King of Kings

by Unknown

  But leave the bastard and you leave the rest of them to die…

  Ballista returned the salute. ‘Mucapor, you will take the right-hand hundred men of the bodyguard, and I will lead the left. We will advance separately, driving the Sassanid horse archers before us until we are on either side and just beyond where, as you can see, the Legate Acilius Glabrio has got his men trapped. Then, while the remnants of Equites I Parthi run back to the army, we will conduct a controlled withdrawal, one line withdrawing through the other so that there are always some troopers facing the enemy.’ Ballista paused for questions. There were none. ‘The river should help guard your right flank.’ As it occurred to him, the general issued orders for Sandario to try to protect the left flank with his slingers.

  Ballista indicated where the unit was to be divided. He and Mucapor trotted off in opposite directions to take up their positions in the centre and just in advance of their men. Once in position, Ballista wasted no time making the signal to advance.

  They advanced slowly, a walk at first, never rising to more than the gentlest of canters. Ballista gave some of his attention to dressing the line of his men – it was vital they kept together – and some to the Persian horse archers ahead. But much, much more of his mind was directed to piercing the cloud of dust that hung over the plain. Somewhere behind that thick, swirling, red-brown cloud were the Sassanid clibanarii, the terrible heavy cavalry that could sweep over the tiny forces of his own cavalry in a matter of moments.

  This is madness, thought Ballista. I am risking the whole army on the off chance of saving a couple of hundred men and a man who probably paid an assassin to kill me.

  As was only natural, the Persian light horse withdrew before these new forces of Roman heavy cavalry. A few feinted towards them, loosed off an arrow or two, but then were gone. As Ballista made the signal to halt, he saw the surviving troopers of Acilius Glabrio’s unit streaming towards the army. Some of them were on foot, discarding their weapons and armour as they ran. He could not see if the young patrician was still with them.

  Ballista waited a few moments. The Persians were rallying just out of bowshot. He ordered the retreat to begin. The front line of the men with him turned to the right, passed through the line behind them, cantered for about fifty paces, then turned again and pulled up once more, facing the enemy. Then the other line turned and repeated the procedure. So it went, Ballista and his immediate entourage remaining always with the line nearest the enemy.

  It seemed no time at all before the horse archers were back, snapping round the heels of Ballista’s men, shooting innumerable arrows from but a few yards. Despite their heavy armour, men and horses of the Equites Singulares were being wounded, were falling. A rider crashed into Pale Horse. Ballista turned to curse him, then realized with a lurch that there was no point. The man was dead, held on his mount by the horns of his saddle. Two arrows protruded from his face. As the horse carried him away, the shafts seemed to dance in a grotesque parody of a set of Pan pipes.

  Ballista looked back at the Roman army – still some three hundred paces away. They were going to be a very long three hundred paces. Then he looked south towards the Persians. For a moment, the dust cloud parted – and there was the sight that the northerner least wanted to see. Glinting and flashing in the sunlight, coming on like an army of living statues was a solid line of Sassanid heavy cavalry, the clibanarii.

  The dust cloud covered them again. How far away had they been? Ballista was unsure. He had made out details of their surcoats. They must be within at least five hundred paces, probably much closer. This ordered retreat was not going to work. The clibanarii would overrun them before they reached the army and then, with no organized force at the front of the Roman columns, they would overrun the whole army.

  Ballista gestured wildly for a messenger to attend him. ‘Ride to the Legate Aurelian, who is with the infantry column. Ride as fast as ever you can. Tell him I want him to bring five hundred legionaries around to the front of the army. I want them set out in five blocks of one hundred. Enough space for our cavalry to pass between each block. As soon as my men have passed, he must have them ready for the rear ranks to come round to form an unbroken line. They must be ready to lock shields, ready to repel a cavalry charge. Got that? Good, now go.’

  The messenger disappeared to the north, and Ballista’s world slowed to an agonizing snail’s pace. At his signal, the rank of cavalry nearest to the enemy turned and followed him as he cantered away. The Sassanids surged after them, yelling, howling. Their arrows, loosed at almost point-blank range, hissed at the riders’ backs, at the horses’ hind quarters. So many arrows, some had to find an unprotected spot or even punch clean through armour. Men and horses were screaming, falling, writhing in the dust. The Romans rode through their second line, and the Sassanids pulled back a little.

  Ballista looked at the Roman army. There was no sign yet of Aurelian’s legionaries. He looked at the Sassanids. There was nothing to see except the myriad wheeling horse archers and the plumes of dust – no further sign of the dreaded clibanarii.

  Again Ballista made the signal, and the line of cavalry nearest to the enemy turned and cantered away. Again the Sassanids swept forwards. Again the arrows flew, and men and beasts felt the sharp stab of pain and fell. There was a nightmarish quality to these awful repetitions, to this painfully slow flight from a terrifying menace you could not see but knew was coming.

  An arrow punched into Ballista’s shield. Its feathers were dyed scarlet. In fact, he was surprised to see, there were four arrows embedded in his shield. The earlier clarity of his battle-calm had slipped away, leaving him as if in a trance. He pulled himself together and looked at the army. At last. There they were. He could make out Aurelian’s legionaries. They were about two hundred paces away, jogging across the front of the army.

  Ballista turned to regard the Sassanids. There was nothing to see but horse archers and dust. He made the signal, and the front rank of the Equites Singulares followed him away. And something had changed. Arrows were still falling, but not so many and not released from so close. Ballista swivelled in the saddle. Still nothing in sight but horse archers and dust. Almost casually, he fended off an arrow with his shield. All the eastern riders were galloping away from the Euphrates, away to the east. Already there were none down by the riverbank. Absently, Ballista noted the little galleys out on the river, saw their torsion-powered artillery bolts speeding after the Persians. I must remember to praise Turpio for his initiative… Ballista waved the trumpeter and Bargas the standard bearer to his side… If I get to see the bugger again. He looked at the Roman army. It was about a hundred and fifty paces away. Aurelian’s men were not yet quite in position. It could not be helped. It had to be now. He gave the order: all-out retreat, every man for himself.

  It takes a little while for a heavily caparisoned horse to reach full speed. But fear communicates itself easily from man to mount. Soon, all the Equites Singulares, those under Mucapor as well as those with Ballista, were galloping flat out across the plain, riders leaning forward, horses with nostrils wide, ropes of saliva streaming back from gaping mouths, galloping straight and hard, only when essential jinking round a clump of camel thorn.

  Ballista glanced over his shoulder. The horse archers were gone, cantering now off to the north-east to lap round the flank of the main body of the Roman army – and in their place were the clibanarii. No more than a hundred paces away, a solid wall of steel, bronze, leather and horn, as far as the eye could see. The earth trembled under their horses’ hooves and the air above them was bright with banners, with flowing streamers – yellow, violet, red – and with wicked, glinting spearheads.

  Ballista was riding hard, but not pushing Pale Horse near the gelding’s limit. He was reasonably secure in his mind. The Sassanid clibanarii had to maintain their line. They could not ride at a full gallop like the fleeing Romans. It should be all right.

  Pale Horse swerved around some thorn bushes. Beside and behin
d him Ballista heard a sound like a whimper. Demetrius was half off his horse, clinging despairingly to its neck. No horseman, the boy must have been dislodged as his mount avoided the sharp camel thorn. As Ballista watched, the Greek youth’s grip failed and he was rolling on the hard, dusty ground. Without thought, Ballista reined in, grabbed the bridle of Demetrius’ mount and circled back. The boy was on his feet. He was babbling as the northerner led up his horse. The Greek youngster looked over his shoulder, saw the advancing clibanarii and leapt at his horse. He misjudged it entirely and slipped back to the ground.

  ‘Plenty of time,’ said Ballista reassuringly. He looked across the ever-diminishing no-man’s-land. The steel visors and the mail hangings that covered all the face below the eyes made the clibanarii appear entirely inhuman.

  Demetrius tried again. He got half up and stuck, wriggling. Then he started to slip again. ‘Try again,’ said Ballista. The clibanarii were close now. The northerner was struck by the cold, hard beauty of one steel visor which was sculpted like a human face. It reminded him of the horseman in the alley at Antioch. Here was a whole army of horsemen that wanted to kill him.

  In a flurry of hooves and kicked-up dust, Maximus reined in. With typical economy of movement, he swung his right leg over his horse’s neck and dropped to the ground like a cat. Gripping him by the scruff of the neck and his belt, he threw the Greek boy up into the saddle. In the twinkling of an eye, Maximus had remounted his own horse as it started to run. A heartbeat later all three were on their way.

  They squeezed through the small gap in the line of legionaries and pulled up. Their horses stood, flanks heaving. They heard the big red shields of Legio IIII Scythica slam together. They heard the levelling of the spears of the legionaries. No cavalry on earth would charge into a formed line of close-order infantry. They were safe.

  XI

  Maximus stepped out of the dark shadow of the tent. The moon was big and bright – but often it is easy to follow a man without him being aware of it. A lot depends on the environment. An army camp is a good place: rows of tents, horse lines, piles of forage; at any hour, men wandering, some of them drunk. More depends on the followed man not thinking about being followed.

  They were down near the river by now. The baggage boats, moored three deep, clanked together as the current tugged at them. Up ahead at the palisade, Maximus heard a sentry call the watchword – disciplina – then came the response – gloria. He waited for a short time, then followed. The call, disciplina; the response, gloria; and he was outside.

  Outside, it was all different. Quiet and empty. The great plain ran away moon-washed and open for two or three miles until it met the twinkling lights of the Persian campfires. To Maximus’ right was the river, its waters black and oily. Along the riverbank the undergrowth had been cut back for about fifty paces from the palisade. After that was a stand of trees, poplars with reeds fringing the waterline. The bright moonlight made the shadow under the trees very black.

  Maximus walked quietly to the trees. He stopped just inside the gloom, letting his eyes adjust. He stilled his breathing. At first it was very quiet, but then he started to hear the normal night noises, the rustles and squeaks that marked the life and death of some small animals. Slowly, watching where he put his feet, watching for signs of the man, he moved deeper into the wood. He had gone no distance when he saw him – down by the water, motionless, sitting with his back to the trunk of a tree. Stepping ever so softly, Maximus began to circle around him, to put himself between the Sassanid camp and the man.

  ‘Stop prancing about and come and sit down,’ said Ballista.

  Maximus jumped slightly then looked all around once, very carefully, and did as he was asked. He felt more than slightly foolish.

  They sat in silence for a time, seeing the river flow past, hearing the whispering of the reeds.

  ‘I have been thinking, sure, what would be sending the renowned Dux Ripae wandering alone in the dead of the night?’ Maximus kept his eyes on the river. ‘Certain, it would be another nocturnal visitation by the late and completely unlamented emperor Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus Thrax.’

  Maximus watched his dominus and friend stifle a move to look around, to check that no one was listening. Apart from Ballista, only three people – his wife Julia, his body servant Calgacus, and Maximus himself – knew that from time to time the Dux Ripae suffered the terrifying appearance in his sleeping quarters of the long-dead emperor known and hated as Maximinus the Thracian – the emperor who died long ago because a sixteen-year-old Ballista, having taken the sacramentum, the military oath to protect him, had instead assassinated him in his tent.

  ‘No, thank the gods below, I have not seen that big bastard since the night before the fall of Arete.’

  They sat quiet again. Maximus was sure his friend was thinking back to that summer day all those years ago before the walls of Aquileia, thinking about the mutineers falling on the dead emperor, desecrating the corpse, denying it burial so that the daemon of Maximinus Thrax was condemned to walk the earth for ever in eternal misery, to walk the earth haunting the man who had killed him. Wordlessly, the Hibernian took a piece of air-dried beef from a pouch on his belt and passed it over. Ballista took it and began to chew.

  ‘It could have gone worse yesterday.’ Maximus received no reply, but continued anyway. ‘Admittedly, your man Glabrio got about fifty of his own men killed and your Equites Singulares lost nearly as many rescuing the stupid bastard, but it could have been a lot worse. And it is good that Niger’s wound is not serious – your young aristocrat might not have been able to even start his foolishness if the very first arrow had not taken the commander of Equites I Parthi in the arm.’ He passed over some more dried beef and smiled. ‘It was a fine stroke ordering officers to give up their spare horses to remount those troopers who had been dismounted – fine indeed.’

  ‘Mmm,’ grunted Ballista.

  ‘And our young patrician has behaved well enough today. All day the reptiles were at it – galloping up like madmen, letting fly a few arrows, and running off again, and never a move from our handsome young nobleman.’

  ‘Do you think he hired the assassin?’ Ballista asked.

  ‘Ah, but I doubt it. More likely would be one of the Macrianus boys, or even those Borani, who think so highly of you.’ Actually, Maximus thought it quite probably was Acilius Glabrio but, like many in the army, he mistrusted what would happen if things came to a head between the big northerner and the Roman aristocrat.

  They sat in silence some more. The smell of mud and decaying reeds was strong down by the water.

  At length it was Maximus who spoke again. ‘The letters – it must be something in the letters that is preying on your mind.’ Early that afternoon, just as the army had begun to erect its marching camp, a small despatch boat had pulled in from Zeugma in the north. There had been no letters for Maximus, there never were – the few who might have wanted to send word to him could not write. With no pang of jealousy, the Hibernian had watched Ballista take charge of two bundles of post, one sealed with an eagle in imperial purple, the other with an Eros winding a piece of artillery.

  ‘No,’ replied Ballista. ‘I have no objection to carrying out the instructions of Valerian Augustus, Pius, Felix, Pontifex Maximus, and ordering everyone in the army to sacrifice to the natural gods.’ He held up a hand and cut off Maximus before he could speak. ‘Of course,’ continued Ballista, ‘it is aimed at the Christians. Anyone who will not sacrifice is to be sent off to some unpleasant designated place of internal exile, and if when there they continue to hold assemblies or enter the places known as cemeteries, they are to be executed. Now who except the followers of the crucified god call a necropolis a cemetery?’

  ‘That is not what I meant. I was…’ Again Maximus was cut off.

  ‘I doubt we have many Christians with us here in the army. What little I know about them suggests that military life would not be to their taste. Worshipping the standards every morning and all
the other official sacrifices, to Queen Juno a cow, to the Divine Hadrian an Ox and all that – I believe a hard-line Christian could not be persuaded to do any of it. And there is the pacifism – their god has told them never to kill.’

  ‘Bollocks, that cannot be true.’

  ‘Well, I listened to one of them in Antioch – he was holding forth in that street known as the Jawbone, they seem to be thick as flies round there – and that seemed to be what he was on about, Thou shalt not kill.’

  ‘Thou shalt not kill, my arse. That is a recipe for a religion with no future.’ Maximus was glad Ballista was talking, even if quite deliberately avoiding what was bothering him.

  ‘Even so, I think I will delay implementing the order until it is over with the Sassanid reptiles, one way or another. You never know, if directly ordered to sacrifice to the natural gods, some closet Christian soldiers might suddenly rediscover their principles. Have you noticed how it is with men who are given to bothering the gods – their principles come and go? And what about the arrogance of the bloody Romans? Their gods are just the natural ones.’

  ‘It has to be said, they are a lot closer to the sort of gods you and I worshipped when we were young, a bloody sight closer than a criminal on a cross,’ said Maximus.

  ‘Well, Woden the Allfather did let himself hang on a tree in agony for nine days.’

  ‘Actually, I was really talking about the other letter. The one from your wife.’

  Ballista grinned, his teeth white in the gloom, but said nothing.

  ‘Everything all right at home? The boy is all right?’

  ‘Isangrim is fine.’

  ‘And the domina?’

  ‘She is fine too.’

  ‘Gods below, man, you are not thinking there is another man’s mule kicking in your stall?’

  Ballista laughed quietly. ‘A lovely turn of phrase, but no, it is not what I was thinking.’

  For a time they sat in silence again, now a more companionable, a somewhat happier silence.