King of Kings

by Unknown

  ‘A long way from your charcoal stack, brother.’ As he spoke, Ballista lunged forward, his sword seeking the man’s chest. At the last moment, a clumsy but effective parry turned the point of the northerner’s blade. Without pause, Ballista took two short steps to his right and unleashed a downward cut. The man there leapt backwards. A movement in the corner of his eye, and Ballista swivelled. Automatically, his sword came down across his body. A clash of steel and the assassin’s blade was forced wide.

  The snow was still falling. It formed a golden corona around the lamps. Weird shadows flickered about the alley as the four men danced their macabre, rhythmic dance: feint, probe, lunge, block, cut. Ballista fought doggedly. His mind was blank. After years of training and experience, the memory in the muscle was keeping the man-killing steel from his body. But he knew that if he made one slip, it would all be over.

  The masked men gave a little ground. A man on horseback rode into Ballista’s view. He had a drawn sword in his hand. Unlike those of the the others, the mounted man’s mask was metal, the silver face of a beautiful youth, lips and eyebrows gilded, an expensive, full-face cavalry parade helmet.

  The horse stopped. It stamped in the snow. The impassive silver face regarded the frozen tableau of the fighters.

  ‘Finish him. Get in close and finish the barbarian filth, you cowards.’ Through the thin mouthpiece, the Latin sounded strange, unrecognizably distorted.

  The pantomime masks closed in on Ballista. Faces immobile but eyes wild, long plaits swinging as the swords flashed. They had not the skill of the northerner and they were encumbered by the masks, but there were three of them. A flurry of blows, sparks flying. Ballista was driven back against the wall. No room to move. Off balance, parrying a heavy blow, Ballista was driven to his knees. A sword knocked chunks of plaster from the wall next to his ear.

  And then the masks were receding. Ballista scrambled upright, getting the sword out in front, securing some space. Snow deadens sound, but Ballista could half-hear something off to his left, beyond the porch, out of sight. The eyes behind the masks seemed to be flicking glances in that direction. Ballista got his breathing right, waiting for his opportunity. It never came. The face of the beautiful girl and that of the harridan looked in at the swordsman with the scar on his hand. The mask of the miserable old woman jerked. And all three were running off to the right, their boots kicking up flurries of snow.

  The horseman looked down at Ballista. The silver face remained unmoving, but the eyes behind it were full of hate. He pulled the reins and walked his horse after the others, the way Ballista had come.

  At the entrance to the alley, the masked man Ballista had cut down had risen to his feet. His leg was pouring blood. The horseman stopped. He held out his hand. A silver ring with the portrait of Alexander the Great glittered. The wounded man stumbled painfully across, his useless left leg dragging. He put up a hand to be helped up on to the horse. The horseman leaned out and gripped the proffered arm with his left hand. A glittering arc of steel, and the blade in the horseman’s right hand crashed down on to the man’s exposed head. There was a sickening sound like stepping on rotten fruit. Fountaining blood, the man fell away.

  The man in the silver mask turned to look at Ballista. The light of the lamps shone on the mask of the beautiful youth. His arm came up. The bloodied sword pointed at the northerner. Then he kicked his boots into the horse’s flanks and was gone.

  Ballista leant back against the wall. He was drenched in sweat, limbs trembling with fatigue. Blood dripped into the slush at his feet. For the first time, he noticed four or five minor defensive wounds on his forearms.

  The noise was getting louder: the sound of men pounding through the snow. Ballista pushed himself away from the wall and raised his sword again. My enemy’s enemy is my friend. But you can never be sure.

  A flood of torchlight, and Demetrius appeared. He had one of the Superintendents of the Tribes with him. They were backed by half a dozen Club Bearers of the watch. Ballista lowered his sword and embraced Demetrius, their faces together. ‘Thank you, boy. How?’

  ‘I knew something was wrong. Cupido never volunteers for anything.’ Demetrius’ face was earnest. ‘I disobeyed you, Kyrios. I went out and found a party of the watch, led them to the Jewish quarter.’

  ‘You showed initiative. It is lucky one of us kept his wits about him.’

  Ballista released Demetrius and went over to where Cupido lay. The ex-gladiator was not moving. Covering him with his sword, Ballista searched him for concealed weapons. ‘A doctor,’ Cupido moaned.

  Ballista looked at the wounded arm. He was fast bleeding to death. ‘Who hired you?’

  ‘Doctor…’ The stale copper-coin smell mingled with that of fresh blood.

  ‘Who hired you?’

  ‘A man in a bar. I do not know his name. The one wearing the old-woman mask. Scar on his hand.’

  Ballista looked down at him, considering.

  ‘I need a doctor,’ Cupido whimpered again.

  ‘Too late, brother.’ Ballista lined the sword up and thrust it down into the man’s throat. It was finished. The snow was turning to sleet.

  VII

  It was early, the second hour of an overcast, gloomy day. The black clouds piling up over Mount Silpius threatened rain. It seemed to have rained every day since the attack in the alley. From the second day of the Saturnalia, 18 December, to six days before the ides of January: twenty-four days, calculated Ballista, counting inclusively, as everyone did. Twenty-four days since the third attempt to kill him and, despite both the municipal Epimeletai ton Phylon and the imperial frumentarii scouring the city, there was no trace of the would-be assassins.

  The dead assassin’s mask, the beauty of its young girl’s face marred by the blood soaked into the linen, had been no help. There were more than thirty theatrical mask makers in Antioch. Unsurprisingly, none admitted it was their work. And no one had come forward to claim the body.

  There was little to go on. Three hired swords: two faceless men and a nondescript man with a scar on his hand – a nondescript man who in the charcoal burner’s clearing had shouted, ‘The young eupatrid sends you this’ – in a city of more than a quarter of a million people.

  The identity of the young eupatrid on the horse was still a mystery. The type of cavalry parade mask he had worn was very expensive, but they were readily available all over the imperium. It need not even have been made by a silversmith in Antioch. The horseman had spoken Latin. But his voice had been so distorted as to be unrecognizable.

  One thing, however, had struck Ballista. The silver-masked horseman had called him a barbarian. That would come naturally to Acilius Glabrio, or the sons of Macrianus, yet surely it was unlikely that Videric, the son of Fritigern, King of the Borani, would call him a barbarian – unless he had become thoroughly romanized in his months as a diplomatic hostage. Or unless he had said it deliberately to throw suspicion elsewhere.

  There was so little to go on; still, the northerner had hoped that something would have turned up before he had to leave.

  Ballista sat on Pale Horse outside the Beroea Gate, waiting. He looked up at the nearest window in the great, square, projecting towers of the gate. The bright lamps inside made a halo of golden hair low down in the window. Higher and less distinct, slightly behind the boy, was the dark hair of his mother. Ballista had said he would leave Maximus to protect them, but Julia would not hear of it. She had pointed out that while someone had three times tried to kill Ballista, there had been no attempt on his family. She had stated firmly that the two remaining ex-gladiators would be enough protection while Ballista was away. The northerner felt some guilt at his relief that he would have the familiar presence of his Hibernian bodyguard at his side. He waved, and saw the light blur of his wife’s and son’s hands waving back.

  Behind Ballista, his staff were getting restless. It irritated him. They irritated him. He did not want them there. It was so typically Roman – the dignitas of a man gr
anted imperium, command, demanded that he be accompanied by a commensurate number of staff. As Dux Ripae, Ballista must have an escort of four scribes, six messengers, two heralds, and two haruspices, to read the omens. Whether he wanted them or not was a matter of no moment.

  And the members of staff were more than an irritation, they presented a danger. Ballista knew that, concealed among their number, would be at least two, maybe more, frumentarii. The reports written by these members of the secret police would fly along the cursus publicus, sometimes at more than a hundred miles a day, into the hands of their commander, Censorinus, the Princeps Peregrinorum, who would pass them to his superior Successianus, the Praetorian Prefect, who in turn would hand them to the emperor himself. Every move Ballista made would be scrutinized. The only, grim, satisfaction to be drawn from the situation was the marked reluctance of the twelve new members of staff he had chosen from the officially approved lists. There were so many places to be filled because, from the last expedition, only two of the staff had come back alive.

  From under the great arch of the Beroea Gate came a clatter of horses’ hooves. A trumpet rang out. Gaius Acilius Glabrio, Commander of the Cavalry in the army of the Dux Ripae, led out his two units of men. As befitted a scion of one of the oldest noble houses in Rome, Acilius Glabrio and his charger, a glorious, prancing chestnut, were magnificently turned out. Even on this dull day the young patrician seemed to shine with gold, silver and precious gems. The troopers that followed him were less gorgeous, but they were well equipped. There was no complete uniformity, but they were all much alike: heavily armoured men on heavily armoured horses. Wherever one looked, there was mail, scale, hardened leather and, in each right hand, a long spear, a kontos. They made an impressive sight, silent apart from the ring of their horses’ hooves and the jingle of armour, bridle and bit, red pennants nodding above the Equites Primi Catafractarii Parthi, green above the Equites Tertii Catafractarii Palmirenorum. These were elite heavy cavalry – shock troops; regular units of tough, disciplined professionals. These men knew their own worth and expected to be treated accordingly.

  Rank after rank they came out of the gate. As the last rank cleared the fortifications, the ritual shout went up: ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’ There was a perfunctory sullenness to the cry. It could be that they had caught the distaste of their commander Acilius Glabrio for serving under a barbarian Dux, but Ballista suspected it was more to do with the reduced numbers of each unit. They had numbered four hundred each; now, they were down to three hundred. Ballista had taken a hundred men from each unit to form a new one, his guard of Equites Singulares, under the command of the Danubian Mucapor.

  A fresh round of trumpet calls, and the tramp of marching feet. Lucius Domitius Aurelian, Commander of the Infantry in the army of the Dux Ripae, marched out from under the great gate. Ostentatiously, he was equipped in the worn mail and leather of his men and, like them, he was on foot. First at his back were the men of Legio III Felix. It was a splendid sounding title, but it could not hide that this was a scratch unit of only a thousand men, made up of drafts from the long-established legions III Gallica and IV Flavia Felix. Still, while the unit might be new, the men, in the main, were veterans, and a vexillatio of a thousand men from Legio IIII Scythica would join the army when it reached the Euphrates. At the heart of the force would be two thousand of the best heavy infantry in the world, the feared legionaries of Rome.

  Four troops of light infantry, all bowmen, emerged next, in no great order. These were not regular units of the Roman army but ad hoc bands of warriors, mercenaries, fugitives and exiles from the wilder reaches of the empire: 400 Armenians, 200 tent-dwelling Saracens, 400 Mesopotamians, 300 Itureans. They did not march. The men of the four numeri slouched or swaggered, each as the mood took him. At least the Itureans were famed for the deadly accuracy of their black-fletched arrows. They were followed by a new unit of slingers. Ballista had created this by combining a ridiculously small unit of a hundred and fifty sedentary Arabs with two hundred volunteers from the Armenians. He had appointed the young Danubian Sandario to command them.

  We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.

  The braying of mules and a stench of camel announced the approach of the baggage train. Ballista had appointed his old subordinate, Titus Flavius Turpio, as Praefectus Castrorum, to be in charge of it. The ever-humorous face of Turpio appeared. Ballista was glad to see him. It was important to have as many men as possible in place you could trust. When Ballista had first met the ex-centurion Turpio he had distrusted him intensely. Then, in Arete, he had found him guilty of embezzling funds from his unit. Turpio claimed he had been blackmailed into it, and after that his service, both in the siege and in the desperate flight from the city, had earned him the right to be trusted. Besides, Ballista had grown fond of Turpio. There was something deeply reassuring about the way he reacted to any news, no matter how bad, with just a slight grin and a quizzical look, as if once again surprised by the follies of humanity or the capriciousness of fate.

  With shouts, and provoking animal squeals, the civilian porters gradually bullied the baggage train along. Ballista’s mind wandered. ‘The young eupatrid sends you this.’ Ballista knew he had many enemies. Who among them would a hired blade from the backstreets of Antioch describe as well born? Gaius Acilius Glabrio certainly. The sons of Macrianus, Quietus and Macrianus the Younger, almost certainly. Videric, the son of Fritigern, the King of the Borani, just possibly, if racial prejudice was set aside. At any event, further attempts were far less likely while Ballista was in the heart of his army.

  The squeal of an axle pulled Ballista’s mind back to the present. In the midst of the baggage train were five carts. Ballista had given explicit orders that no wheeled transport was to accompany the army. Who had dared ignore his orders? Even as he formulated the question, an answer came to him: the carts were smart, freshly painted, expensive – the carts of a rich man, a high officer. In the interests of discipline, Ballista could not let Gaius Acilius Glabrio flout his orders.

  At long, long last, the end of the baggage train passed. The stolid, almost bovine face of Mucapor appeared at the head of the Equites Singulares. It was time to go. Ballista turned in the saddle and took one lingering, last look at the window in the tower, willing himself to remember every detail: Julia’s long, dark hair, the boy’s golden curls. He raised his hand in valediction. He saw the frantic waving of Isangrim’s small hand. He turned Pale Horse away. Breathing shallowly, controlling himself, he rode away down the road to Beroea and beyond to Circesium, the city on the Euphrates he had to save.

  *

  They made the discovery in Antioch the day after Ballista rode out.

  The superintendent hated this side of things. All the other duties that came with being one of the Epimeletai ton Phylon were close to unalloyed joy. Striding through the streets at night, a troop of burly Club Bearers at his back, felt close to being a hero, even a god. The knock on the door at midnight, the placating smiles of the merchants as they hurried to relight the offending, extinguished lamp, the return to the warmth and mulled wine of his official office on the agora – it was all good. But this side of things was not. There were eighteen Superintendents of the Tribes, and it always seemed to happen when he was on duty. This was the third in as many days.

  ‘Fish it out.’ This turned out to be easier said than done. The corpse was wedged in a grating at the opening of a tunnel where a storm drain ran under a street in the Epiphania district. The heavy winter rains which had been falling up on Mount Silpius meant the water was running deep and fast. One arm of the corpse, about all that could be seen in the dark, swirling water, banged against the metal as if seeking to call attention to itself.

  The Club Bearers busied themselves with ropes and hooks. So far, it was impossible to tell if the corpse was that of a man or woman, or even a child. The superintendent, hunched in his furs, looked at the skies. It was not rai
ning now, but a leaden sky looked as it might presage snow. It would be colder than Hades in the water, the superintendent thought absently.

  Eventually, soaked to the skin, the Club Bearers dragged the corpse out of the water. They deposited it at the feet of the superintendent. Part of him wanted to look away, but part of him was drawn to look by a morbid fascination. The gods below knew he had seen enough of the things.

  It was a man dressed in just a ripped tunic. If he had ever had them, belt, cloak and sandals were long gone, taken by the water or his killers.

  ‘He did not fall in. No accident or suicide. His throat has been cut.’ The superintendent spoke out loud but to himself. He leant over to peer closely at the corpse. It was only a little knocked about; it had not been in the water long. The man had not been dead more than a day or so.

  The superintendent straightened up, easing his back. These days, it always played up in damp weather. He hoped that his wife had told the new girl to buy the proper ointment this time. He looked down at the corpse, thinking. The third murdered man in three days. This one was a nondescript man with a jagged scar on his right hand. The big barbarian officer had ridden out the day before, and now here was the corpse of the leader of the street gang of his would-be assassins. The other two corpses from the previous couple of days could well be the underlings who had escaped from the attempt in the alley in the Jewish quarter. The superintendent did not yet see how this got anyone much further forward, but he was still thinking. It was starting to snow.

  VIII

  ‘Hercules’ hairy arse… our heroic general, mooning over a letter like a lovesick girl… lost like a man in the Highlands with the fog coming down, oh shite, what chance have we got… doomed, we are all fucking doomed.’ Then, at the same volume but in a somewhat different tone, Calgacus continued, ‘Gaius Acilius Glabrio awaits your pleasure. He is outside in answer to your summons.’