The Caspian Gates wor-4

by Harry Sidebottom

  A voice called in Greek from the midst of the northmen, slightly muffled but audible. Presumably it was Chrysogonus. When Respa’s words had been translated, there was murmuring in the dark corners of the temple. It was cunning, but Ballista was not unduly worried. Even should they desire it, these Milesian civilians did not have the balls to try and give him up.

  ‘I know you,’ shouted Maximus. ‘Respa, the one they call Cocksucker. You must miss your brother’s sword in your mouth.’

  ‘And I know you, the foul-mouthed Hibernian catamite of Dernhelm.’ The big Goth raised his sword hilt-up to the sky. ‘Fairguneis the Thunderer, all you high gods of the Goths, I pledge two fine stallions and a dozen oxen, if you grant Dernhelm Oath-breaker and the foul Hibernian fall beneath my sword.’

  Ballista snorted derisively. ‘You are long on words, but short on courage. Here we are – come and try your luck.’

  Respa did not reply. At his gesture, a dozen or so warriors shook themselves out of the shieldburg. Big men, in helmets, shields, mail coats, swords, all sporting a surfeit of golden arm-rings. Men to be considered. Their reiks led them warily forward.

  They halted, spread out by the circular altar. Respa spoke to them, too low for Ballista to hear. A single tile dropped from the roof. It shattered harmlessly. The Goths laughed, an unpleasant, wolfish sound.

  Ballista silently cursed the Milesians on the roof. How much nerve did it take to throw things from a position of complete safety? What the fuck was the soldier up there doing? Where was that posturing Greek Hippothous? The Goths should be advancing through a hail of missiles.

  Respa and another warrior took the lead. They reached the first step. The others fanned out behind.

  ‘Open order,’ Ballista shouted. Everyone apart from Ballista and Maximus fell back. The two of them shuffled into position, alert to the need for room for their swordplay.

  Respa and the other champion came up the steps.

  ‘Now!’ said Ballista. As one, Ballista and Maximus took three paces back. Only a fool would make a stand at the top of a flight of stairs – your legs were exposed; it was further for your sword to stretch down. They both dropped into the ‘plough guard’: shield out, its leading edge pointing at the enemy, sword held underhand, low to the side.

  Respa bounded over the top step. With horrible speed, he took two quick paces, unleashed a deafening war cry and a vicious diagonal cut down to the neck. Ballista raised his shield. Respa fluidly lowered his stroke. Ballista got his shield down just in time to prevent his left ankle being severed. Even as the wood splintered and the impact ran up to his left shoulder, Ballista struck overhand, a short-edge thrust to the face. Respa caught it on the rim of his shield, forcing Ballista’s sword arm up and wide. Like a steel serpent seeking hot blood, the Goth’s blade flickered across at Ballista’s exposed right arm. A lifetime of training saved Ballista. Without conscious thought, he brought his shield up, round and forward, crunching into Respa, trapping the reiks ’s blade between the linden boards and his own chest. For an instant their faces were together, their breath mingling. Ballista ducked, heaved; his knees bent, he shoved the Goth backwards. Panting, a little apart, both gathered themselves. The whole exchange had taken no more than two seconds.

  The Goth who had gone for Maximus was down, moaning in pain. His companions grabbed his feet, dragged him clear. He left a bright smear of blood on the marble flagstone. Another took his place.

  ‘Give my regards to your brother,’ goaded Ballista.

  Bellowing incoherently, Respa hurled himself forward, swinging a mighty overhand cut. Ballista did not flinch. Somehow he kept his nerve. Eyes on the sword, the heavy steel slicing down towards the top of his skull. At the last instant, Ballista stepped to his left, bringing his shield up and across. The metal shieldboss buckled with the blow. It almost forced Ballista to his knees. But he twisted, got his shoulder behind his shield, his whole body weight. Twisting and pushing, he drove his assailant’s sword off to the right, exposing the Goth’s unguarded side. There was nothing for Respa to do now but die.

  With all his strength, Ballista thrust, low and underhand. There was momentary resistance, then the sharp cracks as metal rings snapped, and the wicked tip of the blade was sliding through soft tissue.

  Respa screamed. His spatha rang on the stones. Ballista turned the blade, once, twice. The blood splashed hot on his arm. Locked in a ghastly, intimate embrace, Ballista glanced over the shoulder of the dying man. None of the Goths had a clear strike. Bracing with his shield, Ballista withdrew his blade, and pushed Respa away.

  The big reiks tottered back. He dropped his shield. His hands went to the rent in his mail shirt; a futile attempt to staunch the blood. The gore pulsed down the Goth’s legs, puddled by his boots.

  A frozen moment, and then Respa fell backwards down the steps. The man behind tried to catch him. He was knocked down. A third Goth was swept down in the tangle.

  The warrior facing Maximus was stepping back. His shield was hacked, his face horror struck.

  Now the men on the roof were doing their duty. Tiles, stones, scraps of metal were raining down on the steps. Sharp shards and splinters sang through the air. The Goths had their shields up, trying to cover their fallen leader, themselves. They began to pull back, dragging their dead and injured.

  ‘ Testudo! ’ yelled Ballista. He and Maximus stepped back, as the six soldiers locked their shields across the entrance.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Ballista asked.

  ‘Never better,’ said Maximus. ‘I am – what was it you once called me?’

  ‘Demented?’

  ‘No – I have it – hideously exultant.’

  ‘Not usually a good thing.’

  ‘Certain, it is for me.’ Maximus roared, ‘I am hideously exultant!’

  The soldiers laughed.

  Ballista peered through the shields. The Goths had drawn back out of sight. The steps were covered with debris. An idea occurred to Ballista. He looked around, unconsciously flicking the blood in a spray off his blade. Selandros was close. The prophetes looked queasy.

  ‘Selandros, get some people breaking up rocks – small, no bigger than a fist.’

  The priest looked back, uncomprehending.

  ‘I want them scattered on the steps. Make the footing as treacherous as possible. I should have thought of it before,’ Ballista added reflectively.

  Selandros nodded, but did not move.

  ‘The Goths are not skilled at sieges,’ Ballista continued. ‘With food and water, we can sit it out in here indefinitely.’

  The priest looked unhappy.

  ‘What?’ Ballista asked.

  Still Selandros did not speak.

  ‘You did get food in? The sacred spring will give us water.’

  ‘There is food, and a few barrels of water.’ The prophetes stopped, obviously uncertain what to say next.

  ‘The spring?’

  Selandros cleared his throat. ‘The waters of Mykale have ceased to flow.’

  Now it was Ballista who stared, uncomprehending. The mountain range of Mykale was, at a guess, a good twenty miles away. Priene and his familia were there.

  ‘The divine water from Mount Mykale flows under the plain and the sea, to rise here at Apollo’s holy place. Or it did. The spring has been dry for some years.’

  XII

  Ballista sat in the shade at the top of the high steps and looked down on the walled square of the temple of Apollo at Didyma. He moved the pebble in his mouth from one cheek to the other. The pall of dust made it hard to see across the adyton. The bright sunshine turned the fug a dirty yellow, rendered it opaque. The little inner sanctum at the far end was almost totally obscured. There was no wind. Trapped, great waves of dust slowly coiled back from the high outer walls of the sanctuary. Ballista knew the men with picks and shovels down on the ground would be finding it hard to breathe. It could not be helped; they were only slaves.

  It was hot. Everyone was tortured with thirst. De
spite careful rationing, the few barrels of water had run out two days after the Gothic attack. That had been the day before. They were still encircled by the Goths. No one could go outside. No one had drunk anything for more than twenty-four hours.

  Ballista had been wrong in his assumption that the waters rose in the inner sanctum. The sacred spring had been just outside its doors. As soon as he had been given the news about its failure, he had got the temple slaves to work digging down to clear the channels, discover where the water had gone. So far, the Sacred Boys had found nothing.

  Ballista shifted the pebble with his tongue. He was unsure if it did any good, but he could not tell how thirsty he would have felt without it. The tip had come from Mamurra, years earlier. Mamurra had been an old hand on the eastern frontier. Every time he came into Ballista’s mind, there was the guilt. Mamurra, the good friend he had left to die, entombed alive in Arete.

  Just as certainly as Mamurra had been trapped in the siege tunnel, so now they were all trapped in this temple. Ballista wondered if the messenger he had sent from Priene had got through and, if so, had Maximillianus, the governor, acted on it. If not, they were all doomed. The Goths need only wait for thirst to drive them out – and they would have to wait no time at all. For distraction, Ballista asked Hippothous about the sparrows of Didyma.

  In a husky voice, Hippothous told the story. The Lydian rebel Pactyes had fled to the Greek polis of Cyme. The Persian king demanded he be surrendered. The Cymeans had asked the oracle here at Didyma what to do. Apollo had said to hand him over. Giving up a suppliant had seemed wrong to the men of Cyme. They had sent a second embassy to Didyma. It received the same answer. Now, on the embassy was a man of wisdom; Aristodicus was his name. He took a long stick and with it he went around the sanctuary knocking down all the sparrows’ nests he could reach.

  Ballista looked up at the towering walls. It must have been a very long stick.

  As Aristodicus was about this, Apollo himself spoke in the adyton . How dare this man drive these suppliants from the temple? Aristodicus was not stuck for a reply. How could Apollo defend his suppliants but order the Cymeans to give up theirs? The god replied it was to hasten the impiety of Cyme and bring on its destruction; to teach them never to ask such a question again.

  Sat overlooking the adyton, dependent on the god’s house for his safety, Ballista thought it was not the place to voice his doubts over either the piety or the logic of Apollo’s words. ‘What did the Cymeans do?’

  Hippothous smiled. ‘They sent Pactyes to Mytilene. When they heard the men there were going to give him up, they shipped him to Chios. The Persians bribed the Chians with the territory of Atarneus on the mainland. The Chians hauled Pactyes out of their sanctuary of Athena and gave him to the Persians.’

  ‘What happened to Pactyes?’

  Hippothous paused, thinking. ‘I am not sure if Herodotus recorded that. But nothing good.’

  ‘And what happened to the Chians?’

  The Greek frowned. ‘For quite a long time, they would not use barley from Atarneus in offerings to the gods, or sacrificial cakes.’

  Not the most taxing way of easing one’s guilt, thought Ballista. It was just time for him to go down to the entrance and relieve Maximus when something happened down on the floor of the adyton. There was hoarse shouting in the murk. The mass of refugees huddled on the lower steps parted and the dust-caked figures of the prophetes and his aide stumbled upwards. They were both grinning.

  Politely getting to his feet, Ballista spat the pebble into his left hand.

  ‘They have struck water,’ Selandros said. ‘We are saved.’

  With a restrained formality, Ballista and the prophetes shook hands. The Stygian gloom below was transformed by shouts of good omen, husky cheering. They were all indeed saved – at least for the moment. ‘I am Apollo’s water, to the inhabitants a gift Given freely by the player of the golden lyre, in the Scythian war.’

  The youthful aide beamed as he extemporized the poem. His role in the oracle was suddenly clear to Ballista. The priestess from the inner temple muttered the words of Apollo, this young hypochrestes transformed them into verse, and Selandros, the dignified prophetes, spoke them through the high window to the pious waiting below.

  ‘When around the temple dashed Ares

  Leto’s son himself saved his suppliants.’

  Selandros applauded the efforts of his aide.

  ‘This has happened before.’ The youth, buoyed up with relief, rattled on. ‘The sacred spring ran dry, Alexander the Great came, Apollo opened a vein and the golden waters flowed.’ He was looking at Ballista in a strange way. So was the prophetes. Even Hippothous had an odd look in his eye.

  ‘No,’ said Ballista. ‘Euphorbus, Pythagoras, Alexander – I have been none of them.’

  The prophetes shook his head. ‘Unless you were a seer, you would not know.’

  Once everyone had drunk their fill, the barrels were refilled; a spring that had failed twice could do so a third time. Ballista had the men at the entrance and up on the walls be particularly profligate with water; drinking copiously, splashing it over each other in the heat. Likewise, although the dwindling food stocks were strictly doled out, the men on view were often eating. It was important that the Goths thought the defenders were well refreshed, their morale high.

  It was late afternoon. As the sun had moved down, somehow the heat seemed to have intensified. In the relative cool of the forest of columns at the front of the temple, Ballista hunkered down with his back to the hastily erected wall. Close to exhaustion, he looked at the sparrows chattering in and out of their nests, and his thoughts went along similarly random-seeming trajectories. Euphorbus, Pythagoras, Alexander. If you believed in the transmigration of the soul, as the prophetes and his aide obviously did, any of the swooping birds might once have been a philosopher or a hero. Such a conviction must paralyse action. You could never tell who or what you were killing. What sort of a man would you be if you could not kill? It was better not to enjoy it too much, but circumstances sometimes demanded it be done. Belief in transmigrated souls seemed a road that must inexorably lead to pacifism, vegetarianism, and other insanities embraced by Christians and other obscure sects of Jews. Not that they held to that sort of reincarnation.

  Maximus broke into Ballista’s fatigue-muddled thoughts. ‘What?’

  ‘Come and watch the Goths leave.’ Maximus extended a hand, and helped Ballista to his feet.

  It was true. From up on the roof terrace, they saw the last of the northern raiders passing out of the gate, streaming away to the north-east towards Panormos. The Goths appeared to have little booty, were driving but a few captives before them. Something was impelling the warriors to hurry.

  Wary of a trick, Ballista sent Hippothous down to the entrance to ensure that the soldiers there did not relax their vigilance. Ballista systematically scanned the rooftops and groves of Didyma but could see no evidence of lurking Gothic warriors.

  Ballista gazed hard into the distance to the north and north-east. He began to smile. Out towards Miletus, some six or seven miles away, was a tall pillar of dust. Dense, isolated; he knew what it meant. A large body of mounted men was crossing the scrubby hills. They were coming south, following the Sacred Way that would bring them to Panormos. Ballista’s smile broadened slowly. His message had got through. The governor had done the right thing. Maximillianus had diverted the unit of auxiliary cavalry from Ephesus and sent them south. One thousand cavalry, riding to Panormos, where the Gothic ships were moored. Threaten their longboats, and the Goths would leave.

  Allfather, Deep Hood, Death-blinder; they were saved.

  XIII

  Gallienus thought he had overdone the poison that morning. He had been awake well before dawn. As he had been with Demetrius in the night, he had not sacrificed to the gods. Instead he had decided to go riding. While the horses were being tacked up, he had drunk some milk and eaten a little bread and fruit. With something in his stomach, he h
ad gone to the one thing he had that was completely private. Unfastening the triple locks of the chest, he had poured out and taken a little of every poison that nature and human ingenuity provided.

  Perhaps he had been careless. He had felt fine on horseback. There had been a low mist covering the Pannonian plain, the lights of Sirmium dim and haloed in the distance. Gallienus had galloped hard. His favourite hunter, Spoletium, easily outpaced the mount of Freki the Alamann, the commander of his recently created barbarian inner bodyguard. Gallienus had taken only Freki out with him. Sometimes it was good to be alone, or as near as could be for an emperor.

  After a time, the sun had come up in splendour, lighting a wide blue sky with just a few high, dappled clouds. The Savus river shone, broad and placid, on the horizon. When Freki caught up, they had ridden back.

  Now Gallienus did not feel so good. Sitting on the high imperial throne in the apse of the basilica in the palatium, he felt sick. He must have been careless. It had been ten years since his elevation to the purple. Every morning of those ten years, he had taken the poisons. His body was well used to it, his immunity strong. Emperors had died in many untimely ways but, since the time of Claudius, over two hundred years earlier, none had died by poison.

  The low imperial altar with the sacred fire was in front of him. The incense burning there and the smell of horse and sweat coming off his riding clothes added to the nausea. There was nothing to be done. He would have to endure the consilium.

  A formal speech was in progress. The man speaking was Nummius Faustinianus. Gallienus had immortalized Faustinianus by granting him the signal honour of being the emperor’s colleague as the first pair of consuls to take office that year. Forever it would be known as the year in which Gallienus, for the fifth time, and Faustinianus were consuls.