The Caspian Gates

by Harry Sidebottom

  An Alan cut down at Ballista from the left. The northerner took the blow on his shield, without looking thrust his sword around the side of it, felt the steel tip catch, kicked on. A nomad in front was yanking his horse around to flee. Ballista smashed the edge of his blade backhanded down into the man’s left shoulder. The pony took off. The nomad toppled into the stony bed of the river. The stones ran red.

  Ballista reined in, checked all around for threats. There were none. Probably half the Alani were down – loose ponies bolting everywhere – the rest were scattered in all directions, hunched low over the necks of their mounts, pushing hard for their individual safety.

  ‘Rally on me,’ Ballista bawled, first in Persian, then in Greek. His voice had been trained over the years to carry across a battlefield. ‘Form one wedge.’

  The Sassanid clibanarii were good warriors. None spurred off in mindless pursuit. Within moments, they were jingling into formation. The thirty or so Suani were slower, some had to canter back from the beginnings of a chase. But soon they began to fall in behind.

  Ballista looked back towards the village. A ragged column of Suani warriors on foot was jogging out. Castricius had them in hand.

  ‘At the trot, advance.’

  Almost at once they rode into the wall of fog. The world was reduced to a few yards of shifting greyness. Sounds – the snort of a horse, the clink of metal touching metal – were muted. The air smelt of mist, water, wet stone and damp horse. It was like riding into the demesne of some bleak underworld.

  Ballista glanced over each shoulder. Rutilus on one side, Maximus the other; serried ranks of Sassanids behind. The fog pearled on beards and cloaks. The damned croaking of frogs started up – brekeke-kek, ko-ax, ko-ax. From further away came an indistinct roaring, like surf on a rocky shore.

  Ballista flinched. With a whir of wings, a flock of white doves dived out of the mist. They wheeled just over the column, and were gone. Shouts, curses from the rear. Ballista turned to the Persian officer tucked in behind him. ‘Pass the word for silence.’

  ‘Those birds are unclean. Like lepers, they must be driven out,’ the Persian said.

  ‘Surprise is our only hope. We must not let them know we are coming.’

  The order to be quiet hissed back through the ranks.

  The roaring was getting louder, sharp sounds within it becoming distinct.

  ‘Not far now,’ Ballista muttered.

  Rutilus leant forward, whispered near Ballista’s ear, ‘Hamazasp can take us in the rear.’

  Ballista actually laughed. ‘Allfather, I hope not.’ He stopped laughing. ‘It depends how active is his treachery; how brave he feels. I think he will wait and see who wins.’

  A black, moving mass appeared ahead through the vapour; not above fifty yards. The clash of weapons, yells, and screams of men and horses. Ballista flung up his hand. They halted, automatically dressed their ranks. Ballista turned in the saddle. ‘We are there,’ he said softly. ‘They are still fighting. We are in time. Now – on my word, ride hard, but keep closed up, stop for nothing. Our infantry will be here to add their weight soon.’

  ‘Now!’

  They moved off at a walk and went straight up to a close-in-hand canter. The noise of fighting swelled.

  Even the Alani at the very rear did not see or hear them coming. The nomads were too noisily intent on the trapped Sassanid warriors in a tight-wedged knot beneath the lilac standard. The Alani were circling, pouring arrows in from all sides, from every trajectory.

  The first of the Alani Ballista killed literally never knew what hit him. He had just released an arrow, was reaching for another, when Ballista’s sword caved in the back of his skull. Ballista neatly retrieved his weapon. The next man looked around, an arrow notched in his bowstring. Ballista’s heavy blade smashed bow, arrow, hands to ruin. The Nisean stallion barrelled a pony aside. Ballista forged on. Behind him welled up a chant of ‘Peroz, Peroz.’ In front rose cries of fright.

  A warrior with a shaggy sheepskin cap sliced at Ballista. Long training let the northerner watch the blade, take it on his own, roll his wrist to force it wide, and repost; all one fluid movement. The nomad jerked back. Not far enough – the steel sliced across his face. The blood sprayed into Ballista’s eyes; hot, stinging. Half blinded, Ballista finished the man with two chopping blows.

  Ballista kicked on. He wiped his eyes, and his Nisean went down. He used a horn of the saddle to push himself off, throwing himself away from his falling horse. The ground rushed up. He landed awkwardly. His helmet rang on a stone. The great weight of the stallion crashed beside him.

  Ballista tried to get up. Stay on the ground, and he would die. Sharp hooves were stamping all around. A wave of nausea engulfed him. His legs gave way. Curling up tight, his arms covering his head, the blackness overtook him.

  Ballista did not know how long he had been unconscious – he was still in the same position – probably but moments. Legs straddled him. He groped for his sword. It was gone: the wrist loop must have snapped. He looked up. His eyes were gummed with blood; he did not know if it was his own. Maximus and Rutilus, back to back, stood over him. Suani warriors on foot ran past. They were cheering, laughing with the courage that comes from spearing fleeing enemies in the back.

  ‘This time it is over,’ Rutilus said. ‘They are broken.’

  Ballista was helped to his feet by Maximus. As if from a great distance, he heard ‘Peroz, Peroz.’ He drew a deep breath, made to give orders to keep some men together in case Hamazasp tried anything. The nausea rushed up to his throat, his mouth – a cloying, oily taste of burnt almonds. He got back on his hands and knees, and painfully started to throw up.

  Peroz! Peroz!

  XXXII

  Prince Narseh and Azo, the man who would be king of Suania, were regarding the Caspian Gates. It was a desolate sight. Ballista’s reconstruction had not been completed before the Alani arrived. During their siege of Cumania, the nomads had removed and burnt all the woodwork from the Gates. They had even begun to demolish the stone gate across the track at the eastern end.

  Yet, despite their ruinous state, the Caspian Gates had been a choke point in the rout of the nomads. The path down which Ballista rode towards the royal entourage had been mainly cleared of the dead, but they were everywhere else. Sassanid work parties were busy. They were gathering their own dead, treating them with respect, getting them ready for exposure to the birds of the air, as was the Zoroastrian way. Things were different with the corpses of the Alani and those Suani who had fallen supporting Saurmag. Stripped naked, sometimes mutilated, they were unceremoniously being thrown into piles out in the valley. It was the natural order, Ballista thought, for some things to be stacked: sheaves of wheat, amphorae, barrels. Corpses were not in that category. The pallid, blue-white tangles of limbs were grotesque. They said something deeply troubling about the inhumanity of mankind.

  Ballista climbed down from the saddle, passed Maximus the reins. Narseh and Azo turned to him. Ballista bowed to each, blew them a kiss. If he had performed full proskynesis, he was not sure he could have got up again unaided. He was still dizzy; the taste of bile and burnt almonds remained strong in his gorge.

  ‘Ballista, Framadar.’ Narseh stepped forward. He was smiling, but his dark eyes were melancholy. ‘Nasu, the very daemon of death.’ He embraced the northerner; kissed him on each cheek, the eyes, the lips. His blue-black beard rasped across Ballista’s face. ‘I am in your debt. Your intervention turned the battle. It broke the Alani. Maybe, in the mist, they thought the numbers with you larger. We will never know.’ The prince stepped back, studied Ballista. ‘I was told you took a bad fall. Are you hurt?’

  ‘I will live.’ Ballista smiled. ‘But, I am afraid, I cannot return the charger Gondofarr lent to me.’

  ‘Gondofarr is dead.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Tir-mihr is badly wounded. Our losses are heavy.’

  ‘How badly wounded?’

  ‘He has been
carried to the village. It will be as Mazda decrees. The mobad will send word.’

  ‘Hamazasp betrayed us.’

  Narseh rubbed his eyes; the gesture of a tired man. ‘His Iberians fought well. His man Ztathius was killed.’

  ‘He sacrificed them. He was not ill. He was waiting to see who won.’

  ‘There is no proof.’

  ‘When the Alani sprung the ambush, the Iberians in the village were not surprised. Hamazasp must have been forewarned.’

  ‘He has sent his congratulations. We must leave things as they are.’ Narseh lapsed into silence.

  Azo took Ballista into his arms, kissed him. The Suani prince was laughing. Unlike Narseh, the death of his men did not seem heavy on him. ‘I am doubly in your debt. Both for today and for when my snake of a brother and his barbaric allies rode up the pass. Saurmag would have taken me, if your men had not welcomed me into Cumania. Although “welcome” might not be quite the right word. Fifty-one days is a long time confined with your man Calgacus. Does he ever stop moaning? And the Greek called Hippothous – he has a most disconcerting habit of staring at one.’

  ‘They are the companions the gods have given me.’

  ‘If I were you, I would worship at new shrines.’

  ‘What happened to Saurmag?’

  A cloud of anger passed over Azo’s face. ‘He escaped north to the steppe. I saw him pass. From the battlements, my arrow killed one of the traitors who rode at his side.’ The Suanian brightened. ‘A temporary reprieve. I will close the passes next spring. With his subjects unable to cross south for the summer pasture and unable to trade for iron and salt, a suitable gift should induce the chief of the Alani to hand Saurmag over.’

  ‘And then things will not go well for him.’

  ‘As you say, things will go badly for Saurmag at my hands.’ Azo’s eyes were dancing. ‘There was another I had intended to suffer. But a man who helped put the diadem on the king’s head should perhaps be allowed certain intimacies with the royal family.’

  Ballista said nothing. Your whole family is rotten to the core, Ballista thought.

  ‘Your own household is waiting for you in the fort,’ Narseh said.

  ‘You took your fucking time,’ Calgacus said.

  ‘How was it?’ Ballista asked. They were alone on the steps of Cumania.

  ‘I have had better times. At first Azo hardly spoke. But since a Suanian sneaked into the fort a few days ago with the news that you and Narseh were coming, the little shite has never drawn breath. He has an inventive mind when it comes to torture. Good job he has got used to the idea of you fucking his sister.’

  ‘How are the others?’

  ‘Waiting inside. Young Wulfstan is strong. Hippothous is off his head – does nothing but stare at people and mutter about physiognomy telling him the future. Fuck me, another few days and I would have had to kill him.’

  The eunuch Mastabates came down the steps. He had a gold-trimmed ivory codicil in his hands. ‘Ave, Marcus Clodius Ballista, Vir Ementissimus.’ He spoke formally in Latin.

  ‘What is that?’

  Mastabates handed it to Ballista. ‘Your new mandata.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your new mandata. Signed by the hand of the pious, invincible Augustus Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus himself.’

  ‘How did you get this?’

  The eunuch said nothing.

  ‘You have had it all the time?’

  Mastabates acknowledged this with a dip of the head. ‘My instructions were to give you this when your mission in Suania was complete.’

  ‘And it is?’

  ‘Without doubt. The first task was to ensure that the nomads were contained beyond the Caspian Gates. That you accomplished today. But the other half was to win back the peoples of the Caucasus to Rome. There is a Persian army at the Gates. The kings of Albania, Iberia and Suania have never been more under the influence of the Sassanids. You, Rutilus and Castricius can hardly be said to have succeeded. Still, you have not failed as spectacularly as the noble senator sent to Abasgia.’

  ‘What happened to Felix?’

  ‘He has been expelled from Abasgia for being an accomplice to attempted murder. He is lucky to be alive. My colleague Eusebius was apprehended trying to kill King Spadagas.’

  ‘Why?’

  Mastabates gave a thin smile. ‘What would you do to the man who castrated you for money?’

  ‘He did not succeed?’

  ‘No, but he died well.’

  ‘Did Felix help him?’

  ‘I very much doubt it.’

  Ballista opened and read the codicil. ‘The Heruli?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have to go to the north-east of the Black Sea, beyond Maeotis?’

  ‘Up the Tanais river.’

  ‘Out on to the sea of grass?’

  ‘A not altogether pleasing destination,’ Mastabates agreed. ‘But you will have Castricius and Rutilus as companions. And, I fear, I am ordered to accompany you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His imperial majesty did not divulge his thinking to me, but I assume that you, like an Abasgian eunuch such as myself, are supremely expendable.’

  Pythonissa came to the chamber at the top of the fort of Cumania where Ballista was going to spend the night. This time there were no carpets, no flirtatious subterfuge. She dismissed her men outside, walked in and told Wulfstan to leave. The boy had been bandaging Ballista’s various grazes from his fall. She did not offer to take over.

  ‘When did you intend to tell me?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Ballista said.

  ‘When are you leaving?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Take me with you.’

  Ballista had been dreading this since he had been given the mandata. If he were honest with himself, he had been dreading this since the start.

  ‘No. I have a wife.’

  ‘Take another wife.’

  ‘It is not permitted among my people.’ It came out easily. It was close to the truth. He had rehearsed it.

  ‘I have read Tacitus. Leading men among the German tribes can have more than one wife.’

  ‘I am not a German any longer. I am Marcus Clodius Ballista, a Roman equestrian. I live in Sicily with my wife. Romans have one wife.’

  ‘Gallienus has taken a second wife.’

  Ballista smiled – rueful, placating; he was not sure which. ‘Emperors do not encourage their subjects to follow all their practices. Anyway, Pippa is not a wife but a concubine.’

  ‘Take me with you as a concubine.’

  ‘It would not answer. You would not be content. Anyway, I am ordered to travel to the nomads.’

  Pythonissa came close. ‘Take me with you.’

  ‘You will be better here. Without your help, your brother would not have reached the throne. He will be grateful, find you the sort of match you seek.’

  Pythonissa waved the idea away angrily. ‘Gratitude does not run in my family. Take me with you.’

  ‘No.’ There – it was said.

  ‘I saved your life.’ Her blue-grey eyes looked into his. ‘I love you.’

  ‘There is nothing to be done.’

  She stepped away – tall, straight-backed, angry. ‘They told me you were sick on the battlefield. Did you think I had poisoned you?’

  ‘It crossed my mind. I thought my usefulness might have ended.’

  ‘I wish I had.’ She turned and left the room.

  Under a lowering sky, Ballista led the small column south up the pass towards Dikaiosyne. It was an oddly assorted company: six fighting men in Roman armour, three eunuchs, eight slaves and a Suanian called Tarchon who would not be left behind – eighteen horsemen with five baggage animals.

  It was raining. Groups of Sassanids paused from the grisly work of sorting cadavers and watched them pass. Nothing was said.

  The path ran through the village. The horses stepped carefully in the mud of the alleys. The blank, forbidding walls of the towers w
ere black in the rain. They came out into the village square. She was there. Dressed in black, standing in the rain, hair unbound. Standing by the Mouth of the Impious.

  Ballista reined in.

  Pythonissa did not look at Ballista. She stretched her hands down to the earth. ‘Hecate triple-formed, who walks the night, hear my curse. Vengeful furies, punishers of sinners, black torches in your bloody hands, hear my curse.’

  Now she turned her blue-grey eyes on him. ‘Kill his wife. Kill his sons. Kill all his family, all those he loves. But do not kill him. Let him live – in poverty, in impotence, loneliness and fear. Let him wander the face of the earth, through strange towns, among strange peoples, always in exile, homeless and hated.’

  Appendix

  Historical Afterword

  At the end of his wonderful Human Traces (2005), Sebastian Faulks writes that he does ‘not think that novels should contain bibliographies … as though all art aspired to the condition of a student essay’. However, in that case, he made an exception, and the discussion of his sources runs for seven pages. Undoubtedly, he has a point. But the classical pedant in me has an affinity for lists – in my books and in others’ – and I always like to make an exception.

  History and Fiction

  As with all the Warrior of Rome novels, I have worked hard to try to make the underlying history as accurate as possible – the geopolitics, the Realien (clothes, weapons, food, and the like) and the Mentalités. (And what could be a surer sign of scholarship than delineating two concepts with words from two foreign languages in one sentence?) But, as always in these novels, the story in the foreground is fiction. After the Sassanids’ victory over Valerian in the battle ‘beyond Edessa’ (most probably in AD260), the influence of the Sassanids in the kingdoms of the Caucasus seems to have increased. Both Shapur and the mobad Kirder later boasted in inscriptions of their successes there. Archaeological finds of Sassanid silverware from the period in the region have plausibly been interpreted as diplomatic gifts (see Braund, below, under ‘The Caucasus’, pp. 242–3). We have no evidence of Roman efforts to counter this – unsurprising, given the general paucity of evidence – although we know that missions were sent at other times. Similarly, there is no evidence of an attempt by the Alani to force the Caspian Gates at this point in history, although they did try on other occasions (e.g. see Arrian’s small work Expedition against the Alani).