shelter. I’m a traveller, lost in these hills.’
The central warrior opened his mouth and out came a series of strange clicking noises. Flaminius stared at him, then at the others who were listening to this first man’s speech as if it was sage wisdom. He looked back at the warrior who was now scowling at him for his inattention. More clicks and squeaks followed, and deep ‘tock’ sounds that resembled a child’s imitation of dripping water. The warrior gestured behind him and down, as if towards the foot of the cliffs.
‘Oh!’ said Flaminius. ‘The Garamantes?’ He tried to indicate the chariot people with hand gestures. Then he shook his head. ‘No, I’m not one of them,’ he told the warriors. ‘I’m running away from them.’
He mimed desperate running, turning his head now and again as if to look out for his pursuer. The first warrior scowled blankly at him, but one of his companions began to laugh, a wholly natural laugh at odds with the squeaking, clicking, tocking sounds that seemed to serve as language for these people. The third warriors joined in, slapping his bare thigh and holding his belly. The first warrior looked from one to the other in bafflement, but Flaminius grinned.
Another of the Ethiopians appeared, scrambling down the passage from outside. He was small enough to traverse the tunnel deftly, without shuffling along like Flaminius. Panting, he squeaked urgently at the first warrior.
The first warrior jabbed a hand irritably at Flaminius. His men stopped laughing and one gestured with his spear for Flaminius to go down into the cave. Then the remaining three turned and hurried back up the passage.
Flaminius’ captor ushered him down the rocky slope to the fire where the other people had been sitting, watching the exchange with concern. They were also dark skinned Ethiopians: youths, women and children made up the small group, the women as scantily clad as the men, wearing only loincloths. Their hair was as close cropped as the men’s. Somehow, they seemed familiar.
His captor clicked urgently at the others, gesturing at a narrow crack in the cave wall. Flaminius gathered that this was an escape route. Were the Garamantes climbing the cliff in pursuit of him? Now he had brought trouble, not just for himself, but also for the troglodytes.
They gathered their possessions. Suddenly, one of them, a woman, peered into Flaminius’ face. She seized his arm, and clicked volubly at him, gesturing at a boy nearby, who had a newly healed scar in his torso, what looked like a spear thrust. Then she turned and fired off a rapid series of clicks at the warrior. The warrior lowered his spear, and stared in Flaminius in awe.
Flaminius shrugged, baffled by the sudden change. All the troglodytes gathered round him, some reaching up to touch him, all clicking away. The troglodyte warrior shushed them at a clash of arms from outside. It was followed by the pound of running feet from the main cave entrance.
Suddenly it all clicked. Flaminius knew exactly where he had seen these people before.
The warriors burst into the firelight, two of them with fresh wounds weeping blood. They ran down into the cavern at incredible speed, like the people Gildo and his Garamantes had hunted. Everyone dashed towards the crack in the cavern wall. The woman took Flaminius’ hand and urged him in that direction.
A big Garamantian appeared in the passage, shouldering his way clumsily as Flaminius had. His cold face surveyed the scene when he halted at the entrance into the cavern.
Flaminius snatched a spear from one of the troglodytes, turned and flung it across the fire lit cavern. It struck the Garamantian dead on in the middle of his chest and he fell back with a short cry, effectively blocking the narrow entrance.
More Garamantes appeared in the passage, shouting curses. They started trying to lever it out of the way.
The troglodyte woman tugged at Flaminius’ hand. The rest of her kind had vanished into the crack in the other wall. Flaminius watched the vain efforts of the Garamantes a moment longer. Then, grinning with satisfaction, he followed the little woman into the fissure.
The Garamantes shoved their dead comrade down into the cavern and tumbled out after it, into the fire lit space. They peered around them, cursing in confusion. But the cavern was empty.
Meanwhi
le, Flaminius was trying to keep up with his new friends as they dashed through the starlight. They were incredibly fast, almost supernaturally so, and their eyes must have been better than his, since they shot over the rocks like lizards without stumbling, while Flaminius tripped and fell flat on several occasions. The faithful troglodyte woman remained with him, however, and he was also helped by the boy with the spear wound.
He remembered how he had helped these people near Gildo’s village. That had been the start of his troubles, not that they knew that. But it seemed that they felt they owed him something. And yet he wasn’t out of trouble yet. Running through the night on rocky slopes wasn’t his idea of sensible behaviour. Where were they going? He had no hope of getting that out of them. Even if they had been less intent on flight, he couldn’t understand their language—if a cacophony of clicks and squeaks could be called a language—and they didn’t understand him. Hardly a basis for mutual understanding. But it was actions not words that mattered now.
They had left the Garamantes far behind now. His hopes of escape had previously been futile. The natives of these parts knew the desert, knew the country, and he knew next to nothing. He must have been visible for miles as he crossed the open sands, until he went to ground among the rocks. They knew the territory better than him, knew where the paths led. But now he was with people who knew the place even better, it seemed.
They were in a narrow defile between two rocky cliffs. The moon had risen now and she cast her eerie light upon the scene as the troglodytes issued through the gorge. Flaminius was near the back, with the woman and the boy. He threw worried looks over his shoulder until the woman touched him gently on the hand and gave him a shake of her head.
‘They’re not coming?’ he asked. She squeaked at him. ‘You think we’ve thrown the hounds off the scent?’ She clicked something else, then reached up and put her hand to his lips to enjoin silence.
They followed the others through the defile. It grew so narrow that Flaminius was in danger of leaving what remained of his skin on the rocks. All that day he had been negotiating narrow tunnels and defiles, from the irrigation channel in the morning to this gully. He was beginning to feel a new yearning for the wide open desert... But he was safe from pursuit. The only question was, safe to do what? He still had to get to the city, enter the temple, steal the veil—then travel all the way back to the empire. It would be a long road, assuming he survived that far…
His thoughts ended abruptly as he stumbled out into a wide, grassy valley. Crags rose on either hand. A stream trickled at the base of one cliff. Humped shapes among the grass emitted an occasional snort or lowing sound, and Flaminius guessed them to be some kind of cattle. Beyond the stream, flickering red dots suggested inhabited caves where fires burned, at least twenty of them. He had reached Troglodyte City.
He was led across the grassy valley floor, past the sleeping herds, across a ford of stones and up a sandy slope to the mouth of the biggest cave. Sentries stood on guard outside, but the small group gave a password, and they were allowed into the fire lit cave beyond. The other own cave had been an outlying settlement of this troglodyte polity.
Within, the cave seemed to be filled with figures, some eating and drinking, others lounging by the fire. Sitting on the far side of the fire was a bearded, paunch bellied troglodyte, resting one hand on a long wooden club while he gnawed at a beef bone in the other. At his feet crouched a younger female. This was the only example of anything like marriage that Flaminius was to encounter among the troglodytes, whose females otherwise seemed to choose their own mates. The consort was very fair, very beautiful if your tastes ran in that direction, but Flaminius focused on the man he took to be their leader.
The warriors Flaminius had met in the other cave made obeisance, and clicked at some length. When they finished, the big troglodyte rose to his feet with the aid of his club, flung his beef bone to his consort, and came round the fire slowly and dignifiedly to peer at Flaminius’ face. He was taller than his subjects, almost Flaminius’ height.
‘You speak Greek?’ he asked.
Flaminius stared at this bestial savage in dawning comprehension.
‘After a fashion,’ he said. ‘My tutor said I spoke it like a barbarian, but it’s good enough to get by in Alexandria.’
‘Alexandria,’ said the troglodyte tyrant reminiscently. ‘And how goes it in the greatest city in the world?’
‘You’ve been to Rome, too?’ Flaminius asked.
The troglodyte scowled. ‘Rome? Where is that? I went to Alexandria when I was a boy. A beautiful place. They called me Melanthus there, when I and my brother were sent north by our father to learn the ways of the northern folk. I worked as a warrior for the noble queen known as Livia of the Red Lantern until I returned here on my father’s death. I do not think I ever heard of anywhere called Rome. It must be a small place. What do you think of my city?’
Flaminius looked about him. The cave walls were painted with primitive scenes of hunting and warfare. The people wore loincloths and little else, although Melanthus himself had hung round his shoulders a cloak of what looked and smelled like camel skin.
‘It is very impressive,’ he said. ‘And all those herds in the meadow outside? Are they yours?’
‘Yes,’ said Melanthus proudly. ‘The greatest herd in these lands. A tribute we levied from the people of the chariots.’
‘The Garamantes?’ How had this scruffy band of pigmy cavemen levied a tribute from the rulers of this country? The troglodytes must have stolen them, driven them off. Flaminius remembered hearing something about them being cattle raiders. No wonder so much animosity existed between them and the Garamantes.
Melanthus shuffled awkwardly back to his place, where his young wife waited his return. He patted the ground nearby and invited Flaminius to sit.
‘You may have any woman you desire,’ Melanthus added, ‘except for my consort.’ Then he clapped his hands and clicked at his subjects.
They brought Flaminius a wicker tray containing meat that tasted like chicken, although he later learnt that it was snake, something crunchy that reminded him of locust until he noticed its scorpion tail, and a clay pot containing what proved to be some kind of fermented milk. It seemed that the cattle who provided tribute were used chiefly for milk, while snakes, lizards and scorpions provided meat.
He ate voraciously and drank thirstily. The woman whose son he had saved came to sit beside him.
‘May I ask what brings you to my city?’ Melanthus asked after the Roman had eaten and drunk his fill.
‘Chance, really,’ Flaminius said. ‘I was fleeing from the Garamantes—oh, er, your tributaries.’
Melanthus grunted. ‘That barbarian folk fret against my rule. Sometimes the levy has to be made forcibly. Most of the time, in fact. One day I shall gather my armies and ride upon their pestilential village, the place called Garama, and crush them like scorpions beneath my heel.’
Flaminius decided to humour the old fellow. ‘I’m sure you’ll triumph over the insolent rebels,’ he said. ‘You are a most hospitable host,’ he went on. ‘I only wish I could make some kind of restitution.’
‘But you are a hero among my people,’ said Melanthus in surprise. ‘I had already heard of your exploits. You rescued my young nephew from a rogue band of my tributaries. The woman beside you is enamoured of you. They are common folk, of course,’ he added, ‘barbarians themselves, with their cacophony of a language, simple minded and superstitious. I recognised this on my return from civilised lands. But they are good people in their own way.’
He smiled broadly. ‘They believe that you who will lead my armies against the rebels,’ he added.
Flaminius looked from Melanthus to his naked citizens with their stone tipped spears and their clubs. He remembered the ferocity of the chariot people, and looked away in consternation.
—20—
Garama, Phazania, 19th December 124 AD
Amasis leaned against the wall, revelling in it
s coolness, listening to Vabalathus’ heated tones.
‘…must come to terms with these savages!’ he was saying. ‘I’ll not come all this way for a profitless venture. So no more talk of escaping. Instead, we must beg an audience with King Gulussa.’
‘We have tried that,’ Claudius Mercator reminded him. ‘He refuses to speak to us.’ The merchant shook his head. ‘It has been no more of a success than my initial venture in these lands. No, I’m sorry if you feel you have lost money, but the only option is to escape and return to civilisation.’
‘You make that sound very easy.’ Until now Dido had listened to the discussion between the Arab and the Roman merchant in silence. So had Amasis, but he felt no desire to interrupt. Let them argue it out. He had nothing to say. As long as he didn’t get executed, that was all.
Osorkon said something in Punic. Dido translated for the benefit of the others who couldn’t understand it. ‘He says that he rues the day he spared our lives. He has lost position, standing, and now he will lose his life.’
‘He can escape with us,’ said Claudius Mercator. ‘In fact, with his knowledge of the country, he will be of vital assistance.’
Amasis looked round the cell. It was cold and dank, with one barred gate outside which stood Garamantian spearmen. Paillasses of straw lay on the cold rock floor, and a crock of water sat with empty bowls on a low table. The prisoners were gathered in the middle for the most part. Amasis sat by the wall, with Demetrius, who lay on a paillasse suffering some kind of gaol fever, and Menander was with him, tending to the old man. Reaching over, the boy mopped at the old man’s brow with a grimy rag. He knew one thing for a fact: the Greek was going nowhere.
He had seen little of the city outside, but what he had noticed was like the town they had stayed at, seemingly a long time ago, when they first entered this country. The houses were white walled and flat roofed, with open courtyards. The streets were busy with people, some on foot, and others on camelback. It was strangely like Egypt, although the people were swarthier, if not as dark skinned as Ethiopians.
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