Warrior of Rome III

by Harry Sidebottom

  They struggled, feet slipping, too close to use their weapons. Ballista was aware of the second attacker getting up from the ground. The man Ballista was grappling with tried to bite his nose. Ballista twisted away. The teeth tore at his cheek. The blood felt hot. The fingers of the man’s left hand were clawing for Ballista’s eyes. The northerner slammed the heel of his right boot down on the man’s instep. His grip slackened. Ballista broke free, with his left hand drew the dagger from his right hip, stabbed it hard into the man’s crotch.

  The last attacker on his feet began to back away. Ballista moved carefully towards him. The man turned and ran. Ballista was after him. The man lost his footing in the mud. He sprawled forward. Ballista was on him, driving the point of his blade down into his back.

  Ballista got up quickly. No sound of steel on steel. No fighting. Some low sobbing and a high-pitched wailing. A few paces off, a dark figure moved, a bit shorter than Ballista. The blur of its sword glinted in the firelight as it chopped down again and again. Of course Maximus was fine.

  Ballista walked back to his two injured opponents down on the ground. Bracing his boots in the mud, he killed both of them. There was no point in keeping them alive. He did not speak their language, could not interrogate them. He was not in the mood to try.

  Ballista retrieved his dagger from the dead man’s crotch. He wiped its blade and that of his sword, sheathed them.

  ‘Sure, but you cannot say that was not fun.’ Maximus was beaming.

  ‘You really are a heartless, violent bastard.’ But Ballista could feel the post-battle euphoria seeping through him. He was alive, unhurt. He had done well, not let himself down, nor anyone else. Yes, in a horrible way, Maximus was right: Ballista had enjoyed it.

  ‘Do you think there will be any more of them along?’ asked Maximus.

  ‘No idea. But it would be a bugger trying to light a fire down on that track on a night like this. Go and get the troopers to carry the miserable old bastard up here.’

  Maximus turned to go.

  ‘And hoot like an owl when you come back, to make sure I do not kill you.’

  ‘As if you could.’

  ‘As if I could,’ said Ballista.

  It rained on and off all night, but no more brigands appeared out of the darkness. Ballista and his men built up the fire. Sheltering him with their cloaks, they changed Calgacus out of his wet things, massaged him with some oil they had heated, put him in the driest clothes that could be found in the soldiers’ packs. They gave him something hot to drink and drank some themselves. The old Caledonian complained a lot – an impressive range of obscenities in a variety of languages. He would be all right.

  The morning came up fine; there were just the retreating, tattered remnants of the storm clouds. They went back down to the track and followed it without incident up to Arbela. The village was spectacularly sited on the edge of a cliff. Both units of troops were waiting.

  Rutilus made his report. There had been a half-hearted attack just before his column had reached the village. Two troopers had been wounded, neither seriously. Only one dead bandit had been left behind. They had stormed into Arbela at first light. It was deserted. Miraculously, after a lengthy night march, Lerus’s legionaries had arrived within half an hour.

  ‘The mission was compromised from the start,’ said Ballista. ‘No wonder they had all disappeared.’

  Rutilus smiled. ‘Some of them have not gone very far.’

  The tall prefect led Ballista to the edge of the cliff. The view was incredible. Down to the right, the northern end of Lake Tiberias was spread out, shining blue under the winter sun. Straight ahead, far away in the distance, was the snow-capped summit of Mount Hermon. It must have been fifty miles or more away.

  On top of the cliff, the wind buffeted them. Ballista looked down. There was a sheer drop of two, three hundred feet of jagged grey rock. Below that, a gentler incline of about the same height. The lower slope had some green cover. A few pale-grey paths graded up it to the foot of the rockface. The tiny figures of Roman soldiers moved down at the bottom of it.

  ‘There are caves in the cliff,’ said Rutilus. ‘Some of the brigands have taken refuge in them. We cannot get at them from below. The paths are too steep and narrow. A child could tip stones down and sweep our men off.’

  Ballista looked at the cliff, the slope, the valley below, and the opposite cliffs. The latter were too far away – nothing of use there. He turned and regarded the clifftop: the few bent trees, the village of well-built houses, a synagogue at one end.

  ‘We could starve them out,’ suggested Rutilus. ‘Although,’ he added, ‘we do not know how well they are provisioned.’

  ‘No,’ said Ballista. ‘Sitting here doing nothing seems weak. If we show weakness, every bandit in Galilee will be on us.’

  They stood, gazing down at the pitted rocks, the dry bits of vegetation that offered no safe handholds. Suddenly Ballista laughed. Rutilus looked inquiringly at him.

  ‘The village – tear it down, have the men collect all the timber, anything of a decent length. Have you sent for the horses? Good. When they come, send men down to the town of Tiberias on the lake. It is a port of sorts. There must be ropes and chains there. Collect all of them. And gearing oil and pitch, get a lot of pitch. Also send men back to Caporcotani. Collect bows from the arsenal in the legionary fortress. Not many, about forty or fifty. And a mobile forge – Legio VI should have more than one.’

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

  ‘We are going to build two or three cranes up here on the top of the cliff. We will lower bowmen down in cages. They will burn the brigands out with fire arrows.’

  Now Rutilus laughed. ‘Dominus, that is brilliant.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Unfortunately, it is not my idea. A client king of Rome had trouble with bandits – it must have been here or nearby. Josephus in his History of the Jewish War tells us what he did. You see, a man who reads history is often prepared.’

  It took eight days for the preparations to be complete. In the end, available materials dictated that only one crane was built. None of the soldiers was in a hurry to volunteer – it was amazing how few of them admitted any skill with a bow – until Ballista announced that the men in the cage would get a cash incentive comparable to that given to those in a storming party at a siege.

  Ballista had never suffered from a fear of heights. That was just as well. The cage rocked horribly as it was swung out over the void. The rockwall looked sharp and unforgiving. The valley was a long way down.

  Not a sound came from the well-oiled winches, but inevitably the timber creaked and the ropes seemed to hum with tension as the cage began its jerky descent. Once, a gust of wind threatened to smash the flimsy wooden cage against the cliff face. Ballista clung grimly to the bars. The five soldiers with him cursed or prayed as the mood took them.

  Ballista glanced down at the vertiginous drop. Ant-like figures were scurrying up the paths. With luck, the brigands in the caves would be too distracted by the soldiers arriving from above like a deus ex machina to interfere with the ones below.

  The mouth of the first cave was a rough black oval in the pink-grey rocks. It was too dark to see far inside. Ballista half-saw movement. He ordered his men to shoot. Moving cautiously, they handed round the one guttering torch and lit the pitch-soaked rags tied around their arrowheads. A word of command and the missiles streaked away. Before the thin, oily trails of smoke had dissipated, there were screams from the cave.

  ‘Surrender,’ Ballista yelled in Greek. ‘Any old men, women, children will be spared.’

  There was no answer. Ballista tried again in Latin. Still no answer. He indicated for another volley. He glanced down. The ascending troops still had a very long way to climb. Looking back, he noticed a faint glow in the cave. Something in there must be alight.

  A figure emerged from the depths of the cave. Ballista indicated to his archers not to shoot. The man – in middle
age, smartly dressed – looked contemptuously across at the soldiers. He had a drawn sword in his hand.

  ‘Lay down your weapon,’ Ballista shouted in Greek. ‘Give yourselves up. Women, children, the elderly – all will be spared.’

  The man actually laughed. ‘Is nowhere safe from you Romans – not even the humblest village, the most remote cave?’ He spoke in educated Greek. ‘Even your own writers admit that you create a desert and call it peace.’

  The incongruity of it struck Ballista – he was dangling halfway down a cliff and a Jewish brigand was quoting Tacitus to him in perfect Attic Greek.

  ‘Show yourself a man,’ Ballista called. ‘Give yourself up and save your loved ones.’

  ‘I will show you I am a man.’ He turned and shouted back into the cave in a language Ballista did not know – presumably Hebrew or Aramaic.

  A woman came out, leading a boy, no more than ten. The man took the boy’s hand. The woman fell to her knees, alternately clutching at the boy and the man’s knees. Sobbing, she implored him in the language he had used.

  The man spoke brusquely to her, waved her away. Reluctantly, she shuffled backwards.

  The man ruffled the boy’s hair. He talked tenderly to him. Then he seized the boy’s chin, yanked it back. The sword flashed. It is not easy to cut someone’s throat. The boy tried to wrench free. The man had to saw the blade across his neck repeatedly. Blood soaked the child, the man’s arm. The boy writhed and then slumped. The man pitched the pathetic corpse out into the abyss. It fell, thumping into the cruel rocks.

  Ballista and the soldiers stared in silent horror. This Jew was like no bandit they had ever encountered.

  Once more the man shouted into the cave. He was answered by wailing. He shouted again, angrily.

  The fire in the cave must have spread. This time, as the woman led out another, younger child, they were backlit by a hellish orange glow.

  Ballista whispered to the soldier next to him: ‘Shoot him.’

  The man tried to force his wife away. She clung on. He tore her hands from the child. Still gripping her wrists, he swung her around, her sandals off the ground. One push and she was gone. The scream was cut off when she first hit the cliff.

  Next to Ballista, the archer waited to get a clear shot.

  The little boy – too young to understand – wobbled on immature legs. Allfather, he could only be two – the same age as Dernhelm. The father reached for him.

  Intent on his murderous defiance, the man did not see the arrow coming. As he straightened up, it hit him square in the chest. He was pitched backwards, hands clutching at the fletching protruding from his body.

  Ballista yelled up to the crew of the crane, some fifty foot above his head. ‘Take us in!’

  For long moments nothing happened. The child teetered, terribly near the drop. The fire burned in the cave. The cage jerked as the pulleys bit. It swung towards the cave mouth.

  Ballista climbed up on the rail. He waited, judging the moment. He did not look down. A couple of paces away, he jumped.

  The wind was knocked out of Ballista as his stomach hit the lip of the cave. His weight, that of his armour, began to pull him backwards. His fingers tore at the rocky ground, feet scrabbling a shower of stones. The child shied away from him – the little feet inches from oblivion.

  Ballista hauled himself up, lunged across the cave mouth, grabbed the boy around the waist.

  The wooden cage bumped against the rockface. The soldiers leapt out. Drawing their swords, they went into the cave.

  ‘Only the men,’ Ballista shouted. ‘Only the men.’ He hugged the wailing child.

  Julia was standing by a window in the imperial palace on the island at Antioch. It was nearing the end of a gentle spring night. The stars were not yet paling, but soon the eastern sky would start to lighten.

  It was the night before the ides of May. It should have been more than warm enough to leave the windows open, yet there was a chill to the breeze blowing down the Orontes. Julia could feel it drying the sweat on her body.

  She was tired. She took a last look around. The moonlight rendered the room almost two-dimensional, tried to make it unreal. But she knew it would always have a terrible reality in her memories. She would never be able to forget this night before the ides of May.

  As quietly as she could, Julia crossed the room and slipped through the door. Outside, expensive lamps in niches gave a soft light. She ignored an imperial a Cubiculo. She blushed as she felt the chamberlain’s eyes on her, sensed his prurient interest. Some way down the corridor, beyond the guards, Anthia, her maid, was asleep on a divan.

  Pulling her veil over her head, trying to walk as if it was a normal night, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, Julia passed the Praetorian guards. She could feel their eyes on her too. Had the sounds travelled this far?

  Anthia woke at once. ‘Is everything all right?’

  How could anything be all right after what had happened? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is time to go.’

  The imperial palace was a labyrinth of passages. At this hour of the morning, they were largely deserted. Having been forced to live there with her familia for months, Julia knew the way without thinking. The two women walked in silence.

  Could she have stopped it? Could anything have stopped it? Myths were full of gods and goddesses intervening at the last moment to save girls and nymphs from other deities. A few miles from here stood the very laurel tree that Daphne had been transformed into a moment before Apollo would have had her. But the gods do not exist. Anyway, even in the myths, they seemed only to save young virgins.

  There were stories that did not involve any gods. Greek girls drowned themselves in rivers, stern Roman patriarchs cut down their own daughters, but neither situation applied to her. Her father was dead, and she had been trapped in a heavily guarded first-floor dining room with adjoining bedroom. And the threat had been to her children. Dead, she could not have protected them.

  She had tried to talk to him, to reason with him. Quietus’s father needed her husband to command their forces; Quietus himself needed Ballista to oversee the troops in the east, for his own safety. The odious young man, his hands pawing, had shrugged her arguments aside. His father would triumph in the west. The imperium reunited, any need for Ballista was gone. She should think of her future, of her children’s future. She and they would need a protector when Ballista was dead. They needed protection now – an emperor’s will was law.

  Trying to fend off his hands, she had persevered. What if Macrianus did not win? The advance expedition to the west under Piso had gone completely wrong. First Piso had withdrawn to Thessaly, where he had declared himself emperor, then he had been killed by Valens, the governor of Achaea, who was loyal to Gallienus. What if Macrianus did not come back?

  Quietus had just giggled. There was, he had said, a sculpture in Cilicia set up by the great Assyrian king Sardanapallus. It represented the fingers of the right hand snapping. The inscription on it read: ‘Eat, drink, fuck; everything else is not worth this.’

  For a moment Quietus had looked serious. Yes, if his father failed, it would be the end – the end of all things. Yet just as old Sardanapallus had taught how to live, so he showed how to die. He would gather all the things that had given him pleasure. The silks and jewels, the spices and inlaid furniture, he would have them heaped up. The women he had enjoyed and the horses he had ridden would be sacrificed on the pyre. Then, from a high place, he would throw himself into the conflagration.

  Julia saw that Quietus was not joking. She was sure he was mad.

  As he pulled her off the dining couch and led her to the room next door, he recited poetry:

  ‘For I too am dust, though I have reigned over great Nineveh. Mine are all the food that I have eaten, and my wild indulgences and the sex that I have enjoyed; but those numerous blessings have been left behind.’

  Should she have fought him? She had pushed him away from her face when he tried to force her to do something n
o decent Roman matron should do. He had slapped her hard and asked in a hiss if she would like him to order some Praetorians to come in and hold her down. There was a full contubernium of ten men on duty tonight; he was sure they would all like to take turns with her when he had finished. She had done what he wanted. Her reluctance seemed to increase Quietus’s pleasure in the act.

  She had asked him to put out the lamps. Quietus had laughed: even the most respectable Roman matron lets the lights burn so her husband can admire her on their first night. Surely she would not deny her emperor, her dominus, the pleasure of gazing at the shrine where he was worshipping? A shrine defiled by a barbarian, but now being reconquered for Rome.

  Julia tried to push the physical from her mind. What should she do now? Of course, early Rome provided a stern exemplum – did it not always? Raped by one of the sons of Tarquinius Superbus, the noble Lucretia had killed herslf. Why? She herself had said that only her body was defiled, her soul was not guilty. Her husband and her father had agreed; guilt fell not on the victim but on the rapist; the mind sins, not the body. It had made no difference. Lucretia was her own harshest judge. She absolved herself from guilt, but not from punishment. In the future, no unchaste woman would live, thanks to the precedent of Lucretia.

  Julia had not tried to kill herself before being raped, and she had no intention of following the precedent of Lucretia now. Julia had submitted to protect her children. She was not going to stop protecting them now. She would just have to carry on as if nothing had happened.

  Could she keep it quiet? Rhea, raped by a river-god, had killed herself in case her blush betrayed her to the mob as an adulteress. Ridiculous, thought Julia. It showed the weakness of Rhea, that she let her body betray her by blushing. And it indicated her stupidity – first to equate a woman who had been raped with an adulteress, and then to care what the unwashed plebs thought.