The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  Every tyrant needs one, you see – and Chosroes had everything a tyrant needed. I’d never seen it in action in Ctesiphon. No one I’d spoken to ever mentioned it. Perhaps no one had seen it work and been left alive to warn of its existence. But I’d sat night after night with him, working out the function of the red square drawn on the floor and of the irregular contours in the coffered ceiling above where the Great King always sat when strangers were present, or those some turn of his frenzied imagination had given him cause to suspect of treason. I’ve said this room was a scaled-down copy of its counterpart back home. It was unthinkable its designers had left off the dual layer cage of bronze bars, eight foot by eight, that would in emergencies seal off the Great King from so much as a lucky bowshot. I’d now seen it do its work. Spikes on its underside had nailed it immovably to the floor. One of the projecting steel blades was barely an inch from my nose. Even after the reverberant crash was over, the whole of the raised palace continued pitching and swaying from the transfer of weight.

  I let Eboric finish his orgasm dance. Then I lifted him, sobbing and twitching, out of harm’s way. I sat up and took the sword. There was no one left to kill for the moment. But the guards down in the pass would need to be drunk not to have noticed the fall of the safety cage.

  ‘You’ve failed again, Alaric!’ came the snarling cry from behind the tight bronze strands of the cage. ‘You’ll never touch me now.’ There was a double lamp hanging from the ceiling behind the cage. By the light of this, I could see the bowed shape of Chosroes shuffling about.

  I looked at Urvaksha. He hadn’t been so lucky as his master. One of the fins had sliced him in half from right shoulder to left hip. The palace had settled into a slight tilt and I watched his dark blood run towards the far end of the room, where Theodore had gone still and quiet.

  I turned away. ‘Get dressed!’ I ordered the boys. ‘There’s no time to lose.’ I think a couple of the support poles now gave way together. It was like standing in the belly of a ship that’s just hit something. I staggered to keep my balance. That isn’t easily done when standing upright in relation to everything round you means you’re off vertical by about twenty degrees. I gave up brandishing the sword and put it to use as a walking stick.

  Rado brought forward one of the elaborate silk jackets in which they must have got past the guards. A dreamy smile on his face, Eboric stared at it. I kicked him in the chest. ‘Come on,’ I hissed. ‘He’ll get away and they’ll burn us alive in this thing.’

  I was wrong. I’d guessed that the security cage was only intended to ward off an immediate attack and there was a trap door to get Chosroes properly out of danger. But no one had allowed for the buckling of the segmented floor. I could hear Chosroes pulling and pushing frantically at an exit that might be jammed beyond hope. I saw him get up and caught the flash of his steel blade. He howled in the terror of being caught in a space that didn’t let him stand upright. He rattled his sword against the bars. He went back to banging at the jammed trap door. He hadn’t yet noticed that Urvaksha was dead. He would eventually care about that, I knew. Every tyrant needs his safety cage, or something like it. And every tyrant needs at least one certain friend. When he got free of what was now his prison, there would be blood on the moon in his wild grief for a seer whose predictions had only been an excuse for their friendship. But he was a prisoner and it suddenly appeared that whatever blood he finally shed wouldn’t be ours.

  I swallowed. I relaxed. I bent down and kissed Eboric on the face. ‘I could never have asked for a better son,’ I said gently. I helped him to his feet. I gave Rado a manly nod. ‘But do get something on you. We need to be away from here.’

  Even as I spoke, there was another sound of snapping wood and of groaning palace sections. I’ve never been in a shipwreck. But that must be what the sideways collapse of the far end of the room resembled – that and the shifted slope of where we stood to about forty-five degrees. One of the lamps had come off the wall and was already spreading a pool of burning oil across the floor. If the outside of the palace was sodden from the rain, its furnishings might, with luck, become a royal funeral pyre.

  Eboric was still fumbling with his clothes. No time for niceties. I snatched the coat from him and threw it over his shoulder. ‘We’re getting out as we are,’ I said calmly. ‘Keep your mouth shut. If there’s talking to be done, let me do it.’

  Holding hands, the three of us slithered down the slope of the floor towards the collapsed far section. This had squashed an unknown number of the guards and I could hear maniacal shouting that took me back to the failed assault on my own palace in Constantinople. We slid down the silk rugs that still connected the two parts of the floor. I looked back once at the cage where Chosroes was now hurling himself about like a trapped wild animal.

  ‘Don’t leave me here, Alaric,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t let me burn. I’ll be your friend again. I’ll make you Emperor in Constantinople.’ He raised his voice to a shrill scream. ‘Get me out of here and I’ll do whatever you want.’ He raised his voice higher. ‘Urvaksha – where are you, Urvaksha!’

  Water was leaking upwards through the lower segments of the floor and the silk rugs squelched underfoot. Only one lamp down here had survived the collapse but it was enough to show us towards a sheared-off section of wall. Another few yards, and we could step out into the shouting, terrified crowd.

  I heard Theodore behind me. ‘Please, Father,’ he begged in Syriac, ‘take me with you.’ I turned and saw him lying on his back, bound hands stretched out in supplication. No one could complain if I say that I gave him a kick of my own in the balls and hurried out alone into the darkness. Instead, I walked carefully back across a floor that seemed to have come to life beneath me and threw him across my shoulder.

  The collapse we’d had so far wasn’t the end of the destabilising effect of the fallen cage. There was another sound of snapping supports. This time, there was a crash that went on and on. I’ve said I was never in a shipwreck but many’s the time I’ve seen a building catch fire and burn to the ground. This was like the final inward crash of floors. All that was missing was the explosion of sparks and the blast of intense heat.

  I had my story ready for when I stepped out through the gap on the walls but no one paid the slightest attention. Dressed in the finery of a Persian noble, two naked boys beside me, another sobbing boy across my shoulder, I stepped right through a circle of men screaming orders at each other. We hurried across what remained of a wooden causeway. We nearly bumped into a party of armed men who were hurrying forward. I waved them aside and watched them step down into the water. I stopped by the dark wall of the pass and turned to look back at the stricken night palace. I’d been hoping it was on fire. All I saw was an irregular mass of darkness, framed by the lesser dark of the cloudy sky. I couldn’t see anyone. But there was a rising babble of shouts that indicated someone would finally see a personal interest in going in to spring Chosroes from his trap. It was best not to be anywhere close when he was carried out into the cold air of the night, bellowing for vengeance.

  ‘We tethered the horses in a sort of cave a hundred yards up on the left,’ Rado whispered in my ear.

  I nodded in the darkness. He couldn’t have seen. I cleared my throat and laughed. ‘Those weren’t the orders I gave you,’ was what I wanted to say. It would have been ironic and nonchalant, and fairly memorable, and worth quoting in the biographies. But I was beginning to tremble with delayed shock and I didn’t trust my voice to sound as I wanted. I shifted Theodore to my other shoulder and patted Rado on the back. ‘Good work, my son,’ I said quietly in Slavic.

  Chapter 62

  The rain had passed away and, although the clouds were still a leaden mass in the sky, it didn’t seem likely to return. Happy in my riding clothes, I sat on a stone and watched Eboric scrub the last of the gold paint from his body under a cascade of water from a high outcrop of rocks. He was astonishingly pretty, I thought again. Little wonder Chosroes had been take
n off guard. Adoption brings certain paternal duties that must be taken seriously. The avoidance of incest, on the other hand, is one of those technicalities to be observed only in public. Such a shame the circumstances of our getaway would keep my increasingly lustful hands off him for the foreseeable future.

  I sighed and turned my attention to Rado. ‘I have told you,’ I said in an interval of the snarled questioning, ‘that knocking him about won’t get us anywhere.’ Long before morning, Theodore had turned pious again and was crying out in Syriac for punishment. The savage beating that might actually have broken one of his ribs was no more than he was calling out for. Still, he deserved it, and it was improving Rado’s mood from moment to moment. Who was I to interfere? But for this shitty little God-botherer, Chosroes would now be dead and the invasion would be over – and possibly the war as well. And we could be riding off to snatch Antonia at our leisure. Indeed, Shahin would probably hand her over in exchange for my promise of asylum. As it was, the whole upland plain behind us was crawling with mountain cavalry. It was only because the horses were worn out that we were having even this break from our desperate climb out of their reach.

  I stood up and stretched. I walked over to where Theodore was trying to pull out one of his wobbly front teeth. I bent down to him. ‘Listen,’ I said in Syriac, ‘I want you to tell me where you left Priscus. I need to speak with him.’

  He opened his eyes. He burped and more bloody froth covered his mouth. ‘Tell your disgusting catamite,’ he whispered, ‘that I’ve had a vision of him writhing in the lake of black fire. It is a sin to show parts that none should ever see but God. It is a sin to take pleasure in their filthy perfection.’ He tried to spit at me, but knocked his head on a stone, and closed his eyes again.’

  I stood up. ‘No more beating,’ I said firmly. ‘You’ll get nothing out of him when he’s in this state of mind.’ I pressed myself against a big rock and crept along till I could see the army of pursuit that had been set on us. They were all a very long way off.

  ‘We need to sleep,’ I said to Rado. ‘Do you suppose we’ll be safe here until it’s dark again?’ He nodded slowly. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then I’ll take the first watch.’

  ‘You sleep first,’ Eboric said behind me. ‘Leave everything to us.’ I frowned. ‘Sleep, Alaric,’ he said, now very firm. ‘We’ll wake you if anything happens. We need you rested for when there’s more talking to be done.’

  I sat up in the light of a rising moon. ‘I said we’d take turns with the watch,’ I croaked.

  Eboric pushed a water canteen into my hand. ‘There was no reason to wake you,’ Rado said. He patted one of the horses and whispered something in its ear.

  I got up stiffly and looked about. ‘Where is Theodore?’ I asked.

  ‘He ran away just before the sun set,’ Eboric answered.

  I pursed my lips. ‘If you’ve killed him, I’d like to be told the truth,’ I said.

  ‘Eboric’s telling the truth,’ Rado broke in. ‘Theodore said he was hurting all over, so we untied him. While I was getting him some water, he pushed Eboric over and ran towards the grove of trees down there. He was singing a very queer song. He turned round once and shouted back that his master was calling him and that we’d all be punished for our crimes against him.’

  I walked carefully to the beginning of the steep incline. The moon was past its brightest but I already knew which patch of deeper blackness was the grove. ‘You could have gone after him,’ I said to Rado. ‘It’s not a very big grove.’ He and Eboric looked at each other. I sighed. No point in talking about duty. It was only words they couldn’t read, in a language they barely understood, that made him their brother and me his father. As for me, I’d never felt comfortable with Theodore. We’d never shared real confidences or relied on each other. I’d never thought to fall asleep with him close by. I felt a small stab of pity for the boy. But he’d gone off of his own will. Let that be an end of the matter.

  ‘Well, he won’t be able to slow us down,’ I admitted when I finally spoke. It was better than that. If the Persians caught him, they might take him back to Chosroes. That would mean some diminution in the search party for us.

  I sat down beside Rado. I watched Eboric pull out some food they must have stolen in the pass. I looked up at the sky. Some time while I was asleep, the cloud cover had broken into harmless patches. Bright and unwinking, the stars looked down from the clear darkness between the patches. It would be a while before the wolves came out. Until then, the wind was setting up its familiar moan.

  I took a sip of very sweet wine – the sort that’s made for eunuchs. ‘Do you remember how, when you first came to me,’ I began, ‘I said something about instruction in Greek?’ They both nodded. ‘What I then had in mind was enough Greek for boy slaves to make themselves useful. Now that your status is entirely changed, you must learn Greek properly. You must also learn to read and write.’ I reached forward and stroked Eboric’s cheek. ‘None of these things is very hard once you put your mind to it. These modern Greeks are decayed far beyond the level of our own peoples and they can manage a basic literacy when money is there for schooling. You are both young gentlemen now of an exalted status. You mustn’t do anything to let me down in Constantinople.’

  Far behind us, on the wide plain, someone blew a trumpet. He was answered by a chorus of other trumpet sounds. ‘Do you think they’re being called back?’ I asked.

  ‘More like calling everyone together for a conference,’ Rado answered. ‘I’ve heard the Greek armies do this when they’re hunting for slaves. I think they’ll be up here before midnight.’

  ‘Then we’d better move out,’ I said. It would be no good if we were followed all the way to our interception of Shahin.

  It was another sore-backside night. You don’t get speed in the mountains by pushing horses into a gallop. Instead, you keep moving. Rado was taking us round the lower slopes of the mountain I’d seen on my map. I did suggest that going higher would shorten the journey. But that would take us through more of the scrubby wooded areas that both he and Eboric insisted were best avoided by night. Long before morning, they were agreed, we’d come to another of the upland plains. This should let us move quickly forward to a chain of hills and then to the middle point of the Larydia Pass. If they caught sight of us, there was no doubt the Persians would follow us all the way. The point was to keep out of sight while we kept moving. These Persians were the highlanders we’d seen three nights before. They were at least as good as Rado in the mountains. But he was sure we were ahead of them. So long as we weren’t seen, there was a limit to how far they’d move from base. Eventually, they’d have to go back for further orders. I suspected they’d ask these of Shahrbaraz. I also suspected they were too valuable as scouts for even Chosroes to have them boiled in lead.

  We reached the plain around the midnight hour. We’d spent what seemed an age pressing forward and mostly upwards, dark and jagged rocks all about us. Then as abruptly as if we were passing from one room to another, it was quickly downhill to another and more immense flatness. It went on seemingly forever. In daylight, it might be only twenty miles across. In the light of an uncertain moon, it could have been the whole world laid out before us.

  We quickened our pace along a path that ran reasonably straight to the north-east. We were passing by more little villages and larger settlements. All were in darkness. None seemed, though, to have been drawn into the tide of blood that Chosroes had decreed for the Greek inhabitants along his line of march. Either this side of the mountain was too far away for the tide of blood to have reached, or we’d finally come to a district where the new law was in force. It was probably both. Unlike those we’d passed by earlier, these settlements were all surrounded by earth walls.

  Riding behind me, the boys were having another whispered conversation of jokes about nothing I could understand. Suddenly, they stopped moving. It took me a moment to bring my own horse under control. When I turned, they were a dozen yards behind m
e and listening hard.

  Rado slid off his horse and put his ear to the ground. He looked up at me. ‘They’re after us!’ he said. I got off my horse and led it back to where he was still crouching. I looked along the way we’d come. The path shone pale in the moonlight. I could see all the way to the looming blackness of the mountain we’d left far behind. I held my breath and listened. Nothing but the distant howling of wolves carried on the breeze.

  Rado shook his head. ‘I can hear them,’ he said.

  Eboric nodded. He pointed diagonally from where we’d come. ‘They took the longer path round the mountain,’ he said.

  I held my breath again and looked and looked. I looked till spots danced in front of my eyes. Then, just as I was about to turn round and suggest their nerves were overexcited, I saw a very distant glitter. It was the briefest flash of something. I might have put it down to my own nerves or to some trick of the moonlight. But the boys were already taking the horses away from the bright glow of the path.

  My heart was beating fast. ‘Do you think they’ve seen us?’ I asked.

  ‘Hard to say,’ Rado whispered. He looked up at the moon. ‘To be sure, though, we’ll be seen once the dawn is up.’ He jumped back on his horse. ‘We’ll have to risk a canter along the side of the path. If they haven’t seen us yet, they might give up. They are a very long way out from base.’

  Chapter 63

  Once more the leadership passed openly to Rado. Without him in front, it was plain I’d have trouble controlling my speed. Away from the path much of the ground was low-grade turf. What wasn’t spongy puddles was mostly flat stones or low clumps of bramble, invisible in the moonlight. Even at this speed, in the dark, there was a risk that one of the horses would stumble. I gave up on any appearance of controlling my horse and let it tag along behind Rado and Eboric. To our right, the path snaked forward into a distance without obvious end. Looking left, there was the darkness of woods. But they must have been miles away – miles across unknown ground.