The inside of the women’s quarters of the palace of the king of Emesa would have confirmed every prejudice against the Orient of every stern Roman moralist of old. Cincinnatus would have fled back to his plough. Cato the Censor would have had apoplexy.
The room was bathed in a lurid red light. There was an almost overpowering smell of perfume and wine. The emperor Quietus lay on a couch. The priest-king reclined against his chest. Both men were half naked. Quietus absent-mindedly toyed with Sampsigeramus’s hair. On another couch, the emperor’s cousin Macer lay on his back unconscious. An equally comatose girl lay across him.
In the gloom at the rear of the room was an enormous bed. Girls moved in the shadows behind it. Four more slept on it. They were naked apart from the odd wisp of material, limbs sprawled in abandonment. Another girl had collapsed and lay with the crushed flowers and spilt wine on the floor.
Ballista started to make the daily report. It was a carefully worded thing, keeping to the official line and troop numbers. Even so, Quietus clearly was not interested. He quickly interrupted.
‘It is written in the stars that this is a turning point for us. The gods turn their anger on the camel herder of Palmyra. The storm howls around Odenathus’s impious ears.’
Ballista broke the ensuing silence. ‘Dominus, the storm is unlikely to delay the Palmyrenes for long, not more than a day.’
‘They say Odenathus has a beautiful wife.’ Quietus’s voice was reflective. ‘I will enjoy her when he is defeated.’
Sampsigeramus giggled knowingly.
Rutilus spoke. ‘Dominus, Odenathus will be here by dusk tomorrow.’
Quietus ignored him.
‘We will form a new legion.’ Suddenly the emperor sat up, full of manic energy. ‘Legio XXXI Macriana Victrix. Its symbol will be the symbol of my family, the image of Alexander the Great. My father always said that those who wear the likeness of the Macedonian are aided in all they do. It will be the same with the legion. After its first victory, we will add the title “Invictus”. Rutilus, conscript men from Emesa, and make up the numbers with drafts from the existing legions.’
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready,’ said Rutilus.
Quietus looked momentarily downcast. ‘Treachery all around me. Maeonius Astyanax – my father trusted him. Now Pomponius Bassus – he will lead no army down the Euphrates.’
With no warning, the emperor brightened. ‘But it is of no account, none at all. My Princeps Peregrinorum has arranged everything.’ He looked over to where Macer lay, stunned by alcohol. The emperor laughed fondly. ‘Before he took his deserved rest – otium must always follow negotium, it is the ancestral Roman way – my beloved cousin sent envoys bearing princely gifts to the leader of the Arab confederation of the deep desert. Jadhima of the Tanukh will ride at the head of his horde. The Arabs will fall on Odenathus, scatter his army like chaff on the threshing floor.’
The news was received in silence. The officers tried not to give away their feelings. The idea that any confederation of Arabs could ever come out of the desert and defeat a regular army in open battle was too ridiculous for words.
Rutilus tried again. ‘Dominus, our scouts say the storm will blow out quickly. Odenathus will be here by dusk tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow, the day after, it makes no difference.’ Quietus waved a hand at Ballista. ‘The night he arrives, you will lead a raid into the heart of his camp. If you cannot bring him to me alive, you will bring me his head. It will be finished.’
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’
And Odenathus will be ready too, thought Ballista. Now a collection of Emesene guards and palace girls know of the plan. Odenathus knew what he was about. He would have spies in the palace.
‘By the next dawn, the Lion of the Sun will be dead,’ Quietus added softly, ‘or others will suffer.’
Night and not enough darkness. The flames of the torches sawed in the wind. The orange glow illuminated the inside of the Palmyra Gate. Only at the very top of the tall arch night still held sway. Lower down, the sculptures of the eagle, altar and conical stone of Elagabalus were thrown into shifting heavy relief. Below them, the palimpsest of graffiti – thanks to the god for safe arrivals or pleas for help getting across the desert unharmed – was almost legible.
Night and far too much noise. The five hundred or so Praetorians gathering for the raid stamped their feet against the chill breeze, or just out of boredom. The unbound hobnails of their boots rang on the paving stones. There was a continual jingle and chink of equipment; several thousand metallic awards for valour, and good-luck charms hung on their harnesses. There was a low buzz of talk. One or two groups were passing around wine-skins.
Disciplina was not good in the army of Quietus. But there was a deeper reason for the men’s behaviour. The Praetorians had been seconded from the eastern legions, and they had a reputation among officers for lack of disciplina. How could it be otherwise? Their camps were not in bleak frontier fastnesses like Caledonia or Germania but near comfortable towns. Sometimes they were even billeted in the towns themselves. And the towns were eastern. Most of the men had been recruited locally. At bottom, they were easterners, with all that implied about insolence and loose living.
No one had told the Praetorians to bind rags round their hobnails, to take off their charms. No one had ordered them to stop talking or drinking. There was no absolute certainty of being obeyed. Ask any legionary or auxiliary out on the frontier – the Praetorians were overpaid, arrogant and pampered; all plumes and sashes; parade-ground soldiers, useless in a fight.
Ignoring the commotion, Ballista leant against the wall. He pulled an old black cloak around himself and shut his eyes. The usual smell of Roman soldiers: unwashed men, with undernotes of garlic, cheap perfume and sour wine. Once – when the centurion and his men had come to the hall of his father – it had been alien and frightening. Now – twenty-three winters later – it was homely and reassuring. Like everything else we think innate, the evocations of smell are often shaped by circumstances outside our control.
Ballista found himself thinking about Turpio. His old friend had boasted of a particularly keen sense of smell. Ballista wondered what scents had come to Turpio five years earlier as he had waited under another gate to Palmyra, the one at Arete, to lead a mission with a different target but the same aim. Turpio had so nearly taken the Persian King of Kings unaware in his tent. But he had not. All he had taken was a golden bracelet. And years later, it had proved his death.
For mortals, mortal things. And all things leave us.
Or if they do not, then we leave them.
The lines ran through Ballista’s mind. Turpio had been fond of modern poetry, but Ballista had no intention of letting this nocturnal raid be the death of him.
‘Have a rest, you poor little thing.’ Calgacus puffed up and put down the two lanterns he was carrying. ‘After tonight, we may have all fucking eternity to rest.’
Somewhere in the town, dogs were barking. In Aeneas Tacticus’s book on defending a town under siege, the general was advised that, to avoid noise and confusion, all dogs, strays and otherwise, should be rounded up and killed. Ballista had read the book at least twice. In this town, he had not acted on that piece of advice.
‘Here comes Jucundus,’ said Calgacus.
Ballista opened his eyes.
Jucundus marched up and saluted. The noise from the Praetorians had dropped appreciably with his arrival. Jucundus was solid dependability personified. He reported his men ready; a column five wide and a hundred deep to pass through the gate; once outside, they would redeploy ten wide.
Ballista thanked him. They waited for Castricius.
The sometime convict now Prefect of Cavalry came down the steps from the artillery platform two at a time. The stone-thrower and the two bolt-throwers were ready. Ballista thanked him.
The northerner drew Jucundus close to quietly explain the stratagem, for
should Ballista fall, Jucundus must carry it out. The artillery pieces were drawn back but unloaded. At night you could seldom see the missiles fly. If the raid got into trouble, these two blue lanterns should be hoisted. Castricius would release the artillery – they sound the same whether they are loaded or not. With luck, Odenathus’s men would think they were being shot at – there is little more frightening than incoming missiles you cannot see – and retreat out of range. It had worked before with the Persians at the siege of Arete. The gods willing, it would work again now.
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’ The two officers went to withdraw. Ballista indicated Castricius to remain. The northerner talked so that only Castricius could hear. The latter listened intently, the flaring torches scouring deeper the many lines on his face, highlighting its points and sharp angles. The talk was obviously of serious matters, but in the flickering light Castricius never looked more like a playful creature from a backwoods myth.
It was time to see if the raid could go ahead at all. Castricius clattered back up the stone steps. Ballista asked one of the legionaries on the gate – they were from III Felix – to open the postern. Following Calgacus through, he noticed it was big enough for someone to lead a horse.
The postern shut behind them. The rectangle of orange light vanished. Ballista was left in profound darkness. He stood still, waiting for his night vision. Beside him, Calgacus hawked and spat.
The nearly full moon was somewhere over Ballista’s right shoulder. He stood in the deep shadow of the town walls. Beyond was the moon-blanched landscape. He went out into it. Calgacus followed.
The road ran away, very light, smooth and straight. Near at hand, on either side, prominent and reassuring to Romans of rank with a clear conscience, stood the symbols of the divinely inspired power which upheld the stability of the imperium. The crosses were empty, but there was a dark stain at the base of the one to the left. Ballista did not like to wonder what fluids were its cause. Maybe the local dogs pissed there.
The shadow of the right-hand cross pointed diagonally off down the road. The eastern necropolis of Emesa was like a reduced version of those outside Palmyra; the same tower, temple and house tombs, but most of them on a somewhat smaller scale. The houses of the dead were close-set. The ground between them was rough and stony. It would make it difficult to outflank the raiding party on the road. At least that was something good.
Little else was good. The necropolis ran for about two hundred yards. About the same distance further out were the picket fires of the Palmyrene army. They burned rose-red, were well made up, evenly spaced. Beyond them, yet another couple of hundred yards, were the bigger fires of another picket line around the main camp. These too looked well tended. There were Roman regulars among the blockading army. Vexillationes of at least three legions had been seen: III Cyrenaica from Arabia, XV Apollinaris from Cappadocia and, mirroring the detachment in Quietus’s force, III Felix from Circesium. Yet Ballista considered that the Palmyrenes needed no guides in the craft of war – they knew what they were about.
As for Odenathus, he not only knew what he was about, nature was aiding him too. The moon, like some radical democrat in old Athens, wanted everything out in the open and treated all the same. It was bright as day but without the colours. The world was snow-blue or black. Anything that did not stay in the shadows was visible for miles.
As if the gods wanted to reiterate the point, a fox came out from behind one of the furthermost tombs. Ballista watched it cross the road. Its high ears and low body were strangely one-dimensional; its shadow had an unreal depth. But tricks of the moonlight aside, it was easy to see.
A single fox at a couple of hundred yards – what price five hundred men at twice the distance? This was hopeless. If pressed home, suicidal.
Ballista walked back to the postern and kicked it to signal that the operation should get under way.
The Palmyra Gate had not been oiled. The shriek of its hinges rushed away across the plain. Not all the torches had been extinguished. The Praetorians were orange-tinged silhouettes as they emerged. The gate shrieked shut behind them. The soldiers jingled and thumped into their new formation.
As if Odenathus did not know we were coming anyway, Ballista thought. Calgacus at his side, he took his place with Jucundus at the head of the column. Ballista ordered the standard bearer Gratius to signal the advance. Best get it over.
In the forsaken, luminous light, their shadows went on far ahead. The shadows ran on as if the men’s souls had already left and were flitting away, searching for some fissure to slide down to Hades.
Ballista could hear nothing over the heavy tramp of boots and the higher notes of harness and weapons, like ten thousand bone dice clinking together. He could see no movement from the nearer picket fires. Even if not forewarned, the Palmyrenes must have heard or seen them coming. He knew they were walking into an ambush.
They were clear of the last of the necropolis. The land opened up all around, flat and deadly. Two hundred yards to go. No movement by the fires. Come on, come on. Get on with it. One hundred and fifty. They were within bowshot. In the darkness beyond the fires, the Palmyrene archers would be notching arrows, waiting for them to walk into a good, effective range – the range where the tip of an arrow can punch through the best steel armour and into the delicate flesh it covers.
Twang-slide-thump. From the wall behind them, loud in the night, the sound of an artillery piece. The lanterns were still shuttered in Calgacus’s hands. Twang-slide-thump: the sound of another. Now there could be no question of surprise.
‘Halt!’ Even as Ballista’s voice faded, a trumpet called from beyond the fires. Seconds later, no one in the column could help but duck as they heard the whoosh of arrows.
There was only one scream. The first flight had almost all fallen short.
‘About turn. Quick march.’ The Praetorians jostled to obey.
Again the horrible sound of unseen arrows. Again just a solitary yell of pain. The second volley had also been misjudged.
Ballista looked over his shoulder. He saw his own shadow, elongated into the distance. It was the moonlight. In the uncanny light, distances were hard to judge.
A terrible, huge, tearing sound. Screams behind them. Castricius had decided the time had come for his artillery to use missiles. All along the wall, from tower to tower, echoed the sounds of torsion artillery. They were shooting virtually blind into the night; aiming roughly at the picket fires. Yet it should be enough to deter any close pursuit.
‘Run!’ Ballista shouted.
The gate banged shut behind them. The orange torchlight could not have been more welcoming. They had not returned unscathed. The ever-efficient Jucundus reckoned ten men missing. It could have all been so very much worse.
The palace of Emesa, like that of Minos, was a maze. Of course, the Emesene priest-kings had had over three centuries to add architectural complexity. There had been a Sampsigeramus waiting all those years earlier when Pompey the Great had first led Roman arms into Syria.
Even if they had just been given instructions, it would be doubtful if Ballista, Castricius and Jucundus would have found their way to this secluded courtyard on their own. The morning after the failed raid, this had not been put to the test. Summoned in haste, they had arrived at the main gate and had been taken in charge by no less than sixteen of the Emesene royal guard. As Jucundus had muttered, the odds were worse than five to one.
Since the time of the first emperor, the Praetorians had been among the few who were allowed to be armed in the imperial presence. The more recent post of Prefect of Cavalry was one of the others. None of this held any longer at the court of Quietus. The Emesene guards had brusquely disarmed and thoroughly searched Ballista and the other two. Their weapons and armour were piled negligently against the wall. The easterners, uncaring of their wounded foreign dignitas, had hustled them like condemned prisoners through the myriad corridors of the palace.
Like the palace of Minos, at the heart of the maze was something unpleasant. Quietus at first completely ignored the new arrivals. The emperor was dressed in eastern fashion: long, flowing robes, a jewelled dagger in his sash. Arm in arm with Sampsigeramus, he wandered here and there across the courtyard. Quietus inspected things, issued commands and reproofs, even the occasional word of encouragement.
The open space was a hive of activity. At one end, slaves were laying out a huge array of precious things: paintings, sculptures, dinner services in gold, silver and electrum, intricate carpets and curtains, silken garments. Quietus studied them closely, head on one side, rearranging his hair with one finger. Sometimes he ordered an item removed and another brought out in its place. Opposite all this, other slaves were building an elaborate pyre, surely too close to the wall; with the amount of scented oils being poured, it would burn with an all-consuming ferocity.
Ballista had seen nothing like it before, but it was all oddly familiar.
There was an awning strung over the whole courtyard. It was torn near the centre and let in a column of clean light. The slaves walked tentatively around it, as if it were solid. The emperor and his friend avoided it as if it could hurt.
Despite the shade, it was hot. Soon Quietus and his delicate eastern priest-king needed a rest. At a word, work was suspended. A couch was brought out and they reclined between the mountain of luxuries and the half-built pyre. They sipped drinks chilled with the snow of Mount Libanus.
Ballista stood rigid. Castricius and Jucundus did the same. They were unarmed, ringed by guards, prey to justified fears. Quietus’s words at their last meeting ran round and round in Ballista’s thoughts: by dawn, the Lion of the Sun would be dead, or others would suffer. The northerner pictured the senator Astyrius in the gloom of the temple; his headless trunk in the pooling blood. Rather that happen to himself, here and now in this sweltering courtyard, than any harm come to his boys. Let this be over. It was the waiting that always threatened to unman you. Calm, calm. In a way, what was life but one long wait for the final, horrible thing?
Warrior of Rome III Page 30
